ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, June 9, 1996 TAG: 9606100021
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
COLUMN: New River Journal
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY
Monday evening, I was wrapping up the editing of the next day's New River Current when I heard two hikers had been found slain near the Appalachian Trail in the Shenandoah National Park.
I called a friend and fellow hiker a short time later. "Oh, no," he said sadly. "Not again."
The news flash about the slashing deaths of Julianne Williams and Lollie Winans resonated with many people across the New River Valley. Its echoes were particularly strong in Giles County, where the first double homicide on the trail occurred 15 years ago last month at the Wapiti Shelter along Dismal Creek, over the mountain from Pearisburg.
Randall Lee Smith, the convicted killer of hikers Robert Mountford Jr. and Laura S. Ramsay, will be released from prison this fall.
But the echo I heard loudest came from a hot day in July 1991, when I sat at a three-sided trail shelter just south of Duncannon, Pa. I had just passed the midpoint of a successful six-month Georgia-to-Maine hike of the Appalachian Trail. There was no reason to walk down to the Thelma Marks Shelter, a short descent off the rocky ridgetop trail. I was carrying plenty of water; I didn't need a break.
Except that the place had haunted my Appalachian Trail dreams for months.
In September 1990, the second double homicide on the trail occurred there (there have been nine homicides on the 59-year-old trail since 1974). By coincidence, I was on the trail the week of the murders on a training hike in Southwest Virginia, trying to decide whether to quit my job the following spring to tackle the trail. I decided to take the hike, knowing you can never be insulated from the malignant violence in our society, even miles into the quiet woods.
Within the hiking community, there has been a major focus on hiker safety this decade. One of the best summaries I've seen came from Becky Blanton, a former police officer, who wrote a 1992 article in the Appalachian Trailway News. Her recommendations are common sense, but worth repeating: be wary of people you meet on the trail, particularly those who ask about your travel plans; male or female, don't hike alone; let someone at home know your itinerary and check in with them periodically; don't camp near road crossings or within sight of the trail; listen to your intuition and if you get bad vibes about someone you meet, clear out.
Given the focus on the 1990 murders, I was on my guard throughout my 1991 hike.
Sitting at the tree-shaded shelter that day, I opened the hiker register. Inside were several letters and a photograph of the two slain hikers, Geoffrey Hood and Molly LaRue, left there two months earlier by their families.
Their letters spoke of a coming to terms with the tragedy, and of encouragement to other long-distance hikers to keep the faith in their dreams.
There's no pat resolution to such horrors as the dual slayings in Giles County, in Pennsylvania and now, in Shenandoah National Park. Hikers will continue to tramp in the woods, more wary than before, but willing to balance the potential for danger against the certainty of the physical challenges of the trail and the mental release from the deadlines and routines of everyday life.
I thought of a passage from one of the letters:
"I had expected to feel sorrow or possibly anger at this place where one man's actions had altered the course of my life forever. Instead, what I find myself experiencing is a great sense of peacefulness. This is the last place on earth that I ever expected to experience such peace."
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: The families of Geoffrey Hood and Molly LaRue left aby CNBphoto of the couple and letters in their memory at the Thelma Marks
Shelter in the spring of 1991. KEYWORDS: 2DA