Police searched homes in Richmond and Northern Virginia yesterday looking for clues to the whereabouts of missing Virginia Commonwealth University freshman Taylor Behl.
The Richmond Police Department task force assigned to the criminal investigation into Behl’s Sept. 5 disappearance executed warrants at Behl’s home in Vienna early yesterday afternoon. They removed the contents of her personal computer.
Later in the afternoon, investigators also executed a search warrant at the Richmond home of a 38-year-old photographer who had taken pictures of the 17-year-old when she visited VCU in April.
The man, according to Behl’s family and investigators close to the case, also had a personal relationship with the teenager and is believed to have seen her within 24 hours of her disappearance.
Officials would not comment on what was removed from the photographer’s home, on the northern edge of VCU’s Monroe Park campus. But people familiar with the investigation said computer information was also taken from his house. A call yesterday to the man’s lawyer was not returned.
“We’re totally in the information-gathering process,” said Richmond Police Chief Rodney Monroe, who is heading an 11-member task force of investigators from his department, the FBI, Virginia State Police, VCU Police and the Virginia Attorney General’s Office.
The chief said there are no suspects in Behl’s disappearance. He said investigators are interviewing and re-interviewing “a host of individuals” who may have talked with the teen or had seen her in the day or two before she disappeared.
…
As of last night, police said they had received no credible leads on Behl’s whereabouts. Calls to her cell phone have not been returned. Police searches of the surrounding campus area and various tow lots across the city have not located her car.
Police have yet to find evidence of foul play. They have not foreclosed the possibility that Behl left campus voluntarily and is now perhaps reluctant to return, given the extensive publicity her disappearance has generated.
But investigators say the absence of any contact with the teenager — through sightings, e-mail, phone, credit transactions or surveillance — is a prime reason her disappearance is now a criminal investigation.
[Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch]
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