Bluefield Daily Telegraph
— By CHARLES OWENS
Bluefield Daily Telegraph
CLAYPOOL HILL, Va. — Although nearly a year has passed, a tragic double slaying in Tazewell County still remains unsolved.
As the one year anniversary of the Pizza Plus murders approaches, police are renewing their appeal to the public for help in solving the horrific crime.
Two employees of the Claypool Hill-based pizza parlor, Harvey Looney, 52, and his wife Valerie Looney, 48, of Bandy, were both found deceased on the morning of March 30, 2009, at the restaurant. Looney was found outside near the restaurant’s back door and Valerie Looney was found at her desk.
The slayings shocked the normally peaceful Claypool Hill community. A multi-county manhunt that was launched in the hours and days after the slayings failed to locate the suspect or suspects.
However, detectives with the sheriff’s office in Tazewell have never stopped investigating the case, according to Sheriff H.S. Caudill.
“As of just last week, there were things they were following up on and working on,” Caudill said. “It’s not something we’ve set aside. We’ve put precedence on this case. We knew from the very beginning that this was a very difficult case and a very complex case. And because of the type of situations we are dealing with we are making sure that with every aspect of the investigation that we go through it with a fine-toothed comb. That no stones are left unturned. I know that is police terminology but that’s the way we are handling it.. We are working very closely with the Virginia State Police which is still helping us on it, and Commonwealth Attorney Dennis Lee is still working closely with us on it. We are confident that we are going to hopefully sometime bring closure to it. We’ve never given up hope on any part of it.”
Caudill said the sheriff’s office is investigating leads locally, regionally and out of the state.
“We have looked locally, in surrounding counties and states and even states away from our area,” Caudill said. “That’s information we are gathering and we go and search and follow those leads. Sometimes it may take us weeks to track it down to then find out it is a dead end. I wish we had kept a record of the hours we’ve put into this investigation. Because the number of hours we have worked on this — many times have just led us nowhere. But still as I said we’ve turned over every stone. We will follow it (every lead and tip) through even if it doesn’t match the crime scene.”
Caudill said the sheriff’s office continues to withhold details concerning the couple’s cause of death as part of the ongoing investigation. Caudill said anyone with any information concerning the crime is still asked to contact the sheriff’s office.
“Please do — because sometimes little tidbits of information they may think has nothing do with the case (can help),” Caudill said.
Caudill said he spoke with a concerned citizen just last Wednesday who told the sheriff he “working on the Claypool Hill case.”
The 2009 slayings are the only unsolved homicides in Tazewell County in recent history. Caudill said there is only one other unsolved homicide in Tazewell County. That case dates back to the 1960s.
Anyone with any information regarding the pizza parlor slayings are asked to call the sheriff’s office at (276) 988-5966.
— Contact Charles Owens at cowens@bdtonline.com
