Over the past six months, law enforcement officials have announced DNA matches in two of Virginia’s highest profile cold cases, but the brother of one victim says his relief at the new information in both the Colonial Parkway killings and the Shenandoah Park murders has been marred by the way the FBI has handled the release of information.

“I’m thrilled because I know what it is like to wait for decades for answers in your loved one’s case,” says Bill Thomas, whose sister Cathy Thomas was murdered in 1986 along with her girlfriend Rebecca Dowski. In January, the FBI announced that DNA had linked Alan Wade Wilmer Sr. to another of the four couples who were murdered in the Colonial Parkway case and the unrelated 1989 murder of Theresa Lynn Spaw Howell in Hampton Roads. Then, on June 20, the FBI suddenly announced a DNA match in the 1996 murders of Julie Williams and Lollie Winans in the Shenandoah National Park. 

“The way the FBI and the Virginia State Police are handling these press conferences leaves me almost with more questions than they’ve provided answers,” Thomas told Charlottesville Right Now. 

Both press conferences were announced abruptly, giving family members and reporters just a few hours notice. At the June 20 press conference, FBI Special Agent in Charge Stanley Meador said the review of the case began in 2021.

“That process started three years ago. So what I can’t figure out is why are we given almost no notice that a press conference is going to take place,” Thomas said, noting that at the January press conference announcing the DNA match to Wilmer in the Colonial Parkway case, the FBI declined to answer questions about when and how Wilmer first came to law enforcement’s attention.

“I heard about this in 1988,” said Thomas, who co-hosts the Mind Over Murder podcast. “He was questioned. A search was conducted of his property. He was given two polygraph examinations. He passed one and the second one was inconclusive.”

Thomas says the announcement of the DNA match to Walter “Leo” Jackson Sr. in the Shenandoah Park murders case also left him with more questions. 

“What wasn’t said at the press conference the other day was how they connected Jackson to this double homicide, when they conducted these tests and how they were able to eliminate a suspect like Darrell David Rice, who clearly did not commit this murder despite the fact that the FBI has been insisting for over 20 years that he did,” Thomas said. He supports the FBI focusing on the success in the case, but believes more information is necessary.

“I think they owe the public in Virginia and across the country a better explanation as to how we got to this point,” he said.

Listen to the full interview with Bill Thomas here.