Shadowangel,
Yesterday afternoon I contacted two Charleston police officers, one a Deputy Sheriff (not the one I quoted yesterday) and another retired CPD officer (not Rusty Flowers). I am attempting to make a timeline of the events of her disappearance and the discovery of her body.
I now have all of the Charleston newspaper coverage of the murder. There are two papers in town: the Charleston Gazette (morning) and the Charleston Daily Mail (afternoon). Both papers are owned by the same corporation. And they are not easily accessed online.
Lynn went missing on Friday night, March 21, 1990. According to witnesses at Tidewater, the restaurant where Lynn and Tom White ate, she and Tom arrived at Tidewater around 11 p.m.
According to Gazette reporter Maryclaire Dale’s 3-22-90 coverage f the discovery of her body, the two had been at Bennigans prior to coming to Tidewater. Lynn was socializing with patrons and, at one point, Tom left her and did not return for some 15 minutes. When Lynn asked where he’d been he told her he’d got lost. Moments later, the two left.
Quoted from Dale’s article:
Missing woman’s body found on riverbank
(beginning at paragraph 7): Priestley’s body was found about 2:30 p.m. lying face-down at the river’s edge, about a quarter of a mile east of Winifrede. The steeply sloped riverbank inches from W. Va. 61, is about 15 feet high. The area lies about 10 miles upstream from Charleston.
Police said it did not appear the body had been in the river.
Priestley had worked part-time at Tidewater from its opening in 1985 until 1988.
She remained friends with current staff, employees said.
Employees who worked Friday said she came into the restaurant with her boyfriend, Thomas R. White of Charleston, about 11 p.m. One employee said they have been at Bennigans earlier.
The couple stayed less than an hour, drinking in the lounge, employees said. Lynn was very social, was seen talking to friends from other area restaurants while they drank.
At one point, White left the restaurant for about 15 minutes. When he returned, he told Priestley he had gotten lost. About 15 minutes later the two were gone, employees said.
Friends who had talked with Priestley at Tidewater Friday expected her to join them after 11 p.m. at Spankys, a bar on Kanawha Boulevard at Capitol Street, according to police. She never arrived.
On Saturday, White came back to Tidewater at 6 p.m. to ask if anyone had seen Priestley that day, a bartender said. He (White) said they had gotten separated after leaving the restaurant the previous night. An employee gave White her keys, which Priestley had left on the bar.
Reached at home Wednesday night, White declined to comment.
The remainder of the article describes the clothes Lynn was wearing and describes her purse. There are also accounts of the family’s pain, bit nothing else of evidentiary value.
The following day, March 23, 1990, Charleston Daily Mail reporter Frank Hutchins filed the following report:
Cause of woman’s death probed
By Frank Hurchins
©Charleston Daily Mail 3-23-90
Authorities today were to determine the cause of death of a Charleston woman whose nude body was found along the banks of the Kanawha River south of Chesapeake.
A man searching for a place to fish Wednesday afternoon discovered the body of Lynn Priestley, 34, who had been missing since Friday night. No arrests have been made in connection with the death.
“We’re treating it as a homicide,” said Sgt. Dallas Staples of the Charleston Police Department.
Priestley’s body was discovered about 2:30 p.m., lying face-down approximately two-thirds of the way down a steep bank leading from W. Va. 61 to the river. The bank is covered by tress and thick brush.
Ed Leonard, an investigator for the Kanawha County Prosecutor’s Office and one of the first people to arrive at the scene, said the woman appeared to have been dead several days.
“I think it’s been over there since early Saturday morning,” he said. “She was thrown over there; you could tell.”
Leonard said blood near the body indicated that Priestley had died not long after she was thrown over the hill.
Leonard said he didn’t see any wounds on the body that would indicate physical violence.
Austin “Whip” Wilson, a Chesapeake City Councilman, said he was in the City Hall when a man came in to report seeing what appeared to be a body about one-half mile south of town.
“He was looking for a place to fish,” Wilson said. “He didn’t know if it was a real body of a mannequin.”
Wilson and Leonard, who was also in the City Hall, went to check out the report.
“Ed Leonard and myself came back up here and Ed went over the bank and verified it was a body,” Wilson said. He said the body was lying about four feet from the edge of the water.
“It didn’t appear the body had been in the water,” Staples said.
Priestley, who was assistant director of the Charleston Urban Renewal Authority, was reported missing Saturday afternoon. Her parents, Charles and Blanche Priestley of Kanawha City, said they became concerned after being contacted that morning by Lynn’s boyfriend, Thomas R. White.
White told the Priestleys that he and Lynn had been at Tidewater Grill in the Charleston Town Center. They separated about 11 p.m. after disagreeing on where to go after leaving the restaurant, her parents said.
White told the Priestleys he took a taxi home and Lynn headed toward her car, which was parked in the Kanawha County Judicial Annex lot.
Leonard said his investigation indicated that Priestley and her boyfriend were involved in a loud argument in the judicial annex parking lot on the evening of her disappearance.
Denzil Shamblin, a security guard at the annex, said he was on duty when he heard an argument take place in the lot. He said he was taking out trash bags at about 12:30 a.m. when he heard a woman screaming.
“I saw this girl run over toward the federal building and up the street,” Shamblin said. He said his glasses were broken and he was unable to tell who was involved in the fight.
Shamblin said that Deputy Mike Stiltner, who had just finished his shift as bailiff in magistrate court, stopped the man involved in the argument and the two exchanged words.
“This boy must have said something to Mike,” he said.
Stiltner would not comment on the incident, but said that he had given a statement to authorities.
An employee of Tidewater said he had spoken to Priestley that night, and she seemed fine. He said he thought Priestley had left the restaurant by the time he got off work by 11:15 p.m.
Priestley reportedly was supposed to go to Spankys, a bar on the levee, but never arrived there, her parents said. Her car was found on the Judicial Annex parking lot.
Detectives from the Charleston Police Department and the Kanawha County Sheriff’s Department scoured the area where the body was found Wednesday. Plaster molds were made of footprints at the roadside, and evidence was collected from around the scene.
Dr. V. Kashirsangar of the state medical examiner’s office was called to the scene to examine the body. An autopsy was to be performed today.
_____________________________________________________
According to the detectives with whom I spoke yesterday, Lynn’s clothing and purse have never been located.
Did Thomas R. White call a cab? Yes, but we still have no idea when exactly Lynn was killed. There are many ways White could have been the killer. The timeline is as likely to exonerate White as it is to convict him.
Plus, Shamblin claims Lynn ran away from the scene and that White was definitely stopped by Deputy Stiltner, the bailiff. I will interview the CPD Cold Case Squad as soon as Major Beckett can get me in there, hopefully Monday or Tuesday. In the meantime, I’m attempting to locate the reporters, and surviving family members of Lynn Priestley, if they are willing to speak with me.
You have to “like” White for the killing BUT, if the evidence was really strong that he did it, my feeling is Rusty Flowers would have busted him for it. There has to be a very good and compelling reason Thomas R. White was not arrested and tried for this crime.
