[at-l] Article about past Shenadoah murders

[ShaunaShatto at aol.com (ShaunaShatto@xxxxxxx)]

Tragedy on the trail 

Just more than seven years ago, a killer roamed Shenandoah National Park. But 
was it Darrell David Rice who killed two women at their remote campsite? 

By <A HREF="mailto:laurence.hammack@roanoke.com";>LAURENCE HAMMACK</A> 
THE ROANOKE TIMES 


            ?Darrell David Rice picked an odd time and place to confess to "a 
perfect murder," if a prosecution witness is to be believed. ??? Rice, who 
played bass guitar in a prison rock 'n' roll band, had just finished a practice 
session with two fellow inmates in the gymnasium at Butner Federal 
Penitentiary in North Carolina. 

??? It was the fall of 1997, and Rice was at Butner for a psychiatric 
evaluation after being charged with attempting to abduct a woman as she rode her 
bicycle through Shenandoah National Park. 

??? As he talked with the band's drummer and lead guitar player, Rice 
suddenly blurted out that he had committed another crime - a much more serious crime 
- the year before, according to one of the inmates. 

??? "He said that he did a perfect murder; he killed this girl up in a park, 
and they could never tie him to it," Keith Killingsworth told a federal grand 
jury in 2001. "He was bragging about it." 

??? After considering testimony from Killingsworth and other witnesses, the 
grand jury last year charged Rice, 35, with killing Julianne Marie Williams and 
Laura "Lollie" Winans as they hiked together in Shenandoah National Park in 
1996. 

??? Rice, who faces a death sentence, is accused of killing the women because 
they were gay. Prosecutors say the former computer programmer unleashed years 
of resentment toward women when he happened across the two lesbians at their 
creekside campsite. 

??? Kept alive for hours, the women were bound with duct tape and tortured 
before their throats were slit, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Bondurant has said 
in court. 

??? Although Rice's trial was postponed last week until October, documents 
recently unsealed in U.S. District Court in Charlottesville reveal much about 
the case against him. 

??? Equally revealing, defense attorneys say, is what the case lacks. 

??? There is no weapon found, no eyewitness to the killings, and no physical 
evidence linking Rice to the crime scene, said Fred Heblich, one of Rice's 
three attorneys. Heblich has received thousands of pages of prosecution 
documents, interview transcripts and lab reports provided by the government. 

??? Much of the government's circumstantial case is based on the testimony of 
Killingsworth and up to 10 other inmates who claim they heard Rice either 
confess or make incriminating statements, Heblich said. 

??? One inmate claims that Rice said the "lesbian whores" deserved to die, 
according to court records, while another has given a detailed account of how 
Rice told him that he came upon the women's campsite while hiking, learned they 
were not interested in men, and decided to kill them. 

??? But the inmates' testimony should be viewed cautiously, said Tod Burke, a 
professor of criminal justice at <A HREF="http://www.radford.edu/";>Radford University</A>. In addition to inherent 
credibility problems, most convicted felons have a self-serving interest to 
provide information in exchange for early release or other favorable treatment, 
Burke said. 

??? "Their testimony is always going to be questionable because of the 
'What's in it for me?' question," he said. 

??? 

??? A killer's profile 

???begins to emerge 

??? Julie Williams and Lollie Winans were looking for peace and solitude when 
they set off on a five-day backpacking trip over the Memorial Day weekend of 
1996. 

??? Williams, a 24-year-old from Vermont, and Winans, a 26-year-old from 
Maine, were experienced hikers who often looked for secluded campsites. They found 
one next to a creek, near Luray in the northern end of the park, and pitched 
their tent the evening of May 24. 

??? One week later, after the couple was reported missing, park rangers 
discovered their bodies at the campsite. 

??? Both women were nude, with duct tape binding their wrists and covering 
their mouths. Winans was found covered with a sleeping bag in the tent; 
authorities believe she was killed first with the slash of a knife to her neck. 

??? Williams was the primary focus of the attack, prosecutors said in court 
papers. Evidence at the scene suggested she was kept alive for hours, tied and 
re-tied by her attacker and tortured with nonlethal knife wounds before she 
finally was killed. 

??? There was no indication that the women were sexually assaulted. And the 
only items taken from the campsite were Williams' personal belongings, 
including her journal and driver's license - leading investigators to suspect the 
killer had formed a warped fascination with the woman. 

??? Early in the investigation, authorities began to focus on whether the 
sexual orientation of the victims played a role in their deaths. 

??? One of the last people to see Williams and Winans alive was John Sager, 
who would later tell investigators that the two women were openly affectionate 
and obviously gay. By the prosecution's theory, that would have been equally 
apparent to the killer. 

??? A profile began to emerge: The assailant was likely a troubled man, 
hostile to women, perhaps with a history of failed relationships and assaultive 
behavior. 

??? But as weeks turned to months, agents with the FBI and the National Park 
Service chased down leads that never evolved to charges. 

??? Then, more than a year after the killings, they got the break they were 
waiting for. 

??? 

??? 'I thought he was 

???going to kill me' 

??? Yvonne Malbasha was riding her bicycle on Skyline Drive the morning of 
July 9, 1997. 

??? She turned off on a side road to a rest area when she noticed a pickup 
truck pulling up behind her. The truck, so close she could feel the heat from 
its engine, forced her off her bike. 

??? The driver got out and began to scream at her to get in the truck, 
Malbasha later testified in court. He grabbed at her shirt and ordered Malbasha to 
show him her breasts, she said. Malbasha retreated, holding her bike in front 
of her to fend off her attacker. 

??? The man then got back into the truck, gunned the engine, and accelerated 
toward Malbasha, ordering her to get into the truck as she took refuge behind 
a fallen tree. After driving off and then returning several times, the man 
left. 

??? "I was terrified," Malbasha testified. "I thought he was going to kill 
me." 

??? She identified her assailant as Darrell David Rice. 

??? In 1999, a federal judge sentenced Rice to 11 years in prison for 
attempted abduction. By then, he was a capital murder suspect. 

??? When Rice was arrested in the park the same day Malbasha was attacked, it 
didn't take long for investigators to start asking him about the unsolved 
double slayings that happened the year before about 15 miles away. 

??? "Did you ever get curious about those murders that happened up here?" 
National Park Service Investigator Kenneth Johnson asked Rice, according to a 
transcript of the interrogation. 

??? "Oh yeah," Rice responded. "All I heard was that ... they were lesbians." 


??? Later in the interview, Johnson offered an opening for a confession. 

??? "I am absolutely convinced that the person didn't intend for that to 
happen one bit," he said. "It just happened. I think things got out of control, I 
think those girls did something that was foolish and made their lives even 
riskier." 

??? Rice didn't take the bait. 

??? But the investigation was just beginning. 

??? 

??? 'They must really 

???want this person' 

??? In February 2001, an FBI agent paid a visit to Keith Killingsworth at the 
Coleman Federal Penitentiary in Florida. 

??? The agent wanted to know if Killingsworth had pulled time in Butner, and 
if he had played in a prison band called Accelerator. He then pulled out a 
photograph of Rice, according to a transcript of Killingsworth's grand jury 
testimony that is part of the court file. 

??? "And I said, is this about a girl getting killed in a park? ' " 
Killingsworth testified. "And he just ... his eyes just lit up, you know. He knew I 
knew." 

??? Although Killingsworth told the investigator what he wanted to hear that 
day, he could be a problematic witness for the prosecution. For one thing, his 
account has Rice admitting to one killing, not two. And a third inmate who 
Killingsworth said was present during the conversation tells a different story. 

??? Robert Olsen, who has been released from prison and now lives in 
Colorado, said he never heard Rice make any confessions. Asked during a telephone 
conversation last week why Killingsworth would say what he did, Olsen replied: "I 
can think of one reason." 

??? Killingsworth may have been thinking the same thing. 

??? In a letter he wrote to his aunt, Killingsworth asked her to find a 
lawyer to help him get his sentence reduced in light of his cooperation with the 
prosecution. 

??? "I see guys get 10 years off for snitching on a pot dealer. We're talking 
double homicide here," Killingsworth wrote in the letter, which is part of a 
defense motion filed in March that sought to exclude testimony from him and 
other inmates. 

??? In response to the motion, prosecutors noted that at least three inmates 
have completed their sentences without getting any breaks for their expected 
testimony. "None of the government's so-called 'jailhouse informants' received 
any money nor any consideration from the government," Bondurant wrote. 

??? According to Heblich, FBI investigators traveled across the country in 
search of inmates who might have heard Rice confess. 

??? And they didn't stop there - at one point, an undercover FBI agent posed 
as an inmate and was placed in prison "in order to befriend Rice, gain his 
trust and obtain incriminating information," according to a defense motion. 

??? Such undercover operations are rare, said Burke, the <A HREF="http://www.radford.edu/";>Radford University</A> 
criminologist. 

??? "They must really want this person," Burke said. "It sounds like they 
were going to great lengths to get a confession, and when you're lacking in 
physical evidence, you need to get other evidence." 

??? Assistant U.S. Attorney Tony Giorno, who is prosecuting Rice along with 
Bondurant, declined to comment on the physical evidence in the case. 

??? As for the undercover prison operation, Giorno said that produced 
valuable information. But according to Heblich, Rice never confessed to the 
undercover agent or any of the other law enforcement agents who questioned him. 

??? The statements to inmates - which Judge Norman Moon has allowed 
prosecutors to present to a jury - do not amount to a full confession, Heblich said. 

??? "There's no outright 'Here's what I did and here's how I did it,'" 
Heblich said. "But there are some statements that arguably could be considered to be 
incriminating." 

??? 

??? 'What have you 

???put in my head?' 

??? There's more to the case against Rice than the word of convicted felons. 

??? Surveillance cameras at the national park's entrances show Rice driving 
into the area on the weekend of the killings. 

??? A camper has said he saw Rice standing on a trail about 2 1/2 miles from 
Williams' and Winans' campsite the morning of May 25. Anthony Coyle told a 
federal grand jury that he and Rice stared at each other from a distance for 
several minutes, and that he found the experience unsettling because his 
girlfriend thought she had heard women screaming the night before. 

??? In court papers, prosecutors have listed a number of acts by the 
defendant that they say were motivated by the same misogyny evident in the park 
killings. 

??? "The government will prove at trial that Rice harbored a deep resentment 
of women and manifested this resentment by physical acts and verbal taunts," 
Bondurant wrote in a prosecution motion. "The fact that a woman is a lesbian 
adds to Rice's resentment and bias toward women." 

??? Bondurant plans to call Malbasha as a witness to testify about her 
experience with Rice. 

??? Also relevant to the charges, the government says, is a "pattern of 
harassment and intimidation of female employees" that Rice exhibited while working 
for a computer company in Columbia, Md., where he was living at the time of 
the killings. 

??? Rice was known to follow women co-workers while muttering "filthy slut" 
and other obscenities under his breath, according to court records, and was 
prone to flying into fits of road rage directed at women. 

??? In interviews with police, Rice admitted that he liked to aggravate women 
"because they are more vulnerable than men." 

??? Moon has granted a defense motion to keep from the jury some of Rice's 
comments. Rice's lawyers maintain that prosecutors are putting too much stock in 
the words and actions of a mentally troubled man. 

??? "The unspoken theory of the government in this case is that Rice is 
'crazy,' and that 'crazy people' commit these sorts of terrible murders," Heblich 
wrote in a motion seeking to exclude some of the character testimony. 

??? Court records provide ample evidence of Rice's mental problems. Rice, who 
once told an investigator he thought he might suffer from schizophrenia, has 
said he started falling apart mentally in 1995, when he heard voices during a 
concert by the Grateful Dead, a rock band he followed loyally. 

??? A neighbor who lived in the same Maryland apartment complex as Rice often 
complained to management about his disruptive behavior. 

??? One time in May 1997, according to court records, Rice was jumping up and 
down so hard in his living room that it made the downstairs neighbor's lights 
flicker. Although Rice was presumably alone at the time, he was screaming: 
"You mind-f-----. What have you put in my head? Get it out of my head you 
mind-f-----." 

??? Did the torment inside Rice's head finally drive him to kill? Or does the 
proof against him exist only in the minds of conniving jailhouse informants 
and authorities convinced of his guilt? 

??? When his trial begins in October, that will be a question for the jury. 

    
    

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