WASHINGTON — Nearly 30 years after Henry “Ricky” Ryan’s body was found buried in a shallow grave in Loudoun County, Virginia, a jury has delivered a guilty verdict to the man long suspected to be his killer.
Timothy Warnick was the last person seen with Ryan at a pull-off near the Shenandoah River in West Virginia, when the two left to go on a beer run back in the fall of 1988.
Indicted in 2016, the West Virginia resident was found guilty of first-degree murder and robbery on Thursday by a Loudoun County jury.
Information investigators gleaned in speaking again with family, friends and witnesses allowed them to charge Warnick, Loudoun County Sheriff Mike Chapman said.
Investigators now know Warnick was the person who also buried Ryan in a shallow grave off of Virginia Route 9 just over the West Virginia border in Loudoun County.
A judge will decide if the now-59-year-old Warnick will spend the rest of his life in prison. Prosecutors are asking the judge to issue a life sentence plus five years. Warnick is being held at the Loudoun County Adult Detention Center.
Chapman said that solving cold cases like the murder of the then-29-year-old Ryan is why he established a cold case unit in 2012.
“We continue to go back on these cases because half the time what you’ll see is that people will start to come around. They might want to tell you things they wouldn’t have told you in the past … and hopefully something at some point will break, and that’s exactly what happened in this case,” Chapman said.
