Suspect Was Legend In Va. Tech Community
Friends Recall Drifter Who Was Full of Bluster

By Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 23, 2006

BLACKSBURG, Va., Aug. 22 -- The escaped prisoner who led police on a manhunt after allegedly killing two people this week is a self-professed survivalist whose tales of spending nights in the dense woods around this college town were legendary at the university coffee shops where he had become a fixture.

But the people who served him lattes and challenged him to games of backgammon said William C. Morva, 24, though odd, had seemed to be a harmless young man, full of bluster and tall tales. They said they were surprised when he was arrested in an attempted robbery last year and shocked by the killings he allegedly committed starting Sunday.

"I was just floored. I couldn't believe it was him," said Erik Benoist, 20, a third-year student at Virginia Tech who works at Bollo's, a popular coffee shop.

"Everyone downtown knows Will. We all were subject to Will's conversations," Benoist said, recalling long diatribes about politics and religion. "I remember him talking about hunting deer with spears, but you never knew when he was just talking."

Morva was being held without bond at an undisclosed location on charges that he killed a hospital security guard during an escape from jail early Sunday morning. Authorities said Morva also fatally shot a sheriff's deputy from Virginia's Montgomery County along the popular Huckleberry Trail on Monday morning. Charges have not been filed in that killing.

The escape and ensuing manhunt shut down Virginia Tech on the first day of classes. Police officers told students to stay in their dorms, and faculty members were restricted to their offices for hours. Police found Morva hiding Monday afternoon in the woods in which he often talked about living.

"I told the cops he slept in the woods along the trail," said Meredith Hampton, 27, who works at Gillie's Vegetarian Restaurant near campus. "He was different -- living in a different world than everyone else was living in."

Andrew Mullin, 18, said his friend "was the kind of person that didn't like the government watching him. He didn't like government interference. He was much more of a natural person -- hunting, camping, doing stuff on his own."

Mullin said that "sometimes he'd be in a bad mood and it wouldn't lift, you couldn't cheer him up. He'd be really pretty angry and you'd steer clear. He would snap."

Morva "kind of floated in and out of town," Mullin said. "It seemed like he was carried by the wind."

Felicia Jackson, 38, who manages Bollo's and has known Morva since he was 16, said he seemed indifferent to the weather, wearing only a sport coat even on the coldest days.

"He would do things like walk between here and Radford on the back roads on a cold winter day," she said, describing a distance that could stretch for almost 20 miles. "He would be barefoot. I said, 'Will, you're crazy.' "

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..