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Angela H. Eng Fairfax County

“I am Rabbit. I can be anywhere”: The Legend of the Bunny Man in Northern Virginia

This is a crossposting with the Uncanny America Podcast.

By Angela H. Eng (Podcast by Uncanny America)

When I first moved to Northern Virginia six years ago, I didn’t know much about the area—aside from bad traffic and a breakneck pace of life. I first stumbled on the story of the Bunny Man in 2015 and remember posting about it on Facebook. One of my friends, who grew up in the area, commented “Bunny Man Bridge was the shit growing up!” Me, on the other hand? I was properly creeped out. I had visions of Robbie the Rabbit from the Silent Hill series dancing in my head. Yeesh. 

Robby from Silent Hill 3 (Konami)

Fast forward to 2020, and I’m revisiting the legend again. Except this time we were actually going to visit the famed bridge. Getting there was interesting: it’s set back in a residential area and is at the end of a single-lane winding road. It was a particularly cold and dreary afternoon the day we went; the atmosphere radiated gloom. When we turned the final corner and saw the bridge for the first time, I uttered a long and drawn-out, but quiet, “Shiiiiiiit.” 

The Bunny Man legend seems to be split into two parts: Legend seems split into two parts: the escaped lunatic story and the man in the suit story. The escaped lunatic portion of the story was purported to occur around 1904. Supposedly there was an asylum not far from the bridge in the town of Clifton. However, Clifton residents were wary of an asylum so close to their homes, so it was shut down and the patients were bussed to Lorton prison nearby. However, the bus crashed near the bridge, and the lone survivor, a man named Douglas Griffon (spelled Grifon in some sources), took refuge under the bridge and in the woods.1

This version is just one from many sources, and it contains details that are glossed over or altered slightly in others, such as a train crash, another survivor that Griffon murdered, and bunny carcasses in the woods. One particularly interesting account was posted on a personal website: 

One of the most prominent urban legends in the Virginia area tells of the Bunny Man. The Bunny Man is a former patient of an insane asylum who was committed for killing either his parents or his wife and kids on Easter Sunday. After he escaped, he made himself a giant rabbit suit which he constantly wears. He lives in the woods around Colchester Overpass near Clifton, VA (known as “Bunnyman Bridge”) and is known to eat and dismember rabbits. He likes his privacy and will scare away or kill any trespassers with his ax (his weapon of choice). While some legends claim The Bunnyman is a living person, others claim he is the undead spirit that has haunted the bridge since 1904.2

Brandon Coon, “Legend Research. The Bunny Man”

Brian Conley, an archivist who attempted to pinpoint the origin of this tale, cites the “most widely circulated written version” as the “The Clifton Bunny Man,” written and posted to a website by Timothy C. Forbes, of Virginia, in 1999:

This version of the tale is actually quite notable because of the number of specific facts given. Forbes claims that in 1904 inmates from an insane asylum escaped while being transferred to Lorton Prison. One of these escapees, Douglas J. Grifon, murdered fellow escapee Marcus Wallster and eventually became the Bunny Man. Not only is the location identified, but also the names of several victims and the dates of their murders. The story ends with a challenge for the reader to check with the Clifton Town Library for verification of the facts.3

Brian Conley, “Local History: The Bunny Man Unmasked”

However, Conley is quick to debunk this story by pointing out the historical inaccuracies: Lorton Prison wasn’t open until 1916, there’s no Fairfax court record of Douglas Grifon and the “old Clifton Library” never even existed.4 Conley did meticulous research of this story and attempted to verify it through a database of historical Fairfax County Newspapers. He extracted every murder and killing reported by the local press from 1872 through 1973 and ended up with over 550 individual mentions of killings in the study period. Ultimately, he eliminated all of them. 

Washington Post articles on October 22, 1970 (left) and October 31, 1970 (right)

Eventually Conley found two documented cases of a man in a bunny suit. The first was a Washington Post article from October 22, 1970 entitled “Man in Bunny Suit Sought in Fairfax.” The second was a Washington Post article from October 31, 1970 titled “The ‘Rabbit’ Reappears.” These two stories, both from the 1970s, are a far cry from the story of the escaped lunatic in 1904. Perhaps the “escaped lunatic” is the reasoning storytellers use for the odd and frightening second part of the story. 

The first article mentions an event from October 18, 1970. The Washington Post reported that Air Force Academy cadet Robert Bennett and his fiancée were sitting in a car on the 5400 block of Guinea Road in Fairfax around midnight near Bennett’s uncle’s house when “a man dressed in a white suit with long bunny ears appeared.” He yelled at the couple that they were on private property and he had their tag number. Then, he threw a wood-handled hatchet through the front car window. Luckily, neither of them was hurt.5 This article takes an almost comical tone, starting “Fairfax County Police said yesterday they are looking for a man who likes to wear ‘a white bunny rabbit costume’ and throw hatchets through car windows. Honest.” After yelling at the couple in the car and throwing his hatchet through the right front car window, the “‘rabbit’ skipped off into the night.”6

Bunny Man Bridge in Clifton, VA of urban legend lore (Offbeat NOVA)
Bunny Man Bridge, Clifton (Matthew Eng Photo)

Two weeks later, the Bunny Man showed up again about a block away from his original sighting, according to an October 31 Washington Post article. Private security guard Paul Phillips spotted him  on the front porch of a new, but unoccupied house. He was holding an ax. In the piece, Phillips recounted what happened next: “I started talking to him and that’s when he started chopping.” Taking several swings at a pole on the porch, he threatened Phillips, “All you people trespass around here. If you don’t get out of here, I’m going to bust you on the head.”7 This article, though just as short, is a little less jovial, mentioning that he “was wielding an ax and chopping at the roof of a new house.” The article also described him as “about 5-feet-8, 160 pounds and appeared to be in his early 20s.”8 

The Fairfax County Police Department has no official record of the October 18 assault on Robert Bennett and his fiancé, but they do have an Investigation Report relating to the vandalism incident. The case was turned over to Investigator W. L. Johnson of the Criminal Investigation Bureau. Johnson found no concrete leads, though he got a tip from a caller claiming to have been threatened by an “Axe Man”: 

[The] caller claimed to have just received a telephone call from someone identifying himself as “the Axe Man.” The Axe Man allegedly said “Mr. _____, you have been messing up my property, by dumping tree stumps, limbs and brush, and other things on the property.” The Axe Man further stated that “you can make everything right, by meeting me tonight and talking about the situation.” The representative from Kings Park West stated that the caller sounded to be a white male in his late teens or early 20s. The police set up a stake out, but the “Axe Man” never materialized.9

Brian Conley, “Local History: The Bunny Man Unmasked”

Johnson did not find any information that would allow him to pursue the case further, so he marked the case inactive on March 14, 1971. Conley speculates that the stories’ references to trespassing match the rapid development of the area. However, he also points out that the urban legend-like details began to emerge less than two weeks after the events in these two articles were reported. And so the Bunny Man retreated into the mists of legend. To date, there are a number of Bunnyman horror films and published stories with variations of the tale. This variation seems to be those gruesome, and frightening—weaving both aspects of the tale into one: 

A couple of teens were driving with their girlfriends, looking to scare them. They decided to go out to the old railroad bridge where the Bunny Man was killed. It was almost midnight. The boys stopped under the bridge and dragged the scared girls out of the car, teasing them that the ghost of the Bunny Man would get them. The teasing became too much for one of the girls, who pushed the boys away and ran out from under the bridge into the road. At that moment, at the exact stroke of midnight, she saw a bright flash of light under the bridge. When the light faded, she saw her friends’ bodies mutilated and hanging from the bridge, and their car had a bloody ax stuck into the windshield. Ever since that night, local kids gather every Halloween at Bunny Man Bridge–but they all scatter before midnight, as none want to be caught under the bridge when the Bunny Man comes.10

Brandon Coon, “Legend Research. The Bunny Man”

It’s never far from the minds of its residents, however. In 2018, a man’s body was found near the bridge: 

He was found along the 6500 block of Colchester Road in Fairfax Station by a nearby resident just before 7 a.m. Cooker’s body was about 900 feet from what’s known as the Bunny Man Bridge. The railroad bridge is part of an urban legend, which draws hordes of teenagers to the rural area of Fairfax County every Halloween . . . ‘And certainly it’s ironic it popped up near the Bunny Man Bridge,’ said [a police officer].11

Peggy Fox, Man Found Dead in Fairfax Co. near Urban Legend Spot” (WUSA9)

The article is careful to point out there is no connection between the legend and the man’s death. 

Listen to the Uncanny America Podcast featuring Offbeat NOVA HERE.

Footnotes:

  1. Ally Schweitzer, “The True Story Of The Bunnyman, Northern Virginia’s Most Gruesome Urban Legend.” WAMU, WAMU 88.5 – American University Radio, October 31, 2017. Accessed October 30, 2020. LINK.
  2. Brandon Coon, “Legend Research: The Bunny Man.” bulb, n.d. Accessed October 30, 2020, LINK.
  3. Brian Conley, “Local History: The Bunny Man Unmasked,” Research Center Guides. Accessed October 30, 2020, LINK.
  4.  Matt Blitz, “The Scary, Weird, Somewhat True Story of the Fairfax ‘Bunny Man’: Washingtonian (DC).” Washingtonian, October 23, 2015. Accessed October 30, 2020, LINK.  
  5. Blitz, “Scary, Weird, Somewhat True.” 
  6. “Man in Bunny Suit Sought in Fairfax,” Washington Post, Oct 22, 1970.
  7.  Blitz, “Scary, Weird, Somewhat True.”
  8.  “The ‘Rabbit’ Reappears,” Washington Post, Oct. 31, 1970.
  9.  Conley, “Bunny Man Unmasked.” 
  10.  Coon, “Legend Research.” 
  11.  Peggy Fox, “Man Found Dead in Fairfax Co. near Urban Legend Spot,” wusa9.com, April 18, 2018. Accessed October 30, 2020, LINK.

Categories
Angela H. Eng blog Fairfax

Beyond a Punchline: The Fairfax Butt-Slasher

By Angela H. Eng, Offbeat NOVA

When I first came upon the story of the Fairfax Butt-Slasher I thought, this has to be some kind of blown-out-of-proportion urban legend. 

We had stories like that where I was from—the Pembroke Mall Leg Slasher or the Lynnhaven Mall Car Stalker. In the Pembroke Mall variation, a person—usually a man—would hide underneath a car. When the owner of the car, almost always a woman, returned her car with her hands full of shopping—almost always Christmas shopping—the man under the car would slash at the woman’s legs, leaving a series of gashes that would require stitches. In the Lynnhaven Mall variation, the victim would be leaving the mall late at night and would be the owner of the only car left in the parking lot. Like the other story, the victim would be juggling shopping bags and be preoccupied with getting home. Of course, someone—almost always a man in these stories as well—would be lurking nearby the car or sometimes IN the car, waiting to attack. We told these stories so much as kids, I can’t remember if they actually happened or not. 

Supposedly, the “Mall Slasher” trope has been in vogue since the late 1970s and has some similarities to actual events, but most of these stories have been reduced to urban legend status.1  I think I can be forgiven for thinking the Butt-Slasher was another one of these outlandish stories reduced to middle-school whispers or high-school bathroom conversation. 

Turns out, the Fairfax Butt-Slasher was not a punchline—it was totally real. The Butt-Slasher was responsible for a series of attacks on young women during most of 2011. 

Johnny Pimentel (ABC News)

The first victim of the Butt-Slasher was a pregnant woman in her 20s. She was leaving Fair Oaks Mall in Fairfax, Virginia, in February 2011 when she noticed someone behind her:

I’m pushing the door open, and then all of sudden, he’s right there behind me, and I felt a pinch on my bottom and I thought he just grabbed me and I was like, ‘Hey, you just cut my leggings,’ and he was like, ‘No, no, no. It was my bag.’ He was carrying a little, yellow bag.2 

At first, the victim said, she didn’t even know she was cut. However, the cut was deep and she ended up with a permanent scar.3

The attacks continued: one on March 11 at the Tyson’s Corner H&M, and another on May 16 at the Fair Oaks Mall Ann Taylor. On June 8, a 21-year-old woman was shopping at the T.J. Maxx at Fairfax Towne Center in when she felt a pinch on her buttocks. The woman did not realize that she had been the victim of an assault and did not report the attack to police until later.4 

It’s hard to gauge the mood of Fairfax at this time, but perhaps it is best summed up in this 2011 tweet:

(Twitter/kaltizer)

By this time, the police had put a profile together: according to the victims, the suspect was a heavyset, 5-foot-6 Latino man in his late 20s. He was using a box cutter or a razor to slice at women’s buttocks shortly after distracting them.5 Some experts speculated that he may have had a rare sexual disorder known as piquerism.6 A Psychology Today article from 2015 cites Dr. Anil Aggrawal’s definition of the disorder: “sexual arousal from penetrating another person’s body with sharp objects (such as pins, razors, knives, etc.).”7 Though the article names the Fairfax Butt-Slasher as an example of piquerism, is it clear by the other examples that the Butt-Slasher’s case was downright mild. 

On June 18, the slasher struck again at the Tyson’s H&M, followed by another attack at a Marshall’s in an area called the Greenbriar Towne Center. All of the attacks followed the same pattern: distracting a young woman, slashing her with a sharp object, then disappearing. On July 25, he attacked an 18 year-old shopping at Forever XXI. She was distracted by a rack falling, then, as the Herald Sun in Australia reported, “felt a ‘sharp pain’ in her backside which she dismissed as a coat hanger. Later she realised her behind was cut and bleeding and her denim shorts had been slashed. The wound was about an inch and a half (4cm) long.”8 

(Post from the Restonian Blog)

The news had reached as far as Australia, where the suspect was known as “the serial bum-slasher.” In late July, following the Forever XXI attack, the Restonian blog made a half-serious, half-joking post about the phenomenon. Though the blog is slightly tongue-in-cheek, the August edition of the Fairfax Connector took a more serious turn:

However, said police spokesman Lucy Caldwell, ‘Women shouldn’t feel this is isolated just to Fair Oaks Mall. This type of behavior could happen anywhere’ . . . police ‘don’t want women to feel unduly afraid to go shopping. But if they feel at all uncomfortable in a store, they should report it to store security. There’s no reason to believe it won’t happen again, so women should stay alert . . . they should also consider shopping with a friend,’ she said. ‘Actually, these are general safety tips women should always use — these incidents just highlight them.’

Being a woman is grand in 21st century America. 

Eventually, the slasher was identified as 41 year-old Johnny Pimentel, a former day laborer. The police were able to identify him via an anonymous tip.9 By September, the news reported he had fled Northern Virginia.  Eventually, in January 2012, he was arrested near a shopping mall in Peru. One article mentioned that it was unclear how he got to Peru, and it was also unclear whether he could be brought back to the United States to stand trial.10 Eventually, almost an entire year later, he was extradited to the United States in December 2012. He remained in jail, plead guilty to the charges against him, and was sentenced on September 6, 2013. At the hearing, he was reported as saying, “I’m very remorseful for all the things that are occurring, and I ask you to pardon me.”11

However, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and the judge suspended all but 7. That would make this year the year of his release, but I couldn’t locate any up-to-date information on him. 

Perhaps a fitting end to the story is at the start of this 2012 Yelp review of the Tyson’s Corner H&M:

(Yelp)

If folklore experts examine stories as cultural artifacts and search them for clues about the attitudes, fears, and beliefs of the cultures they come from, it would be easy to dismiss the stories I heard from my hometown as stories about women’s fears of being vulnerable, or even dismiss it as some kind of anti-capitalist tale. 

But the more I read about this story and the attitudes surrounding it, I had to wonder—what happens when the urban legend is true? 

Footnotes:

  1. Peter Kendall, “URBAN YARN OF `MALL SLASHER` JUST WON`T DIE,” Chicago Tribune, September 2, 2018. Accessed October 25, 2020, LINK.
  2. Matthew Stabley John Schriffen, “Butt-Slashing Victim: ‘I Didn’t Even Know I Was Cut at First,’” NBC4 Washington, July 29, 2011. Accessed October 25, 2020, LINK.
  3.  Stabley and Schriffen, “Butt-Slashing Victim.” 
  4. Reshma Kirpalani, “Serial Butt Slasher Blamed for 6 Assaults in Virginia,” ABC News, August 3, 2011. Accessed October 24, 2020, LINK.
  5. Kirpalani, “Serial Butt Slasher.” 
  6. Ibid.
  7.  Mark Griffiths, Mark, “Life on a Knife Edge.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 1 Jan. 2015. Accessed October 24, 2020, LINK. 
  8. Herald Sun, “Serial Bottom Slasher Strikes Again,” Herald Sun, 2011. Accessed October 18, 2020, LINK.
  9. Christina Caron, “Serial Butt Slasher Suspect Is on the Lam From Virginia Cops,” September 8, 2011. Accessed October 19, 2020, LINK.
  10.  NBC4 Washington and the Associated Press, “Serial Butt Slasher Located, Police Say,” NBC4 Washington, June 17, 2013. Accessed October 20, 2020, LINK.
  11.  NBC4 Washington and the Associated Press, “Virginia ‘Butt Slasher’ Sentenced to 7 Years in Prison,” NBC4 Washington, September 6, 2013. Accssed October 20, 2020, LINK.
Categories
Alexandria blog Matthew Eng

Timing is Everything: Coming Attractions

By Matthew T. Eng, Offbeat NOVA

We have been lacking a little in the content lately. Fortunately, there’s a reason: we bought a house!

The new Offbeat Nova HQ (Matthew Eng Photo)

Both Angela and I are very excited about this. It’s something we have talked about for a very long time, for sure. If we are going to be exploring northern Virginia history for the indefinite future, it made sense to truly put down our roots in the area.

So, instead of exhausting ourselves trying to put something out that we might not be completely happy with, we decided to let everyone know what is in on the short list for upcoming posts. Enjoy.

The Fairfax “Butt Slasher” (Fairfax County)
For six months in 2011, a man known as the “Butt Slasher” terrorized women in northern Virginia in shopping malls. Women were warned to “keep track of their behinds” while shopping and pay close attention to their surroundings. 

Bunnyman Bridge (Clifton)
You may have heard about it. Is it an urban legend, real, or just a joke? We take a look at the “Bunnyman” of Clifton and the bridge where he supposedly hanged his victims. This will be a collaborative post with Uncanny America. 

Top Golf Alexandria (Fairfax County)
It was the first Top Golf in America. Now it sits abandoned and derelict near a busy shopping area in Fairfax County. We explore the history and complicated business plan of Top Golf Alexandria. 

Offbeat Eats: Egg Foo Young in Suburbia (Gainesville)
This new segments explores some of the best food off the beaten path. Our first segment will showcase a small and unassuming Chinese restaurant in Gainesville, VA, and the incredible egg dish with a unique connection to American history. 

Offbeat Eats: Steak and Ale’s “Kensington Club” Recipe (Alexandria)
If you’ve traveled anywhere near the Mark Center in Alexandria, chances are you have seen the abandoned Steak n’ Ale restaurant with its iconic sign. We look at the restaurant itself and recreate one of its signature steak recipes to taste test. 

All You Fascists Bound To Lose (Arlington)
We revisit the site of the murder of George Rockwell, leader of the American Nazi Party, in a small Arlington strip mall. Just in time for the election. 

Categories
Civil War spottsylvania county

Offbeat Postscripts: The Minister of Pestilence

Offbeat Postcripts is a series of short posts where we cover small topics of offbeat history in Northern Virginia. 

George and Evy Doswell, Fredericksburg City Cemetery (John Hennessy/FredericksburgHistory)

By Matthew T. Eng, Offbeat NOVA

In a year that seems like twenty, I catch myself thinking about what life was like before Coronavirus. At the beginning of March, I can faintly remember hearing about the first reported case of Coronavirus in Virginia from a Marine in Quantico. That particular individual was of course not “Patient Zero,” but the first of many that tested positive for the deadly virus in the months since.1 

I remember talking to others at work in January and February about how the virus had isolated itself in the Pacific Rim, and it would never make its way over here. Boy, was I wrong. I’m sure nervous Americans felt the same thing about the A/H1N1 “Spanish Flu” happening overseas in 1918, even if the first cases were likely in the United States. Well, no one ever said Americans were ever right, or could believe their own naivety. 

But what do you do when it’s inescapable? Movies featuring deadly worldwide viruses treat it like some invisible monster wreaking havoc over populations, leaving death and destruction in its wake. It’s the Motaba virus in Outbreak. Captain Trips in The Stand. The T-Virus in Resident Evil. And now we have Coronavirus. But it’s not Hollywood. It’s actually happening, and the reality is far different and more terrifying. 

I began to think about other epidemics in American history and their connections to Northern Virginia. Talking about the “Spanish Flu,” while tragic, is not necessarily offbeat. 

Then I found a story first written about by John Hennessy, Chief Historian of the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. 

The story involves a short outbreak in Civil War-era Fredericksburg of scarlet fever, a disease that acts much like Coronavirus, and the man who performed a large number of burials for the unfortunate children who fell victim to it between 1861 and 1862. 

The worldwide pandemic of scarlet fever was among many of the deadly epidemics that occurred in Europe and North America in the early to late 19th century (one report approximates the years between 1820 and 1880). Symptoms of the streptococci bacteria in a human body include a sore threat, fever, inflammation of the lymph nodes, and, in some cases, abscesses of the throat and tonsils. Unfortunately, the majority of those who developed the sickness were young children, who would often succumb to the virus within two days of the onset of symptoms.2 

Scarlet fever came to Fredericksburg beginning in September 1861. According to Hennessy, the first known death was Wilmer Hudson, an eight-year-old son of John and Pamela Hudson. The deaths continued to increase into the winter of 1861. Countless parents had to watch their children die in large numbers. The only respite for their anguish was the ferocity of the virus, taking those affected quickly. In all, there were forty-one known victims of scarlet fever from September 1861 to February 1862. The devastation of it was so bad that NPS historian John Hennessy said it might have been “the greatest human disaster to ever befall the residents of Fredericksburg.” That was, of course, until December of 1862.3

Alfred M. Randolph (Wikimedia Commons)

Either out of grief or worry of spreading disease, the majority of children were buried the following day in cemeteries around Fredericksburg. One of the most popular spots was the Fredericksburg City Cemetery, a small plot of land on the corner of Washington Street and Amelia Street in the heart of downtown Fredericksburg. Most people know the area next to it simply as the “Confederate Cemetery,” an equal parcel of land separated by an invisible dividing line that that splits the area. At least seven of the children who died of scarlet fever were buried there. These burials were performed by one man, a young minister named Alfred Magill Randolph of St. George’s Episcopal Church, less than a half mile away from the burial site. His position at St. George’s was his first after graduating from the Virginia Theological Seminary. He quickly climbed the ladder at St. George’s, becoming a rector after he was officially ordained at the age of twenty-two in 1860.4   

When the war began in April 1861, the burials he presided over took a different tone. Sporadic fighting was occurred near Fredericksburg in Spotsylvania County, so the likelihood for Randolph to bury soldiers became a reality in the fall of 1861. The first soldier he administered a burial for was Francis Lewis of Company G., 1st North Carolina Infantry Regiment, on October 12, 1861. By the end of the month, Randolph also began burying children from the scarlet fever epidemic. 

The rector’s first burial was Sidney Cavell, a two-year old child of Charles Cavell and Emma Huckey, who died on October 27th and was buried the following day. His next two burials were by far the most heartbreaking. Two prominent figures of the Fredericksburg community, J. Temple and Evelina Doswell, lost two of their children within nine days of each other. Randolph presided over the burial of five-year-old George Doswell on November 11, 1861. He did the same for his sister, two-year-old Evy Doswell, nine days later on November 20th. The Doswells were not the only family to lose more than one child, but Rector Randolph presided over the pair.

In all, Alfred Randolph performed burial rites for seven children between October 1861 and February 1862. The last was two-year-old John Edward Haydon.5 

  • Sidney Cavell (2 years) – Buried October 28, 1861 (Death 27 October)
  • George Doswell (5 years) – Buried Nov. 11, 1861 (Death Nov 10, 1861)
  • Evy Doswell (2 Years) – Buried Nov. 20, 1861 (Death 19 November 1861)
  • Malvina Meade Hart (5 years, 7 mos.) – Buried December 7, 1861 (Death Dec 6, 1861)
  • Susan Gill Mander (2 years, 6 mos.) – Buried Dec. 11, 1861 (Death Dec. 9, 1861)
  • Anne B.H. Scott (10 years, 9 mos.) – Buried Jan 5, 1862 (Death Jan 3, 1862)
  • Thomas Wolfe (6 years) – Buried February 7, 1862 (Death Feb 5, 1862)
  • John Edward Haydon (2 Years, 2 Mos.) – Buried February 24, 1862 (Death Feb 1862)

By February, scarlet fever had dissipated in Fredericksburg and Virginia in other hotspots like the Confederate Capital in Richmond. Today, you can see many of the gravestones and pay your respects to these children in the Fredericksburg City Cemetery. 

Six-Year-Old Thomas Wolfe (FindaGrave)

The woes for Fredericksburg only had a brief respite once cases and deaths began to dissipate after Alfred Randolph presided over the burial of John Edward Haydon in February 1862. By autumn of that year, Federal forces were beginning to descend in and around Fredericksburg. A major battle seemed imminent in November. With forces at their doorstep, residents were given the order to evacuate on November 21, 1862. Randolph and his young family departed his wife and day-old son for Danville, where he became a Post Chaplain for the Confederacy until the remainder of the war. He held a number of positions in Alexandria, Baltimore, and Norfolk before passing away after a long career of service to God (and unfortunately the Confederacy) in 1918. He is buried at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond. No doubt he kept his thoughts on the turbulent winter of 1861-1862 in the back of his mind for the rest of his life, and the many poor children he buried as a result of an unforgiving disease. 

Reading about this tiny event puts our current troubles into perspective. We cannot justify any death, but the loss of those younger than us are the hardest to bear. 

Stay healthy and wear a mask. 

Footnotes:

  1. NBC Washington Staff, “US Marine in Virginia Tested Positive for Coronavirus, in State’s First Case,” March 8, 2020. Accessed October 2, 2020, LINK.
  2. Alan C. Swedlund and Ann Herring, Scarlet Fever Epidemics of the Nineteenth Century: A Case of Evolved Pathogenic Virulence. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 159-177.
  3. John Hennessy, “The 1861 Scarlet Fever Epidemic,” Remembering, October 15, 2010. Accessed October 2, 2020, LINK.
  4. St. George’s Episcopal, “Alfred M. Randolph.” Accessed October 2, 2020, LINK.
  5. St. George’s Episcopal, “St. George’s Burials, 1859-1913.” Accessed October 2, 2020, LINK.
Categories
blog Matthew Eng Prince Willilam County

Lorena Bobbitt Revisted: Examining NOVA Dark Tourism in Manassas

By Matthew T. Eng, Offbeat NOVA

On June 22, 1993, John Wayne Bobbitt and his wife, an Ecuadorian immigrant named Lorena, discussed the possibility of divorce. The couple had issues. Many of these issues stemmed from the ex-Marine’s abusive behavior towards his young bride. She went to the police that day in hopes of obtaining a restraining order on her husband. Unfortunately, the process dragged and she left. 

John Wayne Bobbitt and Lorena (Amazon Prime Documentary/ABC News)

That night, John and a friend went out for a night of heavy drinking around their home in Manassas, Virginia. The two returned, late and drunk, to the couple’s second floor apartment near Route 28 and Old Centreville Road. John stumbled into the bedroom and raped Lorena before falling asleep in a drunken stupor. That was enough. As Lorena went into the kitchen to get some water just before 4 am, she brought an 8-inch carving knife into the bedroom and cut her husband’s penis off. He was drunk enough to not immediately wake up or notice the large pool of blood that collected around him. 

Lorena got into her 1991 Mercury Capri with the weapon and penis still in her hands and drove off out of the complex down Maplewood Drive. At the intersection of Maplewood Drive and Old Centreville Road, she finally realized her husband’s severed penis was still in her hand and tossed it out the window across from a 7-Eleven in a grassy field in front of the Paty-Kake Daycare Center. Shocked and scatterbrained, she drove to the only place she thought of going — her work, a nail salon approximately four miles away in the Old Centreville Crossing shopping center. Nobody was there, so she deposited the bloody knife into the trashcan next to the nail salon and proceeded to her boss’s house. Once there, her boss, Janna Bisutti, called the police. She divulged to authorities where the missing appendage could be found. The police eventually found it, brought the small measure of manhood into the nearby 7-Eleven, and placed it into a hot dog container on ice where it was transported to the hospital and reattached on John. The rest is history.

Henry David Thoreau once wrote that he went into the woods of Concord, Massachusetts, to “live deep and suck the marrow out of life,” and “cut a broad swath and shave close.” He did not pontificate how close he shaved in his time in solitude next to the pond. I don’t think he had John Bobbitt in mind when he wrote Walden, but it was for this reason that I, armed with the “essential facts of life,” ventured into the interior of Manassas to pique my newfound curiosity in one of Northern Virginia’s premiere sites of dark tourism. 

Truthfully, I didn’t know much about the Lorena Bobbitt case—besides all the jokes wrapped in fragile masculinity and fear that gave comedians months of content in the early nineties. It wasn’t until the Jordan Peele Lorena documentary came out last year that I fully understood all the facts about the case, the biggest of which was that it occurred nearby where I lived in Northern Virginia. The documentary centered on three main places that Lorena visited on the early morning of June 23, 1993: her home, the field across from the 7-Eleven, and her place of business where she deposited the weapon. 

I decided to visit these three places in 2020 and retrace her steps from that night. Although I took several pictures of these places during the day several weeks ago, I wanted to go back at night and retrace the steps Lorena did 27 years ago. The first thing I had to do was figure out the starting point: her apartment.

Maplewood Park Apartments, 2020. Lorena Bobbitt lived here with John on the night of September 23, 1993 (Eng Photo/Offbeat NOVA)
Maplewood Park Apartments

Looking through old newspaper articles, as well as the recent video taken for the documentary, I was able to piece together her location in the Maplewood Park apartments off Route 28 in Manassas. She lived on the second floor of a front facing apartment at 8174 Maplewood Drive. The complex, both during the day and at night was always crowded with cars and activity. It’s a far cry from the dilapidated state often written about in stories. The area is well-kept, even if its location is flanked by countless liquor and vape stores off the main road. It’s as if the idea of John Bobbit’s douchebaggery blanketed the surrounding area like some deadly airborne pathogen of Axe body spray laced with Aristocrat vodka and menthol cigarettes. Looking into the second floor apartment at night, I couldn’t help but run through the sequence of events in my head and reflect on the courage it took for her to act against her aggressor.  

It’s only a short drive down the street to the 7-Eleven. I got to the stop sign at the intersection where she threw the appendage up and over her car into the grassy field and chuckled. Based off of the images of the location where it was found, it was a hell of a throw. Good for you, girl. It looks like they are clearing the area for a construction project at that corner location. Soon, the location will turn into something entirely different, so I feel fortunate to record the area before any new buildings spring up. 

The hardest location to find was the nail salon she went to after ejecting the penis out her driver side window, the Nail Sculptor. Put simply, the location as it was in 1993 and in the documentary does not exist anymore. Simple Internet searches yielded me similar results. They always talked about the salon and the city it was located in, Centreville. But that was it. No address could be found anywhere. So, once again armed with a business name and location, I went on DOBsearch and reverse engineered the information to give me a physical address. The location is in the middle of the Centreville Crossing Shopping center roughly four miles away from her former apartment in Manassas. 

The Nail Sculptor over the years in the Centreville Crossing Shopping Center in Centreville, VA (Eng Photo/Offbeat NOVA)
The Nail Sculptor over the years (Google Maps/Eng Photo)

When I drove there at night, I carried a screenshot I took from the documentary in my phone. Sure enough, all the details matched up, including the stone sitting area on a small slope right in front of the shop. The location seems to have been a revolving door of beauty salons and establishments since Bisutti left sometime in the 1990s. The location was something called Amore until 2015 when it turned into what it is still today, a Korean makeup retailer called Aritaum. I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but there is a trash can still right next to the shop — the same location where Lorena dropped her bloody knife on top of a KFC fried chicken container in 1993. Intentional or not, I thought it was a nice touch.

But that’s not all that I did in my visit to Lorena’s greatest hits. Don’t worry. I saved the best for last. 

How many of you know what it’s like to eat a hot dog at the same place where mortified men put a penis on ice? My guess is not many of you. But I had to know. So I went recently got one at that exact location, eating it a few feet from where Lorena alley-ooped her abusive husband’s dismembered member out the window onto a grassy field with a Kareem Abdul-Jabar hook shot. The experience was surreal to to say the least.  

"Hot Dog Bag" of John Wayne Bobbitt's penis (Eng Photo/Offbeat NOVA)
“Hot Dog Bag” (Eng Photo/Offbeat NOVA)

The 7-Eleven itself looked like any other one you’ve walked into. I immediately started thinking about the officers that carried John’s penis into it, frantically looking for ice and anything to hold it in. I can imagine them looking straight at the hot dog rollers and put two and two together before pleading to that poor employee to hand them one. No big bite for the officers. They would take theirs to go. 

So I got a hot dog in honor of Lorena and ate it in the parking lot. It tasted like any other 7-Eleven hot dog you’ve had before. I had to stop thinking about why I was there to enjoy it as much as I could. 

Footnotes:

Sources were gathered from the Amazon Prime Lorena documentary, ABC News Special “The Bobbitts,” and The Washingtonian article, “The Definitive Oral History of the Bobbitt Case, 25 Years Later.”

Categories
Matthew Eng Postscripts Prince Willilam County

Offbeat Postscripts: Montclair Veterans Flagpole

Offbeat Postcripts is a series of short posts where we cover small topics of offbeat history in Northern Virginia. 

By Matthew T. Eng, Offbeat NOVA

There is a flagpole in the middle of a garden and brick path in the desirable Montclair neighborhood in Dumfries, VA. A small set of benches sit nearby like restful sentries waiting for neighborhood residents to take in the patriotic tableau in quiet reflection. The small area is located directly in front of the Montclair Property Owners Association, Inc. The flagpole, unassuming in its position off the road near the busy intersection of Waterway Drive and Cardinal Drive, is even more mysterious in its true purpose.

A Blue Star Memorial marker shows the location as a “tribute to the Armed Forces that have defended the United States of America.” On the brick path leading up to the flag are the names and short messages of Montclair residents who have served in foreign wars and conflicts from World War II to the present day. It’s a nice way to honor the men and women who lived locally but served globally. 

If that was the real reason why the flagpole was there, we would certainly not be covering it here for Offbeat NOVA. There are countless flagpoles and Blue Star Memorial markers around the region with similar stories and purposes. 

This one is different.

Resting on the ground on the opposite end of the flagpole is a small rock, largely obstructed by some of the overgrown grass on its edges. The inscription highlights the true reason why the flagpole was erected:

“DEDICATED TO THE BRAVE MONTCLAIR RESIDENTS WHO SERVED OUR COUNTRY IN 

OPERATION DESERT STORM.

JULY 4, 1991”

The flagpole was dedicated in 1991 in honor of those who served in Operation Desert Storm. What is most interesting is the date it was dedicated: July 4, 1991. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. 

One of the things I can remember about the Gulf War was the overwhelming sense of patriotism Americans felt for those fighting in the Middle East. Although the Cold War ended that year, the one big moment that stands out for me was Operation Desert Storm. I had a relative who served over there during the conflict and it was a big deal for my family to show our support. I remember the ticker tape parades. The trading cards. The patriotic songs. Dedicating the Montclair Veterans Flagpole on Independence Day, only four months removed from the end of the brief war, is a testament to the patriotic fervor many felt back home. Although 650,000 Americans served in the Gulf War region between 1990-1991, there are not many monuments to it today, even if plans are supposedly underway to create a national memorial up the road in Washington, D.C. 

Now that we are currently in the thirtieth anniversary of the conflict, we felt it was the perfect offbeat anecdote to the United States’ Cold War farewell tour. 

If you happen to be in Dumfries, VA, stop by this unassuming flagpole. Who knows. Maybe you’ll love it so much you’ll want to live there. Judging by the location of it, you’re already halfway there. 

Categories
Alexandria Angela H. Eng

Aquatic Temptations: The “Potomac Ark” Houseboat Brothels of Alexandria

By Angela H. Eng, Offbeat NOVA

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kublah Khan

I can’t recall where I first heard about the Potomac Arks. I might have been doing some research for another project when some small mention of them caught my eye—the floating brothels of the Potomac. And somehow, when I was imagining these boats, small snatches of Coleridge’s fragmented poem would come to mind: opulence, metaphorical pleasures, and the river. 

Intrigued, I decided to research more, and soon found out that the Potomac River was filled with these brothel boats in the years after the Civil War up until sometime between the 1920s and 1940s. 

According to John Wennersten’s Historic Waterfront of Washington, “As Washington became a center of military and industrial activity [during the Civil War], it also became a city awash in a tidal wave of cash . . . Prostitution, an activity long associated with the Potomac waterfront, increased dramatically.”1 Around the same time, local boat builders invented the “Potomac Ark,” an inexpensive houseboat that could house fishermen and shipyard workers.2 Frederick Tilp, author of This Was Potomac River, described what these boats were like:

The standard specifications called for a boat 24 feet by 10 feet by 12 inches draft, with a flat bottom and square ends. It would have cedar clapboard siding, red-painted flat-tin roof, two windows, two doors, and would be lighted by kerosene lamps, and would use a coal fired stove for heating and cooking. Arks moored at the water’s edge, rested on the bottom at low tide, and poling and rowing were their only means of propulsion.3 

Frederick Tilp, This Was Potomac River

Though these boats were designed for fishermen and shipyard workers, pollution caused fishing and shipbuilding to decline; eventually, the arks were sold to sex workers that operated close to the river.4 In time, the river was filled with hundreds of floating brothel boats. By the early 1900s, the arks began to spread beyond the confines of Washington and to nearby cities in Maryland and Virginia. These states were safe havens for the arks because Alexandria had “sympathetic politicians and influential gentry,” while Maryland State Police were “too busy chasing oyster pirates.”5

Tilp described the ark operations as a “‘one woman” type of enterprise. Each woman ran her own business on her own ark, at whatever location she pleased.6 Parke Rouse, in a Daily Press article about historical bawdy houses in Virginia, quoted the Virginia Canals and Navigations Society’s description of the arks: “small floating houses of prostitution, most of them painted white or blue (the more high-class boats usually were white with blue roofs and shutters) lined the shores and clustered around gambling casino boats.”7 

Madame Rose’s “Dream” (Frederick Tilp)

The most famous of these arks, according to Tilp, was the only known two-story houseboat named the Dream, run by a lady named Madam Rose. Though there is little mention of the arks in the press during this time period, the Dream was featured in a 1905 Alexandria Gazette article. The article stated that the infamous brothel survived a “terrible northwest storm” and the “scenes of revelry on board were not checked by the wild outside elements” and small boats “continued during day and night, carrying patrons to and fro.”8 Tilp, when citing the article in his book, also mentioned a second opulent boat the Dream’s owner was building, “patterned after one belonging to the King of Siam.”9 Unfortunately, like the majority of these boats, its fate is unknown. 

Alexandria Gazette and Virginia Advertiser, August 14, 1905.

These brothels and gambling arks flourished because Virginia had no jurisdiction over the river and because Maryland and the District ignored them.”10 A Washington Post article from 1905, when describing a gambling ark that frequented the waters just outside of Alexandria, acknowledged that “The Ark is slow but clumsy, but she flirts airingly outside the law . . . If the Ark happens to be lying inside the District line and the metropolitan officers attempt to raid her, the anchor is up in a trice and in thirty seconds she has drifted into Maryland or Virginia, beyond the reach of pursuing officials.”11 Likewise, if Maryland or Virginia police attempted a raid, the boat would then cross back over into the District. Similarly, these brothel arks evaded the law.

A popular spot for these boats was Jones Point, Alexandria. Here, the boundary lines between Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. all intersected, so it was easy for these arks to operate in the waters just beyond the city. Now a park, Jones Point has the original D.C. boundary stones and the point lighthouse preserved. A historical marker at the lighthouse even mentions these arks. The marker specifies that the oil that fueled the lighthouse lamp was red for a time, which coincided with the height of popularity for the arks, thus making the waters of the Potomac a literal “red light district.”12 

Jones Point Lighthouse (Matthew Eng Photo)

And so these illicit businesses boomed until the late 1920s, when the surveys for George Washington Highway began.13 Donald Shomette, a Mallows Bay historian,14 notes that the Potomac Arks saw a resurgence during the great Depression, since scavengers would come to the wrecks in Mallows Bay and acquire scrap metal; as a result, the colonies of bootleggers, gamblers, and prostitutes thrived once more.15 Though I can’t recall where I might have read it, supposedly the remains of some of those boats are among the shipwrecks in Maryland’s Mallows Bay. Though the arks would survive through World War II, they were entirely wiped out by the 1960s.16 The last known photograph of an ark is in Tilp’s nautical tome; taken in 1957, the photo shows a small ark in Great Hunting Creek, Virginia. 

And so the Potomac Ark disappeared from history. Until 1993, that is. Alexandria city workers had started demolishing a blighted part of the Alexandria waterfront and ceased operations when they discovered that the structure was part of a wooden barge sunken in the dirt.17 The Washington Post continues, “City historians quickly arrived and declared it an ark, probably built about 1900, and the only known survivor among the thousands of houseboats, gambling barges and floating brothels that lined the Potomac River from the Civil War to after World War II.” Though historians could not ascertain what the use of this particular ark was, there’s no doubt it is a unique and priceless part of history on the Potomac. 

Alexandria Seaport Foundation (Matthew Eng Photo)

The ark was given to the Alexandria Seaport Foundation. The foundation restored the ark and it now serves as the McIlhenny Seaport Center, the headquarters for the foundation. The foundation assists troubled youth through mentoring and teaching woodworking and boat construction. 

It’s funny to think that this ark may have once been a gambling house or brothel, but now serves as a safe haven for troubled youth. That’s pretty cool to me. 

Footnotes:

  1.  Wennersten, John R. The Historic Waterfront of Washington, D.C. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2014. 
  2.  Frederick Tilp, This Was Potomac River (Bladensburg: Tilp, 1987), 306.
  3. Tilp, Potomac River, 306.
  4. Ibid.
  5. Ibid.
  6. Ibid.
  7. Parke Rouse, “Bawdy Houses Abounded in Virginia.” dailypress.com, August 16, 2019. Accessed it September 17, 2020, LINK.  
  8.  “Aquatic Temptations,” Alexandria Gazette and Virginia Advertiser, August 14, 1905. 
  9.  Tilp, Potomac River, 308. 
  10.  Rouse, “Bawdy Houses.” 
  11. “Houseboat for Gamblers: Gamesters Revel on Former Ferryboat Moored Near Alexandria,” The Washington Post, Mar 18, 1907.
  12.  The historical marker is located just south of the Jones Point lighthouse in Jones Point Park, Alexandria, VA.
  13.  Tilp, Potomac River, 308.
  14.  Mallows Bay, Maryland, is the marine sanctuary where, per the website, “protects and interprets the remnants of more than 100 World War I-era wooden steamships – known as the ‘Ghost Fleet’ – and other maritime resources and cultural heritage.”
  15.  As quoted in Fenston, Jacob and Tyrone Turner, “Ghost Fleet: Exploring The WWI Skeleton Ships Of The Potomac.” WAMU 88.5, October 22, 2019. Accessed September 16, 2020, LINK.
  16.  Tilp, Potomac River, 308.
  17.  Hodge, Paul. “Discovering a Lost Ark.” The Washington Post. WP Company, February 18, 1993. Accessed September 16, 2020, LINK.
Categories
Matthew Eng Springfield

Finding the 9/11 Springfield Mall DMV Through the Internet Archive

Matthew Eng, Offbeat NOVA

Not unlike the history-shaping year we are currently having, 2001 altered the course of American history when the terrorist attacks occurred on September 11, 2001. I was just starting my senior year at First Colonial High School in Virginia Beach, VA. I didn’t get my news and information from the Internet back then because I had my parents and the television. I was in school when the attacks occurred, so I didn’t see anything about it with my own eyes until that afternoon. After watching the planes crash into the World Trade Center a few times, I was done with it. I don’t think I processed it, but I was at least finished with learning more about it at the time.

The Internet looked much different in the early fall of 2001. The majority of Americans did not have broadband Internet. Most of us, like my family, used AOL and a dial-up modem to get online. I talked with imaginary friends in chat rooms. I left tacky away messages on Instant Messenger. I printed off driving directions from MapQuest. To be completely honest, I mostly used the Internet to get one thing: illegally downloaded music. Just kidding, of course.

(Vice.com)

News websites in 2001 look blocky and archaic by today’s standards, yet I still remember them well. In the process of thinking about a post to do for this week, I began thinking about any connections the 9/11 terrorist attacks had to Northern Virginia. As a relatively recent import into the area, I had no prior knowledge save from what I have gathered on the subject over the years. Truth be told, the facts surrounding the actual attacks are still an open wound for most of us. 

In a year where we are still hemorrhaging from emotional bleeding, I felt another angle was needed. In my research, I discovered an interesting connection between two of the terrorists that flew a plane into the Pentagon and the means in which they gained credentials to purchase a ticket for American Airlines Flight 77. It involved a DMV in a slowly-approaching dead mall about ten minutes from where I live now. This is the story of how I found that DMV Express location today, using the modern Internet to recall the halcyon days of the digital age. 

Let me tell you a quick story. 

The 7-Eleven off Leesburg Pike where
Hanjour and al-Mihdhar bartered for
false IDs. (Eng Photo)

On August 1, 2001, Saudi Arabian nationals Hani Hanjour and Khalid al-Mihdhar traveled to Falls Church, VA, to a 7-Eleven off Leesburg Pike to obtain fraudulent documentation. One of the employees there, Luis Martinez-Flores, was willing to openly expose a very broad loophole in the process for obtaining Virginia identification for a price of $100. The three men proceeded to the DMV Express in the lower level of Springfield Mall. Hanjour and al-Mihdhar used a false address provided by Flores, 5913 Leesburg Pike, just a short drive from the 7-Eleven where Flores worked. The address, once verified and falsely signed by Flores as truth, provided the necessary criteria for Hanjour and al-Mihdhar to claim themselves as  legal residents in the Commonwealth of Virginia. They received their identity cards that day. 

IDs in hand, both were able to purchase tickets on American Airlines Flight 77, which departed from Dulles International Airport for Los Angeles, California, at 8:10 am on September 11, 2001. These two men, along with three other Saudi Arabian nationals, hijacked the flight, crashing it into the western side of the Pentagon an hour and twenty minutes later at 9:37 am. Fifty-eight passengers lost their lives. An additional 125 fatalities occurred on the ground at the Pentagon. 

I want to focus less on the horrific tragedy of the day and instead explore what occurred a few miles down the road from where I now live. Where were those places? Specifically, what happened to the DMV Express? We have been going to the newly renovated Springfield Town Center since it reopened in 2014, and have never seen a DMV in the mall. Like the majority of the structure itself, it seemed that the DMV Express was swallowed in the mall’s closure in 2012 before cocooning itself in a two-year construction phase. What emerged, Springfield Town Center, looked nothing like its shabby predecessor. The DMV Express was gone, alongside most of the previous stores in it. The posh space has now shed all its drab architectural insecurities for clean lines and a bland color scheme that would make most asylums blush. 

How could I recall the past and pinpoint exactly where the DMV Express was located? I can go to the same place I go for the answers to all my problems….the Internet! But where to start?

A quick Google search on “DMV Express, Springfield VA” leads you to the DMV Select, located caddy-corner to Springfield Town Center Today. No information on the former DMV Express exists in the search results, even on the first four pages. In fact, it looks like there are no locations named “DMV Express” in the state of Virginia. 

I had to unpeel another layer of the Internet. I wasn’t ready to go to the core just yet. If possible, I hoped to avoid places like Reddit and 4chan, the figurative center of Dante’s Internet inferno where simps sit frozen in ice suffering next to unabashed “Karens,” anti-vaxxers, and people who chew too loudly. 

The next step was video. Thankfully, I found something. I typed in “Springfield Mall 1990s” into the search bar. The first hit was from a user by the name of “SignalsOverTheAir” who reminisces about the original Springfield Mall before it closed in 2012. Sure enough, the very first thing he mentions is the DMV Express. I can finally see what it looks like. But the shop as it existed in 2012 was closed up, so I had no bearings to go on. I had to go further.  

Results from DOBSearch (Screencap)

My next step was to look it up on a website I have used before for looking up businesses, dobsearch.com. Upon searching, I was able to find the business inside the mall. But the address it gave was not specific to any shop. The telephone number was old and dead. Another dead end. 

Through the number, however, I was able to find an old PDF document from the DMV that listed different customer service centers around the country. It had a slightly different address for the one in Springfield. 

6691-A Springfield Mall
Springfield, VA 22150

Unfortunately, when you type in that address into Google, it takes you to a Taco Bamba Taqueria down the road. As delicious as those tacos are, it did not quench my curious appetite for answers. Then it hit me. If I wanted to find the old Internet, I had to go to the one place that stores it for safe keeping, the Internet Archive! 

The problem was I couldn’t use on a search team like today. I had to have a website in mind. What would it be? I put in the stupidest and simplest answer I could think of: www.springfieldmall.com. Bingo. 

Springfield Mall Website, c. 2002 (Internet Archive)

Apparently the mall slogan back in 2002 was “Turn up the fun.” No wonder they wanted to gut the place and start over. Looking at the menu on the right, I chose the “Service and Financial” hyperlink, which gave me an old school list of relevant businesses. Seven businesses down from some place called “Back Rubs USA” was the DMV Express. I finally found it! It had a different 1-800 number and everything! The best part was, the directory finally showed it’s location, on Lower Level A section. Thankfully when I clicked it, it took me to a c. 2002 map of the mall. Looking at the map, I was able to decipher exactly where it was, and what happened to the location of arguably one of the most famous DMV locations in American history. 

The former DMV Express is now Eyebrow Designer 21 (Eng Photo)

The former DMV Express was located just outside the lower level of the Target store underneath the escalators. Today, the location is currently a beauty spa and salon called Eyebrow Designer 21. In the few times I would peak out to get footage for this video after making a Target run, the place always seemed busy. It looks like a nice establishment. Good Yelp reviews. I wonder if they know what happened there nearly twenty years ago. 

I am thankful that modern technology allowed me to reach back two decades into the past to find what I was looking for. In a year when everything is crushing us down, rehashing the sordid details of 9/11 seemed too much for me. Using the Internet for an offbeat scavenger hunt, however, is another story. 

Categories
Arlington blog Matthew Eng

Arresting Great Value James Bond: The Aldrich Ames House

By Matthew Eng, Offbeat NOVA

I love everything about spies and spy movies. I love the cool gadgets, fast cars, faster women, and scarred villains that stand between our heroes and world destruction. 

Of course, every well-known popular culture spy is attractive, physically perfect, and has infinite money, skills, and abilities. We think of the Adonis-like figure of Daniel Craig stepping out of the water in Casino Royale, Jason Bourne throat-chopping Russian operatives, and Ethan Hunt blowing up a helicopter with bubble gum at the end of Mission Impossible.

Of course, that’s popular culture’s version of a spy. In reality, they look like Robert Hanssen, John Anthony Walker, Jonathan Pollard, Harold James Nicholson, and perhaps the most heinous American spy working for a foreign country, Aldrich Ames.

(Matthew T. Eng)

Ames is both the polar opposite of pop culture’s rendition of a spy and the perfect amalgamation of its reality. It’s as if you are showing a picture of James Bond to your mom, who sees it and replies that you have double agent spies at home. Yes. He is the Great Value version of a name brand spy. James Bland. Ethan Hunt’s Ketchup to Heinz. THAT is Aldrich Ames. 

Yet the more you look at him, the more you see the cold deadness in his eyes. The lack of remorse. They are the lifeless doll’s eyes of a shark that Quint talks about right before he is eaten by one in Jaws. He might not look it, but he is a cold-blooded assassin; one that dealt death with secrets, not force. He looks like somebody you’d see passing the checkout line of a convenience store, and wouldn’t know that he was the perpetrator of one of the worst betrayals in U.S. history — one that culminated with a nearly decade-long mole hunt that ended near a home he purchased with blood money in a quiet upper class neighborhood in Arlington, VA. 

Aldrich Ames was born in River Falls, Wisconsin, in 1941. He spent his childhood traveling with his father before settling near the CIA’s Langley headquarters in McLean. He later began his full-time career there in 1962. 

Ames and his wife Rosario (Paul Davison Crime)

On paper, Ames’ career and service at the CIA checks all of the boxes of somebody teetering the line between instability and the abyss. He had a lifelong struggle with alcohol and was financially ruined through a divorce between he and a fellow CIA agent. He was also placed in increasingly sensitive posts throughout his career. He met is second wife, Rosario, in Mexico City in the early 1980s. Despite several hiccups in his performance, he was nonetheless elevated to the chief of the Soviet branch of counterintelligence at the CIA. His job focused on the recruitment of foreign agents, the very people he would turn on in due time. 

In 1985, he sold the names of KGB officers working for the United States to a Soviet Embassy official for the amount of $50,000. He offered up more names for intelligence officials and military officers working against them in return for money. A trend developed in his routine at work. He continued to spy over nine years from Rome in the late 1980s to headquarters in Langley from 1990 to 1994.1 Many of these agents he exposed were captured by the Soviets and KGB and imprisoned. A handful were confirmed to be executed by USSR authorities shortly after their arrest and mock trial. In all, Ames betrayed at least twelve agents working for the United States within the Soviet Union and bloc countries in the 1980s and early 1990s. 

Why did he do it? In an interview after his arrest, Ames said he did it for reasons only known to him. If you asked former Director of Central Intelligence, R. James Woolsey, the “warped, murdering traitor” did it because he “wanted a bigger house and a Jaguar.”2 

Aldrich Ames House, 2512 North Randolph Street, Arlington, VA (Bigwig Digs)

And that’s exactly what he got for his troubles. Unlike the spies we see in Hollywood, Ames was careless with his spending habits. According to one report of evidence put together by the FBI, Ames and his wife Rosario spent nearly $1.4 million between April 1985 and November 1993.3 By the time of his arrest the following year, he had amassed a fortune totaling $2.5 million for nearly a decade of Soviet-financed espionage. The most egregious of his expenses came on August 1, 1989, when he bought a home in the Country Club Hills section of North Arlington on 2512 North Randolph Street. According to author Peter Maas, it was the first place that the realtor showed him. It was truly a brick and mortar representation of the new wealth he felt he so duly earned for his services. As Maas stated, “the immediate surroundings said upper middle class in capital letters.”4 

Ames bought the house outright and paid in cash. The seller first asked the realtor to ask for $540,000 and “negotiate down.” But Ames did not hesitate, offering the full amount up front. At first, the realtor thought they had perhaps gotten the money from drug-related activities because Rosario was from Colombia. Without taking out a mortgage on the house, he explained the unexplainable simply an inheritance. And just like that, Ames and his wife were instantly elevated amongst the doctors, lawyers, senior businessman, and government bureaucrats that lived next to him. 

Most popular culture spies are mobile, and you never really see where they live. Does James Bond own a toaster oven? We’ll never know because he is too busy putting armageddon on a temporary pause. Not Ames. He had it all and didn’t care about the optics. The North Randolph Street house was a statement. Rosario quickly put in renovations to the spacious five bedroom house to the tune of $95,000. The house had a spacious library and large living room. The best part was that there was no backyard access for anyone to see their activities because of a steep grade that led up to the houses on top of a large slope. Ames felt comfortable enough to build a large deck and hot tub. He made an in law suite downstairs for Rosario’s visiting family from Colombia. Along with the house came the fancy cars, clothes, and accessories, all of which he bought at a rate that far exceeded his paycheck. Either careless or naive, Ames carried on like he would never be caught. Until he was.5

CIA Mole Hunt Team (CIA)

All of these transactions made by Ames were quickly checked by a small team of CIA agents, working closely with the FBI, ultimately finding hundreds of thousands of dollars in deposits in Swiss bank accounts. This “mole hunt” team was created in 1986 after the first Soviet asset disappearances, was led by career CIA agent Jeanne Vertefeuille along with four other agents. By 1989, a lead came about pointing to Ames as the culprit. How did they know? As a friend of Ames, Diana Worthen noticed how far he and his wife were living beyond his means. The biggest giveaway was their luxurious house. After more digging and surveillance help from the FBI in 1992, they noticed a large spike in Ames’ accounts that would always come directly after his work-related rendezvous with Soviets. As a leader in the CIA’s Soviet/East Europe Division, it happened often. The FBI took over the case from there in 1993, gaining more information for his ultimate arrest, which came in February of the following year, ironically on President’s Day. 

During that holiday weekend, Ames was preparing for a trip to Moscow, no doubt to divulge more information on assets. The FBI asked his boss Dave Edgers to call and ask him to leave his house and come in to discuss something on the morning of Monday, February 21, 1994. They wanted him out of the house and separate from Rosario when they arrested him. Thankfully, Ames bought into it and told him he would be there at Langley momentarily. The FBI already knew that his typical work route meant leaving his driveway and the curve on North Randolph before turning right on North Quebec Street where he turned a left at the Nelly Custis intersection.6 

Several minutes after he hung up, Ames appeared in his Jaguar sedan with a cigarette in his mouth as he left his house and headed toward Quebec street, where he was approached by FBI agents and arrested. The nine-year manhunt was finally over. He later admitted in a television interview that he was completely shocked that he had been caught. 

Arrest Location of Ames, 1995 vs. Today
(FBI/Google Maps)

There’s one photo in particular used by the FBI to document Ames’ arrest. You can see from the photo Ames being escorted by FBI agents into a sedan. Using several sources, I discovered that the photo was taken near the intersection of North Quebec Street and Nelly Custis Drive, a short distance from his house. It looks much quieter today. I’m sure the residents of this upper middle class neighborhood feel much safer knowing the Ames’ aren’t there, even if he spent half a decade hiding in plain disguise as a Soviet-bought imposter.

Ames was convicted of espionage in 1994 and is currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole in the Federal Correctional Institution in Terre Haute, Indiana. His wife Rosario received a five-year sentence for tax evasion and conspiracy to commit espionage. She was clearly a co-conspirator in her husbands activities, as it was found she had as healthy a spending habit as Aldrich. When the FBI searched their house after the arrest, they found more than 500 pairs of shoes, sixty purses, and 165 unopened boxes of pantyhose.7 

There is a small silver lining to all of this. In 1995, Ames’s prosecutors presented a check in the amount of $549,000 for the victims of his crimes. The check included the price of the Randolph Street house as well as the other assets seized by the government, including his 1992 Jaguar sedan and property ranging from expensive suits to silver. According to the Washington Post, the sum only represented a fifth of the $2.7 million that Ames received for spying on behalf of Moscow.8 

So where does the house stand today?  According to public records, the home was last sold for $401,000 in April 1995. Today, the estimate of the household is listed at $1,184,351. Houses in the Country Club Hills neighborhood run from just under a $1 million on the low end to nearly $3 million.9 The median estimate for price in the neighborhood is just below this at $1.167 million. Take that against the median value for a house in Arlington, which is $751,000, still at the higher end in the entire country. You can see why Ames selected this particular neighborhood as his home base. According to one website, Arlington’s cost of living is 53% above the national average.10 

Former Residence of Aldrich Ames Today (Matthew Eng)

Looking at this house on North Randolph Street today, you would hardly guess it fits that description of domestic opulence. Driving through the neighborhood, Ames’ former residence sticks out like a sore thumb. The front yard appears overgrown and unkempt. Grass is growing between cracks in the driveway. The siding on the house is dirty and disheveled. Moss grows in sections on the roof near the second floor windows. The colors are altogether muted from its former heyday. 

Composite of Former Ames Household Over Twelve Years (Google Maps)

It wasn’t always that way. Thanks to Google Maps, there is a record of what the house looked like on four separate occasions: December 2007, September 2009, July 2014, and August 2019. You can see the slow decline of the look and feel of the house over time. It’s hard to tell if anyone is currently occupying the house. A traitor’s house does not deserve light and love. Perhaps it should remain this way — nearly derelict and devoid of charm or character. It stands as a reminder of the cost of secrets and information and the faustian bargain one must make to achieve an unearned status of wealth and prestige. 

Footnotes:

  1. Tim Weiner, “Why I Spied; ALDRICH AMES,” The New York Times, July 31, 1994.
  2. Weiner, “Why I Spied.”
  3. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, An Assessment of the Aldrich H. Ames Espionage Case and Its Implications for U.S. Intelligence, November 1, 1994. Accessed September 1, 2020, LINK.  
  4. Peter Maas, Killer Spy: The Inside Story of the FBI’s Pursuit and Capture of Aldrich Ames, America’s Deadliest Spy (New York: Warner Books, 1995), 104-105.
  5. Maas, Killer Spy, 105.
  6. Maas, Killer Spy, 213. 
  7. Maas, Killer Spy, 222-223. 
  8. Charles W. Hall, “Aldrich Ames’s Spying Booty Shifted To a Good Cause.” Washington Post, September 1, 1995.
  9. Zillow, 2512 N. Randolph Street. Accessed September 4, 2020, LINK.
  10. Education Loan Finance, “10 Most Expensive Cities to Live In for 2020,” March 2, 2020. Accessed September 4, 2020, LINK.
Categories
Angela H. Eng Arlington blog

“I’m Not Really Ready to Die:” The Air Florida 90 Crash of 1982

By Angela Eng, Offbeat NOVA

I’m a commuter. I pass by the same landmarks and historical places every single day, and I don’t even know it. 

Well, I was a commuter, before COVID.  The alarm would blare incessantly at 5 am, and I would reach over in a blind haze to hit snooze just to get a couple of precious seconds of extra sleep. By 6:45am I’d be headed to the metro for my trip to DC.  

One of my favorite parts of the metro ride is crossing the bridge into the city. A few times, if I was lucky, I could catch a plane roaring right over me, headed either to some unknown destination in the clouds or coming in for a landing at National Airport. I’ve got a weird fascination with planes—I’ve got a pretty healthy flying phobia, but I love to look at them. 

Sometimes my mind works in weird ways. The planes dip so low when they descend, and climb so steeply when they ascend. The pilots steer those planes through the air with an expert hand; they take off and land with an ambient dexterity, no matter how bumpy the landing. So more than once while I crossed over the Potomac, I wondered if there had ever been an accident at National Airport.  

It turns out, there was a pretty notable accident at National Airport in 1982: the crash of Air Florida Flight 90. 

Air Florida Airlines (Aviation Explorer)

Air Florida was a carrier based out of Miami throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s. It began as an intrastate operation, but soon expanded to the east coast and, eventually, international destinations. On the afternoon of January 13, 1982, Air Florida Flight 90 was scheduled to fly from Washington D.C. to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with a stop in Tampa. The plane was supposed to depart at 2:15 pm, but takeoff was delayed due to heavy snowfall in the area.  The airport closed from approximately 1 pm to 3 pm, so Flight 90’s departure was delayed about 1 hour and 45 minutes. 

During that time, American Airlines personnel were deicing the aircraft. The National Transportation Safety Board report stated that the “deicing process used was inconsistent with recommended practices” so the plane was not deiced properly. In fact, the plane had visible snow on the wings and the fuselage at the time of takeoff. The Safety Board also noted that the Captain and the first officer did not inspect the outside of the plane before leaving the gate. This oversight was the first of many from the crew that contributed to the accident.

The crew continued to make mistakes throughout the taxiing process. The report continued, “the flight crew’s failure to turn on engine anti-ice was a direct cause of the accident” and suggested the accident may have been avoided had the crew turned it on. The report also notes that the plane’s proximity to another aircraft while taxiing turned the snow on the plane to slush, which then froze in several critical areas. The instruments were not working correctly, which the first officer noted, but the captain brushed him off.

Though all of this, I can’t help but wonder what the 79 passengers aboard were thinking. They had been boarded between 2:00 and 2:30 pm. They had been stuck on the plane for close to two hours. Were they nervous to fly in these conditions, or just dreaming about the sunny weather that awaited them in Florida? 

Joe Stiley, one of the survivors, was an experienced pilot. In an ABC News article following the crash, he said he knew something was not right while the plane hurtled down the runway: “You could see out one side, but not really the other side. I wanted out in the worst way.” 

Air Florida Flight 90 Flight Map (NTSB)

The plane took off and struggled to maintain altitude. It began to descend after reaching between 200 and 300 feet. One eyewitness, a driver on the 14th Street Bridge that day, stated that the plane’s nose was up and the tail was down. The right wing hit the bridge span first as the plane descended, leaving a trail of debris. The point of impact was only approximately 4500 feet from the end of the airport runway. The rest of the plane slammed into west side of the bridge and sank into 25 to 30 feet of water between the 14th Street Bridge and the George Mason Memorial Bridge. 

The National Transportation Safety Board report later noted that the “cabin separated from the cockpit and broke into three large sections and many smaller pieces.” None of the cabin floor remained intact; most seats were extensively damaged and separated from the floor. The only part of the plane that held together was the rear of the cabin by the flight attendant’s jump seat.

Air Florida Flight 90 Survivors: Joe Stiley, Nikki Felch, Kelly Duncan, Priscilla Tirado, and Bert Hamilton

In all, there were five survivors: Joe Stiley, his coworker Nikki Felch, flight attendant Kelly Duncan, Priscilla Tirado, and Bert Hamilton. Duncan was only 22 at the time of the crash. According to a New York Times Magazine article, “After hours of delays, when the plane was finally ready to push off, she took her seat, as required, at the back of the plane . . . no one from the front of the plane survived.” In an interview after the crash, Duncan said, “My next feeling was that I was just floating through white and I felt like I was dying and I just thought I’m not really ready to die.” She, along with Stiley and Hamilton, were rescued from a lifeline thrown from a helicopter. 

One bystander, Lenny Skutnik, was able to rescue Priscilla Tirado from the icy waters after the rescue helicopter’s failed attempt to tow her to shore. Tirado was 22 and traveling with her husband and 2-month old son. Both her husband and son died in the crash; Other survivors remember hearing her scream for someone to find her baby as they all flailed in the water. Felch was lifted out of the water from rescue personnel aboard the helicopter.

The temperature of the river that day was only 34 degrees Fahrenheit. For comparison, the temperature of the water the night the Titanic sank was 28 degrees. The water in the Potomac that day was only six degrees warmer.  

Arland D. Williams, Jr.
(Toronto Star)

Initially, there was a sixth survivor that day—46 year old Arland D. Williams Jr. Williams was “trapped in his seat in the partially submerged rear section of the plane by a jammed seat belt.” Though the helicopter’s lifeline came to him several times, he passed it to other survivors. When all the other survivors had been rescued, the helicopter went back for him. However, he was gone. The coroner determined that he had drowned; the only victim of the crash to do so. 

In 1985, the 14th Street Bridge was renamed the Arland D. Williams Jr. Memorial Bridge in his honor. 

To me, that bridge was always the 14th Street Bridge. I never knew that it actually had a name until now—or that it was named after an incredible man who gave his life so selflessly only a few feet from where thousands of commuters cross into DC every day. There are no markers or plaques commemorating him. I can’t even recall seeing any other name for the bridge other than 14th Street. 

Though I wish there was more recognition of the bridge’s true name, I’m grateful I know it now. At least the next time I commute into the city I can reflect on his bravery instead of impending disaster.

Footnotes

  1. “Air Florida,” Sunshine Skies, accessed August 29, 2020, https://www.sunshineskies.com/airflorida.html. 
  2. National Transportation Safety Board, “Aircraft Accident Report: Air Florida, Inc. Boeing 737-222, N62AF, Collision with 14th Street Bridge, Near Washington National Airport, Washington, D.C., January 13, 1982,” National Transportation Safety Board Aviation Accident Report, accessed August 29, 2020, https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/AAR8208.pdf. Pages 2-3. 
  3. NTSB, “Air Florida,” p. 58.
  4. NTSB, “Air Florida,” p. 60.
  5. NTSB, “Air Florida,” p. 64.
  6. “Survivors Remember Flight 90,” ABC News (ABC News Network, January 6, 2006), https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=125881.
  7. NTSB, “Air Florida,”  p. 1, p.47.
  8. NTSB, “Air Florida,”  p. 6.
  9. NTSB, “Air Florida,”  p. 22.
  10. Yoffe, Emily. “Afterward.” The New York Times. The New York Times, August 4, 2002. https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/04/magazine/afterward.html.
  11. ABC News, “Survivors Remember.”
  12. Yoffe, “Afterward.” 
  13. NTSB, “Air Florida,” p. 22.
  14. NTSB, “Air Florida,” p. 21.
  15. Lipman, Don. “The Weather during the Titanic Disaster: Looking Back 100 Years.” The Washington Post. WP Company, April 11, 2012. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/the-weather-during-the-titanic-disaster-looking-back-100-years/2012/04/11/gIQAAv6SAT_blog.html.
  16. Associated Press, “Potomac Mystery Hero Identified,” The Toledo Blade, June 7, 1983, 1.
  17. Yoffe, “Afterward.”