#555 - Murder On The Trail - Pearisburg, Virginia

Hey, everybody. Just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you a little bit about a delicious dog food, Ollie.
If your dog could talk, they'd want Ollie. They'd ask you for Ollie.
That's what I'm talking about. It's a fresh whole food diet.
It's not just delicious. It can add, like, years to your puppy's life.
Yeah. You want that good, healthy food that's more tail wagging.
And this is. This is real food.
Like, this stuff looks good. I'd eat it.
Yeah. That's how I was like, this looks pretty good.
I might sit down with you on the floor and you could share. It is nice to be able to pop something down on the floor for him that looks like something that you'd put over rice or whatever and eat it yourself.
That's what I mean. It looks great.
All you need to do, you fill out their 30 second quiz that Ollie has for you. They create a customized meal plan based on your puppy's weight and activity level and health info in general there.
You get expert recommendations. Dogs deserve the best, and that means fresh, healthy food.
Head to ollie.com slash STM. Tell them all about your dog and use code STM to get 60% off your welcome kit when you subscribe today.
Plus, they offer a clean bowl guarantee on the first box. So if you're not completely satisfied, you'll get your money back.
That's O-L-L-I-E dot com slash STM and enter code STM to get 60% off your first box. Now back to the show.
This episode is brought to you by IQ Bar. Our exclusive snack sponsor, IQ Bar, is the better-for-you plant-protein-based snacks made with brain-boosting nutrients to refuel, nourish, and satisfy hunger without the sugar crash.
These things are amazing. My daughter loves them, and it's so hard to find a snack that a child will eat in the first place.
These have nutrients that are good for your brain. She takes them to her volleyball game and feeds them to her teammates, and they all love them.
They have so many different flavors. They're amazing.
Yeah, IQ Bar's totally free from gluten, dairy, soy, GMOs, and artificial sweeteners for a natural snack. Try any of their nine delicious flavors, including mint chocolate chip, chocolate sea salt, banana nut, toasted coconut chip, lemon blueberry, and peanut butter chip.
And right now, IQ Bar is offering our special podcast listeners 20% off all IQ Bar products. Plus, get free shipping.
To get your 20% off, text SMALLTOWN to 64000. Text SMALLTOWN to 64000.
That's SMALLTOWN, one, to 64,000. Message and data rates apply.
See terms for details. Now back to the show.
Hi, this is Steve Buscemi. You know, the actor.
Well, now I'm an actor and podcast host. From Piece of Work Entertainment and Campside Media in association with Olivections, comes Big Time, an Apple original podcast.

Each episode follows the story of one misfit with big dreams who isn't afraid to bend a few rules or take a shortcut to get there. Well, who steals bees? I was duped.
I shoot you in the leg. This is Big Time.
Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts. This week in Parisburg, Virginia,

fear strikes the area as a strange, lying, porn-obsessed murderer known as the AT Killer stalks the countryside and creates an awful legend.

Welcome to Small Town Murder. Yay! Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy.
Yay indeed. My name is James Petrogallo.
I'm here with my very sick co-host. Oh, yeah.
I'm Jimmy Wissman. Thank you so much for joining us today on another episode of Small Town Murder.

We have all sorts of a crazy story for you today.

Very insane here.

We will get to all that.

And we have the announcement of the new tour dates for 2025.

We'll tack those on at the end of the episode so you can check that out.

And people who are just tuning in for the first time don't have to hear all that. So we'll get to that very quickly.
First of all, shut up and give me murder dot com. That is where you can check that out and people who are just tuning in for the first time don't have to hear all that so we'll get to that very quickly first of all shutupandgivememurder.com that is where you can go to get your tickets for the live shows they are on sale right now 2025 tour some places we've never been before like Grand Rapids stuff like that we're coming and we can't wait so get your tickets and get them quick because this year they went very fast and people were disappointed when they waited.
So get in there and get those tickets. Shut up and give me murder.com or you can go to at small town murder on Instagram, whatever you want to do.
And you can go to the links and do all that stuff. Also, Patreon.
You definitely want Patreon. Patreon.com slash crime in sports is where you get all of the bonus episodes.

Anybody $5 a month or above, you are going to get tons of stuff.

So much.

Immediately upon subscription, hundreds of back episodes you've never heard before,

and new ones every other week.

One crime in sports, one small town murder, and you get it all for $5.

That's right.

And this week, what you're going to get for crime in sports, oh, it's going to be fun.

We're going to talk about sports songs.

We're going to listen to, like, Macho Man Savage rap.

Now, we're going to get for crime and sports. Oh, it's going to be fun.
We're going to talk about sports songs. We're going to listen to like Macho Man Savage rap.
And we're going to listen to football teams try to put a song together and we're going to laugh our asses off and die. It's just going to be fun.
Can't wait for that. Then for small town murder, something that cost tax dollars, billion taxpayers, billions of dollars.
The CIA thought they could get it so people wouldn't be just psychic. They could remote view, which is they could see what's going on 10,000 miles away by concentrating hard enough.
So that's what they had there. I don't think so.
We'll talk all about that. It's patreon.com slash crime and sports.
Also, listen to Crime and Sports, our other show, and your stupid opinions as well, because God damn it, is it funny. So check check that out hang out with us and keep doing that but you can hang out with us all week that way that said disclaimer time oh boy everybody it's a comedy show it is we're comedians but the thing is the stories are excessively real there is nothing nothing embellished no details that are you know oh we're gonna say this so it's funny or none of that stuff stories are as real as they get and they are meticulously researched and everything so get in there and check that out what we do is you might go out of murder and crime and comedy go together well if you do it tastefully that's how you go that's how you do it yeah what you do is you don't make fun of the victims or the victims' families.

Why is that, James?

Because we're assholes.

But?

But we're not scumbags.

See?

There you have it.

That's how that goes.

See?

And if that sounds good to you, you're going to hear a goddamn wild story.

Here we go. If you think true crime and comedy should never, ever go together, we might not be the show for you.

But we might be the show for you.

You don't know.

You never know.

Give it a chance.

But tell you what, no complaining later. How about that? Yeah said, I think it's time, everybody.
Let's do this. Let's do it.
Here we go. Deep breaths, arms to the sky.
Let's all shout, shut up and give me murder. Let's do this, everybody.
Let's go on a trip. I'm dragging Jimmy and all of his medicine behind me.
Let's do it. Let's get out of here.
We're going to Virginia. Oh, yeah.
Here we go. Been a while since we've been in Virginia here.
Virginia, we're going to Parisburg, Virginia. Sure, sure.
Which is pear, like the fruit. Yeah.
And then is berg. So, yeah, they don't know how to spell that.
So this is in north central Virginia. It's about an hour 10 to Roanoke and about an hour five to Beckley.
So you know you're in a great spot when you're right between Beckley and Roanoke. That's the sweet spot right there.
This is in Giles County. Area code and the motto of course virginia is for lovers it sure is even if it's your cousin that's okay that's all right down there it's fine uh history that's right god damn it well we're far enough away history of this town was founded in 1808 when the county was established it was named after a guy named george Paris, P-E-a-r-i-s like the town he's a local landowner who donated a 50 acre tract to be used for a town that would grow around the county courthouse they built the courthouse and they said we'll make a town around that here now this guy by the way george paris was actually like a war hero oh yeah and it's funny because when you look for of him, the best you can find is like this third graders watercolor painting of him.
And he looks, it makes him look like an Amish child. And I'm like, this man, this poor man was a hero for Christ's sake.
He commanded a company of Virginia cavalrymen under Joseph Cloyd and was instrumental in the American success during the War of Independence.

Wow. And in 1780, on October 14th, his crew defeated the Tories at Shallow Fork on the Yadkin River.
Those are Brits, yeah? Yes, yes, absolutely, in the War of Independence. And he sustained a severe wound to his shoulder.
Fuck. And then he moved to Giles County, Virginia, purchased the property, got married, operated a ferry, had the first...
Survived it. Survived it, yeah.
Which back then, a wound like that, I mean... That'll take you.
That'll take you, even if the wound doesn't kill you, the infection will later. Infection will, yeah.
Yeah, there was no antibiotics or anything like that. So then he operated a ferry, the first store in town, and a tavern, and was appointed the first chief justice of the peace of the town as well, or the county.
So Paris was the man here. He operated a ferry on the New River at a settlement called Bluff City, which they just took into Parisburg and made a part of that.
So he took that. He died in 1810, this guy, and he's buried in his own cemetery.
Just missed the War of 1812. Yep.
The Paris Cemetery, which by the way, if you check out pictures, look it up. It is the scariest looking place ever.
It looks like a cemetery that was abandoned 100 years ago. That's what it looks like.
The gravestones are tilted and there's tree limbs growing through everything. They're not putting.
No. And what's there is not being maintained.
Not being maintained at all. It is really bad stuff here.
So we have one review of this town because it's a small town. There is not many reviews.
One review. Four stars.
And they say, great little town. Okay.
All right. Double exclamation point.
So it must be true. Four stars.
not five. Born and raised there, and I would love to go back if I could.
Looking for a retirement place there, but not sure what is available. Hmm.
If only there was a place you could find available real estate. Have you heard of Zillow? You found the niche website to put this review, but you didn't take it one step further to go, you know, real estate, Parisburg.
It only takes a couple of letters. It only takes a couple of words.
And this town, too, looking at the other stuff, too, it's like there's a little restaurant in this town that looks like a trailer building that they put a sign on and then that burned to the ground. And then there's motel there that also burned to the ground.
It's bad. It's flammable as shit.
It's very flammable. Then there's a very crappy motel here.
Very, very crappy that one of the people reviewing it said their bathroom had a quarter inch of quote scunge on it. Hell yeah.
I don't know what the S-K-U-N-d-g-e scunge so you don't know what that is you know what that is it is funk funk and scunge and something that came out of someone else's body that's not yours those are bodily fluids yeah when what is defined scunge something that came from someone else's body that's scunge. And is now stuck on the ground.
Yeah.

Stuck on the ground.

People in this town, 2,878.

So a very small little place here.

There is more females than males by a good margin here.

It's 53% female, which is way out of whack with normal here.

Median age is 45, which is about seven years older than the national average.

Um, there is 0% 18 to 20 year olds here.

Zero.

There's almost 3000 people and none of them are 18 to 20 years old.

Interesting. Wild.

Soon as you get legal age to run screaming from this place, you do apparently.

Um, right back and then come back when you're 21.

Apparently go fail elsewhere.

Yeah.

Come on back to Parisburg. Um, married.
Very high single with children rate. It's normally 10% here.
It's about 25%. Race of this town, 88.1% white, 9.5% black, 2.4% Hispanic.
And that's it. Wow.
Zero point zero percent anything else that could possibly exist here.

Religion in this town, it's 50 50, which is the national average actually to.

And the highest one you'd think normally it's Baptist.

We say Baptist or the Catholics of the South here.

No, it is Methodist.

Oh, yeah.

Coming in with 17.5 percent out of the out of the whole crew here.

The unemployment rate is low in the country. Actually, actually.
Not a lot of people without jobs here. Median household income is pretty close to the national average.
It's almost $66,000. The rest of the country, it's $69,000.
Not bad. That's not bad at all.
And the cost of living, very low. What? Yeah.
Normally, 100 is average in the rest of the country. it is 80 out of 100 and the housing is 49 out of 100 so that's terrific low median home cost here 188,400 which is that right not too shabby honestly that's pretty damn low for prices that is not bad here and all right so if that sounds good to you you can't wait to can't stay out of parisburg we have for you the parisburg virginia real estate report here we go house number one is a four bedroom tworoom, two-bath, 2,090-square-foot house on a .75-acre lot.
Is that good? It's a schizophrenic house. This house, half of it looks like somewhere where the Texas Chainsaw Massacre family lives.
And then from another angle, it looks kind of like a quaint country home. It's really, it depends on the lighting.
It's either a cottage or a murder house. One of the two.
Inside, it has not been touched since maybe the 60s. I mean, literally the 60s.
It doesn't have cabinet doors. It just has a curtain across it.
It's one of those. It's got several different old-timey floors.
It's got drop acoustic ceiling in a couple of the rooms. Like it's an office.
It's a really weird fucking house, man. And it says back on the market.
I bet it is. Oh, the last offer fell through.
I bet it is here. This house is $154,950 though.
Not bad. For a little bit of land and 2,100 square feet.
Almost an acre. That's not bad.
Yeah, if you want to put it together you can here. House number two is not really a house.
There is a structure on it, but you can't live in it because it would fall on your head eventually here. This is 171.7 acres of land in the hills here.
That's a lot. It's a shitload of land.
And it said, embrace the opportunity to own one of the region's most exquisite plots of land. Oh, yeah.
And it's on, like, a mountainside. It also comes with, it says, the true gem of this property is the historic cabin on Lot C, an artifact with stories dating back to the Civil War.
Well, that scares me. Yes, I don't know what happened in there.

And it's like falling apart.

Like you can see, it's not structurally sound, this building.

It's pretty scary here.

But it said that it is complete with four-wheeler trails and hiking.

It's a hunter's paradise.

I think that's kind of what it is.

$562,000.

For over 150 acres. That's not bad.
170 acres here. House number three.
Four bedroom, three and a half bath. Almost a T-bowl for each and every B-hole.
3,932 square feet on 1.66 acres. It's just a big McMansion.

It's one of those houses that has it's on a big lot.

1.66 acres where they cleared

all the trees first before they

put up a house. So it's just this house

sitting in the middle of a field basically is what

it looks like. I don't like when they do

that. They do that up by me all the time and I'm like

why did you do that? You cleared out all the

trees. Clear a halo around the house to keep it safe

for being burned down. That's all.

Or a tree falling into it. otherwise keep some mature trees around instead they knock all these trees down then plant small ones it's like you had a tree right there why didn't you just keep it assholes so i don't know it's it's like that fake brick facade it's all right i don't know 750 grand for this house though it's a little it just seems a little cheesy.
I don't know. Not my favorite.
It's a lot. It's all right.
I don't know. $750,000 for this house though.
It's a little, it just seems a little cheesy. I don't know.
Not my favorite. It's a lot.
It's a lot. It's too much, honestly, here.
For an acre and a half, that's not good pricing. No, no.
That's what I mean. It feels terrible for that kind of pricing.
I mean, especially for the house. Things to do in this town.
What are they? Okay, hererow festival of course and this just appears to be kind of like you know people with their tents set up selling like handmade jewelry and shit yeah and at the same time the scarecrow festival they have a giant scarecrow person yeah with a pumpkin on their head um on on stilts they're on stilts this person's you know 14 feet tall and all the pictures i saw the entire festival not one person's even looking at this guy this dude is in the middle of the street in the middle of a crowd like hey i'm the scarecrow and there's kids not even like interested like don't even fucking care seeds Pumpkin seeds in his hair. No one gives a shit.
This guy's going to go home. If he doesn't fall and break his neck, he's going to go home and pick pumpkin seeds out of his hair, and no one could care less what he's doing here.
They couldn't fucking care less. So, yeah, there's that.
It's the every October the Parisburg Merchants Association will host the annual scarecrow festival in our downtown streets. It's one of those where they close off all the streets and you just walk around.
There's a classic car. It's inconveniencing anybody.
No, 2,800 people. Just avoid the one street.
You're fine. There's a classic car show, which from the looks of it was like literally nine cars with a few old men.
One of them was a Fox Body 80s Mustang. So it wasn't even like, I mean, technically classic, but it's 40 years old.
Not really what we're going for when we're going for a classic car thing here. So that's pretty fun.
One of the favorite parts of the festival, according to the website here, is that it kicks off the tradition of seeing the scarecrows located throughout town.

These are the things that no one gives a shit about or even looks at. That's one of the favorite parts of the festival, according to them.
Another scarecrow. To have people risking their lives on stilts while people ignore them completely.
So that's fun. Residents and visitors alike are greeted in the downtown Parisburg, are greeted in the downtown Parisburg, as well as outside in the downtown Parisburg, as well as outside the town area to a parade of scarecrows during the month of October.
A parade? They're just all walking? I guess they're all walking with pumpkins on their heads here. They're going to have vendors and live entertainment, which is so good that they won't tell you what it is but based on the pictures of it uh one was um a bunch of old people yeah and another one was a guy in a dack prescott uh a dack prescott cowboys jersey singing singing outside of a uh like a like a garage shop like that was they just had a stage set up out right outside the bay doors of a garage.
That's where you do it. It's big time.
It's big time. A car and motorcycle cruise in a dog show.
Okay. Oh baby a dog show and more.
Don't miss this event. I don't know how you could.
I will not miss it. So I only thing to do.
It really really is the only thing to do there, looking all the shit up. I mean, 2,800 people.
What do you want? It's mainly all the recreation is outdoor shit here. It's in the mountains.
It's right by the Appalachian Trail. So it's essentially people hunt and fish and camp and do all that shit.
There's not a lot of really others. Four-wheelers, shit like that about.
So more than that, this is getting all the people in from the hills to come actually into town and do something here. Crime rate in this town, what we are interested in here, property crime is actually higher than the national average somehow.
Is that right? There's 2,800 people and they walk around with pumpkins on their heads and somehow there's a lot of crime. I don't get it.
Violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and of course assault. The Mount Rushmore of crime is about half the national average.
So they won't kill you, but they'll steal your shit. So that's that.
Certainly, yeah. They want your car.
They want your car. That said, let's talk about some murder.
What do you say, everybody? Let's do it. Let's do this.
Let's talk about some murder what do you say everybody let's do it let's do this let's talk about um a lady first here talk about a woman named loretta smith now loretta smith here she is a hard-working lady she starts out in the laundry at the giles memorial hospital and works her way up to a nurse's aid. So hard, hard working lady.
Yeah. I mean, that's that's, you know, hospital works hard work.
It just is. She apparently here, he she gets married, has a young boy named Randall Lee Smith.
And that's her. That's her.
That's her son. He's born in 1954.
And then poor Loretta here with her son is divorced when Randall is six months old. Oh, no.
So now it's like 1955, and she's a single mom working in the laundry of the hospital with a baby boy. And we'll never hear from this dad again.
He just disappears, and that's it. He's gone.
So, I mean, there's no help at all and anything like that. So she and her son are a pair.
They're going to win it. That's just the world.
Just the two of them here. And Randall, the son, Randy, as people call him, not only do they call him Randy, they also have a nickname for him.

Great.

It's good when you have a nickname and the whole town just calls you that.

It's awesome.

It fits.

It's a good nickname for you. Well, his nickname that everyone calls him is Lion Randall.

Oh, no.

Yep.

Lion with an apostrophe.

Oh, boy.

It is Skeeter.

Nope.

It is Lion Randall.

L-R.

They literally call him L-R.

Hey, what's up, L-R?

That's fucking bad.

Thank you. boy it is uh skeeter nope it is lion randall lr they literally call him lr hey what's up lr that's fucking bad that's tough stuff yeah that's not t-bone or some shit like that that's not cool at all that's not cool hey what's up lion randall's over here and he just goes hey everybody so um now when he was little they lived in several small houses around trying to find a place because she doesn't have a lot of money at all.
You know, times are tough here. And so finally they settled down in a four room single story home.
It's got a basement, too, but for not four bedroom, four room. It's a very small little house they live in it's it's like a little box basically and um that's where they're gonna live they find that when i think randall's about four or five years old perfect and they are gonna stay there for the duration forever home that's their forever home here it's at 190 virginia street in perisburg in the ingram village area apparently uh now like said, Loretta worked in the laundry room at Giles Memorial Hospital.
A neighbor of theirs who's, I guess, vaguely related to them, a guy named Carl. Carl, my sort of cousin over here.
A fella. Kind of cousin Carl.
He said she made a living and that's about all. That's it.
And it was tough. Just enough to pay the rent and get some food.
But outside of that, not much going on here. And Randall, in addition to being poor and not having a dad, which back then was not normal back then, especially in a rural area.
So that made made him a little bit different and then he made sure to make himself as different as possible as well and it's not like he did it on purpose like he was just trying to be different he's not like damian eccles or something like just trying to fucking freak out the squares he's just a weird kid oh he's just a weird kid he like other kids would play and congregate and do games, and Randall would just, like, stay a yard away just, like, looking at him. But he wouldn't, like, go play or do anything.
Just leering like a fucking creep. He didn't have many friends at all in school.
I mean, very rarely did someone talk to him other than to just be like, it's Ryan Randall, and fucking make fun of him or something sure uh one guy who went to school with him named gerald smith said he was a loner and he stayed too much to himself and then said the funniest thing i've ever heard for a child not to ever have a friend that's unusual it is yeah i would say so yeah usually kids will find somebody that somebody else that's weird to latch on to. What's the normal amount of time to spend by yourself, though? You know what I mean? I mean, I guess some.
If it's noticeable, then that's the wrong amount. I think so.
I think whenever you see all the kids out playing and you never see Randall in the group, I think that's when it's, you know. That's when it's too much by yourself.
Where's Randall? He's just, like, sitting in his yard. You know, like, okay, he's a creep staring at people.
So, yeah, and it's self-inflicted, too. Like, he's just very, very strange, a very strange man.
And we'll find out there's no, like, he doesn't have, like, a, you know, a disability or, like, a mental problem. He's just a strange fucking weird guy.
Yeah. Doesn't have a super low immune system or anything? No, nothing like that.
He's just staying away from people. He just doesn't want to be put back in the bubble.
Yeah. That's all it is.
So his big interest, all the other kids are into baseball and then girls and then cars and stuff like that he's into collecting arrowheads that he finds buried in the ground out in the appalachian trail behind his house which the other there i imagine yeah i must be i guess if he made a lifelong like hobby of it it's there's got to be plenty otherwise you get bored by the time you're 12 if you can't find anymore i got three i found three of them then i turned 12 and i'm still looking so i don't know but he uh that's what they said he would basically go out into the woods by himself and that was that was his day he'd come back later in the night with a couple of arrowheads and they were like have a good day randall he was like oh yeah found of arrowheads. And now he seemed to be fine with that.
Yeah. Which is weird.
Off in D.C. lobbying.
Yeah, for sure. So Loretta's sister lived next door.
And her husband, who's Randall's uncle, would take him camping sometimes. So that to give him some kind of, I guess, male influence.
And loretta wasn't a big camper so this guy would take him camping and uh even he said randall's a weird fucking kid he's just a weird kid he's just weird he's one of those kids it's weird randall drops out of school after 11th grade and he actually he's got like he's not lazy that's one thing about Randall. No, he doesn't.
He's almost there. He doesn't seem lazy.
I know, dropped out after the 11th grade. Well, I mean, I stopped like halfway through my senior year.
So it tells you how dumb I am. Yeah.
Very angry. So close.
Well, I realized I was going to be credit short. And I was like, what am I doing? What am I doing here? Yeah.
So this guy, he just, I don't know how many credit short he was going to be but maybe a lot i'm going to assume quite a few and um he's like i said he's pretty industrious though he he likes to likes to do things he's got a motor and after this he makes he heads over to newport news virginia and gets jobs working welding jobs in a shipyard at 17.

That's that's man work.

You know, go get her.

Yeah. Yeah.

And that's those are like guys with families and kids to support welding in the shipyard.

So angry fellas.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's a real like a tough job.

So he does that.

He'll go like do, you know, a couple weeks of work like a project and then he'll be home for a while and he'll go back.

I think he just makes enough money to have some money for a while and then he goes back and works more.

And so, yeah, he would just leave and come back and leave and come back.

And when he'd come back, he'd have crazy stories to tell.

Crazy stories.

Now, all through junior high and high school, there was never a girlfriend. There there was never a girl he talked to there was never a friend who was a girl oh like he just no girls talked to him and he didn't talk to girls basically but when he would try to fit in he would just lie that would be his way to fit in okay all these other kids i got a girlfriend this one's talking about this he just makes some shit up so he in his in his mind it would make him fit in so one of his uh classmates said quote he was a habitual liar we called him lr all the time lying randall yeah he called him lr he was habitual liar and it is too he says shit that can't possibly be true that's the crazy shit yeah he's things that aren't even plausible yeah like he'd go and do like a two-week welding job and come home and then talk about having multiple girlfriends and children out there okay somehow he knocked people up and they had full gestation and spit a kid out in the two weeks he was in virginia or fantasizing about the wrong life he really is he's like i got girlfriends and i've been knocked slipping them past the goalie left and right and it's just tough they're gonna hit me with that child support soon yeah it's rough um but no one ever saw him or knew of any actual romantic relationship he ever had.

You know, not like he brought any of these girls home with him or anything.

It's like, who, you should see me in Virginia.

Newport News, they can't keep their hands off me.

This show, Small Town Murder, is sponsored by BetterHelp. We're huge proponents of therapy because everybody needs it, too.

And independence is very glorified.

It's easy to forget.

And we're all better when we have a little support system behind us.

I'm not going to forget that we're all better when we have a little support system behind us. And therapy can be a great source of support for any area of your life when it's time to shift the focus here from doing it all on your own to maybe, maybe it's a little better if we ask for some help here or there.
It doesn't hurt and there's nothing wrong with it. And we've benefited greatly from therapy.
Just talking to Jimmy about something he wanted to talk to his therapist about this week. So, I mean, you can't beat it.
Makes therapy affordable and convenient, actually, which is a big barrier to a lot of people. Serves over 5 million people worldwide.
You access a diverse network of more than 30,000 credential therapists with a wide range of specialties. And you can easily switch therapists at any time for no extra cost.
Build your support system with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash SmallTownMurder today to get 10% off your first month.
That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash SmallTownMurder. Now back to the show.
Hey, everybody. Just going to take a quick break from the show and tell you a little bit about our safest sponsors, Simply Safe.
And everyone has routines that you go through, make you feel good, make you feel secure, like you have control over the world. And a lot of times you don't, but you do if you're us and it's on your routine includes arming your Simply Safe home security system.
You know, that's going to do well for you. So when we're heading out, both of us, we both have them in our houses, our studios.
You lock up for the night. Yeah, this simple step does more than just protect you.
It gives you peace of mind. You're going to feel good about leaving, and then you're going to know it's going to be the same when you get back.
You'll sleep more soundly. I can leave the house with confidence, and it's amazing how a push of a button can give you that kind of confidence.
And with SimpliSafe, we love it. Like I said, it's in our studios, in our homes.
It's really easy to install, too. You can get professional installation also, but if we can put it up, you can put it up.
Put it that way. Visit SimpliSafe.com slash small to claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring plan and get your first month free.
That's Simplisafe.com slash small. S-I-M-P-L-I safe.com slash small.
There's no safe like Simplisafe. Now back to the show.
I got news for you. You don't want to watch life, Randall.
No, you don't, Randall. So no one remembered him going to like parties that the kids had or social events or never any of that.
Like, oh, yeah, I remember that big kegger when Randall got drunk and ran into that tree. Like, there's no stories of Randall like that.
Got the cheerleader pregnant. Yeah.
On other the ones that when he did show up to things like that, all he would do is lie and no one would want to talk to him. Awesome.
His friend said he told lies about the money he didn't have, about a property he claimed to own in other states. So not only does he have girlfriends and children, but property too.
He lives quite the life outside of this place. No kidding.
But then he just comes home to live with his mom for a few weeks, you know, just a break from it all wow the rat race you know it gets to you after a while it really is exhausting and take a little break here so um and this is like a a pretty poor area too at the time like in the in the 70s his mom's house was worth less than ten thousand dollars what less than ten thousand dollars wow which i mean even adjusted for inflation that's crazy that's incredible that's a way crazy that's like 60 grand it's worth now which how many houses are worth 60 grand they're not very good houses we've we've seen them on a real estate report here it's a bad fucking house so that's that is crazy um so they like i said but for them this was a good house because it was the best house they've had here i mean you know um now randall at one point when asked about this i guess his family didn't go to church him and loretta loretta's probably tired i think she's she's got to work at the hospital like you want me to go on Sunday? Yeah, that's my only day off.

I'm not going.

So he didn't go to church.

And I guess in this area, if you didn't go to church, you were considered a little aberrant. And you kind of have to lie about it.

So he said, quote, by the time I was in junior high, I'd learned to lie when someone asked what church I went to.

Rumors always spread like wildfire, ending with a dozen people personally letting me know I was going to hell or telling me they were praying for my soul. He's like, my mom's just tired.
Yeah. And I it's my weekend with the kids, so, you know, it's a lot.
The little lady won't let me. She's I've been gone all week.
We're trying to bang on someone. I was going to say, both these, my girlfriends, it's a tug of war at this point.
And, you know, I don't have room for God to come in and pull on the other side. So he had very few, if any, friends.
And his one guy, this Spower guy, he describes himself as probably the closest person to Smith. And they're not even close.
He's the guy who said he's a habitual liar and you know, blah, blah, blah. But let me get close.
The thing is about Randall. Randy is a hell of a welder.
Apparently really his welding work is on point, which I mean, he keeps getting like hired for jobs in the shipyard. So it has to be decent.
Sure. So Spower has a shop where he does like drag racers and off-road vehicles and all that kind of shit repairs and makes and customizes awesome so whenever randall is a home from virginia he'll hire randall to do welding work for him at the shop because he said he said quote he was a real good welder that's what spower said so as much as he lies and as weird as he is he's a decent welder i mean you ever talk to welders a lot of them are weird people the vast majority it's a pretty interesting folks there so they said he would drop out of sight for weeks at a time this is hilarious man because this spower he'd be working welding doing shit putting stuff together and he'd have a couple other people in his shop helping him out or whatever doing spot jobs they said that you would randall would have been gone for a month they forgot all about randall they're working and then they turn around and randall would just be in the corner working on something they just show up not even say hi and just start working on shit they were like all right randy, I guess.
That's what kind of a fucking weird guy he is. Like, he comes in from a month.
He's dragging a torch around or he's just leaving all his shit there and popping in to put a 74 Nova on the front of a fucking tugboat. I think that it's a shop that has all the equipment.
So he just comes in and starts doing shit. Yeah.
That's it. So they're really like, what're really like what a fucking pops in uses a torch and a welder and goes to work what a weird yeah he doesn't even say hello so they're like okay well i mean he's welding i guess over here i'll just do it yeah that's it so they thought that was very weird um they're just like he never left you know what i mean like even like when they'd all stop work and he'd be like so you know you start start talking about a job they'd be like how you been for a month randy right where you know for a month hey normal people conversation how you been what's been going on were you in virginia or newport news or whatever and they said that the weird part is that once they would be done with all this stuff like when they would be done with cars or or trucks or drag racers or four wheelers, they would, you know, go do like four wheeling shit.
And they would like go to the race to watch the car. Randall wouldn't perform.
He wouldn't come with them ever. What? Yeah.
He didn't want to go. And they said, well, why? Come on, Randall.
Why don't you go out with us? And he'd say, quote, it's my weekend to have the children. Okay.
He doesn't like you guys at all. Children, not child even.
Right, all of them. He just goes for a couple months, comes home with multiple kids, apparently, that are born and ready to be watched by him.
Yeah. It's fucking weird.
He's also, in addition to arrowheads, he has one other big interest. Oh, yeah.
It's three mainly. This is the big triad.
Arrowheads, welding, and nude pictures in Hustler and Penthouse. Sure.
Loves those. Those are the good ones, yeah.
Loves them. And I mean, this is the 70s, so that's about the- This is the heyday for fucking porn mags.
And that's about the highest level of accessible porn that normal people in a small town would have.

It's not like he can go to Times Square and go to, you know, Jack Booths or anything. He's going to whatever store in rural Virginia.
They might have a hustler. You know, that's big time for him.
so um he would take his favorite pictures oh yeah cut them out with an exacto knife

sure from the you knife from the magazine, not like cut out the silhouette of the picture, the whole page, and laminate it. So he can just whack it for years on that thing.
Just wipe her down and go again. He's like, I'm going to buy me a laminating machine and a squeegee, and this is going to be my forever thing here.
Remember when you had to cut out magazines and glue them to a paper board and the Elmer's glue would fuck that paper up? Make it all fucking bubbly. Make it all riply? Yeah.
Riply, yeah, that was the worst. I always use too much glue also.
Laminate that shit. You are good to go.
Laminate it up. So he did that.
He had a collection of magazines, which he would either laminate the pictures or put them in plastic, like comic book sleeves. God damn.
Like they're valuable. Deserving them.
Like it's a Superman number one or some shit. Here it is.
Fascinating. Yeah.
The fucking Hustler 77 fucking spread in the middle here. Hell that's what he would do, and that was very strange.
He also was obsessed with, his other obsession is his truck. He's got a four-wheel drive pickup truck, and he is absolutely obsessed with not only the mechanical working of it, but also its cleanliness.
He's constantly polishing it with a rag. Gotta keep that truck clean.
It's clean. It's not that great of a truck.
It's like an older truck. He doesn't give a shit.
He's on it, though. Looks brand new, though.
He told everybody that there were several airline stewardesses, in his words, that were in love with him. Oh, boy.
He's never been on a plane in his fucking life. Yeah.

So I don't know where he's meeting several airline stewardesses

or why they would fall for him.

Right.

Maybe they love it.

You know, I always hear it's an old cliche that stewardesses,

flight attendants are suckers for an arrowhead collection, I hear.

It's true.

That's what it is.

That southern accent really gets the gay fellas that are flight attendants.

Yes, the gay fellas and the fucking 75 fucking 75 year old women who are around there that's pretty much who flight attendants are now in the 70s though flight attendants were they had to have like physical like there was you can't be attributes yeah they had like a weight for your height that you could be you know, flight attendants were very, very attractive in the 70s and they were considered like. Today they are just.
Today they don't. Yeah.
They just hire whoever applies for it. Now it's basically, you know, whoever would be waiting tables but doesn't want to wait tables.
There it is. Yeah.
That's what they're doing. Wait seats in the sky.
That and then there's the flight attendants who've been doing it for 45 fucking years.

They cannot wait to quit this shit.

They can't wait.

And they're like, people used to say I had a nice ass when I walked by, you know.

And it's like, okay, Grandma, that's great.

You're pretty surly now.

So I don't think so.

So he would fantasize about that.

He drinks as much as casually, as much as other people. He's not an alcoholic, but he's also not a teetotaler of any kind drinks a normal amount uh occasional drug user mostly just some weed here and there something like that nothing he's not really into that too much um he has no criminal record doesn't get in trouble because you have to do things and go places to get you gotta leave the house yeah generally yeah digging for arrowheads and welding in your neighbor's garage really aren't things that are going to get in trouble because you have to do things and go places to get in trouble.
You got to leave the house. Generally, yeah.
Digging for arrowheads and welding in your neighbor's garage really aren't things that you're going to get in trouble too much for. So, yeah.
So he did some odd jobs. He went and did some welding and came back.
And this left him free to do what he really loved, which was hang out all the time on the Appalachian Trail. Okay.
Now, if you don't know what the Appalachian Trail is,

it goes from Maine all the way to Georgia.

It's over 2,000 miles long, and it's an uninterrupted trail

where you can walk all the way through it, no roads.

The whole thing on foot.

You don't have to stop at an interstate crossing or anything.

It's just right down.

They've made everything around it.

So it's very cool. You can go.
There's entrances to it probably about 15 minutes to my house, from my house. You can go on the Appalachian Trail.
And when I was a kid, teenager, we used to go there. You'd drive out to the Appalachian Trail, and they had, like, little bunkhouse things, basically, where you could sit and smoke weed in there.
And they had, like, cots you could sit on and smoke weed and get cover from the rain and shit like that so it was fun and the trail was gorgeous too like little bridges over streams to walk over and shit's idyllic it really is it looks like a hairy armpitted gal with a with a oh you're gonna get that you're gonna get that yeah yeah she's and if she doesn't like what you're doing she will pelt you won't. Is that right? Oh, I'm sure.
Yeah. It's rough.
Dried cranberries hurt when they hit you. Let me tell you something.
So that's what he liked to do. He liked to do the Appalachian Trail.
He wouldn't hike it. He'd just like to hang out on it.
Just go sit. Yeah.
And also there's like fishing in there. There's all sorts of creeks and stuff.
So he'd go fishing. Outdoors outdoorsy shit looking for his arrowheads, like we said, that sort of thing.

So now he takes off from his house on May 30th, 1981.

All right.

May 30th, 1981.

Randall, the house he shares with his mom, he says, I got to go somewhere.

I got to go. I'm taking off.
I'm going to Connecticut. Oh.
And then he leaves the house he shares with his mom. He says, I got to go somewhere.
I got to go. I'm taking off.
I'm going to Connecticut. Oh.
And then he leaves the house. Okay.
Now, he had been gone for over a week before that. Okay.
As well. Just got back.
So he'd been gone. Yeah.
Just got back from a week, popped in and said, I'm taking off. I have to go to Connecticut.
And he got in his truck and he left. And that that was that he was gone so virginia didn't know what the hell was going on his mother he just thought at this point i don't think you question weird shit that randall does if you're his mom you just go okay whatever i don't know you know what i mean like he's been weird his whole life he's continuing to be weird i can't fix it so then we kind of find out what happened to him and where he's going because we find out back on May 19th, about 11 days before this, there had been an incident on the trail here.
There was a man named Robert Mountford Jr., who was 27 at the time, but looked like a retired defensive coordinator for an NFL football team.

He had like a big Dave Wanstat mustache.

Hell yeah.

He looked like he was 48 years old.

He was 27.

So crazy.

Wild back then how different people looked.

So Robert was with another 27-year-old named Laura Susan Ramsey, who goes by Susan.

Now, these two were hiking the Appalachian Trail. They might be some of the nicest people I've ever heard of here, these two.
Kind. They're social workers from Ellsworth, Maine.
They're counselors at the Homestead Project, which is a home for disturbed children in Ellsworth, Maine. Which, to be able to do that, number one, hats off to you.
You know, I can't fucking do that. So they decided on their idea they would hike the entire 2050-mile Appalachian Trail to raise money for mentally disturbed children.
That is pretty nice. I can't work with the kids, and I'm definitely not walking 2,000 miles for it.
I'm not walking 50 miles for anybody. Not doing that.
I'll pay. I'll sponsor your walk, but that's about it.
So Ramsey had joined him as well because it was Bob's idea. He's going to do the whole thing.
Susan comes in as well. Now, around the 19th, they were seen at the Bland County store which is called Trent's Grocery so they're seen at Trent's and apparently they earlier in the day had befriended a female hiker on the trail this trail is a very social thing too it's a lifestyle it's like driving a jeep it's driving a jeep or it's like those weird golf cart old people neighborhoods like yeah where they congregate on their golf yeah that's what this is that people walking up and down the trail will meet other hikers go meet up at our campsite later and we'll all drink and all that kind of shit we'll all be part of this together once the sun goes down there's there.
Watch out. So it's just drink and hang out.
Drink till you can sleep, basically, and then wake up. So they befriended this female hiker.
They all agreed to meet in the area above Parisburg. Now, this woman waits for them and waits for them, but they never show up.
No? Now, rather than thinking that maybe they didn't like me as much as I thought they did, which is what I would think. Wow.
Talk about having some high opinion of yourself. Right? If someone didn't show up, I'd go, I thought they liked me.
Fuck. And I'd just sit there the whole night going, I guess they didn't like me.
What did I do? I suck, I guess. Yeah, I would just think I was a piece of shit all night.
This woman is so confident in herself, she alerted the authorities. Clearly, it it's not me it's definitely not that they

don't want to hang out with me all night a stranger they just met it's a tragedy has befell them there must be crime that's what happened that's the only way this didn't happen so she alerts authorities so the authorities look for them as they do the u.s forestry service employees here um now Now, they had heard that the last people who saw Bob and Susan said that they were with a man named Billy Joe. Which they were like, well, shit, that's half the people who live around here.
Fuck. God damn it.
Jesus Christ. Fuck Billy Joe.
They said they saw this. He's a guy calling himself Billy Joe.
And this was at the Wapiti 2 shelter. They saw this.
Now, there's all these little shelters along the trail that are just basically three-sided wooden boxes. Nice.
With a roof. So there's an open side to it.
But it's good to protect you against elements. Wind, cold, rain, things like that.
And it's a good place to camp too because there's a wooden floor that's above the ground. It's already a tent.
Yeah, so you're not like with the animals or anything. So you can put your tent, put your sleeping bag in there and it's a better place to sleep.
And also just to hang out. People hang out in these shelters.
So that is where they were seen with Billy Joe at the Wapiti 2 shelter. That's the name of it.
So they're investigating. They're going all – they got several investigators looking because after an initial search, nobody comes up with them.
And apparently they had plans to meet other people like they had

a whole bunch of plans that none of them came to fruition so they think they might be missing so they had a few different investigators going up and down the trail asking other hikers about them have you seen them anything like that uh one hiker told them the police that mountford and ramsey had been seen with what they called a, quote,

strange-looking man near the Wapiti shelter. So that's where they said.
So now they've been told by multiple people that they were seen at the Wapiti shelter, both with a weirdo named Billy Joe. So a local, they're probably thinking, I would imagine.
So the investigators head to the Wapiti shelter because they go, they got it. They must have been there.
Maybe they left some kind of clue behind. So the initial, the main head investigator here looks around the shelter.
And it's very small. It's smaller than a bedroom in a house.
Yeah, it's like an easy up. That's exactly what it is.
It's a very small thing. You could probably fit.
I would say you can lay probably side by side. You could probably have five sleeping bags in there comfortably to where you wouldn't bump into people.
Otherwise, it would be kind of a little crowded. So he ends up looking around, doesn't see anything until he looks down at the floor of the shelter where he said it looked like something had run down between the floorboards.
Quote, so I run my knife down between the boards. It was a thick and red substance down there.
Scunge. Scunge.
Red scunge. Fucking discarded Kool-Aid.
So he said, we need to tear this floorboard up.

I think there's blood here.

Or scunge,

but we're going to check it out.

So what they did is,

once they figured out it is blood

under the floorboards,

they went out 30 yards in all directions,

kicking over logs

and knocking weeds out of the way.

They came upon a small open area.

In this area, they noticed a big mound of leaves as if someone tried to cover something

up.

There's nobody raking out here.

So if you see a pile of leaves, it's not like an animal going, I got to clean this place

up.

Jesus Christ.

Let me, there's people all walking all around. We look like slobs.
Clean up everybody. That's not happening.
So they start digging in the leaves and they notice a cloth sleeping bag in the leaves. And there's something inside the sleeping bag.
Oh, no. And it's Susan Ramsey.
Damn it. It is 27-year-old Susan Ramsey.
So they find her. Then they bring in dogs because they go, okay, now we actually know we have a crime scene here.
So they bring in dogs that are trained to search for bodies, cadaver dogs. The dog stops several hundred yards from the shelter, poking its nose around, and then it sat down near a stump.
Now, the cop, who, by the way, is the dog's trainer and handler, said, quote, I thought maybe he was tired. Not like I taught him how to signify what he found when we're looking for it, but okay.
Turns out he wasn't tired. He found something.
Attaboy. Yeah, the dog's not lazy.
He's into this. The dog has much more, like, gumption than these cops do.
So does Randall, as a matter of fact. So right there, also buried in a sleeping bag, they find Bob Mountford as well.
So now we have Bob and Susan both found, obviously killed in the woods and covered up, too.

I mean, neither of them are obvious to the naked eye.

Their bodies have been covered.

Bob is several hundred yards from the site.

I mean, he's not even close.

And Bob's a pretty decent-sized guy, too.

So for someone to get him from the shelter all the way out there would take something.

You know what I mean? He'd been shot three times in the head. Golly.
Bob. Susan had completely different wounds.
She wasn't shot at all. No? That's the other thing.
Yeah. Bob was disposed of quickly, it looks like, whereas Susan had defensive marks all over her hands.
She fought. She fought, which if you put together logically what happened here.
Yeah, yeah, it's pretty easy. It's pretty easy to see.
He wants to get rid of the guy to have something to do with this woman here. Whatever experience he wants, he's got it.
So the police said she fought him very hard. He used a piece of iron to hit her in the head.
He also stabbed her with a long nail. A long nail, and we'll find out exactly where that came from.
She had 13 puncture wounds from the nail. Jesus.
As well as stab wounds from a knife, too. So three different weapons used on her.
Yeah. Blunt force to the head, nail punctures, and stab wounds on her.
Three different ways. Meanwhile, Bob shot three times in the head.
She is also wrapped in plastic, Susan is, before she's stuffed in her sleeping bag, whereas Bob is just in the sleeping bag with no plastic. Interesting.
The medical examiner said the hikers had been dead at least several days when their bodies were discovered. So this is on the 30th they're found.
So I'm thinking this is the same day that Randall takes off to Connecticut. So I'm thinking here that they were probably killed on the 19th and have been in the woods for 10 days like that.
It's been a while. It's been a while.
That's crazy. now Robert a little more about the injuries here Robert had been shot in the head

but like this. It's been a while.
That's crazy. Now Robert, a little more about the injuries here.
Robert had been shot in the head but police couldn't find the gun. There's no gun in the area.
No, and they looked for that everywhere. Metal detectors, you name it.
They couldn't find it. Susan had been stabbed, what they said, repeatedly in the chest.
Not only that's with the knife and then it's on top of the puncture wounds with the nail uh hit in the back of the head with a blunt uh with a blunt instrument and um the police found those weapons though oh yes but not the gun the the lead investigator said we discovered a piece of angle iron wrought iron that was in the uh was in the fireplace that was used as a poker to stir up the ashes oh so he's okay yep he said i did see a large spike nail that had been used to put the shelter together as well there yeah so they think that is what he was using nail out pulled a nail out this guy just whatever was around i mean the fireplace poker and a nail from the shelter is crazy. Based on the forensic evidence, they believe that the killer attacked the two hikers after they went to sleep.
Okay. So they think they went to sleep, and then they shot Bob Mountford.
The investigator says, quote, it does not penetrate the skull the first shot. Oh, no.
That's, dude, this guy had a big fucking like ex-NFL defensive lineman head on him. Apparently so thick bullets don't fucking penetrate it.
Not on the first shot. Wow.
He says as Mountford starts to turn over and starts to get up, he shoots him in the cheek, which little softer that round goes up and into the brain that's the round that killed him and then he shot him one more time too just to make sure but this guy's skull will repel bullets that's how that is impressive so he said then the killer turned his attention to soon ran susan ramsey and based on the crime scene, he puts together that, quote, she runs, he chases, grabs the wrought iron poker as she's running. He's taking the spike nail that was on the ground.
He's stabbing her. As she went down, he hits her in the back of the head.
At that point, she's at his mercy because she's out of it. police could not determine because this is also 19 you know early 80s police could not determine if she had been sexually assaulted because of the decomposition of the body for 10 days 10 days in the woods in the summer in virginia is gonna in a bag yeah in a plastic bag is also gonna make it worse so they don't know.
But I assume that would be the reason for why he's doing this. I can't imagine any other reason why someone would do this.
The investigator said, I don't know. It's amazing what human beings can do to other human beings.
He also said, we found evidence in tree stumps, in knot holes, in trees, under rocks. We found two paperback books that belonged to her.
One of the paperback books, when we were thumbing through the pages, we found a fingerprint, a bloody fingerprint on the book. Okay.
They also talk about Susan had cuts and bruises on her fingers to show what kind of defensive wounds she had. Both bodies had been dragged from the shelter.
Also, tests of the blood for Bob and Susan showed that they had drank enough to be under, like, you know, drunk legally. But yeah, they're in the fucking woods.
Of course, they're drunk. Yeah, they're camping.
So when they came across her backpack, that's where they found the book. It's a paperback novel called Mount Olive, one word, by Lawrence Durrell.
And I've never heard of the book before. I'm not sure.
But it had the bloody fingerprints. One of the bloody fingerprints wasn't hers.
Oh. Great lead.
Yes. So they have this fingerprint.
It's not Bob's either. They test that.
So now they're like, okay, this is probably a murderer, I would say. Yeah.
So they run it through the regular database. Nothing comes up.
Okay. Run it through the FBI database.
Yeah. Nothing comes up.
Oh. They got nothing.
So now they're like, well, fuck, what do we do? So then they decided, okay, what if we go to private industries that fingerprint their employees and see if we can run that? So one of the first places they go is the Norfolk shipyards. Oh.
Because to work in shipyards, you have to be fingerprinted. Yeah, got to make sure you're not some sort of fucking terrorist.
Terrorist, yeah. terrorist even back then you had to do that

so

they end up running it through there

and they get a print hit

on Randall Smith

because Randall

had to get his fingerprints done to go to the Norfolk

shipyard so they're like okay

well that's a place to start

and Randall lives nearby they look at his

address and they're like well all of this makes a lot

of sense this is lucky

then they ask around they find out he's a place to start. And Randall lives nearby.
They look at his address and they're like, well, all of this makes a lot of sense.

This is lucky.

Yeah, this is lucky.

Then they ask around. They find out he's a guy that's always hanging out on the trail and all that kind of shit.
By the way, this was the first double homicide in the history of the 2100 mile trail here. So, yeah, there's been single homicides, but never a double.
Now, there's a friend who was supposed to be there, Renate Lilifers, who had planned to join the hikers but didn't because of a foot injury. Oh.
Yeah, he got lucky, this guy here. This person, he said that they found out from the cops that charcoal from a campfire had been used to smear over the blood stains on the wood floor of the shelter.

Pretty smart.

Which is smart. That's what I mean.
Randall's not a fucking idiot. That's the thing.
Cunning, yeah. Cunning, exactly.
So that's, I mean, you wouldn't notice that looking down quickly. You'd have to look down between the cracks to really see anything.
So police, when they removed the floorboards, obviously confiscated them as evidence. And they found also some of the victim's belongings covered with leaves and tree stumps in the woods near where the bodies were recovered.
So he kind of just spread their shit and just kind of buried it temporarily. None of these things that he was doing is a permanent solution.
That's what I don't get. Jeff, it's very, the earth will take this.
Yeah, it's real short-sighted as far as no one will ever stumble across this body is kind of a crazy thought on a trail where there's constantly people on it. It doesn't make any sense.
He just made a very obvious grave with leaves on it. That's the thing.
He would have been better off burying them shallow or something, but to make a pile of leaves that looks unnatural in the woods, I have woods. I've never seen a pile of leaves like that ever once in those woods.
And if I did, I'm running the other fucking direction. Hey, everybody.
Just going to take a quick break from the show and tell you a little bit more about our stylish and fashionable friends over at Quince. Elevating your style.
That used to be a real expensive thing. You want to change your look.
It's so hard to do. It's expensive, but with Quince, this is the way you can do it the right way.
You can get high-end, versatile pieces at a price that we can all actually afford and actually want to pay. And now I can upgrade my style, getting nice, real good luxury items and essentials that sync up with what I want and what I want to pay.
It's perfect. And Quince has all the must-haves, like Mongolian cashmere sweaters from $50.
Come on. That's ridiculous.
Iconic 100% leather jackets and comfortable pants for every occasion, which I got a leather jacket and Jimmy got comfortable pants. That's exactly what we did.
It's great stuff. So you, too, should do this.
Indulge in affordable luxury. Go to quince.com slash smalltownmurder for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.
That's quince.com slash smalltownmurder to get free shipping and 365-day returns. quince.com slash smalltownmurder.
And now back to the show. Hey, everybody.
Just going to take a quick break from the show and tell you a little bit about Chime. Everything's so expensive.
And the last thing you want to do is go into credit card debt, and then you're paying interest, and it's more expensive, and it's horrible. See, there's a better way to do this, though.
You can build credit with money you set aside and avoid interest or expensive debt with Chime's Credit Builder Card. It's a secured card with no credit check or minimum deposit required.
Start building credit with your everyday purchases and regular on-time payments with no annual fees, interest, or credit check at Chime.com slash smalltownmurder. There's a lot of benefits to this, obviously.
It's really hard to establish credit, number one, especially if you're young or even if you're older, you've had some credit troubles in the past and you're trying to get back on the right path. It's really difficult.
So something like this is excellent. You need a lower rate.
There's no annual fees, interest, or credit check to apply, which is great. Turn your everyday purchases and on-time payments into steps toward your financial goals with Chime's secured credit builder visa credit card.
Get started today at chime.com slash smalltownmurder. That's chime.com slash smalltownmurder.
Chime feels like progress. The Chime credit builder visa card is issued by the BankCorp Bank N.A.
or Stride Bank N.A. Spot Me eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply.
Chime checking account required to apply. Out of network ATM withdrawal and OTC advance fees may apply.
Timing depends on submission of payment file. Late payment may negatively impact your credit score.
Results may vary. Go to Chime.com slash disclosures for details.
Now back to the show. Ready to prioritize yourself in the new year? Your skin is a great place to start.
Dime Beauty, founded by a master esthetician, is more than just a skincare company. With four skin-conscious categories, skincare, beauty, body care, and fragrance, Dime offers simple, spa-worthy products that will help you enter 2025 with confidence.
Whether you're revitalizing your regimen with nourishing products or building one from scratch, Dime makes it easy. The work system, our all-in-one best-selling routine, includes a cleanser of your choice, toner, serums, and moisturizers, taking the guesswork out of skincare for your healthiest, happiest skin yet.
Dime's commitment to clean ingredients and sustainable packaging ensures every product is as gentle on your skin as it is on the planet with thousands of glowing five-star reviews and a loyal community the results speak for themselves revive your skin and give yourself the routine refresh you deserve by visiting dimebeautyco.com that's dimebeautyco.com your best skin awaits somebody put a body there and I don't want to know about it. So, yeah, they said that this is funny.

This is the guy who could have been there with them but had a foot injury he said quote this is such a narcissistic quote i could have been with them that's what's strange to me to you that's what's strange not that this happened at all but that i could have been there. Can you imagine that? Not me.
Fuck them, but me? He also said Bob and Susan were not violent people. They would not instigate what happened.
They wouldn't be like, fuck you looking at, fucking hillbilly. Get over it.
You know, not try to fight them or anything. And I wouldn't either if I was with them because I was supposed to be.
But that's the weird part. That's the weird.
That's the strange thing to me. I could have been there.
Yeah. So now there's a giant don't be afraid of the trail campaign.
Of course. Of course.
Because people are terrified of this now. Which, I mean, yeah, you're in the woods.
You're by yourself. It's alone.
You're dark, quiet. No good.
Anything can happen out there. We've all seen Friday the 13th.
So in Appalachian Trail, they're saying it's dark quiet no good anything can happen out there we've all seen friday the 13th so um an appalachian trail they're saying it's safe an official is urging backpackers to stay away from that section of the trail just stay away from the crime scene that that piece everything else is fine he would never leave and go do it somewhere else no no no he's probably hiding very close nearby, maybe up in a tree. I'm sure we missed him, but don't go by there.
So Dave Starzl, who's the associate director of the Appalachian Trail Conference, guy running this joint, he says, just looking at the statistics, it's probably still safer along the Appalachian Trail than in most suburban backyards. Right.
Yes, because most people have had double murders in their backyard. Shitloads of them just last weekend.
In their suburban backyard. I try to tell people, stop killing people in my backyard.
Every time I come back. They keep coming.
Every time I come back from the road. How many bodies? And there's three bodies in my backyard.
Three bodies, four bodies if it's a long trip. I was in Phoenix for a week.
I've got to go to urgent care, but I've got to clean this up first. Nope.
Five bodies, next thing you know. And you go to urgent care, you come back, there's a body there.
That's the problem. Every time.
Every time. I can't cook dinner.
You know what I mean? It's ridiculous already. Halls, cough drops, and shovels.
I'm buying them at the same rate. I can't keep enough shovels.
That's the problem. I really can't.
I can't keep enough shovels in the house. So, yeah, Dee said that you can't do this indefinitely.
Don't avoid that section indefinitely, you know, for a little while until we figure it out. So since they know it's Randall Smith's fingerprints, they go to his house.
Yeah. He's not home.
No. He shows up.
Yeah. The cops show up.
Mom said he went to Connecticut. I don't fucking know what he's doing here.
So they look around his house, which doesn't take very long, as we know. That's quick, yeah.
And in the basement, they discover some blood-soaked jeans, which that's not great. And what they say, the investigator describes in very technical terms as, quote, some stuff that belonged to the hikers.
Very technical and legal and, you know, that's practically a trial inventory of their things. Yeah, some stuff.
Thanks, guy. Now, June 8th, 1981.
So almost 10 days goes by since they discovered these bodies. They're looking for Randall everywhere.
They know what he drives. They know his license plate.
They know everything. They can't fucking find this guy.
Can't find him. Then, on June 8, 1981, in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, just nowhere fucking near here.
Not near Connecticut at all. No, no, not near Connecticut, not near Northern Virginia in the Appalachian Trail Mountains either.
So they find his pickup truck abandoned in Myrtle Beach. Okay.
And by the way, there's a note inside that's quite a doozy. Y'all can have it? No, it's not.
Y'all can have it. It's real weird.
It was found near a wooded area at Myrtle Beach, and an extensive search was made of the woods for him. Yeah.
Figure he can't be far behind.

So a note with

some references to the murders was found

in the truck here.

First they won't release the notes

contents to the press. They just say

that it's disjointed.

Here is the note. We have the

note now though.

Quote, this boy

and girl have been so nice to me, You would too, if it meant your neck, that's the opening line. And by the way, that doesn't make any sense.
No, it doesn't. If you're going to kill them anyway, why would they be nice to you? Yeah.
They don't know. Yeah.
I think they're being nice to you because they think you're a normal person who's not going to murder them. Probably.
He said, all the money they gave me is almost gone. It is

going to be a real shame for them

when the time comes to get rid of them.

He sold the parts

off the truck and gave me all of

his hunting and fishing guns and

kniffs. He spelled it wrong.

No E. Good guy.

And fishing stuff. His

girlfriend gave me her car.

It's bad that I have to get rid of them.

His girlfriend is so pretty and nice.

I will be far, far away before truck and these people are found.

That's what he says.

Why would he write that?

Why would he write an internal monologue down and put it in his truck and leave it there?

I have no idea.

And the tenses of it are crazy, too.

It's very, very strange. He writes it at one point like he's with them.
Yeah. They're being nice to me, but then it's the money he gave me is almost gone.
That's a way later thing. That's way later, yeah.
And then he talks about it's going to be bad that I have to get rid of them, which is then they're still alive. Yeah, they don't even go from past to present to go.
They're like in the past and they're now. Then they're back in the past again.
They didn't leave the structure. No.
Not at all. And he's selling her car somewhere.
He got rid of her car apparently because I didn't hear anything about her car being found out there either. Or why she even would have a car.
They hiked from. Right.
Oh, I think she met. Bob did the whole trail.
Susan came a little later. So I don't know if she met him there with her car or I don't know what the fuck happened.
That's really weird here. So the, they're looking at that.
They're saying, is this a suicide note? Right. Is this, I'm leaving this in my car and I'm going and going off in the woods and offing myself here.
So that's what they're thinking about. So they have to search for Randall.
Um, they contact Giles County dentists to try to find dental records for him. If they find some, you know, some corpse that's been completely emaciated.
So the dental records are used to identify a body. So they're thinking they're probably not going to find them alive here.
And the state police assistant agent said, quote, we consider it a possibility that Randall Lee Smith may not be alive, but I'm saying that we feel confident that has occurred. I'm not saying we feel confident that's occurred.
Might be dead, maybe not. So they found his dentist here, and an FBI agent contacted him to ask if he had treated Smith, and this guy said he didn't treat Smith.
So then they found the guy that actually did treat Smith, but he has no records for him somehow. Somehow just didn't save any of that stuff.
Oh, yeah, I know Randall. He comes in.
That's how you get discount dentistry. That's it.
Yeah, he goes, I don't keep file cabinets or nothing like that. That's real expensive.
I just fix shit and send them on their way. Send them on their way

and they come back. They'll tell me what their history is

next time. It's alright.
So, the

Giles Sheriff John E. Hopkins

III said he had

no comment when asked about the

request for dental records or if he thought

Smith might be alive.

He said it's not particularly unusual

to seek dental records in this kind of case. So So don't take anything from it.
June 11th, 1981, he's officially charged with two murders. Right.
But he's still not in custody. But there is a charge out there.
He's been charged. He's not arrested yet here.
So they keep searching for him. Keeps going on.
is into june 12th june 13th june 14th uh days pass now lawson who is the lead investigator he's the guy who ran his knife in between the floorboards and found the knife and all that he said he needed a he needed a break no no no it's the opposite of that oh it's not this is personal i will not sleep and rest until this man is found he said i need a vacation oh he literally said this manhunt it they found the bodies on may 30th yeah it is june like 17th and he said i can't take it anymore i need a break yeah it's not even been three weeks and he's just like oh yeah this pto you got to use it or lose man dude imagine if he lived in a place where there was actually murders that needed to be solved all the time like he would be useless this guy so he'd instead says i'm taking my family on vacation to myrtle beach okay that's what i'm doing here no idea no well he knows the truck was found down there but who cares so he said i'm beach that sounds great we're yeah we're down here anyway i called the wife up told her pack the car bring the kids fuck it i'll stay here so shortly after he arrives in south carolina with his families with his family he gets a call from his bosses saying back to work, asshole. God do that.
Why?

Because we found a guy we think might be Randall Smith. Clock in.
So come on back in here. So I'm sure he, I picture him leaving his wife and kids at some seaside motel.
Yeah. I don't know, guys.
I don't know when I'm going to be back. Half a sandcastle deep.
Take the kids to the beach. Now, he was buried and his kids were burying him.
He had to rise from the sand and fuck it all up. So while en route here, officers told Lawson that the individual being detained was claiming to have amnesia and couldn't remember his name or even how he got to Myrtle Beach.
Doesn't even know that much. I don't even know how I got here.
Okay. so Lawson took a look at him and he said it's this haggard guy he's got insect bites all over him like big bleeding

blotchy shit. He's been living in the woods in South Carolina in the summer for weeks.
And he said, it's fucking Randall Smith. As soon as he showed up, he goes, yeah, that's Randall Smith.
I know this guy. It's Randall Smith.
So he's arrested in a, what's called a, quote, litter strewn wooded campsite on the outskirts of Myrtle Beach after they found his truck. They said that the note plus all the other evidence and a bloody fingerprint, pretty decent case here.
Kind of a slam dunk, yeah. They said he'd been lurking in the campsite for about two weeks.
That's not a good way to describe it. Lurking, yeah.
This guy lurks. He doesn't hang out.
He lurks. So he's going to be charged with the two murders like we said um they don't know they said he said i don't know who i am where i'm from how i got to south carolina nothing yeah and his attorney court appointed attorney says i think he's telling the truth is that right this is is Philip Sasser, who was a very easily fooled man.

He said, quote, if he's a faker, he's the best I've ever seen.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I've never watched a movie before.

Yeah.

Now, I've avoided cinema my entire life, but I don't think he's acting.

No.

So he's got a full beard and they said jeans and a blue knit shirt.

And they said that his lawyer said, my client is not mentally competent to stand trial. This fucking guy doesn't even know who he is.
He said, quote, I've had eight or ten conversations with him and the contents are very similar. I asked him who he was and he says, they say I'm Randall Lee Smith.
I asked him where he's from and he says, they tell me I'm from Virginia. I don't know.
I the the man with no name here yeah they got kurt russell in the lobby trying to marry the man that's it yeah they're gonna they're gonna give him off to somebody there yeah he's showing his picture on the news yeah so sasser his lawyer said that smith they brought his mother in and he didn't even recognize his own mother is that right so clearly I mean that's it's that's it that's what more he must be telling the truth he said I she said my my boy and he said I don't know I don't know that bitch I don't know man I don't know so anyway he's got shit all over him bites everywhere and uh he said he knew it was Smith. He said that Randall was exhibiting dissociative behavior and conveying the impression he'd forgotten everything about his past.
You know, something that obviously they thought once we get him into any kind of pre-trial psychiatric testing, they're going to know he's full of shit, so that's not great. They said if anything, his response was as real as the kidnapping note he left here.
So, here we go. He is, this is what they do to him.
They take him into an interview room. They sit him down.
They go outside and they go, how are we going to get him to fucking admit who he is? We need him to just admit it. Yeah, we need confession.
Somebody has an idea. They're like, all right, check this out.
This is what we're going to do. Yeah.
We're going to tell him, you put a fucking white coat on. You, detective, put it like a doctor's coat on.
We got a stethoscope around here. Throw that on.
There's a pharmacist around the corner. Borrow his jacket.
We're going to go in there. We're going to tell him that basically his wounds and bug bites are so bad that he needs medical attention right this minute or his life is in danger.
And by the way, this, again, is somehow perfectly legal to do. So they do this.
They observe that he's exhibiting so much physical discomfort, scratching himself, and obviously he's had poison ivy and mosquitoes all over him and everything else, and he's got open wounds and shit. So they said other scars.
Sopterina is unforgiving. Oh, there's a lot of bugs down there.
They said there's other scratch marks on him that they thought were probably from Susan Ramsey, even though that was a month ago. They still think that they're deep ones probably.
So they said, okay, this is what we do. He said, we told him that those bug bites were quite serious and told him if he didn't get medical attention we don't know what could happen to him i mean he could be he could die from infections so they said he was nodding his head furiously and you know yeah yeah i know i get it i get it so you want medical attention he said please i love medical attention he's scratching they said okay yeah no problem let's get you medical attention so you don't die but before we get the treatment you just need to sign this consent form real quick you know standard procedure here so he goes oh okay he said do i have to and they said i mean unless you don't want medical attention yeah and he said okay and he just scribbled randall lee smith like you fucking dummy gotcha dum-dum and then they give him calamine lotion and fucking put him in handcuffs there you go stupid here stupid.
Here's your medical attention. You fucking dummy.
So, yep. He said, yeah, yeah.
And that was that. And as they said, as soon as there was Randall Lee Smith, the cop said, bam, we had him.
That was that. So then the cop said, quote, he's a very sharp, cunning person.
Very precise in what he does. That's the opposite of cunning yeah to a to a point yeah he's he seems like he if you think he's a nice guy and you're in the woods he could trick you into thinking he's a nice guy long enough to kill you while you sleep i'd say he's elusive yeah he's not gonna he's not coming up with any grand plan no and that note That note was supposed to throw the cops off his scent.

That didn't do anything.

No shit, man.

So the attorney general here has extradition papers,

and his lawyer here, Randall Smith's lawyer,

said the papers were not enough to make a case for extradition from South Carolina. They said that the prosecutors must prove that Smith was in Giles County when the murders occurred before he can be handed over to Virginia authorities.
His lawyer said, I don't believe the state of Virginia has established that Randall Lee Smith was in the state at the state of commission of the crime. What the fuck are you talking about? His bloody fingerprint.
It's on the book on a book that puts him there during the crime while blood was on jeans in his basement. There you go.
And their blood on his hand on a fingerprint. It's it's not doesn't take a genius here.
So they said when the agents from the

Virginia State Police discussed what happened

at the shelter and sought out details,

they said he'd just say, I don't want

to talk about it.

That was it. He just said, I

just don't want to talk about it.

So he does get extradited.

He's arraigned in Virginia.

And the Giles County Commonwealth

Attorney's name is Hezekiah Osborne. The prosecutor's name is Hezekiah.
You're getting some fire and brimstone biblical shit if the prosecutor's name is Hezekiah. He's quoting Bible verses.
My God. So he said he has a good case against Randall E.
Smith, currently 27 years old. He said, quote, this is funny.
They said, do you think he's a murderer? And this guy, this is the fucking county attorney said this, quote, if he ate one, he's got a whole lot of explaining to do. If he ate one, he's got it.
And then he pulled a Ricky Ricardo. Yeah.
If he ate one, he's got some explaining to do here. Unbelievable.
That's the, that's Hezekiah, the guy in charge. Eight one.
Eight one.

If he ate the one, that's that. So he is charged with the slayings, though, for sure.
And they said they set a grand jury date, and obviously there was plenty to indict him, obviously. That's nothing.
So they said two counts of first-degree murder. There is a strong suspicion that Laura had been sexually assaulted, possibly raped either before or after death.
They're not sure. But they couldn't prove it due to the condition of her body.
So they said they would not charge him with the sexual assault. We did this murder thing to it.
So we'll just charge him with that. It's logical that the only reason he's did any of what he did is for this.
So that's the logical end. But physically, they can't prove it.
Now, nowadays, they'd probably be able to prove. Oh, in a second.
Now, back then, they couldn't do it. So, by the way, the people in Giles County want blood from this guy because he's fucking up the trail.
And, you know, also also he's probably ruining our lives, ruining everything here.

So they want a real hard sentence.

He was found mentally competent to stand trial by psychiatrists at the Central State Hospital during tests.

Doctors wrote court officials their evaluation saying that he's mentally competent and was mentally competent at the time of the crimes as well.

So 1982 here. The trial's a week away.
Okay. There's questions about some sensitive evidence here, how it's been stored and things like that come up in questions, which is never good.
The prosecutors and defense lawyers were given until a certain date to file all their arguments and everything like that to find out what should be admitted and what's not admitted. The pretrial really is the trial.
The pretrial and the jury instructions are really everything. Because the pretrial is what's evidence is going to be allowed into trial.
That makes 95% of the difference. And the jury instructions, you're telling them exactly what to do it.
So I mean, that's a big part of it. So they said that if the judge agrees with the defense that the search of Smith's abandoned pickup truck was illegal, then the letter cannot be admitted as evidence in trial.
They're saying that they found the pickup truck abandoned on a vacant lot near the ocean. A former Myrtle Beach policeman named Rick Pearsall said he checked the truck a few hours after it had been reported as suspicious by another officer.
The truck was hidden from view, locked, and the license tags had been removed. That's abandoned.
That's an abandoned vehicle, yeah. That's abandoned.
He said he jimmied the lock on the passenger side door so he could read the identification, the VIN. He wanted to read the VIN, so he jimmied that open.
He said that's when he found the handwritten note from Smith. That's what they're talking about, whether the note should be allowed in.
Because he found it in a way that was not a proper search. Yeah.
The word Jimmy implies a negative connotation. That's the piss out of me.
That's yeah. That's well, we've both had that our whole fucking lives.
It's obnoxious. I don't know if everybody knows this, but everyone on earth calls me Jimmy except for you people.
You guys. That's it.
Because Jimmy's Jimmy on his birth certificate so he has no choice so i'm like i'll be i'll take the bullet and be james this time because you got nothing so you have to be jimmy but either way yeah jimmy means a dick a condom a fucking breaking into something it's never good jimmy is always bad a sprinkle apparently from what i found out on ice cream uh bad engineering. It's our fault.
It's all our fault. We did it all.
So, yeah, and that sounds bad that he jimmied it open. But the way he got it open really isn't the point of the legal battle.
The legal battle is whether this truck would be considered abandoned, which means it's nobody's property. Anybody can do whatever they want with it.
Or whether it is his truck that they broke into and then look for a note. So that's the way it is.
They said that the sources close to the investigation said it makes reference. Oh, that's the note.
They said when, while police obtained a search warrant for a truck the following day, the defense claimed the seizure of the note was illegal and it should be withheld from the jury. They said that one of the court-appointed defense attorneys said that police had no information at the time they went into the truck of any alleged crime had been committed.
But they did. That's why they were down here.
They found the murder suspect's truck, which honestly makes it a little bit worse that they broke into it without getting a search warrant because they knew what they were doing yeah if they just found an abandoned truck didn't know they were looking for his truck and then you know whatever maybe this is it some shit like that yeah but his lawyers are saying no they knew it was his truck because the myrtle beach police is saying it was just reported as an abandoned vehicle so i was trying to get the vin number and they're saying no no no you knew whose truck it was and you were trying to break into it so that's the fight here um another lawyer of randall's said it scares me to think i could park illegally and in four hours could have my car broken into and rummaged through well would you hide it and take your license plates off of it first that's the other thing when i park my car and go into the mall, I tend to leave my license plates on the car generally.

Yeah.

Anytime I walk away from my car, I always cross my fingers that everything's going to stay in there.

Everything will stay in there.

I never trust it.

No, no.

So they argued that Smith was taking chances when he left the truck unattended.

He said the Commonwealth takes the position that it's an abandoned vehicle. Randall Lee Smith has no standing to object to the search.
He abandoned it. In addition to the note, they say they have a wealth of circumstantial evidence.
Forest rangers have testified they saw Smith with one of the victims near the shelter where the bodies were found. That's not good.
His bloody fingerprints found on a book next to one of the hikers and bloodstained clothing found in his house. Also not good.
Bad stuff. So March 23rd, 1982, his trial is just about to start.
And unless he has fucking Vincent LaGuardia Gambini coming down to help him, I think he's got problems here. Yeah, I don't think he's beaten this one.
This is right before jury selection was to begin. And he will plead guilty to two counts of second degree murder.
There we go. Now, a big part of this is both the Ramsey and Mountford families had to agree to the plea bargain.
The prosecutor said before they would do it. So they said that he was recommending the prosecutor told the family that he was recommending the pleas after discussing it with the families of both victims.
They said that he was not certain he could approve first-degree murder, which I don't know how much more proof you need. The lack of self-awareness.
Yeah, confidence. Come on, man.
Dude, you have his bloody fingerprint. Know when you win.
You know what I mean? Know when you've won and fucking accept it. You went to law school, man.
Dude, this is fucking crazy. This is why we fucking play the game.
This is it right here. Somebody hit somebody.
So, yeah, they said. So, sentencing comes around.
And, by the way, they said in private discussions that the prosecutor said he wasn't thrilled with having the second-degree sentences. He said first-degree murder would have imposed 20-year prison sentences on each charge.
So you could have given him 40 years. But instead, he will get you, sir, may fuck off 30 years in prison.
Okay. That is the sentence, but that is not what he's going to do, as we'll find out.
No way you're doing all that. He's not doing all that.
So part of this is he had no criminal record. That was part of it, which really, once you've murdered two people and possibly raped a corpse i feel like your criminal your past is pretty irrelevant at that point the present matters more that's a little bit and it's the the recent past when you were murdering people to me so they said the consentence was considered lenient and a lot of people were pissed off about this in the town yeah people lost their fucking But the families were okay with it, and that is what Bob Mountford Sr.
said. If the Ramseys went along with it, we were going to go along with it.
We didn't want him to get the death penalty, but we also didn't want him to ever get out. Great people.
You can see why these Susan and Bob are so nice. You know what I mean? They come from nice backgrounds.
so they said that Mountford, this is Mountford Senior said that he was struck by Randall's

personal background which partly influenced his decision in accepting the deal he went jesus this guy's pathetic basically really sad yeah yeah he said he heard about his lifelong fabrications and he said i don't want to sound like i sympathized with him after all he was a murderer but he, but he really never did have a life. And what life he did have, he made up.
Dude, he wanted to be a 36-year-old divorcee. That's what he was looking for.
That's what he was looking for. Wow.
So a lot of people were very pissed off, though. Police officers were very pissed off about this.
They were really mad. They also disagreed with the prosecutor who told fellow lawyers he didn't want to risk a trial because he had been unable to discover a clear motive for the double homicide who cares who gives a shit yeah wanted to kill him rape her and rob them there is your motive i don't know what we're talking about here what the fuck um so yeah and they said that the families have said the whole thing's been really hard and people are wanting to talk about it with them all the time.
And they kind of just wanted to get it over with, basically. Yeah.
Yeah. Mrs.
Ramsey, Susan's mom, said just getting through the emotional shock will last forever. But the prosecutor said that this agreement lays to rest any questions about the slayings.
At least everybody knows who did it. We know what happened.
Yeah. They said we now know who killed Susan and Bob, and that is something certainly worth something to their parents.
I feel that I'm exchanging the somewhat remote possibility of a larger sentence. I don't think it's somewhat remote at all.
I think he would have got first degree consecutive sentences and got fucked good. He said the possibility of a larger sentence with the certainty of a smaller sentence there's one guy who's really pissed off about this yeah who do you think that is um oh that's right a random hiker exactly yeah warren doyle 32 spends his day picketing the front of the courthouse by himself protesting the plea bargain yeah he said no way this is ridiculous yeah they said well you must have been good friends with susan and bob he goes i never met them before never met anybody never met any of these people he goes but you know he said that he believes the really pisses me off yeah he said the lawyers in the case should have gone ahead with a jury so the residents of giles county um instead of what he called the judicial powers, could decide on the case.
He said a jury trial might have answered the question of motive. Yeah, we don't know.
Why are you protesting a plea deal that the parents are okay with? That's the problem. Oh, I might.
There's nothing else. It's so weird.
He walked back and forth in front of the black iron fence that surrounds the courthouse, was interrupted frequently by passersby who wanted to talk to him about the protest. As he walked, he carried a red and black lettered sign that said, did Bob and Sue plea for their lives? Did Randall Smith give them a bargain? Shame on the murderer.
Shame on our judicial system. One knife's the living, the other knife's the survivors.
That all on one sign god damn that's a he's got to understand marketing yeah you think man a billboard can't be too wordy you got to tell people what you're doing real quickly 60 yeah shame on the plea deal or just pick a fucking pick a sentiment he just stuffed it all into one here so um one person who lives three houses from randall smith's mother uh described himself as one of randall's best friends oh which isn't really a thing told doyle they were surprised by they were surprised smith was guilty he told the protester we were surprised he's guilty can't believe it yeah yeah he said this is crazy Warrenren doyle jr this guy here um he's a veteran hiker he said he'll soon finish his 11th trip of the of the the entire appalachian trail he's uh you know this is the the protester he said he was so offended by the plea agreement that he had to pick at the courthouse he had no fucking choice he said He said, if another incident happens with Randall Smith, perhaps the people who are responsible for the plea bargain should be put on trial. That's not how things work, but okay.
He said that he's the only one who did not get life without parole also. And they said that everyone associated with the trail security remembers the Smith case.
He said, since 1981, there's been three murders on the trail. Each time people would say, where's the guy from 81? Where's Randall Smith? Oh, he's in jail.
Okay. I guess nine people murdered on the trail since 1974 up to that point.
That sounds like a lot. They said that more precautions have been taken to ensure safety, such as increasing the number of ridge runners who patrol sections of the trail and report suspicious people, though there are seasonal ridge runners in the busy areas and that sort of thing.
So you can't. Likely volunteers.
Those are not paid positions. Yeah.
You can't police 2,100 miles of woods. Of woods.
That's the thing. This isn't a structure with a building.
There's no stoplight to run through. It's impossible.
And they said also more than 3 million people use the trail every year. Wow.
Good luck. One guy said, I don't want to overreact to the fact that a handful of socially marginal people have killed a handful of hikers.
Socially marginal. That's one way to put murder.
Okay. So in prison, he is sent to the Nottaway Correctional Center in Burkeville.
He's inmate number 127885, in case you're wondering. In case you want to look him up there.
And there's more, though. Don't worry.
Then, by the way, this is in the flat area of Virginia with no mountains, and he's very sad.

That's tough stuff.

He's very, very sad here.

In 1985, when he's in jail for a couple years, a book comes out about him here.

It's called Murder on the Appalachian Trail by Jess Carr.

And, yeah, I guess she's also a Giles County native, the person who wrote it.

And, yeah, the book, honestly, is kind of a disjointed book.

It's a little.

Yeah, but it's real personal to her.

It's a little odd.

Yeah, it's a little strange.

So in the book, though, they reconstruct a scene in which Smith, Ramsey, and Mountford drink together.

Because we know that happened.

Mountford, behind Ramsey on the trail, caught up. Smith leaves angry because the social workers are, quote, trying to see inside my head.
Trying to see inside my head. Yeah.
They said Ramsey and Mountford continue drinking. They bed down for the night.
Ramsey suggests that Smith wants to rape her. Just says to Mountford, I'm a little worried about that.
So that's what they think happened here, putting this all together. And now Hezekiah Osborne, who went to private practice after this, said that he, this is his, from all the evidence he's seen, he said they drank together.
And he said, Randall, I think, made a pass at the girl. Mountford intervened and Randall left, but he returned to shoot Mountford while he was still in a sleeping bag.
He said that Smith and Ramsey, according to the evidence, had a hell of a battle. He did treat her pretty bad, he said.
I would fucking say so. Holy shit, they said her head injury was fucking brutal.
The palms of her hands were cut to shit. It was brutal, man.
So 1986 comes around.

You might say, why the hell are we talking about 86?

Randall's away for 30 years.

Randall's up for parole.

That's fast.

That's real fast.

Yeah.

Bob Mountford Sr. said, what the fuck?

He said he's not even serving for one death, let alone two.

What he got was little enough. To be paroled in five years would be a complete travesty of justice yeah absolutely miscarriage fuck yeah he also said this is something we're gonna have to live with for the rest of our lives we won't get paroled in 10 or 15 years we won't ever get paroled he shouldn't be allowed to get out susan's uh father said well.
They said for obvious reasons, I have a very

negative prejudice. It was our daughter,

but I would feel the same if it was someone else's

daughter. I think the parole board would

not be doing its duty to let a guy out

who did what he did out on the streets.

Especially not in five years.

Truth, yeah.

Whatever energy he has, he's got to

sit in there for a while and burn up that energy

and be too old to go out and bother to do that shit again. Otherwise, I don't trust this fucking guy.
So they said, you know, he's just up for parole. It doesn't mean he's getting released.
One of the people's here, this is the chairman of the parole board, said no matter how heinous the crime, if the person's eligible for parole, we're supposed to look at it from the perspective that he could be released he said but you're not talking about people operating in a vacuum we have families and children too and we can be just as affected by a crime as anyone else we're not trying yeah we're not trying to put someone out there just to see how they will do it's just an experiment um then another uh hiker from there outside the parole board said he really hopes he doesn't get paroled he said he scarred this area of the country permanently permanently also said that i tried to shield them talking about the notoriety of the trail said i tried to shield my kids from it but when people would ask where they were going their their answer would always produce the same response oh that's where the murders happened it's the trail. Yeah, it's the murder spot there.
Now, Randall's mom, Loretta, she is trying to, she's just all alone sitting in her little house. She said, even though I'm here and he's there, I've been treated a lot of times like someone who was in prison.
Everyone from here to Washington knows who I am and knows who he was too. She said she hasn't seen her son since he was sent to prison in 82.
This is in, like, 86. But she talks to him by telephone every two weeks, and she knows he's waiting anxiously for word from the parole board.
Anxiously? Does he think he's getting out right now? That's crazy. They said, well, where would he like to be? And she said he would like to be where he's not penned up.
I bet. No shit.
I bet if you asked all the guys in prison, they'd say similar. Not jail.
I do not know what his chances are, but I do hope he gets out. She says she does not believe her son committed the crimes.
Unbelievable. Does not believe it for a second.
There's a certain level of delusion and reality blocking that only a parent could do. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Only a parent or a spouse could do. Well, that's half her DNA, so...
It couldn't be that. She'd have to recognize that she contributed to this.
Yep. She said, if he had ever bothered anybody, I would know about it.
I would be the first one to know. Okay.
Hey, Ma, I tried to rape this lady. She wouldn't let me, so I had to shoot her boyfriend and stab the shit out of her, but you know how it goes.
Anyway, how was your evening? I've been out here boogie monster and the shit out of the woods. How was your fucking shift at the hospital? Jesus, she said that my son was framed.
He's been framed. She said if there was more investigation done, they would have found some things that didn't come up.
But they quit looking when they picked up my son. They got my son and that was it.
Ma. That's what she says.
Fingerprints. I hope she didn't say that to the parole board.
No shit. So he is denied parole in 1986 here.
In prison, they said he never made any, didn't really make any friends. No? Nope, didn't do anything.
Just continued living his life the same way? Just continued doing what he was doing. He said there was keeping him constant company were various members of the Appalachian Trail Conference who religiously filed an objection, and each year he came up for parole.
So, yeah, they said that. He did.
He underwent a lengthy educational program that was intended to increase post-release employability. Basically, he got a GED exam and a couple other things he did.
That was what he did. So he does all that.
They said he also got into religion, but not the religion that everyone in church everyone in town wants him to be into no he got into wicca hell yeah yeah he got into wicca here um nice work that's what he found which i mean he loves nature and loves the woods so why not might as well blair witch it what the fuck here so for um yeah there you go that's what he's going to do. Now, September 27th, 1996.
Been in for 15 years in custody and in jail here. He is released on mandatory parole.
Mandatory? Mandatory, because he finished one of his whole sentences. Okay.
He will be supervised for 10 years, though. Terrific.
He's going to be on home confinement for a while and then be on supervised parole for 10 years. So that's interesting.
He had two visits from his mother in the whole 15 years he was in jail. It's the only contact he had with anybody.
So basically, he was weird before. He's going to be real fucking weird now.
Real isolated. Real weird.
Yep. They said, and the cop who the lead investigators who didn't want him out said, quote, he had never, he had been a model inmate, never caused any problems.
So they let him out. And back then, too.
Right back to the same town? Back then, every day you did would give you a day of good time, too. So if you did 15 years, that's 15 years of good time good time which means they'd let you out so he returns to his home with his mom yeah and starts doing odd jobs again sure and also begins to immediately lie again too um his friend spower there the guy who he welds for he visits randall at his house after rall was placed under home confinement.
And he claims he still has severe amnesia, by the way. Oh, he's had severe amnesia for 15 years.
Apparently that's a in prison. That's a great way to do 15 years.
I guess so. I wait.
That's the way you'd want to do 15 years. Just bash your head into the fucking wall every day.
You're doing it. No clue spower guy said i walked in and he said who are you and i said you know who i am he said i don't remember nobody i said whatever whatever line randall we fucking know yeah so later on they walked around the house and carried on their.
Dude said it got just weirder and fucking weirder, obviously. He said that if you didn't know him before, it might have seemed like he was actually crazy.
He said, but I know this fucking guy. I know he's full of shit.
This ain't crazy. This is Randall.
Yeah. He said at one point, Randall showed Spauer a page of a word puzzle book that had words circled in pencil.
The guy, Spower said, quote, he then says, your name's on this right here. I said, really? And he said, yeah, the FBI knows everything about you.
Perfect. He said, so we just kept that up for a while.
That's what Spower said. Said, this is fun.
Let's see. I would find find this fun let's see how far he'll go with lying fuck it he then said that spower's name was in a crossword puzzle as well okay he said that was in a crossword puzzle um so there's that then he said quote this is spower he said i can't remember nothing about place.
None of this stuff comprehends to me. So we step out on the porch and looked up at the mountain.
I said, that old antique school bus, I didn't know that was up there. He said, yeah, that's something that's been up there since I was a kid.
He said, I knew right then. He was lying to me.
Bullshit. Yeah.
That's what he does. It's the same as you need to sign this.
Oh, no problem. Yeah.
He also noted that while Smith lied practically about everything in his life from his wealth to his education, there was one theme that he was always lying about. And that was the women that he had.
And he would continue that. Because if you thought he was a desirable piece of ass before.
Yeah. Now he's a double murderer who's been in prison.
Now that all ladies want to fuck him fuck he's a bad boy people are jumping out of planes these flight attendants to try to get in his pants now forget it so this guy said the women he had he would talk about his girlfriends he'd have one living in bland he'd have one living in blacksburg they seem to be everywhere certainly popping up he said we rode over there one day day before Christmas because Mama wanted some purple candles from roses. He rode over to Blacksburg with me.
He said, my little woman works over at that place. So I said, really? That's right where we're going.
Perfect. Perfect.
So I pull in. I go inside.
He just sat outside in the truck and never mentioned that story again. That was it.
It's so funny. He just shut the fuck off when caught.
When caught, he's like, oh, shit, damn it. He said, we'd be here on Friday thinking of somewhere we might go, maybe have a nice cold one, get a bunch of guys together, maybe watch the home run championship or something.
But he had no desire to head off at five after hours for a drink with the boys or to chill out. He'd say, I've got a little lady and I've got to go meet her at six or seven o'clock

tonight.

Pick her up and take the kids out tonight.

Can't keep them waiting.

Can't keep them waiting.

That's how it is.

Those kids, boy, they get real ornery when they're hungry.

You know what I mean?

They're on that shit.

He said, I'd say, all right.

So he'd go home to Ingram Village and we'd drive by real slow and there was his red truck sitting right there in the driveway all by itself. Doing nothing.
Full of shit is what it means. In the early hours of December 4th, 2024, CEO Brian Thompson stepped out onto the streets of Midtown Manhattan.
This assailant pulls out a weapon and starts firing at him. We're talking about the CEO of the biggest private health insurance corporation in the world.
And the suspect. He has been identified as Luigi Nicholas Mangione.
Became one of the most divisive figures in modern criminal history. I was targeted, premeditated, admit to so terror.
I'm Jesse Weber, host of Luigi, produced by Law and Crime and Twist. This is more than a true crime investigation.
We explore a uniquely American moment that could change the country forever. He's awoken the people to a true issue.
Finally, maybe this would lead rich and powerful people to acknowledge the barbaric nature of our health care system. Listen to Law and Crime's Luigi exclusively on Wondery Plus.
You can join Wondery Plus on the Wondery app, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts. What if everything we thought we knew about justice was wrong? In This Is Actually Happening's new series, A World Beyond Revenge, we explore a radical idea that justice can be about healing, not just punishment.
Through five powerful stories, we meet people who've experienced unimaginable harm and those who caused it as they come together to seek something radical. Healing.
From a man tortured for a crime he didn't commit to a woman who misidentified her attacker. These stories will change the way you think about justice, forgiveness, and the possibility of a better world.
Follow This Is Actually Happening on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to This Is Actually Happening ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.
Year 2000, Randall's mom Loretta dies. Fuck fuck loretta is the last piece of tether holding him to anywhere near sanity or a normal life or society once she dies he just becomes a complete fucking ted kaczynski recluse weirdo at this point so real fucking weird the first The first thing he did was take all the pictures off the walls.
Like the day his mom died he took everything down off the wall. Everything.
Even if it's like a painting of a mountain down. Just clean walls.
Well you gotta have room for your hustler laminates as well. The second thing he did here was run out of money.
Because doesn't really have any money anyway nothing coming in yeah and it would get worse every month um later on all his utilities will be shut off it's not good september 2006 he's been on parole for 10 years he's off parole he is a free man yeah off supervised parole and he wants some property yeah he has no money no okay his electricity electricity is getting turned on and off. I don't know where he thinks he's going to have money for property, but there's a guy, a couple named Robin and Jason Stephen.
They own 98 acres of wooded mountainside between Smith's house and the Appalachian Trail. Sure.
So that's what he has to cut through their property to get to the trail. What he wants is a piece of that property that would allow him to go to the trail.
Sell me a trail through your trail, basically. He said that shortly after he was released from prison, this couple said that he just rolled up to them as a neighbor and said, quote, you may hear some things about me that aren't true, that I killed some people.

That's not a good way to say it.

Nice to meet you, neighbor.

Can I get you a beer?

Like, holy shit.

Yeah.

And then they heard, too.

They had heard about him.

Everyone said, oh, you meet Lion Randall yet?

They're like, Lion Randall?

Who the fuck is that?

You know, the murderer that lives three doors down.

Wait, there's a murderer named Lion Randall that lives three doors? Yes, there is. named lion randall that lives three okay okay well great job buying this excellent thanks real estate agent so this guy um randall then told jason that he doesn't hike in the trail anymore or do any of that he said i'm getting too old for that sort of shit can't be doing that to go all the way around so i want to be able to just walk right over there to it to hang out.
And yeah, he said Smith wanted permission to walk the property in search of arrowheads to get to the trail also. And he wanted to buy a small parcel at the top of their land so he could put an old trailer next to the trail and live there.
That's what you want. A fucking recluse, lying weirdo living on your land in a trailer that murdered people.
In a trailer, yeah. Who's a murderer also.
But even if he wasn't a murderer, I wouldn't want that. So he would show up all the time to ask this guy to sell it to him.
And the guy would say, sorry, I don't want to sell any of my land. Not doing that.
Yeah, Jason's wife, who was a real estate agent, so she could have made the sale. She's aware.
Said she never felt comfortable around Randall at all and said that Randall always seemed to ignore her in a weird way. Like she wasn't there.
Like she didn't exist. It was between men.
Once he told, Randall told the husband that he could see her coming a mile away, that jet black hair. So that made him uncomfortable.
Like, you've been looking at my wife. You just haven't been acting like you are, which is even creepier.
He said when they did talk, Smith would repeatedly ask her if she wanted to sell the parcel of land. And she would say no.
And he'd go, all right. Yeah.
The Stevens ended up selling the entire parcel to someone else oh fuck oh shit they sold them so smith approached the wife or smith yeah approached the wife and said will you list my house he said i want to move in a few months he said he had things he needed to do is what smith said the the everybody's name smith in this town by the way the real estate agent wife neighbors named robin sm Robin Smith. So he said he had things he wanted to do.
He also told her he'd been in the hospital and wanted to settle down and that his days of walking on the mountains were over. And they didn't know.
They were like, I don't know what the fuck. But either way, we're not selling this shit to you.
So February 2008, not long after she told Randall that she was not going to list his house as well here he said that he needed to move. One afternoon in the month of February this is one of the neighbors said they were at home when they saw a very weird sight from their kitchen window.
Okay. Randall Smith was making trip after trip from his cellar, which he accessed by an exterior door, one of those double open doors there.
They said he was carrying what they called an astonishing amount of bright yellow plastic grocery-style bags filled with something into the house

from the basement.

They said his actions were calm

and methodical. They said in some

ways it was like he was collecting the ingredients

to make like a cake or some shit.

Like I got it like he went grocery shopping, but

probably not.

They didn't get it. Then

they figured out later that they

as he may be assembling

things for a lengthy trip

Thank you. but probably not.
They didn't get it. Then they figured out later that he may be assembling things for a lengthy trip,

like canned goods, because a lot of it they figured out was canned goods.

Like maybe he's going out camping or something like that.

April 28, 2008, Randall's public water is cut off.

Shit.

That was his last utility that he had working was water. That's gross.
So now he's got no, he can't even shit in his house now. Nothing goes away.
Everything sticks around. Nothing goes away.
You're keeping all of it. Yeah.
You're keeping dinner last night from last night. So the house is dark and quiet.
During this period, neighbors notice that he's not around. So that's weird.
Then, you know, six weeks go by. They haven't seen Randall.
There is a shitload of mail piled outside the house. I mean, also like weeks worth of mail out there.
So they're like, that's really weird. So on April 30th, a missing persons report was filed about Randall.
They said concerns about his welfare and mental state and what he might be doing out there. Maybe he's an older guy, too, at this point.
Maybe he got sick in the woods. Maybe he fell and hurt himself.
All too possible, yeah. You never know.
So they didn't know. And the cops, they weren't really looking for him like that because he's off parole.
So he's like anybody else. So he is missing.
They put up a big picture of him missing, looking for a missing hiker. So they said that one person here who's with the sheriff said, apparently during this time we never had the first problem out of him since he got out of jail.
They said no other crimes, never failed to signal a right turn. He was as invisible as invisible can be.
Kept it all together. Kept it together.
Kept it tight.

He lived up there in that little house and pretty much kept to himself. I heard

that some dumbass went up there

and tried to get him to autograph the book

that Jess Carr wrote and Smith

didn't want to sign it but that's about it.

So he's basically invisible until

2008. Some dumbass.

To go knock on a murderer's door

and ask them to sign the book about the murder that he didn't even write is crazy. That is fucking crazy.
You're an idiot. So they said, quote, so we went up to the house and broke in, and his house looked just as if he was there right now.
Everything was there in place. It looked like he just walked out.
He said, we started checking it, and it seemed like his water and stuff had shut off sometime before for non-payment. We talked to some of the other people and they said

he liked to go up on the cliffs right above the house that were right near the Appalachian Trail.

They said he liked to go up there and sit and just watch the world go by.

So they were like, okay, that's a place to look, I suppose. But they said, why not?

Check it out. In the house though, they said they were doing nothing crazy.
They were just dusting for fingerprints, kind of doing like a burglary scene thing just to see what they could find. They checked his mailbox.
They found that his mail had not been picked up since March 3rd. So quite a while, two months almost.
They said that's about when he left his but they don't know maybe um the they there were signs that he had run out of money uh packed a few things removed his pornographic material it took that with him he took his porn with him yeah they said um yeah it looked like he just walked out it was real weird um they said so um they were worried about so we're thinking okay he's gone up there on the trail and he broke a leg or had a heart attack or something so he had a big search and never found any trace of him so they put up all these posters if you see this guy let us know they um everything they said we figured at that point that he probably died in the woods and that some hunter would probably find him in the fall figure it out later that's it literally someone's going to trip over his bones in a couple months don't worry about it we'll be alerted to his corpse soon yeah we'll find a skeleton and we'll we'll do it from there they said as the kind of as more time passes and everything there's the chances that he's alive are less and less probably that so may 8th 2008 okay this is at dismal creek yeah in this area by the way it's beautiful dismal creek fantastic yeah it's a it's a trick strategically named it's a trick yeah but it does say right under the sign no alcoholic beverages allowed which is also a trick because everyone's got booze in this fucking trail yeah the number one thing people have is fucking nuts and booze That's what they got. So now we'll talk about Sean Farmer, who is 33 years old.
Sean is a big fucking guy. Six, four, three, fifty.
God damn. Big old dude.
Just a big, giant honking son bitch here. Now he's with his buddy, longtime best friend, Scott Johnston, who's 37.
They're both from Virginia also. And they're going up camping in the Walnut Flats area of the Dismal Creek section of the Jefferson National Forest.
They're going trout fishing. Oh, yeah.
Good trout up here, babe. That's good stuff.
Scott Johnston said, I love coming up here. It's easy to get on the trail here.
It's a good place to meet other hikers. So they were on the trail, near the trail on Brushy Mountain, miles away from civilization.
And they were going for a creek that apparently was just jumping with rainbow trout. Fuck, yeah.
More than you could reach in with your bare hands and scoop them out. So he said, they asked him, this is actually Chris Hansen asking him later on, how was the fishing that day? And he said, actually, awesome.
I hammered them. Laughing.
Hammered back some fish. They said, how many did you get? And he said, six.
So he said, six nice ones. Six nice trout.
That's a damn good day. Now, Sean and Scott out here fishing said they had a weird feeling that someone was watching them all day which in the hills of virginia you should probably always feel yeah anyway in the hills of anywhere feel that way feel that way yeah just assume there's someone watching yeah so he said they didn't know it though but um just weird he said also that the local sheriff some hikers had reported to the local sheriff that they had seen some odd shit on the trail strange symbols and threatening signs painted on rocks and trees the sheriff said there were skulls and crossbones painted on rocks you know enter at your own risk which is hadn't been there before none of that shit yeah it's all new.
Um, so Scott Johnston said, I had fished all morning and I was coming back up the mountain and there was this dog in the road. Oh, when I, when I stopped, I got out of my truck, you know, someone walked up out of the Creek bank.
So we talked a little while, talked about fishing and stuff. And he told me, he says, oh says oh you know there's no fish in this creek and he said so chris hansen asked this guy no fish and the guy scott johnson said yeah that's what he said so i opened up the cooler and pulled out a bag of trout and i said here you can have these yeah i took them all i'm sorry i got a bunch and so they said did he strike you in any way as weird and scott said no he just looked like a Camper.
Normal camper. I'm sorry.
I got a bunch. Yeah.
And so they said, did he strike you in any way as weird?

And Scott said, no, he just looked like a camper. He looked exhausted.
Normal camper. He looked tired.
He looked like he was hungry for fish. So that evening, as Sean, the big guy, was setting up his tent near Dismal Creek, that's the same guy comes by again.
Uh-huh. Okay.
and Sean Farmer, the big guy, said he. Okay.
And, um, Sean Farmer,

the big guy said that,

um,

arms,

uh,

said he just,

you know,

walked up and I,

you know,

I said,

how you doing type of thing.

And he'd spoke to Scott and they were fishing together.

Sean and Scott say an unwritten rule.

The trails to offer aid and friendship to fellow hikers and fishermen.

That's what it is.

It's part of it.

Yeah.

It's like,

it's the last bastion of hippieism.

Right, right.

You know what I mean? When you're out there, help people. And they did just that, so they were trying to help him.
And Scott said, you know, he'd been coming up here since his early childhood with his dad and everything. So they sit down and they talk to this guy.
And this guy, this haggard fucking haggard camper,

said that he was an engineering graduate from Virginia Tech.

Sure.

But they were like, no, he's not.

They looked at each other like, yeah, right.

They took pity on him, basically, they said, Scott and Sean.

They were like, this fucking guy.

This poor bastard.

He's wandering around the woods, fucking wandering around the woods, puffing up his credentials like he's on a job interview.

Fluffing his resume. Yeah.
Yeah. So they sat around.
They talked with him. They they ate food together there.
And that's how that went. Now, the weird part is that they were before this, too, before the campsite, because he met him in the road, gave him some fish, and then later on ran into him.
And he had asked Scott if he was going to set up a camp nearby. And Scott said, yes, my friend's coming and pointed in the direction of the campsite.
this man told Scott that his own camp happened to be in the same direction, about a mile or so beyond where you're pointing. He said, so maybe I'll stop by later on my way to my campsite.
And they said, yeah, sure, why not? And that's how it goes here. By the way, this guy that they run into is carrying a .22 pistol the whole time.
Pistol. So, that's when, like we said, Sean arrives later on.
They're setting up their tent. They start cooking about 4 o'clock, and that's when, by the way, Johnston at the time was working as a chef.
Oh. So he built a campfire, cleaned, and cooked the trout, which if you got it, that's pretty good.
Probably good food. You're getting good trout there.
That's when Smith rolled up when the fire was going and they invited to join them for dinner. And farmer said, we talked to him for about three, three and a half hours.
God dang. Imagine talking to a stranger in the woods for three and a half hours.
That's a fucking nightmare. They didn't even learn you teach a man to fish.
They're just giving him fish all day. Giving him more fish.
It's the same day. Yeah.
Maybe tomorrow teach him. I'm not sure.
So this guy, a farmer, said, I never got the feeling that any of this was out of the ordinary. He was pretty charismatic.
He didn't talk like he was lying. Anything we talked about, he seemed to know something about.
He told them, by the way, not only did he have attended Virginia Tech as an engineering student, he wrote papers for NASA. Sure.
Sure thing. Now he's emaciated needing fucking donations of trout in the woods.
Neither guy believed the stories. They all thought he was bullshit.
They said, this is Johnson, my intuition was the guy was an alcoholic who'd been kicked out of his home. Hilarious.
Probably closer to the truth. Yep.
So Farmer said the only thing that was unusual was how long this guy stayed with them. He said he told us where his camp was, and I knew it was about an hour walk away.
That wouldn't have been a problem for Scott and me to walk through the woods in the dark to get there, but I thought most people would have a problem getting there in the dark. I don't even think I realized it at the time.
Where the fuck is this guy going to go? Where is he going to go? The stranger tells Sean and Scott that his name is Ricky Williams. Yes, the running back.
Why not? I'm Ricky you know my dreads get in the way of getting of my helmet sometimes uh yeah i like to smoke weed obviously this is randall smith clearly now at about 8 30 p.m old ricky williams gets up to leave he goes well that's about all i thanks for the trout you fellas have been a hell Turn in. Really appreciate your hospitality, but I'm going to be getting on out of here.

So they go, well, great to meet you.

You be careful going through the woods.

It's at that point that, you know, it's Randall Smith. He walks behind Sean Farmer, the big guy, like he's going to leave,

and instead pulls out his .22 caliber pistol and fires two shots into Sean's head and back.

Pow, pow. Quick, quick.
Right. So Smith turned and from about 10 feet away, aimed his pistol at Johnson or Johnston and fired two rounds into Johnston's neck and face.
Fuck. Yeah, this is fucking crazy.
Johnston and we'll get into more detail detail, ran into a clump of trees near the camp, and Smith turned back, possibly to shoot Farmer, but Farmer had already taken off running. Unbelievable.
Both these guys have two bullets in them, and they're both pretty moving around. So, yeah, later on in the spot, they said it was right there.
They had some dinner,. Uh, Scott said, we were sitting around the campfire talking about sports and fishing.
Sean said, and then it was dark by that time. And he walked over to get his dog right in front of Scott's tent and, you know, patted his leg.
Like I could hear him say, come on, boy, we need to get back to camp. It seemed to be quiet and just an easy way.
And he said, Scott said, And the next thing you know, I mean, I just hear pow, pow. And I see his arm stuck out towards Sean.
Sean said, I just had this ringing in my head where he shot me right in the side of the face. You know, I hear that boom.
I couldn't hear any other gunshots because inside of my head was like, wow, five A's just as loud as you could possibly imagine. It rings in your head unbelievably.
And my mouth was swollen immediately. So I really couldn't speak after that.
And then my vision in my right side went bad. Oh, Jesus.
Now, Sean said, and I stood up, staggered back, and all I could see were, you know, shots of what looked like fire, which were bullets discharging towards Scott. He said, now it was all about survival.
So Scott, who's also shot, says, and I jumped up and I took off and I started running this direction, ducking down. And he's pointing.
Scott says, and I guess he turned and shot me in the back at that time. And then I run up and I get down behind this clump of trees to protect myself.
Still moving. Still moving.
Yeah, shot in the back. Scott says, and then I realized that I was shot in the neck.
I could actually see the blood like squirting like a foot every time my heart would beat. He had an artery.
Yeah. He hit the main vein there.
Not good. He said, you know, he said, I mean, it was just pulsing out of me.

Well, I felt around my neck and I was like, oh, you know, and I felt the bullet hole and I just stuck my finger in the bullet hole to plug the wound.

Oh, God.

To keep the blood from, you know, squirting out.

Oh, my God.

That is horrifying.

Oh, God. He's the toughest man alive alive that's wait till you hear sean too sean remembers the scene unfolding as if it was slow motion he said the shooter turned back toward him and gets ready to fire again and chris hansen asked what was the look in his eyes and sean said just a blank look like it's almost like he was looking past me you know crazy crazy you know a murderer in the woods for no reason so Sean's a fucking enormous guy like we said Sean said I'm gonna rush him fuck it I got a better chance if I bum rush him so Sean rushes him and Sean said once I saw that happening I just went toward him and they said Chris Hansen said and what was your intent he said just to stop him from shooting us just to get to him so now he said he's face to face with the gunman here and he's struggling with him and he said he charged the shooter and Sean said he turned back toward me shot me in the chest so that'll end that so many shots that'll end trying to get after him yeah Sean said at that point nothing happened there was no more bullets no more fire so it was just you know staring each other down briefly now you had to be scary for Randall at that point yeah you shoot a guy who's six fucking four, three, fifty, and he doesn't go down

and he's staring at you. You're in deep shit.

Yeah, you're in deep shit.

So he somehow absorbed a

fucking, and it was like three feet away, point

blank gunshot wound to the chest.

At that point, Sean

turns and runs for his Jeep.

Somehow

is able to turn and run. He gets

in. By the way, Randall's chasing him, fucking with his gun, trying to fix it or whatever, trying to line him up.
Sean said, at that time, I just put my hand up just hoping to, if he was going to shoot me, shoot me through the hand to block it a little bit. Hopefully slow it down, yeah.
Slow it down, ricochet off one of my bones, something. So I start the car, and once the car started, he went past me and was from behind.
So when I started the car, I ducked down in the passenger seat and just drove away. Now, meanwhile, Scott is hiding in a clump of trees in the woods.
Remember that? So Scott Johnston's taking refuge in the wood. He'd been shot in the back and neck.
All he remembers thinking is that he could bleed to death right in the woods. Yeah.
He's got the Vegas fountain in his neck. Fuck.
Yeah. He said, he said, I mean, the blood was just squirting out of my neck.
Oh, fuck. I mean, it was every time my heartbeat, it was just boom, boom.
And I assume in that case, your heart would be beating pretty fucking hard and fast. Yeah.
and I and like I say i mean i just stuck my finger in you know probably a quarter a quarter inch down inside the wound holy he put it in like he's trying to hear on the phone yeah put it in his ear oh my god imagine putting that in your neck fuck so chris anson hansen said and you knew you had to get that wound plugged and he said yeah, yeah, I knew that. And he said, otherwise I would have died right there.
And so Sean tears out of the campsite. Then Sean said he realized Scott was still back in the woods somewhere, wounded and bleeding.
Now, Scott saw Sean make a run for it. And at that point, Scott described it thusly, quote, I took off and made it down through the woods.

I was going to go down to the road and I met Sean down at the road with his truck. He said, I saw his headlights coming down and stops and I jump in and I just screamed, go, go, go.
We're both shot and we got to get out of here. And I mean, he just punched it.
sure so says, I was just lucky that my car was aimed heading out of camp and the keys were in the ignition because it's bad enough to try to drive with not having vision in one of your eyes, but to do it in reverse through the dark in the woods with only your red taillight glow to guide you would be fucking horrific. So holy shit.
So now that is wild. They said wild they said that they saw wow farmer said he saw him in the rearview mirror he saw randall smith at that point come up next to them and raise the gun again and they're both in the truck and he pulls the trigger but the gun didn't fire suck it yeah so they said they had ran out of ammunition it looked like and as he began reloading that's when they took off.
Go. Yeah.
Now as they're going here fucking yeah it's wild. They said they're flying down the road the ride from their camp there's no houses for about five miles from here too so there's some time then at this point farmer's tongue sean the driver is so swollen because the bullet entered through the back of his head and remained in his sinus cavity by the way it'll never come out of his sinus cavity and blood is squirting like a fucking like bugs bunny just got shot a bunch and drank something out of scott johnston's.
Neither one of them could drive independently. They're both drifting in and out of consciousness.
This is insane what's happening right now. This is almost like the guy riding off on the four-wheeler in Utah, bleeding.
Blood on the icicles, it's called. But he's trying to get away.
Yeah, well, so is this guy. Same thing.
Because that was a father trying to save his kids. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was the same deal. On the snowmobile, that's right.
On the snowmobile. So neither one of them could drive.
They're both drifting in and out of consciousness. They said they couldn't really even remember much about the drive here.
Farmer said, as soon as we pulled away, we both ducked down in the seat because we thought he was going to shoot again. My throat and my tongue were so swollen I couldn't talk to Scott,

and I remember I was feeling around for an exit wound, but I couldn't find anything.

I started spitting to see if I was spitting up blood.

When I didn't see any blood, I knew I was going to be okay.

Is that what it is?

I wouldn't have thought that.

I didn't know that.

I would have said I must be out of blood is what I would think. I must have ran out of blood.
The next few minutes are precarious. It's not going to go well.
But then at this point, now they still have to drive five miles, drifting in and out of consciousness and bleeding to death. So Sean said, I knew I was running off the road.
Like he couldn't keep it together. And he said, but I could feelott's hand on my steering wheel keeping us on the road one hand with a finger in his neck hole the other hand steering the car farmer said i blacked out and my vision was blurred out of my left eye i couldn't hear out of my left ear either it was like a ringing you have with a bad case of swimmer's ear um he said my vision vision kicked back in at the hospital, but I don't remember much about the ride going to someone's house.
So he does remember seeing the blood spurred out of Johnston's neck. And he said he wanted to talk to him, but he couldn't because his jaw and his tongue were fucked up.
He said, quote, I've always been an outdoorsman. the thing that saved us was that Scott and I know each other so well and that we know that the other one was going to do without thinking about it.
They're flying down the road. One is passing out while the other one will grab the wheel.
Then Scott would start to pass out and Sean would grab the fucking wheel again and take over. This is crazy.
Scott Johnston said, we went down that dirt road doing like 40 miles an hour, 50 miles an hour on the road that you can normally do 20. He said, and I can look, he said, I can look over and I can see he shot in the face.
And I, I'm worried like, you know, he shot in the brain or something, you know, it's dark. I mean, we're both shot.
We're both bleeding. I mean, we're both in a panic.
There's a small bridge that you have to cross the creek. We cross that and then the road veers left.
Well, when we veer left, the next thing I know, the Jeep just runs on the side of an embankment. Oh, God.
Fuck. And I mean, the rocks are flying and there's trees and I'm screaming, Sean, Sean.
And we come down off that embankment and we stop. He's shot in the face.
And I was sitting there thinking, well, you know, he can't see. He's blacking out.
I said, let me steer. And I said, you just listen to me and I'll tell you when to work the pedals.
Hilarious. Holy shit.
I'll see a gas break more. That's fucking crazy.
But I mean, all of a sudden we just take off again. And I mean, we're flying down the road and the road curves and S turns and, you know, turns.
And I, I, I mean, I'm steering from the passenger side. I'm holding my finger on the bullet hole there, trying to keep myself from bleeding to death.
He said, and we drove about two or three miles holy shit wow i'm gonna be sick fuck and it comes to a really sharp curve in the road and the next thing i know we hit it too fast and i'm like i'm telling him i'm like slow down slow down and we just skid sideways in the road around that curve and the wheels probably come within a foot of going over like a 20 to 30 foot embankment they almost flew off a cliff now and we skid to a stop right there totally sideways in the road and then i'm like you know go go go and i whip it back around and we take off this is crazy so it's zigzagging careening out of control he said'm screaming, stop, stop when I want him to slow down. And you know, I'm trying to steer.
He said that he took his finger out of his neck, blood squirted everywhere. He had to stick it back in because he thought maybe I don't need it now.
Um, so yeah, this is crazy. He said, Sean, you, we've been shot.
We're going to die. If we don't get help, you can't go off the road, dude.
We got to fucking do this shit. So anyway, they come to a house here.
The first house they come to, they pull in. It's under construction.
No one's here. Fuck.
They get back. Second house, they go.
It's dark. Okay, fuck it.
We don't care. We're banging on the door.
People live here. There's cars in the driveway.
They they're banging banging banging screaming call 9-1-1 me and my friend have been shot call 9-1-1 call 9-1-1 good answer good good thing to do there yeah don't make them think that you're there to sell fucking avon or something make sure they know what you're there for so this is an amway i swear so farmer is still in the truck well it's johnston who runs up there he's got a lot of energy Melissa Miller is the homeowner she opens the door she said she thought it might have been a home invasion at first that's why she didn't come out at first but they kept screaming call 911 call 911 and she could see blood already yeah so she said I said oh my god her and her son Randy out on the porch, and mom told Randy to go get some towels. They got some towels.
They called 911. The ambulance is coming from Bland, which is 20 miles away.
Oh, they better hurry. Holy shit.
Randy, the kid, said, I was just shocked to think that two people might die right there in front of my eyes on my front yard so melissa thought maybe these two strangers at first she thought they got in a fight and shot each other she thought they got in a fight with each other shot each other and then we're like oh shit we're both gonna die so let's help each other uh but when he but when randy the kid gets back randy's 20 by the way the kid the kid here, he recognized Farmer. He

knew him. So I know this fucking

guy. Farmer had dated a friend of

his that he knew, like a work friend.

So he said, I know this fucking guy.

Yeah. They sat on the porch.

They were applying wet towels. They were listening

for the ambulance. And

she said, I called them again and I said,

where are y'all at? Hurry up. I'm out of

towels. Yeah, I've done ran out of towels, and my bounty supply is dwindling.
So they said blood had soaked the towels. Randy went to get more.
Wow, that's fucking crazy. By the way, the run-up to this is from Scott's side, because that was Melissa's side of what she saw.
Scott said, we make it down to the bottom of the mountain, and we just got down to where there was three or four houses. And for some reason, you know, we passed the first or second house.
And I just says, I said, stop here. I said, these people are going to help us.
Whether they like it or not. Whether they like it or not.
I jump out and I run up to the house and I bang on the door and I say, call 911, call 911. I said, me and my friend have been shot.
And they come to the door and they see me soaked in blood, I mean, from head to toe. Meanwhile, Sean got out of the car and tried to stagger to the house.
Sean said, I was, I guess, so drained because when I got out of the car, I almost just fell down. I was just out of it.
And Melissa Miller thought, I thought it was one of my friends my son's friends playing a joke being real funny being hilarious until i actually went to the door and seen him holding his neck and blood was running down and i said oh my goodness this isn't a joke so the cops get a crazy call because obviously the once they the ambulance comes they're gonna get the police involved there's a lot of gunshot wounds here. So this cop, this is a wild fucking quote from this cop.
He said, quote, so whatever night it was, I got a call. I got a call dispatch.
And they said, I'd better come out because Randall Smith had shot two more people. Incredibly cavalier.
And I was like, yeah, right. Yeah, that's a lot of joke playing going on over there.
Dispatch for fucking murder suspects. But they were serious.
So I had to go out there. Yeah, you do.
Stupid. I had to go out there.
Yeah, dummy. So I guess that one of the local people said Mr.
Smith was known to loaf around the hikers a lot. So they were kind of looking around to see if he was hanging out with other hikers.
Then John Beckham of Atlanta said some hikers were sleeping off the trail avoiding shelters because it was because that's where the murders happened. So even 20 years later, they knew it.
25 years later, they said that they saw a sheet of loose leaf paper with a skull and crossbones and the words you've been worn drawn on it stay out and his father saw the same image and words on a rock so that's what we've been seeing um yeah that's a lot a hiker named danny reed said he heard the gunshots that night when he later heard that the shooter may have been randall smith he said he couldn't believe it he He said, quote, I was like, you got to be kidding me.

That guy's back again?

Yeah, stupid he is.

So Randall makes his escape

in Scott Johnston's pickup truck.

May as well take it, yeah.

It's a Ford Ranger pickup truck.

It's in the woods with the keys in it.

So Randall takes that.

That's that.

Now the following day,

this is the day after the shootings here, there's a guy named Moondog. That's what everyone calls him on the trail.
He goes and talks to the cop. That's looking for Randall Smith in the woods.
And this cop said, Moondog told us he'd been camping the night of all this over in a thicket, and he heard the truck coming by and stopped near the end of an old fire road he said he knew it was a ford ranger pickup because he had one and he knew what the taillights looked like and he recognized the door chong chime the bong bong bong when the door was open it was a ranger he said that he saw someone get out and start walking around this old fire road with a flashlight he could tell he was looking around for something he was rooting through the leaves and stuff and the guy was cussing he said this moondog hollers out hey and a couple more cuss words come out and then the guy with the flashlight jumps in his truck and takes off so the cop said so we went with moondog back to his campsite that's a weird thing to say so we went we went with moondog back to his campsite that's a weird thing to say so we went yeah we went we went with moondog back to his thicket and uh shared a breakfast of groundhog is what the next line's probably going to be there and you could tell that he'd uh that he'd been there a couple of us walked down the road and he said stop right there that's where he was look around sure enough right in this brush pile we found stuff that belonged to randall smith there it is they said it was an astonishing amount of items a lot of some of it weird some of it strange some of it just puzzling you will find out exactly how weird this guy is but we definitely know it's his though okay for sure uh they said we were sure it belonged to Smith because it had things in it like his GED certificate he got when he was in prison. Never get rid of that.
And if that's not enough, it had his birth certificate in there as well. So it's definitely Randall Smith.
He said a couple other things, including a little tape recorder that had a tape of some kind of ritual. Oh.
You could hear people moaning and screaming. It sounded like a witchcraft kind of thing.
Oh, yeah. The official investigation narrative referred to the audio cassettes contents as, quote, some kind of satanic ritual.
Right. OK, this is fucking hilarious.
They agreed that the cassette featured a man's voice chanting and women's voices moaning in the background, augmented by music apparently generated by a theremin. So there we go.
That creepy old music. There was also some kind of handwritten what they called occult material found along along with the items.
They said this is what Skidmore said, quote, we found written incantations that I believe were from the Wiccan religion. All hail guardians of the watchtower and so forth.
This is the exact thing. Hail to the guardians of the watchtowers of the east powers of air and invention.
Hear me. Hail to the guardians of the watchtower of the south powers of fire and feelings.
Hear me. Herald to the guardians of the watchtower of the south powers of fire and feelings hear me hail to the guardians of the watchtowers of the west powers of water and intuition spelled i-n-t-o wishing like upon a star intuition tremendous hear me hail to the guardians of the watchtowers of the north by the powers of the mother and earth.
Hear me. Hear me roar.
Hear me roar. Yeah.
Aid me in this magical working on this maze eve garden of the bitter sea. Show me your glory.
Show me your power. I pray thee.
I pray thee. I invoke thee.
O sacred one, hear my calls, ancient wise one. Teach me thy ways.
Lend me thy powers. Show me thy glory.
I invoke thee. I invoke thee, O ancient one.
It's from The Craft. Of course it is.
It's from the movie The Craft, 1996, with Feruza Balk and a bunch of other women. Yeah, it's The Craft.
It's a witchcraft movie from the 90s. A teen witchcraft movie from the 90s a teen witchcraft movie from the 90s that this 60 year old fucking weirdo yeah puts a goddamn tape recorder up to and audio records shit off of it okay amazing other handwritten incantations as they call it which is fucking hilarious is um well, we'll talk about this.

The handwritten version found among Smith's belongings is almost word for

word,

identical infant incantation uttered by actors,

Feruza Balk,

Rachel true,

Nev Campbell and Robin Tunney during this stormy scene on the beach,

which significantly advances the plot.

They said,

it's not a perfect match.

There's some places.

This Smith text diverges from the movie script, but it's enough. He was getting what he could remember.
Intuition. The other handwritten incantation, now incantation, now is the time, now is the hour.
Ours is the magic, ours is the power, which is absolutely from the craft because that was on the trailers. Features prominently in the beginning of the craft, as does one of the abstract occult symbols drawn apparently by Smith on one of the stashed documents.

He was just really into the craft.

That's all it was.

Big fan.

Wasn't into Wicca.

Really.

Just into the craft, whatever they were into.

Just wants to fuck a crazy girl.

Holy shit.

Among the items, too, that he had were a copy of a law enforcement radio, 10 codes, and a police scanner. There's also a small battery-operated television.
There were molded plastic contour maps of the area of Giles and Blad counties where the attempted murder occurred. There were several places marked in pencil on the maps.
He said, we searched those places and didn't find anything. There was, I don't know, now they're talking about in his stuff, there was, I don't know how many, dozens of knives.
Most of them looked like kitchen knives. There was a couple hunting knives and maybe a butcher knife, but dozens of knives.
Of course. There were clothes.
I'm wanting to say eight pairs of ladies' underwear. Oh, boy.
That's new. That's awesome.
There were several pairs of eyeglasses that were either ladies' or unisex glasses what so he just anything that a woman had he feels like he can he can like some kind of witchcraft power he can extract some pussy out of that i don't know what his deal is it's so strange what a weird guy um so the panties and the eyeglasses and all this type of shit so now they're really want to find him. They bring in cadaver dogs.
Ponds are trained to scour the muck for corpses. Nothing found.
Roughly a hundred of the collected items were called for DNA testing. The eight pairs of ladies' panties, by the way, were black size large, bright pink size 7, pale pink size large, light purple size medium 6, white lacy size L7, large 7, white hanes size 8, white size 7, and white with blue trim size 7.
They yielded no leads, no DNA, same thing with the glasses. They're thinking that he might have taken those off somebody's clothesline.
Sure, yeah. That's like one person, one lady's clothesline,

and then stole her glasses too, maybe out of her car or something.

Who knows?

So they said, we wanted to see if there was any blood on these knives.

We got nothing.

We sent out the underwear, but they'd been exposed to the elements,

and there was no DNA on it, so we don't know who any of that belonged to.

We passed the word all up and down the trail for any unsolved homicides or anything like that nothing it was just a crazy crazy case um you would think that you could put a word out anybody here get a bunch of underwear stolen from them yeah weird underwear thief maybe it's a cabin that somebody's not at a lot that's the other thing that they might have found something like that or broke into somebody's house and that's all he stole was fucking underwear like a weirdo. So at that point, finally, they spot him with the Ford Ranger one day in the woods and they give chase on Sugar Run Road, which is also in Giles County.
Randall leaves the scene, takes off in off it's a 2000 Ford Ranger

a state trooper

spotted the vehicle

on Sugar Run Road

near Eggleston

Virginia

pulled on

on the road

behind Smith

he took off

went off the road

to try to like

run through the woods

and flip the truck

Randall does

those aren't real

good off-road trucks

not the best

a Ford Ranger

especially

I don't even think

it's a four-wheel drive

it's a tough going

he was transported, because I had a 99 Ford Ranger. That's not a real big off-road truck.
So he's transported to the hospital where he's treated for injuries he had. A trooper recovers a gun at the scene, and it's the gun he shot the boys with there.
They said that he was released into police custody. They said

we read him his rights, informed him he was being

charged with two counts of attempted capital murder,

two counts of the use of a firearm during the

commission of a felony, one count of

possession of a firearm

by a convicted felon, and one

count of grand larceny related to the

theft of the pickup truck. And then we'll

tax Melsan for underwear after that, but that's a whole other thing. So that's May 5th.
They find him. They get him from the hospital.
They bring him in. The pictures of him sitting in the police station with a sling on his arm.
He looks like a dead person. He looks like a fucking corpse.
You look at him and you go, that person's alive? That man ran from the law?

Shocking that he's alive.

Then on May 10th, five days

after he crashes the truck,

Randall dies in jail. Oh, shit.

Croaks in fucking

jail. They said, at

first the cause was unknown,

but tests later on showed that he

had a blood clot from the car accident that

they didn't catch at the hospital. They went, whoopsops oh well sorry about it and he's dead so there you go randall smith is dead jesus christ that's fucking insane man that's crazy shit yeah he's he just dies in a chase blaze of glory i guess for him as it can get yeah i mean shit i mean fucking he had bon jovi cranked when he crashed that's when they found him it was just a skipping cd of i'm going down down down down over and over again just couldn't get to blaze of glory so both of them survived the experience scott is hospitalized longer than sean but they end up getting better.
The bullets, they both still have bullets stuck in their body. Farmer had been in sales, but within a few weeks, he ended up getting out of sales and getting a job driving a coal truck.
He didn't want to do sales anymore. He said, I didn't have to interact with with as many people then he was laid off due to a slump in the coal industry Johnston had been doing some contracting work in the Bluefield area and also helping his mother who'd been dealing with some health issues of her own Sean said I've camped out since then and I've been alone in the woods the only thing that's different now is that I used to be Mr.
Nice Guy to strangers, but now I'm not. I was never like that before.
I would never again. No, get the fuck away.
Anybody walking up, the fuck away from me. I'd be cocking my shotgun going, keep on walking.
Not what you're doing here. Johnston, the smaller guy, said, I feel like I got my life back.
We both have a little pain, but all in all, but all the good that has come out of this has outweighed the bad. I still go out and fish, but I guess if this has taught me anything, it's taught me to appreciate the smaller things in life and to live day to day.
He said, Randall Lee Smith tracked Sean and I that day, and we survived. It all happened within the blink of an eye.
And I've always been a good judge of character, but I never saw that coming.

Missed it.

Yep.

Yep.

One thing they'd like to figure out is they want to nail down confirmation that the .22

revolver with the one he shot Johnston and Farmer with was the same one he used to shoot

Bob Mountford with because they never found that gun. And it was a 22 also.
So they're thinking it might be the same one. The gun they got in the second crime, the cop said was a very old gun.
The one he used to shoot these two. He said it misfired a lot and it wasn't reliable.
We ran a trace on the gun and it shows that it was sold to him in june of 81 he's had it a long time which is yes that's fucking crazy they noted in the early 80s by the way because the murder happened in may of 81 but they said that in the early 80s the cop said it was not uncommon for a gun dealer yeah to wait two or three months after a sale before sending the official paperwork

and sending the sale.

They think it's the gun he shot everybody with.

He saved and stashed a fucking murder weapon away.

They never found it.

They looked through his whole house and everything.

They never found it.

They said so he could have bought it in May or April and just not have been turned in yet.

They said the visible evidence as far as the bullets were long gone since, meaning the bullets from the first murder case had been disposed of because the case was over with so um when smith was found unresponsive in his jail cell they said um that was the end of it as far as they were concerned sure one of the cops said he wasn't going to murder anyone else so yeah they said they asked what about the case what's the progress of the case somebody in the press asked and the cop said what's it classified as we don't have anyone to prosecute we don't have a victim we don't have a crime other than the fact that he shot those two boys there that night there's nothing illegal about having a stash of hidden stuff in the woods there's nothing illegal about a man possession possessing women's underwear or women's eyeglasses there's nothing illegal about a person having 30-something knives. Anything that could have been any help to us, any lead has been exhausted.
It's just a dead case. That cop has a lot of ladies' underwear.
He's like, listen. It's not illegal.
It's not illegal to have four dressers full of ladies' underwear. It's not illegal to do that, to have more ladies' underwear than the rest of your clothes put together that's normal now right it's not illegal to wear four or five pairs of ladies underwear at the same time is it no it's not now um the best part of this entire thing is that on randall smith's find a grave which findagrave.com is a very somber official thing.
They have like the person's obituary. They have people write nice things about them, flowers, where they're buried, where they're born.
It's a remembrance of their life. So it's very rarely insulting.
You know what I mean? It's usually irreverent. His fucking thing says Randall, quote, Lion Randy Lee Smith.
Hilarious. It says Lion Randall on his find a grave, which is fucking incredible.
Incredible. Now, Sean and Scott, how are they doing these days? I hope this is them.
And I found an article about them doing, I think it's them. There's no pictures, so I don't know if it's them, but fingers crossed it's them.
This article says, otherwise there's two guys named Sean Farmer and Scott Johnston who are just as close, which is weird. Sean Farmer and Scott Johnston are two highly acclaimed musicians who've made significant contributions to the music industry.
Farmer's an accomplished guitarist and singer-songwriter known for his innovative and eclectic styles, while Johnston's a renowned drummer and producer who's worked with various artists, including the Foo Fighters, it says. What the fuck? Together, Farmer and Johnston have collaborated in several projects.
Their work has garnered praise for its originality, emotional depth, and sonic experimentation. Farmer and Johnston's partnership extends beyond music creation.
They're also involved in philanthropic initiatives and have used their platform to raise awareness for social and environmental issues. Their commitment to using their art for positive change further highlights their dedication to making a meaningful impact.
In conclusion, Sean Farmer and Scott Johnston are two exceptional musicians whose collaborative efforts have produced remarkable music. Their innovative approach, musical prowess, and commitment to social responsibility makes them influential figures in the contemporary music landscape.
I hope that's them. I really do.
You're incredibly talented. And then maybe you get super talented talented after that or maybe they decide just to go all in with that shit i don't know what happened but we hope so either way randall's fucking dead he's not going to kill anybody else uh but what a fucking disaster this is a mess imagine living in that area during this time fucking crazy shit so there you go.
If you like that story, you should absolutely, surely tell the world about it, I would say. Tell every bod-damn person you know.
Did I say bod-damn? Bod-damn. Bod-damn.
Every goddamn person they know about it, please, because it really, really helps the show out. Also, get on, you definitely want to go to shutupand up and give me murder.com get your tickets for live shows 2025 is ready and it's out and we will go over those dates real quickly here let me pull those up there we go all right let's do it we have February 7th in Pittsburgh right February 8th Columbus Ohio at the Davidson it's a nice've been there before.
Pittsburgh, it's the Carnegie Music Hall with the bigger one in Oakland there. We're stepping it up there.
May 16th, we are in St. Louis at the Pageant.
Same place as last time. Beautiful place.
Come out there. May 17th, Chicago at the Riviera.
Can't wait for that. We love Chicago.
September 6th, we are in San Diego, California, at the Observatory, where we've been before. September 7th, 2025, we are in Irvine at the Irvine Improv.
That's outside of Los Angeles. September 20th.
Now, there is going to be another show added to this, by the way, the next day. September 20th in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
I believe it's the night before is the other show. We can't announce it right this second.
And when you hear what city it is, you'll go, oh, yeah, I get why they didn't announce it that day, because it would be pretty shitty to do. It was just a cheesy thing to do.
OK, but definitely another show there. October 17th, we are in Portland, Oregon at the Newmark.
October 18th,

Seattle, Washington at the Moore. That's a

gorgeous place. December 12th,

we're in Philly. Oh, baby,

back in Philly at the Fillmore. Can't wait to

get those cheesesteaks again.

And December 13th,

we are in Washington, D.C.

So get in there

and get your tickets right now.

They are available everywhere.

So get in there. We're fucking jacked

for it. We can't wait.
Shut up and give me murder.

or So get in there and get your tickets right now. They are available everywhere.
So get in there. We're fucking jacked for it.
We can't wait. Shut up and give me murder dot com.
Follow on social media at small town murder on Instagram at small town pot on Facebook. So hang out and do that.
You definitely want to listen to our other two shows, Crime in Sports, which is hilarious and you don't have to like sports. We have a horrible, like basically somebody who makes Marlo on the wire look like a nice guy.
An awful drug dealer guy who has two seconds of sports and then it's all crimes right now. So check that out.
And then we also, you want to listen to your stupid opinions, which everybody, it's fucking hilarious. Terrific, yeah.
If you're not listening to that show you're missing out you're really missing out

it's really funny check it out

also head to Patreon

patreon.com slash crime in sports

is where you get all of the bonus

material anybody $5

a month or above you get hundreds of episodes

immediately upon subscription

whole huge back catalog

of bonus stuff you've never heard

then new shit every other week

one crime in sports one small town murder

and we say it's shit but you'll think it's stuff

I don't know. subscription, whole huge back catalog of bonus stuff you've never heard.
Then new shit every other week. One crime and sports, one small town murder.
And we say it's shit, but you'll think it's stuff. It's great.
It's good stuff. This week for crime and sports, we're going to talk about, just going to have some fun talking about old sports songs, not songs about sports, athletes thinking they can sing, which is fucking hilarious.
We're going to make fun of them, and it's really, really great. We can't wait for that.
Then for small-town murder, we're going to talk about remote viewing, which is something that the CIA spent billions of dollars trying to do so someone could sit in a room, concentrate hard enough, and see what a terrorist is doing in a cave 10,000 miles away. And mixed results, let's just say that.
So we'll talk about all that and more. Patreon.com slash crime and sports.
And you get a shout out, which comes right fucking now. Jimmy, hit me with the names of the most wonderful goddamn people on the face of this earth who would never, ever, ever shoot us multiple times at a campsite.
Hit me with them right now. This week's executive producer, Gary Howard, Laura Shin in Denmark.
Mayta. Mayta.
Mayta Luisa and Sam Bam, Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas to you.
Annette Hollywood, Courtney Jadel, and Dr. Rita Miller, thank you all so much for what you do.
We appreciate the hell out of you. Other producers this week are Peyton Meadows, Liz Vasquez, Jennifer and Dan Ward.
Happy 18th anniversary. Janice Hill, Jonathan Braun, Samantha Clark.
Mysteries with no last name. Nancy Stislinger.
Brandy Lynn Pierce. Richard with no last name.
Amy Jenna John. Jenna John.
Jenny John. Jimmy John's.
Or Celia. No, it's Jenny.
That's definitely Jenny. It's a competitor to Jimmy John's.
I like Jimmy John's. I'm getting Jenny John's.
Well, I mean, I'll eat anything. I'll eat Subway.
I don't give a shit, but I prefer a good deli sandwich with a good stiff bun and roll. You know how it goes.
Good buns on those Jenny John's. Or Celia Price.
Diddy Concepcioni? Concepcion. Diddy Concepcion.
Oh, Diddy. That's better than Diddy.
You've got to be careful. Yeah, it is.
Yeah. Well, Kay, he.
Ian Luckett. Lukeett? Luckett.
Ian Keith also. That's two different Ians.
That's rare. John with no last name.
Corey Neely. Julia with no last name.
Alexis Croce. Miranda Oliva.
Kiddo Coyote. Michael with no last name.
Xavier with no last name. Chan Chan with no last name, Lauren Hunter, Heather with no last name, Steven Louder, Amanda Harker, Peter Lafreniere, Neil Poling, Hayjay Elizabeth Kajos, that's not right, Patty FK Nelson, also probably not right, Lynn Capella, Christopher DeMars, Brie Bussell.
Bussell. All right.
Mucho Macho. All right.
JKU Alien. Jakku.
Jakku. Amber Fyvet.
Fyvet. Amber with no last name.
Kaylee Hafner. April with no last name.
Samantha McFadden. Sean with no last name.
Madeline Happold. Whitney Patterson.
Pam Parker. Kelsey Drew.
Miriam Tachydine. Megan.
Majen. Majen.
Majen Thompson. M-A-G-E-N.
What is that? Megan? Megan. Megan.
Megan. Megan.
It's Megan Thompson. There we go.
That's what that is. Carlos Edward.
Laura. Laura.
Their parents did her wrong, though. That's rough.
Yeah, they sure did. They spelled Megan like that.
She was like, you fucking assholes. Just spell it normal.
Kate Maxwell. Emily Vancholete.
Victoria Lenya. Clayton Bonner.
Janice Klee. Brian Herman.
Misty Edwards. Kyle Stubbs.
Lauren Truck, Costabo Park, Cowstub, Cowstub, I don't know. Cowstub.
Kustube. Heather Orozco, Trenton Miller, Britt McPeak, Anne-Marie Cooper, Rhee with no last name, Jessica Lingenelt, Lingefeldt, Lingefeldt, Linge, all right, Michael Johnson, Cheyenne I don't no last name.
Blake Turner. Lauren Farrell.
Mackenzie Engler. Mark Linus.
Linus. Leslie Foster.
Sarah Dixon. Kevin Etienne.
Lauren Rushing. Kevin Bacon.
Yes. That's amazing.
Awesome. B-A-K-I-N.
That's very funny.'s bacon. Yeah, he's bacon.
Uh, William Wagner, Morgan would know last name. See which five, five, five, Kelly would know last name.
Kathy Gaskell. Uh, Trevor would know last name.
Eric Giuliano, uh, Willem Vergan, Verhagen, uh, Willem Verhagen, Kay, Nicole, Nancy Cagle, uh, Luke Robinson, John Gray, Corey would know last name. Jill would no last name, Natalie Arch, Stephen Condliff, Lisa Eisenberg, Alyssa Heberger, Avery Aiden, Candy Brewer, Jadia with no last name, Daniel Pittman, Alyssa, Elise, Elise Johnson, Layla, not Layla, Leela, not Layla.
Okay. Jennifer Donato.

Martha Grigsby.

Katie C.

Keith with no last name.

Nicole with no last name.

Gabriel Lucero.

Evan Katz.

Maya.

Maya Holcomb.

Eliza Hawley.

Miranda Davey.

Christina Cruz.

Elsa Almansoori.

A.W.

Jess with no last name.

Megan.

Well, Megan Vellekes.

At least you got the Megan part right. You got that nailed.
She'd rather have the other way. That last name's no good.
Tiffany Skates. I can't laugh.
Look at mine. It's worse, bro.
Sarah DeLayla. Tara with no last name.
Jay's Rock and Roll Stories. Waffle Bros.
Rebecca with no last name. Rise 804.
T. Breezy.
Laura Burgard. Laura Burjard.
Amanda Hamm, Emily Kittleson, David Talkington, Eric Seuler, like micellar water, Seuler? Seuler? Oh, okay. All right.
Alice Mouse, Steve Chippendale, underwhelmed reader, Melinda Johnson, Jasmine Bond, Jordan Bond, Becky with no last name, Mallory Hakes, Mallory with no last name, Larry Lavaking, Jack Skenzel. Okay.
Sophia Haid. Not going to fuck with it.
All right. Mickey Farrell, B.
Moore, Sarah Forshee, Mark Cook, Sydney Olsen, Chris B., Aaron Garrity, Liz Lisa, Lisa Mikalski, Michael Ski, Amy Williams,

Arminda Green, Michael Leftwich, probably Byron's name, Tatum would know the last name, Kelsey

Dunlap, Arminda, that's wild.

Like arm in the type of thing?

Arminda, yeah.

Arminda.

Just like your arm would be in the green.

Too in the pink type of deal. Yeah.
Wild. And all of our patrons.
You guys are the best, especially Arminda Green. Thank you so much, everybody.
You wonderful, fantastic bastards. We cannot thank you enough for what you do for us on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis.
Thank you. Can't wait to see everyone at the live shows.
Come out and buy tickets. You want to follow us on social media.

Real goddamn easy to do. All you have to do

is go to shutupandgimmemurder.com.

It's all right there.

That said, thank you for joining us.

No, not live. That's the other show.

Let's do that. We'll say instead,

until next week, everybody, it's been

our pleasure. Bye.
If you like small town murder, you can listen early and ad free now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen early and ad free on Amazon Music.
Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondery dot com slash survey. Are you captivated by the dark and mysterious world of true crime? Wondery Plus offers you the ultimate true crime experience with early access to new episodes, exclusive content, and a seamless ad-free listening journey.
With Wondery Plus, you'll get access to hundreds of podcasts, including more than 50 true crime series like Dr. Death, the shocking true story of a trusted surgeon who brought unimaginable pain and suffering to his patients.
This was not an operation that was performed. This was attempted murder.
And there's Morbid, the hit podcast that's a lighthearted nightmare. With Wondery Plus, you get access to exclusive bonus content too, allowing you to dive deeper into the cases you love.
Like in Suspect, where an ordinary Halloween party turned into a terrifying murder mystery and left its mark on the community. This case is one of those roller coaster rides where it's like, no, he did it for sure.

No, for sure he did it.

Each story is crafted to keep you enthralled, revealing the complexities and motivations

behind every crime.

Subscribe to Wondery Plus on the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify today.

Unlock the door to a world of true crime like never before.

With Wondery Plus, the best true crime stories are always at your fingertips.