Updated: Police reveal new lead in death of Tammy Thorpe
Tammy Thorpe
Fauquier County deputies are pursuing new information in the death of Tammy Thorpe. She was shot and killed 31 years ago; her body was found on the side of the road outside of Warrenton.
Sgt. James Hartman of the Fauquier County Sheriff’s Office said that a person of interest during the investigation of the crime, Duane Mecham, has recently returned to the U.S. from Canada. Hartman said "We have been in contact with that individual." He said that new evidence has been submitted for forensic comparison to evidence that was collected at the time of Thorpe's slaying.
On the anniversary of the killing, Hartman released a statement asking the public for help with solving the crime.
The release said “On October 23, 1988, the body of Tammy Thorpe was discovered by passersby on the northbound side of U.S. 17, just north of Warrenton.
“Tammy had been shot in the face; her car was later recovered in the Warrenton Plaza parking lot on Broadview Avenue in Warrenton.”
Hartman wrote, “Even now, 31 years later, detectives are currently working with the commonwealth's attorney's office in evaluating evidence in this unsolved murder and submitting evidence for analysis to the Virginia Department of Forensic Science.
“We are still working to bring closure to this family and to this community.”
Anyone with any information can contact the Sheriff's Office at 540-347-3300.
Details of Tammy Thorpe’s last day
In a Nov. 1, 2017,
Fauquier Times article about Tammy Thorpe’s death, writer Hannah Dellinger revisited the crime.
Dellinger wrote:
Around 9 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 21, 1988, Tammy Thorpe left her home in Ada to attend a dance at the Marshall Ruritan Club.
While at the dance, a man reportedly threatened Thorpe’s life after she turned him down for a dance. That man was initially a person of interest in the homicide investigation, Fauquier Sheriff’s Office Maj. Warren Jenkins told the
Times-Democrat.
In a separate incident at the dance, deputies arrested a man with a gun in the parking lot. When he resisted arrest, a deputy forced him against Thorpe’s parked gold Pontiac Grand Am, then-Sheriff Ashby Olinger said at the time.
Thorpe was “particular” about the prized car she bought herself, her family said, and she was concerned the scuffle left a dent on it. When the dance ended around 1 a.m., Thorpe called the sheriff’s office to speak with the arresting deputy about the dent, according to old media reports.
Lorraine and Richard Thorpe say they saw their daughter for the last time around 2 a.m. the day she was killed. They ran into her at the Marshall 7-Eleven coming home from a night out.
“I said to her, ‘Tammy, come on home, get ready for bed,’” her mother remembers. “I always worried about my children being out at night by themselves. But when they start driving and come of age, you don’t have control over them. You have to let them grow up.”
After running into her parents, her family believes Thorpe took her car to the old Chevron gas station in Warrenton to wash it and to see how bad the dent was.
Thorpe was last seen getting gas at the Chevron around 2:45 a.m. At the time, Lisa Thorpe told reporters Tammy wouldn’t usually stay out past 2 a.m. and, if she did go to Warrenton that late after a dance, it was to eat at the Howard Johnson’s.
A little before 7 a.m., Lisa Thorpe noticed her sister’s car, donning the specialty plates 86-TAMMY, parked at the former Warrenton Bowling Alley next to the Chevron. Lisa Thorpe said she coincidentally left her car at the bowling alley before she went out for the night.
Tammy Thorpe’s car was found unlocked, with the keys still in the ignition and her purse inside, according to media reports.
Around 7:20 a.m., a passing motorist spotted Thorpe’s body in a drainage ditch on a private gravel road off U.S. 17, about a quarter-mile outside of Warrenton town limits. She succumbed to multiple gunshots to her face with a small caliber firearm, according to an autopsy report.
There wasn’t evidence of a struggle and Thorpe was not robbed, Olinger said.
Detectives told reporters they interviewed more than 100 people in the weeks following her death. Various rumors circulated in the tight-knit rural community about who the murderer could be.
Thorpe knew the culprit, according to an FBI profile of her killer released by the sheriff’s office. He was likely a white man living in Fauquier and probably showed signs of “psychological stress” and hid feelings of anger and frustration, profilers said.
“He is still likely to be thinking about it today and [is] haunted by dreams of what happened,” the press release said.
In May 2004, the Winchester Star published details from a search warrant related to a possible suspect in the case.
Investigators received a tip from a former hospital employee that a psychiatric patient at the Winchester Medical Center, Duane C. Mecham, confessed to killing Thorpe during a week-long stay in August 1992, according to the affidavit.
The former employee came forward to Fauquier detectives in July 2003, according to court records, and investigators spoke with another informant who knew both Thorpe and Mecham in January 2004.
That informant told detectives that during visits to the hospital, Mecham would “repeatedly say the word “‘Tammy’ over and over again,” the search warrant says.
Fauquier County Sheriff’s Office Maj. Paul Mercer told reporters at the time the story broke that Mecham no longer lived in Fauquier.
When asked about Mecham’s whereabouts or if there are any other possible suspects being looked at, Detective Jeff Crane, one of the original investigators in the case who still works on it today, said he cannot comment on specifics because the case is under active investigation.
Around 9 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 21, 1988, Tammy Thorpe left her home in Ada to attend a dance at the Marshall Ruritan Club.
While at the dance, a man reportedly threatened Thorpe’s life after she turned him down for a dance. That man was initially a person of interest in the homicide investigation, Fauquier Sheriff’s Office Maj. Warren Jenkins told the
Times-Democrat.
In a separate incident at the dance, deputies arrested a man with a gun in the parking lot. When he resisted arrest, a deputy forced him against Thorpe’s parked gold Pontiac Grand Am, then-Sheriff Ashby Olinger said at the time.
Thorpe was “particular” about the prized car she bought herself, her family said, and she was concerned the scuffle left a dent on it. When the dance ended around 1 a.m., Thorpe called the sheriff’s office to speak with the arresting deputy about the dent, according to old media reports.
Lorraine and Richard Thorpe say they saw their daughter for the last time around 2 a.m. the day she was killed. They ran into her at the Marshall 7-Eleven coming home from a night out.
“I said to her, ‘Tammy, come on home, get ready for bed,’” her mother remembers. “I always worried about my children being out at night by themselves. But when they start driving and come of age, you don’t have control over them. You have to let them grow up.”
After running into her parents, her family believes Thorpe took her car to the old Chevron gas station in Warrenton to wash it and to see how bad the dent was.
Thorpe was last seen getting gas at the Chevron around 2:45 a.m. At the time, Lisa Thorpe told reporters Tammy wouldn’t usually stay out past 2 a.m. and, if she did go to Warrenton that late after a dance, it was to eat at the Howard Johnson’s.
A little before 7 a.m., Lisa Thorpe noticed her sister’s car, donning the specialty plates 86-TAMMY, parked at the former Warrenton Bowling Alley next to the Chevron. Lisa Thorpe said she coincidentally left her car at the bowling alley before she went out for the night.
Tammy Thorpe’s car was found unlocked, with the keys still in the ignition and her purse inside, according to media reports.
Around 7:20 a.m., a passing motorist spotted Thorpe’s body in a drainage ditch on a private gravel road off U.S. 17, about a quarter-mile outside of Warrenton town limits. She succumbed to multiple gunshots to her face with a small caliber firearm, according to an autopsy report.
There wasn’t evidence of a struggle and Thorpe was not robbed, Olinger said.
Detectives told reporters they interviewed more than 100 people in the weeks following her death. Various rumors circulated in the tight-knit rural community about who the murderer could be.
Thorpe knew the culprit, according to an FBI profile of her killer released by the sheriff’s office. He was likely a white man living in Fauquier and probably showed signs of “psychological stress” and hid feelings of anger and frustration, profilers said.
“He is still likely to be thinking about it today and [is] haunted by dreams of what happened,” the press release said.
In May 2004, the Winchester Star published details from a search warrant related to a possible suspect in the case.
Investigators received a tip from a former hospital employee that a psychiatric patient at the Winchester Medical Center, Duane C. Mecham, confessed to killing Thorpe during a week-long stay in August 1992, according to the affidavit.
The former employee came forward to Fauquier detectives in July 2003, according to court records, and investigators spoke with another informant who knew both Thorpe and Mecham in January 2004.
That informant told detectives that during visits to the hospital, Mecham would “repeatedly say the word “‘Tammy’ over and over again,” the search warrant says.
Fauquier County Sheriff’s Office Maj. Paul Mercer told reporters at the time the story broke that Mecham no longer lived in Fauquier.
When asked about Mecham’s whereabouts or if there are any other possible suspects being looked at, Detective Jeff Crane, one of the original investigators in the case who still works on it today, said he cannot comment on specifics because the case is under active investigation.
“We want this case solved as much as everyone else,” he said. “We are doing everything humanly possible to see that the person who did this is brought to justice.”
Crane said there is still an FBI agent assigned to the decades-old case who he stays in contact on a weekly basis. Advances in technology have allowed investigators to glean more knowledge of Thorpe’s killer as they resend preserved evidence for testing, Crane said.
The Thorpe family says they still maintain hope they will finally have closure in the case.
“We can never let it die,” Lisa Thorpe told the
Times-Democrat in 1991. “That’s the worst thing we could do. In that person’s mind, we can never let them rest, never get any sleep. Tammy lives on in us, and I hope that we are constant reminders to the murderer.”
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Updated: Police reveal new lead in death of Tammy Thorpe
