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Jesse Matthew Indicted in the 2009 Killing of Morgan Harrington

Already charged in Hannah Graham's death, the former cab driver is charged with first-degree murder and abduction of the Virginia Tech student.

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A man in a gray suit carrying a file folder climbs the stone steps of a red-brick Georgian building with white trim, under magnolia leaves. Not the actual courthouse.

Gil and Dan Harrington had waited nearly six years to see someone charged with killing their daughter. On Wednesday, September 16, 2015, they sat a few feet from Jesse Leroy Matthew Jr. in Albemarle County Circuit Court as he was arraigned for first-degree murder and abduction with intent to defile in the death of Morgan Harrington. "It was not menacing and scary, but it was brazen," her mother said afterward.

The charges had been announced the day before. In a statement, the Albemarle County Commonwealth's Attorney's Office said a grand jury had returned the two indictments on September 11, that the court received them on September 15, and that Matthew was served with them that day. Each charge carries a maximum of life in prison. The office said the indictments were the result of six years of work by the Virginia State Police, the Albemarle County and Charlottesville police, the University of Virginia police and the FBI, and reminded the public that an indictment is a charge, not evidence of guilt. Prosecutors said they would hold no press conference and would not discuss the evidence.

Morgan Harrington was 20, a Virginia Tech student from Roanoke, when she vanished on October 17, 2009, after leaving a Metallica concert at John Paul Jones Arena. She was last seen on the Copeley Road bridge near the arena. Hundreds of people searched for her, and posters covered the area for months. Her remains were found in January 2010 in a field on a farm off U.S. 29 south of Charlottesville. Her parents marked the date on the bridge every year and founded an organization, Help Save the Next Girl, to warn young women about predators.

A few months after she was found, the Harringtons learned that forensic evidence from the case matched the man who had sexually assaulted a woman in Fairfax City in 2005. No one could put a name to that man until September 2014, when Hannah Graham, an 18-year-old UVA student, disappeared after, prosecutors alleged, crossing paths with Matthew on Charlottesville's Downtown Mall. Matthew, a former cab driver, was arrested on a beach in Galveston County, Texas, and charged with capital murder in Graham's death. Her body was found that October a few miles from where Harrington had been found. In June 2015 he entered an Alford plea in the Fairfax attack. Gil Harrington credited that woman's testimony, and her ten years of determination to tell her story in court, with making everything that followed possible.

At the arraignment, Matthew's lawyers in the Graham case, Doug Ramseur and Michael Hemenway, were appointed to represent him on the new charges. Commonwealth's Attorney Denise Lunsford said she had no plans to join the two cases or to seek a capital charge in Harrington's death. "I think it's an incredible relief for us," Dan Harrington said outside the courthouse. "It's a very emotional day."

The case did not reach a trial. On March 2, 2016, Matthew pleaded guilty to the murders of both Harrington and Graham and was sentenced to four consecutive life terms without parole.

What this story covers. The charges, dates and penalties come from the Commonwealth's Attorney's statement as published in full by the Fairfax County Times and TheCount.com on September 15, 2015; the courtroom scene and quotations come from C-VILLE Weekly's report of the arraignment on September 16. On September 15 Matthew was charged, not convicted; the closing paragraph records his later guilty plea. The image is an illustration of a county building entrance, not the real Albemarle County courthouse.

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