ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, September 26, 1996 TAG: 9609260065
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: PEARISBURG
SOURCE: LISA K. GARCIA STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Lede
Randall Lee Smith will leave prison Friday and return to this small mountain town, walking through his mother's door for the first time in 15 years.
Smith murdered two hikers on the Appalachian Trail in May 1981. He shot Robert Mountford Jr. three times, stabbed Laura Susan Ramsay more than a dozen times and left their bodies in shallow, leaf-covered graves.
It was the first, but not the last, double homicide on the trail.
Loretta Smith of Pearisburg said last week she did not want to comment about her son's release. Excited that he is coming home, Smith said she knows from telephone conversations with him that he is excited, too. She has not seen that in his face, however, because she has seen him only once during his decade and a half in prison.
She would like some peace, she said, but does not expect much given the high profile of the case that drew national media attention and was the subject of a book, "Murder on the Appalachian Trail."
Controversy surrounded the 15-year prison term Randall Smith received in exchange for pleading guilty to second-degree murder in 1982.
Smith, now 43, was given two concurrent 15-year sentences. The plea agreement halted the case just before it went to trial in Giles County Circuit Court. It left many in the community guessing about exactly what happened to the hikers who were found dead near the Wapiti Shelter along Dismal Creek, over the mountain from Pearisburg.
The slain hikers from Maine, both 27-year-old social workers, were found almost two weeks after they disappeared.
They were using their trip to raise money for a school for mentally retarded children in Maine that Mountford's mother ran.
Witnesses testified in General District Court that they saw Smith at the shelter with Ramsay shortly before she is believed to have been killed. Blood-stained clothes were found soaking at Smith's home shortly after Ramsay's body was found.
Central to the prosecution's case, however, was a rambling note found stuffed in the ashtray of Smith's pickup. He drove the truck to Myrtle Beach a week after the murders and abandoned it.
"This boy and girl have been so nice to me ... it is going to be a real shame when the time comes to get rid of them," the note stated. It ended with these words: "I will be far away before truck and those people are found." Smith was arrested in Myrtle Beach.
The victims' parents thought the plea agreement at least laid to rest the question of who committed the murders, but some relatives were upset by it.
They were told Smith would serve at least 71/2 years.
"He's not even serving for one death, let alone two," Robert Mountford Sr. told a reporter in a 1986 interview when Smith came up for parole just five years after he entered prison.
None of the victims' family members could be reached this week for comment about Smith's release.
Smith, who declined all interviews over the years, could not be reached this week; nor could his three defense attorneys. The prosecutor who accepted the plea bargain, Hezekiah Osborne, died in 1986.
Many of the people involved in the case refused to comment. One Giles County man who helped search for the bodies said Smith had done his time and he hoped Smith would "stay clean."
Five years after Smith's sentence began, the Virginia Parole Board considered whether to release him. Phone calls and letters from family and friends of the victims, as well as Appalachian Trail supporters, bombarded the board, and Smith was kept behind bars. Similar protests happened each year until Smith reached his mandatory release date this month.
When an inmate is released, he normally spends six months under parole supervision, said David Botkins, spokesman for the Department of Corrections. The Parole Board can extend that time, however, and Smith will be under parole supervision for the next 10 years, until Sept. 26, 2006.
In addition, he must wear an electronic monitoring bracelet on his ankle, Botkins said.
A typical monitoring device is no bigger than a deck of cards. It is linked to an electronic transmitter installed in the home that sends a signal to a receiver whenever the person is within range. The receiver signals a computer at a monitoring center when the person travels outside that range.
Botkins said he could not release the details of Smith's parole supervision and how the monitor would be used.
"It's safe to assume that Mr. Smith will not be returning to the Appalachian Trail. For all practical purposes, he is homebound," Botkins said.
Smith's case enraged Appalachian Trail hikers, who said the punishment did not fit the crime.
Warren Doyle Jr., a veteran through-hiker, will soon finish his 11th trip of the 2,159-mile trail that stretches from Georgia to Maine.
Doyle was so offended by the plea agreement that he picketed the courthouse the day after it became public in 1982, carrying a sign that said: "Did Bob and Sue plead for their lives? Did Randall Lee Smith give them a bargain? Shame on the murderer. Shame on the justice system."
In a recent telephone interview, Doyle said his feelings about Smith's sentence have not changed.
"If another incident happens with Randall Smith, perhaps the people who are responsible for the plea bargain should be put on trial," Doyle said.
Doyle said he was particularly upset that no one got to hear the full evidence in the case, which would have been used to educate hikers about trail safety.
Brian King, spokesman for the Appalachian Trail Conference in Harpers Ferry, W.Va., said Smith is the first person convicted of murdering a hiker who has had the opportunity to leave prison.
"He's the only one who did not get life without parole," King said. Another trail killer, in a 1990 Pennsylvania case, was sentenced to death.
King said everyone associated with trail security remembers Smith's case. He said since 1981 there have been three murders on the trail; each time, people would ask "Where's the guy from '81?" Nine people have been murdered on the trail since 1974. Most recently, two women were slain in Shenandoah National Park on an adjoining trail. They were last seen alive on May 24. No arrest has been made in that case.
More precautions have been taken to ensure trail safety, King said, such as increasing the number of "ridge runners," who patrol sections of the trail and report suspicious people. Though there are seasonal ridge runners in the busy McAfee's Knob section of the trail in Roanoke County, there are no regular patrols in the area of Wapiti Shelter. Instead, the U.S. Forest Service has closed a road leading to the shelter, making what used to be a short walk into a two-mile trek.
Overall, though, King said the slayings on the trail have not seemed to have a long-term negative effect on the more than 3 million people who use the trail each year.
"I don't want overreact to the fact that a handful of socially marginal people have killed a handful of hikers," King said.
LENGTH: Long : 128 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Smith. Graphic: Map by staff. color.by CNB