me a ride home.”
A number of UNR’s administrative employees were also on guard about their safety after Brianna’s murder. Kathy King, fifty-seven, who worked in the cashier’s office of student services, told a reporter for the Reno Gazette-Journal that she typically walked across campus to the downtown area after work to catch a bus. Due to her safety concerns after the UNR attacks and Brianna’s murder, she said she began taking Virginia Street as an alternate route, instead. Virginia Street is a major thoroughfare between the campus and downtown and is heavily traveled. After awhile, however, feeling a little safer, she reverted to her old route of walking across campus.
“I felt it was a random act,” Kathy said. “And I always see the campus police patrolling everywhere, so I feel safe.”
She said that she still felt concerned for her safety at times. When she had those moments of insecurity, she simply used the campus-escort service—which was not being offered during the summer months because it was operated by students and required student participation. King said that she also carried a police whistle with her, which had the police telephone number printed on it. The whistles were blue in color and distributed earlier in the year as part of the campaign to find Brianna.
Journalism student Denise Parker, who worked at the Joe Crowley Student Union, told a reporter that when she worked late she would make sure that she could get a ride home with a friend or coworker. She said that she felt “pretty safe on campus,” but she tried not to think much about what had happened to Brianna.
In the meantime, the search for Reno’s elusive rapist-turned-murderer continued.
Chapter 11
By the time mid-July 2008 rolled around, the police were still just as actively trying to identify Brianna’s killer as they had been from the outset of the case, but what had seemed at first to be the most promising leads had all but dried up. Members of law enforcement, as well as the citizens of the community, were left wondering who and where the killer was and whether or not he would strike again. Many people began to lose faith in the investigation; some began questioning whether or not Brianna’s murderer would ever be caught.
According to Lieutenant Robert McDonald, the investigators now believed that their suspect had gone underground and was keeping a low profile. They theorized that he had even moved to another community, since none of the sex crimes that had been committed in Reno after Brianna’s murder had been linked to the DNA of the unknown suspect.
“It’s frustrating to have this guy’s genetic name, but not their given name,” McDonald said. “It’s frustrating we haven’t had the right lead to develop the right suspect. Yet. For [Brianna’s] family and the community, we want to bring some resolution and catch this person so everyone will feel safer [when] he’s behind bars.... Eventually this person will return to their pattern.... We don’t want to displace the problem elsewhere and have more women raped, because we know that other communities do not have the same sense of heightened awareness. We know he was stalking and targeting his victims, who were opportunities, but not at random.”
Many people, however, such as UNR employee Kathy King, still mistakenly believed that the attacks had been random.
McDonald said that investigators believed the man they were looking for was not a ladies’ man. They speculated that he would be “comfortable standing in the back of a room, unassuming.” He stressed that when the perpetrator got caught, this man’s family, friends, and coworkers would be surprised and would likely say that they could not believe he was capable of committing sex crimes and murder.
During the months since Brianna’s murder, investigators had focused on leads about a number of suspects, with detectives thinking that several of them had been the one that might crack
A number of UNR’s administrative employees were also on guard about their safety after Brianna’s murder. Kathy King, fifty-seven, who worked in the cashier’s office of student services, told a reporter for the Reno Gazette-Journal that she typically walked across campus to the downtown area after work to catch a bus. Due to her safety concerns after the UNR attacks and Brianna’s murder, she said she began taking Virginia Street as an alternate route, instead. Virginia Street is a major thoroughfare between the campus and downtown and is heavily traveled. After awhile, however, feeling a little safer, she reverted to her old route of walking across campus.
“I felt it was a random act,” Kathy said. “And I always see the campus police patrolling everywhere, so I feel safe.”
She said that she still felt concerned for her safety at times. When she had those moments of insecurity, she simply used the campus-escort service—which was not being offered during the summer months because it was operated by students and required student participation. King said that she also carried a police whistle with her, which had the police telephone number printed on it. The whistles were blue in color and distributed earlier in the year as part of the campaign to find Brianna.
Journalism student Denise Parker, who worked at the Joe Crowley Student Union, told a reporter that when she worked late she would make sure that she could get a ride home with a friend or coworker. She said that she felt “pretty safe on campus,” but she tried not to think much about what had happened to Brianna.
In the meantime, the search for Reno’s elusive rapist-turned-murderer continued.
Chapter 11
By the time mid-July 2008 rolled around, the police were still just as actively trying to identify Brianna’s killer as they had been from the outset of the case, but what had seemed at first to be the most promising leads had all but dried up. Members of law enforcement, as well as the citizens of the community, were left wondering who and where the killer was and whether or not he would strike again. Many people began to lose faith in the investigation; some began questioning whether or not Brianna’s murderer would ever be caught.
According to Lieutenant Robert McDonald, the investigators now believed that their suspect had gone underground and was keeping a low profile. They theorized that he had even moved to another community, since none of the sex crimes that had been committed in Reno after Brianna’s murder had been linked to the DNA of the unknown suspect.
“It’s frustrating to have this guy’s genetic name, but not their given name,” McDonald said. “It’s frustrating we haven’t had the right lead to develop the right suspect. Yet. For [Brianna’s] family and the community, we want to bring some resolution and catch this person so everyone will feel safer [when] he’s behind bars.... Eventually this person will return to their pattern.... We don’t want to displace the problem elsewhere and have more women raped, because we know that other communities do not have the same sense of heightened awareness. We know he was stalking and targeting his victims, who were opportunities, but not at random.”
Many people, however, such as UNR employee Kathy King, still mistakenly believed that the attacks had been random.
McDonald said that investigators believed the man they were looking for was not a ladies’ man. They speculated that he would be “comfortable standing in the back of a room, unassuming.” He stressed that when the perpetrator got caught, this man’s family, friends, and coworkers would be surprised and would likely say that they could not believe he was capable of committing sex crimes and murder.
During the months since Brianna’s murder, investigators had focused on leads about a number of suspects, with detectives thinking that several of them had been the one that might crack
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