An Alexandria man has been convicted of trying to set up an enemy with a false tip in the Morgan D. Harrington case, Virginia State Police announced Thursday.
Alvin T. Daniels, 51, was arrested in May and convicted Wednesday of intentionally making a false statement to state police, according to authorities.
A Nov. 11 anonymous tip told police that a 34-year-old Prince William County man was responsible for Harrington’s disappearance, according to authorities.
But investigators, working with the FBI and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, soon determined that the tip was a try for revenge, not a legitimate lead, according to police. The Prince William County man had nothing whatsoever to do with the case, according to police.
Daniels must repay the Virginia State Police for the time they spent vetting his tip, at a cost of $1,600. He also cannot have contact with the man he tried to set police on, and was sentenced in Appomattox Circuit Court to six months in jail, suspended so long as he maintains good behavior for the next year.
“Investigative tip lines are for the sole purpose of generating relevant information related to an ongoing criminal investigation,” Lt. Joe Rader, who is working the case, said in a news release. “We in no way want to deter anyone from calling state police or Crime Stoppers with information, but the public does need to be aware that there are penalties for purposely misleading investigators with a tip. In this instance, our investigators had to spend valuable time away from the Morgan Harrington case in order to vet an intentional false lead.”
Harrington, a 20-year-old Virginia Tech student, went missing after leaving an Oct. 17 concert at the University of Virginia’s John Paul Jones Arena. She was last seen hitchhiking on the Copeley Road railroad bridge. In January, a farmer found her remains in his southern Albemarle County pasture.
Since then police have used forensic evidence to link Harrington’s death to a 2005 abduction and sexual assault in Fairfax.
Police ask anyone with information about the crime to call the state police at 352-3467 or Crime Stoppers at 977-4000.
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