A Charlottesville cab driver today recalled driving the suspect in the Farmville killings from there to Richmond International Airport last Friday morning, hours before police found four bodies.
Curtis Gibson of Access Taxi said Richard Samuel Alden McCroskey III told him he had found a text message on his girlfriend’s phone from a man stating that he loved her, and that McCroskey had confronted her about it.
Gibson picked McCroskey up from a Huddle House in the Farmville area after McCroskey, who was not a suspect at the time, called for a cab about 6:20 a.m.
McCroskey smelled horrible, Gibson said, but otherwise seemed like a mature adult who spoke calmly and never raised Gibson’s suspicion. A wrecker driver who gave McCroskey a ride earlier that morning has said he smelled like a dead animal.
McCroskey’s mother has said her son’s girlfriend was Emma Niederbrock. The body of the 16-year-old Niederbrock was found that Friday afternoon, hours after the taxi ride, in the Farmville home she shared with her mother, Debra S. Kelley, a Longwood University professor. Also found in the home were the bodies of Kelley’s estranged husband, Pastor Mark Niederbrock, and Melanie Wells, 18, a friend of Emma’s visiting from West Virginia. All four had been bludgeoned to death.
Gibson said he and McCroskey talked for most of the trip to the airport, and McCroskey spoke passionately about the underground music scene he was involved in and also about his girlfriend. The 20-year-old Californian told Gibson he met the girl online about a year ago through a mutual interest in underground music. He said he saw her for the first time in person when she arrived with her parents to pick him up at Richmond International earlier this month. He was struck by her pretty smile.
McCroskey told Gibson his girlfriend’s parents had taken them to a music show in Michigan on Sept. 12 and that they had a good time. But McCroskey said he later saw a text message on her phone from a man she had talked to at the music show. The message said he loved her and wanted to be with her.
McCroskey said his girlfriend got angry when he confronted her about the message, accusing him of invading her privacy. He told Gibson he didn’t want to argue so he waited for her to go to sleep and left the house.
He was planning to fly from Richmond International to California. Police captured him Saturday at the airport and charged him with with the murder of Mark Niederbrock and have said that additional homicide charges are expected.
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