WASHINGTON — Surveillance footage showing a 1990s model red Ford Escort speeding away from the area where an Alexandria woman was killed in February helped authorities link Charles Severance with the killings of three Alexandria residents, according to The Washington Post.
Severance is charged in the murders of Ruthanne Lodato, Ronald Kirby and Nancy Dunning, three prominent Alexandria residents who were killed in a similar fashion.
He became the main focus of a police investigation after the death of Lodato in February. Investigators developed a sketch based on the bearded man who knocked on Lodato’s door, spurring a manhunt in Alexandria.
According to the search warrant, calls to police saying the sketch looked like Severance led investigators to the man, whose grizzled beard and hair appeared strikingly similar to the drawing.
The Post reports the footage does not show the car’s license plate, but a Fairfax County search warrant indicates Severance drove himself to the Russian Embassy in D.C. about a month after Lodato’s killing in a 1999 red Ford Escort.
The three murders, the first of which occurred in 2003, are linked by ballistic evidence proving the same gun was used in all three.
Severance was charged with the murders in September.
Related stories:
- Severance named primary focus of murder investigations (June 2014)
- Tips in unsolved Alexandria killings lead police to W. Va. (March 2014)
- Alexandria police investigating links between three unsolved homicides (March 2014)
- Woman shot in Alexandria home dies, manhut continues (February 2014)
- FBI joins investigation into Lodato’s murder (February 2014)
- Hundreds of loved ones remember Lodato (February 2014)
- Council of Governments official found shot to death in Alexandria home (November 2014)
- Kirby’s widow discusses grief after husband’s killing (November 2014)
- Two prominent murders vex Alexandria police (December 2013)
- One year later: Police still need info in Dunning murder (March 2005)
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