Entire Family Found Bound With Throats Slashed In Their Virginia Home :: Harvey Family Murders

« Pope Benedict on Islam and the West - An Exchange You Don't Want To Miss | Main | RadioBlogger Interview With Mark Steyn »

January 6, 2006

Entire Family Found Bound With Throats Slashed In Their Virginia Home

Topics: Harvey Family Murders

An entire family was found brutally murdered in their Richmond, Va. home on New Year's Day and many in the close knit community want to know why a well-liked couple and their two young children were massacred in their midst. The family may have been held hostage, since their daughter returned home just hours before the bodies were discovered New Year's Day morning. Apparently Kathryn Harvey had answered the door, anxious and in distress.

Apparently the Harveys, Bryan, Kathryn, Stella and Ruby, were well known in the community. Bryan, 49, was a talented and widely-respected musician, knew a lot of people in the music business and was well liked, and was an employee of Henrico County Schools, Kathryn, 39, was known as the owner of World of Mirth in Carytown, Stella, 9, was a third-grader at William Fox Elementary School, and Ruby, 4, was in pre-school at Second Presbyterian Church.

From another news source:

(...) Some in the neighborhood feared the Harvey family murders were a professional-style hit. Instead, sources say the killers were sloppy in taking the Harvey family's lives.

(...) Sources now say the killer used a box-cutter style-knife and a hammer in the slayings. And, that the knife, hammer and tape all came from within the Harvey family home.

(...) Visitors to the home for a New Year's Day picnic discovered something was wrong when they smelled smoke coming from the home.

(...) Sources say smoke was found in some of the victims' lungs, meaning they were still breathing when the fire was set.

Two quick questions come to mind: First, why this family, and second, why this particular method of killing them - binding them and slashing their throats? I'm not yet ready to take a guess as to whether or not these murders were unplanned. It appears that there may be much more to this than meets the eye.

Very interestingly, from another news source we learn that Bryan Harvey penned a 1994 song for his rock duo House of Freaks that bears a striking resemblance to the New Year's Day massacre of his. In the song titled "Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey," Harvey describes "knocking on the Pearly Gates in my Sunday best."

The most disturbing passage conjures a murderer in a basement.

Who's that man coming
Says hey, hey, hey, hey
Sharpens his knife singing
Hey, hey, hey, hey
Flashes of pain
Hey, hey, hey, hey
Heartbroken woman
Hey, hey, hey, hey
In the basement
Hey, hey, hey, hey
Begs him for mercy
Hey, hey, hey, hey

As the song hauntingly foreshadows, Harvey and his family were found bound with tape with their throats cut in a basement playroom that was set ablaze shortly before 1:40 p.m. on Sunday.

Kathryn and Stella were seen alive at 10 a.m. that New Year's morn - when a friend delivered Stella from an overnight play date.

From the "America's Most Wanted" website:

(...) Authorities say they received a call reporting a fire at the Harvey home at 1:41 p.m. on New Year's Day. When firemen arrived, they found Bryan, Kathryn and their two young daughters Stella and Ruby, all dead in the basement. Police say all four were bound and had fatal knife wounds.

(...) Police believe that the four were murdered sometime between 10:00 a.m. and 1:40 p.m. The Harveys were hosting a chili cookout that afternoon and friends began to arrive at 2:00 p.m.

(...) The night before, Bryan had played a New Year's Eve gig at the DoubleTree Hotel with (his band) NrG Krysys.

More...

From the MSNBC Clint Van Zandt commentary:

(...) murder isn't a strong enough word. The family was brutally, cruelly, pathologically slain, murdered as only a killer like Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs could do. But this savagery was real, so real that seasoned investigators were said to have cried at the crime scene.

(...) Just an hour's drive north of Kay Scarpetta's Richmond, the scene of the annihilation of the Harvey family, is the small community of Culpeper, Virginia. It was there that less than two weeks before the murder of the Harveys that another victim met a similar terrible death. While talking on the telephone to her father, Sheryl Ann Warner heard a knock on her door and told her dad that the person at the door had car problems and needed help. (This kind of a plea for help has been a common ruse for assailants to obtain entry into a home.) In less than 45 minutes sheriff's deputies arrived at the Warner household to find the 37-year-old mother of three shot in the head and hanging from an electrical cord in the basement, where a fire had been set near the victim's body. That fire was also extinguished and the crime scene preserved.

Is there a connection?

If you have any information that can be helpful to the police, the number is 514-TIPS (8477). There is a $6,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killers. The reward should be at least 100 times that amount!

Related update: Harvey's gesture a plea?

Also, possibly related??? 3 found slain in South Richmond. Discovery in E. Broad Rock Rd. home marks city's third multiple homicide of 2006

Other coverage - Riehl World View

Posted by Richard at January 6, 2006 1:24 PM

Articles Related to Harvey Family Murders: