The Tragic 1990 Murders Of Geoffery Hood And Molly LaRue

Eight days after the murders, police detained a man by the name of David Casey Horn (via The Patriot-News). He had been picked up near Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, after several hikers along the trail reported that a man with an oversized backpack was behaving bizarrely (per The Baltimore Sun). Police responded and performed a search of the pack secured to Horn's body. In it, they discovered items stolen from Molly LaRue and Geoff Hood and the weapons he used to murder them — a .22 caliber revolver and a long-bladed hunting knife (via Green Belly). 

As the investigation unfolded, officials learned that the man they detained had given them a false name. His real identity was Paul David Crews, a fugitive from the state of Florida. The Baltimore Sun reports that Crews had an outstanding warrant from the Sunshine State after being implicated in the 1986 murder of Clemmie Jewel Arnold, a woman who had given the drifter a ride. After her mutilated body was discovered, he fled the state and settled in South Carolina, where he worked off and on as a laborer.

He had been hiking the trail for an undetermined amount of time when he happened upon LaRue and Hood. Whether or not the couple exchanged any words with their killer before they were attacked in their sleep is not known. What was revealed is that Crews murdered them while they were bedded down for the night in the shelter and robbed them of some of their possessions. 

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