Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington has been missing since the night of Oct. 17. Photo courtesy Virginia State Police.
Police officials recently spoke to players from Virginia’s men’s basketball team about the disappearance of Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington, University spokesperson Carol Wood said.
A woman matching Harrington’s description approached several players as they were leaving practice Oct. 17, the night of Harrington’s disappearance, Wood said. She declined to provide details about the nature of the players and woman’s interaction, citing the ongoing police investigation.
Virginia State Police spokesperson Corinne Geller also declined to elaborate about the exact circumstances under review, but said investigators spoke to the players prior to releasing the timeline of Harrington’s movements Oct. 28.
Harrington was attending a Metallica concert at the John Paul Jones Arena the night of her disappearance but left the arena shortly after 8 p.m. for reasons that remain unclear. She was denied reentry to the arena between 8:20 and 8:30 p.m. because she did not have her ticket stub, and spoke with friends inside the arena at 8:48 p.m., indicating that if she did not find a way back into the arena, she would attempt to find another way home.
Several witnesses reported seeing a woman matching Harrington’s description in the University Hall parking lot between 9:00 and 9:10 p.m., and in the Lannigan Field lot between 9:20 and 9:30 p.m. A woman matching her description was last seen attempting to hitchhike on the Copeley Road bridge near Ivy Road at 9:30 p.m.
Although officials continue to conduct the search with the methodology of a criminal investigation, Geller said, police have yet to identify any suspects.
“We still do not have evidence to prove or disprove that Morgan fell victim to foul play,” she said.
Anyone with information about Harrington’s disappearance is encouraged to contact the Virginia State Police at 434-352-2467. Tips can also be e-mailed to bci-appomattox@vsp.virginia.gov.
—compiled by Rodger Nayak
I thought she was denied reentry to the arena because the arena has a policy of no reentry, even with a ticket stub. Which is it?
The police “questioned” many people.
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Because this article was posted on Dec. 1st. I thought it might shed some light about the UV basketball players, but instead it is just another report about what we already know. How disappointing.
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Notice that it took about a month and a half for one word of this to appear in the Cav Daily. And still not one word about her being sighted by an eyewitness leaving a room on the west range of the lawn at 3:45 am that night with three men. All this was covered in The Hook story, which itself only came out a month after the disappearance.
Who cares about a missing Hokie, we need to keep “the university” and it’s students’ safe from bad publicity, right? Could someone else have verified the lawn sighting had the story been covered in the Cav Daily? Could something, anything, about her last confirmed sightings be learned and aid the investigation if her interactions with the basketball team were made known to everyone by covering it in the Cav Daily ASAP? Too late to tell now, huh?
Absolutely disgusting.
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About that “lawn sighting,” here’s an extensive quote from The Hook, which is where I saw that sighting first referenced.
“I know what I saw,” says Norma Parson, a newspaper delivery woman who believes she saw Morgan– or an incredible lookalike— coming out of a room on UVA’s West Lawn at 3:45am October 18, six hours after the last confirmed sighting on Copeley Bridge.
“She was tall and thin,” says Parson, who says the woman’s high black boots had heels making her appear taller than Morgan’s reported height of 5′6″ and that she wasn’t wearing the black hose or tights police have described.
Because the woman also was wearing a jacket that was fastened shut, Parson says, she couldn’t determine whether the woman’s blonde hair, which was tucked inside, was long or short. But as the blond woman— accompanied by three young men, two shorter, one taller— passed by her in the well-lit brick walkway along the Lawn, she says, she got a clear look at her face, and her heavily made-up eyes, in particular. She says the woman’s presence in the wee hours of a chilly night— and her bare legs— seized her attention.
“I thought, ‘What’s she doing out here dressed like that,’” Parson recalls. When she learned of Harrington’s disappearance two days later and saw photographs of heavy mascara- and eyeliner-wearing Morgan, “I knew immediately it was the same girl I saw,” says Parson, who credits art training for teaching her to examine facial details— even those she sees in passing. “I never had a moment’s doubt,” she insists.
Evidence experts, however, say that even the most earnest and certain witnesses can err.
“It’s well established that confidence and accuracy are not clearly correlated,” says UCLA Law Professor Jennifer Mnookin, an evidence expert. Mnookin says that’s the reason police confirm every alleged sighting and look for multiple witnesses or surveillance tapes before releasing new reports.
“The mind isn’t a camera,” she says. “Recollections can be affected in all kinds of ways by other information, by what we want to believe, by other biases.”
So — Ms. Parson is convinced that she shaw Morgan Harrington. But the person she saw seemed taller, Ms. Parson doesn’t know how long the person’s hair was, and the clothes this blonde woman was wearing don’t seem to match the description of what Morgan Harrington had on at the concert.
While I am sure Ms. Paron is sincere, this can hardly be called a definite sighting of the missing woman.
As for the basketball team “connection,” it was clear from the beginning that many people who saw someone who may have been Ms. Harrington have been questioned. Perhaps some of them were accountants. Is that fact that we don’t know about the accountants questioned in this case evidence that media and the accountant community are engaged in a cover-up? Ms. Parson was delievering newspapers when she saw whoever she saw. Does that somehow implicate delivery people working the morning after the concert?
Wild speculation and self-righteous indignation really aren’t very helpful.
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Tim,
I agree with the basic gist of what you are writing here. Like you, I have no idea where she was and who she was with either. But if you indeed are sure that Ms. Paron is sincere (which does not mean that the sighting is a valid one), then WHY has none of these 4 people who were sighted come forward and simply explain who they are and who came out of that room at 3:45 am? There are no “accountants” who are so conspicuously keeping quiet, now are there? And the resident of the room itself refused to be interviewed or speak publicly. There are no eyewitness accounts of Morgan leaving an accountants office that I know of.
By the way, it’s not just some missing and/or under-reported links involving UVA students that bother me. It’s also the fact that for some reason they refuse to identify the male who drove in the car with the three girls to the concert. I know the cops keep some info hidden from public view for good reasons known only to them, but I don’t understand why two of three companions have been publicly ID’d – and a third somehow gets a pass.
As for the basketball team, you don’t need to put quotes around “connection.” These interactions were confirmed by police, and ever so grudgingly and belatedly acknowledged by the UVA athletics department this past week. This, of course, does not mean they contributed in any way to Morgan’s disappearance. But there’s been exactly zero suspensions of local accountants for undisclosed reasons, now has there? Again, we don’t know why, because we’ve been deliberately kept from knowing that. There are some really busy lawyers out there you can bet. But I for one can’t imagine what could be so bad and so private that it would prevent me from explaining my suspension just to show it has nothing whatsoever to do with anything involving a missing person’s case.
Wild speculation? From me? Show me. Where?
You yourself have said today that you are disappointed in how fast and how completely the Cav Daily covered details of a MISSING PERSON investigation. We all know that time is of the essence in such cases, and since she vanished on UVA’s campus, I dare say that the UVA campus newspaper was the most important outlet for such details to be trumpeted ASAP given that UVA students rarely read other local papers or local websites.
If you are not indignant about that, then you should be embarrassed.
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Sean,
Where were you when this woman disappeared? Can you prove that? Do you think you should have to?
Why should anyone have to explain why they were walking out of a dorm room?
As for the three people who came to C’ville with Morgan Harrignton, I believe the two who’ve been identified identified themselves.
You’ve gone ’round the bend on this one.
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