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Author’s note: What you are about to read is very true, or in other words Non-fiction.
What is murder? The dictionary defines it as ‘the illegal deliberate killing of one person by another.’ Pretty clear-cut isn’t it? Someone’s angry, upset, maybe even hurt, or confused, so they take a knife, a gun, maybe use their hands and kill whoever has wronged them. In some situations there doesn’t even have to be a qualified ‘wrong’.
Take for instance an eighteen-year-old freshman at Radford University, Gina Hall. Gina Hall was your regular run of the mill ‘good girl’. She wasn’t a drug addict she didn’t drink, or even smoke. She wasn’t an easy girl for a guy to hit on and in no way was she promiscuous. You’re probably asking, Jessica how do you know that? Well I’ve studied Gina Hall for years now. Studied her? Yes, studied. Gina was murdered in 1980. Only an hour away from where I live. Well dozens of people are murdered all the time why pick out Gina? I’m not sure I can ever answer that question. It started as a thesis for a term paper my senior year in high school. We had to pick a law or something from the Constitution and construct a paper around it. I needed this paper to pull up a grade so I thought why not find an actual case of some kind and tie it in with how the laws helped either prove or disprove the case. Thus bringing my attention to the murder of Gina Hall.
Enough background right? You want to know how it happened. How this eighteen-year old was murdered? Well so do I, and here her story begins:
Gina had just finished her midterms and excitedly called her sister to see if she could go and celebrate with her. Her sister was unable to go, and Gina decided she would venture out alone, something she rarely ever did. Anyone that knew Gina also knew how modest she was and that she had a good strong character. Gina was also nervously self-conscious. When she was younger, she had an accident, which left horrible scares over the middle section of her body. Therefore, Gina dressed conservatively, to cover her scars. That night she dressed in a purple body suit with white jeans and a jacket.
She drove to the Marriott a hotel slash restaurant and met up with two friends, Bill King and Robin Robinson. Stephen Epperly, six feet tall and charming was also there. He was the grounds keeper at Radford University and at times a substitute teacher for a nearby high school. After talking awhile, the group decided to meet back at Bill King’s stepparents home, the Davis’ who were away on vacation. Stephen Epperly didn’t have a car, he asked Gina for a ride. The group split up and headed for the doors but didn’t reach the house at the same time.
Bill King later testified in court that when he and Robin finally reached his stepparents house, that Epperly and Gina Hall were not there. King states that he saw Epperly an hour later coming through the utility room door while wiping himself with a blue towel, but Gina was nowhere in sight. Stephen Epperly left and Bill King and his girlfriend were left alone. Gina Hall disappeared that night.
Three days after her disappearance, a missing persons case had been ruled out, and the police decided to search the Davis’ home. When the police and forensics team arrived at the Davis’ home, they started their search in the den area. First, they found blood on the arm of a chair then shockingly, discovered an eighteen-inch-wide pool of blood near the sliding glass door soaked into the carpet. On finding this horrific evidence the police had probably cause to move on to other rooms of the house. Out of the den and into the utility room that doubled as a catch all for all the family out door junk. They found blood on a pair of golf shoes, a pair of brown shoes, on the refrigerator door, on the tip of a mattock, on the inside and outside of an empty water pitcher, and in the heel of a dustpan. Their search continued throughout the rest of the house. Flecks of blood were found on a light switch in the bathroom and on a faucet handle.
The police decided to search for items missing from the house. A quilt from the Davis’ bedroom and the blue towel Epperly used to wipe himself were nowhere to be found. Though the evidence of blood was pilling up the police still had no clue as to where Gina Hall, dead or alive, could be.
Aside from searching the Davis home, the police wanted to search a four-mile perimeter around the Davis home. Gina was after all, a grown woman who had gone missing. What they found surprised them and devastated the family. Remember what Gina was wearing the night she disappeared? The police found every item of clothing she had on that night at the Marriott. Remember the scars she kept hidden? Does this sound like something Gina would do? Oddly enough, the contents of her pocketbook had been placed neatly under a brush pile two feet from where her clothing was found. If Gina were still alive, she was without any money, or clothing for that matter.
Next the authorities found Gina Hall’s brown Monte Carol abandoned under a railroad trestle with the trunk open. Streaks of dried blood were found in the carpet of the trunk and strangely enough, the driver’s seat in the car was pushed completely back. Why was that strange? Can you recall how tall Epperly was? (Six feet) Testimonies in Gina Hall’s behalf stated that she only stood five foot one and that ‘she had to drive with the seat so far up that is was uncomfortable for anyone else to drive her car without first adjusting the seat.’ Someone had to have been in Gina’s car. By now the evidence of ever finding Gina alive was growing dim.
Now this is my favorite part of the whole case. The police, tired and exhausted their leads saw a need for a tracking dog. Enter John Preston and his dog, Harrass Two. From Pennsylvania Preston and his dog hoped a plane so they could help. Epperly was the last person to be seen with Gina, so obviously the dog was given Epperly’s scent near Gina’s abandoned car. The police were hopeful but discouraged at the same time, for two days the weather had been nothing but solid rain. So when Preston took off with his dog they were tracking in three inches of mud. Does this deter Harrass Two or Preston for that matter? No way. Harrass Two picks up Epperly’s scent and follows it straight to Gina’s car still parked under the railroad trestle. Preston let the dog continue after all the dog had just proved Epperly had been there. Harrass Two walks the length of Memorial Bridge, the comes back and starts up a dirt path onto first street, where he then walks through the bay of a car wash on his way up writ street where he sits down on his meaty haunches in front of Stephen Epperly’s front door. Amazing you say, and after two days of rain no less. But my friend it gets better.
This is when and where the police discovered the bloody blue towel that Epperly used to wipe himself. To make sure the dog truly had Epperly’s scent, Preston wanted to use the bloody towel in a little test for his dog. Seven towels, plus the bloody one were tossed onto the floor in a pile for Harrass Two to pick through. Harrass Two picked the right one with ease. Preston freed the dog to track Epperly again.
The dog made a direct beeline for the police station’s parking lot, where Epperly’s car was parked. Harrass Two circled Epperly’s car a few times letting Preston know this is where Epperly’s scent was. John Preston was proud of his dog as well he should be, they had accomplished what they had set out to do. Preston lead Harrass Two into the station house for a rest, but Harrass Two had other things on his mind. Once inside Harrass Two continued to follow Epperly’s scent until he reached a closed door and couldn’t go any farther. Stephen Epperly was being held on the other side of that door for questioning.
Now I could go into all the evidence that helped put Epperly behind bars. Direct evidence, where Gina and Epperly were seen leaving the Marriott together or circumstantial evidence, when Bill King testified he saw Epperly enter the Davis home and wipe himself with a towel. I could bore you with tons of that. Instead, I’m jumping straight for what made this case so unusual. It’s been twenty-two years and still they haven’t found Gina Hall’s body.
All the blood the police found was hers. Epperly didn’t have an alibi and never denied or admitted to murdering Gina. When he was advised to tell the authorities where the body was Epperly’s reply was “I’ll think about it.” At one time Bill King confronted Stephen Epperly with a point-blank question, “Did you kill Gina Hall?” Epperly’s unconcerned reply was “Bill, I don’t know anything about it, we’ll just have to wait and see.”
Epperly now sits behind bars for life without chance of parole. Still no body present the jurors believed beyond a reasonable doubt that Epperly was guilty of murder. Does it help to know that Epperly was taken to court on two separate rape charges before being convicted of murder but that the charges were dropped? I think so, it adds to the fact that this man wasn’t normal and was capable of going to extremes in order to get what he wanted.
I’ve met Epperly’s lawyer, Mr. Lookabill, we’ve kept in touch over the years. Over all he’s a good man, aside from his choice of job that is. He too is still sickened by this unexplainable case. He believes Epperly did it, admits that Epperly was a psychotic, though he made me swear not to print that (sorry Mr. Lookabill but you defended a murderer). The police determined, as well as the forensic scientists, that in order for the amount of blood to be found and found where it was that Gina Hall was most definitely beaten to death. Beaten in fact, so hard that the specks of blood found in the utility room had indeed come flying from the den area to land on the shoes, pitcher and other items. What a horrible, gruesome death. Now, the next question that pops to mind is, why. Why did this man murder such an innocent, nice, well-rounded girl he had just met? I think its safe to say that when Gina left the Marriott with Epperly, knowing her friends were right behind her, she wasn’t going with any intention whatsoever of having sex with Epperly. But I do think (and so does the prosecutor of this case) that this is what brought on Gina’s death. It was sex. This man’s raw desire for her and her rebuff of him and he killed her. And if that wasn’t enough he disposed of the body, hiding it so that family and friends would never see her again.
Today, in my hometown, rumors still circulate on the location of Gina Hall’s body. At the time of her murder, a mental hospital was being built close to the Davis’ home. The concrete was poured and left to set the day of her disappearance. There are rumors her body lies in the foundation of that building. Others believe she was hidden away in the endless underwater caves that lay south of where she was killed. Questions, too, are still being asked. Why hasn’t Epperly revealed her whereabouts? Is this his way of getting the final word? Does he keep it to himself to hurt Gina’s family? I don’t think he’ll talk. But if he does, his lawyer is supposed to give me a call.
------
Jessica@Lit.Org or Jessicamg@gmail.com
~How vain it is to sit down and write when you have not stood up to live.~
Henry David Thoreau
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