In the spring of 1981, Laura Susan Ramsay, a 27-year-old female social worker from Maine, embarked on a hiking expedition along the Appalachian Trail with her fellow social worker, Robert Mountford Jr., also 27. Their journey, intended to raise funds for a school for children with developmental challenges, took a tragic turn in the serene wilderness near Pearisburg, Virginia.
It was here they encountered Randall Lee Smith, a local man from Pearisburg.
In May 1981, within the supposed tranquility of the Wapiti Shelter, their lives were brutally cut short. Smith murdered the two hikers, shooting Mountford three times and stabbing Ramsay over a dozen times. Their bodies were discovered in shallow, leaf-covered graves near the shelter almost two weeks after they disappeared. The investigation into their disappearance led authorities to Smith. Evidence against him included blood-stained clothing found at his home and a disturbing note discovered in his abandoned pickup truck in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where he was subsequently arrested.
The legal proceedings that followed brought a controversial conclusion to the case. In 1982, just before his trial was set to begin, Randall Lee Smith entered into a plea bargain, pleading guilty to two counts of second-degree murder. He was handed two concurrent 15-year sentences, a penalty that was met with anger and disappointment by the victims' families and the wider hiking community who felt it was too lenient for the gravity of the crimes. Smith was released from prison on mandatory parole in 1996 after serving 15 years.
Years later, in a chilling echo of the past, Smith's propensity for violence resurfaced. In May 2008, near the very location where he had murdered Ramsay and Mountford, Smith attacked two fishermen he had befriended, shooting both men. Both victims survived the assault. Smith was arrested after crashing a pickup truck belonging to one of the victims while attempting to flee. Four days after his arrest, while incarcerated, Randall Lee Smith died from injuries he sustained in the crash, bringing a final, grim end to the story of the man responsible for the death of Laura Susan Ramsay.
