Grace Mann briefly stopped at home to fix her hair, but her roommates couldn’t find her. The two women later testified that they called her name and checked the back yard, before arriving at a bedroom with a closed door. When they knocked, another roommate, Steven Vander Briel, slid out. He was drenched in sweat, according to testimony, and his eyes darted side to side.
He asked what, in retrospect, would be a chilling question: “What would you do if Grace wasn’t here anymore?”
Moments later, the women would testify, they found the University of Mary Washington student from McLean, Va., lying near a bed, beneath a purple comforter. Mann’s hands were bound with a sweater and belt, and a plastic shopping bag was cinched over her head. They would find more bags shoved in her mouth as her body lay on the floor.
Neither woman said she was aware of any problems between Vander Briel or Mann or knew the origin of the altercation on April 17. When asked whether she remembered any issues, Aleksonis seemed at a loss.
“He had left a voice mail about needing a blanket back, and he had been kind of persistent,” Aleksonis testified about a message on Mann’s phone.
Gardener said Vander Briel’s only connection to Mann was that he rented a room in the same house. Fredericksburg police have said Mann and Vander Briel had no personal relationship. He had returned to Mary Washington for his third stint there at the beginning of the spring semester, and was close to finishing his degree in political science.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...fd6ab6-1382-11e5-89f3-61410da94eb1_story.html