Nearly a week since Rachel Morin was found dead after she vanished from a popular walking trail in Maryland, no suspects have been named in connection with her homicide, and locals are wondering whether the attack was random.
The Maryland mother of five was jogging on the Ma & Pa trail in Bel Air around 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 5, when she disappeared. She was found dead in what authorities have described as a "horrific" homicide the next day.
A majority of female runners fear being attacked because instances of these random crimes are not entirely uncommon.
"These cases are not out of the ordinary, and while you are always looking at individuals who are closest to the victim, you also have to keep your eyes open," former Washington, D.C., homicide detective and Fox News contributor Ted Williams told Fox News Digital. "This is one reason why women are told, if you're going to be jogging alone early in the morning or late at night, to change their jogging pattern … because there are always, unfortunately, predators out here."
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"I've seen it happen around the country, unfortunately," Williams added.
The former homicide detective was reporting on the ground from the nation's capital when Chandra Levy, 24, was found dead in Rock Creek Park — a 2.7-square-mile park in the center of Washington, D.C. — in May 2002 after she vanished from a jog in May 2001.
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Levy was reportedly having an affair with former Congressman Gary Condit at the time of her disappearance, prompting speculation directed at the congressman until 2009.
That year, authorities arrested Ingmar Guandique, an undocumented immigrant and known MS-13 gang member involved in other abductions of women, in connection with Levy's abduction and murder. In 2011, he was sentenced to serve 60 years in prison.
The case remains unsolved to this day, however, because it was later overturned and in 2016 prosecutors dropped their case against Guandique. The next year, he was deported back to El Salvador.
Mollie Tibbetts, 20, also vanished while running on a rural road outside her hometown of Brooklyn, Iowa, on July 18, 2018.
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Cristhian Bahena Rivera, 27, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico working as a farmhand at the time, was convicted in 2018 for her murder and later sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Investigators tied Bahena Rivera to the scene of Tibbetts' murder after surveillance video from a homeowner appeared to show his Chevy Malibu repeatedly driving past the victim as she was jogging.
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When Behena Rivera was sentenced in 2021, Tibbetts' mother, Laura Calderwood, addressed her daughter's killer in a victim impact statement read by a representative to the court.
"Mollie was a young woman who simply wanted to go for a quiet run on the evening of July 18, and you chose to violently and sadistically end that life," Calderwood wrote, adding that because of Bahena Rivera's actions, her daughter would never get to experience marriage or motherhood.
In August 2016, Karina Vetrano was jogging near her family's Howard Beach home in Queens, New York, when she was brutally beaten and left for dead by an unknown assailant. Her father, Phil Vetrano, and police discovered her body about 15 feet from the jogging path in marshland.
Chanel Lewis, 22, was found guilty in 2019 of sexually assaulting and murdering the 30-year-old woman two years after his arrest.
Lewis confessed to killing Vetrano in a recorded interview with investigators. He said he was angry at his neighbor at the time and suggested Vetrano happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, according to The New York Daily News.
"She didn’t do anything," he told police. "I was just mad at that time. I beat her to let my emotions out. I didn’t really mean to hurt her. It just happened."
Authorities also linked Lewis to the crime through crime scene DNA.
Eliza Fletcher, a 34-year-old teacher, left her Memphis, Tennessee, home around 4 a.m. in September 2022 for a morning run. As she passed by the University of Memphis campus, a stranger named Cleotha Abston allegedly snatched her off the street, forced her into his SUV, sexually assaulted her and shot her in the back of the head.
Abston, 38, allegedly camped out in the area for about 24 minutes before Fletcher was taken. Police say surveillance cameras recorded him sprinting out of a GMC Terrain SUV and grabbing Fletcher around 5:30 a.m. In the ensuing struggle, he lost his Champion slides at the scene, and police found his DNA on them, according to an arrest affidavit.
Police found Fletcher's remains dumped behind a vacant home near Abston's brother's apartment days later. Witnesses told investigators they saw him washing out the SUV in the parking lot with chemical cleaner.
The case against Abston is ongoing; prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
Morin's case is also similar to the 2020 murder of Sydney Sutherland, 25, who was jogging near her home in Jackson County, Arkansas, when she went missing. Her body was discovered north of her home two days later, and police soon arrested Quake Lewellyn, 28, in connection with her abduction, sexual assault and murder.
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Unlike the former cases, authorities said Lewellyn, a local farmer, and Sutherland knew each other. He was traveling westbound on County Road 41, saw Sutherland walking and abducted her. He then put her in the back of his pickup truck and assaulted her before killing the young nurse.
Lewellyn would eventually confess to the crime, allegedly telling medical experts that he "was driving to check the wells and the rice fields" when he spotted Sutherland walking along a gravel road. He turned his truck around after driving past her, but could no longer see her and assumed he hit her with his vehicle. When he believed her to be dead, he took her to a rice field, where he dug a hole, took off her clothes "and tried messing with her a bit."
He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison in 2021.
Morin's cause and manner of death have not been released as of Thursday, but Harford County Sheriff Jeff Gahler described her killing as "a criminal homicide" in an interview with Fox News Digital.
Williams said suspects in these kinds of cases — strangers targeting women who are walking or jogging — typically occur in places that are familiar to them. The suspects are also normally young and relatively strong, he said.
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"Unfortunately joggers are at a disadvantage because the perpetrators of these kinds of crimes know where to [hide] to try to determine how best to take the woman down," the former detective said. "…It is more likely than not that the perpetrator was a man…and a younger man, and he would have known where to take [Morin] and maybe attempt to assault her and try to hide the body. The one thing you look for in a case of this nature is familiarity."
Morin's boyfriend, Richard Tobin, broke his silence Sunday in a Facebook post after online sleuths speculated that he might have played a role in her death.
"I love Rachel, I would never do anything to her, let the family and I grieve. Yes I have a past but I also have 15 months clean and have changed as a person. Please," the 27-year-old wrote.
Sheriff Gahler said investigators are looking into both Morin's "inner circle" and working their way out to people who may not have known her at all.
The sheriff's office is encouraging anyone with a tip that may be helpful for authorities to call 410-836-5430 or send the Harford County Sheriff's Office a message through its Facebook page.
Fox News' Louis Casiano, Yael Halon and Michael Ruiz contributed to this report.
