Newspapers / University of North Carolina … / April 30, 2009, edition 1 / Page 2
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News Inner voices inspire community garden page 11 Thursday, April 30, 2009 University receives anonymous $1.5 million donation By Rhys Baker Staff Writer RDBAKER@UNCA.EDU A mystery donor gave UNC Asheville $1.5 million from a growing pool of dona tions now totaling $60 million given to uni versities around the country since March, according to the university. “The gift is among the largest ever made to UNCA,” said Merianne Epstein, director of news information. Scholarships made possible by the dona tion will be available next semester, accord ing to Epstein. “I read in the Citizen-Times that there were more than a dozen donations, and they all went to colleges led by women,” said freshman biology major Violet Silwedel. “I think it’s great (female chancellors and university administrators) are getting help running colleges because I can imagine it is hard to get that sort of a position as a woman.” Upon finding out about the donation on March 20, UNCA’s chancellor made a state ment. By that time, nine donations totaling $45 million were already distributed, with more to come. “This is a wonderful gift to our universi ty, to our students and to the public that we serve,” said Chancellor Anne Ponder. “It’s as if this donor read our strategic plan and priorities and knew how important it is for us to invest in scholarships, in faculty ex pertise and in equipment to ensure that we continue to provide outstanding academic quality.” In the current economic climate, when investments in our academic programs are See DONATION Pages I {The Blue Banner} Page 2 Hope remains after 36-year-old homicide UNCA's only on-campus murder still under investigation ady Sharp UNCA student, although retired UNCA “The original investigators pro\ fvlc\A/e CrMT/^Q . 1 A o C\ V\ i-4l 1 POlH Of"' By Cassady Sharp Assistant News Editor CBSHARP@UNCA.EDU It was the perfect day for a Sunday picnic, exactly what Thomas Guthrie and Larry O’Kelly were enjoying before they discovered UNCA student Virginia Ol son’s bound and murdered body. After 36 years, literature professor and UNCA alumna Deborah James’s voice still quivers when she talks about the fear she felt as an upcoming graduate dealing with the murder of a fellow student. The hand that slew Olson is still a mystery. “The young women were hysterical. Girls were sleeping in my room and on my floor until the end of the semester,” James said. “People were afraid to go to the bathroom.” Guthrie and Kelley, high school stu dents at the time, found the 19-year-old’s body near the forest service building across from the Botanical gardens at about 3 p.m., according to the police report. An autopsy revealed Olson was gagged with her own shirt, raped and stabbed twice in the heart. James and Olson were botjj drama stu dents living in Governor’s Village along with the other 200 residents students liv ing on campus in 1973. James was a dor mitory proctor, leaving her responsible for residential students after 5 p.m. “After they published the news of Ginger’s murder in the paper, prank sters would call in threats on the one hall phone,” James said. “It was a terrible and terrifying time.” Olson’s murder occured against a backdrop of 1970s hippie culture, a flow er-child era, as James called it. Water gate’s scandalous waters were beginning to boil, dominating the front page of The Asheville Citizen for weeks following Ol son’s April death. The Citizen mostly printed updates about the case toward the back of the paper. The follow-up coverage did not reveal anything but stale leads, reward money and a scholarship fund. Olson’s was the only homicide of a Virginia Olson UNCA student, although retired UNCA faculty member Arnold Wengrow said he remembered other deaths and suicides during his 28 years of teaching. “1 remember saying to my female the ater drama students after our night re hearsals, ‘Please don’t walk down to the dorms by yourself,”’ recalls Wengrow, who worked with Olson in a campus pro duction of U.S.A., and was one of only two faculty members in the theater de partment. Olson’s case is one of about 20 cold cases assigned to Asheville detectives Yvonne Coboum and Kevin Taylor. Although Asheville police and the State Bureau of Investigation continued to investigate the Olson case, the po lice department did not establish a specific cold case unit until last summer. “We have hope with all our cases,” Co boum said. “This is not the coldest one we’re working on.” Applying modem technology, Coboum and Taylor hope to find new leads in the nearly 40-year-old case, according to Me lissa Williams, Asheville Police Depart ment’s community relations manager. The forensic technology in 1973 basi cally consisted of identifying a suspect’s blood type, Coboum said. “The detectives in 1973 had the vision to save things, but simply had no use for them,” Williams said. Justice, especially for the family, reso nates as primary motivation for detectives working on cold cases, according to Co boum. “We just have to keep working, “ Co boum said. “The smallest detail could break the case wide open.” Although Coboum said that she and Taylor have not talked to Olson’s remain ing family, they conducted extensive re search on locating connected people and “The original investigators provided the base,” Coboum said. “They started painting the picture. We added the col or. After nearly 40 years of investiga tion on the Olson case, the police have yet to make an arrest despite following a few leads, which a lack of solid evidence halted. “Before we had a cold case unit, detec tives who were working on more current cases also had a pile of cold cases to work on when they had time,” Coboum said. The Asheville Citizen published an anonymous account a few weeks after po lice discovered Olson’s body. The man, who was in town for work, said he rec ognized Olson’s picture as a girl he wit nessed getting into a car with two young men on Broadway Avenue. This anonymous account did little to generate possible leads, however. Ten years after Olson’s death, police reported they were close to arresting a- man who fled Asheville after police ques tioned him. They just needed more evi dence before arresting the man who had a history of mental health problems. More evidence never surfaced, a familiar story at this point. “Nobody would have believed that it wouldn’t be solved immediately,” James said. “We thought sure that at any minute, they would know.” Detectives relentlessly interviewed in dividual students for the remainder of the semester, according to James. “Asheville police did a very poor job of handling it, from my perspective, which was only that of a young girl. The head detective would tell us that we should all be really careful because it was probably someone who lived on campus,” James said. “All that did was create more fear. We were all looking around in the cafete ria thinking, ‘Could it be that person?”’ James said she remembered a rumor that the suspect was the son of a promi nent citizen so the police squashed the tried recreate the distant era. See OLSON Page 8 I
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