Missing Maryland Teens Deaths Ruled Suicides

The search for two missing Montgomery County teens missing since Jan. 19 that drew wide attention along the Atlantic seaboard ended today when both girls where teens found dead in a car in rural Loudoun County. The Loudoun County sheriff's office says they probably expired of carbon monoxide poisoning.

The Virginia medical examiner's office in Fairfax County ruled yesterday on the cause of death based on a preliminary autopsy, Loudoun sheriff's spokesman Kraig Troxell said. "Although the case remains an active investigation, it appears the two teens took their own lives," Troxell said in a statement.

The sheriff's office would not release further details, citing a policy not to disclose information in suicide cases.

Rachel Samantha Smith, 16, of Potomac, and Rachel Lacy Crites, 18, of Gaithersburg, were found dead in the front of the Crites family's car Friday on an access road off Route 9 near the West Virginia border. They had been missing since Jan. 19, when they told their parents they would be attending a movie in Georgetown.

Police immediately suspected that they had gone to the area around Charles Town, W.Va., based on a tracked cellphone call one of them made about the time they disappeared. The bodies were found by people using an all-terrain vehicle a few miles from Charles Town.

Police and family members had said they were worried about the mental state of both teenagers based on statements they had made in the past. That concern stemmed in part from a diary entry made by Crites, in which she wrote of her desire to be buried next to her true love.

Shortly after the teenagers' disappearance, investigators received several tips that they had been sighted in the area where their bodies were later found.

Several reported seeing the Crites family's blue Subaru station wagon before it was discovered at the edge of a steep, snowy mountain embankment on the Loudoun side of the Virginia-West Virginia border Friday.

Residents reported seeing one or both of the teenagers at a small store in Shannondale, W.Va., and near or on the campus of Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, W.Va.

Scott Beard, a Shepherd University music teacher and faculty adviser for Allies, a gay-lesbian-transgender group on campus, said yesterday that he had been recently questioned by a Montgomery investigator during the search for the girls because authorities had received information that Crites and Smith were a couple and had been seen on campus together. Beard said, however, he had never met or seen the girls. (Washington Post)

Montgomery police spokeswoman Lucille Baur confirmed that investigators had pursued a tip suggesting that Crites and Smith were possibly romantically involved and had visited Shepherd University. But it was one of many tips received during the search that did not pan out, Baur said.

Reached at home yesterday, Smith's father, Paul, said the family is likely to be in shock "for a long time" over the girls' deaths. He said a funeral for his daughter will be held later this week.

"We just want to get Rachel home and put her to rest," Paul Smith said of his daughter.

Reached by phone yesterday, Rachel Crites's father, Troy, said his daughter had been in treatment for depression. But counselors and family members had not noticed any warning signs for suicide, he said, declining to comment further. "They got it in their minds that this was a way to see out of their current hurt," Troy Crites said.

(Washington Post, Washington Times, Reuters)