New details are emerging in what the sheriff is calling a random home invasion murder of the mother of an up-and-coming country singer from rural Virginia, but members of the tight-knit community are still searching for answers as the suspect showed no warning signs until he appeared to snap out of the blue.
The Shenandoah Valley is an idyllic community known for its heritage and local landmarks – not for crime. But around midnight on Aug. 3, a 41-year-old Maryland man named Kevin Moses Walker broke into the home of Holly and Michael Hatcher, 62 and 65, armed with a knife. He killed Holly, a former teacher beloved by the local community, and fought with her husband until Michael retrieved a handgun from his vehicle and fired a single deadly shot into the intruder.
It happened at the Hatcher family’s 19.4-acre property in Timberville, Virginia, near James Madison University and less than 5 miles from the landmark Endless Caverns, where the suspect took a tour and booked a campsite just days before the attack.
“Everybody knows a little bit of everybody over here,” said Mike Stewart, the general manager at Endless Caverns. “Everybody has questions.”
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He said Walker was polite and seemed to be interested in caves – like many visitors that come through the gates.
“He was a ‘yes ma’am, no sir,’ person, just didn’t register any aggressiveness on our part,” Stewart said. “That’s why everybody’s looking for answers.”
Walker spoke cordially with guides and other visitors during the tour, he said. In addition to the cost of the tour, he also rented a campsite for the night.
The rural stretch is northeast of Harrisonburg, the Rockingham County seat. The Virginia Civil War Museum and the Shenandoah Caverns are other landmarks nearby in the quiet, quaint area east of the West Virginia line.
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Stewart said Walker interacted with numerous staffers, tourists and other campers. He described him as polite and unremarkable, if not a little down on his luck.
But for reasons that remain unclear, he snapped.
“He was at his campsite til early morning Saturday and then sometime right before dawn, when he was leaving, who knows what happened, that’s when he ran his car into our front door, shattered our front door area,” Stewart said. “He was in the cave, there were signs. He left his hat there.”
Then he left.
Early on Aug. 2, Virginia State Police found Walker’s vehicle disabled in a ditch between the caves and the Hatcher household. But they found no sign of him.
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Just before midnight on Aug. 3, Walker broke into the Hatcher home, stabbed 62-year-old Holly Hatcher and attacked her husband Michael. After their struggle spilled outside, the 65-year-old homeowner retrieved a handgun from his vehicle and fired a single fatal shot into his attacker.
Their son is country singer Spencer Hatcher, a 28-year-old who signed with Nashville’s Stone Country Records in October.
“He didn’t ding our radar as being somebody that would end up doing what he did,” Stewart told Fox News Digital.
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Rockingham County Sheriff Bryan Hutcheson said over the weekend that his oldest son had the victim as a schoolteacher and said previously the home invasion attack was unprecedented in his 31 years of law enforcement.
Walker lived in Pikesville, Maryland. Hutcheson said he had no known criminal record.
“I’ve heard a lot of you say that there are no words to explain this, and there aren’t – and there’s going to be questions that will never be answered,” Michael Hatcher said in a video posted by the sheriff’s office, in which he thanked law enforcement and the local community for their support. “But all I can tell you is, we’ve cried, we’ve hurt, we’ve hugged, and we have found more love than we have ever known has existed between us and between you. Thank you.”
Public records indicate Walker never owned a home and appears to have lived with family in the Baltimore suburb. Police said the vehicle was registered to him.
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“We’d like to know what he came from and what his past was, but we’re just thankful that nothing really happened here (at the caverns),” Stewart said. “We’re grieving for our community and our neighbors.”
Holly Hatcher would have turned 63 on Tuesday. Stewart said the campground’s sign, visible from the family’s home nearby, would be illuminated in pink light in her honor after sundown.
