FBI Joins Music Teacher Murder Investigation, Vets Tips

With so many tips coming in about the death of a well-known music teacher, the FBI is stepping in to help Alexandria police "vet each and every tip," police announced Monday.

Detectives and officers returned to 59-year-old Ruthanne Lodato's neighborhood Monday to pass out fliers featuring a sketch of the man believed to be responsible for killing her and injuring another woman.

Police also spent the day taking additional evidence from the home, including a large door wrapped in black paper and crime tape.

The shooter knocked on Lodato's door in the 2400 block of Ridge Road Drive just after 11:30 a.m. Feb. 6 and opened fire. Lodato and her mother's caregiver were shot.

Lodato was taken to a hospital in critical condition and later pronounced dead. The surviving woman was shot in the arm and hospitalized with non-life threatening injuries.

Lodato's mother was also inside the home during the shooting, but was not injured.

The suspect is described as an older, balding man with gray hair and a beard. Police say he was wearing tan outerwear at the time of the shooting, possibly a jacket or a work coat.

Right now, police say there's no evidence linking Lodato's death to two other unsolved murders in Alexandria, despite their similarities.

Last November, 69-year-old Ronald Kirby was fatally shot inside his home, less than a mile from the house where Lodato was killed, and in 2003, real estate agent and wife of Sheriff Jim Dunning, Nancy Dunning was gunned down inside her Del Ray home.

No arrests have been made in either case.

Over the weekend, police pulled a man from a D.C. theatre after a few people in the audience at the National Academy of Sciences told security that the man looked like the suspect in the police sketch. But after speaking with the man, authorities determined that he was not connected to the case.
 
If you have any information that can help police, you're asked to call police at 703-746-6864.
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