CHARLOTTESVILLE -- When Morgan D. Harrington's bones were found in an Albemarle County pasture, they had been shattered and broken into jagged pieces, her parents said yesterday.
"When you view . . . not just a skeleton but brutal damage to a skeleton, you can imagine what [her mother] must have gone through," said the victim's father, Dan Harrington.
He and Gil Harrington, Morgan's mother, addressed the media yesterday, marking five months since their daughter disappeared. They came from their home in Roanoke to the University of Virginia for the event.
Morgan Harrington, a 20-year-old Virginia Tech student, was killed after leaving an Oct. 17 Metallica concert at U.Va.'s John Paul Jones Arena. Harrington was last seen hitchhiking on a railroad bridge on Copeley Road. A farmer found her remains about three months later, on his farm near U.S. 29 in southern Albemarle.
Gil Harrington said she believes the person who killed her daughter caused the damage to her bones.
The medical examiner's office has said only that the case is a homicide and has not released a cause of death.
State police spokeswoman Corinne Geller declined to comment yesterday on the state of the remains.
Police are continuing to investigate the case, and leads still are coming in, Geller said. Police do not have suspects yet, she said.
Officials continue to wait on the results of DNA testing, Dan Harrington said.
"One thing that we have clearly learned . . . is that things do not work as they do on 'CSI,'" he said, referring to the television program that focuses on solving crimes through forensics.
The Harringtons also highlighted other Virginia homicides and disappearances that have happened since August.
"We have no evidence at this time to link Morgan's death with . . . any other murder," Geller said.
Ted Strong is a staff writer for The Daily Progress in Charlottesville.
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