Alexandria Commonwealth's Attorney Bryan Porter has authored a book about serial killer Charles Severance, who terrorized Alexandria before he was caught, tried and convicted for the murders of three prominent Alexandrians.
He was sentenced in early 2016 to three life terms and 48 years and is serving time in a southwest Virginia maximum security prison.
"The story is interesting, and sad, but I think there are also a lot of important lessons to be learned in the case," Porter said. "I'm telling the story of what happened but I'm also trying to use it to make points about my perspective, of being involved in this line of work as long as I have."
Porter previously worked for five years as a police officer in the Alexandria Police Department, working the midnight shift while earning his law degree at George Mason University. After graduating in 2001, he was hired as a prosecutor and was elected Commonwealth's Attorney in 2013.
His book covers the investigation, prosecution and trial of Severance and is titled, The Parable of the Knocker: The True Crime Story of a Prosecutor's Fight to Bring a Serial Killer to Justice.
Severance was convicted in the shooting deaths of Nancy Dunning, wife of then-Sheriff James Dunning, in 2003; transportation planner Ron Kirby in 2013; and music teacher Ruthanne Lodato in 2014. He was also convicted in the shooting of a caregiver in the Lodato home who survived.
When Dunning was murdered in 2003, Porter had only been in the Commonwealth Attorney's Office as a prosecutor for two years.
"I was involved in low-level stuff and was not involved with the Dunning case at all," said Porter, who grew up in Rosemont and attended T.C. Williams High School, where his father John Porter was principal for 25 years.
The murder, committed in broad daylight, flummoxed Alexandria for years. A decade went by before Severance struck again.
November 2013
Fast forward 10 years to 2013: After winning election in November as Commonwealth's Attorney, succeeding Randy Sengel, who retired, Porter was sailing in the Caribbean between Grenada and Saint Martin on vacation. He found out about the ambush-style murder of Ronald Kirby when he returned to port.
Porter remembers the extreme stress he felt and how everyone in Alexandria was on edge. He began his new job in January.
"I was not prepared for the attention and chaos and stress that accompanied the case," Porter said. "Everyone was on edge. The media attention was very, very intense."
"Random ambush murders at the doors of people's houses in affluent neighborhoods don't usually happen," he said. "It was kind of the same vibe as the Beltway snipers, when they were shooting people. People were terrified. My parents live a few blocks from where Ron Kirby lived. I told them to lock their doors, not answer the door."
Then soon after, on Feb. 6, 2014, Severance struck again when he fatally shot Ruthanne Lodato. A surviving victim, a caretaker, observed the shooter in the house and was able to give police a description. A composite sketch was released. The FBI assisted and created a database with the tips that poured in, Porter said.
"Most of the tips were not useful at all," Porter recalled. "They were 'I saw a guy that looked like that this afternoon on the metro.' People were terrified."
But one tip led to a guy who police interviewed and determined that "he was not our killer, but he knew Severance and said, 'I didn't do it, but I know this guy you might want to look at.'"
"They both had the beard, were about the same age and went to school together," Porter said. Police added Severance to a list of leads to check out.
Another big break: When Severance drove away from the scene of the Lodato murder, his car was captured on a private home surveillance camera along Braddock Road, across the street from Blessed Sacrament.
"You can't see the license plate but you could tell the make and model of the car," Porter said. A circular bumper sticker was visible on the back of the car, which was recorded about two minutes after the murder. The recording was put on the back burner but would come in handy later.
Firearms Evidence Hits the News
On March 6, Alexandria Police Chief Earl Cook gave a press conference that linked the firearms evidence to all three murders. "You've got to imagine Severance saw that," Porter said.
"Then by coincidence, that afternoon, a police detective — because Severance is now in the database as someone who needs to be talked to — had determined Severance lived with his girlfriend in Ashburn," Porter said. "He knocked on the front door but no one was home."
Porter thinks the press conference and the visit "freaked Severance out."
The next morning on March 7, Severance emailed the detective who had left a business card at the Ashburn home and said, "I received your business card."
Two hours later, Severance drove his car to a D.C. parking garage wearing a tricorn hat like a Revolutionary War veteran and a poncho and rode a bicycle from there to the Russian Embassy, requesting asylum, telling them that the City of Alexandria was persecuting him, Porter said.
"I think he believed he was committing political acts of revolution," Porter said, noting that it was about the time that Edward Snowden had gotten asylum from the Russians.
When Severance showed up at the embassy, the Russians called the Secret Service. The Secret Service interviewed and followed Severance to the garage where he had parked his car.
They asked to search the car, which he denied. (Porter believes the guns, which were never found, were likely in the car at the time.) The Secret Service took pictures of Severance and his car and sent their report to the Alexandria Police after he told them the city was persecuting him.
A police detective looking at the Secret Service report realized Severance matched the composite sketch and the car looked exactly like the one on the tape captured on Braddock Road after the Lodato murder, Porter said.
A detective then returned to the Ashburn house but was told by Severance's girlfriend that he had packed up some belongings and left. Porter said he thinks Severance hid the guns somewhere, possibly in Maryland, when he left Ashburn.
The police questioned the girlfriend and she told them that Severance was angry, hated the City of Alexandria and that she had bought Severance two guns and ammunition that were missing.
"I remember sitting there that night thinking 'This is more than a person of interest. This is starting to look like our guy,'" Porter said.
A manhunt was then on to find Severance. On March 13, an FBI agent reported that Severance had used a credit card in Wheeling, W.Va. Police arrested Severance at a library there and he was returned to Loudoun County.
"We decided to send an FBI agent in to talk to him because he said he wouldn't speak to Alexandria police," Porter said.
As the FBI agent read him his Miranda rights, Severance said he wanted just two things — an attorney and the right to remain silent.
Manifesto
Later, reading a 2,500-word manifesto written by Severance online and in notebooks he left in his car, Porter saw that Severance, a former Alexandria resident, had been stewing for years over a child custody case that kept him from his son. He blamed the "elite" of Alexandria. Severance had lived on Gunston Road in Alexandria in his earlier years, and had made a run for mayor and Congress.
Looking at his writings, Porter could also see Severance held a fascination for Gen. Edward Braddock, the British general who left the Carlyle House in Alexandria in the 1750s to head to the Ohio River Valley to fight Native Americans. One way the Native Americans fought back was to use guerrilla tactics like ambushing a home. Severance, who admired the Native Americans, "wrote over and over again about the Native Americans, 'tomahawking a homestead,'" Porter noted.
In his writings dated before the Kirby and Lodato murders, he wrote about "introducing murder into a safe and secure neighborhood...," Porter said, noting that if you draw a line between the three Alexandria homes where Dunning, Kirby and Lodato were murdered, you'll find the Braddock cannon at the intersection of Braddock and Russell roads near the center.
The firearms evidence tied up the case, Porter said.
Severance never made a public statement and never testified at trial.
"The best we can do is kind of piece it together from the jigsaw puzzle of all of his writings that he left," Porter said. "I've got a feeling ... that his motivations and thoughts will go to the grave with him."
Mental Health System
Porter said one of the big takeaways from the case is that there are a lot of politicians who say this is a failure of the mental health system, "but it's short sighted to put it entirely upon the mental health system. ... think lay people conceive of mental health as a binary switch, you're either crazy or you're not. Take Severance: He had mental health issues for 30 years. His parents knew when he was in high school he had issues, he joined a religious cult. He was not mumbling to himself, he was not schizophrenic, he was not having hallucinations."
Severance was diagnosed with personality disorders and saw a psychiatrist once in the early '90s, Porter said.
"Anyone who met him would say, 'There is something wrong with him.' He was very quick to perceive personal slights. His writings bear all of that out. He is very intelligent, with an advanced degree in engineering from the University of Virginia. He was self-aware enough that if a doctor met with him and asked, 'Charles, are you thinking of murdering anyone?' He was smart enough to say, 'No way.'"
"My point is you can't entrust the mental health system with the sole responsibility of addressing these situations when so many people can easily fly under the radar because they don't present mental health problems the way most people think," Porter said.
"The first thing we have to do as a society is decrease the stigma," he noted. "Family members are the first warning level on this stuff. Friends and family members knew there was not something quite right with this guy for years but for whatever reason there was never any real intervention. 'I don't want to brand my son or friend or family member or loved one as a 'troubled crazy guy.'"
But the reality, Porter said, is mental health issues are another physical problem. "We don't attach a negative stigma to people who have cancer, but we do for people who have mental illness and that's a vestige from another time," he said. "If we can decrease that negative connotation, people will be more likely to receive treatment."
Porter's book is available on Amazon and it will be available at local bookstores.
