A Father Recalls a Day Now Far From Ordinary

Nothing Seemed Amiss Before Montgomery Teens Disappeared, He Says

Troy Crites sits in his Gaithersburg townhouse next to a photo of daughter Rachel and son Trevor. He thinks Rachel, 18, and her best friend, Rachel Samantha Smith, 16, died the last day he saw them: Jan. 19. The teens were found dead Feb. 2 in an apparent double suicide. (By Bill O'leary -- The Washington Post)

There is still no official ruling on when the two missing Rachels died.

But, preparing for his daughter's funeral today, Troy Crites said he is certain of the date -- not from police or any science exactly, but from every detail he has absorbed and what his gut tells him.

"There's no question in my mind they did it the 19th," he said.

Jan. 19, the first day they were gone.

Crites, father of one of the Montgomery County teens who were found Feb. 2 in an apparent double suicide, remembers that morning as ordinary. He recalled that his Rachel, Rachel Lacy Crites, 18, and her best friend, Rachel Samantha Smith, 16, had a sleepover at his home. They were getting up as he was leaving for work at a defense contracting firm in Virginia.

Everything had seemed normal, he said. Although his daughter had suffered from depression, she had seemed much improved in recent months.

She called him later, about 10:30 a.m. He said they talked every day by phone about when they would have dinner -- they almost always had dinner together -- and who would walk their black Labrador retrievers, Lina and Zowie.

His daughter mentioned heading to a movie in Georgetown with her friend.

"So what are we doing for the weekend?" he recalled asking her.

"I don't know," she said.

"We could go for a hike," he offered. "We could climb Old Rag . . . "

They agreed to figure it out in the morning.