NORFOLK, Va. — In the book "A Special Kind of Evil - the Colonial Parkway Murders," author Blaine Pardoe and his daughter Victoria R. Hester write about a man investigated during the disappearance of Keith Call and Cassandra Hailey in 1988.
Pardoe says the former Special Agent in Charge of the Norfolk FBI Field Office told him a man with a license plate reading "EM RAW" was looked into and given a polygraph test.
The man passed the polygraph was cleared in the investigation, Pardoe said.
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Is man linked to one of the Colonial Parkway murders connected to other cases?
Fast forward to last week, investigators said Alan Wade Wilmer, Sr. drove a pick-up truck with the license plate, "EM RAW" when they linked him to three murders, including one of the other Colonial Parkway murders.
"When I saw the picture come up, it was bone chilling to see that because I realized the FBI had this guy on their radar," Pardoe told News 3 in an interview last week.
News 3 wanted to get more answers on polygraph tests from that era, so a reporter contacted David Goldberg from Executive Protection Group Polygraph Service in Virginia Beach.
He says today's polygraph tests are computer-based, but back then it was analog, meaning the machine used ink and paper, which required the examiner to closely monitor someone's movements.
"It's very difficult because as an examiner you had to not only watch the body movement of the examinee, as well as the ink and marking the link. It was very strenuous on the examiner," said Goldberg. "Back then, you had a lot more inconclusive, false positives, false negatives."
Watch previous coverage: Is man linked to one of the Colonial Parkway murders connected to the other cases?
Advances in the technology have made it made it easier on the examiner.
"Back then if they were trying to deceive the test, it would have been easier because they didn't have what we have nowadays" said Goldberg. "We have a lot of countermeasure attachments."
In the book, Pardoe writes about how investigators reacted to the man passing the polygraph test, saying they felt the examiner was well respected, but they were frustrated.
Meanwhile, the families of the other Colonial Parkway Murder victims continue to ask people to share any information on Wilmer to investigators.
"We're so close in the Colonial Parkway Murders to getting more answers," said Bill Thomas, the brother of Cathy Thomas, one of the victims.
