Virginia missing teen Alexis Murphy

Missing teen Alexis Murphy

Alexis Murphy (photo: facebook.com/acebooqie03)

Virginia missing teen Alexis Murphy was last seen in the early evening of August 3 at a gas station along route 29 in Lovingston, not too far from her home.

She stopped at the gas station and was expected to go to Lynchburg to get her hair done for her upcoming school portrait

After that, the beautiful teen seems to have fallen off the face of the earth, leaving her mother and other family members extremely concerned for her safety.

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Her car, a white Nissan Maxima, was found 3 days later, over 35 miles away in a movie theater parking lot in Charlottesville.

Shortly after her disappearance, authorities focused in on a suspect, Randy Taylor.

Taylor, 48, was a patron at an adult sex shop and the location is not far from where Murphy’s car was recovered.

He is also a suspect in the disappearance of another teenage girl, Samantha Clark. She was 19 years old when she disappeared 3 years ago and Taylor was the last known person seen with her.

There have been a number of unsolved disappearances along Route 29 and it is unknown if Taylor is a suspect in any of those cases.

Randy Taylor (photo: WDBJ)

Missing teen Alexis Murphy was seen on videotape at the gas station and the suspect was allegedly seen in a supermarket parking lot that happens to be right near the gas station where Murphy was last seen.

Taylor, in addition to being suspected in the abductions and possible murders, of Clark and Murphy has a very long rap sheet.  News & Advance reports that Taylor’s criminal record includes charges of assault, stalking, statutory burglary, grand larceny, arson and brandishing a firearm.

Now that Taylor has been arrested in connection with Murphy’s disappearance, after authorities found a hair matching Murphy’s in his camper, he is telling a story that her family does not believe.

He claims to have spoken with Murphy before when Taylor was working at a local car wash and says that Murphy began talking to Taylor after she noticed he was smoking marijuana.

Through his attorney, Mike Hallahan, Taylor now says that Murphy, on the day of her disapperance, was inside his camper with another person, a man, and that he and the unidentified man sipped Icehouse beer and smoked marijuana.

He also claims that he had asked the teen if she could find him a drug dealer. .

Taylor claims not to know the man’s name but purchased $60 in marijuana from him. Hallahan, Taylor’s court-appointed attorney said that Murphy did not smoke marijuana or drink as the three talked.

He then said the now missing teen and the man she was with left in separate cars before dark and that he never saw them again. He described the unidentified man as a black male in his early 20s who had cornrows and was driving a 1990s sedan.

Could Taylor be telling the truth or is he spinning a take, as many criminals do, in an attempt to cast himself in a more favorable light?  Could he have been stalking the pretty teen after seeing her in the car wash, where he once worked?

During a search Wednesday, approximately 10 feet from U.S. 29 an investigator was overheard saying “We found it!”.

No further information has been released, however, according to CBS News, investigator Billy Mays of the Nelson County Sheriff’s Office declined to release information about the search but noted that crews have shifted from a missing person search to a criminal investigation.

That move seems to indicate that authorities believe that Alexis Murphy may be dead.

Anyone with information concerning the whereabouts of Alexis Murphy should contact the Nelson County Sheriff’s Office at (434) 263-7050.

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