Chesterfield police take new look at 5 missing-women cases

The recent discovery of Pamela Sue Dodson's remains after she vanished more than eight years ago has jump-started police interest in the disappearances of five other Chesterfield County women over the past 20 years.

Three of those women, including Dodson, disappeared between 1990 and 2001 within a 1-mile radius in the county's Bensley area along the Jefferson Davis Highway corridor. Dodson's remains were discovered in that same area, as was another woman's body in a case that was solved in 2001.

"I don't immediately jump on the serial-killer bandwagon" theory in explaining their disappearances, Chesterfield County police Capt. Terry Patterson said last week. "But I do find it fairly strange that all these things happened so close to each other."

That area of the county is more prone to violent crimes, Patterson noted, "so you probably have more potential for those types of things [to occur] in that vicinity than you would in others."

Renewed interest in Chesterfield's half-dozen missing-women cases came after the Aug. 18 discovery of skeletal remains in the 2500 block of Marina Drive in Falling Creek Apartments off Jefferson Davis Highway.

Within about a week, police learned they belonged to Dodson, a 32-year-old mother of two who disappeared after being dropped at the now-defunct House of Dave's restaurant and bar at 7501 Jefferson Davis Highway -- a little more than mile from where her remains were found.

On the day Dodson's remains were recovered, investigators immediately began pulling the still-unsolved case files of women reported missing over the last two decades. "I start thinking, 'OK, I still have these other missing women that I know are from that general area,'" Patterson said.

Five of the six cases involve white women in their 30s; the sixth was 21.

After Dodson's remains were identified, Patterson said investigators began to review the department's entire investigative file on her disappearance May 4, 2001. That way, investigators could determine what portions of the initial investigation might need to be reviewed again, or whether there were any unresolved questions the first time around.

"It also made us start looking at these other women," Patterson said, "to see if there's a connection."

As detectives have been sent out to interview people about Dodson -- police still don't know how she died -- they've also been tasked to ask questions about two other women who vanished in the same area in the 1990s.

They are:

• Thylea Chisholm, 21, who disappeared just after midnight on June 18, 1995, in the 6100 block of Strathmore Road just south of Chippenham Parkway.

• Anita Marie Gunn, 37, who vanished Aug. 31, 1990, after leaving her residence in the Shady Hill Trailer Park in the 6700 block of Jefferson Davis Highway.

Police want to determine whether people who knew or were acquainted with Dodson also had some knowledge or connection to Chisholm and Gunn, Patterson said.

Adding to the mystery is the case of Laura Beth Brinser, 38, whose body was found Oct. 1, 2001, in a wooded area off Conifer Road near the Defense Supply Center Richmond. She had been strangled.

Within days, police arrested Bobby James Oney Jr., 31, who lived in a small house several blocks from where Brinser made a daily trek to the 1700 block of Williamsburg Road to feed stray cats that lived around a building where she used to work. Police discovered Oney had lived for years near where Brisner's body was found in the 7800 block of Conifer Road in Chesterfield, but he was living in Richmond at the time of his arrest.

He was convicted less than a year later of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. He has not been linked to any of Chesterfield's earlier missing-women cases, but Patterson said he is a "person of interest" as investigators try to determine what he was doing during that period.

"I have not found a connection between these four women, but that's not to say" there isn't one, Patterson said.

In an odd coincidence, Chesterfield authorities received an out-of-state information request on the Chisholm case during the same week that Dodson's remains were identified.

The department received an e-mail inquiry from a Pennsylvania state trooper about some unidentifiable remains recently found in that state. Authorities there learned of the Chisholm case and asked for dental records and other information for comparison purposes. Chesterfield sent the material but hasn't heard back.

Two other Chesterfield women disappeared in other parts of the county within the same time frame as Chisholm and Gunn, and a third vanished several years earlier in the Ettrick area. A possible connection is much less apparent in these cases. They include:

• Darline Pinelli Vaughan, 35, who disappeared May, 2, 1986, after walking away from her home in the 20800 block of Sasha Court in Ettrick. She left without taking her car, pocketbook or any money.

• Donna Gail Harris, 35, who vanished April 5, 1991, after dropping off her 11-year-old son at her mother's home in the 2100 block of Turner Road, presumably to run some errands. A day later, family members found her Honda Prelude abandoned but locked on a road behind Cloverleaf Mall, less than 2 miles from her mother's house.

• Linda Evans Lunsford, 38, who disappeared Dec. 26, 1996, after having coffee with a co-worker at the McDonald's in the Village Marketplace shopping center off Midlothian Turnpike. She went there after finishing her shift at the Midlothian Wal-Mart at 8:30 a.m. Her Nissan Sentra was found in front of the Food Lion store in the same shopping center.

In 1992, a local law-enforcement task force was formed to review the unsolved disappearances or deaths of nine women in the Richmond area. The cases included those of Harris and Vaughan in Chesterfield.

Investigators from six area law-enforcement agencies concluded that a serial abductor or killer was probably not responsible after finding more dissimilarities in the cases that similarities.

Contact Mark Bowes at (804) 649-6450 or .