The Dark Secrets of Lovers’ Lane: Colonial Parkway Killings

Lovers' Lane Murders Along the Colonial Parkway

A lovers’ lane is the perfect place for a young couple to enjoy a moment of privacy…but it is also the perfect place for a serial killer to find his next pair of victims.

During the late 1980s, a series of murders began along the length of Virginia’s 22-mile Colonial Parkway. The parkway provides a connection between Yorktown, Jamestown, and Williamsburg, and runs directly through the Colonial National Historic Park. While it was a scenic drive in many places, many sections of the road didn’t have any lighting, and as soon as the sun set, these isolated dark corners became a popular place for young couples to park their cars and hook up.

None of those couples suspected that there was another person out there in the dark, waiting for the right moment to attack.

The First Victims: Rebecca Dowski and Cathleen Thomas

The first victims were a lesbian couple—21-year-old college senior Rebecca Dowski, who was known as Becky, and 27-year-old Cathleen Thomas, who was known as Cathy. Becky and Cathy were last seen at a college computer lab in the evening of October 9th, 1986—and, for three days, there was no sign of them. Finally, early in the morning of October 12th, a jogger saw a white Honda that had been left in an embankment off the side of the Colonial Parkway. The vehicle belonged to Cathy Thomas.

The jogger reported the vehicle, and when the highway patrol arrived, they found Becky and Cathy’s bodies inside the parked car. Becky’s body was in the backseat, but Cathy had been placed inside the Honda’s hatchback. It was immediately clear that foul play was involved. Both victims had been strangled, and then their attacker had used a sharp weapon to cut their throats—the neck wounds were so deep that they had both almost been completely decapitated. There were signs of rope burn around their wrists as well as their necks, showing that at some point, they had been restrained. Cathy had clearly tried to fight off her killer and had ripped out some of their hair, which the autopsy found clenched between her fingers.

While the cause of death was clear, the motive was another story. No valuables had been taken, so it wasn’t a robbery—in fact, both victims' wallets were easily accessible and had been left inside the Honda. Sexual assault also didn’t appear to be the motive; there was no sign that either victim had been raped, and all of their clothes had been left on.

Only a few weeks after the bodies were discovered, the media announced that the FBI’s behavioral science unit at Quantico was working to create a behavioral profile of the perpetrator. It was clear that investigators didn’t believe the murder was an isolated case—they were dealing with a killer who may have killed before and was likely to kill again unless they were apprehended.

A Second Double Murder: David Knobling and Robin Edwards

Despite the construction of a behavioral profile and the FBI looking into the case, it went cold until 1988, when an abandoned truck was found.

The truck was a Ford Ranger pickup that belonged to 20-year-old salesman David Knobling. David had gone missing on the 19th of September, 1988, along with 14-year-old Robin Edwards, who had been his passenger. Robin had gone on a date that evening with David’s younger cousin, and David had driven them to the arcade—however, at some point during the evening, she and David had arranged to meet up alone, despite Robin being in eighth grade and David being in his 20s.

At midnight, David drove the pickup to Robin’s house. It was the last time either of them was seen alive. David’s truck was discovered two days later, left in a parking area with the radio still playing, the doors and one window open, and the engine turned on.

David and Robin’s bodies weren’t found near the pickup truck. Instead, they were found lying on the banks of the James River after the current had washed them ashore. Unlike the previous victims, David and Robin hadn’t been strangled or had their throats cut—they had both been fatally shot. Robin’s jeans were unbuttoned, and her bra had been removed. This made investigators wonder whether the killer had assaulted Robin, but they knew it was possible that David and Robin had a sexual relationship, so he might have been the one to partially remove her clothing.

New Theories: Was the Killer a Cop?

Because David’s truck had been left with the driver’s window rolled down, investigators wondered whether the killer was a law enforcement officer or at least pretending to be one. He could have asked for David’s license and registration, resulting in David winding the window down to pass them over, and then ordered both David and Robin to get out of the vehicle, explaining why the doors were left open.

Even though the Colonial Parkway was not directly involved in David and Robin’s murder, there was only about a half-hour drive between the site of the second murders and the site where Becky and Cathy had been killed two years before. Along with the other similarities in the cases, this made investigators suspect that the same killer had struck again.

DNA Breakthrough in 2024

For more than two decades, there were no more leads…until a handwritten note in Annamaria Phelps’ handwriting was found in a box of evidence from her apartment. The note outlined Annamaria’s plans to meet someone at a rest stop, stating the person’s name and that they would be driving a blue van. Somehow, this piece of evidence had been overlooked.

In January 2024, a statement was released: two of the Colonial Parkway murders had been linked to a deceased suspect.

The suspect’s name was Alan Wilmer Sr., the same fisherman who had passed a polygraph test after initially being viewed as a suspect in the killings. Unfortunately, Alan couldn’t be questioned or arrested for murder: he had died in 2017. Alan was confirmed to have killed David Knobling and Robin Edwards, but his DNA had also connected him to a different murder that had never been linked to the Colonial Parkway murders—29-year-old Teresa Lynn Spaw Howell, who had been fatally strangled in July 1989.

Technically, the Colonial Parkway murder cases have been solved…but Alan Wilmer Sr. has not yet been linked to all of the killings, and several possible additional victims have not been formally connected to the string of Colonial Parkway murders. At the very least, Alan killed three people and lived out the rest of his life without being viewed as a suspect. He got to have a wife and a family, then grow old and pass away peacefully of natural causes…a chance that none of his victims ever got to have.