Virginia police identify suspect in 3 cold-case homicides from the 1980s, including victims of the "Colonial Parkway Murders"

A smalltime fisherman who died in 2017 has been linked to three cold-case homicides in Virginia from the 1980s, including two that were among a series of unsolved slayings of couples known as the "Colonial Parkway Murders," law enforcement officials announced Monday.

Virginia State Police identified the suspect as Alan W. Wilmer Sr., but offered few details about how he's tied to the killings, which occurred in 1987 and 1989, or when he became a suspect. However, authorities said Wilmer would be charged if he were alive.

"Part of the cold case philosophy is to go back over and start re-looking and going back through all the witness statements, all the evidence," Corinne Geller, a Virginia State Police spokeswoman, said at a news conference. "And it's a very time consuming, very complex, but a very effective way."