Alexandria police have not identified a suspect or determined a motive in the killing of Nancy Dunning, wife of Sheriff James H. Dunning, more than a month after she was gunned down in her home.
Mrs. Dunning, 56, a prominent Del Ray-area real-estate agent, was found dead on Dec. 5, laying at the bottom of a stairwell in her home with multiple gunshot wounds in her back. Police have reported no developments in the investigation, despite extensively questioning the victim’s friends, relatives and business associates and probing her recent activities and relationships.
“It is still an active, ongoing investigation,” Alexandria police spokeswoman Amy Bertsch said yesterday. She said the case remains a “top priority,” as would any homicide in the city.
Alexandria police investigated four homicides last year and closed two of the cases. The unresolved cases are the slayings of Mrs. Dunning and of Gail Collins, a 49-year-old government employee found fatally shot in her apartment on March 21.
Early in the Dunning investigation, police searched the family home in the 200 block of Mount Ida Avenue, the sheriff’s city-owned Ford Crown Victoria and the personal vehicle of the couple’s son, Christopher.
Nothing was taken from the house or from the son’s car, but police seized a number of items from the trunk of Sheriff Dunning’s vehicle, including a pair of rubber gloves, a white towel, a pair of brown gloves, four golf gloves, a bag of shotgun shells, two 12-gauge shotgun shell boxes and a photograph of an “unknown female” that was in a briefcase in the trunk.
Miss Bertsch yesterday declined to comment on specifics of the investigation, including whether the police had identified the woman in the photograph.
Friends of the family said Mrs. Dunning had planned to meet her husband and their son for lunch on the day she was killed. When she did not show up at the restaurant, the two went back to the house and found her dead, they said.
Among those interviewed was Mrs. Dunning’s sister, Christine Neidermeier, who had disagreed with Mrs. Dunning over the care of their now-deceased mother. Miss Neidermeier was in Connecticut at the time of the killing.
Sources familiar with the crime scene said that there was no sign of a forced entry and that investigators suspect Mrs. Dunning knew her killer.
A reward fund established by friends and neighbors of the Dunning family has raised more than $75,000 for information leading to the killer’s arrest.
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