CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft has authorized federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty against a man charged with the 1996 slayings of two hikers, including a Unity, Maine, woman, in Shenandoah National Park.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Tony Giorno said the brutality of the slayings of Julianne Marie Williams and Laura “Lollie” Winans led him to seek permission to pursue the death penalty against Darrell David Rice. Federal authorities are involved in the case because the slayings occurred in a national park.

Rice, 35, of Columbia, Md., has been charged with two counts of capital murder in the killings and faces two additional counts of capital murder on grounds he intentionally selected his victims because they were female and gay.

Williams, 24, of St. Cloud, Minn., and Winans, 26, of Unity, Maine, were found about a week after they set out on a camping trip in May 1996. Their bodies were discovered about a quarter-mile from Skyline Drive off the Appalachian Trail. Their throats were slit, their mouths gagged and their hands bound.

Winans was a student at Unity College, majoring in outdoor recreation. She also worked as a volunteer at a rape crisis center in nearby Waterville, Maine.

One of Rice’s attorneys, Frederick Heblich of Charlottesville, said Ashcroft’s action was not unexpected. “We’ve been preparing our defense on the assumption that it would be a death penalty case,” he said.

Rice, currently serving an 11-year sentence for assaulting a female bicyclist in the park in 1997, is scheduled for trial in the Williams and Winans slaying on July 24 in Charlottesville.