Trailed by Kathryn Miles

Trailed by Kathyrn Miles

Published by Algonquin Books ISBN 9781616209094

Hardcover, $27.95, 320 pages

Kathryn Miles is an outdoor expert and she combines that with her award-winning journalistic style to investigate the brutal double murders of two women in Virginia's Shenandoah National Park in Trailed- One Woman's Quest to Solve the Shenandoah Murders.

Miles began a teaching job at Unity College in Maine in 2001. A small college in central Maine that focused on environmental studies, it had only 500 students and 30 faculty. Lollie Winans was a student at Unity in the 1990s. Lollie was "confident, egoless, gregarious, and fiercely protective". She came from a wealthy Michigan family, and was a sexual abuse survivor at the hands of her mother's new husband.

Julie Williams was from a conservative religious family "a world traveler, quiet, self-assured and big hearted". Julie and Lollie fell in love and overcame struggles to be together. Lollie and Julie led outdoor excursions for other women, sharing their love of the outdoors with others.

In May of 1996, the two women set out to hike and camp in Shenandoah National Park. Their bodies were found at the end of May at their remote campsite when their dog was found wandering alone. The murders shocked the National Park goers and staff, and the investigators on the case were determined to find the culprit.

There were many problems with the investigation. The murder site was an outdoor campsite, and it had rained before the bodies were discovered. Budget cuts at the National Parks meant that resources, including investigators, were spread thin. FBI agents called in clashed with the park police as how to process the crime site.

The nature and location of the heinous crime made capturing the killer a priority. People want to feel safe in national parks, and this could frighten people away. Investigators narrowed in on a suspect, and in 2002 Darrell Rice was arrested.

Rice had been previously arrested for harrassing a female cyclist, and he was at Shenandoah in May. US Attorney General John Ashcroft held a press conference and announced that Darrell Rice would be charged with a newly established hate crime statue for the murders of Julie Williams and Lollie Winans. 

The case against Rice fell apart, and in 2004 it was dismissed. In 2016, twenty years after the murders, the FBI issued a press release asking for any information that may lead to the successful prosecution of the case, implying that they already had a suspect.

It was at this point that Kathryn Miles became involved. She was a writer at Outside magazine at the time, and she pitched her editor on the idea of writing a long form investigative piece on the murders. She would write of the lives of Lollie and Julie and the FBI's renewed interest in the case.

The murders consumed Miles. She became friendly with the park police investigators, and spent months, years even, going over every detail and possible suspect. She learned all about forensic science, getting to know Ann Burgess who worked on the launch of the FBI's Behavorial Science Unit (if you watched Mindhunter on TV, you saw a fictionalized version of her).

Miles comes to the conclusion that Darrell Rice did not kill the two women, and she zeroes in on another likely suspect. 

Fans of true crime TV shows, and books like Michelle McNamara's I'll Be Gone In The Dark will want to read Trailed, but it appeals to more readers than that. Kathryn Miles gives the readers a look at flaws in the criminal justice system, not always intentional. We get to know police investigators, FBI agents, Darrell Rice, friends of Julie and Lollie, and especially Julie and Lollie. Miles honors the memory of Julie and Lollie by letting us get to know them as real people whose lives were tragically cut short. 

I am not a reader of True Crime, and yet I could not put Trailed down. 

Thanks to Algonquin Books for putting me on Kathryn Miles tour.