BERKELEY SPRINGS, W.Va. — According to a criminal complaint, investigators were able to link a Berkeley Springs man and a 15-year-old murder victim through drywall mud found in his work truck and on her body.
Andy McCauley, 41, was initially arraigned Thursday in Berkeley County after being charged in the murder of Riley Crossman, his girlfriend’s daughter.
The criminal complaint filed by state police troopers said cadaver dogs picked up the scent of a dead body under a toolbox in McCauley’s work truck. They also spotted drywall mud in the pickup truck bed. According to troopers, there was what appeared to be drywall mud on Crossman’s right shoulder and right foot when her body was found over an embankment in a rural mountain road section of Tuscarora Pike in Berkeley County Thursday morning.
According to the complaint, authorities were searching in the Tuscarora Pike area because they believed that’s the way McCauley would have traveled to work from his Berkeley Springs residence to a work site near Hedgesville.
McCauley, a construction worker, was missing from the work site for more than four hours on May 8, the day Crossman went missing, the complaint said.
Eyewitness and video evidence put the truck at Crossman’s residence and traveling toward the area where the body was found, troopers said.
McCauley was questioned by police Thursday not long after the body was located. The criminal complaint said there were inconsistencies in his story about the time in question including why he left work and which way he traveled to and from the work site.
The criminal complaint did not list a possible motive for the crime.
An autopsy was scheduled to be performed on the body Friday at the state Medical Examiner’s Office.
McCauley is being held without bail in the Eastern Regional Jail. He’s scheduled to appear for a preliminary hearing in Morgan County Magistrate Court next Friday, May 24, at 2 p.m.