Md. Man Charged With Hate Murders

A Maryland man who said he hated lesbians and enjoyed assaulting vulnerable women has been charged with the 1996 murder of two female hikers in Virginia's Shenandoah National Park, Attorney General John Ashcroft said Wednesday.

The defendant, Darrell Rice, said the two women, Julianne Williams, 24, and Laura "Lollie" Winans, 26, deserved to die because he said they were lesbians, according to court papers filed in the case.

Rice, who is serving a 135-month sentence in federal prison for the 1997 attempted abduction of a female bicyclist in the park, was charged with killing the two hikers by cutting their throats. They were found bound and gagged, Ashcroft said.

The charges against Rice carry a possible death sentence.

Ashcroft said the indictment accused Rice, a computer programmer who lived in Columbia, Md., of singling out Williams and Winans for murder because of their gender and because he believed them to be gay.

The government is prepared to present evidence that "the defendant's killing of the two women was part of an ongoing plan, scheme or modus operandi to assault, intimidate, injure and kill women because of their gender," according to court filings.

Federal authorities had automatic jurisdiction in the case because the slayings took place on U.S. government land. A federal hate-crimes law covers race and religion, but not sex or sexual orientation; an effort to add those categories failed two years ago.

The Justice Department was able to push for a hate-crimes type of indictment in this case, however, because sentencing guidelines permitted a harsher punishment if a crime was motivated by sexual orientation.

At a Justice Department news conference attended by the families of the victims, Ashcroft announced the four-count indictment and said, "We're inclined to prosecute hate crimes like this one, prosecute them to the fullest.

"Just as the United States will pursue, prosecute, and punish terrorists who attack America out of hatred for what we believe, we will pursue, prosecute, and punish those who attack law-abiding Americans out of hatred for who they are," he said.

Williams, of St. Cloud, Minn., and Winans, of Unity, Maine, were reported to be the eighth and ninth people to be murdered over a 22-year period along the Appalachian trail, which stretches from Maine to Georgia.

In the 1997 assault, Rice accosted the bicyclist, angrily screamed sexual references at her and attempted to force her into his truck, Ashcroft said. When she resisted, he attempted to run her over with his truck.

Investigators found hand and leg restraints in his truck.

Rice said on several occasions he enjoyed assaulting women because they are "more vulnerable than men," according to the documents. He also said he hated women and lesbians.

John Brownlee, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, said he had evidence of Rice's "numerous physical and verbal assaults upon randomly selected women, including ... acts of road rage, physical assaults, demeaning sexual comments and threats of injury and death."

It was while Rice was in prison - as investigators tracked down more than 15,000 leads and contacts in the Williams and Winans murders - that Rice made comments relevant to the case, authorities said.

"Interviews subsequent to his arrest indicated that he may have been involved," Brownlee said.

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force had pressured the FBI to investigate whether the slayings were a hate crime.

Williams was a graduate of Cathedral High School in St. Cloud and Carleton College in Northfield.

Winans, a Michigan native who was majoring in outdoor recreation leadership at Maine's Unity College, and Williams, who had a degree in geology, were experienced hikers. They had met while studying to become trip leaders at Woodswomen Inc. in Minneapolis in 1995, and had been living in Burlington, Vt.