Randall Lee Smith: The Appalachian Trail Killer

Randall Lee Smith was the Appalachian Trail killer who murdered two Maine hikers near Virginia’s Wapiti Shelter in May 1981, served only fifteen years in prison after a controversial second-degree murder plea, and then shot two fishermen a few miles from the same spot in May 2008 before dying in jail custody days later.

The 1981 Murders Near Wapiti Shelter

Robert Mountford Jr. and Laura Susan Ramsay were both 27-year-old social workers from Maine, hiking the Appalachian Trail through Giles County, Virginia, to raise money for a school for children with intellectual disabilities run by Mountford’s mother.¹ When they failed to arrive in Pearisburg on schedule, a search began. Nearly two weeks later, their bodies were found in shallow, leaf-covered graves near the Wapiti Shelter along Dismal Creek.²

Ramsay had been stabbed multiple times with a large spike nail and struck in the back of the head with a wrought iron fireplace poker. Mountford suffered a non-penetrating gunshot wound to the head, followed by a fatal shot through his cheek into his brain.²

Investigators identified Smith, a local man from Pearisburg, after finding his bloody fingerprint inside a paperback book belonging to Ramsay. Witnesses had seen him with Ramsay at the shelter shortly before her death, and blood-stained clothing was soaking at his mother’s home. In the ashtray of his pickup truck, officers found a handwritten note: “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,” followed by, “I will be far away before truck and those people are found.”¹ Smith abandoned the truck in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, about a week after the killings and was arrested there.

The Fifteen-Year Plea Deal

In March 1982, just before his case was set to go to trial in Giles County Circuit Court, Smith pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder. The agreement, negotiated by Commonwealth’s Attorney Hezekiah Osborne, produced a 30-year sentence structured as 15 years on each count running concurrently. Smith would serve a maximum of 15 years.³

Osborne said he had traded “the remote possibility of a larger sentence for the certainty of the lesser sentence.” He cited two problems: uncertainty that he could prove premeditation to a jury, and what he called “weak” evidence tying Smith specifically to Mountford’s death.³ Defense attorney J.L. Dillow added that no motive had ever been established, saying “there has never been one scintilla of reason given for a motive for these killings.” Psychiatrists at Western State Hospital had found Smith competent to stand trial, dismissing his claims of memory loss as “selective and self-serving.”⁴

Circuit Court Judge Robert Powell had earlier rejected a proposal for 20 years in exchange for first-degree murder pleas. He accepted the second-degree deal, he said, “considering the feelings of the families of the victims and the prolonged agony.”³

The sentence provoked lasting anger. Robert Mountford Sr. said in 1986 that Smith was “not even serving for one death, let alone two.” Veteran through-hiker Warren Doyle Jr. picketed the courthouse during the 1982 proceedings. The Appalachian Trail Conference later noted that Smith was the only person convicted of murdering a hiker on the trail who had not received life without parole or the death penalty.¹ Osborne died in 1986 without ever adding to his public explanation. Because the case never went to trial, the full evidence was never publicly presented.

Release in 1996 and the Years in Pearisburg

Smith was denied parole every year starting in 1986, blocked each time by letters and phone calls from the victims’ families and from Appalachian Trail supporters. He served his full sentence and was released on his mandatory release date of September 27, 1996. He was placed under parole supervision for ten years and fitted with an electronic ankle monitor. A Department of Corrections spokesman said at the time, “It’s safe to assume that Mr. Smith will not be returning to the Appalachian Trail. For all practical purposes, he is homebound.”¹

Smith returned to Pearisburg to live with his mother. After she died in 2000, he stayed on in her small house, scraping by on odd welding and mechanical jobs. Neighbors described him as quiet, often walking his dog, Bo; some saw a humble man who liked Virginia Tech football, while others remained wary of his history.⁵ As a child in the neighborhood he had been nicknamed “Lyin’ Randall” for outrageous stories, including once claiming he had been kidnapped to explain a disappearance.²

His parole supervision ended in 2005. Sometime in February or March 2008, with money running out, Smith quietly left his home. A neighbor, Brenda Bowles, filed a missing person report with the Giles County Sheriff’s Department on April 3, after not seeing him since December. His water service was cut off on April 29. Bowles believed he had gone camping in the mountains above his home.⁵

The 2008 Shootings on Dismal Creek

On May 6, 2008, Scott Johnston, 37, of Bluefield, and Sean Farmer, 33, of Tazewell, were camping and fishing near Dismal Creek in Giles County, only a few miles from the Wapiti Shelter where Smith had killed Mountford and Ramsay 27 years earlier.⁶ A gaunt stranger introduced himself as “Ricky Williams,” claiming he had attended Virginia Tech and “written papers for NASA.” The fishermen did not believe him; Johnston’s impression was of an alcoholic who had been kicked out of his home.⁷

After sharing a meal, Smith pulled a .22-caliber handgun and opened fire at close range. Johnston was hit in the neck and back. Farmer was struck in the temple and chest, then shot again point-blank in the chest. When Smith apparently ran out of ammunition, the wounded men escaped. Johnston kept a finger pressed into his own neck wound to slow the bleeding, and Farmer, despite massive facial swelling, drove Johnston’s truck roughly 40 miles down a mountain road to the home of Melissa and Randy Miller, where they called 911.⁷

While the victims were being treated at the Miller house, Randy Miller went to Trent’s grocery store and brought back the missing-person flyer bearing Smith’s photograph. Johnston looked at it and said, “I’m 100 percent sure that’s the man.”⁷

Smith had fled in Johnston’s 2000 Ford Ranger. A Virginia State Police trooper spotted the stolen truck on Sugar Run Road and gave chase. Smith flipped the vehicle and was pulled from the wreckage.⁶ Officers recovered a .22-caliber revolver, the same type of weapon used in the 1981 killings, along with Johnston’s sunglasses, more than 20 knives, meat cleavers, and writings with symbols consistent with Wicca that Smith had stashed in the surrounding woods.² He was charged with two counts of attempted capital murder, grand larceny, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Both men were airlifted to a hospital in Roanoke for emergency surgery. Johnston’s bullet had missed his carotid artery by one millimeter. Both survived. When they learned who had shot them, both were furious. Johnston said: “Back in the original case … where was the judicial system? They just let him roam free.” Farmer called it “just some added shock.”² Warren Doyle, who had picketed in 1982, had warned at the time that “if another incident happens with Randall Smith, perhaps the people who are responsible for the plea bargain should be put on trial.”¹

Death in Jail Custody

Smith was treated at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital after the crash, spending time on a ventilator before being released into police custody on Friday, May 9. The next day, Saturday, May 10, 2008, he was found unresponsive in his cell at the New River Valley Regional Jail in Dublin, Virginia, around 6:00 p.m., and was pronounced dead at a Pulaski County hospital shortly afterward.⁵ Officers found no external evidence of suicide. An autopsy report released by the Virginia State Police on August 6, 2008, ruled the death accidental and attributed it to injuries sustained in the truck crash.⁸ He was 54. The attempted murder charges died with him.

1
Roanoke Times. Randall Lee Smith Release Coverage, 1996
2
NBC News. Randall Lee Smith Case Coverage
3
UPI. Murderer Pleads Guilty to Double Slaying
4
UPI. Smith Plea of Guilty Coverage
5
The Roanoke Times. Randall Lee Smith Death Coverage
6
CBS News. Cops: Man Who Killed Hikers Strikes Again
7
South Coast Today. Killer Strikes Again at Scene
8
The Washington Post. Death of Suspect in Custody Is Traced to Road Accident