Charles Severance was convicted in November 2015 of killing three well-known residents of Alexandria, Virginia, over a span of more than ten years. Nancy Dunning, a real estate agent and the wife of the city's sheriff, was shot in her home in December 2003. Ronald Kirby, the region's senior transportation planner, was shot in his home in November 2013. Ruthanne Lodato, a music teacher from a family of Alexandria judges, was shot in her home in February 2014, and a caregiver who worked in the house was wounded.
Prosecutors said the three had nothing in common except the city they lived in and the man who killed them. Severance, a former Alexandria resident who had twice run for mayor, had lost custody of his son in an Alexandria court in 2000. In more than 2,000 pages of writing he railed against what he called the "enforcement class," and the Supreme Court of Virginia later described the killings as part of a plan of retribution he called "tomahawking [the] homestead." No murder weapon was found and there was no DNA or fingerprint evidence. A jury convicted him on all ten counts, relying on the surviving caregiver, neighbors who placed him near the last killing, a rare type of ammunition, and his own words. He was sentenced to three consecutive life terms plus 48 years, and both of Virginia's appellate courts upheld the verdict.
Little is on record about Severance's early years. According to the Court of Appeals of Virginia, he graduated in 1986 with a degree in mechanical engineering and afterward worked only sporadically. His family noticed erratic behavior beginning in 1988, the court said, and he received no significant mental health treatment. He distrusted the mental health system, and when he ran for mayor of Alexandria in 1996 his platform condemned mental health institutions.
He ran for mayor again in 2000 and lost both races. In 2014 the Associated Press spoke with two former mayors about those campaigns. Bill Euille remembered Severance's unusual clothes. Kerry Donley called him an "odd opponent, to say the least," and said police had assigned an undercover officer to shadow Severance during both campaigns. A 2015 ruling by the Fairfax County Circuit Court described him as well known in local political circles in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when he lived in Alexandria.
The Associated Press reported in March 2014 that Severance had reluctantly acknowledged a diagnosis of schizophrenia, which he blamed on his doctors' errors, and that he had stopped taking a prescribed antipsychotic drug because he believed it was part of a plot against him.
The event prosecutors placed at the center of the case was the loss of his son. Severance began a relationship with a woman in 1998, and their son was born in April 1999, according to the Court of Appeals. After problems in March 2000 the mother moved out with the boy. Following contentious hearings in the Alexandria Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court, she received sole legal and physical custody, and Severance received no visitation. The court noted that the custody orders were signed by deputies "for Sheriff Dunning."
The Associated Press, reporting on the case in 2014, wrote that the mother had obtained a protective order after saying Severance displayed a rifle and arranged ammunition in a threatening way, and that the judge called the matter "a most unusual one presenting real issues of safety." Severance sought custody again in 2009 without success, the AP reported. The Fairfax County Circuit Court wrote in 2015 that he never saw the child again.
Afterward, according to the Court of Appeals, he sent the boy's mother threatening letters. For years he grew upset and irrational about the custody decision, denounced the police and the "enforcement class," and repeated the phrase "tomahawking the homestead." His later girlfriend testified that the phrase meant one could kill people who posed a threat. The circuit court summarized the prosecution's proffer this way: he showed intense and long-lasting anger over the custody ruling, aimed at the city, its courts and its elected officials.
In April 2003, according to the circuit court's 2015 ruling, Severance bought a .22-caliber five-shot mini revolver made by North American Arms. In February 2004 a Virginia state trooper stopped him for a traffic violation near Harrisonburg and found three handguns, one of them a North American Arms .22 revolver. He was charged with a felony concealed-weapon offense and convicted, and the gun was destroyed, the Court of Appeals said. From then on he was barred by law from possessing firearms.
By 2011 he was living with a girlfriend in Ashburn, in Loudoun County, about 40 miles from Alexandria. She testified that he often talked about killing judges, police officers and their families. In 2012, she said, he had her buy two .22-caliber North American Arms revolvers and Remington subsonic ammunition, because he could not legally buy guns himself. The Fairfax court's summary of the evidence said he wanted "low velocity ammunition only."
Nancy Dunning was 56, according to the sentencing judge. She was a successful real estate agent known locally as the "Queen of Del Ray," Patch reported, and the Alexandria Times wrote that she was known for her work improving that neighborhood. Her husband, James Dunning, had been Alexandria's sheriff since 1985.
On December 5, 2003, she was due at lunch with her husband and son and did not arrive. Her family found her in their home that day; she had been shot. The front door was closed but unlocked. Nothing was missing or disturbed and there was no forced entry, the Court of Appeals said. Investigators recovered a small-caliber bullet.
The killing went unsolved for more than ten years. Suspicion fell on her husband. After the 2015 verdict Commonwealth's Attorney Bryan Porter said he was glad to remove the suspicion that had hung over James Dunning, and the couple's daughter said the verdict cleared her father. James Dunning, who served as sheriff for two decades, moved to South Carolina after his wife's death and died there in July 2012, at 62, according to Patch. "We miss her more than I can say," his daughter said in 2015.
Ronald Kirby was director of transportation planning for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, whose work covered suburban Maryland, the District of Columbia and Northern Virginia. The Connection Newspapers described him as a soft-spoken Australian. A friend who had helped bring him from Australia to the United States described him as a skilled negotiator who listened closely to everyone in a discussion, and the two shared a love of sailing on the Chesapeake. Kirby helped research and press the idea that the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge should carry walkers and cyclists as well as cars, worked on reform proposals for Interstate 66, and studied the effect of teleworking on local traffic. A former Alexandria mayor, Patsy Ticer, said he "knew more about transportation than anyone else." Councilwoman Redella "Del" Pepper called him "the expert to the experts."
On November 11, 2013, he was at home in Alexandria waiting for a plumber. The plumber spoke with him by phone at 11:32 a.m., arrived ten minutes later, got no answer and left after noon. On his way there he had noticed a white man in a faded flannel shirt who "stuck out" from a nearby construction crew; at trial he said he was "eighty percent sure" the man was Severance. Kirby's son found him later that day. He had been shot. There was no forced entry, and his wallet, watch and ring were untouched. The medical examiner testified that in more than 300 autopsies of shooting victims she had never before seen a .22 long-rifle round used in a shooting.
His wife later said that the last thing he told her, while guiding her by phone after she got lost driving that day, was "call me if you get lost." In May 2016 the city unveiled a memorial plaque to him at the Alexandria end of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. "He loved this city," his daughter said at the ceremony. His wife said, "He was the love of my life."
Ruthanne Lodato was 59. She taught music, and the Alexandria Times called her a beloved music teacher. Her father had been an Alexandria Circuit Court judge and her brother was a retired judge of the city's General District Court. She had three daughters. Her eldest said after the verdict that the family would remember her for her faith, her music and her family, and that her mother had still been the person she turned to for support. "I was 32 years old when mom was killed," she said. Her husband told reporters he could not concentrate at work after her death and later lost his job.
At about 11:30 a.m. on February 6, 2014, the doorbell rang at the Lodato home. The caregiver who looked after Lodato's elderly mother heard a loud noise and a scream, then came face to face with a bearded white man of about 50 to 60. He shot her in the arm and she ran out the back door to a neighbor, who called police. She then went back into the house to check on the two other women. Lodato told the first officer to arrive that she did not know the man who shot her, but that he was an older white man with a gray beard. She died of her wounds. Nothing was stolen and there was no forced entry.
The next day the caregiver helped a police artist draw a composite sketch. A neighbor had noticed a man with a "full gray beard [and] messy hair" who "looked out of place" near the house for weeks. A driver a few blocks away saw a speeding red-orange car run a stop sign that morning. Severance drove a red 1999 Ford Escort wagon with a bumper sticker reading "Assassination City Derby," and a surveillance camera less than half a mile from the house recorded that car at 11:29 a.m., according to the Court of Appeals.
Two killings in three months, both in late morning and both at the front door, alarmed the city. On March 6, 2014, Alexandria Police Chief Earl Cook said bullet fragments from all three scenes were similar enough to investigate the Dunning, Kirby and Lodato cases as possibly linked. The tests showed similar rifling from a small-caliber weapon but did not establish whether the same gun had been used, the Alexandria Times reported. "Until we have evidence to point to only one suspect, we investigate all possibilities," Cook said.
The same day, police contacted Severance's girlfriend. According to the Court of Appeals, Severance went on March 7 to the Russian Embassy in Washington seeking asylum, telling Secret Service agents that Alexandria had persecuted him for a dozen years, partly in revenge for his mayoral campaigns. The agents photographed his car, and detectives matched it to the vehicle in the surveillance video from the morning of the Lodato killing. Severance told his girlfriend he was going camping rather than speaking to police. She told him to pack and not come back, and he left on March 10. When police searched her home on March 12, the two revolvers and the ammunition were gone. They found two spent Remington .22 casings in the garage; she said she had never fired the guns.
At his parents' home in Fairfax, where he kept some belongings, police found a box of Remington .22 long-rifle subsonic hollow-point ammunition with 40 of its 50 rounds left. His parents had not bought it.
On March 13, 2014, police in Wheeling, West Virginia, arrested Severance at a public library on a Loudoun County warrant charging him with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Wheeling's police chief said officers had first gone to a downtown hotel after learning he might be there and found his car but not him. His car held a gun-cleaning kit, his passport, clothing, two bags of latex gloves and about $1,700 in cash, the Court of Appeals said. He was 53.
Alexandria police said publicly that they were nowhere near a charge. Spokeswoman Crystal Nosal said investigators were "nowhere close" to calling him a suspect or a person of interest, though his photograph resembled the sketch released after the Lodato killing. At an extradition hearing on March 17, an Ohio County prosecutor in West Virginia called him a suspect in the three killings, a danger to the community and a flight risk, citing the embassy visit, and he was ordered held without bond. His West Virginia public defender reportedly called the Loudoun warrant a "sham" meant to hold him while investigators looked into the killings. After his request to delay extradition was denied, he was returned to Virginia and held in the Loudoun County jail on the gun charge.
On September 8, 2014, Severance was indicted in Alexandria, and police announced that he was charged in the deaths of Nancy Dunning, Ronald Kirby and Ruthanne Lodato. "This has been a complex and time-consuming investigation that has spanned almost 11 years," officials said. The ten counts included two of capital murder, under the Virginia statute covering the premeditated killing of more than one person within three years, and one of first-degree murder for the 2003 killing. Prosecutors said they would not seek the death penalty.
After Loudoun County prosecutors dropped the gun charge, Alexandria sheriff's officers took him into custody. At his first appearance on the murder charges, by closed-circuit television, he said nothing and stared into the camera while his lawyer, Joseph King, spoke for him. His defense team was King, Christopher Leibig and Megan Thomas. Three Alexandria circuit judges recused themselves because of their relationship with Lodato's brother, and the Chief Justice of Virginia appointed Fairfax County Circuit Judge Jane Marum Roush, who had presided over the 2003 trial of the sniper Lee Boyd Malvo. Alexandria Sheriff Dana Lawhorne, a close friend of Lodato's brother, had Severance moved to the Arlington County jail "to eliminate any possible appearance of a conflict."
After Severance tried to fire his defense team at a preliminary hearing, Judge Roush ordered a psychiatric evaluation. When he reportedly refused to be interviewed by a court psychiatrist, she renewed the order and sent him to a state mental hospital for further evaluation. She later ruled him competent to stand trial, and his lawyers did not object.
The defense then asked to move the trial out of Alexandria, citing more than 300 pages of news coverage and a fear that ran through the whole city; the motion said the case "has the side effect of making victims out of the entire community." Prosecutors pointed out that an impartial jury had been found in Boston for the Marathon bombing trial, and Severance himself objected. On April 23, 2015, Judge Roush rejected the argument about publicity but accepted the one about fear. "It was a fear that the people of the city of Alexandria experienced," she said, and she moved the case to Fairfax County.
The defense also asked for a separate trial on the Dunning charges, arguing that nothing tied the 2003 killing to the other two. Porter answered that all three shootings happened on weekdays, within a mile of one another, at the victims' front doors. "They were cold-blooded assassinations," he said. In a letter opinion of June 22, 2015, Judge Roush denied the motion. She found that the offenses shared idiosyncratic features suggesting one person's pattern and that, as the prosecution proffered them, they were "a series of acts done with a relatively specific goal or outcome in mind": revenge on Alexandria's elite for the loss of his son. Evidence of the 2003 killing would be admissible at a separate trial of the other two in any case, she ruled.
Roush was soon appointed to the Supreme Court of Virginia, and Fairfax Circuit Judge Randy I. Bellows took over the case. In September 2015 he ruled that the defense could try to show at trial that the late Sheriff Dunning had been responsible for his wife's death, WUSA-9 reported. Prosecutors objected that the theory unfairly dragged Dunning's name through the mud, according to the Associated Press.
The trial opened in Fairfax on October 8, 2015, and ran until November 2. Severance, 55, pleaded not guilty. Prosecutor David Lord told the jury that the three victims had lived within a mile of one another, near where Severance once lived, and that all three were shot with .22-caliber long-rifle Remington ammunition of a kind Severance's writings praised. Defense lawyer Joseph King answered that "the Commonwealth has jumped to conclusions," that there was no direct evidence such as DNA or fingerprints, and that Severance looked suspicious only because he was mentally ill. King said some of the violent language in his writings, such as "tomahawking a homestead," could come from his frontier writings or from board games he had invented.
The caregiver was among the first witnesses. In a photo lineup after the shooting she had rejected five of six photographs and said the sixth, showing Severance, looked similar, but she could not make a definite identification, the Associated Press reported. On the stand she first said he "looks like the guy." When the judge had him turn to face her, and under cross-examination by the defense, she grew more certain. "His eyes tell me something," she said. Through tears, she told the court, "I want to think that maybe it is a dream, I think that every day." The defense pointed out that the description she gave the sketch artist included a much shorter beard than Severance's.
The neighbor who had noticed the out-of-place man identified Severance in court, as did the driver who saw the speeding car. Another witness described a "vacant stare" that she said had led her to recognize him in the neighborhood before the shooting.
The firearms evidence came from three examiners. They testified that the bullets from all three scenes were Remington .22 long-rifle plain lead hollow points bearing eight lands and grooves with a right twist, consistent with a North American Arms revolver. Microscopic markings showed that three different guns had been used, and three such revolvers could account for all of the evidence. A representative of North American Arms testified that his company was the only maker of a five-shot mini revolver with that rifling. Each examiner said he or she had seen that ammunition only in these three killings; the Associated Press reported that they had seen it in three of more than 15,000 cases in their careers. A police detective testified that no similar killings had occurred after Severance's arrest.
Police had recovered more than 2,000 pages of his letters, emails and journals. Lord read from a poem titled "Parable of the Knocker": "Knock and the door will open. Knock. Talk. Enter. Kill. Exit. Murder. Wisdom." Another passage read, "Introduce murder into a safe and secure neighborhood." Another said, "Received no satisfaction after revenge killing." One journal entry urged a son to buy three North American revolvers and subsonic ammunition and called hollow points "sweet music."
In closing, Lord told the jurors that the killings made sense only "through the prism of the eyes of a man who hated Alexandria." Megan Thomas began her closing for the defense with the words "Everyone is suspicious of the middle-aged man with no place to call home," and argued that witnesses sounded more certain at trial because they wanted to help the prosecution. Severance did not testify.
On November 2, 2015, after about 13 hours of deliberation over three days, the jury found Severance guilty on all ten counts: capital murder of Ronald Kirby and of Ruthanne Lodato, first-degree murder of Nancy Dunning, malicious wounding of the caregiver, three counts of using a firearm in a murder, one of using a firearm in a malicious wounding, and two of possessing a firearm as a felon. He sat in a wheelchair, his ankle injured, as the verdict was read. The jury recommended life without parole for each of the three killings; on the capital counts, with the death penalty off the table, life without parole was the only sentence available.
"The reign of the Alexandria Assassin is over," Porter said, calling Severance "a clever, but cowardly, murderer." Chief Cook said the verdict "officially gives closure for the families of Nancy Dunning, Ron Kirby and Ruthanne Lodato." Severance's family said a jury of his peers had reached a verdict that they respected, and they offered their sympathy to the victims' families.
Eight members of the victims' families testified at the sentencing phase, and the court received ten victim impact statements. At the hearing on January 21, 2016, when he was invited to speak, Severance leaned into the microphone, said "sadism," complained about his lawyers and tried to have them removed.
In a letter opinion issued the same day, Judge Bellows wrote that Severance had "shattered the lives of these three families. They will never, ever, recover from what he did." He noted that in each case the victim was killed at home and that family members had found Nancy Dunning and Ronald Kirby. He quoted one family member: "You have not defeated us." Finding nothing in the presentence report, the trial evidence or the testimony that would justify reducing the jury's sentence, and calling the conduct egregious, he ordered every sentence to run consecutively: life and a $100,000 fine for each of the three murders, 20 years and a $100,000 fine for the malicious wounding, three years for using a firearm in the Lodato killing, five years for each of the firearm-use counts in the Kirby killing, the Dunning killing and the wounding, and five years on each of the two felon-in-possession counts. The total was three life terms plus 48 years and $400,000 in fines.
Severance appealed on three grounds: that the Dunning charges should have been tried separately, that the evidence was not enough to prove he was the killer, and that two capital murder sentences under the same multiple-killing provision punished him twice for one offense. On May 23, 2017, the Court of Appeals of Virginia rejected all three in a published opinion by Judge Mary Grace O'Brien, Severance v. Commonwealth, 67 Va. App. 629.
On joinder, the court held that the killings were part of a common scheme, sharing a small area of low crime, weekday late mornings, victims shot near their front doors, nothing taken, and the same rare weapon and ammunition. They were also "separate expressions of a general plan," the court said, with the outside goal of revenge against Alexandria's elite for the loss of his son. On the evidence, it pointed to the caregiver, the two neighborhood witnesses and the video in the Lodato case and the plumber in the Kirby case. For the Dunning killing there was no eyewitness, but the court found the ballistics, the missing revolvers, his flight and his writings enough. Defense witnesses had said that a man seen on store surveillance video apparently following Dunning before her death was not Severance; the court held that the jury could convict even if he was not that man.
The Supreme Court of Virginia agreed to hear only the double jeopardy question. On July 19, 2018, in an opinion by Justice D. Arthur Kelsey, it affirmed. The Blockburger test, the court said, applies only when a single act violates two statutes, and "killing two victims at two different times in two different places constitutes two different criminal acts." Justice Powell dissented. She would have held that the two capital counts described the same offense, with the same victims in the same three-year period differing only in the order in which they were listed, and would have vacated one life sentence.
With that ruling, his convictions and sentences stood.
The case against Severance was circumstantial, and several points were contested at trial and on appeal.
No murder weapon was recovered. The three revolvers that the examiners said could account for the bullets were never produced; the two his girlfriend bought in 2012 disappeared after he left her home, and the revolver seized in 2004 had been destroyed. The defense said the ammunition was widely available. The prosecution's experts said they had never seen it in any other crime.
The caregiver's identification changed over time. She described the gunman for a sketch, said in a photo lineup that Severance's picture looked similar but could not be sure, and became certain only at trial. The defense argued that the witnesses' growing certainty reflected a wish to help the prosecution.
No witness placed Severance near the Dunning home in 2003. A store surveillance video showed a man apparently following Dunning that day, and the defense called witnesses who said the man was not Severance. The Court of Appeals held that the conviction did not depend on who that man was.
For a decade the leading suspicion in the Dunning case fell on her husband, the sheriff, and the trial judge allowed the defense to argue that he had been responsible. The jury rejected that theory, and the prosecutor and the Dunning family said the verdict cleared him.
The defense maintained throughout that Severance's mental illness explained his writings and behavior and made him look guilty. Prosecutors, the Associated Press reported, also described a history of mental illness. Judge Roush found him competent to stand trial.
Reports differ on his earlier gun record. The Court of Appeals described a 2004 traffic stop near Harrisonburg that led to a felony conviction; the Associated Press, citing The Washington Post, referred to a 2005 felony gun plea in Rockingham County that ended in probation; and Washingtonian wrote that he was arrested on Virginia gun charges in 1997 and 2005.
1986: Severance graduates with a degree in mechanical engineering.
1996: Runs for mayor of Alexandria and loses; runs again in 2000 and loses.
April 1999: His son is born.
2000: After the mother moves out with the boy, an Alexandria court gives her sole custody; Severance receives no visitation.
April 2003: Buys a .22-caliber North American Arms mini revolver.
December 5, 2003: Nancy Dunning is shot and killed in her Alexandria home.
February 2004: A traffic stop near Harrisonburg leads to a felony concealed-weapon conviction; he is barred from possessing guns.
2009: Seeks custody of his son again, unsuccessfully.
2011: Is living with a girlfriend in Ashburn.
2012: At his urging, the girlfriend buys two .22 revolvers and subsonic ammunition.
July 2012: Former Sheriff James Dunning dies in South Carolina.
November 11, 2013: Ronald Kirby is shot and killed in his Alexandria home.
February 6, 2014: Ruthanne Lodato is shot and killed in her home; her mother's caregiver is wounded and survives.
March 6, 2014: Alexandria police say the three killings may be linked.
March 7, 2014: Severance seeks asylum at the Russian Embassy in Washington.
March 10 to 12, 2014: He leaves his girlfriend's home; police search it and find the revolvers gone.
March 13, 2014: Arrested at a public library in Wheeling, West Virginia, on a Loudoun County gun warrant.
March 17, 2014: Ordered held without bond in West Virginia.
September 8, 2014: Indicted in Alexandria on ten counts, including two of capital murder.
April 23, 2015: Judge Jane Marum Roush moves the trial to Fairfax County.
June 22, 2015: Judge Roush denies a separate trial on the Dunning charges.
September 2015: Judge Randy I. Bellows lets the defense argue that the late sheriff was responsible for his wife's death.
October 8, 2015: Trial opens in Fairfax.
November 2, 2015: Jury convicts him on all ten counts.
January 21, 2016: Sentenced to three consecutive life terms plus 48 years and $400,000 in fines.
May 2016: Alexandria unveils a memorial plaque to Ronald Kirby.
May 23, 2017: The Court of Appeals of Virginia affirms the convictions.
July 19, 2018: The Supreme Court of Virginia affirms, rejecting the double jeopardy claim.