VIRGINIA STATE POLICE
Virginia State Police said they have not yet been able to determine the cause of death of Lisa K. Gaudenzi.
By BILL MCKELWAY
Published: June 15, 2010
The 15-year search for the remains of murder victim Lisa Gaudenzi covered wide swaths of the country and reached a milestone last week with the discovery of a tell-tale bit of evidence: a piece of dental bridgework just a few inches long.
Col. W. Steven Flaherty, Virginia State Police superintendent, announced yesterday that the painstaking investigation helped resolve longstanding questions that endured even beyond the conviction of Gaudenzi's killer, her husband, Lawrence, a year ago in Caroline County.
Flaherty said much of the mystery surrounding what happened to the 31-year-old mother of two children and 1994 Virginia Commonwealth University graduate remains undetermined -- including the cause of death and the whereabouts, if any, of her skeletal remains.
But he said the discovery last week in a woodland field off Massaponax Church Road in Spotsylvania County, about 45 miles north of Richmond, helps make sure that her "family had the closure they so desperately needed and deserved."
Lisa Gaudenzi's family in New Jersey was notified of the discovery Saturday in person by state police investigators who had worked on the case.
Lawrence Gaudenzi, now 46, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in May 2009, three days into a trial in which Caroline Commonwealth's Attorney Anthony G. "Tony" Spencer summoned 54 prosecution witnesses, each of whom was able to establish that Gaudenzi's explanations for his wife's disappearance were in conflict and not truthful.
"I think he just broke down under the weight of what he was hearing," Spencer said yesterday.
The guilty plea preceded scheduled testimony from a state police investigator who tracked down a homeless man in Florida who still had a tape recording of one of Gaudenzi's error-filled explanations.
Sentenced to 25 years in prison, Lawrence Gaudenzi remained of interest to state police investigators who were determined to find his wife's remains.
"He wanted to play 'Let's make a deal,'" state police special agent J.R. "Doc" Lyons said yesterday. Lyons visited Gaudenzi in prison repeatedly and gained his confidence but never made a deal.
Gaudenzi eventually promised to lead Lyons and others to his wife's body. And under extraordinary security last week, Gaudenzi, shackled at his ankles and wrists, walked agents to the spot where he remembered leaving his wife's body.
According to state police, Gaudenzi described a horrifying disposal site. Lisa Gaudenzi, he said, was killed, wrapped in a sleeping bag and stuffed into a 55-gallon oil drum. Muriatic acid -- used to clean or etch brick and stone -- was poured over her.
State police, in fact, found scattered remnants of a sleeping bag and empty bottles of acid on a patch of cut-over timberland -- but there was no metal drum, no skeletal remains, no body -- just the tiny fragment of dental work.
Within days, it was established that the bridgework belonged to Lisa Gaudenzi, Lyons said yesterday.
Spencer said he believes Lisa Gaudenzi was killed because she was about to leave her husband, a former Richmond tow-truck driver who made a home with her in a Caroline subdivision.
"He had had a terrible childhood and couldn't bear to see the only thing in his life that was really his taken away from him," Spencer said, referring to a daughter the Gaudenzis had together. Lawrence Gaudenzi was not the father of Lisa Gaudenzi's other child.
After the killing, Lawrence Gaudenzi left the area and took his daughter with him. What began was a long period of hiding and police work to locate him. A big break came in 2002, when Richmond's NBC affiliate broadcast a story about Lisa Gaudenzi's murder and her husband's disappearance.
A tip came in that Gaudenzi was living in the Harrisonburg area and was using the alias Randy Lee Evans, a homeless Richmond man missing since 1998.
Gaudenzi was taken into custody and charged with forgery and perjury. State police continued working the murder case, which Spencer agreed to prosecute -- despite the absence of the victim's body or knowing a cause of death.
Now, Lawrence Gaudenzi remains behind bars, his daughter has been reunited with her grandparents, and Evans' family in North Carolina still awaits some information about Evans' whereabouts. State police believe he, too, was killed.
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