Robert Kovack, a Virginia Tech graduate student, went missing 10 years ago.
Chapter Eleven: Closure
Michael said Rivesville has deteriorated in recent years, becoming more of a passing-through town between Fairmont and Morgantown.
Rivesville rests on the banks of the Monongahela River and is dominated by an oversized coal power plant. Residences occupy much of the land in the small town, though abandoned shops, bars and office spaces are also in abundance.
Michael said the bars they used to frequent and where Rob used to work have all shut down, and he said that while the city hall in the center of town remains, not much else is constant.
"Even the playgrounds at the schools are in shambles," Michael said. "It's completely different. You don't see kids doing anything on the playgrounds, so there's no incentive to fix them."
The passing of each year ushers in a new mentality for the Kovack family and investigators.
Cunningham and Mankins agree that the entire scope of the investigation changes and becomes more challenging with each day.
"This person could have been killed or buried," Cunningham said. "There are plenty of places in West Virginia with the mountains, not to mention with Kentucky and Tennessee and Virginia. You have coalmines and shafts that people fall in. There are a lot of ways for people to disappear."
The once optimistic declaration of hope that Robert will be returned to them has begun to fade, something that Michael labeled as true reality setting in.
"At this point, I'd say in the first few years, you still had hope that he was alive somewhere," Michael said. "It's pretty safe to say that if there were someway in which he was alive, he would have found a way to contact someone. He wouldn't just leave everyone in limbo if he had any way. Even if it was just to say, 'Hey, I'm safe, I'm fine, don't worry about me.'"
"Deep down we all have hope that he is out there," said Michael, who has named his son Robert in memory of his missing brother. "But as each day and year go by, you have to be a realist. The hope is diminished. All we as a family want is a little closure to put things to rest."
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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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