Investigators, Family Look For Break In 1987 Murder Of Tuscaloosa Kindergarten Teacher

TUSCALOOSA, AL — Around midnight on the evening of June 10, 1987, a University of Alabama Police officer conducted a routine patrol of the Riverside Pool when he noticed a parked 1986 Honda CRX with its interior light on.

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Upon further inspection, the officer found that the driver's side door was ajar. Inside the hatchback car, investigators recovered 23-year-old Chanda Fehler's purse, driver's license, UA student ID and towel, but her keys were reportedly nowhere to be found.

The discovery of Fehler's seemingly abandoned car, along with her family reporting her missing, immediately prompted a large-scale investigation that saw police quickly examine pool records and interview those who had last seen Fehler.

Sadly, Fehler's nude body was found four days later in the Black Warrior River by fishermen in the area of Cap'N Bob's Marina, near the Peterson community. Fehler's hands and feet had been tied together, with her killer then trying to sink her body by tying her to a three-hole cement cinder block.

Medical examiners speaking to local news media at the time said it was determined that her cause of death was "suffocation, smothering or drowning."

The killer hasn't been caught or otherwise identified nearly 38 years later but investigators aren't giving up hope just yet.

"The case has never been closed and has been reviewed and re-initiated numerous times by different investigative teams," Tuscaloosa Violent Crimes Unit Commander Captain Jack Kennedy said on Friday. "Currently, an intense evaluation of physical evidence is being conducted. These modern, state-of-the-art techniques were not available until just a few years ago. We are hopeful that the result of these tests will help provide leads or closure to this case."

Hoping For A Break

The Tuscaloosa Violent Crimes Unit held a press conference Friday afternoon along with Fehler's siblings to remind the public that investigators continue to work the case and that a $10,000 reward previously offered by Alabama Gov. Guy Hunt was still active for those providing information leading to justice in the case.

The award got as high as $20,000 in 1987 — with a $8,000 reward originally put up by Fehler's church, $1,000 from CrimeStoppers and other smaller donations — but Kennedy said the $10,000 offered by the state is still available to anyone providing information leading to an arrest in the case.

Kennedy, who serves as the commander of the multiagency unit, also used the opportunity to say that technological advancements, even in the last year, have given investigators new capabilities in their latest re-examination of the case.

"Some of these techniques are modern, state-of-the-art techniques that have never been done before in the state of Alabama," Kennedy said, before going on to explain that multiple pieces of physical evidence have been or are in the process of being tested.

Above all else, though, Kennedy reminded the public that nearly four decades have passed and said now is the time to come forward so Fehler's family can have closure.

"Anyone who has information about this crime, or has personal knowledge of a suspect, now is the time," Kennedy said. "Now is the time to provide closure for Chanda and her family. Now any information you provide may be eligible for the $10,000 reward. Now is the time do the right thing."

Fehler's siblings were also in attendance and said they had a renewed sense of hope that the suspect will be brought to justice thanks to the present work of investigators and the use of new technology.

Chanda's sister, Kristin Fehler O'Connor, at first said the family was cautiously optimistic for a big technological breakthrough in the case but went on to commend the dogged determination of investigators working the case.

"This did not exist in 1987 or for several years after that, so we're very optimistic," she said. "We're hoping the state will get some results for us. We did have some physical evidence that we sent and we're really hoping to get some results — some concrete, pinpointing results."

Chanda's other sister, Allison Fehler Sherrill and her brother Earnest Fehler Jr. both agreed with Kristin that they are hopeful the work being put in will see their sister's killer brought to justice in their lifetimes and the lifetime of the person responsible.

"We all three feel like we're closer today than we've ever been in these 38 years, we're almost on the cusp," Sherrill said. "And really Captain Jack Kennedy and his group, they are phenomenal, relentless. They call you at any time of day or night, and that's alright."

What We Know

Chanda Fehler — a University of Alabama graduate student and kindergarten teacher at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary at the time of her death — was bubbly, creative and loved children.

Described by her sister Allison as "small but mighty," Chanda was an expert at needlepoint, with her family saying the back of her cross-stitching looked as good as the front. The Fehler siblings still have some of Chanda's handiwork framed, representing some of the few lasting memories of their beloved sister.

Prior to attending the University of Alabama in her hometown of Tuscaloosa, Fehler had been an honor student at Central High School who helped build the homecoming float her senior year. She was a member of the French club and was involved with the school newspaper, where she was considered a talented writer by her peers.

Fehler's sister Allison said the family had managed to save some of her writings and speculated that her sister likely would have gone on to write children's books apart from her career in teaching and dreams of becoming a mother.

She was also popular and beloved by those around her.

Indeed, one newspaper report from her Central High School class's 10-year reunion in 1991 said her classmates referred to her as "Chanda Honda," because it was catchy. Her sisters also said she had a sticker on her Honda CRX that said "Chanda's Honda."

"We just liked it because it rhymed," Fehler's best friend Anne Moyer Falls told the Tuscaloosa News at the reunion, saying they had been friends since the fourth grade. "We played with Barbie dolls, went camping, wrote plays, made puppets, acted out 'Star Trek' episodes and swam together every summer."

Falls also said her friend had a secret crush on their English teacher, William McBride.

"Who didn't? All the girls loved him," Falls recalled.

After graduation, Fehler quickly became a beloved member of the MLK Elementary community, with the school later naming an award for Fehler following her death. The award was reportedly given to an outstanding fifth grade student for qualities such as "a willingness to help others, good manners, friendliness, creativity and kindness" — traits Fehler was said to have embodied.

The year following her death, the Kiwanis Club of Greater Tuscaloosa donated $250 to the Tuscaloosa Public Library, while the Northington Elementary PTA also gave $600 in Fehler's memory.

Still, Fehler's routine most summer days included going to the Riverside Pool on McCorvey Drive around noon and walking with her mother in the evenings.

Around noon the day she went missing, Fehler reportedly left for the pool around the same usual time and planned to visit with her sister later in the day and then go to a study session with a group of classmates.

Fehler was a no-show for her visit with one sister and when her other sister stopped by her apartment to borrow some records, she reportedly found a note left by her sister's classmates who had visited the apartment but found that Fehler wasn't home.

Fehler was last seen alive at the Riverside Pool around 12:30 p.m. the day that her Honda CRX was later found in the parking lot. She was reported missing by her family in the hours after the vehicle and her personal effects were recovered, which led investigators to begin connecting details.

"We have confirmed that she was at the swimming pool, that is without question," Captain Jack Kennedy said in the present day.

Numerous witnesses were interviewed in the hours and days after the vehicle was recovered, including a woman from Fehler's church — First United Methodist, where she sometimes kept children in the nursery — who told police she saw the young woman at the pool leaving with her belongings but said that she never saw her drive away.

She was last seen wearing a black, one-piece bathing suit with pink frills around the collar.

Additional information was reported by local news at the time that Fehler may have been spotted around 1:30 p.m. at the McDonald's restaurant on Highway 82 in Northport. This witness testimony was never confirmed.

Investigators told news reporters in August 1987 that they had their work cut out for them due to a lack of physical evidence and the advanced stage of decomposition when Fehler's body was recovered, which was only identifiable through dental records. Investigators also said Fehler's autopsy showed "no trauma to the body."

The FBI speculated that the way Fehler's killer attempted to dispose of her body strongly suggested that she knew the person responsible, due to the fact that killers who cannot be connected to their victims typically don't make any attempt to hide the bodies of their victims.

Several suspects were quickly developed after the missing persons case evolved into a murder investigation and numerous leads were pursued by the Tuscaloosa Metro Homicide Unit — the fledgling precursor of the Violent Crimes Unit that had barely been in existence for a decade.

Among the most compelling tips included at a woman who told investigators through an anonymous phone call that they saw Fehler "embracing a man" in the area of the Riverside Pool parking lot in the time before she vanished. The anonymous tipster reportedly never came forward again.

"If the lady who made that anonymous call and described a male suspect whose description fits one of our suspects would please call back," Tuscaloosa Metro Homicide Commander Tom Lowe told the Tuscaloosa News in 1991. "If we could get her to pick someone out of a photographic lineup, we could very well be on our way to making an arrest and solving this case."

As time passed, memorials and vigils were held for Fehler and any suspects remained free, with investigators coming up short on enough evidence to move forward with charges.

Indeed, former homicide investigator J.R. Simpson told the Tuscaloosa News in 2004 that they had zeroed in on a possible suspect for years, but that they hadn't found the hard evidence yet to connect the individual to Fehler's murder.

"That's one of those things that just plagues us," Simpson said in the newspaper interview. "Without something that ties him there."

In the years following the murder and with the emergence of new crime-fighting tactics such as the relatively new field of criminal psychology, investigators in the early 1990s sought the insight of the FBI's famous Behavioral Analysis Unit to construct a psychological profile of Fehler's killer.

While the accuracy of FBI criminal profiling is regularly brought into question and under scrutiny, the profile provided of Fehler's murderer was a "secret admirer type" — particularly a single white male around Fehler's age and social status who struggled interacting with women.

The profile postulates that the killer likely held a fixation on Fehler from afar and that she might have known him and willingly followed him, which could potentially indicate a premeditated plan.

The FBI report issued shortly after the murder said the killer was likely a meticulous and patient person who planned things well in advance — not impulsive and unlikely to lash out at others.

What's more, the profile speculated that the killer placing Fehler's body in the river could have signified a type of "water burial" that would be less emotionally and physically intense to the killer than burying their victim in the ground.

Lastly, the profile said the killer likely would have felt a sense of relief after the murder, but would have been unnerved by the re-appearance of the body ... to the point that he may have become ill and missed several days of work once news of the murder became public.

In the present, Kennedy declined to provide additional specifics on potential motives or suspects but did confirm that investigators believe Fehler knew her killer.

"It has long been believed that the suspect in this case knew Chanda and was not a stranger," Kennedy told local media on Friday. "Invariably there are people who have personal information about suspects and can help solve cases. Eye-witness testimony is just as valuable, if not more valuable, than forensic evidence. This includes observations before and after the crime, and conversations with possible suspects. Any valid witness information may be corroborated by the new forensic leads, and vice versa. This can be useful, even if someone was not present and did not personally witness the crime."

Kennedy encouraged anyone with information regarding the murder of Chanda Fehler to contact him directly at (205) 464-8692 or the Violent Crimes Unit at (205) 464-8690.

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