CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – A Maryland man already serving prison time for trying to run a woman bicyclist off the road pleaded innocent Thursday in the slashing deaths of two female hikers along the Appalachian Trail.

Prosecutors accuse Darrell David Rice, 34, of killing Laura “Lollie” Winans, 26, and Julianne Marie Williams, 24, six years ago in the Shenandoah National Park because of their “actual or perceived sexual orientation.”

Rice, dressed in a black-and-white striped prison uniform and wearing leg chains, said little during the brief arraignment. Rice, of Columbia, Md., calmly waved to his mother and sister in the courtroom gallery before U.S. marshals escorted him out of the federal courthouse.

“We’re scared to death,” said Rice’s sister, Dawn Metcalfe, before hurrying out of the courtroom.

In court documents, investigators described Rice as a violent mysogynist who told them that Williams and Winans “deserved to die because they were lesbian.”

Prosecutors said that Rice targeted Williams of St. Cloud, Minn., and Winans of Unity, Maine, as part of a paranoid scheme to assault, intimidate, injure and kill women.

Rice, a former computer programmer and drug dealer, has said that he “hates gays” and liked to intimidate and assault women “because they are more vulnerable than men,” according to court documents.

In 1998, Rice was sentenced to 136 months in prison for assaulting a bicyclist along Virginia’s Skyline Drive. While Rice was in federal prison in Petersburg, investigators started to focus on him after pursuing about 15,000 leads and contacts in the double murder.

His court-appointed attorney, Fred Heblich, met with Rice shortly before Thursday’s hearing. Heblich said he thinks Rice will receive a fair trial in Charlottesville. No further court dates have been set and Rice is being held in the Central Virginia Regional Jail in Orange.

The Justice Department pushed for a hate-crimes type of indictment in this case, which will allow prosecutors to introduce more evidence than a straight murder charge.

Prosecutor Tom Bondurant said he will send Attorney General John Ashcroft a memo outlining why Rice should receive the death penalty. It is up to Ashcroft to make that decision, Bondurant said.

Federal authorities are involved in the case because the murders occurred on national park land.