Slaying of 2 hikers 'solved'
Inmate indicted in hate crimes

Los Angeles Times
April 11, 2002


WASHINGTON - With the filing of federal capital murder charges, law enforcement authorities said Wednesday that they had solved one of the United States' most egregious hate crimes against gays: the 1996 slaying of two young women in Virginia's Shenandoah National Park.


The deaths of Julianne Marie Williams, 24, and Laura S. Winans, 26, attracted national attention because the two women were gay and their bodies were found just off the Appalachian Trail, one of the most popular hiking destinations.

Darrell David Rice, a Virginia prison inmate already serving time for an unrelated assault and attempted abduction of a female bicyclist in the same park, was indicted in their deaths by a federal grand jury.

Prosecutors said Rice, 34, had targeted the two hikers because he believed they were gay. Their bodies were found June 1, 1996, beside their tent in a secluded campsite about a half-mile off the trail. Their throats were slashed and their hands bound.

Rice told fellow prisoners months ago that he "hates gays" and intentionally selected women to attack "because they are more vulnerable than men," authorities said. Since then, authorities said they have built a case against Rice by collecting physical and other evidence.

Prosecutors also quoted Rice as saying Williams and Winans "deserved to die because they were lesbian."

If convicted, he could receive the death penalty.

"It has been a long and tedious investigation," said Lawrence Berry, a spokesman for the Richmond, Va., FBI field office, which investigated the murders with the National Park Service. "We're certainly pleased it has resulted in an indictment."

The case was heard by a federal grand jury because the murders took place in a national park.

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, which had urged a full investigation of the slayings in 1996, expressed relief at "closure" of the case but said it was "a sad reminder" of the pervasiveness of violence against gays.

The women, both experienced hikers, had worked as interns for Woodswomen Inc., a Minneapolis-based group providing outdoor adventure and education programs for women.

Attorney General John Ashcroft, who announced Rice's indictment, said the women's murders denied the world their budding talents, "which would have been substantial."

"These families have suffered what Americans now know all too well: the pain and destruction wrought by hate," Ashcroft told a news conference.

"The volatile, poisonous mixture of hatred and violence will not go unchallenged in the American system of justice," he said after meeting with relatives of the victims.

Rice, an inmate in the federal prison in Petersburg, Va., was charged in a four-count indictment with capital murder and with "intentionally selecting and murdering the two young women because of his hatred of women and homosexuals."

Quoted:
This guys MO points out one thing- gun bans only create protection free zones for predators to roam, they don't protect anyone.