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Copyright 1996 The Washington Post
The Washington Post
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June 04, 1996, Tuesday, Final Edition
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1022 words
HEADLINE: 2 Women Slain In Shenandoah National Park;
Hikers' Bodies Found At Secluded Campsite
BYLINE: Rajiv Chandrasekaran; Tod Robberson, Washington
Post Staff Writers
BODY:
Two young women were slain at a secluded campsite
near the Appalachian Trail in Shenandoah National Park, authorities said
yesterday after finding the
hikers' bodies over the weekend.
The women were found by park rangers Saturday night
within three miles of the popular Skyland lodge along Skyline Drive, about
10 miles east of
Luray, Va. They had planned a five-day hike through
the park that was to have ended on Memorial Day, park officials said.
The victims were Julianne Williams, 24, of St. Cloud,
Minn., and Lollie Winans, 26, of Unity, Maine, a law enforcement official
close to the
investigation said last night.
Rangers and administrators at the park, about 80 miles
southwest of Washington, revealed few details about the slayings, saying
that doing so might
compromise the criminal investigation. They said they
would not discuss a cause of death until a coroner had finished examining
the bodies.
"It's clear this is a homicide," said Robert Marriott,
a National Park Service law enforcement official in Washington.
The women were not shot or stabbed, Marriott said.
He declined to say whether the pair were sexually assaulted.
The bodies were found at 8:30 p.m. Saturday, Marriott
said. He said the women appeared to have been dead for 12 to 15 hours,
but other officials said
they may have been killed several days earlier.
Greg Stiles, the park's chief ranger, said officials
did not notify the news media as soon as the bodies were discovered because
they wanted to determine
first whether the deaths were homicides. "Usually
it's an accident or a suicide" when someone is found dead in the park,
Stiles said.
Both victims were affiliated with Woodswomen Inc.,
a Minneapolis-based group that provides outdoor adventure and education
programs for women,
said Denise Mitten, the group's executive director.
Williams and Winans had worked as interns for the group last summer, leading
outdoors programs in
Minnesota, Mitten said.
The two struck up a friendship that continued over
the year as Williams worked in Vermont and Winans attended Unity College
in Maine, Mitten said.
Their trip to Virginia was not related to the outdoors
group, she said.
"It's an absolutely awful tragedy," Mitten said. "These
women were so ready to serve, to teach, to give."
Williams had previously worked as a park ranger at
Big Bend National Park in Texas. Winans was studying outdoor recreation,
Mitten said.
"It's just unthinkable," Mitten said. "Normally you
just worry about the weather and animals when you're in the country. You
never think anything like
this could happen."
Rangers began searching the park on Friday after receiving
a telephone call from the father of one of the women who told them that
his daughter was late
in returning from a hiking trip, a law enforcement
official said. The FBI has joined park rangers and the Virginia State
Police in investigating the deaths.
The two women had two back-country camping permits,
one for the area where they were found and the other for Nicholson Hollow,
about five miles
northeast, park spokeswoman Robbie Brockwehl said.
They were supposed to have traveled from the Skyland
area to Nicholson Hollow by May 26 and to have left the park the next
day, Brockwehl said.
"People don't always camp in the area they plan to,"
she said. "Maybe they got tired. Maybe the weather was bad."
Last night, park spokesman Paul Pfenninger said "no
arrests have been made in conjunction with this case."
Earlier, police questioned a man described by a park
ranger as "tall, scruffy-looking" and bearded, who was taken into custody
about 5 p.m. near a park
trail.
The man, whose presence in the park was reported to
police by a couple who had encountered him on a trail, was camping and
had no backpack or
camping permit, the ranger said. Pfenninger said later
that "routinely, arrests are made in the park" but that "no link has been
made" between that man and
the slayings.
No further details about the man were available.
By yesterday afternoon, news of the slayings had circulated
among many of the guests at Skyland. Several visitors said they were stunned
that a violent
crime could occur in such a remote and tranquil setting.
"You used to think that national parks were safe.
Maybe animals could get you, but certainly nothing like this," said Howard
Shirley, of St. Joseph, Mo.,
who was visiting the lodge with his wife, Sue.
"We'll stay here, but we'll certainly be careful,"
Sue Shirley said. "We'll keep the doors locked tonight."
Eric Pinard and Colette Chayer, from Montreal, said
they had spent the last two months hiking the Appalachian Trail and planned
to continue along the
trail until they reached Maine.
Chayer said she felt safe hiking with a male companion.
"But when I think of the women out here hiking alone, it really scares
me," she said.
"One thing that's been upsetting us is that Skyline
Drive being so close to the trail makes it too accessible," she said.
"The Forest Service warned us that it
was a risk."
Pinard added, "Not necessarily that it's a risk to
your life, but there are a lot of yahoos out there partying."
The women are the eighth and ninth people to be killed
along the Appalachian Trail in the last 22 years, said Brian King, a spokesman
for the Appalachian
Trail Conference, a nonprofit group based in Harpers
Ferry, W.Va., that maintains parts of the trail.
The last slayings along the trail occurred in 1990
near Harrisburg, Pa. A drifter from Florida shot one hiker in the head
and stabbed another as they slept
in a camping shelter.
"There's an expectation that because it's a trail
and it's the back country, you're immune from everything else that's going
on in the world," King said.
"That's not true."
But King added that the trail, which attracts almost
4 million visitors a year, is "still a very safe place."
Park officials, without saying why, maintained that
visitors should not worry about repeat attacks.
"We believe this was an isolated incident," Stiles,
the park's chief ranger, said.
Robberson reported from Shenandoah National Park.
GRAPHIC: Photo, reuter, WILLIAMS
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
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