Md. Teens Found Dead Eluded Searchers; Motivations Unclear
By Donna St. George and Timothy Dwyer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, February 4, 2007
They were found side by side, two teenage girls in a Subaru station wagon parked on a remote trail near the West Virginia border. The ground was frozen when police arrived. It was starting to snow.
A search that had gone on for almost two weeks to find the two Montgomery County girls ended Friday.
It had been an anxious time for their parents, their neighbors, their friends at Wootton High School -- even for people who had never met them and who, through e-mails and Web sites, had worried and prayed and called for them to come home.
"These people just wanted desperately to help," said Cathy Hodin, who organized search and assistance efforts from her North Potomac home.
It remains a mystery how Rachel Samantha Smith, 16, of North Potomac and Rachel Lacy Crites, 18, of Gaithersburg disappeared in plain view. They died less than 60 miles from home.
The young women's identities were confirmed late Friday, and officials called the deaths apparent suicides. They noted no signs of trauma. More will be known after autopsies are performed tomorrow; tests for drug and alcohol use will take several weeks.
Officers say they are investigating why the teenagers went missing Jan. 19, how long they had been dead and where they had gone.
Both women were found seated in the front of the car, said Kraig Troxell, of the Loudoun County sheriff's department.
It appeared that they did not want to be found.
The isolated area where the car was discovered was off a dirt road, then a utility trail, then up a rugged plateau, against a steep incline. The heavily wooded area, off Route 9, is sparsely settled with homes spaced far apart.
The car was reported to police by people driving four-wheelers who thought it looked out of place, given the rough terrain.
"This can't be happening," a Wootton student posted on a FaceBook.com message board called "Come Home Rachel Crites. "I'm so shocked. May both girls rest in peace."
For the grieving and the perplexed, it seemed hard to understand how two teenage girls with seemingly little money, few belongings and a distinctive blue station wagon eluded public notice for so long.
Smith family members declined to comment yesterday. The Crites family released a statement thanking the people who gave "heart and soul" to trying to track down the teenagers.
"It is a journey which we all wished had turned out so very differently," the statement said. "As we mourn the loss of both Rachels, we only ask that you be aware of the true risks of depression in your children, and most importantly, that you hug your child today, for we cannot."
Police were first called in the early hours of Jan. 20. Rachel Smith and Rachel Crites had told their parents they were headed to dinner and a movie. By 11 p.m., the Smith family wondered why their daughter, a high school junior, was not home.
By 2 a.m., they were on the phone with police.
"Their daughter was very punctual, and she always kept them informed of where she was," said Lucille Baur of the Montgomery police department.
The young-looking girls -- Crites, taller and curly-haired, and Smith, shorter, with straight hair -- were declared missing, and bulletins went out about the car they were driving: a dark blue 1997 Subaru Outback station wagon with a gray roof rack.
"I hope they have just run away for a few days and are not taken by some freak," someone posted on a WTOP blog that became a popular site for discussion of the case.
From the beginning, however, police said that they did not suspect foul play and said that the girls' "mental state" was an issue.
Troy Crites, father of the elder teenager, said in a broadcast report that his daughter had once made a suicide attempt and that Rachel Smith had been a "guardian angel" to her.
In other interviews, he described how he had examined his daughter's diary and found a disturbing entry that alluded to her death.
"Wherever I end up laying, whether buried or cremated, I want to stay with my true love, buried next to her," it said. "This is my choice. I'm sorry."
Troy Crites, who described the teenagers as "peas in a pod," later called it "a goodbye note."
It was impossible for many to understand what the teenagers had in mind -- a temporary escape from Montgomery or something far more grim.
Early on, police traced a cellphone call made on one of the girls' phones to West Virginia, and investigators focused strongly on that area.
As law enforcement officials issued bulletins and stories appeared in the media, there were other leads. On the fourth day, Montgomery police officers said they were encouraged by the many reported sightings.
Tips were coming in that the girls had been seen at a racetrack, a bar, a coffee shop. There was a tip from Florida and one from California.
Still, they were not found.
The families held a news conference Jan. 26 at Montgomery police headquarters.
"Girls, we just want to know you are safe and okay," said Daniel Alexander, an uncle of Rachel Smith. "Your friends and family are terribly worried."
The mother of Rachel Crites, who had traveled to Montgomery from her home in Italy, offered a plea: "Sweetie, I'm here if you need me or if I can do anything to help you."
Baur, with the Montgomery police, said yesterday that she was not aware of any reported sightings that had been verified. Cathy Hodin, a neighbor of the Smith family, organized perhaps 100 volunteers from school, work, the synagogue and the neighborhood -- putting up posters, blitzing with e-mails and making phone calls -- as they tried to help find the girls.
They tried to think of tactics. "Anything we could think of to get in their minds," Hodin said.
Last weekend, family members joined volunteers to search an area of West Virginia that was two to three miles from where the girls were found -- on the other side of the state line.
Sgt. V.C. Lupis, one of the officers who investigated the case for the Jefferson County sheriff's office in West Virginia, said the search party turned up little.
Lupis said he took them to the Shannondale area to put up fliers and knock on doors but was unable to find anyone who had seen the girls or their car with the distinctive rooftop storage container.
Despite several reported sightings of the girls, he said, "I don't think that as of right now we have confirmed that they were in this area." Lupis said the sheriff's office had received a report from Montgomery police that the girls had attempted to obtain jobs at the racetrack, but police were unable to confirm that they had gone there looking for jobs.
Security officials at the racetrack refused to comment yesterday.
Another West Virginia searcher said that the girls were so elusive that he thought they had altered their car, perhaps changing license plates and getting rid of the roof rack.
He was surprised to find that the car was the same and that after all the searching they had done, they had simply not been spotted.
Similarly, in Shepherdstown, W.Va., a nearby college town, people heard they were there, but no one saw them. At the Lost Dog coffee shop downtown, employees said yesterday that they had heard that the two girls had been to the Lost Dog a couple of times, but no one remembered seeing them.
A writer who said she was Kathryn Cornelius, mother of Rachel Crites, said in a FaceBook posting Jan. 30 that the sightings reported to police "have all been tracked down, to no avail."
She wrote: "This has included viewing DC Metro video, Video surveillance in stores where they were reported, checking houses where they were reported to be staying, as well as maintaining electronic surveillance on their cell phones, credit cards, email/My Space accounts, etc, etc. (None of which have been used) So, at this point, we have no leads that tell us where the girls are."
She concluded: "We also have no information that leads us to believe they are anything but 'safe' and trying not to be found. I wish I had better information." At Wootton High School yesterday, where Rachel Smith was a student and Rachel Crites had attended, students said they were surprised and saddened by an ending they did not expect.
"Oh, my God, it's so sad," said Jackie Kaufman, 17. "One day they are standing next to you in class, and the next day they are gone."
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