I'm fairly new to Websleuths and was drawn to this thread since I too live in the Charlottesville area and remember the news stories about Robert. I'm one of apparently a few people who do, though. Compared to some other missing persons stories in my area from the last few years -- Morgan Harrington, Alexis Murphy, Dashad (Sage) Smith -- the Hourihan story has received sparse coverage. The families of the other missing people have passed out flyers, organized searches and vigils and pushed to keep their loved one's name in the news and on people's minds. When I mentioned this case to my co-workers, none of them remembered it.
I have to wonder if there are people in my area who know something, saw something, but because of the relative lack of publicity, don't even know it's significant.
I also got directions from Columbia to La Plata, and they started with going east to Richmond to pick up I-95. Does anyone know how long he and his wife had lived in the area or how comfortable he was with Charlottesville? It seems like if he lived in Fluvanna and worked in Richmond, he might not be too familiar with Cville, which makes it even odder that his car was seen at the 5th Street exit.
5th Street is one exit for downtown Cville, but not the fastest/most direct one if you're coming from the east. Other than that, there's not much near the exit...some apartments/townhouses, a couple of gas stations and fast food places, a Holiday Inn and the Albemarle County Police Department.
Finally, I'm struck by the reports that he regularly stopped by the E.W. Thomas grocery store to get breakfast on his way to work in Richmond. If he truly lived in or near Columbia, which is a tiny, tiny town, going to Palmyra on his way to Richmond would require some serious backtracking. I also mapped this and compared the routes with and without the stop, and going to the store would add more than 20 minutes to his trip. I know people are loyal to this grocery store, I've been there, but it seems really odd that he'd go that far out of his way before work on a regular basis.
