Hannah Graham

On the night of September 12-13, 2014, Hannah Graham, an 18-year-old second-year student at the University of Virginia, went out with friends in Charlottesville. After becoming separated from her group, she was seen on surveillance cameras walking through the Downtown Mall area in a disoriented state, apparently intoxicated. Footage captured her being approached by a man later identified as Jesse Matthew, who put his arm around her and walked with her away from the mall area.

When Hannah failed to return to her dormitory, her friends and parents raised the alarm. A massive search effort was launched, with thousands of volunteers and law enforcement officers searching the Charlottesville area. The surveillance footage led investigators to Jesse Matthew, a 32-year-old nursing assistant at the University of Virginia Hospital. When police went to question him, he fled the state but was apprehended in Galveston, Texas.

On October 18, 2014, Hannah's remains were found in a stream bed in rural Albemarle County, approximately eight miles from where she was last seen. DNA evidence from the crime scene matched Jesse Matthew. Crucially, the DNA also matched evidence from the unsolved murder of Morgan Harrington in 2009 and a 2005 sexual assault in Fairfax, Virginia, linking all three crimes.

Jesse Matthew was charged with first-degree murder and abduction. In February 2015, he pleaded guilty to the 2005 assault. In 2016, he pleaded guilty to abduction with intent to defile and first-degree murder for both Hannah Graham and Morgan Harrington, receiving four consecutive life sentences. The case highlighted concerns about campus safety and the importance of DNA databases in connecting serial crimes.