Rhiannon Rosie Gordon

A 10 year old girl who was abducted while riding her bicycle is found dead
In the warm summer of 1989, the quiet, suburban community of Burke, Virginia, was a place where children rode their bikes freely through wooded paths and around Lake Braddock. Ten-year-old Rhiannon Gordon, a bright and happy Asian/Pacific Islander girl known to everyone as "Rosie," was a familiar face in her neighborhood. Remembered for her "ticklish laugh," she often joined groups of friends riding home from the local pool on her purple glitter bicycle. Her sense of childhood security, and that of the entire community, was shattered on the evening of July 2nd.

Rosie had been visiting a friend's house just a few blocks from her own home on Hollins Lane. She left at 6:55 p.m., trying to make her 7:00 p.m. curfew. Her friend walked with her part of the way, leaving her at a street corner. Shortly after, when Rosie failed to arrive, her father went out to look for her. He made a devastating discovery on Lake Braddock Drive, only two blocks from their house: Rosie's abandoned bicycle. The spot, obscured by foliage around a curve, was an ideal place for an abduction to go unseen.

A massive search was immediately launched, with family, neighbors, and police desperately combing the area. The community rallied, holding onto hope for Rosie's safe return. But their hopes were tragically extinguished on the morning of July 4th. A passerby discovered Rosie's body under a clump of trees in a wooded area off Bentonbrook Road and Edenderry Drive in Fairfax, about five miles from where she was last seen. An autopsy later determined her cause of death was asphyxiation. The news sent a wave of shock and fear through the once-peaceful neighborhood, forever changing parents' sense of safety.

The Fairfax County Police Department began an immediate and intensive homicide investigation. Detectives learned that just before her disappearance, Rosie and her friend had reportedly been followed by a man in a blue car. A month later, police held an unusual press conference to name Randall Lee Breer, a Dale City man with a history of sex offenses, as the prime suspect in Rosie's abduction and murder. Investigators, relying in part on an FBI behavioral profile, believed Rosie was a victim of the same man responsible for a series of sexual assaults on young girls in Northern Virginia.

Though Breer reportedly confessed to four of those assaults, he adamantly denied any involvement in Rosie's death. Investigators' theory soon unraveled when it was confirmed that Breer had a solid alibi: he was at a company party in another county on the night Rosie was abducted. While he was later convicted and sentenced for the other sexual assaults, he was never charged in connection with the Gordon case. The public naming of a suspect who was later cleared drew criticism from the Commonwealth's Attorney.

Over the ensuing years, the investigation into Rosie's murder has continued, but with no resolution. In 1992, police briefly looked into another man who died by suicide before he could be questioned about a different attempted abduction, but no link to Rosie's case was ever established. Other individuals, including another convicted sex offender, were also considered, but no evidence emerged to definitively connect them to the crime.

Decades later, the murder of Rhiannon "Rosie" Gordon remains an unsolved cold case, a painful and lingering injustice for her family and community. The Fairfax County Police Department's Cold Case Squad continues to list her case, hoping that new information might finally emerge. As of July 2020, her case was featured on a new cold case webpage created by the department to generate public interest and new leads. The person responsible for ending the life of a happy 10-year-old girl on a summer evening has never been brought to justice, leaving behind a legacy of unanswered questions and enduring grief.