EDA Investigation Series Parts 9 – Bianchini 2nd interview

In the second of two Front Royal Police interviews with yours truly, Royal Examiner reporter and editorial consultant Roger Bianchini on June 16, 2017, investigators Landin Waller and Crystal Cline revisit information given them in his initial interview around 10:45 a.m. that morning.

In the interim between the two interviews FRPD investigators have learned from the Warren County Sheriff’s Office that the rock-throwing vandalism Bianchini reported being told about by Jennifer McDonald the previous afternoon, had been reported by McDonald as occurring around 9 p.m. the previous evening. That was some five to six hours after Bianchini said the EDA executive director described the front-door vandalism of her home to him, leading him to believe the incident had occurred over the course of the previous week.

In interview two, Episode 9 of Royal Examiner’s series of FRPD investigative interview videos Bianchini returns around 3 p.m. to confirm the information given to investigators that Friday morning.

Perhaps ironically, McDonald’s lengthy FRPD interview concerning the EDA office break in, separated into three parts in this series, occurred Thursday afternoon, June 15, 2017, between 1:15 p.m. and 2:56 p.m., just prior to the meeting in her office Bianchini would to describe to FRPD the following morning.

Reference FRPD’s June 16, 2017, interview with EDA Marketing Director Marla Jones (Episode 7) in which Jones corroborates Bianchini’s story that he had a lengthy, closed door meeting with McDonald mid-afternoon, Thursday, June 15, and was not at the EDA office the morning of Friday, June 16, to be informed of the vandalism as McDonald attorney David Crump asserted he was during McDonald’s misdemeanor Filing a False Police Report trial of October 31, 2018. Jones’ interview was conducted around 1 p.m., between the two Bianchini interviews of June 16, 2017.

For some reason the prosecution did not call Jones to corroborate their main witness Bianchini’s story, though she was present to be called that Halloween Day and her FRPD interview was available to the prosecution. Also uncalled to testify at that trial that saw McDonald acquitted without having to present a defense were the FRPD officers who developed the false police report case.

As noted in the preface to Bianchini’s morning interview (Episode 8) video, in the coming year and a half the EDA executive director would come under increasing scrutiny by multiple levels of law enforcement, as well as by the Town of Front Royal, and eventually the County and her own EDA Board of Directors, culminating with her December 20, 2018 resignation; as well as apparent written acceptance of responsibility for the return of $2.7 million in misdirected EDA assets McDonald remains jailed without bond as a flight risk in the Fairfax Adult Detention Center, where she was transferred from RSW Regional Jail on June 11. She was arrested by Virginia State Police on four felony counts of fraud or embezzlement of EDA assets on May 24, 2019. She will be in court Monday, July 15, to enter pleas on those initial charges, and possibly on eight related financial felony counts she was served with on June 21.