Highway crime scene¶
The highway crime scene is the roadside by the interstate into Radford, Virginia, where the mutilated body of Amanda Lucky is found at the end of Radford Horror 04.
| Type | Location (roadside crime scene) |
| Aliases | The interstate |
| Region | Radford, Virginia |
| First appearance | Radford Horror 04 (mentioned); first visited in Radford Horror 05 |
Description¶
The scene is on the highway into town, beside thick woods with few streetlights and a shadowed pool of blood. It is about a mile from the Lucky house and near both the Pay n' Stay and the Ferry Lodge (Radford Horror 05). In the photos Amanda lies collapsed 10 to 15 feet from the tree line, a mile from home, in a nightgown with no pockets (Radford Horror 05).
History of events there¶
Discovery of the body¶
At the end of Radford Horror 04, Deputy Molly Underhill takes the team aside. A young girl's body, probably Amanda's, has been found by the interstate, badly mutilated: much of the face gone and organs eaten, which the examiner attributes to animals after death. Molly says, "y'all were right." The body goes to Dr. Harvey Mauden, who delivered Amanda, and the team is invited to the autopsy (Radford Horror 04).
The team's examination¶
Radford Horror 05 opens on a young woman in a bloody, ragged dress running through the woods, clutching a stomach wound, until something passes overhead and blocks the moonlight. Andre tells the players this is the same person whose body they then see at the autopsy, "presumably a flashback" (Radford Horror 05).
At the autopsy at the sheriff's station, Dr. Mauden concludes that the nails through Amanda's wrists and ankles were pulled through rather than removed, and the team concludes she was crucified but not restrained. See Amanda Lucky for details (Radford Horror 05).
At the scene a part-time deputy in street clothes, with a laminated paper "badge," offers coffee and says things were quiet "except for the dogs." Dick "The Biz" Baxter rolls a 10 to Investigate a Mystery and finds a trail of blood drops and foot smears from the tree line to the body, lost about 10 meters into the woods. One or two coyote-sized paw smears lie in the blood, and a diffuse ring of spatter about five feet across sits on top of Amanda's own bare footprints. No other tracks are present and nothing suggests pursuit. The droplets shrink the farther back they go (Radford Horror 05).
The Biz and Andrew Howard trade theories. Howard suggests that the people who took Amanda experimented on her and let her go, and jokes about a werewolf. The Biz favors a serial killer plus coyotes after the fact (Radford Horror 05).
The team later retraces Amanda's route through the woods nearer her home, covered on the page for Jefferson National Forest. About a quarter mile from the Lucky house they find a scrap of her dress on a branch and the skull and spine of a large dog (Radford Horror 05).