“As soon as I got involved in the case, I realized that nothing about it was clean-cut,” she said. Thinking it would be a simple feature, Miles approached her then-editor at Outside magazine about covering the story. Two decades after the murders, journalist Kathryn Miles spotted an FBI press statement exhorting the public to submit relevant information in the case. The Department of Justice quietly dropped the charges in 2004, and the world - for the most part - moved on. The rangers who finally located the couple’s campsite stepped into a nightmare: The women had been brutally murdered.Īlthough a suspect was quickly identified and an indictment handed down in April 2002, the case had holes. But when Williams failed to return to her apartment in Richmond, Vermont, as intended, her father notified the park, spurring a two-day search. The women, both skilled outdoor guides with dozens of wilderness trips to their names, had planned to spend a week hiking and taking in the views from the trails that branch like veins from the park’s scenic Skyline Drive. Julianne “Julie” Williams, 24, and Laura “Lollie” Winans, 26, had arrived in the park with Winans’ dog, Taj, on May 19. Shortly after arriving in Shenandoah in May of 1996, Julie Williams (left) and Lollie Winans posed for this picture.
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