Photos by SAM DEAN The Roanoke Times

Dozens gathered in North Roanoke County on Friday night for a vigil honoring Morgan Harrington, whose body was found Tuesday in Albemarle County.

Dan and Gil Harrington exchange candles as they take turns speaking during a vigil honoring their daughter at their North Roanoke County home. The couple thanked the crowd for supporting them over the past months.

Gil Harrington stands with her son, Alex, while her husband, Dan, speaks during Friday night's vigil.

They parked their cars along the nearby suburban streets, and in the dark they huddled at the foot of the hill in front of the two-story brick house. There were dozens of them, clutching candles, the flickering lights of a hope for solace.

The vigil in front of Gil and Dan Harrington's home Friday evening was a physical manifestation of the online community that formed during the three-month search for their daughter, Morgan. Beyond the confines of Facebook and Twitter, in the Harringtons' North Roanoke County neighborhood, it had autonomously taken its own course.

Just hours after a farmer found the 20-year-old Virginia Tech student's remains in a remote Albemarle County field Tuesday morning, members of the "Help Find Morgan Dana Harrington" Facebook group began organizing a vigil outside her parents' home.

The family didn't organize it, said Janet Crawford, a longtime friend who passed out candles at the vigil. But the Harringtons embraced it as a way to channel public concern they'd helped generate during the search for their daughter through social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

"Having been nothing but private people heretofore, all of this is a foreign life," Gil Harrington said of the public attention. "But you don't want the person who killed her also to have erased her. I think you have to use [the attention] to do something good, to make something good, because that will give lasting memory to Morgan's life."

On Oct. 17 Morgan Harrington became separated from friends at a Metallica concert at the University of Virginia's John Paul Jones Arena, her parents said. David Bass discovered her skeletal remains Tuesday morning in his Anchorage Farm hayfield.

The discovery of Harrington's remains 101 days after she was reported missing triggered a surge of tips to investigators trying to determine how she died, when she died and where she died, the Harringtons said.

Her family used the attention from new and traditional media as a means to garner support in the search for their daughter. But they've also used it to advocate for other parents in similar situations. On the "Today" show on Thursday morning, they told host Meredith Vieira they met with Virginia Sens. John Warner and Jim Webb last week to seek federal funding for the National Center for Missing Adults.

"We are a prime example of the pain and the difficulties that families have after someone goes missing," Dan Harrington said on the show. "There is no template: Law enforcement, communities, parents don't know what to do."

But the family has been flooded with support after the public's appetite for news through the Web site findmorgan.com, YouTube videos about Harrington and social-networking sites.

Related

Latest story

• Parents: Morgan Harrington likely died quickly

Online

• "Help Find Morgan Dana Harrington" Facebook group
• findmorgan.com
• twitter.com/find_morgan

Timeline

Matt Chittum | The Roanoke Times

Click to see a map documenting the timeline of sightings of Harrington in thehour before she was last seen.

Ongoing coverage

• Follow the search for missing Va. Tech student Morgan Harrington of Roanoke County

After her body was found this week, support came from other continents. "Mis condolencias a la familia Harrington," wrote one woman from Lima, Peru, on a Facebook page for Harrington. My condolences to the Harrington family. A man wrote: "Some prayers from France ... all my strength to you."

Supporters in social media also pushed for answers. By Friday afternoon, some of the 34,000-plus members of the "Help Find Morgan Dana Harrington" Facebook group were asking where the investigation would go. A Kent State University student wrote, "Has anyone heard anything about the time or cause of death yet?"

"It could take weeks-- or longer -- for the state medical examiner's office in Richmond to determine how Harrington died, assuming her skeletal remains yield any clues at all," said Emil Moldovan, an adjunct instructor of criminal justice at Radford University and former death investigator in the Los Angeles County medical examiner's office.

But some elements in the media and on the Internet have also disturbed the couple -- particularly suggestions that their daughter's attire or behavior was somehow responsible for her suspected abduction and death.

"No matter what Morgan did, she deserved to be safe walking the streets of Charlottesville, the streets of the University of Virginia, so those comments really, really made me angry," Dan Harrington said.

The family's public activism, friends said, is a counter to their private nature. Their advocacy has been in the interest of helping other people and keeping the case alive and honoring their daughter.

"We want to be able to show how you get through tragedy, and how you can be public about that and maybe help people," Dan Harrington said. "Secondly, Morgan had a short life of 20 years. She should not be forgotten."

At the vigil, some people walked up one by one onto the Harringtons' lawn and spoke of their prayers for them, and of their amazement that the family has been able to reach out to others, having lost their daughter in still unknown, yet horrific circumstances. Standing above the crowd with the candles, Gil Harrington said, "We know that we have been held up by your love in this catastrophe. We could have never made it without you."

Then, the crowd sang from lyrics handed out on small sheets of paper: "Let there be peace on earth."

Staff writers Rex Bowman, Meg Martin, Stephanie Ogilvie and The Associated Press contributed to this report.