ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, June 5, 1996 TAG: 9606050054
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LURAY
SOURCE: DAVID REED ASSOCIATED PRESS
NOTE: Strip
BOOKS HAVE BEEN WRITTEN, warnings sounded and criminals convicted. But murder along the Appalachian Trail deters few.
You meet a hardy lot along the Appalachian Trail, some of whom are intent on braving all the perils 2,159 miles of woods and mountains pose on a hike from Georgia to Maine.
But the slayings of two women - both accomplished backpackers and campers - just off the trail in the Shenandoah National Park has shaken people who sought peace and challenge in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
``I'm definitely going to be looking over my shoulder on this hike,'' said Cindy Clymer, 42, of Charlotte, N.C., who was hiking with her husband and their 21-month-old son near Dark Hollow Falls. ``I don't know who's going to get me out there.''
Park rangers found the bodies of Julianne Williams, 24, of St. Cloud, Minn., and Lollie Winans, 26, of Unity, Maine, at a back-country campsite Saturday. Autopsies revealed that the women died after their throats were cut, but investigators refused to say whether the women had been sexually assaulted. A golden retriever named Taj, which had been with the women on the trail, was found unharmed in the woods nearby.
The women were last seen May 24, the Friday before the Memorial Day weekend, authorities said. Investigators would not say when they believe the victims were slain. They said they have no suspects.
Both women were trained wilderness camping and hiking guides.
``They wanted to help other people learn to be in the outdoors,'' said Peggy Willens, an administrative assistant at Woodswomen, a Minneapolis, Minn.-based adventure travel vacation organization for women. ``They were both very experienced outdoorswomen.''
Winans was a four-year environmental science major at Unity College and was due to graduate in December, said Chip Curry, the college's extension service coordinator.
A volunteer in a rape crisis center in nearby Waterville, she planned to provide counseling for abused women through outdoor adventures such as canoe trips. She had ``a quiet demeanor but was very, very happy,'' Curry said.
Her mother lives in Grosse Point, Mich., Curry said.
Clymer was so frightened and angry about the slayings that she and her husband decided not to camp in the Shenandoah National Park Tuesday night.
``That person could still be lurking around,'' she said.
Porter Teejarden, 23, of Providence, R.I., and two of her girlfriends thought twice about continuing their hike in Virginia when they heard about the slayings.
``For women, it's real depressing, because men don't have to worry about this half as much,'' Teejarden said.
Murder usually comes in pairs along the Appalachian Trail. Nine people have been killed on or near the trail since 1974, and all but three have been multiple slayings, according to the Appalachian Trail Conference in Harpers Ferry, W.Va., which maintains and manages the trail.
``In three of those cases, they were double murders: six incidents, nine murders,'' said Brian King, a spokesman for the organization. About 4 million people visit or hike the trail each year, King said.
Park officials and trail organizations have begun receiving calls from people worried about loved ones on the trail.
``I've gotten calls mostly from parents who are nervous. This morning, I got a call from a man in Vermont who was very worried about his 18-year-old daughter who is hiking the trail alone,'' said Wilson Riley, director of administration of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club.
Nobody has canceled reservations the club books for primitive cabins it maintains along the trail, but hikers are much more safety conscious, Riley said.
``People are asking us what should we do, and we tell them to take whatever precautions they feel are necessary,'' Riley said. ``You are alone and out of sight of others; and if someone has criminal intent, there's really no one around to witness it.''
In 1988, a man frightened two women off the trail and shot them in Michaux State Forest in south-central Pennsylvania. One woman survived; the other died. Stephen Roy Carr was sentenced to life in prison without parole in the shootings.
Two years later, hikers were warned to stay off the trail in Pennsylvania after a man and his fiancee were shot to death as they slept in a remote shelter along the trail in Perry County, Pa. Paul David Crews of LaRue, S.C., is awaiting execution in Pennsylvania for those two slayings.
In May 1981, a man and a woman who were hiking from Maine to Georgia were killed in a remote cabin near Pearisburg. Randall Lee Smith, who pleaded guilty to lesser charges in the deaths, is up for parole in Virginia in September.
A Wisconsin woman was hacked to death by a hiker with a hatchet in Tennessee in April 1975; her attacker died in prison. A 26-year-old man was killed at a shelter in Georgia in May 1974.
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