DISMAL CREEK, Giles County, Va. Randall Smith had been in the woods for weeks. His face had gone slack, and he had lost weight. Yet he was familiar with this area along the Appalachian Trail in southwestern Virginia. It was where he had charmed his way into the company of two hikers back in 1981, only to murder them in the night. After 15 years behind bars, Smith was paroled in 1996. He scraped by for more than a decade doing a bit of welding here, a bit of mechanical work there. But last March, he packed a few things, slid out of his home in nearby Pearisburg and headed back up the mountain he had walked since he was a child.
