New evidence discovered in 43-year-old cold case involving murder of Henrico woman

HENRICO COUNTY, Va. (WRIC) -- 8News is digging into the latest development in a decades-old cold case that has detectives feeling optimistic. Forty-three years ago on Nov. 25, 1981, Olivia Thorndike was brutally murdered in her western Henrico apartment complex. If she were still alive today she would have been 67 years old. To this day, no one has been held responsible for Thorndike's murder. But now, three years after 8News first reported Henrico police were pursuing new investigative techniques, detectives are reviewing new evidence. "Recently, we did partner with a private lab to get some testing done on some of the evidence and it did garner some new results that we are looking into," said Karina Bolster, a spokesperson for Henrico police. "Technology has certainly advanced since this crime took place." It was 1981, the day before Thanksgiving when Henrico County police found the 24-year-old dead at the bottom of the stairs of her Harbor Village apartment on Mainmast Court. She had been stabbed in the chest multiple times. "That family could never have Thanksgiving, or any other holiday, normal again," said Thorndike's childhood friend, Cat Storch. Shortly after the incident, Henrico police identified two suspects -- Gary Lankford, who was awaiting trial for trying to rape Thorndike (he was later convicted) and Richard Slaughter, who police and family say was stalking Thorndike. Henrico police say both men knew each other. Slaughter was charged in connection to Thorndike's murder in 1983 -- but police tell us there wasn't enough evidence to move the case forward and charges were later dropped. Storch began writing letters and postcards to Slaughter to try to get him to go to the police. "I mean, probably 200 of them, if not more over the years," said Storch. In the 43 years since Thorndike's murder, Lankford has since died. Henrico police confirmed the two men remain persons of interest along with a third unnamed person. Storch has spent the last seven years keeping the case alive. She created a Facebook page called "The Unsolved Murder of Olivia Thorndike." "The investigator in me said, 'OK, I'm going to investigate this. I'm going to get down to the bottom of it and I'm going to find out everything I can.' And that's what I've been trying to do," Storch said. Over the years, detectives have explored numerous leads including a tip 8News brought to Henrico police three years ago about a neighbor who had seen a green station wagon car parked in front of Thorndike's apartment shortly before her murder. "Unfortunately, nothing came out of that one," Bolster said. "We're just really focusing on trying to get answers for this family, trying to find an end result that will help us close this case." In the meantime, Storch can't help but wonder what kind of woman Thorndike would have become. "How many kids would Olivia had or not had? Or would she have raised horses just like her sister? Or would she have become a wonderful volunteer? Would she have become, like, who knows? She had her whole life ahead of her," Storch said. Henrico cold case detectives are reviewing the new evidence and ask anyone with any other details about this case to please come forward.