Blood on the Mountain

By Wil Haygood

The Washington Post

July 08, 2008

BRUSHY MOUNTAIN, Giles County, Va.

High on the mountain, the sun has to fight its way down through the thick forest. The light takes on a spectral elegance, as if yellow diamonds are falling to the ground.

The two campers loved so much about the mountain. How it gave to its visitors, how generous it seemed: There's another deer; listen to that owl; the trout are running.

But a murderer was in these woods, too. And he brought darkness to the light.

When Randall Lee Smith rose from a meal with Scott Johnston and Sean Farmer at their campsite along the Appalachian Trail here in southwestern Virginia in May, he politely thanked them for the fried trout and beans. Then he pulled out his .22 pistol and calmly turned from one to the other.

The first bullet hit Sean in the temple.

The second hit Scott in the neck.

The third hit Sean in the chest.

The fourth hit Scott in the back of the neck.

Blood gushed against the moonless night. Scott had bolted into the woods. But the gunman was not finished. Sean had lumbered across the grass to his truck, parked a few yards away. When Randall reached him, he raised his gun again.

* * *

Twenty-seven years earlier and little more than a mile away, Randall Smith had sat for a similar evening meal with two other campers, Susan Ramsay and Robert Mountford Jr. He murdered both. Then he buried them with his bare hands.

Those 1981 murders stunned the nation. Calls came into the county sheriff's office from all over the country, everyone wanting to know if the Appalachian Trail was safe. Tom Lawson, one of the investigators at the time, never forgot Smith's eyes: 'Cold. Stone cold. And remorseless.'

Those killings turned Randall Smith into what we most fear: A killer seemingly without motive. A man who wouldn't explain. A man who emerged from a life of misery to suddenly strike back at the light around him.

When Lawson heard of the Johnston and Farmer shootings, something jumped in his gut. There was blood on the mountain again. 'I just knew it was Randall,' Lawson says. 'Just knew it.'

Loretta Smith raised her only child, Randall, alone in Pearisburg, a town of 2,700 about half an hour from Blacksburg. Townsfolk do not remember anyone else ever living at the house at 190 Virginia St. 'She kept to herself,' recalls Gerald Smith, 58, who lived near the Smiths and is unrelated. 'A nice lady, though she never communicated with the neighbors.'

Loretta worked in the laundry room at Giles Memorial Hospital. 'She made a living, that's about all,' says Carl Vest, 74, who knew relatives of the family. The Smith home was small -- four rooms and a basement.

For the first few years of his life, Loretta Smith dressed her son in girls' clothing. She never explained why.

At Giles High School, Randall made few friends. 'He was a loner,' says Gerald Smith, who was also a schoolmate.

On weekends, Randall took off alone to walk the Appalachian Trail, which he could see from the windows of his home.

All through junior high and high school, there was never a girlfriend. No one remembers seeing him at a local house party. On those rare occasions when he would try to fit in with other teenagers, Gerald Smith says something stood out quite clearly about Randall: 'He was a habitual liar.'

He told lies about money he didn't have, about property he claimed to own in other states. 'The house he lived in with his mother was worth $10,000 -- max,' Gerald Smith says.

That habit gave birth to a harsh nickname: 'We called him 'L.R.,' for 'Lyin' Randall,' ' Smith says.

The moniker didn't seem to bother him. There were even times when he turned, with a grin on his face, to someone casually using the epithet.

After high school, Randall Smith did odd jobs, including a brief stint in the Norfolk shipyards. The unsteady work left him free to roam, and he often hiked up and down the Appalachian Trail. He had long, dark hair and his body was fleshy, like a football player who had given up training.

Sometimes, Smith vanished for days. Having never played sports, or joined a Scout troop or done any community-oriented things in which he would have become a presence, no one seems to have missed him.

The Appalachian Trail stretches more than 2,000 miles from Georgia to Maine and draws thousands of hikers every year.

There are accidents on the trail and an occasional vandalized car, but violent crime is rare. 'It is extremely safe,' says Brian B. King, spokesman for the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, a management group based in Harpers Ferry, W.Va. 'You have more of a chance getting hurt driving to the trail in your car than you do on the trail.'

There is about one assault a year and one rape every three years, on average, according to Conservancy figures. There have been eight murders linked to the trail since the 1970s,

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