Parents plea for ground search volunteers

The family of Morgan D. Harrington is seeking volunteers to redouble the efforts to locate the Virginia Tech student who disappeared Oct. 17 after leaving the John Paul Jones Arena.

Harrington’s parents were in town Wednesday along with the father of returned abductee Elizabeth Smart to announce a new ground search on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

“It’s augmenting what [authorities] are doing,” the missing woman’s father, Dan Harrington of Roanoke, said.

The effort will be organized by the Laura Recovery Center for missing children, a Texas-based nonprofit.

Vest-clad volunteers will execute a grid search over ground the Virginia State Police and other law-enforcement agencies have already covered.

“Searchers can go over an area three times before they find something,” Ed Smart said.

Police have been following up on hundreds of tips, but so far have only managed to corroborate Morgan Harrington’s location as far as a bridge on Copeley Road, where she was at about 9:30 p.m.

On Wednesday evening, Virginia State Police officers, police dogs and search and rescue teams combed property near the State Farm Insurance Co. campus on Pantops, checking out a tip regarding Harrington.

They found nothing, but state police Lt. Ann Barber said investigators plan on checking every tip that comes in.

“At this point, this is our priority. We’re going back and relooking at tips,” she said. “We’re deploying all of our resources. If you get an idea, we’ll look at it.”

Officers from the state police, the University of Virginia Police Department, Albemarle County Police Department and Albemarle County Sheriff’s Office searched the area, Barber said.

The search began after a phone call that described a suspicious vehicle that was in the area around the time of Harrington’s disappearance. “A vehicle looked wrong to someone,” Barber said. “It looked out of place and that made someone suspicious, so we searched the area. We’re not taking anything for granted.”

Also Wednesday, Harrington’s mother, Gil, reached out to her daughter, asking her to hold on, and asked her captor to release her.

“You try to program your kids with enough wisdom and strength that when they are on the dark side of the moon and not receiving messages from you, that they know to come home,” she said after Wednesday’s news conference.

Police haven’t released any evidence pointing toward abduction, but Harrington’s family is convinced that it is the most likely scenario.

Dan Harrington said he thinks his daughter’s abductor is likely still in the Charlottesville area.

Her mother added that seeing young blonde women jogging in the area from which her daughter disappeared made her nervous for them.

Ed Smart came into the picture after Dan Harrington called him. Harrington said he admired the strength and dignity with which Smart’s family weathered Elizabeth’s abduction in Utah.

Elizabeth was 14 when she was taken at knifepoint on June 5, 2002, from her Salt Lake City home. She was found alive in March 2003.

Ed Smart and Dan Harrington have become “members of the club that no one wants to join,” they said.

Smart has been able to help the Harrington family cope with their ordeal, Dan Harrington said.

Smart said he now occasionally speaks with families of the abducted.

In preparation for the new search, there will be a meeting for volunteers at 7 p.m. today at the Cavalier Inn. Searches will take place near JPJ on Friday, Saturday and Sunday mornings, and volunteers unable to make the Thursday meeting are still welcome.

The reward for information leading to Harrington is now more than $150,000. That includes $50,000 from Metallica, the band that was playing the arena the night Harrington disappeared.

Harrington is 5-feet-6-inches tall, weighs about 120 pounds, is blonde with blue eyes and was last seen wearing a black T-shirt with “Pantera” written on the front in tan letters, a black miniskirt, black tights and boots.

Police are asking anyone with information to call 352-3435 or e-mail bci-ap pomattox@vsp.virginia.gov.

Police timeline

All locations are for a woman or women closely matching the description of Morgan Harrington.