Hello and welcome to Crime on the Clarkfork, the true crime podcast that only covers cases that happened in areas with populations of 15,000 or less. On this week's episode, I am telling you the story of Lyin' Randall who created terror on the Appalachian Trail.
Hello and welcome to Crime on the Clarkfork, the true crime podcast that only covers cases that happened in areas with populations of 15,000 or less. On this week's episode, I am telling you the story of Lyin' Randall who created terror on the Appalachian Trail.
Hello and welcome back to Crime on the Clarkfork, the true crime podcast where I tell you about big crimes that happen in small places with each case having occurred in areas with populations of 15,000 or less. My name is Mackenzie Spence and I am so glad you are joining me this week! It is finally March and the sun is out longer into the evening, so it is really nice to leave work and still have daylight left to do some chores or take my dog for a walk.
This episode we are staying stateside, but jumping to the other side of the US to Virginia. Specifically, the Appalachian Trail. I chose this case because, as it gets warmer, I start to plan out my summer adventures, including hikes. After this story, I will be sure to bring along a friend or some form of protection when I am hiking.
The sources for this week’s episode are: CityPopulation.de, Appalachian Trail Histories, Roanoke Times, The Washington Post, Murderpedia, Criminal Minds Wiki, The Fordham Ram, Strange Outdoors.com, CBS News, FindAGrave.com, UPI, Sims Family Cemetery.org, the Brattleboro Reformer, grunge.com
This week, the Appalachian Trail Murders. Let’s get into it.
Pearisburg, VA, 1981, population 2,500.
It was May 1981 and Robert Mountford Jr. and Laura Susan Ramsay, who went by Sue Sue, were hiking the Appalachian Trail on vacation. Sue had begun hiking the trail at Damascus, VA taking off on a two-week vacation from her job as a social worker in Ellsworth, Maine. She met up with Robert, who was a coworker and fellow social worker who had begun hiking the Appalachian Trail two months prior, starting his adventure in Georgia. The two met on May 9, 1981 at the Methodist Hospice in Damascus and Sue was planning to hike 150 miles to Pearisburg, VA, ending her adventure by May 21st so she could hop on a bus to meet her parents in Maine to celebrate her birthday. The couple were raising money for their job where they worked with children who had developmental disabilities. The two spent the next week hiking the trail with three other people, winding through the hills of Southwestern Virginia. They eventually broke off from this group to hike by themselves, but not before making plans with one of the female hikers they had been traveling with to meet her in an area above Pearisburg. As they continued on their journey, acquaintances of the pair saw them on and off in the following days after the split from the larger group. On May 19th, Sue stopped at a store located near the trail, but was not accompanied by Robert as she was about an hour ahead of him. She left a little bit of cash with the teller for Robert and said hello to a man in the store before trodding along, returning to the Appalachian Trail.
That evening, Sue ended her day of hiking in the valley that sat beneath the peaks of the Brushy Mountain and Sugar Rim Mountain where she searched for a known shelter that was in the area for travelers. This portion of the trail was one that was recently moved further away from the road, so when she arrived at their resting spot for the night, it was difficult for her to find the wapiti, or shelter that they knew to be there. By talking to others on the trail, she knew that there was another shelter on the newly moved path, which was called the Wapitu that travelers could use to rest for the night. Sue left a note for Robert near the trail to let him know that she was searching for the Wapitu and that if she couldn’t find either shelter, they could just set up her tent and use that for the night. Eventually, she found the Wapitu shelter and settled in for the night under the oak and Virginia pine trees, approximately ¼ of a mile from the popular road. Robert joined her not long after and they finished the day with a heavy meal and some Bacardi rum.
The Appalachian Trail is a 2,193 mile long hiking trail that spans 15 states in the Eastern US. The trail passes through 8 national forests and 6 national parks, but it is especially known for its breathtaking views of the Appalachian mountains. It is also known as a rather challenging feat with a total of over 450,000 feet of elevation gain and numerous peaks standing over 6,000 feet in elevation. Every year, it is estimated that at least 3,000,000 people hike at least some of the trail with over 3,000 people attempting to hike the entirety of the 2,193 miles. 1 in 4 of those 3,000 actually make it from end to end. While many would think that the most dangerous part of the trail would be the wildlife, such as bears, the creature you really have to look out for is the tick, which can infect hikers with Lyme disease. The trail is rather safe for the most part with an average of 2-3 fatalities each year, which are generally attributed to hypothermia or lightning strikes. While person on person crime is rare, it also isn’t unheard of on the Appalachian Trail either. For example, since 1974, there have only been a total of 13 known murders along the trail, which is around 0.25 per year.
A couple of days passed since May 19th and the female hiker that Robert and Sue were supposed to meet in the area above Pearisburg waited for them to arrive. Unfortunately, this never happened. When the couple failed to arrive at the designated spot, the female hiker became worried and alerted authorities. When Robert’s father heard of the disappearance of his son, he packed up his car and drove from Maine to Virginia. Robert’s grandfather had even mentioned that Robert was too good of an outdoorsman to get lost in the woods, which worried his father even more. When the officials began looking into the disappearance of the couple, they were perplexed because many of the log books on the trail had gone missing, making it impossible for investigators to put together a timeline of the couple’s travels along the Appalachian Trail. There had also been heavy rainfall during the time of the couple’s disappearance, which made looking for boot tracks virtually impossible and those that were found, were at least 5 days old.
Eventually, the authorities began talking to people on the trail if they had seen the hikers during their travels. During their interviews, a hiker told investigators that they had seen Sue and Robert near the Wapiti shelter with a “strange-looking man”. Investigators also went to the local store that the couple had stopped at individually, the one from a little earlier in the story, and were told that the clerk had seen both Sue and Robert at the store on May 19th, the last day they had been seen before their disappearance. Something else that the country store employee was able to tell officials was that there was a man who had been going around and saying he knew what happened to those hikers, but was known in the area as a liar. They even called him Lyin’ Randall. Not thinking much about these claims, investigators continued on, interviewing more hikers that had been on the trail at the time of the couple’s disappearance. During this time, they had found two more hikers that had recalled seeing Sue and Robert near the Wapiti shelter with a strange man who they recalled acting very “eerie”. Finally, two forest service rangers had seen the couple at the Wapitu structure with the strange man who they heard introduce himself as Billy Joe, but according to them, he did not appear to be dangerous or armed.
Some fellow hikers had also stated that they had stayed at the Wapiti shelter after they had assumed Robert and Sue had taken up camp there and subsequently left. They mentioned that they found it odd because the log book to sign in was missing and the floorboards of the shelter were smeared with coal from the fire. They had also assumed that the couple had been there before them because they had found the weathered note that had been written by Sue to Robert about attempting to find the Wapiti and Wapitu, which indicated that they may have arrived at the shelter at different times in the evening.
After hearing about the couple at the Wapitu shelter with the odd man more than once in their interviews, authorities made their way to the shelter on May 30th, 11 days after the couple were last seen. Lawson, one of the investigators on the case, didn’t notice anything unusual about the structure. That is, until he looked down at the floorboards. He noticed that it looked like something had gone in between the boards, so he grabbed his knife and shoved it between the floorboards. When it emerged, it was covered in a thick, red substance. Blood. When Lawson realized that they may be standing on the scene of a crime, he told the others that they needed to pull up the boards of the structure because he thought there was blood underneath. After this discovery, the officials began a search of the area, spreading out in the nearby wooded space. In their search, they found Sue’s camera with the film ripped out of it and her backpack that had a paperback copy of Mountolive by Lawrence Durrell inside. The kicker, there was a bloody fingerprint on the inside cover of the book. During this search, they whacked weeds and kicked over logs 30 yards in all directions of the shelter. Eventually, they came upon a small, open area where they noticed a small mound of leaves. They found this peculiar, so they investigated further by removing some of the leaves. When they did so, they found a cloth sleeping bag and inside it, the body of Sue. Her hands were covered in defensive wounds, indicating that she had put up a fight with her attacker before her death. She had been hit in the head with a piece of iron, stabbed 13 times with a nail, and also had knife marks on her body. Based on the wounds and disposal of the body, authorities knew they had a murder on their hands, so they sectioned off this area of the Appalachian Trail to search for more evidence.
Sue was the third child born to her parents, Bud and Ginny Ramsay. She was born in Albion, Michigan, but her family soon moved to Southern California not long after her birth. Her family moved around the states quite a bit growing up, but she never let that affect her bubbly and compassionate personality. She was a talented person who excelled in music, theater, comedy, sports, and academics. She graduated with honors from high school and then enrolled and graduated with her bachelor’s degree at Denison University and then her master’s in art therapy from Norwich University in Vermont. After graduating with her master’s degree, Sue began working as a social worker at a facility called The Homestead where she worked with teens who had emotional challenges and/or learning disabilities. Even to her last day on Earth, Sue was continuing to be the person who gave as much as she could to other people. It’s just what she did.
Even before they blocked off this section of the trail, hikers were already avoiding the area because they knew Sue and Robert had disappeared in that area. Before the disappearance occurred, this section of the Appalachian Trail was considered the safest for recreationists who used the trail for day hikes or through-hikes. Many hikers were taking shelter off-trail until the assailant was found, others gave up on their hike altogether and boarded buses home. Authorities posted warning signs as far south as the Tennessee border to alert people of the crime and that the trail was closed in Virginia.
The day after they found Sue’s body buried under the leaves, they brought in a cadaver dog to search the area for further clues. It didn’t take the dog long before it alerted investigators that it had found something. A couple hundred yards from the Wapiti shelter, the dog stuffed its nose in the ground next to a stump and sat down. At first, Lawson thought the dog may have been tired and taking a break, but other officials at the scene thought he was alerting them to evidence. So, they moved the dog and began digging. Their search didn’t take long before they uncovered another sleeping bag, but this time, the body of Robert was inside. Robert also had wounds that pointed to murder. A single bullet wound to the head.
Analysis later revealed that the blood that was found in the shelter belonged to Robert and that he had been shot with a .22-caliber pistol. When authorities began analyzing the evidence that they had collected, they ran the bloody fingerprint that they had found in Sue’s book against the national database. And there was a hit. Randall Lee Smith. Lyin’ Randall.
Randall grew up in Pearisburg, VA and was raised by a single mother, Loretta Smith. The two lived in a 4-room house that had a basement and locals often mentioned that they generally kept to themselves, not communicating with neighbors or community members. Loretta worked at Giles Memorial Hospital in the laundry room, just making enough to keep the house and feed her and her son. For the first couple years of Randall’s life, Loretta dressed him up as a girl, but never gave any reasoning for doing so. The Appalachian Trail was able to be seen from the Smith’s home, so Randall often could be found walking the trail alone. He was known as a loner and liar at school, to the point that he received the nickname, Lyin’ Randall or L.R. for short. He was never known to have a girlfriend or go to house parties with his classmates, but on the off-chance he was seen at a social event, it was obvious that he was a habitual liar. He often boasted about money that his family did not have, claiming to have property in other states while the house he and his mother lived in could not have been worth more than $10,000. The nickname of Lyin’ Randall didn’t seem to bother Randall at all. His classmates even reported that when it was used, he would turn to whoever said it and grin. After high school. Randall stayed in Pearisburg, VA and picked up odd jobs here and there including working at the Norfolk Shipyards where he was fingerprinted. Since he had jobs on and off, he was able to continue to walk up and down the Appalachian Trail just as he had as a kid. Oftentimes, Randall would disappear for days, but with no social life or friends, no one would notice he was gone.
After the authorities were informed that the fingerprint came back as a match for Randall Smith, they descended upon his home in Pearisburg, VA. Inside the home’s basement they found bloody jeans, belongings of Sue and Robert, and pornographic instruments that were made out of hospital equipment, presumably stolen from the hospital that his mother worked at. The investigators put out an APB, or All-Points Bulletin, to create a widespread message to officers to be on the lookout for Randall. The final thing they found in the Smith’s basement was a note in Randall’s handwriting that said he had been kidnapped by two people and was going to be killed. Investigators didn’t believe a word of it.
Days passed with no sign of Smith, to the point that officials wondered if he had committed suicide after murdering Sue and Robert. After searching to no avail, Lawson decided to take a vacation with his family to Myrtle Beach, SC for a weekend getaway in late June, 1981. Not long after he arrived in Myrtle Beach, he received a phone call from his station saying that officials in Myrtle Beach were hoping to speak with him. They had arrested someone who they suspected to be Randall Smith. Lawson passed on the name of the motel that he was staying at and not soon after, a squad car pulled up to the motel with lights flashing. Lawson joined the Myrtle Beach officer in his squad car and was brought to the station where the man was being held. On the ride to the station, the Myrtle Beach officer told Lawson that the man they had in custody fit the description of Randall. He was found in a makeshift camp, but the man was claiming to have amnesia and didn’t know who he was or how he got to Myrtle Beach. The area where he was found had been searched more than once prior to discovering the man, but officials said it looked as if he had been living there between 10 and 14 days. When they spotted him, he started to run from police almost immediately, but surrendered rather quickly. When they arrived at the station, Lawson took one look at the man and knew that it was Randall Smith. He was covered in blotchy bug bites and looked haggard, but it was him nonetheless. Once the man was confirmed to be Randall by Lawson, the investigators hatched a plan. They were going to tell Randall that the bug bites that he had were really bad and needed medical attention or they would make him sick. Thinking that he got away with his lie, Randall nodded aggressively and began scratching his bites until they were raw and bleeding. They further told him that in order to get him medical attention, they would need to get a signed consent form from the man. The detained man understood and scrawled his name at the bottom of the paper, Randall Lee Smith. They had him now.
Randall was extradited back to Virginia where officials presented him with the evidence that they had found against him in hopes he would tell them what happened on the mountain with Sue and Robert that grim day. All Randall would say was “I don’t want to talk about it”. He was given a psychological assessment for his amnesia and dissociation and it was concluded that Randall was faking his symptoms. They had found Randall’s truck abandoned in Myrtle Beach at a secluded parking lot by the ocean. The license plates had been removed and there was a note that had been stuffed in the truck’s ash tray that read “This boy and girl have been so nice to me… all the money they gave me is almost gone it is going to be a real shame when the time comes to get rid of them. He sold parts off the truck and gave me all of his hunting and fishing guns and knifs (sic) and fishing stuff his girlfriend has give me her car so it time I dump his truck and take her car. It's bad that I have to get rid of them. His girlfriend is so pretty and nice I will be far away before truck and these people are found.” He was charged with two counts of murder and many people in the community were pushing the authorities to give him a tough sentence.
There was a strong inclination that Sue had also been raped, but it was unable to be substantiated due to the decomposition of her body when it was found. On the evening before the start of the trial for Randall, he took a plea bargain that was agreed to by both Sue and Robert’s families. He pled guilty to 2 counts of second-degree murder and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Robert’s father, who was an Episcopalian Minister, said that while they didn’t want Randall to get the death sentence, they also didn’t want him to get out of prison. When they agreed to the plea deal, they were told that Randall would get 71 - 72 years in prison, not 30. Even though the plea was agreed to by the families and Randall, the community was outraged about the sentence that they thought was far too good for someone who murdered two young people with their lives ahead of them.
Osbourne, the commonwealth's attorney for Giles County at the time said that he believed the plea bargain was a good thing because he was unsure how the case would have held up in court, especially because there was no known motive for the crime. Many disagreed with this and there were times that the courthouse was being picketed by hikers due to the decision to accept the plea from Randall. When Osbourne went up for reelection, he was not voted in for another term.
There are a couple of theories as to why Randall attacked the two young hikers. The first being that Randall had taken a pass at Sue that was not reciprocated. Another being that he saw those on the Appalachian Trail as interlopers due to his love for the trail and the woods surrounding it. The final theory is that Randall was provoked by Sue and Robert attempting to draw him out using their training as social workers, which led to anger.
Smith was sent to prison where his mother visited him once or twice over a 15 year period. When Randall was up for parole in 1986, just 5 years after being sent to prison, Robert’s father told the media that “[Randall] is not even serving for one death, let alone two.” His parole was denied. He was back up for parole a couple more times in the next 10 years, but each time the Virginia Parole Board was bombarded with letters and phone calls from the victims’ families and friends urging them to keep Randall behind bars. Then, in 1996, after serving 15 years in prison, he was finally released on parole after being a model prisoner and never causing issues. He returned to his mother’s Pearisburg home and once again started spinning tall tales and working odd jobs around town. Normally, when people are released from prison, they are under parole supervision for 6 months, but Randall was given 10 years of parole supervision after being released, until September 26, 2006. He was also required to wear an ankle monitor to ensure he was staying where he needed to. The public was promised that, with this monitor, he would not be returning to the Appalachian Trail and would be homebound, for the most part. An avid through hiker of the Appalachian Trail, Warren Doyle Jr. was one who picketed the courthouse the day the plea deal was accepted and held that sentiment even after Randall was released. In a phone interview with the media after Randall’s release, he stated “If another incident happens with Randall Smith, perhaps the people who are responsible for the plea bargain should be put on trial”
As years went on, Randall became more and more secluded, but would sometimes be seen talking to hikers from the Appalachian Trail. He was now 54 and was no longer the beefy young man that was sent to prison. He now walked with a slight stoop and stopped showing emotions. One Pearisburg community member recalled that he would wave to Randall as he drove past if he was out and about, but Randall had stopped returning the sentiment, so he stopped waving as he drove past.
Randall’s mother passed away in 2000 and left him a small amount of money. The money was able to last him 8 years and when the money ran out, Randall took the pictures off the walls of his family home, packed some of his belongings up, and walked into the woods with his dog, Bo and fishing gear. Over the next 6 weeks, mail began piling up at the Smith household, which drew attention from residents of the town. Police went to do a welfare check on Randall and when they arrived, they noticed the pile of mail and that the utilities had been shut off for non-payment. When they realized Randall was missing, they formed search parties and created missing person fliers and hung them around town, including at the county store where Sue and Robert were last seen 19 years prior. Many thought that he may have gotten sick or injured on one of his walks in the woods off of the Appalachian Trail while others thought there was something more sinister at play.
On May 6, 2008, two friends, Scott Johnston and Sean Farmer went fishing in the Brushy Mountains in their regular spot. Scott arrived at the fishing location early in the day, to be met by Sean in the early evening by their campground. Before Sean arrived, Scott went fishing. Early into his morning, Scott was approached by a fisherman who introduced himself as Ricky Williams. The man was scraggly looking and gaunt, wearing a nice camouflage jacket and new hiking boots. The man was accompanied by his dog and Scott deduced that the man may have a drinking problem and most definitely had spent the last couple of days in the woods, but other than that, seemed rather harmless. Ricky began complaining to Scott that there weren’t any fish in the creek because he hadn’t caught anything all day. Scott told the man to hold on and showed him the trout that he had already caught. The two spent the day fishing together, catching a lot of trout, and Scott eventually invited Ricky back to his campground to hang out with him and Sean, who would have been arriving soon as the man stated that his campground was near where Sean and Scott were staying for the night.
When Sean arrived at the campground, Scott was out gathering firewood. Not long after he arrived, a man approached the campsite and introduced himself to Sean as Ricky Williams and that he knew Scott. When Sean learned that the strange man knew his friend, he let his guard down. Ricky explained to Sean that Scott had invited him over to hang out with the two and sat down beside the fire. Sean didn’t think much of this since Scott was a hospitable man and Ricky looked like he was rather skinny and his dog was malnourished. As the evening went on, Sean and Scott began to wonder when the man was going to leave for his own camp. Eventually, they threw on some trout and beans for dinner, inviting the man to stay to eat. They even cooked up a trout for Ricky’s dog. The three men shared dinner, listened to music, and enjoyed the evening. Ricky told the men stories of his life, including that he attended Virginia Tech and wrote papers for NASA. Sean and Scott did not believe a word that he was telling them, but assumed the man was a lonely drunk who wanted to be heard. As night began to fall, three hours since the stranger arrived at their campsite, Sean and Scott again began to wonder when the man was going to leave for his own campsite. They worried that if it got too dark, the man would stumble to his campsite, possibly falling down and hurting himself. Just as darkness fully took over, Ricky stood up and walked around the fire to stand between Sean and Scott, calling his dog to his side. Before Sean knew it, he heard a loud bang that left his left ear ringing. Ricky had shot him in the face with no warning. Sean is a large man, standing at 6’4” and 325 pounds. He staggered a bit, but did not collapse when the bullet struck him. When he turned to look at Ricky and Scott, Ricky had the gun pointing at Scott who was running to take cover behind a cluster of trees near the tent.
When Scott heard the first gunshot, he took off running, not taking time to look for a gun. After shooting Sean, Ricky shot at Scott while he was fleeing, he then swiveled and sent another shot into Sean from 10 feet away, hitting him in the chest, turned around once again and shot at Scott as he continued to flee to the trees. While Ricky was firing the second shot at Scott, Sean ran to Scott’s jeep and started the car. It wasn’t until Scott reached the cluster of trees that he noticed he had been hit by a shot. Scott had been shot in the neck and when he realized this, he plugged the wound with his index finger to stop the bleeding. When Ricky noticed Sean was fleeing the scene in the car, he aimed the gun at the vehicle, pulled the trigger, but the gun didn’t fire. It was out of bullets. Ricky began reloading, but Sean floored the gas pedal and sped away from camp, not knowing if his friend was dead or alive. Not wanting to be left with Ricky, Scott began running through the underbrush, towards the main road in hopes to meet him at the main road, further away from camp. He continued to hold his finger in the wound in his neck to slow the bleeding while he was running. As soon as Sean turned onto the main road, he spotted Scott, covered in blood, standing on the side of the road. He slowed the vehicle, let him into the passenger seat, and started speeding down the road.
Their campground was 5-6 miles from the nearest home and 40 miles from the nearest hospital, with no cell phone reception. The road that they had to navigate to get down the mountain was one with sharp turns, deadly drops, and no guard rails. Sean was driving the vehicle at 45 miles per hour down the road and it was going relatively smooth. That is, until he lost vision in his right eye. Once he lost vision, Scott grabbed the steering wheel from the passenger side of the vehicle and Sean controlled the gas and brake pedals. They finally made it to the bottom of the mountain where they spotted five houses. Once had its lights still on, so Sean stopped the car in the middle of the road, put it in park, and Scott ran to the house, banging on the front door, yelling for someone to call 911.
The owner of the home, Melissa Miller, initially thought someone was attempting to break into her house, but she finally came to the door when the knocking didn’t cease. Her son joined her on the porch, but quickly ran back inside to grab towels on his mother’s orders. She ran to the vehicle and helped Sean out of the driver seat and held towels to the pair’s wounds. At first, Melissa thought the two men had shot each other in an argument, but when her son returned with the towels, he recognized Sean because he had dated a friend of his. The two injured men sat on the porch with towels held to their wounds for 20 minutes before the Giles County Police Department arrived along with an ambulance. It took so long that Melissa called back to ask where they were. During the wait, Scott wanted to call his parents in case it was the last time he would be able to. Melissa called the number Scott gave her and waited for someone to answer. It was 9:30pm at this point and Scott’s mother finally picked up the phone. Melissa told Scott’s mom that he had been shot before handing the phone over to him. Scott told her was going to be okay, but he was much more worried about Sean. His mouth had swollen to the point that he was no longer able to talk. When the police arrived, they began asking questions right away. They asked Scott for a description of the man who he said was gaunt with gray hair. Melissa’s father or father-in-law (the sources were not specific), knew about a man that had been missing from town that matched the description, so he told his grandson, Melissa’s son Randy, to run to the country store to grab the missing person flier that was hung up there. Randy sped the mile to the country store to find it closed, but he knew where the owner lived. He began pounding on the owner’s door saying that it was an emergency and he needed to go into the store for the missing persons flier. He retrieved the flier and sped the mile back home where Sean and Scott were receiving medical attention for their wounds. The flier was shown to Scott while he was being loaded into the ambulance and he was asked if that was the man that attacked him and Sean. With blood oozing through the gauze applied to his face and neck, Sean told the police that he was 100% certain that that was the man who shot them.
Sean and Scott were rushed to Hollybrook Community Center where there was a field large enough for two life flight helicopters to land. When the ambulances arrived, the medical personnel who were in the helicopter knew they had a problem. Sean was too big to fit in the helicopter. The ambulance took off again, and drove 20 more miles to a hospital in Wytheville where a larger helicopter was waiting for him. The life flight helicopters brought both Sean and Scott to the hospital in Roanoke and during the flight, Scott had lost his pulse, but they were able to resuscitate him. During this time, the Millers called Sean’s mother who immediately got in her vehicle and headed for the Wytheville hospital, but when she got there, Sean had already been loaded into the helicopter that was bringing him to Roanoke, an hour away.
When they both arrived at the hospital, it was found that Scott had been shot in the neck and in the back. Doctors told Sean that he was lucky, or as lucky as you can be while almost being murdered. The shot that was fired into his face had lodged itself in his sinus cavity whereas the shot to his chest entered between two of his ribs, but the muscle mass he had in his chest pushed the bullet away from his heart. Luckily, he was in recovery by the following morning at 4am.
After Sean and Scott fled in Scott’s jeep, Ricky jumped in Sean’s 2000 Ford Ranger and fled the scene. Scott had left his keys in the visor, allowing Ricky to easily get in and go. During his drive down the mountain, a person who was camping higher up the mountain heard him cursing and screaming from the vehicle. A BOLO, also known as a Be on the Lookout, was sent out for Sean’s truck after the shooting. As Ricky was fleeing the scene of the crime, he passed a police trooper on Sugar Rim Road in Staffordsville, around 8 miles from Pearisburg. The trooper spotted the gray truck with Ricky inside going the opposite direction he was and when the driver noticed the trooper, he sped off, eventually running off the road and flipping the truck. When the trooper arrived at the crash site, he got out of his patrol car and made his way to the vehicle. He found Ricky still inside the upside down vehicle with a .22-caliber handgun lying over his shoulder. Ricky’s eyes were open, looking at the officer, and the officer later told the media that “They’re the coldest eyes I’ve ever looked into in my life, and I’ve been around the business for 30-something years.” Ricky was taken to the Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital, which just so happened to be the same hospital that Sean and Scott were flown to for their injuries.
When Sean awoke in the hospital, police interviewed him, asking him about Scott and his assailant. They informed Sean that their attacker had fled the campground and scene of the crime in Sean’s truck. The police were able to catch up to the vehicle being driven by the man, who drove off of the embankment in an attempt of suicide. Luckily, the crash did not kill the man and he was brought to the hospital in police custody.
If you weren’t able to tell by now, the man that introduced himself as Ricky was none other than Randall Lee Smith. It turns out that Sean and Scott’s campground was less than 1.5 miles from the Wapitu structure that he had murdered Sue and Robert at in 1981. When the police went to the area that the campground was in, they found an abundance of Randall’s things. They found his GED Certificate that he had obtained while in prison for the murders of Sue and Robert, his birth certificate, a copy of 10-codes that are used in law enforcement, a police scanner, a contour map of the area made out of plastic and had a lot of places on it marked in pencil, a cassette tape that officials said contained some sort of satanic ritual, several pairs of eyeglasses, 8 pairs of women’s underwear, clothes in miscellaneous sizes, and over 30 knives. When they went to the places that were marked on the contour map, they came up with nothing. Officials also ran DNA that was found on the knives and clothing, but had no hits with that evidence either.
At the hospital, Randall was on round-the-clock police guard and was released from the hospital after 2 days. He was then taken to jail after being released from the hospital and was claiming that the attack was a result of self-defense. The charges that he was being held on included attempted capital murder, grand larceny for the theft of the truck, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. On the evening of May 10th, 2008, four days after the attack, an officer at the jail went to bring Randall his dinner in his cell. When Randall didn’t come to the cell door after his name was called multiple times, the officer opened the door to find Randall unresponsive in his cell. They attempted to revive him, but had no luck. The investigators found that there was no foul play in his death and that he died from natural causes at the age of 54. Sean believes that the man died from long overdue karma, but also that Randall took more lives than they know about.
Sean and Scott were lucky to be alive. If the bullets had hit them a millimeter or two in any direction, their outcomes would have been much more grim. Both men were able to get out of the hospital in approximately a week after the attack, but both had to return to the doctors many times after the attack as well as long physical therapy sessions to help them heal. Scott still has a bullet in the back of his neck and Sean still has bullet fragments in his sinus area. Despite this traumatizing event, Scott and Sean still go fishing together at Dismal Creek, the same place they almost met their end at the hands of a crazy man. Sue is buried in the Sims Family Cemetery in Michigan and her gravestone reads “A Ray of Sunshine”. To this day, no one knows the reasonings behind the attacks that Randall committed and we will never know. He took his secrets to the grave.
I hope this case was able to give you a bit more closure than the last couple of cold cases I have covered. Cases like these remind me how important it is to be aware when you are hiking and camping and always let someone know where you are going before you go out of cell service. As always, if you liked this episode, please give me 5-stars on Spotify and Apple Podcasts as well as a review on Apple Podcasts. I am always looking for cases to cover, so if you have a case suggestion, please visit the link in the show’s instagram page, @CrimeontheClarkfork. I hope you enjoyed this episode and I will catch you next time with more big crime in small places.