Retired FCPD officers creating police museum
Effort to preserve, showcase county’s law enforcement history soon will be on display in Fairfax City
by Gregg MacDonald, FAirfax County Times
http://www.fairfaxtimes.com/article/20120323/NEWS/703239692/1076/-best-on-reston-honorees-announced/Retired-FCPD-officers-creating-police-museum&template=fairfaxTimes

In February 1949, long before there was a Reston, a double homicide was committed in the Green Forest nudist colony, which, today, is located where the Reston South Park and Ride commuter parking lot sits at the intersection of Reston Parkway and Lawyers Road.

Charles Holober of Washington, D.C., later confessed to shooting his wife and burying his infant daughter alive there. Dubbed the “laughing killer” by the media because of his apparent lack of remorse, Holober was declared insane and remanded to the Southwestern State Mental Hospital in Marion, Va., for the rest of his life.

Dwight Lee Hubbard, 76, of Fairfax Station remembers the incident.

“I was just a kid of 13, but it was all over the newspapers and the story was even later published in ‘Crime Detective’ magazine,” he said.

The killings stuck with Hubbard, who in 1954 graduated from Fairfax High School, and in 1956 joined the Fairfax County Police Department after training with the FBI as a fingerprint examiner.

Hubbard retired as a lieutenant in 1979, and today is part of a small group of fellow retired county officers that soon will open a Fairfax County Police museum dedicated to the department, which was created in July 1940.

Hubbard, along with 2nd lieutenant Daniel Courtney, civilian volunteer Daniel Cronin, and captains Paul Puff and Eddie Wingo, have accumulated memorabilia since 2006.

The group has stored the items inside two first-floor rooms within the Massey building’s police headquarters.

Wingo died in 2008, but the others estimate they now are only months away from being able to schedule public viewings of the artifacts, including the front page of the Feb. 28, 1949, Times Herald newspaper showing Holober being booked for murder.

Other items include thousands of photos, vintage police uniforms, firearms, patches, radar guns, polygraph equipment, and even the tail of a police helicopter that flew on a 9/11 mission in 2001.

“One of the personal items that I donated is a nightstick that contains a tear-gas canister inside it,” Hubbard said. “You wouldn’t be allowed to use something like that today.”

Courtney, a 27-year veteran, said a more public version of the museum eventually will be set up in a room now used by the Fairfax County Sheriff’s Department, which will be moving in a few years to a new facility. The museum’s current incarnation is being funded by sales of Courtney’s 219-page book, “History of the Fairfax County Police Department, 1921-1990.”

“Both the book and the museum project was a group effort,” he said. “We all have a great general interest in history, and particularly law enforcement history. There so far has not been a comprehensive effort to preserve the history of the Fairfax County Police Department, so we set out to do it.”

In doing so, Courtney said throughout the years he and the group were able to meet with dozens of retired officers and their families who recalled hundreds of stories, and donated or loaned many items to the project.

“One of the most interesting items to me is called a ‘pen register’ that reportedly came from the CIA and aided police detectives in tapping phone lines,” he said.

According to Courtney, before the 1967 Supreme Court case Katz v. United States, it was legal for detectives to tap phone lines with the approval of the commonwealth’s attorney.

“What Dan Courtney and this group are doing is incredible,” said Fairfax County Deputy Chief of Police Lt. Col. Ed Roessler. “In addition to providing the public with a history of the department, it is also a great learning tool for younger officers to understand the people, procedures and equipment that were here before them, and that helped the department get to where it is today.”

Shamus Ian Fatzinger/Fairfax County Times Retired police officer Daniel Courtney goes through the contents of a small room in the basement of the Massey Building that contains artifacts that will be part of the new police museum in the ground floor of the Massey Building.
Attachments:

Now they have a place to jerk each other off, after they prey on the poor and weak, GREAT !!

Here's some information on the

Frances and June Holober: February 1949
http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/library/branches/vr/bunny/bunny2.htm

It would be hard to imagine a more disturbing event for a growing community like Fairfax than the gruesome murders of 37-year-old Frances Holober and her eight-month-old daughter, June. On Thursday February 24, 1949 Mrs. Holober and her daughter drove to Fairfax County in the company of her estranged husband Charles. All were residents of the District of Columbia. Charles Holober later told police that they had come to see the new lodge at a nudist colony to which Mr. Holober belonged.

Upon leaving the lodge the car became mired in some mud. The couple quarreled and Mrs. Holober took the child and walked away from her husband and never returned. Charles Holober spent the night in the car and got a ride back to Washington the next day. He returned with his brother-in-law and a friend to retrieve the car. Still finding no evidence of his family, the police were finally notified.5 An intensive search of the area was organized involving Fairfax County Police, Washington Detectives, and Boy Scouts.

About 5:00 p.m., just as the searchers were about to give up for the night, one of the detectives noted that the ground on which they were standing was very soft. Both mother and daughter were found in a shallow grave next to the lodge and less than 200 yards from where Charles Holober's car had been stuck. Frances Holober had been beaten and then shot once in the head and once in the heart. The baby girl had been buried alive.6

The local community was shocked and horrified by the cold brutal character of the crime, especially when the investigation identified Charles Holober as the prime suspect. Holober later confessed to investigators that he had planned the murder for three weeks and had not intended to report the disappearance of his wife, but changed his plan when the car got caught in the mud.7 The case came to trial on January 16, 1950. After hearing four days of testimony the jury returned a verdict of guilty, and Holober was sentenced to die in the electric chair.8 Holober's attorney, T. Brooke Howard, filed an appeal alleging that the jury failed to give proper consideration to the plea of insanity, and that the Court made errors in its instruction to the jury.9

The Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals eventually overturned the conviction and ordered a new trial. Charles Francis Holober was re-committed to the Western State Mental Hospital at Marion, Virginia, where he was judged to be insane.10 It is interesting to note that this was the first time since the Ridgeway Murder Trial of 1927 in which a Fairfax County jury invoked the death penalty.11

I hope my tax dollars aren't paying for this.

Stephen, in order to worry about how your tax dollars are spent, I suggest you get a JOB first, then buy PROPERTY. Then you may worry about more than masturbating to the latest Katy Perry video, picking your nose and getting to the dinner table on time when Mommy calls you. Have you always been a moron or is this something new for you?

stephen Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I hope my tax dollars aren't paying for this.

Damn sight better than subsidizing a day labor center to encourage illegal immigration and sign up for welfare days.

It is sad that out of the 70+ years the department has faithfully served the community and the officers done their jobs properly... that so many people would focus only on the incidents where there was some wrong doing.

To hold the entire department at fault for the actions of a few is idiotic.

This same logic would allow the police to view every citizen as a criminal when they arrest just one for a crime.

There will always be a few bad apples in any group.

The Joker Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> To hold the entire department at fault for the
> actions of a few is idiotic.
>
> This same logic would allow the police to view
> every citizen as a criminal when they arrest just
> one for a crime.
>

okay. That same logic does allow the police to do exactly that.

When and where is this museum going to open?

They should build a massive marble statue of a radar gun in front of the new museum. At the bottom engraved " 1 million dollars in tickets every day."

tl:dr Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> When and where is this museum going to open?


More important question: Who would go to such a museum? Especially considering all the better options in DC or next to the Airport.

More Important Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> More important question: Who would go to such a
> museum? Especially considering all the better
> options in DC or next to the Airport.

McGruff the crime dog will go.

@more important - well, most of us do actually manage to see more than just one of them

not that hard..................

1st floor of the Massey building is the where.

Gordon Blvd Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> @more important - well, most of us do actually
> manage to see more than just one of them
>
> not that hard..................

Yeah, I said "Who would go to such a museum? Especially considering all the better options in DC or next to the Airport."

I didn't say "Especially considering that one museum in DC"

Good lord.

First floor of the Massey, Huh good luck getting in their?

*It is sad that out of the 70+ years the department has faithfully served the community and the officers done their jobs properly... that so many people would focus only on the incidents where there was some wrong doing.

To hold the entire department at fault for the actions of a few is idiotic.

This same logic would allow the police to view every citizen as a criminal when they arrest just one for a crime.

There will always be a few bad apples in any group.*

And if they would prosecute those "few bad apples" as they would any other "civilian" bad apples, people wouldn't look so poorly upon them.

Cops are corrupt by their very nature and believe that the laws don't apply to them. They say they don't, but you can tell just by talking to them.

Even the notion of referring to anyone not a cop as a "civilian" is arrogant. Everyone is a perp to them. Just ones that have or haven't been caught yet, unless they have some "blue" in the family.

The only civilians are the ones not in the military and despite what they think, they are not military.

That's nothing. There was a serial killer back in the 60's-70's that would dump the body off the Reston Parkway. Back then I think the Reston Parkway was Reston Avenue maybe Old Ox road.

The bodies were dropped in the stretch of Reston Parkway past Home Depot before Rt7. It was a wooded section back then and the serial killers dumping ground.

"Failed Logic: And if they would prosecute those "few bad apples" as they would any other "civilian" bad apples, people wouldn't look so poorly upon them."

The police do not make that decision... the County prosecutor does. Furthermore, you cannot hold the officers responsible for what the chief decides to do or not do. many officers would also like to see bad cops get charged. They have their hands tied with the system.


"Failed Logic: Cops are corrupt by their very nature and believe that the laws don't apply to them. They say they don't, but you can tell just by talking to them."

Can you please cite this because it sounds like your opinion. I know tons of citizens who do not even believe in the laws and break them intentionally. So there seems to be no difference in your argument.


"Failed Logic: Even the notion of referring to anyone not a cop as a "civilian" is arrogant. Everyone is a perp to them. Just ones that have or haven't been caught yet, unless they have some "blue" in the family. The only civilians are the ones not in the military and despite what they think, they are not military."

Who are you talking about? It looks like only YOU are using the term CIVILIAN. I have never heard a cop call anyone a civilian. Please provide a cite for this too. They serve the CITIZENS of the county. If someone did use the term CIVILIAN,I am sure it was done in error. But you are the exception because you knew what you were saying.