Suspect Was Legend In Va. Tech Community

A drifter of sorts with no permanent address, Morva often slept on a friend's couch for a night or two before moving on, his acquaintances said. Most people who remembered seeing Morva said he was almost always without shoes.

"He said he wanted his feet to be strong for the wilderness -- whatever that's supposed to mean," said Stasi Sabinin, who used to wash dishes at Bollo's.

But as authorities begin to assemble a capital murder case against Morva, those who knew him said he never seemed as radical as another famed survivalist, convicted Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph, who disappeared into the hills of North Carolina and survived for years before he was arrested in 2003.

Jackson described Morva as intelligent but said she came to doubt his boasts over time.

"He wasn't an aggressive person," she said. "Almost any subject you could get him talking about, he would say he's an expert. It seemed like he knew too much about too many things."

Tilly Gokbudak, 36, said he recalled seeing Morva when he hung out at Bollo's. Gokbudak, who now lives in North Carolina, remembered the first time he saw Morva.

"We were hanging out on a Friday afternoon . . . and this weird guy walked in barefoot," he said yesterday. "He was pleasant, sociable. But when a guy walks in with no shoes, it makes you think he was homeless or something."

Law enforcement officials declined to discuss Morva's past. In addition to the attempted robbery charge, Morva's record includes several arrests, according to court records. Montgomery County Commonwealth's Attorney Brad Finch said there were no convictions in his past.

Blacksburg police spokesman Joe Davis said authorities were taking their time assembling a case against Morva and could bring further charges against him after assembling a grand jury to indict him in the killing of the sheriff's deputy, Cpl. Eric Sutphin, 40.

At Virginia Tech, students and faculty quickly returned to the beginning-of-school routine that had been interrupted by the hunt for Morva.

People strolled along Main Street and College Avenue yesterday, while college students lugged huge backpacks to and from classes. There remained no sign of the massive police or media presence that had descended upon the town.

And at Bollo's, where Morva used to sit for hours pontificating about a variety of subjects, the tables were filled and the line for coffee was long. At a slow moment, Jackson stopped to wonder how Morva ended up the suspect in a jailbreak and double murder.

"Maybe in his own mind, he was training himself for this," she said. "I never thought he'd do anything."

Staff writer Susan Kinzie, in Washington, contributed to this report..