Erika Yancey was found stabbed to death in her car

[Nell]

The body of a 22-year-old missing Herndon woman was found stabbed to death in her car early Wednesday, police said, ending a 36-hour search and a mother's hope her daughter would be found alive.

Erika Yancey's mother, Lorraine, had flown in from Wichita, Kansas, Tuesday night, hoping to help with the search for her daughter. Hours later she got the call that her daughter's car had been found. The body of an adult female was found inside.

"Walking in this door is going to kill me, but I have to do what I have to do," Lorraine said as she prepared to meet with police to identify her daughter's body. "She was good person and she was a loving person."

About 2:30 a.m., an officer discovered the 2007 Hyundai Elantra in a disabled parking space outside an office building in the 13700 block of Sunrise Valley Drive in Reston.

Investigators say Erika had been stabbed to death and left in the passenger compartment of her car. Investigators don't know how long the vehicle had been sitting in the Reston parking lot.

http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/1108/571204.html

[WryBread]

I hate to think about dying in a car alone. Poor young woman.

[crickett]

RIP Erica...may they find whoever did this to her...and may justice be done.

[Dakota Valkyrie]

Michael Thomas

Two men were arrested this week in the stabbing death of Erika Yancey, who was found dead inside her car in the Herndon area in November, Fairfax County police said Wednesday.
[...]

Fairfax homicide detectives worked the case persistently and recently obtained murder indictments from a Fairfax grand jury for two suspects. On Monday, Michael Thomas, 27, agreed to meet with detectives at the Mason district station. He was arrested there, police said.

On Tuesday, U.S. marshals arrested Marcus Williams, 28, in Sterling Heights, Mich., a suburb of Detroit, police said...

Williams was Yancey's roommate in Herndon, Fairfax Officer Bud Walker said. Thomas is a friend of Williams's but did not live with them, Walker said. Walker did not know a motive for the killing.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...092302286.html

A friend and neighbor who knew the victim and one of the suspects, but does not want to be identified, described the killing as part of a love triangle.

She tells FOX 5 Williams' ex-girlfriend and the mother of his child was dating Yancey and lived in the apartment too. The friend says Williams and Yancey had heated arguments.
[...]

Last November, a property manager at the Camden apartments where they lived, discovered a trail of blood leading from the parking lot to the dumpster.

Yancey was last seen on November 16, 2008 after dropping her girlfriend off at the airport and was reported missing along with her car the next day. Yancey's car was found four days later in a parking lot a few miles away. She'd been stabbed to death.

Police say investigators re-pieced her life, checking out friends, family and anyone who knew her.

It led back to Yancey's roommate and his friend.

"In recreating the life of the victim, this shows them all of the people the victim interacts with that come in contact with the victim's, it's this method that led them to these two individuals," Officer Walker explained.

Days after the murder, that friend says Williams along with Yancey's girlfriend and the mother of his child-took off for Michigan where U.S. marshals found him this week. Williams remains in jail, awaiting extradition.
[...]

Despite the relationship between Yancey's girlfriend and one of the suspects, police do not believe she was involved in the murder.

http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpp/news/loca...n_erika_yancey