RELATIVES of a woman killed by the elusive Route 29 Stalker have shared their heartbreak over the lack of answers in the case, which remains unsolved after more than 27 years.

Alicia Showalter Reynolds, 25, vanished on March 2, 1996, as she was driving from Baltimore, Maryland, to Charlottesville, Virginia, to meet her mom and go shopping at a local mall.

Her car, a Mercury Tracer, was found later the same day abandoned along the shoulder of Route 29 near Culpepper, Virginia, some 50 miles from her destination.

A white paper napkin had been placed under the windshield wiper, a commonly used signal to indicate a vehicle had suffered a mechanical issue. However, nothing appeared to be wrong with the car.

An investigation was launched immediately and several promising leads were garnered in the opening days of the probe.

Three witnesses came forward to inform police they’d seen Alicia talking to a clean-cut white male who was driving a dark-colored pick-up truck.

The man was described to be between 35 to 45 years old, with brown hair, and roughly six feet tall.

Forensic sketch artists drew up various impressions of the man she was last seen with, but still to this day that individual has not been identified.

After nine weeks, Alicia’s body was tragically discovered in a wooded area roughly 15 miles east of Culpepper.

How she died has never been disclosed by police.

Numerous other women would come forward in the months after to inform investigators that between February and March of that year, an unidentified man had attempted to get them to pull over on or near Route 29.

To do so, the man apparently would honk his horn, flash his lights, and wave at them while yelling that something appeared to be wrong with their car.

Many of the women ignored him, to which the man reportedly became incensed, banging his hands on the steering wheel and mouthing curse words before eventually driving away.

Three women who did stop said he took them to a nearby payphone without any issues. Some women reported seeing a toolbox and green tarp in the back of the man’s truck.

Others said he introduced himself as Larry Breeden – a believed alias – and wore a wedding ring.

A week before Alicia went missing, one woman informed police she had been driving home when a man in a small blue truck stopped her along Virginia 234 to report something was wrong with her car.

He offered to give her a ride, which she accepted, but after driving a short distance the man attacked her and threatened her with a screwdriver.

The woman escaped by jumping out the passenger side door.

Investigators believe the man the woman encountered was the same individual spotted with Alicia on the day she disappeared.

In the encounters prior to Alicia’s disappearance, Virginia State Police previously theorized the individual may have been performing “test runs” to pluck up the courage to kill.

All of the women approached by the Route 29 Stalker were petite, brunette, and in their twenties.

Alicia’s family told The U.S. Sun they had given up hope of finding her killer decades ago.

But breakthroughs in other cold cases in more recent years, including the Golden State Killer and the Gilgo Beach murders, has given them quiet cause for optimism.

However, hoping to avoid relitigating the traumas of their past, Alicia’s sister, Barbara Josenhans, said she hopes if the killer is eventually identified, that he himself is already dead.

“I want to believe the guy is dead, quite frankly,” admitted Barbara, insisting she had no desire to face-off with her sibling’s killer during a trial.

“That would make everything easier […] one of the hardest parts of all this has been watching my parents deal with their grief, while also dealing with my own.

“At this point, 27 years later, although I would love for the case to be solved, I would hate for there to be a court trial.

“Dealing with the trial, seeing this person in the flesh, and reliving it all would be more disturbing than helpful, for me, at least.

“I don’t know if the rest of my family feel the same way, but that’s definitely where I stand.”

Another question that occasionally lingers in Barbara’s mind is how her sister was killed.

To this day, she remains unsure if she wants to know what happened to her in her final throes of life, fearful the reality of what occured may be even worse than the scenarios her imagination has conjured up over the years.

“I think part of me is of course curious about that,” she said.

“But at the same time, the other part of me really doesn’t want to think about her last minutes.

“I think if I had the information about how she was ultimately killed, I think it would be more disturbing than what my imagination is currently allowing me to envision.”

FINAL MOMENTS

Barbara was the last of her family members to see Alicia alive.

She was due to finish college in the spring and had been auditioning for graduate school in the days preceding her sister’s disappearance, staying overnight with her in Baltimore on February 28.

Alicia drove Barbara to the airport the following morning to finish up the rest of her school year.

Barbara remembers Alicia hugging her tightly outside departures and telling her: “I can’t wait to see what happens. I’m really excited for you.”

Alicia also told her sister to call her as soon as she got to campus, but Barbara never did.

“I was just an immature college kid, I guess,” she said.

“The next thing I knew, I was getting a call telling me she was missing.”

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That call came on the evening of March 2, sometime shortly after Alicia’s car was found abandoned at the roadside.

Barbara had been at the movies with her friends and had returned home to a message on her voicemail that she needed to call home right away and that she should have someone with her when she did.

When she made the call, a neighbor answered the phone.

The memory of what she was told specifically is hazy now, Barbara says.

But she remembers being overcome with a grave feeling.

“It was shocking,” she recounted. “I don’t think I collapsed or anything like that, but it was upsetting.

“I flew home the next day and stayed with one of my professors and his family that night so I wouldn’t have to be alone.

“The next week I spent at home was the s**ttiest week of my life. And when she wasn’t found within the first few days I just kind of assumed that she wouldn’t be found alive.

“And part of me actually thought – while I didn’t know anything about what had happened to her – that maybe it was better she wasn’t after all that time, because whatever she would’ve had to live through may have been too traumatic or difficult to overcome.

“My head just went to really dark places […] and I think I was trying to protect myself by accepting that fate early.”

SHOULDERING GRIEF

Barbara never told her family of the resigned thoughts she was harboring as they otherwise clung on to hope that Alicia would soon be found, even as the days turned into weeks without her.

For two months, her parents kept a candle burning in their home in Harrisonburg as a symbol of their enduring faith that somehow she would have survived an apparent random highway abduction.

The local community was hopeful too; they appealed for clues, conducted searches of rural areas, and posted rewards seeking vital information – but, tragically, the efforts came in vain.

When Alicia’s body was found on May 7, it was her boots, a dress, and rings that were initially used to identify her. A subsequent autopsy would later confirm the family’s worst fears.

Her parent’s symbolic candle was finally permitted to burn out on the mantle piece.

Alicia, a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, was working on a vaccine for a parasitic infection at the time of her death.

On the day she disappeared, she and her mother were planning to buy dresses for the June wedding of her twin brother, Patrick.

“She was a good sister,” reflected Barbara. “She was 25 when she died and I was 20. We were very different people […] but we were just on the cusp of our adult relationship.

“That’s one of the things that has been really difficult especially as I got married, and then I had children and now started navigating womanhood and wanting to have her to bounce ideas off of, and frustrations, and all that’s been kind of the hard part because I just didn’t know that part of her. 

“But one thing I’ve made sure of is that my own kids never take their siblings for granted.

“Bad things can happen. You can’t stop them, but you also can’t stop living just because something bad might happen.

“It was incredibly unfair that this happened to Alicia. It was totally random and unpredictable.

“It’s weird to think that had she been killed in a car accident, it would’ve been easier to handle in some ways than her being murdered.

“It doesn’t make sense, but psychologically, it does.”

‘INVESTIGATE REX’

After investigating more than 10,000 leads, Virginia State Police (VSP) are still investigating who killed Reynolds.

In a statement to The U.S. Sun, Public Relations Director Corinne Geller said: “State police remain hopeful that this case will come to a successful resolution and continue to encourage the public to come forward with any information related to the investigation.”

Barbabra urged VSP to take a closer look at accused Gilgo Beach murder suspect Rex Heuermann, 60, after noticing a likeness between his mugshot and a sketch of the Route 29 Stalker.

“It’s the cheeks, there’s something about the cheeks,” said Barbara, looking at a side-by-side comparison of the pair.

“It’s quite striking […] he would’ve been around 32 or 33 at the time.

“I wonder if he’s ever been questioned about it. If he hasn’t he should be.”

Property records show that Heuermann’s mother, Dolores Heuermann, has lived in Palmyra, Virginia, since at least 1994.

Palmyra is roughly 50 miles from where Alicia Showalter Reynolds was last seen alive.

In a 2018 deposition for an unrelated lawsuit, Heuermann admitted to traveling to Virginia on several occasions throughout the course of 2018.

When asked how he got there, he responded: “[I] Drove, or my wife would be driving,” per the transcript.

VSP refused to comment on whether Heuermann was being eyed as a potential suspect in the case.

“State police does not comment on potential suspects, confirmed or unconfirmed,” said Geller.

The department is asking anyone with any information related to the abduction and murder to call the Virginia State Police Culpeper Division at 1-800-572-2260, or the Bureau of Criminal Investigation at 1-888-300-0156. You can also e-mail bci-culpeper@vsp.virginia.gov.

Rex Heuermann, meanwhile, remains in custody in New York.

In July, he was charged with the murders of Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello, three petite sex workers who were found bound and wrapped in burlap along a desolate beachfront parkway in 2010.

He is also the prime suspect in the murder of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, and charges in that case are expected to be forthcoming soon.

He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.