Yorktown Parents: Justice Finally Served with Death Sentence in Daughter's 1988 Murder in Virginia

On Dec. 3, 1988, Yorktown native Rachael Raver, 22, was living in Virginia and she and her boyfriend, Warren H. Fulton III, also 22, were planning a night out.

It started with dinner at the home of Fulton's mother and they later went to a bar in Washington, D.C. The next day, they were supposed to go to church. They never made it.

In the early hours of Dec. 4, 1988, they were both shot in the secluded woods near Hunter Mill Road in Reston, Fairfax County, VA. Fulton was shot first, and as Raver tried to run away, she was shot and then raped. Their bodies were found two days later in a field five miles away from Dulles Airport.

Police had told the Raver family back in Yorktown that the killer was most likely familiar with the area. After that, the deaths of Rachael Raver and Warren H. Fulton III remained a mystery for 17 years — until technology helped lead police to a suspect. Today, the Raver family of Yorktown lives with the knowledge that Rachael's killer has been convicted and sentenced to death.

Cold Case Revived

Rachael Raver, a 1984 Yorktown High School graduate, was living in Virginia after her recent graduation from George Washington University, where she had a partial soccer scholarship and was an education major. Raver was working for the U.S. Department of Education and wanted to continue her education to study law, her family said.

Fulton, a senior and baseball team captain at George Washington, lived with his parents in Vienna, VA. The couple had started dating three or four months before their murder.

The double homicide was a cold case until 2005, when Fairfax's homicide unit and Det. Robert Murphy resubmitted evidence from the case for testing and it led to a DNA match to California prison inmate Alfredo R. Prieto, a 44-year-old who was on death row after his conviction for a 1990 rape and murder.

The DNA link to Prieto was the first step on a long road that took until Nov. 5, 2010, for Prieto to be sentenced to death.

In 2007, after a six-week trial, a mistrial was declared because a juror said he was pressured into convicting Prieto. In 2008, after an eight-week trial, Prieto was sentenced to death after he was found guilty in the slayings. But the Virginia Supreme Court ruled there was a technical error and called for resentencing.

A  started on Sept. 17, ending in the latest death sentence for Prieto. He had already been found guilty, so the trial was to determine the sentencing. 

"It's not over until the fat lady sticks the needle," said Raver's mother, Veronica, who expressed her overall dissatisfaction with the court system because of the extended process needed to eventually sentence Prieto to death for her daughter's rape and murder.

During the first two trials, the Prieto defense tried to present him as a mentally retarded person, who could not be given a death sentence. Then for the third trial, they presented him as a man, who as native of El Salvador, was affected by seeing murders and dismembered bodies in the streets of his war-torn country.

Jurors did not agree with the defense claims.

"I found the trials very shocking because of the conduct of (Prieto's) lawyers," Veronica Raver said. "We're mad as hell about what this person has done to these young people. He is an evil, perverted predator."

Prieto has been linked to nine murders.

"The only relief I have is I don't have the sense of frustration I had 15, 16 years ago," she said. "That's gone. As for closure…there is no such thing. The reason there isn't closure is because this was not a death, it's murder."

Veronica Raver said Prieto has affected many lives. Her life, she said, changed tremendously. She was in good health, which after the killings started deteriorating. She is now in chemotherapy for ovarian cancer and has had breast cancer. Her husband, Norman, is a retired IBM researcher who has progressive dementia.

"We were all a mess after Rachael's death," she said. "I would sit on the edge of the bed and I feel like bricks come down on me and I would start crying. One morning, I suddenly started screaming and from that moment I started fighting."

From that point on, she said she was determined to find her daughter's murderer and to have justice served.

'She Had So Much To Give'

Veronica Raver described her daughter as lovely and pretty, extremely outgoing and friendly. Rachael was the captain of the Yorktown High School soccer team, and also played basketball. Veronica Raver said her daughter was great with kids and the elderly, and always kept track of people's birthdays.

"What a waste of life," her mother said staring at a picture of her daughter. "She had so much to give. I like this picture…She's looking up like 'I'm ready to hit the world!'"

"You never get used to it," said Veronica's father, Norman Raver. "I get mad. That's a daughter you never forget."

Jerry Murphy, also a former Yorktown resident, was a good friend of Rachael Raver. Murphy's sister, Denise, was also a close friend of Rachael's.

"Rachael was the all-American girl," Jerry Murphy said. "She was everybody's friend. She was caring and loving."

Murphy said he testified in all three Prieto trials. He had seen Rachael the day prior to the murder and his last memory of Rachael is seeing her sitting on a couch, smiling and telling him she would see him later.

"I have nothing but great memories about her smile and personality," Murphy said. "My thoughts are with her family and I can't imagine what they went through. Your life isn't the same."

Rachael is survived by her parents and three siblings, Elizabeth, a college professor, Matthew, a Navy pilot, and Deidre, who serves with the U.S. military in Afghanistan.

Elizabeth called her sister's killer arrogant for his refusal to talk to authorities about the 1988 murders. The secrets of that night will go with him, she said, and the police could only speculate about exactly what happened or how Prieto met his victims.

She remembers the day her family found out about the murder. One of her aunts, who still lives in Maryland, was on her way to work and heard news on a local radio station that two bodies had been found— she knew right away that this meant the worst had come to pass for her family and that Rachael was gone.

Elizabeth said that in the wake of the tragic discovery, neighbors were coming over to their house to lend support and made sure no one was alone at any time.

"I never had so much community support," she said. "This is Yorktown."