Joe Lavigne, Jr.

For his own part, Mr. Lavigne has spent a lot of time in prison developing what he says is a list of possible suspects in his daughter's rape. He's also taken note of crimes in the area that are similar to the attack his daughter suffered and he's not the only one.

Around the time that the state was prosecuting Mr. Lavigne, he says the FBI contacted the Hurricane Police Department about a case they were working that they felt was similar to his daughter's case. According to Mr. Lavigne, Hurricane police refused to cooperate with the FBI. Mr. Smith did tell the jury he was contacted by the FBI about a similar crime in Kentucky, but said that after talking to him the agent was convinced the two cases weren't connected.

The FBI, meanwhile, has resisted releasing documents detailing their contact with Hurricane police regarding the attack, saying the records would invade someone's privacy. They won't say whose. The Hurricane Chief of Police said he doesn't remember any requests from the FBI regarding the Lavigne case.

Mr. Lavigne, however said he thinks the FBI was looking at the abduction, rape and eventual murder of Morgan Jade Violi, a little girl in Kentucky, as a possible match for his case. The FBI, however, told Where Doubt Remains it can't find any records that show the agency ever investigated the Violi case. However, a cached version of the FBI's Web site from 1996 shows the FBI was clearly involved. The page lists details about the case, a $20,000 reward and pleas that anyone with information contact the agency’s field office in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

The Hurricane Police Department, however, says that it would release the Lavigne case file to the public--if it still had a copy. In a letter to Where Doubt Remains, Police Chief Joe Sisk said that when Mr. Smith the department a few years back, he took his the file with him and that he would have to be contacted to obtain a copy. He didn't mention the Mr. Smith, along with another officer and the former chief in Hurricane, was suspended and then fired from hi job for reasons that have never been made clear to the public.

Mr. Smith's chief in Winfield said in another letter that he wouldn't require Mr. Smith to release the case file without permission of the Putnam County Prosecutor, Mark Sorsaia. But in a phone call, he told Where Doubt Remains that Mr. Smith didn't even have the file and that everything had been turned over to the prosecutor. He also declined to let Mr. Smith talk to Where Doubt Remains about the case.

Mr. Sorsaia, meanwhile, hasn't returned multiple phone calls over the course of months to his office. Earlier this year, an investigator working with Mr. Lavigne's attorney in the Kanawha County Public Defender's Office told Where Doubt Remains that they, too, were having difficulty getting access to some of the documents in that case file.