Seven years after Julie Williams and Lolly Wynens were murdered in the backcountry of Shenandoah National Park,

the case that once promised answers was finally headed toward trial.

On April 11, 2002, inside the Department of Justice Press Room in Washington, D.C., reporters

lean forward as Attorney General John Ashcroft steps to the podium. 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 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.

It was a historic announcement.

One of the first times the federal government had used the 1994 hate crime statute

to charge a murder based on sexual orientation.

The defendant was Daryl David Rice.

To federal prosecutors, Rice was the man who fit the pattern, a man who was angry, impulsive,

and was already serving an 11-year sentence for assaulting cyclist Yvonne Malbasha in the same park within a year of Julie and Lolly's murders.

Yvonne's experience was the catalyst for investigators to start looking at Rice in the first place.

In an interview with the Times recorder in 2002, Yvonne recalled how close she came to being killed that day.

He drove at me three times and kept coming back, swearing and laughing. He wanted to break me.

She remembered the truck swerving across the yellow line, gravel spitting beneath its tires,

in the sound of his laughter,

mocking her as she peddled for her life.

When Rice was caught, he told investigators he wanted to kill women for the fun of it.

Those words and that violence would follow him

into the Shenandoah case.

This is sequestered season three.

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