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Graham’s Statement
ORIGINAL BROADCAST DATE: Saturday, October 4, 2014.
This video statement was released by John and Sue Graham on Saturday morning, October 4. As of this weekend, three weeks after Hannah’s abduction, over 200,000 square miles of land in Central Virginia, in an around the City of Charlottesville, have been searched. This video is provided by the City of Charlottesville.
The text of Sue Graham’s brief remarks follows:
“My name is Sue Graham. At my side is my husband John. As you know we are Hannah’s parents. I will now read a brief statement.
Firstly, we would like again to express our enormous gratitude to all those who have been involved in the search for Hannah, including the police, the professional search teams, the people staffing the telephone tip line, UVa students, our friends, neighbors and work colleagues as well as the citizens of Charlottesville and the surrounding area. We would also like to thank the many, many kind people who have supported our family during this terrible ordeal through words, deeds, thoughts and prayers. We also owe our sincere thanks to the City of Charlottesville, the University of Virginia and the concerned citizens who have contributed a total of $100,000 to the reward which is being offered for information leading to Hannah’s return. We have been overwhelmed by the generosity of you all.
As you are all aware, an individual has been charged with the abduction of our beloved daughter Hannah. However, despite extensive search efforts, no trace of Hannah has been found since she disappeared in the early hours of Saturday September the 13th, now more than three weeks ago. The police have received thousands of tips, and to each one of you who made the effort to call in with information, we express our heartfelt thanks. We also thank all of you who have actively searched your properties and reported the results to the police. However, despite all your efforts, Hannah is still missing.
Somebody listening to me today either knows where Hannah is, or knows someone who has that information. We appeal to you to come forward and tell us where Hannah can be found. John has already said that this is every parent’s worst nightmare. That is true, but it is also a nightmare for our son, James, for Hannah’s grandparents and other members of our family, as well as for all of Hannah’s many friends here in Charlottesville and beyond. Please, please, please help end this nightmare for all of us. Please help us to bring Hannah home.
Thank you.”
My heartfelt sympathies to Hannah’s parents, family and friends. It’s heartbreaking.
Why did it take 40 hours to report Hannah missing?
Updated list of women missing in VA near UVA / Virginia Tech / Anchorage Farms / Corridor 29. I have validated all of the ages/names on google and the missing persons database. Hope this helps … .
2000: 23-year old Hope Curry
2002: 20-year old La-Teasha LaMone Brooks
2002: 33-year old Sharon Jones
2003: 19-year old Julie Marie Fraser
2003: 24-year old Autumn Wind Day
2003: 39- year old Sophia May Rivera
2005: 31-year old Vestora Leatrise Spriggs
2005: 34-year old Kathleen Hulderman
2007: 16-year old Ivonne Biviano
2007: 36-year old Sereda McGlothin
2008: 29-year old Gracie MacCord
2009: 17- year old Latonia Smith
2009: 18 and 19-year old Heidi Childs & David Metzler
2009: 23-year old Cassandra Morton (body found one week prior to Morgan Harrington)
2009: 20-year-old Morgan Harrington (google suspect photo) (body found) ) ( shirt found @ corner of 15th St & Grady Ave outside apt building)
2010: 19-year-old Samantha Clarke
2010: 20-year old Arianna Davis
2011: 20-year-old Lauren Smith
2012: 19-year-old Dashad Sage
2012: 22-year-old Heather Hodges
2013: 17-year-old Alexis Murphy
2013: 18-year-old Jamisha Gilbert
2013: 18-year-old Alexis Murphy
2013: 21-year-old Bethany Decker
2014: 18-year-old Hannah Graham (google suspect photo)
What it’s like to be “roofied”. Here is my first hand experience with the “date rape” drug. Popular at Fraternities and University parties. Thank God I had someone there who took care of me until the ordeal passed. This is what it is like.
” It was a feeling of being outside my body with no control to speak or ask for help. The only way my friend knew I was in trouble was “through my eyes pleading for help”. Call the hospital I tried to say, but nothing came out. A man came in the room and tried to kiss and rape me and my friend pushed him off me. I was completely helpless”. It took about 4 hours to feel somewhat normal again. 🙁
If these girls had been drugged it would be so easy for someone to rape them, take them somewhere, sell them. I believe Hannah is either in the woods somewhere, you’ll probably find her skull and bones (signature of …) , like they did with Morgan Harrington or has been human trafficked after a night of fun by her perp. Hence no body.
I pray she is found alive
Like many people around the world, I have been drawn into this terrible event, as well, for many reasons, not least among them the fact that I produced a television show on missing children over 30 years ago. In most cases of what is called a “stranger abduction” there is an actual abduction – i.e., someone, usually a child, is snatched away, forced into a car, overpowered, etc. Did this happen here? Did anyone at any time ever see Hannah appear to be doing anything against her will? This is one of the mysteries of this case for me. Was she actually “abducted” or did she meet the suspect on the street, accompany him willingly to the bar and then leave with him willingly? In other words, did people see her and perhaps think that it was a bit odd to see a young white woman with a black man almost twice her age and certainly twice her size being led away from a bar in a completely incapacitated state and think that it was a young women with her boyfriend and that everything was fine? How she got into the car, if that is what happened, is the central mystery, although not the only one. But, if this beautiful young woman got into a car with a strange man late at night in a very vulnerable state, she broke every rule of personal safety that any girl has ever taught in recorded history and the results of that seem to be very very tragic. I just cannot believe that a smart young woman would do something that stupid.
Just want the family to know that you are in my prayers and hopes for finding Hannah. I have walked over a vacant property on Jacks Shop Road (Rt 621) in Rochelle to no avail. I have a large estate close by that l will traverse Monday;God willing. Hoping and wishing for the best. God Bless everyone!!
It has been reported that the University which Hannah was attending is offering counseling services to distraught students. I wonder of the light bulb has gone on as a result of this terrible incident that perhaps some form of lifestyle education might be of value, as well. Every single detail of this case, as it has been reported, is wrong. An 18-year-old woman walking by herself at night is wrong. An 18-year-old college student walking alone at night, intoxicated, is wrong. Looking for a party at 1:20 a.m., alone and drunk, is wrong. Going to a bar and having drinks with a complete stranger when you are already inebriated is wrong. Leaving a bar with a stranger is wrong. Getting into a car with a stranger is wrong. If you want to get into terrible trouble, if you want to put yourself in as vulnerable a situation as a woman could possibly be – alone, drunk or drugged and incapable of contacting anyone for help, then this horrifying scenario is the precise blueprint for doing that, enabled entirely by what seems to be an absurdly permissive culture on the university campus. Put all of these factors together – all of them! – and yeah, you’re searching for a beautiful young woman’s body in the woods. Everyone associated with the university and with the drinking culture on university campuses bears some responsibility for what happened to Hannah Graham. What happened to going to bed early and getting up early to go to the university library to study? Ever heard of that?
I really disagree with the “blaming Hannah Graham” suggestion. To me there is a clear institutional failure here and it’s an attribute common to organizations that believe that they solve problems for themselves without actually solving problems. Look at Liberty University in 2002 – they expel the suspect without fully evaluating the claim – why would any University expel a student without fully evaluating a claim? This was a mistake that then became CNU’s problem in Newport News. What does CNU do? They then expel the suspect, another mistake – CNU believes it solves the problem but only solves the problem for CNU. In all likelihood, after these two events, you have a sex offender who should have been registered accordingly (but who was not).
Then you have total irresponsibility (shifting away from the suspect) on the part of JPJ Arena, which should have let the VT student back in the building (this was a very bad decision, even if it was standard protocol – just because you’re following protocol doesn’t mean you’re doing the right thing!). And what kind of “security” was in the parking lots over at JPJ? Again, another institutional failure.
Finally you have the downtown mall area – if it weren’t for the set of private cameras for the various stores you wouldn’t even have the video of the suspect with the victim. But what about public safety in the downtown mall? And why wasn’t the suspect, who was noted by this blog to be acting in a straight-forward ultra aggressive way in the various bars, spoken to by the relevant authorities? Another bad choice.
There’s an awful lot of blame to go around here – that’s the sad thing about the whole case. It really is about “everyone” – schools that didn’t do their jobs to investigate thoroughly and collaborate with relevant police authorities (doing so 12 years, 11 years later is far too late!) etc. Probably were some calls to improve the public safety downtown too on the mall, but nothing came of that either (and now they are looking at it? Too late again).
The evidence is overwhelming that institutions failed. They failed big time. They were very self-interested. It’s also surprising that police departments aren’t sharing their information sooner. If the suspect is indeed a serial killer, this is many, many victims later that they are suddenly determining this. Chances are there’s a police officer that suspected this a long time ago, and maybe that’s why Morgan Harrington’s parents are pushing this idea – because a police officer that saw this and believed this may not have been able to do their job.
So look at institutions as much as the specific details. The victim wouldn’t have been so ensnared in an up to now very upsetting cycle of events (unthinkable, don’t even want to go there!) if others had done their jobs sooner. And I don’t mean her friends. Or herself. The people that get paid to uphold other institutions. They failed in a spectacular way.