Under the Trestle: The 1980 Disappearance of Gina Renee Hall & Virginia’s First “No Body” Murder Trial.

By Ron Peterson, Jr.

“Under The Trestle” is the true story of the most compelling murder case in Virginia history. In 1980, beautiful Gina Renee Hall, a Radford University freshman, went to a Virginia Tech nightclub on a Saturday night. She was never seen again. Her abandoned car was found parked beneath a railroad trestle bridging the New River, with blood in the trunk. The investigation led police to a secluded cabin on Claytor Lake, where there was evidence of a violent attack. Former Virginia Tech football player Stephen Epperly was charged with murder, despite the fact that Gina’s body was never found. In Virginia’s “trial of the century,” prosecutor Everett Shockley presented an entirely circumstantial case. Key witnesses against Epperly included his best friend, his mother and a tracking dog handler later believed by many to be a fraud. Three former Virginia Tech football players testified, including a Hokies quarterback once featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Would Epperly become the first person in Virginia history convicted of murder without the victim’s body, an eyewitness or a confession? And would authorities ever find the body of Gina Renee Hall?

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 20, 2018
• ISBN: 9781532063503

Book preview

Under

THE

Trestle

The 1980 Disappearance of

Gina Renee Hall & Virginia’s First

No Body Murder Trial.

RON PETERSON, JR.

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UNDER THE TRESTLE

THE 1980 DISAPPEARANCE OF GINA RENEE HALL & VIRGINIA’S FIRST NO BODY MURDER CONVICTION

Copyright © 2018 Ron Peterson, Jr.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-6349-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-6350-3 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 12/14/2018

Contents

Introduction

River Town

Gina Hall

Stephen Epperly

Nightclub

Lakehouse

Hazel Hollow

Missing

At The Lake

Trip to Radford

Assessment

Person of Interest

Unannounced Visit

Follow-Up Interview

History of Violence

Murder Scene

Polygraph

Prime Suspect

More Leads

Corpus Delicti

Independence Day

Relocated?

Six Things Missing

Psychic

Man to Man

Purple Shoe

Accomplice?

Superdog

Death Threats

At The Lake

Super Psychic

Press Conferences

Specialist

Christiansburg Searchers

Search Continues

Ohio

Plea Bargain?

Viral

No Body, No Conviction?

Blistering

Prosecute?

Indictment

Arrest

Back To School

Publicity

Shame

Indigent

Discovery

Building a Defense

Preparation

Ambush

Dark Cloud

First Day of Trial

Day Two

Day Three

Day 4

Day Five

Sixth Day

Shotguns

Seventh and Final Day of Trial

Verdict

Sentencing

Celebration?

Prison Life

That’s Incredible

Upheld

The F-word

Homecoming

More Appeals

Parole

False Alarms

Where Is Gina?

Legacy

Re-Opened

Acknowledgements

Endnotes

Introduction

The scuba diver moved slowly along the bottom of the lake, eighty feet below the surface, searching for a dead human body. It was a sunny day at the surface, but eighty feet down, he could not see his hand in front of his face. This was a black water dive. He relied on his fingers’ sense of touch, feeling the silty lake bottom as he inched along. He was performing what search-and-rescue divers call a fingertip search body recovery operation, hoping to literally run into the body.

The diver had been underwater for twenty minutes, covering fifty feet of the lake bottom, moving along a straight line. Eleven other search divers, arranged on both sides of him at even intervals, moved along a parallel grid in the same direction. So far, their collective hands and fingertips had encountered nothing but the silt and sediment along the bottom, along with the occasional remnants of an old tree stump.

He was startled when his right hand suddenly came in contact with an object. Could this be the body? he thought to himself. His first tactile impression was that the object had the same general degree of firmness as a human body. In the blind darkness, he explored the object, inch by inch, using all ten of his fingertips. Yes, although he could not feel the texture through his gloves, the degree of firmness was consistent with that of a human body. And the object seemed to be resting on the bottom, not sunken into the lake bed like a tree stump. It rose up about ten inches above the bottom, consistent with the profile of a body. His pulse rate quickened as he felt its curvature, again consistent with a body. As he took another minute to examine the object with his fingers, in the pitch blackness, he became positive. It was not a human body. It was a discarded automobile tire that someone had tossed into the lake years ago.

Claytor Lake, a freshwater paradise in the majestic mountains of Southwest Virginia, is an outdoorsman’s dream. The huge, 4,000 acre lake features miles of wooded shoreline, dotted with hundreds of lake cottages. Anglers fish the coves for bass, sailboats enjoy the steady winds, powerboats pull water-skiers and young swimmers do cannonballs off docks into the cool mountain water.

Located fifty miles from Roanoke and three miles from Radford, the lake was formed in 1939, when the Appalachian Power Company constructed a massive dam, impounding the New River. The result was the 21-mile long lake, half a mile across at its widest point, following the winding contour of what was previously a river valley. The project provided hydroelectric power for the region while also forming the abundant recreational mecca that folks in this corner of Virginia have enjoyed for generations.

But tragically, on this particular Saturday — July 12th, 1980 — Claytor Lake was the scene of one of the largest body searches in Virginia history. Law enforcement had called in every resource imaginable to hunt for the remains of 18-year old Gina Renee Hall.

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Gina Hall (photo courtesy Dlana Hall)

Two weeks previously, the petite Radford University freshman visited a night club near Virginia Tech to go dancing on a Saturday night. She left the club with a man shortly after midnight and had not been seen again.

Starting at daybreak, over one hundred law enforcement officers from three states combed the surrounding water and banks of the lake in their search for Gina, who had now been missing for fourteen days. The twelve scuba divers meticulously searched the underwater lake bed. Because the deepest section was 125 feet, a mobile decompression chamber was on site, in the event a diver suffered the bends.

In other sections of the huge lake, where the bottom was free of underwater obstructions like tree stumps, rescue squad volunteers rode slowly in a small john boat. In a process known morbidly as dragging the lake they were trying to hook a body. While one of the volunteers navigated, another was at the back of a boat, holding onto a thick fifty-foot long rope as if it were a fishing line. On the other end of the rope, about thirty-feet down at the lake bottom, was a twenty-pound iron grappling hook with two large, sharp prongs, looking like a gargantuan fishing hook. The trick for the man working the drag was to keep the rope taut and the grappling hook sliding just at or inches above the lake bottom. Easy to say, but hard to do. It was a grueling task, one that made your arms ache after just fifteen minutes. And this volunteer had been at it for four hours.

Four search-and-rescue dogs, trained in cadaver scent detection, had been brought in from Northern Virginia. Each of them had undergone years of training, much of which involved search-and-find exercises with rotten pig flesh. They had the amazing ability to pick up the faint scent of a decomposing corpse’s gases, rising up to the water’s surface. These dogs had previously found dozens of bodies.

One of the dogs, a bloodhound, Bambi, rode leaning precariously over the bow of the boat, hanging her nose so close to the water that her handler worried she might fall overboard. As she sniffed the water’s surface, her handler closely observed her behavior, looking for the telltale sign of an alert, or change in demeanor of his dog, like barking at the water, indicating she had caught the scent of a dead body.

A mysterious RV was parked at the lake’s edge, with signage reading Nationwide Tracking, Search and Rescue. Police were closed-mouthed about the identity of the owner. No one realized it, but in six months, the German Shepherd and his handler residing in the camper would become star witnesses in a murder trial unlike any in Virginia history.

A $10,000 reward for information leading to Gina Hall’s remains was publicized, so in nearby areas, adjacent to the lake, volunteers of a more mercenary nature conducted impromptu searches of surrounding forests and farmland. Many were high school kids who had gathered a group of their pals. As they searched, the teenagers talked enthusiastically of what they would do with the reward money if they found the body.

Pulaski County, which surrounds Claytor Lake, is known for having many caves in the hollows and valleys of the rugged mountain terrain. Since there were several caves within walking distance of the lake, a group of amateur cavers, from nearby Giles County had been invited to join the search. The spelunkers were currently on the far side of the lake, negotiating through a substantial cave whose beach-ball sized mouth was obscured by brush on one of the steep lake banks. You had to know the cave was there to find the entrance. They were close enough to the lake that they could hear the boats from within the cavern’s darkness. The spelunkers shined their bulky carbide lights, predecessors to the LED lights now used, throughout the nooks and crannies inside. The search organizers had instructed them to depend most on their sense of smell, as they would most definitely smell a two-week old corpse way before they would see it.

As the search continued, several interested parties watched the day’s events unfold from a distance.

One of them was the man in charge of the Gina Hall case. He was the determined young Commonwealth Attorney, 28-year old Everett Shockley, the chief law enforcement officer of Pulaski County. Just seven months earlier, fresh out of the College of William & Mary’s law school, he had been elected to his position, defeating a popular 16-year incumbent by only 89 votes. Shockley ran a tough on crime campaign, promising voters a lower crime rate, higher conviction rate and stiffer sentences for offenders. He sincerely wanted to keep that promise to the good citizens of his county. The pressure to find Gina’s body and hold her killer accountable was resting squarely on his shoulders. It was a heavy load.

The lead investigator, Virginia State Police officer Clarence Austin Hall (no relation to Gina Hall) stood beside Shockley, a Styrofoam cup of coffee in his hand. Austin Hall needed the caffeine because he had slept very little over the past two weeks, devoting both day and night to the case. Trooper Hall’s friendly demeanor endeared him to everyone, especially his wife and two young kids, who had not seen him for two days.

A former Virginia Tech football player, Stephen Matteson Epperly, was the prime suspect in Gina’s disappearance and murder. He had never been convicted of a crime, but had a violent past, along with two rape acquittals on his resume. Epperly had been interrogated repeatedly in this case, but vigorously denied the accusation of murder. A mountain of circumstantial evidence pointed directly at him alone. Every law enforcement officer involved was confident Epperly was the killer, yet he had not been arrested. How could they charge and convict him of murder with no corpse? There was no precedent for a No Body murder conviction in Virginia legal history. It had never been done. When Commonwealth Attorney Shockley mentioned to his peers the possibility of pressing charges against Epperly, with no body, they strongly advised him not to do so. To seek a murder conviction, without a body, and have the suspect be found not guilty would be career suicide.

The best view of the lake for an interested onlooker would have been from the luxurious, three-level, A-frame cabin at 4955 Weaver Road, perched on a hill, with a million-dollar view of Claytor Lake. Inside, the house’s owners, Ronald and Betty Davis, were emotional wrecks, with feelings running the gamut from sorrow, to regret, to anger.

They felt deep sorrow for the family of Gina Hall, the missing young RU student who, by every account, was a daughter who would make any parent proud. The beautiful, soft-spoken girl was described by friends as one of the most thoughtful and sincere people they had ever met. She once had a promising future, but had perplexingly gone missing and was now believed dead.

Two weeks earlier, the Davis’ had driven to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, for a week of vacation. They felt haunting regret for leaving the lake house, their primary residence, in the care of Betty’s 27-year old son (Ronald Davis’ stepson), Bill Skipper King, also a former Virginia Tech Hokies football player. On his first night of house-sitting, Bill King and his long-time buddy, Epperly, had gone out for an evening on the town, to the lounge of the Blacksburg Marriott. Around midnight, Epperly borrowed the key to the lake house from King, left the nightclub with Gina Hall and brought her back to the secluded cabin. Epperly was the last known person to see her alive.

The anger the Davis’ felt was focused squarely on Epperly, who police believed had turned their beloved lake house into a bloody homicide scene. Ronald and Betty had always been weary of Steve Epperly, one of their son’s best friends since the pair were eight-years-old. A ruggedly-handsome guy from a working-class family, his aggressive nature had led to many incidents of violence in the past, which the townspeople discussed in hushed tones.

The Davis’ returned from their Myrtle Beach vacation and were dumbfounded to learn that police investigators had discovered blood splattered throughout four rooms of their home, even on Mr. Davis’ golf shoes and their refrigerator door. On the den floor carpeting was the remnant of a large bloodstain the size of a watermelon.

Meanwhile, Gina’s father, John Hall, was living a parent’s worst nightmare, back at his daughter’s apartment in Radford. He had been out with the searchers at dawn, but now stared at the telephone on the wall, desperately awaiting any kind of update. He had been going through the worst hell imaginable, with a terrible feeling in his stomach that refused to go away. The police had developed a close relationship with Mr. Hall, rare in a line of work where maintaining professional detachment with victim’s families is essential. Investigators candidly shared evidence showing that his daughter, the light of his life, was dead. He could not sleep, his mind painstakingly alternating between two things: a faint glimmer of hope that Gina was somehow still alive and a desperate realization that she was deceased and that her body needed to be found, so the family could give her the good Christian burial that she deserved.

For the past two weeks, Mr. Hall had taken up temporary residence in the apartment near the Radford University campus where Gina lived with her older sister Dlana. It enabled him to be in closer proximity to local law enforcement, as well as the many dozens of friends and hundreds of volunteers who were canvassing the area day-after-day.

Desperate for help, Mr. Hall had even enlisted the help of a nationally-known psychic who had arrived in Radford a week earlier and provided his insight. Police are always skeptical of psychics, but this one had found bodies before in several well-documented cases. The psychic’s information in this case was credible enough that police continued to take it into account as they theorized where Gina Hall’s body might be.

By early afternoon, the search of the area in and immediately around Claytor Lake had concluded, with no results. It would now move on to the next quadrant of the hunt, a meandering three-mile stretch of the New River downstream from the lake, between the dam and the town of Radford.

Despite its name, geologists tell us the New River is actually the second oldest river in the world, having carved a deep valley through mountains for millions of years. It is a spectacular river, with many sharp turns and oxbows through high mountain peaks. Beginning high in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, it winds into Virginia, with frequent hairpin curves through the tall mountains. The river widens, becoming a reservoir along the 21-mile segment where it is impounded to form Claytor Lake. Then, for the next three miles, it becomes more tranquil, as it flows gently past the town of Radford, where college students enjoy kayaking and inner-tubing on serene stretches. As it enters West Virginia, The New River becomes increasingly wild with breathtaking rapids that make for some of the best white-water rafting in the East. It then combines with the Gauley River, to form the Ohio River, which in turn is a tributary of the mighty Mississippi. Thus, the New River holds the distinction of being the only Virginia river to flow into the Gulf of Mexico and not the Atlantic Ocean.

Native American Indians, centuries earlier, dubbed the New River the river of death because of the many drownings that occur when a person standing in shallow water is knocked off their feet by the deceptively fast current. As they struggle to stay afloat in the increasingly swift water, oftentimes the person’s arm, leg or entire body gets wedged between or under boulders. The ruthless force of the rapids then holds the victim underwater and they drown.

Some of the investigators hunting for Gina envisioned this sort of possible entrapment scenario where her body had potentially been dumped in the river by the perpetrator and eventually became trapped underwater, below an undercut boulder; and then held submerged in place by the steady current.

So at 2:00 pm, Appalachian Power Company raised the gates on the gigantic dam at Claytor Lake, an 1,100-foot long and 125-foot high concrete monstrosity. This halted the flow of water down-river. The water level of the New River began to drop, to better accommodate search efforts. The four boats carrying the cadaver-sniffing canines were promptly launched just below the dam. They began their role in the search, traveling down the three-mile stretch of river, with military precision, each boat 25 yards apart. Additional search dogs worked each bank of the river, while other personnel walked behind them searching the heavy brush along the banks.

After the river had been searched for three hours at the low-tide level, the gates were opened at the dam, releasing a high volume of water to rush downstream toward the town of Radford. The swift water and waves splashed the many rocks and boulders with a vigorous current. If the body was entrapped under boulders or between rocks, this would hopefully wash it out, resulting in what search-and-rescue types called a blowout.

As the river filled with rapids, a state police helicopter flew slowly and deliberately above, so close to the river that casual observers worried it would crash. Behind the pilot, two officers sat sidesaddle, one on each side of the craft, looking intently out the open doors of the copter, scanning the river for the body.

But as darkness set in at the end of the day, the members of the giant search party, who were optimistic at dawn, were now exhausted. Many were dejected, painfully so. After a sixteen-hour day of meticulous searching, they came to a bitter realization: this would not be the day they found Gina Renee Hall. Wearily, they faced the fact that with each passing day, the odds of finding Gina’s remains was growing smaller.

River Town

The summer of 1980, absent this tragedy, would have been a picture-perfect time to be in the quaint city of Radford, nestled along a horseshoe bend on the New River in the mountains of southwest Virginia. It was known as a college town, but as the 11,000 permanent residents would quickly tell you, it was also a great place to settle down and raise a family, which proud residents had been doing for generations. Along with nearby towns Blacksburg and Christiansburg, as well as Pulaski and Montgomery Counties, it formed a very livable region known as the New River Valley.

Radford was established over a century earlier when the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad came to town in 1854. A predecessor of Norfolk Southern, the V&T built a new railroad depot in the middle of downtown, serving as a catalyst for Radford’s early growth. By the late 1800’s, Radford was a booming railroad town and trade center, due to its strategic location between Lynchburg to the east and Bristol at the far western corner of the state.

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Radford University Campus (above), Downtown Radford (below)

(photo courtesy Radford News Journal)

Most of Radford’s early development was along the downtown Main Street and the quaint residential neighborhood comprising the central part of town. The architectural centerpiece was Grove Avenue, a few blocks from downtown, lined with beautiful Victorian homes, four-squares and bungalows.

The turn of the century continued to bring prosperity, as large factories set up shop on the west side of town, providing a substantial base of steady jobs. Soon to follow was development of several residential neighborhoods, consisting mostly of small single-family dwellings, also on the west side of town. They were well-built, affordable houses, which made home ownership a reality for blue-collar families.

In 1940, with World War II in full swing, the U.S. military needed a place to manufacture gunpowder and ammunition. After evaluating several potential sites around the country, a location on the edge of Radford’s city limits was chosen, due to the area’s ample workforce. The Radford Army Ammunition Plant was built and ramped-up to employ 20,000 people during WWII. It remains the New River Valley’s largest employer to this day.

After the war, the Radford Army Ammunition Plant (RAAP) found its niche manufacturing the nitroglycerine used to propel the Army’s artillery shells and rockets. Dealing with the highly explosive nitro was very dangerous. Over a 40-year span, 39 lives were lost at the plant in 25 separate accidents. Employees literally blown to smithereens in explosions from the volatile chemical compounds. Despite the hazards, it was steady work and better-than-average pay, so the jobs were highly-coveted.

The area to the east of downtown Radford, previously rolling woods, received a big boost in 1913, when the state located a new women’s college in East Radford to educate teachers. The college gradually expanded its curriculum and in the mid 1940’s became the women’s division of Virginia Tech. Radford College declared its independence from VT in the mid 1960’s, went co-ed in 1972 and achieved university status in 1979. The college’s growth pumped a refreshing supply of young students and culturally-diverse faculty into the town’s demographics. Radford University is now a thriving 9,000-student research university with a national reputation.

By 1980, the town of Radford had evolved into a thriving city that kept its small-town vibe. With a bustling population of 11,000, there was an interesting diversity between the established residents of the working-class west side of town and the young college crowd on the east side. No one could foresee that a horrible event would occur that summer, when individuals from the two contrasting sides of town met.

Gina Hall

Gina Renee Hall, 18, was voted Most Popular for Coeburn High School’s graduating class of 1979. She had a lot going for her, as the townsfolk loved to say. Her positive energy and enthusiastic smile brightened the day of everyone she came in contact with.

Her hometown, Coeburn, is a tiny mountain hamlet in the far western corner of Virginia. Located in Wise County, Coeburn is the heart of coal country, not far from the Virginia border with Kentucky and Tennessee. With a population of around 2,000, Coeburn is the kind of place where no one is a stranger and people do not lock their doors.

Gina was such a respectful, sweet girl growing up, her older sister Dlana recalls. "When I say she never got in trouble, I mean she never got in trouble. Ever. She was every parent’s dream child."

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Gina Hall (photo courtesy Dlana Hall)

Growing up, Gina was active in a dizzying array of activities. Girls’ sports were not as popular or widespread in the 70’s, but Gina, ahead of her time, played tennis, golf, and gymnastics at the high school level. In tennis, she advanced to the state championship her senior year at Coeburn High. She loved the social aspect of the game and teammates recall she played her best in doubles matches, where everyone wanted her as a partner, due to Gina’s sense of teamwork.

Besides school activities, Gina taught children gymnastics and tap dancing. The Hall family was active at Coeburn United Methodist Church, where she led a Bible-study group and taught Sunday school classes.

Making Gina’s zest for life even more touching was that she had endured a terrible accident as a child. When Gina was two years old, she brushed against a burner on a gas stove in her house which ignited her cotton pajamas into flames. The accident resulted in severe third-degree burns over approximately 90% of the right side of her body, including her chest, abdomen, upper right arm and thigh.

She fought for her life in the weeks and months that followed. Her condition was so grave that doctors later stated that 75% of young patients in a case like hers would have died from shock or sepsis. Nurses at Charlottesville’s University of Virginia Medical Center burn unit were inspired by Gina’s fighting spirit.

When Gina finally came home from the hospital, everyone in Coeburn was there to support her.

Everybody in town provided so much love and support for Gina, as she recovered from her burns, Dlana remembers. Gina was truly ‘Coeburn’s Girl.’ People seemed to really empathize with what she had been through and admired how hard she fought to recover. She had such a wonderful little attitude … she never felt sorry for herself. Gina was an inspiration for so many people.

In the years that followed, throughout her childhood, her father took her on long trips to see burn specialists at the UVa Medical Center, along with consultations at Duke University. This was the mid-1960s, so the procedure of skin grafting was in its infancy. Gina had over a dozen surgeries, some involved excision of the wounds, a surgical procedure in which incisions were made through areas of the deep burns to remove the scarred tissue. As Gina’s body grew, the lack of elasticity in these areas made it necessary for her to endure more of the excruciating surgeries. She was still undergoing the procedures as a teenager.

As a result, Gina had terrible scarring on her right arm, from her shoulder down to her elbow; and her right leg from her upper thigh down to her knee. The worst scars were along her torso, leaving her disfigured from above her right breast to below her waistline. The surgical excisions had also left an indentation over an inch deep, running along the right side of her chest down to her abdomen.

Gina managed to keep the areas concealed by dressing conservatively. She typically wore long sleeves and long pants, with tights underneath, even in the summer. Because she effectively covered the scars with her clothing, Gina had the physical appearance of a beautiful girl with a normal, shapely body.

Understandably, Gina was very self-conscious about her body and avoided serious romantic relationships. According to her sister Dlana, Gina was extremely concerned about how her scars would affect a man’s feelings for her.

She could not have handled the emotional stress of a physical relationship with somebody and never put herself in that situation, Dlana said.

As a result, she dated only on occasion – her high school prom being one instance. Most of her dates were just friends, typically boys with whom she played tennis.

Gina’s mother blamed herself for Gina’s burns, experiencing tremendous guilt and psychological problems. She became estranged from the family, leaving Mr. Hall to raise the children alone. When Gina was six, her father married his second wife, Joan. Gina’s relationship with Joan was close, the pair enjoying a strong bond and Gina affectionately calling her Momma Joan. John and Joan provided a wonderfully loving home environment for Gina, as well as her older sister and two younger brothers, complete with all the support that any child could ever want.

Mr. Hall owned a thriving State Farm Insurance agency in town. His career success enabled the family to enjoy a prosperous upper middle-class lifestyle. One example of the well-grounded way in which Gina grew up is the fact that she held down a part-time job and was required to use her own money for things like stereo equipment and vinyl records.

Throughout high school, Gina worked at the small town’s movie theatre, staffing the ticket booth and concession stand. The owner/manager of the theatre, Jeff Kiser, was always impressed with her work ethic and interpersonal skills in dealing with customers. Gina was such a great employee that she was given an open invitation to work at the cinema during her breaks from college. So when she returned home for Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter breaks, she was happily put back on the work schedule.

Everyone I know who knew Gina thoroughly thought she was great, Jeff Kiser later said. She got along with everyone. She was always congenial with customers. She was the type of person that I didn’t have to tell to do something, she knew it beforehand. She was just a great person.

The apple of Gina’s eyes was her little brother,

Reviews for Under the Trestle

[pinkhouselady · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was a surprisingly interesting and fairly well-written book. Probably not very interesting to anyone outside the New River Valley in Virginia. I will probably read it again, it has a lot of information about this crime.