Updated: 6:05 p.m.

Before the 1981 killings and after he was released from prison in 1996, Randall Smith lived with his mother in Ingram Village, an old subdivision just outside Pearisburg.

Several neighbors said he always kept to himself.

“I ain’t going to miss him,” said Sherman Smith, who lives across Virginia Street and who is not related to Randall Smith. “I tolerated him and talked to him because I’ve got a family.”

A few neighbors went out of their way to forge some kind of connection with Randall Smith, especially after his mother died in 2000. They would take him meals and try to reach out to him, they said, but Smith had little to say to them. Smith’s near-constant companion was his dog, Bo, they said.

Mike Eads, who lives down the street, said Smith “wasn’t anybody easy to talk to.” Eads said when Smith returned from prison, he took over a copy of “Murder on the Appalachian Trail,” a book written about the case, and asked Smith to sign it. “And he slammed the door in my face,” Eads said, chuckling. “I thought it might be worth something.”

Like other neighbors, Eads said he thought Smith got out of prison too soon. Fifteeen years was too little time for taking two lives, he said.

Smith never worked a job after returning from prison, neighbors said. They thought he received some kind of disability check.

No one in the neighborhood had seen Smith in a while. Several people thought Eugene Whittaker, another neighbor, may have been the last to see him, about five weeks ago. Police had come by to try to find Smith to check on his well-being.

Updated: 4:36 p.m.

The Giles County Sheriff's Office is conducting an investigation into a double shooting that occurred Tuesday night.

The shooting occurred between Giles and Bland counties around the Dismal Creek area, authorities said.

Virginia State Police apprehended Randall Lee Smith after he crashed a black 2000 Ford Ranger pickup truck that matched the description of one possibly involved in the shooting, said Virginia State Police spokesman Sgt. Michael Conroy.

Sheila and Melissa Miller, sisters who helped the injured fishermen call 911, identified the victims as Sean Farmer of Tazewell, who was shot in the chest and face, and Scott Johnston of Bluefield, Va., who was shot three times in the neck. Johnston is in serious but stable condition, said Carilion hospital spokesman Eric Earnhart. Farmer is not listed as a patient, Earnhart said.

A state trooper patrolling on Sugar Run Road in the Eggleston area saw the vehicle about 9:42 p.m. and pulled out behind it, Conroy said. The vehicle ran off the left side of the road, hit an embankment, and overturned, he said.

Smith was taken to a hospital, Conroy said.

In 1982, Smith pleaded guilty to the 1981 murders of two hikers on the Appalachian Trail. He shot Robert Mountford Jr. three times, stabbed Laura Susan Ramsay more than a dozen times and left their bodies in shallow, leaf-covered graves. He was given two consecutive 15-year sentences. The plea agreement halted the case just before it went to trial in Giles County Circuit Court. Smith was released in 1996.

In March, Smith was reported missing by a neighbor after he and his dog disappeared. The dog has apparently been with Smith the whole time, and was not injured in the crash.

Donna Muhly, who lives just across the creek from where the shooting occurred, said she and her husband heard the gunfire Tuesday night.

Around 8:30 or 9 p.m., they were coming out of their garden when they heard multiple gunshots. “I’m used to hearing gunfire in the mountains from the deer hunters, but this struck me as different,” she said. They hurried to get a leash for their dog, who was running loose. As they came back out of the house, they heard a car taking off and racing back down the mountain, she said.

While authorities haven’t released any details of the incident, Muhly said the word at the local store is that the victims are two men who were fishing at a popular spot known as the Muhly long hole, and that one was shot in the neck and the other in the chest. Authorities haven’t confirmed this, but she said the story going around the area is that the shooter took the victims’ car, leaving them to walk 3 ½ miles back down the mountain in the dark to get help. She said she figures the victims probably weren’t local or they would’ve known that the Muhly home was just a quarter mile away. 

Elen Rhoades, a Minneapolis woman who is hiking the Appalachian Trail with her boyfriend, planned to spend an extra day in Pearisburg after hearing about the shooting this morning. The delay was more in response to concerns her family expressed in phone calls today than to the shooting itself, Rhoades said. Her parents urged her to wait a day and hike out with a group of people she knew. v"If he was still running around, I'd be concerned," she said of the shooter. "But he's not running around so I feel confident."

Rhoades said she and her boyfriend, Ryan Krapf of Cleveland, reached the trail section around Dismal Creek on Monday and found signs with pictures of Randall Lee Smith asking for information about his whereabouts. The signs said Smith was missing, not wanted for a crime, "so we weren't too concerned," Rhoades said. "Except it looked like a mugshot."

Rhoades and Krapf spent Tuesday in Pearisburg and heard sirens that night. This morning at the Holiday Motor Lodge, they heard from other hikers that two people had been shot near the section of trail they had just hiked. Everyone there seemed to know Smith’s name and previous history, she said.

"It shook me," Rhoades said. "When it really hit me was when my boyfriend said, ‘I wonder if it was this couple we knew.’"

They quickly learned the two people who were shot were not the hikers they knew. Still, Rhoades was shaken. "Oh my gosh, we were right there."

The Appalachian Trail is closed from Virgina 606 north for about 25 miles to Virginia 100 in Pearisburg until further notice to allow authorities to work, according to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy.

The conservancy and trail neighbors are arranging shuttles for hikers around the 24-mile stretch.

Hikers and others, such as trail maintainers, who have been in this area during the last six weeks and encountered suspicious persons have been urged to contact the Giles County sheriff's office or incident@appalachiantrail.org if they saw anything suspicious or the suspect, according to the conservancy.