Post by LadyBlue on Jun 2, 2013 16:34:17 GMT -5
According to the National Parks Conservation Association, our national parks are “extremely safe.” Yet an Internet search of the words “Blue Ridge Parkway” with “murder” turns up lots of bodies.
In 1994 a Swedish man was found shot to death near Deep Gap. In June 1997, a 24-year-old woman and her 5-year-old son were brutally stabbed before their bodies were dumped inside the park. Then, in the summer of 1998, a shirtless man seen sitting at a Big Witch Overlook picnic table with a rifle in one hand and a beer in the other shot and killed park Ranger Joe Kolodski. In March 2004, park rangers found the head, arms, and legs of a murdered cattle farmer scattered along the roadside. Two years after that grisly discovery, in April 2006, the body of male homicide victim appeared six months before rangers found the remains of a 22-year-old graduate student murdered by a serial killer who drove the dead woman’s car to Florida before he took his own life during a police standoff.
The park’s 75th anniversary year appears to be off to a particularly violent start. In February 2010 authorities recovered the remains of another murdered man two months before newspapers published reports that a crazed gunman had pointed a shotgun at a couple enjoying the view at the Rock Point Overlook, killing a disc jokey and wounding his 18-year-old female companion.
Of these nine murders, only three of the killings are known to have occurred inside the parkway's boundaries. Chief Ranger Steve Stinnett reports that the amount of violence occurring on the Blue Ridge Parkway is small when you take into consideration the crime rates of local communities. He says the bodies found on the parkway are more often discovered near urban areas like Asheville.
Yet when the locations of the above crime scenes are plotted on a map, it appears that less than half were found in immediate vicinity of towns. Seventeen million people recreate in the park each year and many roads access the parkway along its 469-mile length. Perhaps the easy access to remote locations makes the parkway convenient for murderers looking for a place to dump bodies or take their victims. Perhaps, as Chief Ranger Stinnett believes, a surprising number of bodies are found along the parkway only because more people are hiking in the area.
For example, at milepost 264.4 a wooden sign highlights the saga of a brutal murder immortalized by the Kingston Trio’s “Ballad of Tom Dooley.” Behind the sign, you can climb a hill locals call “the Lump.” From the top of the Lump you can peer down into a shady valley where, in 1866, a former Confederate soldier named Tom Dula allegedly resolved a complicated love triangle by stabbing his pregnant girlfriend multiple times with a large knife before burying her body in a shallow grave on a hill above Reedy Branch.
You won’t read what follows in any park service brochure but, 143 years later, history appeared to have repeated itself. On a crisp fall morning in 2009, a hiker found the naked and burned body of a 21-year-old woman near Glenn Gap. An autopsy revealed that the woman was pregnant. Cause of death? Blunt force trauma to the head. Family members told the press the young woman had recently made up with her former boyfriend before she was found dead along the roadside. To date her murder remains unsolved.
www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2010/05/ask-ranger-violence-nothing-new-blue-ridge-parkway5898
In 1994 a Swedish man was found shot to death near Deep Gap. In June 1997, a 24-year-old woman and her 5-year-old son were brutally stabbed before their bodies were dumped inside the park. Then, in the summer of 1998, a shirtless man seen sitting at a Big Witch Overlook picnic table with a rifle in one hand and a beer in the other shot and killed park Ranger Joe Kolodski. In March 2004, park rangers found the head, arms, and legs of a murdered cattle farmer scattered along the roadside. Two years after that grisly discovery, in April 2006, the body of male homicide victim appeared six months before rangers found the remains of a 22-year-old graduate student murdered by a serial killer who drove the dead woman’s car to Florida before he took his own life during a police standoff.
The park’s 75th anniversary year appears to be off to a particularly violent start. In February 2010 authorities recovered the remains of another murdered man two months before newspapers published reports that a crazed gunman had pointed a shotgun at a couple enjoying the view at the Rock Point Overlook, killing a disc jokey and wounding his 18-year-old female companion.
Of these nine murders, only three of the killings are known to have occurred inside the parkway's boundaries. Chief Ranger Steve Stinnett reports that the amount of violence occurring on the Blue Ridge Parkway is small when you take into consideration the crime rates of local communities. He says the bodies found on the parkway are more often discovered near urban areas like Asheville.
Yet when the locations of the above crime scenes are plotted on a map, it appears that less than half were found in immediate vicinity of towns. Seventeen million people recreate in the park each year and many roads access the parkway along its 469-mile length. Perhaps the easy access to remote locations makes the parkway convenient for murderers looking for a place to dump bodies or take their victims. Perhaps, as Chief Ranger Stinnett believes, a surprising number of bodies are found along the parkway only because more people are hiking in the area.
For example, at milepost 264.4 a wooden sign highlights the saga of a brutal murder immortalized by the Kingston Trio’s “Ballad of Tom Dooley.” Behind the sign, you can climb a hill locals call “the Lump.” From the top of the Lump you can peer down into a shady valley where, in 1866, a former Confederate soldier named Tom Dula allegedly resolved a complicated love triangle by stabbing his pregnant girlfriend multiple times with a large knife before burying her body in a shallow grave on a hill above Reedy Branch.
You won’t read what follows in any park service brochure but, 143 years later, history appeared to have repeated itself. On a crisp fall morning in 2009, a hiker found the naked and burned body of a 21-year-old woman near Glenn Gap. An autopsy revealed that the woman was pregnant. Cause of death? Blunt force trauma to the head. Family members told the press the young woman had recently made up with her former boyfriend before she was found dead along the roadside. To date her murder remains unsolved.
www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2010/05/ask-ranger-violence-nothing-new-blue-ridge-parkway5898