Robert Kovack, a Virginia Tech graduate student, went missing 10 years ago.
Chapter Ten: Credit collectors and unanswered questions
Michael Kovack still receives numerous calls every month from credit and collection agencies, demanding money due to them from years ago.
Though he tells the solicitors time and again that his brother has been missing for a decade, Michael says he can sense the uncertainty in their tones.
"They automatically think you're lying to them, and that can just become so irritating," Michael said. "You try to be polite, but after they harass you it's a never-ending battle. They can't collect on these outstanding debts."
Somewhere since his brother's disappearance, Michael had all of his brother's bills forwarded to his address, hoping to ease the stress placed on his parents.
But before closure can be achieved in this investigation, a laundry list of questions linger.
Both Davis and Fitzwater are baffled at the lack of investigation from the FBI, and even Mankins struggled to offer an explanation for why the FBI was never actively looked to for support.
"I don't know why they were never pursued," Mankins said. "I've talked to a couple agents, but there's nothing other than his vehicle that says he actually crossed state lines."
The FBI will only get involved in cases that involve crimes crossing state lines, and because Blacksburg was the last place Kovack was seen, they have had no interest in an investigation, Mankins said.
And since the cause of disappearance has never been established, police have not given up on the idea that Robert may have chosen to walk away from his life and start over new.
"They kept saying that maybe there was no crime at all; maybe he elected to disappear, and a person can legally do that if they want," Davis said.
Cunningham echoed that, on occasion, people do not want to be found.
"If he is wanting to not be found, it will be difficult to track him," Cunningham said. "But on the same token, to have survived you would have to use your date of birth and Social Security number, or someone else's. Changing your name doesn't help because your social and date of birth still exist."
And Kovack's case is different, according to family members and police investigators. Even Cunningham said the typical character of a person starting a new life does not match what he was told about Kovack.
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Caleb, congratulations on writing the first decent article I've ever read in the CT. And I''m not being sarcastic.
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Nice article and the most thorough one I have seen on this case, which has bothered me for years!
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really well done.
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This was so interesting just by the way it was written! I feel so sorry for the family though! :( Definitely a lot of things not adding up!
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I believe he jumped into the Gorge after amassing a lot of debt, or somehow having an emotional breakdown.
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I think his body would have been found if he had jumped. Too many rafters around and too many rocks for him to be caught on to have simply disappeared if he had jumped.
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This is fascinating.
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Why did his roommates pack his things like that? That's very odd. Otherwise, I would have said maybe he just was so exhausted, as his classmate noted, that he didn't realize he'd left the Tracker in 4-wheel drive and failed to notice it out of gas. But the fact that at least two people state they did not see it within the time it would've been left there is extremely bothersome.
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This was a very well written article. Maybe if the state police release the reports on this case, some piece of information will trigger someones memory. His family deserves to know what happened!
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Hi, I just read this article after seeing that Caleb won the college reporter of the year award. Congratulations to him on the award, which was well-deserved after such a carefully researched article. I used to write for the CT and Caleb has made us all proud.
I did have one question though. The article mentions that Rob's roommates packed his things up despite being asked not to, so nobody ever knew what state his room was in when he left. But then it mentions that when investigators and family searched the room it looked like he'd never left town, and the backpack was still where he'd left it when he last came home. These two facts seem to conflict with each other. Was the room mostly packed up but there were still a few things out? It's VERY strange that the roommates would box up his stuff when he'd presumably at that point only been missing for a couple of days, especially after they were asked not to. I wonder if they ever gave any explanation for that.
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I just ran across this article while searchig for information on the Morgan Harrington case. I was a student at VA Tech when this guy vanished. Several friends of mine who were architechure majors knew him. back then everyone just assuemd that he was depressed and "took the bridge" and the area around the gorge was well searched. They had orgainized search groups and a lot of students went up there to help look for him. Nothign about the roomates boxing his stuff up ever came out back in 1999 when this happend. I think they may know more than they are lettign on.
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Yes, the roommates' actions were never explained in the article...presumably investigators questioned them and determined that they were not suspects, but why on earth would his roommates touch his room so soon after he left? Really, really strange.
My heart aches for his family.
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I was a student at VA Tech when this guy vanished. Several of my friends knew him well because he was their GTA. At the time this happened everyone was searching the New River Gorge because they thought he had jumped off the bridge. The fBI probabluy assumed it was a suicide. Based on the information in this article (some of which I never recall being made public in 1998) I think it is pretty clear they were looking for clues in the wrong place.
The roommates were clearly trying to hide something. Why would you dismantle your roomate's bed and pack up all of his belongings unless you were 100% sure he wasn't coming back? At this point nobody knew where he was! After reading this article I honestly don't think he ever left Blacksburg (no call home, shaving kit, backpack, and toothbrush at the apartment) and I think the roomates know what happened to him. I think his car was driven to the New River Gorge bridge and abandoned to create a diversion so everyone would assume he had comitted suicide by jumping off. This very likely gave the people responsible for his disappearance time to get rid of any evidence. I think all of the clues in this case points directly at the roommates!
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I agree that the roommates displayed more than a lapse in good judgment -- there was no reason, after the family requested them to leave his possessions alone, for them to be cleaning and packing things up. Since the article describes him as someone who stand up for himself, it's possible that a dispute got out of hand and resulted in his injury or death. Sad for the family that the investigator they hired didn't really put much effort into this case.
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Perhaps if you send copies to some FBI investigators they may take an interest in this case. Your article is well written and compelling enough to entice any investigator to search for answers.
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Perhaps if you send copies to some FBI investigators they may take an interest in this case. Your article is well written and compelling enough to entice any investigator to search for answers.
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