Annamaria Phelps was 18 when she and 21-year-old Daniel Lauer disappeared after leaving Amelia County on the night of September 4, 1989, headed for Virginia Beach in Lauer’s 1972 Chevrolet Nova. Their families reported them missing when they failed to arrive. On September 5 the Nova was found abandoned at a westbound I-64 rest stop in New Kent County, with the keys in the ignition and Phelps’s purse inside.

On October 19, 1989, hunters located the pair’s skeletal remains in woods off a logging road about a mile from where the car was found. The bodies were covered with an electric blanket taken from Lauer’s car. Because of advanced decomposition, investigators could not definitively determine cause of death or whether a sexual assault occurred, though there were indications Annamaria may have been stabbed.

The killings were long treated as part of the Colonial Parkway Murders, a series that targeted young couples between 1986 and 1989. In January 2024 authorities named a deceased local fisherman, Alan Wilmer Sr., as a primary suspect in the broader series; Wilmer died in 2017 and has not been conclusively linked to Phelps and Lauer by DNA. Anyone with information about Annamaria, Daniel, their movements that week, or the stretch of I-64 near New Kent County is asked to come forward.