CIA employee

ELUSIVE BLACK SERIAL KILLER (MURDER OF A BLACK CIA EMPLOYEE)

Since childhood, Veronica “Tina” Jefferson (pictured above) had always excelled in math.  She was a genius with numbers and figures.  The CIA recruited her during her senior year at Oklahoma State University where she served as president of her sorority, Delta Sigma Theta.

Tina celebrated by buying a flashy new Camaro.  The car had to be red and white, her sorority colors.

Jefferson relocated to Virginia to work in the CIA offices.  She was a rising star and was in line for promotion and she dated a medical student.  Despite this, Tina was homesick, her parents urged her to stick it out.

On May 10, 1988, Tina went to the grocery store.  Witnesses saw an attractive clean-shaven black man flirting with her near the deli counter.  The man was expensively attired in a designer sweater, Italian silk slacks and designer shoes.

An elderly couple reported seeing the same man standing with Tina next to her red Camaro.  The couple said Tina kept glancing around, she seemed anxious.  One witness stated, although Tina seemed somewhat relaxed, she got an uneasy feeling when she saw Tina talking to the man.

Less than a half-hour later, off-duty deputy Doug Taylor saw the red Camaro, the car was moving slow and weaving slightly.  Taylor could see a man in the driver’s seat.  He was leaning over talking to a pretty black woman.  The Camaro pulled over, the woman stepped out on the passenger side, she leaned through the window and said something to the driver.  She glanced back at Deputy Taylor; she didn’t seem alarmed.  Deputy Taylor didn’t want to be late for work and he was in a civilian car, he had no way of calling backup and he wasn’t armed.  He drove past the Camaro.

Less than an hour later, several residents near McKinley Elementary heard a woman screaming, followed by gunfire.   The next morning, two motorcyclists came across the body of Tina Jefferson.   The victim was nude, her clothes were folded next to her, alongside her red shoes.  Whoever killed Tina Jefferson was bold enough to drive her car back (after the rape and murder) to the grocery store (24-hour store) parking lot and park it.

A box-cutter had been found in the Camaro, leading authorities to speculate that the killer may have worked at the grocery store. The FBI interviewed 186 people.  DNA was retrieved from Tina’s body, indicating-the killer had one of the rarest blood types in the world. Blood samples were taken from Tina’s boyfriend, male friends, male co-workers and male employees at the grocery store, no matches.

Rumors began to circulate, did Tina come across illegal activity while working at the CIA; was this cause of her death?  These rumors were never substantiated.  The CIA sent the Jefferson family posthumous letters of commendation praising Tina’s work and dedication.

The off-duty Deputy who drove past Tina’s car has received death threats over the years. 

Witnesses gave a sketch artist a description of the killer, no solid leads.

CASE #2:

Warren Fulton III (pictured above, 2nd photo) was 22 years old. He was a senior at George Washington University, finishing his English degree.  He was also the captain of the baseball team.  He batted .367 and was the leading base stealer.  He was hoping to be recruited by the Cincinnati Reds.

On December 3, 1988, Warren shopped for dress shoes.  He wanted to look nice for his date Rachael Raver (1st photo).   They had been dating for three-months, she was coming over to have dinner with Warren and his parents.  Afterwards, they planned to hook up with friends at a bar in the district.

Rachael had graduated from George Washington University six months earlier with a degree in education.   She was doing secretarial work for the American Council while attending law school.

Like Warren, Rachael was also athletic.  She was an exceptional soccer player until a knee injury sidelined her.  Warren was smitten and wrote her poems.

They arrived at the bar, Rachael had a few beers; Warren was sober.  They left the bar shortly after midnight.   Warren planned to drop Rachael off at her house and pick her up for church the next morning.

The next morning, Rachael didn’t show up for work and Warren missed baseball practice.  Family and friends became worried.  By Monday, concern turned to panic.  Both families filed “Missing Persons Reports.”  The police urged the families to start calling hospitals.

Rachael’s aunt was driving to work when she heard on the radio, two bodies were found in Reston.  She called police who matched Rachael’s name to a business card found in Warren’s pocket.

Rachael and Warren were shot in the back of the head, Warren had been executed at point-blank range.  Rachael was also raped.   Authorities suspected that carjacking was the motive.

Police theorized that the couple was abducted outside of the bar and forced to make the 40-minute drive to Reston.  The killer was familiar with the isolated area near Hunter Mill Road.

From the looks of the crime scene, Rachael had briefly escaped after witnessing the killer shoot Warren in the head.  She ran blindly through the bushes when he shot her mid-stride.   He dragged her back to the clearing and raped her.

The police recovered a hair from the killer at the crime scene; it was determined from the hair that the killer was an African-American man.

Rachael’s family searched for her missing car.  Six weeks after Rachael was buried, her parents received a ticket from the NYPD. The car was parked on the wrong side of the street in Jamaica, Queens.  It had been ticketed the morning after the murder.

Meanwhile, the police retrieved DNA from Rachael’s body; the DNA database revealed, the same man who had murdered Veronica “Tina” Jefferson was the same man who killed Rachael Raver and Warren Fulton III.

Another similarity, Rachael’s clothes were folded neatly beside her body; the same way Tina Jefferson’s clothes were folded beside her body and Rachael had worn the identical brand of red shoes that Tina Jefferson had worn the night of her murder.  Rachael’s red shoes were placed alongside her clothes just like Tina Jefferson’s were.  The crime scene was identical.

Sadly, Rachael’s and Warren’s families stopped communicating; Rachael’s father thought Warren should have protected Rachael.

The year before Rachael’s murder, she told her family that she was receiving disturbing phone calls.  The calls stopped when she moved after graduation.  Several weeks before she was killed, she told her family she had received an obscene phone message on her answering machine.  Police don’t know if the calls were related to her murder.

On a cold February day, Rachael’s mother Veronica found a nickel placed carefully on Rachael’s grave.  On the other side of the nickel was Thomas Jefferson.  Jefferson is the last name of the first known victim, Tina Jefferson.

Both cases are classified as ‘cold cases’ and remain unsolved after nearly 17 years.

Source: Tamara Jones, "The Washington Post."

UPDATE (CASE SOLVED)

A DNA match determined that Death Row inmate Alfredo Prieto (above) killed Veronica "Tina" Jefferson, Rachael Raver and Warren Fulton.

Prieto, 39, has been on California's death row in San Quentin prison since 1992, when he was sentenced in the September 1990 slaying of a 15-year-old girl. He and two other men kidnapped the girl, a woman and the woman's daughter from their Ontario, Calif., home and raped and beat them in a warehouse. The two other women were stabbed but managed to get away, and the girl, Yvette Woodruff, was fatally shot.

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