Crime Wire Investigates: The Colonial Parkway Murders-Tuesday August 31, 2010 at 9:00 PM EST

Crime Wire Investigates: The Colonial Parkway Murders
The slayings along the Colonial Parkway, a scenic route in the State of Virginia that stretches from Yorktown to Jamestown, marked the beginning of a series of killings in what is known as the Tidewater area of Virginia in the late 1980s. Six people were killed and two others are missing and presumed dead. The notorious slayings - dubbed the Colonial Parkway murders - have perplexed detectives for years. The Shenandoah National Park slayings, and Route 29 Stalker cases remain unsolved, authorities are taking a new look at the most horrific serial killings in Virginia history.
After Julie Williams and Lollie Winans were killed at their Shenandoah National Park campsite in June 1996, the FBI noted "striking" similarities to the slayings of two other young women found dead in another national park in Virginia a decade earlier.
But 14 years later, 24 years after Cathleen Thomas and Rebecca Dowski were found dead in Colonial National Historical Park, information from law enforcement sources, government documents and victims' family members reveals that those forensic tests were not conducted.
Families of the victims are shocked not only that the evidence in the two cases was not compared, but also that some men who fit the FBI profile for Thomas' and Dowski's killer and who were suggested as suspects in the Williams and Winans case were not fully explored. Joining us to discuss these unsolved murders will be Bill Thomas, brother of victim Cathleen Thomas. (To read the complete story by Pam Gould, please go to this LINK)
WE will analyze this disturbing case as the crime wire team works with the family to seek the truth once and for all.
Join co-hosts Denny Griffin retired Police Investigator and Author, Susan Murphy-Milano Violence Expert and Author and Vito Colucci Jr.Private Eve and Author. Along with the Crime Wire noted experts and attorney's Mickey Sherman, Fox News Analyst Lis Wiehl, Al Dressler, Peter Hyatt, Donna Pendergast and Sheryl McCollum each week.
You can listen live and participate in the chat room by going to the direct link:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/crimewire/2010/08/24/crime-wire-investigates
Time: 9:00 PM EST and 8:00 PM CST
You may call in with questions or comments please call:
(646) 478-0982

IVAN E. “BUD” FOGLESONG

On July 21, 2007, the Foglesong family was in the living room of their home in Willows, California, when 59-year-old Bud walked into the house badly burned. Skin was falling off his arms. His son Kurt drove him the 10 miles to the Willows Hospital. Bud told Kurt that he had gone into the nearby duck cabin on the family compound to use the bathroom. When he opened the front door of the cabin, it blew up, knocking him back off of his feet. Bud was the air lifted to the Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. He died early the next day.

Bud was a Senior Captain with World Airways and a retired USAF Lieutenant Colonel. For 34 years he was married to Jan Holzapfel, whose brother is Glenn County District Attorney Bob Holzapfel. Her other brother is Herb Holzapfel, a widely known and influential farmer. He is chairman of the board of the Farmers’ Rice Cooperative, the largest rice exporter in the state, and runs the family’s extensive rice-growing operations.

Those operations are headquartered on an isolated compound located off County Road 60 southeast of Willows. Several residences are clustered on one side of the compound and at the time were occupied by Bud and Jan Foglesong, their daughter Anne, son Kurt and his family, and two households of Holzapfels.

It was widely known in the community that there was bad blood between Roy Holzapfel and Bud Foglesong. On November 5, 2006, they got into a fight, during which one of Foglesong’s fingers was permanently maimed, potentially threatening his career as a commercial pilot. Just days before Bud’s death, he was informed that the state Attorney General’s Office planned to file charges the next week against Roy Holzapfel for misdemeanor battery. Bud was quite pleased and had made no secret of the fact that he intended to sue Roy Holzapfel after the criminal case was concluded.

Around 5 o’clock on the afternoon of the incident, Bud said he was going to a small house on the property a little less than a mile away. The cabin was used as a base for duck hunting and a rest area for employees. When Bud entered the cabin a fire broke out, possibly as the result of an explosion.

Although he was in shock, Bud somehow he had managed to drive back to the house. Upon entering he said, “It exploded.”

Arson and bomb detectives were called to the cabin. Their investigation determined the fire was the result or arson.

Problems with the investigation include:

1. During the initial investigation, the family members who had last been with Bud on the day he died were not interviewed. His daughter Anne, who was the last person to speak with him, was interviewed a full six months after the fire; 
2. The original fire investigator on the scene was a rookie doing his first investigation. When attempting to test for the presence of gasoline the batteries on his equipment ran down and the test wasn’t completed. The analysis was never performed; 
3. Evidence such as clothing was not secured in sealed containers for eight hours, and the chain of custody was unclear; 
4. Nurses and others who treated Foglesong, were not interviewed; 
5. Cell phone records that could have shown where various people were and who they talked at critical times were not examined; 
6. Although the sheriff’s office failed to call in an experienced forensic fire investigators; and 
7. The investigation lacked clear leadership and direction. 

In December 2008, under pressure from the Foglesong family, the sheriff announced he was reopening the investigation. But there has been little or no progress since then.

The family continues its quest to find out what really happened to Bud Foglesong.

The Case of Shawn Allison

On November 20, 2000 Shawn Joseph Allison was found dead of a gunshot wound to the face in his cabin in LaPine, Oregon. He was 29 years old.

Shawn’s body was found by “Tad” Leighton Keith Shirley II, a friend of Jessica McEwen, the woman Shawn was seeing. Tad said that Jessica’s mother asked him to go “check on Shawn.” This is odd to Shawn’s sister Rita, because Jessica came to the cabin whenever she wished. Why send Tad?

Tad phoned the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Department at 11:36 am, yet Shawn’s neighbors saw Tad at the cabin at 9 am, sitting on the porch steps making phone calls. When one neighbor asked what was going on, Tad said, “Don’t go inside. Shawn’s shot himself.” Why wait two and a half hours to call police and who was Tad calling?

One of the phone calls he made was to Shawn’s friend Buster Tate at 10 am. Buster in turn called Shawn’s mother Veronica’s boyfriend. The boyfriend and Veronica arrived at the cabin minutes after sheriff’s deputies got there. They were met by Deputy Gary Decker, who asked them who they were. When Veronica said, “I’m Shawn’s mother,” Deputy Decker said, “They weren’t supposed to tell you!” It is Oregon statute that the next of kin must be notified. Who was Decker referring to when he said “they?”

Veronica watched in a state of shock as a mortician took away her son’s body. The family has since learned that it was illegal for Deputy Decker to permit the removal. Under Oregon law, only the coroner has the authority to release the body for burial.

Stunned, but still trusting the police, Veronica agreed to have Shawn’s body cremated. Decker asked her if Shawn had ever threatened suicide. She replied, “Yes. He threatened a lot of things back when he was told he was dying of cancer.” Without allowing her to explain that the cancer scare had been eight years earlier, Decker declared Shawn’s death a suicide.

Although the police took pictures, they conducted no investigation. No autopsy was performed. No fingerprints were taken. There were no ballistics tests. The cartridge and the bullet both “disappeared.” A sheriff’s captain pointed out a spot in the middle of the room and told Veronica, “He stood there when he shot himself.” Yet you can see from police photos that Shawn’s body was found across the room on a couch where he “bled out,” and a gun was under his feet. How did Shawn get to that couch unless somebody placed him there? And how could he shoot himself if his feet were on top of the gun?

Under Oregon Statute, if an unnatural death is not witnessed or attended by a physician, it is to be considered a homicide until such time as the evidence warrants other findings. This was not done in Shawn’s case.

According to Rita Allison, the sheriff’s department does not have a stellar reputation. In the years since Shawn’s death, then sheriff Greg Brown has been arrested for embezzling a quarter of a million dollars from the local fire district and later for selling rifles from the sheriff’s department and pocketing the money. Two of the deputies involved in Shawn’s case, one of them the DARE officer at LaPine High School, were arrested for having sex with teenage girls, giving them drugs and attempting to put sex videos on the internet.

The family feels they cannot get an outside agency involved in this investigation unless they can get the finding of suicide removed from Shawn’s death certificate. When they made an appointment to talk to the county coroner who signed the death certificate without viewing Shawn’s body, he kept them waiting for five hours and then charged them money to see him.

As of now, the death of Shawn Allison officially remains a suicide. Did he really take his own life or is someone getting away with murder?