In the spring of 1981 two 27-year-old social workers from Ellsworth, Maine, were murdered while hiking the Appalachian Trail near Pearisburg, Virginia. Robert Tatton Mountford Jr. and Laura Susan Ramsay were attacked near the Wapiti Shelter along Dismal Creek on May 20, 1981. Mountford was shot three times in the head; Ramsay was stabbed more than a dozen times. Their bodies were found nearly two weeks later in shallow, leaf-covered graves about 75 yards from the shelter where they had likely planned to spend the night.

It is going to be a real shame when the time comes to get rid of them. Blood-stained clothes were found at Smith’s home and he was arrested in a wooded area of Myrtle Beach about two weeks after the murders. In 1982 Smith pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder and received two concurrent 15-year sentences; families were told he would serve a minimum of seven and a half years and he was released after serving 15 years.

Did anyone who knew Robert Mountford or Laura Ramsay on their fundraising hike recognize them or remember seeing anyone acting suspicious along that stretch of trail?