Anatomy of Murder - A Knock at the Door (Nancy Dunning, Ron Kirby, Ruth Ann Lodato, Janet Franco)

Episode Date: October 17, 2023

One, two, three murders in Alexandria, VA over a span of years. While investigators tried to decipher if the crimes were related, they knew one thing for sure: all of them began with a knock at the door. For episode information and photos, please visit https://anatomyofmurder.com/ Can’t get enough AoM? Find us on social media!Instagram: @aom_podcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @AOM_podcast | @audiochuckFacebook: /listenAOMpod | /audiochuckllc

What's wrong? Somebody, they would attack my mother or something, I don't know. Okay, what do you see? I see blood. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anastasia Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murder. With some murders, one of the challenges for investigators and even prosecutors, beyond the evidence or lack thereof, is making sure we don't get tunnel vision.

And if we do, recognizing it for what it is. And then making sure we follow the actual evidence, rather than letting our hunches forge the path. Today's story about three homicides in Alexandria, Virginia, is an example of the dangers of that push and pull. Whether it's talk on the street or in the media, a suspect or suspects could rise to the top of those discussions even before a real suspect profile emerges for investigators. In law enforcement circles, it's often referred to as outside noise. But the reality always falls back to the evidence and what theories and suspects develop outside of the noise. Today's case begins in 2003. Fifty-six-year-old Nancy Dunning was a well-known real estate agent in Alexandria, Virginia.

Nancy was compassionate, she exuded positive energy, and she played a pivotal role in transforming her neighborhood of Delray, a pocket of Alexandria, into the thriving, family-friendly community it is today, an achievement that earned her the nickname Queen of Delray. Nancy was also an active member in the community. She was involved in the Delray Civic Association. She was a columnist for the Alexandria Gazette. She organized charity drives. But above all, she was a devoted mother and wife married to Jim Dunning, a prominent member of the community. Alexandria is a relatively affluent city right outside of D.C. We have a population now of about 170,000 in the city. We probably would average, I'm guessing, 14 or 15 homicides a year back then. And obviously, with that kind of rate,

it really wasn't that violent of a city. That's the voice of Brian Porter, who began his career as a uniformed transit officer in the city, who then went to law school and joined the local prosecutor's office, ultimately becoming the Commonwealth's elected attorney in 2014, a position he still holds today. Going from working midnights by myself in a patrol car and kind of doing high-speed things and, you know, and having some adrenaline, the transition to go into an office

and being here in a suit and tie at 8 o'clock every morning and going to court every day, I mean, that was a big transition. But if adrenaline was what Brian was looking for, he would not be disappointed because 10 years later, he would be the man responsible for prosecuting one of Alexandria's most notorious murder cases.

The tragic story of Nancy Dunning's murder begins on the afternoon of December 5th, 2003. Nancy had gone shopping that morning at a Target here in Alexandria. She was supposed to meet her son and her husband for lunch at a local restaurant. Being a real estate agent, Nancy was used to keeping a busy schedule, but she prided herself on never being late. So when she didn't show up for lunch with Jim and their son, understandably, they got worried. Finally, the husband and the son got concerned about her and they both left. They got into separate cars and they decided to kind of split up and look for her. When they both arrived back at their home, they noticed that the garage door was open and Nancy's car was still in the

driveway. But nothing could have prepared them for what they would find inside. Nancy's body on the floor in a pool of her own blood. This is a recording of the 911 call placed just seconds after Jim and Nancy's son discovered the body. And as a warning, as with all emergency calls, it may be distressing to some listeners. I was at their police 911. Oh my God, God, something's over the boat. to some listeners. Now, as you can hear on the call, it was not immediately clear to Nancy's son what had happened. There was blood and Nancy was not breathing,

but it wasn't until first responders got there that the extent of her injuries were clear. Wounds at the base of her head, neck and arm indicated that Nancy had actually been shot multiple times and likely died within seconds of what appeared to be a deliberate close-range attack. From the very beginning, it seemed like it was some kind of assassination. And the reasons were zero evidence of forced entry, nothing stolen. It did not appear that she had been the victim of any type of sexual assault or anything like that. It just appeared that somebody had knocked on the door, shot her, and then immediately left. A woman who had helped put countless young families into their first homes,

who had been a beloved member of the community for decades, had been brutally murdered right inside her very own doorstep. And what's even stranger for this close-knit community, where the houses are no more than 50 feet apart from each other, no one had heard or seen a single thing. It was as though a ghost had come to this very, very peaceful neighborhood and killed a pillar of the community and vanished without a trace. Even after investigators and forensic specialists scoured the crime scene for clues, answers were still hard to come by.

They processed the scene looking for DNA prints, trace evidence. Really nothing of interest forensically was at the scene other than the bullets that were recovered. You know, Scott, one of the first interesting things to me is that in no way did this seem to be a robbery or a burglary gone wrong. Yeah, you know, we can click off a few of the boxes right from the start. Spatter at the scene, blood spatter, makes it clear that she was shot right at the location where her body was found. There were multiple shots, which is a strong indication that the goal of the killer was to kill. And as you said, Anastasia, the other thing that really stood out was no forced entry, telling that it likely wasn't a robbery. Did she potentially open the door to her own killer? I absolutely believe he knocked on the door. She answered. He fired,

briefly came in, fired again, and then immediately turned around. And he did close the door behind him, but probably he was wearing gloves and there was no fingerprints or DNA left on the door, even though it was processed. At the autopsy, the medical examiner recovered two bullets that match bullets found at the crime scene. What was really, really interesting about the bullets that were recovered were that both of them were.22 caliber, which, as you probably know, is relatively rare in homicides because it's such a small round. If you're trying to kill somebody, it might not do what you're seeking to do. While a.22 caliber may not be the most common murder weapon,

it's the kind of detail that can narrow down a potential list of suspects and hopefully pay dividends down the road in the investigation. So with no eyewitnesses and very little evidence at the scene, investigators got to work recreating a timeline of Nancy's movements on the day she was killed, starting with the place she had been shopping before she was due to meet her husband and son for lunch. The detectives did get some surveillance video from the target that Nancy had been at, and they did get video of a guy that appeared to be following her around the store. The store's surveillance footage showed Nancy pushing a shopping cart

and it also revealed a man dressed in jeans and a dark jacket seemed to be following her throughout the store. The man then followed her out of the store and then into the parking lot where he disappeared from view. The same video was shown to Nancy's family and friends and eventually even released to the public,

but no one could make an ID. It was a dead end. No leads were developed. Now, anyone who's been listening to our show knows where an investigation usually turns next, to the people closest to the victim. And the question is, was there anyone in Nancy's life who she may have had disagreements with, anyone she may have considered an enemy?

Got a unexplained murder that appears to be an assassination in broad daylight in a very nice neighborhood where there's almost no violent crime. That doesn't normally happen randomly, right? So immediately the detectives started looking for who might want to do her harm. And so they were looking at, you know, business dealing. She was a prominent real estate agent, couldn't really find anything there. At this point, you just might be thinking, what about the husband? We all know that taking a serious look at the spouse is standard operating procedure in any homicide investigation, and with good reason, because the numbers, the data, lead us right there. But Nancy's husband had a pretty strong alibi for the time of the murder

because he was with his son at a restaurant waiting for Nancy to join them for lunch. Nevertheless, rumors began to circulate through the Del Rey community that he may have played some part in her murder. And much of that suspicion seemed to be based on town gossip about the state of Nancy and Jim's marriage. Pretty soon they discovered that the Dunnings had a tumultuous marriage. There were allegations of him having a drinking problem. But rumors are usually just that, and a rocky marriage is not always the motive for murder. But there was something else that was fueling their suspicion of Nancy's husband,

and it had something to do with that 911 call made from the crime scene. My wife has been killed. We were supposed to meet for lunch, and my son and I waited for an hour and we just came here and just hit the pool. He said, someone has come in and murdered my wife. And the detectives believed that that wasn't obvious from the scene, that she could have fallen down the steps or something. Why would he use the word murderer?

What's wrong? My wife hasn't been murdered. obvious from the scene that she could have fallen down the steps or something. Why would he use the word murder? And so that was like the first point where they started making up their mind that Jim must have had something to do with it. And there was something else that was about to be revealed. What is your name? James Dunning. I'm the sheriff. In December of 2003, 56-year-old Nancy Dunning was shot and killed inside her home. Minutes later, she was discovered by her son and her husband, Alexandria Sheriff Jim Dunning. And with no eyewitnesses and no immediate leads on who would want to kill such a beloved member of the community, suspicion turned to a familiar direction, the husband. When you're a neighbor and a prominent member of the community is assassinated in broad daylight, you're going to immediately start thinking, well, could that be me?

You know, am I in danger? Is my family in danger? Are my children in danger? And I think it's very convenient to very quickly start pointing the finger. And, you know, unfortunately, I think the community started kind of whispering that Jim had something to do with it. You know, Scott, I think that people are always looking at those closest to someone killed when there's no obvious suspect. And to hearing that someone's marriage is tumultuous, well, that's going to even heighten suspicion more. But again, how many marriages are problematic and then some, and they never equal murder?

It just sounds like a lot of conjecture, at least based on what we're hearing so far. We've said that a typical homicide investigation, the person closest to the victim being investigated is SOP, which is short for standing operating procedure. So yeah, of course he is a legit suspect, but it's an incredible twist that your potential first suspect is the sheriff.

So news headlines, absolutely. But you know, also just thinking about that, he's the sheriff. So I don't think that it's so odd that he is going to jump to my wife's been killed or murdered because even though he may not have seen exactly what the recent injuries were, it's his line of work. And sometimes you just know something when you see it based on your experience. So I'm going to have to say, like, you could go both ways on that one, too. I completely agree with you that using the term murder would be

something pretty standard in law enforcement and something that he would recognize. But I will say this. He was the sheriff of the jails. He was not a sheriff who worked the road or went and worked investigations. He was someone who really managed a very large jail system. So, you know, I would agree with you that using the word or the term murder may come natural to someone in law enforcement. But did he have experience within the window of investigations? I don't think so. And based on the various factors

that we've talked about and some others that we may not even know about to date, he was being looked at as suspect number one by those who knew the case. Pretty much everything that followed was seen through the prism of Jim Dunning must have been involved. If he didn't do it himself, he paid somebody to do it.

The tragedy of Nancy's murder, coupled with the allegations against her husband Jim, were devastating for the Dunning family. At a time of mourning when they needed the support of their friends and family and neighbors most, they found themselves somewhat ostracized by the very community they loved and served. He was cooperative in the beginning, but when it became clear that he was going to be the object of the investigation to some extent, he retained an attorney and he finally said, through an attorney, I've spoken to you guys three or four times, I really got nothing more to say. Of course, that was perceived as, well, he's got something to hide. Eventually, Jim and

his son moved out of state. And in spite of the extensive investigative efforts, Nancy's case reached a standstill. And to be quite honest, the case pretty much sat there for the next decade with no significant movement. The police department never actually characterized it as a cold case. But, I mean, that's semantics. It was definitely cold. Ten years passed, and tragically, as with many unsolved crimes, the memory of Nancy Dunning's murder began to fade. If he hadn't chosen to kill again, probably it would have been unsolved, you know, forever. All right, wait, Scott, let's stop right here.

Listening to Brian speaking, if who hadn't chosen to kill again? That's exactly what now prosecutor Brian Porter was determined really to find out. I was elected the first week of November 2013. I actually was on a sailboat near Grenada. And when I got back to port, I went in, I just checked my emails and learned that another prominent Alexandrian had been murdered. Ronald Kirby, who went by Ron, was the director of transportation planning for suburban Maryland, D.C. and Virginia.

And he also lived in Alexandria with his wife. On the afternoon of Monday, November 11, 2013, Ron's son stopped by his dad's house and discovered him near the front door, lying on his back and bleeding from the mouth. I just opened the door to see a little one. I just walked in and there's water on his mouth. He must have had a heart attack.

Dad? Dad? When the paramedics arrived, they initially thought that Ron had suffered a heart attack, until they noticed what appeared to be tiny bullet wounds on his chest. The medical examiner would later confirm the cause of death. Ron had been murdered. He lived in a neighborhood close to Nancy Dunning's house, very close to the house my parents lived in and which I grew up in. So when I got back from my little victory lap vacation, I was immediately thrust into this investigation in November of 2013, right before I took office. The evidence suggested that once again there was no sign of forced entry,

nothing stolen, and no signs of a struggle or an assault other than the bullet wounds. So it appeared that once again in a very nice area, somebody knocked on the front door of the home, shot him in the chest. And again, no one had really seen anything or heard anything. It was once again as though a ghost had committed this offense. And the similarities with the Dunning murder did not stop there. Not too long after Ron was murdered, we got confirmation the bullets recovered were consistent with.22 caliber, long rifle, Remington subsonic ammunition, which was very odd. And they

had the same lands and groove pattern on them that the Dunning bullets had. So let's talk possible motive and if that leads to any potential suspects. As we mentioned, Ron was a prominent citizen involved in local politics. Specifically, he had spearheaded the rebuilding of a major bridge that served Alexandria. But according to friends and family, Ron was the last person to have any enemies or conflicts with anyone that would want him dead. Ron's son found him maybe about an hour or so after we think he was murdered. Again, suspicion originally arose that maybe the son had something to do with it, but very quickly the detectives were able to establish that he had a rock-solid alibi and was on video at a restaurant, obviously could not have committed the offense.

You know, Anastasia, we've had a handful of 911 calls on AOM, which were really difficult to listen to. And this is one of them. I mean, you could clearly hear the anguish and the pain and the helplessness of the son. Now, I would argue by just listening to the 911 call, it's not definitive, but it does not strike me as someone who was out to kill his father. He was a man of artifact, his body cold, calm. Dad!

You can just hear the raw pain in his voice as he is administering those chest compressions over and over on his father until the paramedics arrive, the sincerity seems clear. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, twenty. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, forty. Dad. On the day Ron was killed, he was at home waiting for a plumber to fix a leaky faucet. So investigators also looked into the plumber, but he too had a solid alibi.

But while he said he didn't notice anything unusual at Ron's house, he did tell investigators that on his way to the home, he had seen a construction crew working on curbs and concrete. He further went on to describe the crew as composed mostly of Hispanic men, but that he noticed one man amongst them that in his words stuck out. He was Caucasian with a gray beard

and was wearing a faded flannel shirt. Not the kind of ID the police would consider actionable, but a detail that certainly gets tucked into the file. But I think the million-dollar question is this. Was Ron Kirby's murder similar enough to Nancy Dunning's that police would suspect that they were somehow connected? The two things that made it seem like that was possible were the MO, obviously, general location.

It is a direct line between Ron's house and Nancy's house, probably about a mile. On the other hand, it had been almost exactly 10 years since the first murder, and that long of a gap made it less likely that they were connected. But still, Ron's murder felt neither random or isolated. My dad, they lived pretty close, and they like keeping their front door open. And my dad called me and said, oh, this must be some kind of family to be with Ron at Ron's house. And I'm like, absolutely not, Dad. We have real serious issues here.

You've got to do me a favor. Please keep your door closed and do not answer a knock at the door until we get to the bottom of this. Less than three months later, Brian's fears were confirmed. Another midday shooting had left a woman dead at her front door. When all of that ballistic evidence had been analyzed, that scientist called me. He said, Brian, this is what I think based on what I've seen. You've got a serial killer. The chief said, hey, look, I've got to let the public know. The public is in danger.

It had now turned to a race against time to identify and hopefully apprehend this newly termed serial killer before he might strike again. On the afternoon of February 6th, 2014, Ruthann Lodato was at home with her mother and her mother's caretaker, Jeanette Franco. Shortly before noon, Jeanette heard the doorbell ring. She heard Ruthann answer the door.

She heard a little tiny snippet of conversation, but could not remember what was said. And the next thing she knew, she heard gunshots. Jeanette ran to the front door where she found Ruthann lying on the ground in a pool of blood. Jeanette screamed. where she found Ruthann lying on the ground in a pool of blood. Jeanette screamed. The killer looked at Jeanette, pointed his arm at her, fired.

Jeanette immediately felt a hard pain in her arm where she had been shot. But incredibly, she was able to run out the back door of the house and shout to a neighbor to dial 911. The date was February 6th, 2014. I actually was doing a sentencing and another murder and a deputy who was in the courtroom walked over to me and she said, hey Brian, there's been a shooting in sector two. She's like, I think it's pretty bad. You need to get up there. And so I walked out of the courtroom. I came down. I got the key to the car. I walked down, got into the car, and I drove as fast as I could up to the Lodato house. And when I got there, it was an absolute zoo.

News of another murder on a Delray doorstep shot through the town like a lightning bolt. And this time, the connection between Ruthanne's murder and Ron Kirby's was not lost on their neighbors or the local media. I knew her family. They're an Alexandria institution. She was a member of a local Catholic church that my mom taught at for 40 years. So my parents knew her. She was a wonderful human being. Married her high school sweetheart. Grew up across the street from the house she lived in. Three beautiful daughters. Most of her life was dedicated to teaching children how to play music.

At this point, Alexandria police were not taking any chances. They urged residents to lock their doors and not answer for any unexpected visitors. It was pretty clear that there was an armed killer on the loose. All of my family was really, really worried about, A, that this had occurred again in Alexandria, and, two, a lot of stress in my life that this investigation was now lying directly on my shoulders. I'll be honest, I wasn't ready for the amount of attention, the media attention that came after the third murder. At the press conference, Alexandria's police chief announced

that ballistics testing demonstrated a definitive link between the Kirby and Lodato homicides and Nancy Dunning's murder 10 years earlier. And each of the three murders occurred within one mile of each other at a similar time of day at each of the victims' homes. It also appears that the killer was targeting prominent residents with strong ties to the community and local government. There was this other component where the citizenry here

was very, very afraid that they were going to be next. They could no longer just say that this was somehow a business connection or a family connection. It appeared that we had a random set of murders that were being committed by a serial killer, and people were very afraid. A serial killer. Just the mention of those words seems to change the whole complexion of these three unsolved murders.

Connecting these murders must have been a huge impact on the profile that investigators must have been creating for their suspect. Now investigators would have to ask, was Jim Dunning still a viable suspect? Remember, he was still the only suspect at that point in his wife Nancy's murder. You know, the fact that the media started to connect the three meant that they also revisited the fact that he had had a cloud of suspicion over him. And they kind of retread some of the articles that had appeared a decade before that kind of hinted at maybe he was involved.

They also realized that if the three were connected, then he almost certainly could not have participated in the first murder because he had not participated in the other two. Incredibly, Jeanette Franco survived the attack that left her friend Ruth Ann dead. She told investigators that she didn't recognize the person who shot her but described him as an older white male with a long gray beard. Which, if you remember, matches that of the man

spotted by the plumber outside Ron's house on the day he was killed. But if Ruthann's attacker was the same man who killed Ron, it seems that this time he may have made a very big mistake. The mistake he made is, I think, that he believed Ruthann was in there by herself and he did not know that there was another person in the house. So this time, while he was successful in killing one of his victims, he left the second victim alive and that gave us our first break in the case.

Police now had one of the most valuable assets in any criminal investigation, an eyewitness. She was able to meet with a police sketch artist, and she was able to produce a composite sketch with the help of the sketch artist that was almost immediately publicized and put out through the media. With the police sketch all over the news, tips began to pour into the station. Now we knew the race. We knew that he had a beard. We knew that he had gray hair. We knew that he was relatively thin and probably in his 50s. And so all of that was obviously a big break in the case. And that's really when we started making some progress in the investigation. But it wasn't just the suspect's physical description that was a boon to the investigation.

Jeanette helped us not only with the composite sketch, but also by her explanation of what occurred. She described the gun as being inside of his sleeve. He was wearing a coat. He basically pointed the opening of the sleeve at her and fired. And she wasn't very sophisticated with firearms, but she said the gun was a black circle is what she saw and fire came out of it. Jeanette also made it clear that the shooter never stopped to pick up any cartridges at the crime scene. Between her description of a circle and no cartridge cases,

we were absolutely certain it was a revolver. She was also certain that the man only fired five rounds, which Brian believed served as some proof that it was a five-round revolver. Jeanette was alive and screaming when he fled the scene. If he had a sixth round, he would have just walked over and shot her again. And so the fact that he chose to flee after firing at her, and she's still alive and screaming, in my mind was very powerful circumstantial evidence that it was a five-shot revolver. Immediately, the sketch of the suspect starts paying dividends.

One neighbor reported seeing a man who matched the description driving a red Ford Escort on the day of the murder, running stop signs and driving erratically. Another sighting came courtesy of a security camera near Ruthann's house that caught a glimpse of someone driving away from the crime scene just minutes after the murder. You could see that the guy driving it looked like probably a white guy, maybe with gray beard, but you couldn't really see much detail with him. And the car just looked like

a nondescript station wagon. But the best tip to date came courtesy of one concerned citizen who not only recognized the man in the sketch, but also thinks he may know something about his motive. He said, I know a guy that kind of looks like that composite I think you got to talk to because he hates the city of Alexandria. And he gave the police the name Charles Severance. Charles Severance was a longtime resident of Alexandria with a history of erratic behavior and a criminal history. In fact, he had even had a memorable run-in with a young patrol officer many years before. When the detectives finally made Severance as a suspect, they called me. They were like, there's a young officer that encountered this guy in 1997. And let me read from the report. And it took just a couple of lines when I realized, you know, it was me that had read the report and I knew exactly who they

were talking about. Brian Porter, now the Commonwealth attorney from Alexandria, had actually encountered severance during a traffic stop when he was a patrol officer back in 1997. And I remember the stop very, very, very clearly because he was exceptionally weird, very combative. He wouldn't look at me. But to make a long story short, after I had arrested him, I found a loaded handgun directly under his feet. And it was the first time in my police career where I really was like, oh my God, that guy could have jumped out and opened fire on me in a second. I would have been dead. It turns out that Severance had a long history of erratic behavior and very public grievances with local government and authorities. He had run for mayor of Alexandria, that he had run for Congress in

Alexandria. Both of those campaigns were, as they would say, quixotic in that he was very angry. He had a debate back in the 90s. Severance showed up dressed kind of like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix and he just got very combative and at some point took a flagpole off the stage and started swinging it at one of the people that had put the debate together. And unfortunately, people were probably just frightened of him and nobody wanted to press charges. The cause of his anger against the authorities

seemed to be rooted in something much more personal. Brian was able to discern from public records that Severance had fathered a child in 1999, but shortly afterwards had separated from the child's mother. But when she left him, she filed a suit to have custody of the child. And that suit was heard in Alexandria Juvenile Domestic Relations Court. Severance acted as his own lawyer and was exceptionally bitter about this. The judge bore witness to Severance's erratic and potentially dangerous behavior. And to the court, the decision was a simple one. And the judge granted full custody to the mom, who then moved away. And

Severance never saw his kid again. And that was kind of the spark that lit the tinder, I think. And if Severance was looking for someone to blame, a name was right there on the custody orders, which were served and signed by Depzen murders of Nancy Dunning, Ron Kirby, and Ruth Ann Lodato. There is zero chance that I could charge the most complicated and grave and circumstantial murders of my entire career when we had just barely identified him as a suspect. As of yet, I might have had a strong suspicion he was guilty, but you got to have the evidence, right? And I frequently tell the people in my office, I'm like, you can't ever allow your moral outrage to substitute for evidence. You've always got to have the evidence.

And we just did not have the evidence yet to charge him with murders. And, you know, Scott, obviously there's never one particularly type of evidence needed. But, you know, there are certainly ways that you'd like to see a tighter connection here. You know, whether he could be linked to the guns. Have they looked at his cell phone records? You know, can they definitively put him there? You know, do they have any witness IDs? There still seems like a lot of steps or boxes they need to check before they get there.

When a prosecutor tells an investigator they need more evidence, it's a clear sign that you need more evidence. You could try to make a case that you believe the person being out there is a definite threat to the community. And that may be the absolute truth, but it still doesn't produce probable cause. And, you know, there are risks to premature arrest. First of all, you can't arrest people. It is against their rights just because you think they may have committed a crime. And if they are arrested prematurely,

it could lead to things like dismissal or a problem with the case later on. So that maybe this person, if they are even the right person, might never be held accountable at all if the police don't dot their I's and cross their T's along the way. So keeping that in mind, moving forward was what this case needed to do, and a detective would take the next steps. And he wasn't alone in that.

A detective, along with an FBI agent, located an address for Severance, and they went to go interview him. Basically, the police knocked on the front door of her house. We think Severance was in there, but he did not answer. They left a note, like on a business card, and it said, I need to speak to Charles Severance. Please call me. It didn't say why. The next day, Charles Severance took a drive. He drove over to the Russian embassy in D.C. He was wearing a tri-corner hat,

like from the revolution, and he was wearing a poncho. According to Russian authorities at the embassy, Severance announced to security guards he was requesting asylum from persecution by the city of Alexandria. Severance actually thought that his murders on some level were political acts. And I think he thought the Russians would openly accept him and fly him and give him a dacha or something outside of Moscow. Instead, they called the Uniform Secret Service. The Secret Service followed Severance to a parking garage.

And when they approached him, they asked if they could search the car. He declined consent to search, but they were smart enough to take photographs of the car. And the car was a maroon 1997 Ford Escort station wagon. They sent something over to the Alexandria Police Department and a young officer who was on light duty immediately recognized that the maroon Ford Escort station wagon was in all manners consistent with the station wagon that was seen driving away from the scene on the security surveillance video that we had. And that connection was made, and that kind of started the endgame, if you will. Investigators in Alexandria returned to his girlfriend's house nearby Loudoun County,

where they believed he was staying. She said, oh, you missed him. He left yesterday. He said he was going camping. He didn't tell me where. He packed up all of his stuff, put it in his little escort, and drove away. She might not have known where he was going camping. He didn't tell me where. He packed up all of his stuff, put it in his little escort and drove away. She might not have known where he was going, but she was able to provide police with other information that then gave them the ammunition, if you will, to make an arrest. Biggest thing that she told us was that in July of 2014,

Severance had convinced her to buy two.22 caliber five-shot mini revolvers off of the Internet. And that after he left, she went and looked and the guns were missing and the ammunition was missing. Which means Severance is armed, dangerous and unpredictable. I contacted my counterpart in Loudoun County and I said, hey, look, this guy's dangerous. We got to get paper on him. I'm not ready to charge him with any murders yet. There's a lot of investigation that needs to be done,

but let's get a felon in possession of a firearm warrant so wherever we can find him, if we can find him, we can arrest him and hopefully keep him held while we do this investigation. We got a warrant for him and it effectively was a manhunt looking for him. Because of having a prior criminal conviction, it was illegal for Severance to possess a gun.

So now police had basis for an arrest. Alexandria police issued a nationwide APB for Charles Severance, accompanied by a photograph of him, the car make and model, and the license plate number of what he was driving. Within 24 hours, a patrol officer in Wheeling, West Virginia, spotted the car parked at a local hotel. Severance himself was not far away. They found him inside of a library. He was doing some kind of like research for the next camping ground where he could park and try to sleep. Wheeling, West Virginia police walked in, they arrested him, they locked him up,

took him to their headquarters, put him in a holding room so that he could be interviewed later on. And they called Alexandria. And within minutes, all of us were in cars with lights and sirens going 100 miles an hour, basically up there. You know, Scott, we say it all the time. You just can't make these things up. And to hear that it was Brian's happenstance traffic stop from all those years before that now led to the charge and ultimate conviction that gave them right now that opportunity to arrest him. I mean, that is incredible.

Doesn't even do it justice. The coincidence in that. Yeah, it's easy to see that a lot of law enforcement coordination went into affecting the arrest of Charles Severance, but you're right. I mean, you cannot gloss over the fact that your prosecutor is the person who pulled him over years before and arrested him on a gun charge. I mean, that is just mind-blowing. But even with Severance in custody, investigators knew there was a long road to go before they

could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he was Nancy, Ron, and Ruthann's killer. Not only was he likely to be uncooperative, Severance had already proved to be a careful criminal, leaving no fingerprints, DNA, or other incriminating evidence at any of the crime scenes. But as we have heard before, sometimes the quote-unquote smartest guy in the room can't help but sow the seeds of what just might lead to his own conviction. He had already told the Wheeling police that he hated the city of Alexandria police and he was not going to talk to anybody from Alexandria. So we enlisted an FBI agent who had been assisting and we right to remain silent, right? And she says, yes. And then he's like, and I have the right to have an attorney present, right? And she says, yes. And then he said, I want those rights. And he just kind of pushed the paper back and he didn't say a word. Severance invoked his right to silence and never uttered a word in his own defense. But unfortunately for him, he left evidence in his car that spoke volumes. In his car, police found dozens of his

spiral-bound journals, each brimming with rage-filled letters, poems, and manifestos that gave investigators a chilling look into the mind of a killer. He never affirmatively confessed to the crimes themselves. There's no mention of the victims, for instance, by name. But there's all sorts of really disturbing things written in there, like the last scream of a victim echoes to eternity. He wrote frequently about murdering people, and he also wrote extensively about two specific things that really mattered.

A.22 caliber, long rifle, North American arms, five-shot mini revolver, stainless steel, five-shot with a wooden grip, makes sweet, sweet music, and is very, very effective. Best to use subsonic ammunition so as not to harm the firearm. I mean, Anastasia, just reading a couple of these lines from this so-called manifesto, to me, is just a sickness. It's evil. You know, when I read it, of course, I go down like daydreaming what I would say in court if I was prosecuting this case. And all I could think about is that I would read like line after line, explain to the jury that, you know, they may be general, but they really are admissions into what he did.

I mean, just listen to this. And these are quotes. Knock and the door will be opened. Knock and you shall find knowledge. Knock, talk, enter, kill, exit, murder, murder, wisdom. I mean, that is a blueprint for each one of these murders. So to me, these are great admissions, something I would use in court coupled with the other evidence to hopefully prove his guilt. You're right.

If you look at these words stringed together, they may not make any sense. But when you look back at the events that we're talking about, these homicides, and what his modus operandi was, these fit perfectly like a key to a door of exactly what his mindset likely was at the time he committed those murders. He's talking in triplets. And remember, we have three murders. And again, this is quoting him, introduce murder into safe and secure neighborhood. It shudders with horror. Do it again and again and again. Each one of those, I would argue that it's Nancy,

it's Ron, and Ruthann. It's just a disturbing but fascinating look into the mind of a serial killer. Police eventually recovered a box of Remington 22 long rifle hollow point subsonic ammunition from the house where Severance was living. Ammunition that matched what he was using in all three homicides. Only 40 rounds were left in the 50-round box. Now they had a direct forensic link. Unfortunately, the weapon itself was never found. But Bryan and the Commonwealth of Virginia believed they had enough to charge severance with capital murder in the shooting deaths of Ron Kirby, Ruthann Lodato, and first-degree murder in the shooting death of Nancy Dunning.

But he also feared that what made Severance so dangerous as a killer might also make for a difficult prosecution. He, A, was very calculated, very rational. And I'm not suggesting that what he did was rational by our definition, but he had a goal that he wanted to achieve. He made plans to kill people. He carried them out. He did it in a way to conceal what he was trying to do.

He wanted to get away with it. That's the really scary part about this. A really scary part of this is right. According to Severance's own writings, he was seeking revenge against the people he believed were either directly or indirectly responsible for the lost custody of his son and what he saw as his diminished status in society. You can tell from his writings, he felt like he was the smartest guy in the room. He had a degree in engineering from UVA, but he couldn't hold a job. He didn't own his home. He didn't hold a job. He didn't own his home. He didn't have a family. He didn't have his child. And I think that that neighborhood in which all three of the murders took place ended up kind of representing the society that he thought didn't

respect him and didn't recognize how brilliant he was and was taking away his rights as a human being. But while his victims were all pillars of the community, Bryan actually had a slightly different take on why Severance targeted them. Ron Kirby, very prominent in the Council of Governments. Ruthanne Lodato's brother was a judge and her father was a judge in Alexandria. And so everyone assumed that they had been selected on the basis of their prominence in the community. I think Nancy Dunning was selected for who she was. I think the other two were selected for where they were.

I think it was the neighborhood and his desire to, as he put it, introduce murder into a safe and secure neighborhood. But random or not, he took their lives and left their families grieving. And now it was up to the prosecution to balance the scales of justice. This was not one of those open and shut cases where the evidence is overwhelming and the only question is what the penalty is going to be. We had a very strong and very compelling case, but it required the jurors to pay attention for

seven weeks and to kind of piece together this very complicated mosaic of evidence. I literally feared if I couldn't put this together, if my team couldn't get a conviction, that this guy would not only be released to act with impunity and kill other people, he might target me or my family. A combination of ballistic evidence and testimony for witnesses that claimed to have seen Severance in the vicinity of the crime scene helped paint a compelling but largely circumstantial case against him. But Brian hoped that the strongest testimony would come from the one person to survive Severance's attack, Jeanette Franco.

She was more than just a health care aide. She was kind of part of their family, and she had seen her friend murdered in front of her. We really did not know how she was going to do on the stand. And Anna Seager, I'm sure you know the feeling of going into court knowing that a lot rides on your star witness and how they will really come across to the jury. There are definitely sometimes paralyzing emotions involved in recounting a trauma, on your star witness and how they will really come across to the jury. There are definitely sometimes paralyzing emotions involved in recounting a trauma. And then you have a defense attorney who's, you know, it's their job to try to discredit that very testimony or at least portions of it.

And then the defense attorney started crossing her and I think believes she was a weak witness and that she could be, you know, kind of pushed into recanting her identification. But Jeanette proved she was not someone to be pushed around. And I think the defense attorney said something like, oh ma'am, you can't in this courtroom today in front of all of these people, you cannot definitively say that my client was the one that committed this offense, can you? And she actually looked at her and she's like, no, I can. That's absolutely him.

And her testimony proved to be the last chapter in a confessed killer's own twisted autobiography. Because of what she said in court and her ability to identify him, it wasn't entirely a circumstantial case. We had an eyewitness who identified him as the culprit. The case went to trial in October of 2015, nearly 12 years after Nancy Dunning had been gunned down in her own home, and her own husband had been suspected of that crime for all the years in between her death and the trial. And I had told myself, I just got to put this guy away

so that he can't hurt anybody else. If I don't get the Dunning conviction, I can live with that because it was still the right thing to do. And by charging him, we've kind of cleared Jim's name. But I have to admit that once they started,

you know, returning the verdicts and I realized we were getting close to whether or not they had convicted on the Dunning murder, I felt differently in the moment. And I really, really wanted that sense of closure for me personally, for the community, and most importantly, for the Dunning family. And I realized I was not going to be satisfied if we didn't get a clean sweep on all of the counts.

After deliberating for two days, a Fairfax County jury found Severance guilty of all 10 counts, including the murder of Ron Kirby, Ruthann Lodato, and Nancy Dunning. For surviving families, justice served different levels of importance, but it will always pale in comparison to the loss of their loved ones. But for the Dunnings' son, it also meant more. It was a bittersweet vindication for his father, Sheriff Jim Dunning. I frequently refer to Jim Dunning as the fourth victim of this case because he unfortunately died before severance was identified,

arrested, and convicted. And so he basically died with a cloud of suspicion lingering about him. But one of the blessings of the case is that Chris's testimony about what happened that day in 2003 ended up being exceptionally moving and very important linchpin of the trial. And in kind of like poetic justice, he, you know, a little choked up thinking about this because it was a very emotional day, but he dispatched the cloud of suspicion about his father through his testimony. And so his father was vindicated. It just took 10 and a half years or 11 years. The judge followed the jury sentencing recommendation, than a victory in court, and its effects still linger to this day.

I'm going to live this case for the rest of my life. I feel like as I've gotten older, the homicides stick with me worse, right? I lose more sleep over them. You think it would be the other way around. But this case really affected me. And I am very proud of the fact that my team was successful in putting this together and getting a conviction and putting this man away so that he couldn't hurt anybody else. And I'd like to think that I went through a great deal of personal growth through it as well. So I'm proud, but I'm not satisfied because the only satisfaction would be somehow having to intervene before he did this and stop these families from losing these three precious individuals.

Nancy Dunning, Ron Kirby, Ruth Ann Lodato, and Jeanette Franco. Three lives lost, one forever changed, all bonded together by the cruel acts of one man. They'll forever be remembered as beautiful people and for Jeanette as the strong woman that she proved to be, both during the attack and in court. But the other takeaway on this case is about the dangers of tunnel vision, a case that went down the wrong path for too long. And a man at its incorrect focus, Sheriff James Dunning, who should have been supported as a grieving husband, instead was ostracized as a suspected killer and under a cloud of suspicion for years. Police work and prosecutor's work does come with both the strengths and weaknesses that we each possess as humans.

But this case is an important reminder just how vital it is to let our hunches remain only that until proven otherwise, and follow the evidence and the evidence alone, wherever it will lead. Entering this case, Brian Porter was no stranger to the complexities of law enforcement, having climbed the ranks from a beat cop on the street to being elected as the chief prosecutor in the Commonwealth of Alexandria. And just one month into that prestigious role, he found himself embroiled in the most challenging case of his career. On the other side was Charles Severance. Being on the losing side of a child custody battle sent Severance spiraling into a dark abyss, which he then focused into one community. He became consumed with the notion that society was the architect

of his own misery. This warped conviction ignited an evil campaign of terror against the innocent that began with a seemingly neighborly knock on the door. Tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder. Anatomy of Murder is an Audiochuck original. Produced and created by Weinberger Media and Frasetti Media. Ashley Flowers is executive producer. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?