JUSTIN COOK The Roanoke Times

Laura Childs (left) and Dr. Keith Metzler and his wife, Laura, listen at the Childs' home in Forest as Don Childs reads a statement on the two-month anniversary of the killings of their daughter, Heidi Childs, 18, and the Metzlers' son David, 19.

Earlier coverage

• Concerned Craig Creek residents convene for update on Caldwell Fields killings
• Police seek help from hunters, hikers
• Task force continues to get tips on killings
• Reward in killings increases to $50,000
• Task force to probe students' killings
• Hundreds mourn slain Lynchburg teens
• Police still chasing leads about Va. Tech student shootings
• Virginia Tech announces $10,000 reward for information about killings
• Funerals for Tech students set for Monday afternoon
• Police still seek leads in deaths of Tech students
• Few clues, many tears in deaths of Tech students
• Caldwell Fields neighbors did not hear shots
• Dan Casey: Neighbors shaken after meadow becomes killing field
• Police seek suspects in Virginia Tech students' killings

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• Heidi Lynn Childs
• David Lee Metzler

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Heidi Childs and David Metzler, seen here in a photo from her Facebook profile, were inseparable.

Statements

• From Virginia State Police [PDF]
• From Virginia Tech president Charles Steger [PDF]

FOREST -- When he canceled her cellphone, Don Childs knew he was forever losing the chance to call it one more time to hear the voice of his 18-year-old daughter, Heidi.

He had to clear her things out of the Blacksburg apartment she had just moved into with five friends -- her first apartment -- and close her accounts at Virginia Tech, where she was a sophomore with dreams of being a physician assistant and studying diseases.

He had to cancel her bank account, forcing him to explain that his daughter had been killed.

Don Childs said he has had to do "things that no parent should ever have to do" in the two months since Heidi and her boyfriend, 19-year-old David Metzler, were found shot to death in a remote area of Montgomery County.

"My wife and I have had to take painstaking steps to attain some form of resolution to Heidi's life," he said in the living room of his Forest home Monday afternoon as his wife, Laura, and Dr. Keith and Susan Metzler, David Metzler's parents, stood nearby.

The bodies of Heidi Childs and David Metzler were found the morning of Aug. 27 in a parking lot of the day-use area of Caldwell Fields, a group campsite in the Jefferson National Forest on Craig Creek Road. Both had been shot.

No one has been charged in connection with the crimes.

The pair were last seen at Heidi's apartment just before 8 p.m. the night before, Investigator Brad Roop of the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office said. They had planned to head straight to Caldwell Fields, he said.

Though David, the youngest of four children, went to Brookville High School and Heidi, the fourth of eight children, was home schooled, the pair had been a couple for four years, Don Childs said.

They loved the outdoors, he said.

David had been to the Caldwell Fields site and wanted to share its beauty with Heidi, he said. Heidi had written some songs and wanted to share them with David. Both took their guitars.

Heidi, who had told her mom that day that she wanted to change her studies from biochemistry to pre-med, had a lot of homework to do that night, so they didn't plan to be gone very long, Don Childs said.

Roop said it appears they were killed that evening.

Don Childs and Keith Metzler said they hope someone remembers something from that night -- or the days before and after it -- that could help with the investigation.

"We're hoping that in the process of time people may have recalled something," Don Childs said.

Maybe someone saw a suspicious car, he said. Or maybe someone noticed a friend or relative acting strangely the next day, Keith Metzler said.

"Somebody knows something," said Childs, a sergeant with the Virginia State Police who has served as a pilot for about 20 years. "That's the key."

Nearly $70,000 has been donated toward a reward fund for information leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever is responsible for the crime.

As he went through his daughter's computer, looking at all the pictures she had taken of her boyfriend and her friends, Don Childs said, he was reminded of how special she was "not only to us, but to her church and her friends." He said he appreciated the outpouring of love and support the families have received from the community.

He said his family and the Metzler family take some comfort in knowing their children are in heaven.

"We are comforted in that: knowing we will see them again," he said. "It will just be a matter of time before we are reunited."

However, he said, "it doesn't mean we won't cry."

In the first few weeks after the killings they were kept busy, Don Childs said. There was the initial phase of the investigation. There was a double funeral for David and Heidi at Heritage Baptist Church in Lynchburg. There was the task of taking care of "the things you would take for granted," Don Childs said, like closing accounts, turning off cellphones and cleaning out rooms.

Two months later, Keith Metzler said, "our emotions are catching up to our intellect."

"It's really starting to hit us even more now."

Anyone with information about the killings of Heidi Childs and David Metzler is asked to call the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office at 382-2951.