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a photo of Dawn and Eden, taken the morning before their deaths Dawn: May 14th, 1978 - October 22nd, 2017 Eden: January 12th, 2006 - October 23rd, 2017
SOLVED
Dawn Rachel David (nee Becker) and Eden Miriam David were a mother and daughter, murdered for being Jewish.
Dawn was born in the UK, in Newcastle upon Tyne, or just simply, Newcastle, the oldest of three children, and the only girl, in a Jewish family. When she was nineteen, she met Leonardo David, who she began dating the following year. Eden moved to Roanoke, Virginia, in 2004, and they were married shortly thereafter, and two years later, welcomed their only child; a girl named Eden Miriam David. They did attempt to have more children after Eden, but ended up having nearly five miscarriages and one stillbirth.
The family attended the Temple Emanual Reform Congregation in Roanoke, Virginia, where they went at least every Saturday.
On Sunday, October 22nd, 2017, at around noon (EST time), Dawn, who was six months pregnant, went out to grab groceries and took Eden along with her, while Leonardo, or simply Leo, did yard work. Later, at around 6PM (EST time), Leo attempted to call Dawn, naturally confused at what was taking so long for the girls to get home. He tried texting her, calling her, to no avail. Leo did not call police, believing he hadn't had enough reason to.
The following morning, the bodies were discovered off of Interstate 95, by John Hadley, who was passing through Spotsylvania County, Virginia. They were both naked but sexual trauma was only found on Eden. Initially Jane Does, nicknamed by Spotsylvania County police as Spotsylvania County's Mother Jane and Daughter Doe, they would be identified as Dawn and Eden David on the first day of Hanukkah, December 12th, 2017, using dental records, and they were buried on December 20th, 2017, in the Roanoke Community Jewish Cemetery.
"It was so heart wrenching when I received that phone call," Leo told us. "To be told my wife and daughter were dead, after they'd been missing for nearly two months. I could hardly bear it."
Dawn was a very kind woman, who often cooked for her neighbors and other members of the congregation. Eden was a sweet, though shy, girl who was an exceptional student and had a very artsy spirit to her; she talked about one day wanting to become an animator.
The case would remain unsolved, due to the substantial lack of leads, until earlier this past September. Ayesha Gul, a Muslim seventeen year old girl, who had been missing since January of this year, went running to police in Staunton, Virginia, where she told police she'd been kidnapped by a man named Brendon Ways. She was able to point police out to his residence. When police went there, they found that Ways had shot himself, along with a confession letter, and that he actually had a reputation for kidnapping non-Christian women;
In June of 2013, Ways kidnapped thirteen year old Hina Tsurugi (加藤ひな; Katō Hina), a shinto girl from Japan who had been visiting family in Richmond, Virginia.
Ways had a separate letter, describing what he did to each one of the girls;
He brought Dawn and Eden home, by showing them a gun, and saying that nothing bad would happen to them if they came with him, which they did. He killed Dawn almost immediately after taking them back to his home in Staunton. He then raped Eden before leaving her to bleed out in his basement. He says she died shortly after midnight and so, he dumped their bodies on I95.
