Handsome, Charming & Deadly

Gina Renee Hall was born in 1962 and grew up in Coeurn, a tiny town of about 2,000 people in Wise County in the mountains of western Virginia, close to the Kentucky and Tennessee borders. At the age of two she was badly burned when her pyjamas caught fire at a gas stove. She spent months in the burn unit at the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville and carried heavy scarring on her right side, arm, thigh and torso for the rest of her life. She covered up even in summer and was self-conscious about her body, but she was popular, busy and devout: most popular in her high-school class of 1979, a tennis player who reached the state championship, a gymnastics and tap-dancing teacher, a Sunday-school teacher and a ticket seller at the local cinema.

In the autumn of 1979 she started at Emory and Henry College, a small school about an hour from home, then transferred to Radford University for the spring of 1980 to study nursing and to share with her older sister Delana, who was starting a master's degree in education. On Saturday 28 June 1980 she finished her last summer exam and decided to celebrate by going dancing at the Marriott in Blacksburg. Delana was too tired to go, so Gina went alone in Delana's brown 1975 Chevrolet Monte Carlo, dressed in a purple bodysuit, white trousers and a white denim jacket, with a gold anklet of two interlocking hearts.

this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed By 1980 he had failed to sell or list a single house at a Radford real estate agency and was mowing lawns on the Radford University campus, living with his parents and in debt. He was at the club with his childhood friend Bill 'Skipper' King, a Virginia Tech football player whose mother and stepfather owned a house on Claytor Lake. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it

this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it King thought she seemed confused about who was driving and where they were going. this part of the story is covered for now Her voice was uneasy and out of character. Asked where she was, she said she was at the lake, looking at it, with Steve. Delana told her to hurry home and the line went dead.

At about 3.15 a.m. King called Robin Robinson and invited her to the lake house. They arrived around 4 a.m. and saw the Monte Carlo in the driveway with no lights on in the house. details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it Robin saw him in trousers and no shirt, wiping his shoulders with a blue towel. When King and Robin came inside a few minutes later, King stepped in a wet patch on the carpet and assumed the pair had been swimming. In the morning King drove Robin home at 10 a.m., collected his four-year-old son and came back to swim. this part of the story is covered for now

Sometime before 7 a.m. on Sunday 29 June a Pulaski County sheriff's deputy saw the brown Monte Carlo parked on Hazel Hollow Road where the railroad trestle crosses the New River into Radford, with its boot open. He assumed it belonged to fishermen. details of the account remain covered until revealed After midnight the same deputy saw the car still there, reported it, and did nothing because it was registered to a Hall in Coeurn and had not been reported stolen. On Sunday evening Delana and two friends, Robert Lent and Craig Runyon, found the car. One stayed with it while the others fetched the police. The inside door pull was torn off, the driver's window was down, the seat was pushed back and the car was littered with cups and matches.

By Tuesday the search was public. Delana went to a local radio station and refused to leave until it broadcast the disappearance, which it then did at the top and bottom of every hour. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now On 2 July King went with police to the lake house and found a gold anklet with interlocking hearts on the floor, which matched Delana's description of Gina's jewellery. details of the account remain covered until revealed On 3 July Sergeant Duffy of the Virginia State Police found the contents of Gina's purse under a brush pile ten feet off Hazel Hollow Road, including a chequebook whose last entry was dated 28 June. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it We'll just have to wait and see.'

this part of the story is covered for now A search of the lake house found small bloodstains on the driveway, the walk in front of the glass doors, a light switch, a chair leg, a pair of shoes, a dustpan, a mattock, the refrigerator and its door. A stain about 18 inches across had been partly cleaned from the living-room carpet. Five friends from Coeurn found a blue towel in undergrowth ten feet from the tracks near the trestle; King's parents identified it as one missing from the house. A blue and white towel, a roll of paper towels, a can of Dow bathroom cleaner with a green cap and a handmade quilt were also missing. On 19 July high-school students found the blue and white towel and Gina's clothes, tied in a damp, bloodstained bundle, between the New River Valley Shopping Plaza and the river.

A psychic, Jerry Stewart of Des Moines, was brought in. Blindfolded, he described the missing quilt and said Gina was buried in it, then led police to Hazel Hollow Road and other river sites, but nothing was found. John Preston, a retired Pennsylvania state trooper, brought a German shepherd called Harass 2. details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now

details of the account remain covered until revealed Five days later a 25-year-old schoolteacher, Vicki Koch, disappeared from her apartment in Circleville, Ohio; her car was found a mile away and her body a month later in a cornfield. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it Blood from the car boot, the lake house, the mattock, the golf shoe, the blue towel and the light switch was type O, Gina's type. Hairs matching hers were found in the car, on the fridge door, on her trousers, on the towel and on the cap of the cleaning fluid. this part of the story is covered for now

details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now In 2016 a farmer's grandson told Radford police that his grandfather had seen two men dismembering a body in Meadow Creek in 1980. details of the account remain covered until revealed The same instrument reportedly also matched Angela Radar, missing from Roanoke since 1977. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it