Nearly 28 months following Jimmy Blevins’ disappearance, authorities are still searching for clues and the reward offered for information regarding the case has increased to $15,000.

Frederick Hammer has emerged as the case’s top suspect but he is currently serving consecutive life sentences for the shooting deaths of Frederick and Ronald Hudler and John Miller. He is currently being held in the Powhatan Correctional Center, a level three security facility in State Farm, Va.

After pleading guilty to the murders in May, Hammer told the court that he did not play a part in either Blevins disappearance or Shatley’s murder. Following his remarks, Sheriff James Williams told media members in the adjacent courthouse foyer that Hammer still remains a suspect in Blevins’ disappearance.

Jimmy’s mother, Janet Blevins, said that although she could not make it to the Grayson County Courthouse to hear Hammer’s guilty plea she still wishes she could have made the journey across the state line to hear his confession.

“I just wanted to hear him say he did it,” Blevins said. “That he killed them.”

Hammer’s role in the triple murder did not surprise Blevins the least bit.

“There was no doubt in my mind at all,” Blevins said. “I believed right off that he killed the Hudlers and the Miller boy, there was just no doubt in my mind.”

Authorities’ big break in the case that sealed Hammer’s fate came from a discarded letter found in the trash can of an inmate in the New River Valley Regional Jail in Dublin, Va. Within the letter, the inmate had told his girlfriend that he was about to acquire a large sum of money once he took care of something at a barn in Cripple Creek. According to courtroom testimony, Hammer had asked the inmate to go to the barn once he was released from prison and dispose of a firearm and recover a large sum of cash. As it turns out, the weapon that the inmate was to dispose of was a .22 magnum rifle bearing the serial number matching that of a rifle sold to Hammer in the mid-1990s. Authorities found it hidden under heavy rolls of woven wire fencing. It was also determined that it was in fact the weapon used in the triple murder. They also found the cash the inmate had mentioned in a Yadkin Valley Bank deposit bag within the same barn.

After discovering the whereabouts of the murder weapon in the Cripple Creek barn, the Blevins family saw this as an opportunity to begin a fresh search for Jimmy. Janet Blevins said that her son other son, Joe spent a day combing the barn’s vicinity, looking for possible clues that may suggest Jimmy’s presence in the adjoining property but to no avail.

Authorities also searched the area surrounding the barn but did not elaborate on what if any evidence was recovered from the barn that would link Jimmy’s presence in the area of Hammer’s role in the disappearance.

Ashe County Sheriff James Williams explained that investigators searched the area “to some degree.”

“Of course we searched the area,” Williams said. “That particular barn was a point of interest and still is.”

According to courtroom testimony, that same barn belongs to an Ashe County resident.

Williams also explained that the investigation is moving in a positive direction.

“We feel like we are making some progress and headway in the investigation,” Williams said.

Hammer has denied his involvement in Jimmy’s disappearance on multiple occasions. Some of those remarks can be found within a series of letters that Hammer sent to The Jefferson Post in January and February of this year while he was awaiting trial at the NRVRJ in Dublin, VA. In one of those letters, Hammer explained that he thought the focus of the investigation had been wrongly fixated on him.

“People can focus on me if they want to, and they have, which makes matters worse,” Hammer wrote. “Because they think I did something with Jim because of my prior arrest and conviction of a Philadelphia police officer.”

Hammer was charged in the shooting death of Philadelphia police officer Charles Uffelman during an alleged carjacking in October 1978. He was later acquitted in the death and released from prison.

“But they are forgetting something,” Hammer continued in the same letter. “I was found not guilty and released eight years later. The police are mad because they think I got one over on them and that’s why they have focused on me so much.

“They need to get their mind off of me and look elsewhere or they may never find out what happened to Jimmy,” Hammer stated. That same letter that Hammer denied his involvement in Jimmy’s disappearance was dated Feb. 24, the two-year anniversary that marked Jimmy’s disappearance.

As speculation and rumors continue to work their way through Ashe County, Jimmy Blevins’ flier remains clearly visible in the window of the store where his mother works and she continues to wait for answers. The last time she saw him, he was riding away in a pickup truck with Hammer.

Anyone with information regarding the disappearance of Jimmy Blevins or the murder of Tim Shatley is urged to contact the Ashe County Sheriff’s Office at (336) 846-5600.