Dismal Creek deja vu?

By JEFFREY SIMMONS/Staff

Their suspected attacker is gone, but the two fishermen who befriended a wiry killer and his dog last week in the Giles County woods are still carrying tangible reminders of their encounter.
Although they’ve been released from the hospital, Sean Farmer and Scott Johnston have bullets – bits of lead—inside their bodies from last Tuesday night’s Dismal Creek shooting that, in many ways, mimicked one there more than 20 years earlier.
The first two victims – Appalachian Trail hikers who worked together in Maine—died, and on Saturday so did their killer – Randall Lee Smith of Pearisburg. Smith, 54, was found unresponsive in a Dublin jail cell, one day after being released from the hospital and being charged in the most recent shooting.
His body was autopsied on Monday.
On Tuesday, Jack Johnston said his younger brother was at home in Bluefield recovering from three gunshot wounds, presumably from a .22-caliber handgun. One bullet went through the 38-year-old’s neck, one grazed his shoulder and another shell lodged in his back.
Farmer, 33, of Tazewell was shot in the face and chest; both bullets are still inside him, Jack Johnston said.
The men sustained their injuries last Tuesday while fishing and camping in the Jefferson National Forest off Lion’s Den Road on the Bland/Giles line.
An avid fisherman, Scott Johnston was first to arrive Tuesday afternoon in the federal recreational area that’s popular with anglers, hikers and horseback riders.
That’s when he met Smith, who was using hooks that were too big for trout fishing, Jack Johnston said.
Scott Johnston gave Smith better tackle and bait. Farmer arrived later, and the three men shared a meal and conversation around Johnston and Farmer’s campsite.
For about three hours, Smith, told the two fishermen about his wife, his graduation from Virginia Tech and his job in Florida, all lies they would later learn, Jack Johnston said.
Then, without any warning, Smith pulled a gun.
“He said, ‘Well, guys, I need to go now,’” and started shooting, Jack Johnston said.
David and Donna Muhly, who’ve lived in the Dismal area since the 1970s, were outside sitting on their picnic table at approximately 8:30 p.m.
“We heard the gunfire,” said Donna, who didn’t learn until Wednesday that the shots weren’t from someone plinking at beer cans.
“How do these veterans live with that the rest of their lives?” she said when talking about the notion of bullets hitting bodies. “This man was trying to take their lives.”
Wounded and bleeding, the two fishermen managed to get inside Farmer’s Jeep and began driving a few miles toward a row of nearby homes on the Bland County side.
Smith stole Scott Johnston’s Ford Ranger and took off in the opposite direction with his dog, police said.
The Muhlys heard a car speeding away.
With Farmer behind the wheel losing consciousness and Johnston helping steer while keeping pressure on his bleeding neck wound, the men made it to the Millers’ Dismal Creek residence.
Sheila Miller and her sister Melissa were inside smoking cigarettes when their evening was interrupted.
“I heard this terrible beating on the door – ‘I’ve been shot; call 911,’ ” Sheila Miller said.
The sisters got the men pillows and blankets and tried to comfort them until rescuers arrived.
“It freaked us out...; all we wanted to do was help them,” Sheila said.
When the men were shown a flier with Smith’s photo, they recognized their attacker, Sheila said.
“That’s him; that’s him,” they said.
Smith was on Sugar Run Road in the Eggleston area when a Virginia State Police trooper responding to the shooting got behind the stolen pickup, police said.
The vehicle ran off the left side of the road, struck an embankment and overturned.
Smith and Johnston were airlifted to Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital, but Farmer was taken to Roanoke by ambulance.
As investigators began probing the double-shooting last week, part of the nearby Appalachian Trail from Virginia 606 in Hollybrook to U.S. 460 in Pearisburg was closed as law enforcement personnel searched along the pathway to make sure their were no other possible victims.
Yellow police tape blocked the trail entrance in Hollybrook last Wednesday, and an electronic message board told hikers to go to nearby Trent’s Grocery for updates.
Hikers were lined up along the store’s worn blue benches Wednesday morning as they waited for a shuttle to take them to Pearisburg where they could get back on the more than 2,000-mile pathway that stretches from Georgia to Maine.
Nancy and Claude Robinson, who go by the trail names “Slim” and “Bogey,” said they were warned to watch out for Smith after stopping in Bland County at a United Methodist Church trail ministry for hikers.
Bland County Sheriff Jerry Thompson said his officers had been looking for Smith and cautioning hikers since last Friday when Smith was listed as a missing person.
Veteran trekkers, the Robinsons said news of the most recent shootings wouldn’t affect their walking plans.
“It’s sad,” said Nancy who heard sirens and saw the medical helicopters last Tuesday night. “We’re always on our guard.”
Officers were quick to identify Smith as the prime suspect in a crime eerily similar to one that occurred in 1981 not far from the fishermen’s campsite.
In 1982, Smith pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder in the May deaths of social workers Laura Susan Ramsay and Robert Mountford Jr. Ramsay was stabbed multiple times and beaten, and Mountford was shot at an AT shelter not far from the fishermen’s recent campsite.
Stuffed into sleeping bags, their bodies were buried in shallow graves and weren’t discovered for several days after their deaths.
Smith was caught in Myrtle Beach, S.C., but not before one newspaper identified a former Wytheville Community College student as the prime suspect in the killings. The Southwest Virginia Enterprise ran an article refuting the accusation on June 9, 1981.
Sentenced to 30 years in prison in a controversial plea bargain, Smith was released on parole in 1996, according to the Department of Corrections, and was discharged from parole supervision Sept. 26, 2006.
A state police investigator who worked the first case said Smith never offered a motive in the slayings that inspired Jess Carr’s novel “Murder on the Appalachian Trail” and generated national news headlines at the time.
When police arrested him on Friday, Smith told an investigator that he was ready to die.
“By the tone of his voice, Mr. Smith was very bitter about the process that had been dealt to him, as he said, and he no longer wanted to live,” said Giles County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Ron Hamlin.
Upon hearing of Smith’s death, Ginny Ramsay, mother of Laura Susan Ramsay, said that she had only one thing to say: “That takes care of that.”
Jeffrey Simmons can be reached at 1-800-655-1406 or . Media General News Service contributed to this report.