A Stranger on the Appalachian Trail: The Randall Lee Smith Case
In 1981, two young hikers made their way north along the Appalachian Trail through the mountains of Southwest Virginia. They were experienced enough to know the trail, they had a destination ahead of them, and there was little reason for anyone to believe their journey would end differently from thousands of others who had walked those same miles.
But when they failed to arrive where they were expected, concern turned into a search.
Near the Wapiti Shelter in Giles County, Virginia, not far from Dismal Creek, searchers discovered a scene that would become part of Appalachian Trail history. Two hikers had been murdered in the mountains.
The investigation soon led authorities to a local man named Randall Lee Smith.
What followed included a handwritten note, a search that stretched from the mountains of Virginia to the coast of South Carolina, Smith’s eventual capture, and a court case that ended with him pleading guilty to two counts of second-degree murder.
But the story of Randall Lee Smith and the mountains around Dismal Creek wasn’t finished.
Twenty-seven years later, in May 2008, two friends traveled into Giles County for a few quiet days of fishing and camping. While fishing near Dismal Creek, one of the men encountered a stranger.
It seemed like an ordinary meeting in the mountains.
A conversation about fishing.
A few trout shared with someone they had just met.
And later, an invitation to stay for dinner.
The two friends had no way of knowing what was about to happen—or how closely their night in those mountains would become connected to something that had happened there nearly three decades earlier.
In this episode of Roots & Shadows: The Real Appalachia Podcast™, we travel to Giles County, Virginia, and the Appalachian Trail to examine the disturbing story of Randall Lee Smith, the 1981 murders near Wapiti Shelter, and the events that unfolded near Dismal Creek in 2008.
It’s a story separated by twenty-seven years, yet connected by geography, circumstance, and an unsettling act of kindness shown to a stranger.
Who was Randall Lee Smith?
What happened near the Wapiti Shelter in 1981?
And what brought two more men into the same Virginia mountains twenty-seven years later?
This is A Stranger on the Appalachian Trail: The Randall Lee Smith Case.
Roots & Shadows: The Real Appalachia Podcast™ explores the true crime, history, folklore, people, and forgotten stories of Appalachia. From the mountains of Southwest Virginia and East Tennessee to communities throughout the Appalachian region, we tell the stories rooted in these mountains—and look into the shadows they sometimes leave behind.
In this episode: Randall Lee Smith, Appalachian Trail murders, Wapiti Shelter murders, Dismal Creek, Giles County Virginia, Appalachian Trail true crime, Virginia true crime, Southwest Virginia true crime, Appalachian true crime, 1981 Appalachian Trail murders, 2008 Dismal Creek shootings, Wapiti Shelter, Pearisburg Virginia, Appalachian Trail history, and true crime in Appalachia.
Where every root tells a story, and every shadow hides one.