Paul David Crews and the 1990 Appalachian Trail Murders

Paul David Crews was the man behind the 1990 Appalachian Trail murders, a fugitive from a Florida murder charge who killed two young hikers, Geoffrey Hood and Molly LaRue, at a remote shelter in Perry County, Pennsylvania, on the morning of September 13, 1990. He was arrested about a week later carrying the victims’ belongings, convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in 1991, and originally sentenced to death. That sentence was later converted to two consecutive life terms without parole, and Crews died in a Pennsylvania prison in July 2022 at the age of 70.¹

Who Geoffrey Hood and Molly LaRue Were

Hood, 26, was from Tennessee. LaRue, 25, had grown up in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and later lived in Kansas. Both worked for a church-sponsored organization in Salina, Kansas, that ran backcountry adventure therapy for at-risk youth. Hood was an experienced rock-climbing instructor who had worked at Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico. LaRue was an artist; as a high school senior in 1982, she had won a national United States Postal Service contest to design a stamp, beating more than 500,000 entries. Her “Family Unity” design was issued as a 20-cent stamp on October 1, 1984.²

The couple, described by friends as inseparable, learned in May 1990 that they would be laid off and decided to spend six months hiking the Appalachian Trail while figuring out what came next. They started southbound at Mount Katahdin in Maine on June 4, 1990, and moved at what friends called a “glacial pace,” stopping often to photograph nature and bake bread. They planned to meet their parents at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, for the trail’s midpoint. Family later speculated they intended to announce their engagement there.³

What Happened at the Thelma Marks Shelter

On September 11, 1990, Crews entered the Appalachian Trail near U.S. Route 11. Appalachian Trail Conservancy staffer Karen Lutz noticed him carrying two red gym bags stamped with the Marlboro logo, an odd sight on the trail. Other hikers remembered his combat boots, heavy clothing, and menacing appearance.⁴

Hood and LaRue reached the Thelma Marks shelter after 5:00 p.m. on September 12. The shelter was an open-faced timber lean-to at the bottom of a steep side trail off Cove Mountain, about four rocky miles above the town of Duncannon in Perry County, Pennsylvania.³

Between about 5:00 and 7:00 a.m. on September 13, Crews killed both of them. Hood was shot three times with a .22-caliber revolver. LaRue was raped, her hands tied behind her back, a rope looped around her neck, and she was stabbed eight times in the neck, throat, and back.³⁵ Two other hikers, Biff and Cindi Bowen, arrived at the shelter later that day, found the scene silent, and alerted the Pennsylvania State Police around 6:00 p.m.

How Crews Was Caught

After the killings, Crews hiked north, hitched a ride on Interstate 81, and re-entered the trail posing as a hiker. He was seen wearing Hood’s boots and carrying Hood’s custom-fitted backpack, but he wore it awkwardly, not the way an experienced hiker would. Hikers who recognized the distinctive pack converged at the Appalachian Trail Conservancy headquarters in Harpers Ferry and passed what they knew to police.⁶⁴

On September 21, 1990, federal park rangers arrested Crews on a bridge over the Potomac River as he walked south from Maryland into Harpers Ferry. Inside Hood’s backpack, investigators found a .22-caliber revolver and a knife, later identified as the murder weapons. Crews was also wearing Hood’s clothing and carrying other belongings that belonged to the victims. He refused to answer questions about the killings.⁴¹ His fingerprints then matched an outstanding Florida murder warrant.⁷

Who Crews Was and Why He Was Already Wanted

Crews was adopted by Susan Crews on April 6, 1961, at the age of six. He was in trouble with the law by twelve for carrying a knife and dropped out of high school as a senior, though he later returned during summer session to graduate. He joined the Marines in 1972 and married Teresa Ann Dunman in Pensacola, Florida, the following year. Two weeks after the wedding he slashed his wrists, was committed to a military hospital, went AWOL five months later, and was discharged in August 1973 for severe mental depression. Dunman divorced him in 1974.⁶

On July 3, 1986, Clemmie Jewel Arnold, a 56-year-old woman from Bartow, Florida, was killed after leaving a bar with Crews. According to FBI records, she was found naked with her throat slashed near his home. Investigators later found bloody clothes and a knife in the trunk of Arnold’s car.⁸⁶ Crews was charged with first-degree murder and robbery but fled and lived as a fugitive under the alias “Casey Horn.” During the same period, his second wife, Casey, accused him of holding a knife to her throat while she was in bed. He was still wanted on the Florida capital charges four years later when he walked onto the Appalachian Trail.¹⁴

Trial, Death Sentence, and Life Terms

Crews was held at Perry County Prison in New Bloomfield, Pennsylvania, awaiting trial. R. Scott Cramer led the prosecution; Jerry A. Philpott served as defense counsel. The trial opened on May 15, 1991, before a Perry County jury.⁴

The case was largely circumstantial but heavy. Hikers testified about Crews’s appearance on the trail before and after the killings. The revolver and knife recovered from Hood’s backpack were identified as the likely murder weapons. DNA testing of semen samples linked Crews to the rape of LaRue.³⁴ The defense called a genetics expert to challenge the DNA conclusions and a psychiatrist who testified that Crews had a “schizoid personality” and “organic aggressive syndrome,” a condition the defense said was triggered by alcohol and cocaine use on the day of the killings.¹

On May 24, 1991, the jury convicted Crews of two counts of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to death by lethal injection.⁴

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania affirmed the conviction and sentence in 1994, and Crews spent more than a decade in state and federal post-conviction litigation.⁹ By 2006, Perry County District Attorney Charles Chenot said the county could no longer afford to fight the case. Prosecutors reached an agreement: Crews would drop his appeals, and the death sentence would be replaced with two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole. The victims’ families approved the deal.¹⁰

Separately, in 1992, Pennsylvania Governor Robert P. Casey signed extradition papers so Crews could be sent to Florida to face the 1986 Arnold murder charge.¹¹ The available record does not show whether Florida ever brought that case to trial.

Death in Prison

Crews died of natural causes in July 2022 at SCI Fayette, a state prison in southwestern Pennsylvania. He was 70. He never confessed to the killings and never gave a motive.¹

What the Case Changed on the Trail

The killings shook the hiking community because Hood and LaRue were experienced outdoorspeople murdered at a remote shelter, not near a road or town. Many hikers left the trail that year.⁵ Karen Lutz of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy later said the case was a reminder that “murder could be committed anyplace.”³

Before the 1990 killings, five hikers had been murdered in four separate attacks on the Appalachian Trail since 1974; two of those attacks targeted couples, and three occurred at shelters.³ The Appalachian Trail Conservancy has since formalized safety protocols, deploying seasonal “ridgerunners” on high-use sections and coordinating with the National Park Service and other law enforcement on incident reporting and hiker alerts.¹² Even with the case’s long shadow, trail officials and hikers generally describe the Appalachian Trail as one of the safest places a person can be, with violent crime remaining exceptionally rare against the millions of visits each year.⁵

1
PennLive. Appalachian Trail Killer Who Targeted Couple in Perry County Dies in Prison
2
Mystic Stamp Company. 1984 20c Family Unity
3
Outside Online. Murder on the Appalachian Trail
4
Baltimore Sun. PA Jury Convicts Man of Killing Hikers on Trail
5
WHYY. After a New Killing on the Appalachian Trail, the 1990 Death of Hikers in PA Haunts Their Friend Anew
6
Los Angeles Times. Man Faces Trial in Deaths Along Appalachian Trail
7
NPS History. Appalachian Trail Incident Reports
8
Orlando Sentinel. Man Faces Trial in Deaths Along Appalachian Trail
9
FindLaw. Commonwealth v. Crews
10
WIS TV. Appalachian Trail Killer to Be Resentenced
11
Tampa Bay Times. Appalachian Trail Killer to Be Sent to Florida
12
Appalachian Trail Conservancy. Incident Reporting Guidelines