Warren Fulton and Rachael Raver

(from top to bottom) Rachel, Warren, and Tina

Real Names: Warren Hudson Fulton III and Rachael Angelica Raver
Nicknames: No known nicknames
Location: Reston, Virginia
Date: December 3, 1988

Case

Details: Twenty-two-year-old Warren Fulton was the captain of the George Washington University baseball team and hoped to play in the majors. His girlfriend, twenty-two-year-old Rachael Raver, had recently graduated from there and planned to go to law school. On December 3, 1988, they met with friends at a bar in Washington D.C.. At 12:30am, they left in Rachael's car and vanished. On December 6, they were found dead in an out-of-the-way wooded property. Rachael had been raped and both were shot to death by an unknown assailant near Hunter Mill Road in Reston, Virginia.
Police believe that the killer met Warren and Rachael the night they vanished and then abducted them at gunpoint. It is believed that he forced them to drive from Washington D.C. to the suburbs. When they arrived in the area where they were killed, Warren was murdered first and Rachael tried to escape. However, the killer caught up with her, raped her, and then killed her, finally fleeing in her car.
A single hair found on Rachael's body determined that the killer was African-American. Investigators believed that he was familiar with the area. The murders took place near Dulles Toll Road, which runs from Interstate Highway to Dulles Airport. However, the specific area where their bodies were found was very secluded.
Rachael's family became obsessed with solving this case. They believed that the key to doing so would be locating her missing car. Her mother, Veronica, spent her free time driving around Washington D.C. looking for it. Six weeks later, she received a parking ticket for Rachael's missing car, which had been ticketed for illegal parking on a street in Queens, New York. The date was the day after she and Warren had vanished. However, when it was recovered there was not much left of it. Although some fingerprints were found on it, no suspects were identified. However, Rachael's family refused to give up.
One year after the murders, Veronica saw the broadcast that caught her attention. It was about twenty-four-year-old Tina Jefferson, who had been found raped and shot to death in a schoolyard on May 11, 1988 in Arlington, Virginia. Both cases seemed to be similar. Interestingly, the date of the murder was also Rachael's birthday. However, the police did not believe both cases were connected for several reasons. First, Warren and Rachael were white while Tina was African-American. Next, Tina was alone while Rachael and Warren were together. Finally, police believed that Tina knew her killer while Warren and Rachael's murders appeared to be random.
It would not be until spring 2000 when a technician at Biotech II, Virginia's state DNA lab, would link both cases to the same killer. DNA from the semen found on Rachael matched DNA found at Tina's crime scene. It was now confirmed that a serial killer was on the loose. Investigators noticed other similarities between both cases. One major similarity was that Rachael and Tina were both wearing red shoes. However, the killer remained unidentified.

• Tony (left) and a composite of the suspect
• Alfredo Prieto

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Suspects: The killer was described as an African-American male in his twenties, about 6'3" and 170 pounds, and he apparently knew Tina. When authorities reinterviewed her sister, Crystal, she remembered meeting a man named "Tony" at Tina's apartment complex in Virginia the summer before her murder, and that he may have been her boyfriend and may have been from Queens, New York. While he is not a suspect in this case, police would like to question him.
Extra Notes: This case first aired on the August 29, 2001 episode. It were also featured on On the Case with Paula Zahn.
Results: Solved. In September 2005, DNA found at both crime scenes was matched to a serial killer named Alfredo Prieto who was already on death row in California for murdering a 15-year-old girl named Yvette Woodruff in 1990. He was found guilty of the Fulton/Raver murders in 2008 and given the death penalty.
Prieto was connected to several other murders, including the September 1989 murder of Manuel F. Sermeno in Prince William Virginia; the May 1990 murders of Stacey Siegrist and Anthony Gianuzz; and the June 1990 murders of Herbert Lula Farley. However, he was never charged in those cases. He was executed by lethal injection on October 1, 2015 in Virginia.
Links:

• Rachael and Warren on Unsolved Archive
• Unsolved 1988 Slayings Linked by DNA
• Trail of Evidence
• DNA Leads to Suspect in 1988 North Virginia Killings
• Two Death Sentences in '88 Faifax Killings
• 3 murder victims' families prepare for Alfredo Preito's execution
• Virginia executes serial killer Alfredo Prieto after appeals fail
• Alfredo Prieto on Murderpedia
• Warren Fulton on Find a Grave
• Rachael Raver on Find a Grave

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