CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – If you take a 10-mile drive from downtown Charlottesville, you’ll find yourself in the mountain country of south Albemarle County.
Just down the scenic and narrow Old Lynchburg Road, accented with postcard- perfect views of fall foliage, police continue to comb through trees and dense brush, along a river bed, behind an abandoned home.
It’s the site where human remains were found this Saturday during a search for Hannah Graham, a missing University of Virginia student from Alexandria, Virginia.
Four miles from the site is the Ponderosa trail. At the end of the gravel country road, where signs posted to trees deliver a warning to trespassers, you’ll find a small home where the man accused of abducting Graham once lived.
“He seemed to be a nice kid,” said Cliff Hunt who lives two doors from the home where Jesse Leroy Matthew lived for a time with his parents and sister.
Hunt says Matthew’s mother rented the home to get her kids out of the city and keep them from what she thought was gang activity.
He says she was always friendly and would speak to Hunt and his wife as she drove down the dirt path, which only has a handful of homes on it.
The home is a short distance from the farm where the body of Morgan Harrington was found back in 2009. That case was forensically linked to Matthew, but he hasn’t been charged in it.
He has been charged with abduction with the intent to sexually harm Graham. Now, the wait continues for the identification of the remains found this weekend.
The thought that Matthew could be responsible in multiple cases, is troubling to Hunt. He says he feels for the victims and also for Mathew’s mother.
“I think she did the best she could,” he said.
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