Trailed : one woman's quest to solve the Shenandoah murders
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 289-295).

"An account of the unsolved murder of two women in Shenandoah National Park, by a journalist with unprecedented access to all key elements of the case, and a story that reveals the challenges of wilderness forensics and the failures of our justice system"--,Provided by publisher.

In May 1996, Julie Williams and Lollie Winans were brutally murdered while backpacking in Virginia's Shenandoah National Park, adjacent to the World Famous Appalachian Trail. The young women wre skilled backcountry leaders and they had met -and fallen in love-the previous summer, while working at a world renowned outdoor program for women. But despite an extensive joint investigation by the FBI, the Virginia poiice, and National Park services experts, the case remained unsolved for years. In early 2002 and in response to mounting politial pressure, then Attorney General John Ashcroft announce that he would be seeking the death penalty against Darrell David Rice-already in prison for assaulting another womam-in the first capital case tried under new post 9/11 federal hate crime legislation But two years later the Department of Justice quietly suspended its case against Rice, and the investigation has since grown cold. Did prosecutors have the right person? Journalist Kathryn Miles was a professor at Lollie Winans's wilderness college in Maine when the 2002 indictment was announced. On th 20th anniversary of the murder, she began looking into the lives of these adventurous women-whose loss continued to haunt all who had encountered them -along with the murder investigation and subsequent case against Rice. As she dives deeper into the case, winning the trust of the victim's loved ones as well as investigators and gaining access to key documents, Miles become increasingly obsessed with the loss of the generous and free-spirited Lollie and Julie, who were just on the brink of adulthood, and at the same time she discovers evidence of cover-ups, incompetence , and crime-scene sloppiness that seemed part of a larger problem in America's pursuit of justice in national parks. She also becomes convinced of Rice's innicence, and zeroes in on a different likely suspect.