Sept. 29, 2025

Betty Fran Gladden-Smith and John Smith

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When Betty Fran Smith vanished in 1991, her family was desperate for answers. Recovering from a broken hip, it seemed unlikely she could have left home to travel as her new husband claimed. Determined to find the truth, Betty Fran’s sister and daughter began digging into John David Smith III—and uncovered disturbing secrets from his past. What followed was a search for justice that would stretch across decades and state lines.

Today's snack: Peanut butter stuffed brownies

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WEBVTT

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Hi. I'm Tina and I'm Rich. If there's one thing

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we've learned and over twenty years.

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Of marriage, it's that some days you'll feel like killing

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your wife.

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In some days you'll feel like killing your husband.

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Welcome to love, Mary Kill Hi Rich, Hi Tina.

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How are you?

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I'm doing good?

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How are you good? How are we on the marriage

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meter today?

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Oh, we're good. We're in really good. I think we're

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in really good shape. How are we on your marriage

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meter today?

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Good? I'm a little I'm a little moody, but you're lovely.

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So it's all on me.

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So that's not the marriage meter. That's the Tina meter.

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I guess. But the Tina meter affects the marriage meter.

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That's just we all.

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Know there's a strong correlation between this. Yeah.

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The case we're going to talk about today is about

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a man named John Smith.

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Oh I know him.

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He was just going to ask you, do you have

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you known a John Smith?

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Honestly, I don't think I have personally known anyone named

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John Smith.

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Do you know anyone with the last name Smith?

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I couldn't think of any off the top of my head,

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so I took a quick break and checked LinkedIn I've

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worked with four people named Smith. I just forgot. They're like,

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the name is so common that it's not a John Smith,

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not a John Smith.

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Off the top of my head, I can't think of

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anyone I know currently with the last name Smith, unless

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I go back to like high school. Well, the name

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John Smith is one of the most common in the

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English speaking world, though it has declined in recent decades.

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In the US, about thirty seven thousand men share it,

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while in the UK it remains among the top three names.

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Its ubiquity comes from pairing John, once a top boy's

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name until the mid nineteen eighties, with Smith the most

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common surname in both countries. So in the United States,

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the last name Smith is still the most popular. Almost

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one percent of the population is named Smith, a.

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Lot of people. I'm not surprised that John Smith is declining, though,

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because who would want to name your kid John if

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your last name was Smith.

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I think the name John, I think it's a very nice,

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nice name, but definitely it's on the decline.

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Naming your kid John Smith is like sentencing him to

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a life of you know, basically just getting lost in

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the shuffle.

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Well, if you are a criminal, that might be a

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good Oh, that's true if you want your kid to

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grow up and be a criminal. I'm just saying, if

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your name is John Smith, you might be able to

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get away with a crime or two.

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Good point.

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What do you think are some other common last names?

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I have the top ten last names in the United States.

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Jones, yes, Brown, Yes.

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Very good.

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That's all I got. I think I don't know.

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Johnson, John Williams, Garcia, Miller, Davis, Rodriguez, and Martinez.

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Okay, yeah, those were all those should have all been obvious.

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I just couldn't come up with anymore.

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Your last name, we have different last names is barely common,

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fairly Yeah, mine is too.

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Yeah.

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We think he goes to ourself because we're weird.

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Mine is probably more common in England. I'll just say that.

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I think today people are being more creative with their

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kids' names. When we were in school, they were at

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least six Jennifers in every class and.

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Four Laura's Mike Tom.

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Everyone was named Mike.

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Yeah, I think everyone. I think people are getting more original.

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But what happens is it's a cyclical thing. Somebody gets original,

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and then that name becomes popular, and then it's no

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longer original anymore. And then so it's like a cycle

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that just keeps going on and on.

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True, I'm so sorry if my brain I'm already moved

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on to snack and I really don't have any idea.

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You just I'm sure it was really interesting.

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I'm not sure I have any idea what I just

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said either. I'm just saying sometimes.

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You say something that like with such confidence and you

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just lose me and I'm like, does that word said

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or is my brain just networking.

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Basically, what I'm saying is people come up with a

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name that seems creative and original, but over time that

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name isn't creative, we're original anymore because other people adopt it.

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Oh so you were like the first rich and then

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everyone else copy.

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No, I was on the tail. And I don't just.

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Say, all right, well, I did bring you a snack.

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And this is a snack that I've been wanting to

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make for you for a while. It's from recipe Tin Eats.

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Remember when we did the case about Aaron Patterson and

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the mushrooms and we talked about Naggi from recipe tin Eats, Okay,

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and this is her recipe for peanut butter stuffed brownie. Oh,

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do you want to give him a try?

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Yeah, they look really good.

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Did you like the brownies cream and those? No?

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No, no, it's not interesting.

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It's just peanut butter.

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I liked them, but there was like a weird, like

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sour flavor to the peanut butter that I thought.

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Was a little No, it's literally just peanut butter. I

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think you saw it in the free You first take

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peanut butter and you melt it, and then you put

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it in the pan so it has the shape of

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your pan. And then you take the peanut butter out,

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and then you bake the brownie or you make the

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brownie mix, then you put the frozen peanut butter up

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on top, and then you put more brownie mix on

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top of that.

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Interesting.

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You know, I'm a little disappointed in the recipe too.

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I thought, oh, you're gonna love it. I think part

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of it might be the recipe said use dark chocolate.

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It didn't say you know how dark, And I feel

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like the chocolate might.

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What it is, Yeah, because I'm sensing just a little

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bitterness in there or something.

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Yeah, I think that I used chocolate that's a little

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too dark.

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Interesting, it's not bad. I'm just it's not quite as

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good as something I would hope for with a chocolate

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peanut butter brownie type.

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I almost use the Garadeli brownie mix and just put

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the peanut butter on that. And I kind of wish

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I would have done that, because I don't love the

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brownies and I think the peanut butter is pretty good.

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Yeah.

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I also put a layer of chocolate on top, because

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I am. I have a problem. I have a problemsted

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my first step. Well, there's a family debate about that.

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Then we'll go into yar. Kids don't like a frosted party,

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so weird, they really are? All right, are you ready

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to get to John Smith?

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I am.

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On Tuesday, April twenty second, nineteen eighty, along County Road

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four hundred North in Newton County, Indiana, better known as

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Hopkins Park Road, construction crews were out making routine spring repairs.

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What they stumbled upon that day would be anything but routine.

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The road, about forty miles south of Chicago, runs east

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to west and links western Indiana to eastern Illinois. The

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spring thaw had left the road in rough shape, with

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deep muddy ditches on either side, choked with springs, fresh

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growth mixed with last season's brush. Among the brush, one

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of the workers spotted a wooden box. It appeared to

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be homemade, constructed crudely from plywood and nails hastily hammered

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into place. The box was about four feet long and

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two feet wide. They carried the box to their work

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track and pried it open with a crowbar. An unpleasant

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odor met their nostrils as they lifted the lid. Inside

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was a dirty green blanket, possibly an army blanket. Under

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it was a pair of jeans and a plaid flannel shirt.

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Sam Kennedy poked around the box with the crowbar, afraid

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to touch anything. He jumped back in shock and horror

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when he uncovered a human skull. The men called law enforcement,

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who came and took possession of the box from the

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rattled road workers. The coroner drove the box to the

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funeral home that he worked out of the box had

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several items of women's clothing inside, including a pair of

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bell bottom jeans, a churquoise peasant blouse, two nightgowns, a

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bright red dress, a multicolored dress with puffy sleeves, a

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blue dress, a black and white dress, a striped shirt,

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a plaid skirt, a blue western style shirt, a bathrobe,

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and several bras. There was also a pair of blue

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jeans with a smiling mushroom patch on the crotch. Nearly

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all the items were sized small. Two rings, a gold

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crucifix on a chain, and strand of brownish hair were

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also in the box, as well as the rest of

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the skeletal remains. The bones appeared to be from a

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small framed woman in her twenties. Disturbingly, the leg bones

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had been severed by a saw. The feet were missing,

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and anthropologist later analyzed the bones and determined the young

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woman had never borne a child and might have been hispanic.

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The media coined the Jane Doe the lady in the box.

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Nearby police were contacted to see if someone fitting the

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description of the Jane Doe was missing from their communities.

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Local officials in Newton County buried the remains in a

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child sized coffin and mark the grave with a simple

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marker that read Jane Doe nineteen eighty. When flowers began

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appearing regularly on the grave, police decided to stake out

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the grave, but they soon learned that the culprit was

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a thoughtful local woman who felt badly for the Jane Doe.

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It would be decades before her identity was revealed.

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When you were describing the road workers finding her body,

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I could just put myself in that position of finding

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this box, starting to open it and the smell is emanating.

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That would be just so like terrifying. I don't know,

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it's just so like creepy to not knowing.

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Just really sah. Yeah, I think that would stick with

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you and probably give you nightmares.

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Yeah, for sure.

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On Labor Day weekend in nineteen ninety one, fran and

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John Smith checked into the Stricklands Mountain Inn for a

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belated honeymoon. Fran Or Betty fran Gladden Smith, forty eight,

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and her fourth husband, John David Smith, the third, forty,

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had married barefoot on a Florida beach the year before. Recently,

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they had settled in West Windsor, New Jersey, near Princeton

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for John's new job. Their marriage had been off to

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a rocky start, and they hoped a weekend that the

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Poconos themed motel might rekindle their bond. Instead, disasters struck.

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Franz slipped on the slick tile after stepping out of

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the motel's red heart shaped tub, shattering her hip and

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landing her in the hospital for surgery and a metal

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pin left her bedridden for weeks. The forest downtime gave

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Fran too much time to think and to regret. She

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couldn't bring herself to admit it to her daughter or

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her sister, but deep down she knew that she had

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made a terrible mistake marrying John.

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Quick check in on timeline here, So this is nineteen

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ninety one. The Jane Doe's body was found in nineteen eighty.

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Those were eleven years.

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Yeah, why do you think those two things were related?

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I don't know, just that I have a feeling.

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Betty fran Gladden was born in August nineteen forty two

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in Alabama. She grew up on military basis in a

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close knit family. She and her sister Sherry were very close.

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They shared a kind of sixth sense, an unspoken connection

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that told them when the other was in trouble or

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needed help. They called it the Thing. Fran was petite

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and blonde and did some modeling when she was younger.

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She was shy, but had a warm and bubbly personality.

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After her second marriage ended in nineteen eighty one. She

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was single for almost ten years, focusing on her children.

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I had several sources for this case, and they were

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unclear on her husband's I don't have a lot of

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background information on Fran, but I believe she had four husbands,

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John Rich, Bill and another John John Smith was her

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fourth husband. Her sister said in her book that she

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married one of them twice, but she didn't say which one.

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Okay.

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Fran had three children, Todd, Rod and Deanna or ded

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DeeDee Wheeling was twenty six, a single mother with two

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young children, and she lived in Houston. Much of Fran's

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family lived in Niceville, Florida, in the Panhandle, thirty miles

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east of Pensacola. In nineteen eighty nine, Rod An Army

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ranger was seriously wounded in Panama during an Operation two

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extract Manuel Noriega from office. Soon Fran found herself as

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caregiver for her ill mother, her eighty three year old grandmother,

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and her injured son. Her granddaughter Nick He was also

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living with her for a year. Frean had a lot

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on her plate. She also worked at Chrome Alloy Technologies

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as an executive assistant. When she met her fourth husband,

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John David Smith. John was a lifelong Mennonite and contract

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engineer at the company. He was socially awkward, prone to

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an overly broad, gummy smile and talking too loudly, eager

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for approval, lacking confidence, he often overdressed in colorful suits

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and ties, regardless of the occasion. While some dismissed him

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as an odd duck, Fran found his quirks endearing. She

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really didn't know much about John's family or childhood. He

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was very private about his past. She hoped with time

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he would open up to her. After just two months

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of dating, John proposed and Fran accepted. They built a

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custom home next door to Frand's mother, and, with John

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earning a good salary, he encouraged Fran to quit her

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job to focus on her family. Hesitant to give up

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her income and independence, she eventually.

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Agreed proposal two months into the relationship. That's pretty quick,

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it is.

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And you would think when you're on your fourth marriage

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or fifth marriage, that you might be a little more

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cautious and take your time.

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Yeah, I would think so.

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I think John was very convincing and charming. Some people

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describe John as looking like Howdy duty, and others call

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him John Boy Walton. H Okay, did you ever watch

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the Waltons when you were a very young child.

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I loved the Waltons.

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I am going to show you a picture of him

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really quick, and then I'm going to ask you to

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describe it. Of course, we will post these pictures on

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our social media.

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I do see a little John Boy Walton resemblance. But

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his eyes are crazy eyes.

281
00:13:36.360 --> 00:13:38.799
Yes they are. And in a lot of pictures he's

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00:13:38.799 --> 00:13:41.080
wearing this serial killer glasses.

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00:13:40.679 --> 00:13:44.919
That own Jeffre Dahmer glasses exactly. Boy. John David Smith

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the third was born on April second, nineteen fifty one,

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in Homerville, Ohio, to Grace Cheney and Carl Smith, who

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married soon after his birth. His brother, Michael was born

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three years later, but the Smith's marriage didn't last. Grace

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filed for divorce on the grounds of most neglect of

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duty and extreme cruelty. After the divorce, Grace John and

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00:14:04.919 --> 00:14:07.919
Michael moved in with her parents, Ethel and Chester Cheney

291
00:14:08.240 --> 00:14:12.480
in Seville, Ohio. Seville is a small village in Medina County,

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00:14:12.519 --> 00:14:15.799
about forty miles south of Cleveland, known for its quiet,

293
00:14:15.879 --> 00:14:19.879
rural charm Saville has a historic downtown with shops and restaurants,

294
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and is surrounded by farmland and rolling countryside. Seville, Ohio,

295
00:14:24.639 --> 00:14:27.120
is perhaps most famous as the one time home of

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Martin and Anna Bates, known as the Seville Giants. The

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00:14:31.000 --> 00:14:34.120
couple gained international fame in the nineteenth century as the

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world's tallest married couple, with Martin standing seven feet nine

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inches tall and Anna seven feet eleven inches. They were

300
00:14:42.159 --> 00:14:45.919
made for each other. Anna became pregnant twice, both resulting

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in tragic outcomes. Their first, a daughter, was stillborn weighing

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00:14:49.759 --> 00:14:53.240
eighteen pounds. Their second child, a son, weighed over twenty

303
00:14:53.279 --> 00:14:56.360
pounds and measured nearly two feet long at birth, but

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00:14:56.480 --> 00:14:59.480
he survived for only a few hours. That's very sad.

305
00:15:00.200 --> 00:15:03.200
Sorry, that was very superfluous, but I just thought that

306
00:15:03.320 --> 00:15:06.799
was really interesting. How these two giants were married to

307
00:15:06.840 --> 00:15:08.879
each other. Must have had a really high seat. I

308
00:15:08.919 --> 00:15:10.120
hope they had high ceilings on.

309
00:15:10.480 --> 00:15:13.480
Hope so too. Grace bought a house two doors down

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from her parents, who helped raise John and Michael Chester

311
00:15:16.840 --> 00:15:19.840
owned and operated a Marathon gas station that sat behind

312
00:15:19.879 --> 00:15:22.879
their house, across the street from the town's funeral home.

313
00:15:23.240 --> 00:15:25.200
More than just a place to fill up. The station

314
00:15:25.320 --> 00:15:28.720
became a local gathering spot where neighbors traded stories and

315
00:15:28.799 --> 00:15:32.200
town gossip. Chester spent a lot of time with his grandsons,

316
00:15:32.240 --> 00:15:36.200
taking them fishing, hunting, or watching sports. Neighbor and owner

317
00:15:36.200 --> 00:15:39.000
of the funeral home, Richard Armstrong said of the Cheneys,

318
00:15:39.399 --> 00:15:42.480
John and Michael were practically raised by their grandparents. The

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00:15:42.600 --> 00:15:46.600
Cheneys were good people, pillars of the community. John was tall,

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00:15:46.799 --> 00:15:49.720
gangly and pale, freckled with a shock of red hair

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00:15:49.759 --> 00:15:51.879
that looked as if it had been cut around a bowl.

322
00:15:52.360 --> 00:15:55.480
Right and considered the favored child. He excelled in school

323
00:15:55.519 --> 00:15:58.559
and on the track, where he proved himself a strong runner,

324
00:15:58.840 --> 00:16:03.240
winning many medals. When John and Michael were teenagers, their mother, Grace,

325
00:16:03.360 --> 00:16:07.799
married wealthy real estate developer Sam Malls. Preoccupied with work,

326
00:16:07.960 --> 00:16:11.159
Sam had little impact on the boys lives. Grace and

327
00:16:11.279 --> 00:16:13.919
Sam later welcomed the son of their own, Stephen.

328
00:16:14.639 --> 00:16:17.399
Sam was Jewish, and I read one account that said

329
00:16:17.440 --> 00:16:19.759
that Grace was disowned after she married him.

330
00:16:19.879 --> 00:16:23.679
Oh wow. When John turned sixteen, he bought a leather

331
00:16:23.759 --> 00:16:26.840
jacket and a motorcycle, but neither made him any cooler.

332
00:16:27.399 --> 00:16:30.559
At nineteen, John met Janis Hartman from the nearby town

333
00:16:30.600 --> 00:16:34.080
of Doylestown. Janis was the third of four children born

334
00:16:34.120 --> 00:16:37.480
to Betty and Neil Hartman on March second, nineteen fifty one.

335
00:16:37.919 --> 00:16:40.759
Ten years later her youngest sister arrived, but by then

336
00:16:40.879 --> 00:16:45.039
her parents' marriage was unraveling and they soon divorced. Janis

337
00:16:45.120 --> 00:16:47.399
was a bit of a tomboy with a rebellious streak.

338
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Had she gone to the same schools as John, she

339
00:16:50.080 --> 00:16:53.159
might never have noticed the nerdy boy. Years later, when

340
00:16:53.200 --> 00:16:55.799
asked why she got involved with him, she simply said,

341
00:16:56.080 --> 00:16:57.960
beats the heck out of me. I guess it was

342
00:16:58.000 --> 00:17:00.480
the motorcycle. So apparently it did make him a.

343
00:17:00.440 --> 00:17:03.679
Little cooler, right, it did. But my point was, you know,

344
00:17:03.759 --> 00:17:05.839
had she known him in high school, she had been like, no,

345
00:17:06.000 --> 00:17:08.759
thank you. Yeah, I'm not very nice to John in

346
00:17:08.880 --> 00:17:09.839
this case.

347
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After high school, Janie left for Saint Louis to attend

348
00:17:13.759 --> 00:17:17.599
flight attendant training, while John enrolled at Ohio State University

349
00:17:17.680 --> 00:17:21.000
to study engineering. Just a few weeks later, unable to

350
00:17:21.039 --> 00:17:24.039
stay apart, they eloped in Detroit and were married at

351
00:17:24.039 --> 00:17:28.240
City Hall. Janis's parents had never even met John. Eventually,

352
00:17:28.319 --> 00:17:31.880
when Betty, Janis's mother met John. She said he did

353
00:17:31.920 --> 00:17:34.359
talk a lot. He liked to hear himself talk. He

354
00:17:34.480 --> 00:17:37.000
was the biggest bullshitter you ever saw. He was going

355
00:17:37.039 --> 00:17:40.160
to build bridges. He had it all planned out. Grace

356
00:17:40.359 --> 00:17:43.759
was furious over her son's impulsive marriage. She locked him

357
00:17:43.759 --> 00:17:46.519
out of her house and refused to give him his belongings.

358
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Both of their families believed the couple was too young

359
00:17:49.319 --> 00:17:52.960
to be married and were throwing their futures away. Undeterred,

360
00:17:53.079 --> 00:17:56.119
Janis and John moved to Columbus, where John continued his

361
00:17:56.160 --> 00:17:59.200
studies while Janis worked as manager of a gas station.

362
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Tracks soon appeared in the marriage. John was controlling and

363
00:18:03.480 --> 00:18:06.680
prone to angry outbursts, while Janis was the only one

364
00:18:06.680 --> 00:18:11.799
earning money, leading to frequent clashes. Their relationship deteriorated further

365
00:18:11.920 --> 00:18:15.720
when John's anger turned into physical abuse. Janis hit back

366
00:18:15.759 --> 00:18:18.359
at John, but his strength and size left her at

367
00:18:18.400 --> 00:18:22.359
a disadvantage. She was covered with bruises and scrapes. The

368
00:18:22.400 --> 00:18:25.559
abuse became so commonplace, John didn't try to hide it

369
00:18:25.720 --> 00:18:28.799
and thought nothing of slapping Janis across the face in

370
00:18:28.839 --> 00:18:32.400
front of friends and family. In nineteen seventy one, John

371
00:18:32.480 --> 00:18:36.000
dropped out of Ohio State University. Before earning his degree,

372
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Janis confided to her mother that John once threatened her

373
00:18:39.640 --> 00:18:41.759
if you ever leave me, I'm going to kill you.

374
00:18:42.359 --> 00:18:45.720
In August nineteen seventy four, Janis separated from John and

375
00:18:45.759 --> 00:18:49.359
moved into her father's mobile home behind a bar in Doylestown.

376
00:18:49.839 --> 00:18:53.240
Relishing her independence, she bought a Mustang that she treasured,

377
00:18:53.440 --> 00:18:55.839
took a job as a go go dancer, and even

378
00:18:55.880 --> 00:18:58.960
began working undercover for police on drug cases.

379
00:18:59.480 --> 00:19:02.839
I could not confirm that fact. The police never confirmed it,

380
00:19:03.400 --> 00:19:06.599
but it was in several articles and the books I read,

381
00:19:07.000 --> 00:19:09.680
it was said that she worked as an undercover informant.

382
00:19:09.759 --> 00:19:13.880
Okay, but Janis's new life carried risks. On November tenth,

383
00:19:13.960 --> 00:19:17.119
nineteen seventy four, while visiting a friend's house, she was

384
00:19:17.160 --> 00:19:20.480
brutally attacked by a group of five men. One threw

385
00:19:20.519 --> 00:19:23.119
her to the floor, tore off her clothes, and dragged

386
00:19:23.119 --> 00:19:25.920
her into a bedroom, telling her that quote which is

387
00:19:25.960 --> 00:19:29.400
like you don't deserve to live. Several others held her down,

388
00:19:29.480 --> 00:19:32.799
striking her as they tried to assault her. At one point,

389
00:19:32.839 --> 00:19:35.680
a blonde man entered with a loaded shotgun, pressed it

390
00:19:35.720 --> 00:19:38.720
toward her and said quote narks always have an easy

391
00:19:38.759 --> 00:19:41.799
way out. Another voice shouted not to kill her, and

392
00:19:41.920 --> 00:19:45.680
eventually the men released her. Bruised and scratched. Janis went

393
00:19:45.720 --> 00:19:48.680
straight to the police to report the attack, suspecting it

394
00:19:48.720 --> 00:19:52.279
was retribution because of her undercover work had been exposed

395
00:19:52.599 --> 00:19:53.920
as a terrifying story.

396
00:19:54.240 --> 00:19:57.960
Yeah, Janis sounds like she was very scrappy and tough,

397
00:19:58.359 --> 00:20:02.480
and she was small, so she tried to fight back. Yeah,

398
00:20:02.519 --> 00:20:04.920
but I mean five men were attacking her.

399
00:20:05.039 --> 00:20:08.319
Yeah, She's fortunate she survived that, it sounds like a

400
00:20:08.319 --> 00:20:11.680
Few days later, on November fourteenth, her divorce from John

401
00:20:11.799 --> 00:20:15.519
was finalized. With no children or significant assets to divide,

402
00:20:15.759 --> 00:20:19.599
the process moved quickly. Their split was described as amicable,

403
00:20:19.759 --> 00:20:23.880
with no signs of lingering hostility between them. Without Janis's

404
00:20:23.880 --> 00:20:27.240
financial support, John dropped out of Ohio State University and

405
00:20:27.279 --> 00:20:30.480
moved into a mobile home in Wooster Adrift. With too

406
00:20:30.559 --> 00:20:33.480
much time on his hands, he began stalking her, but

407
00:20:33.599 --> 00:20:37.359
their relationship was confusing, sometimes that they still spent time

408
00:20:37.359 --> 00:20:40.880
together amicably, and sometimes jan wanted nothing to do with him.

409
00:20:41.359 --> 00:20:42.799
We'll be back after a break.

410
00:20:50.960 --> 00:20:53.839
When Betty Fran and John got married, he never told

411
00:20:53.880 --> 00:20:57.400
her about his first wife. Nine months into the marriage.

412
00:20:57.559 --> 00:21:00.480
On February fifth, nineteen ninety one, after j John left

413
00:21:00.480 --> 00:21:03.720
her work, a sheriff's deputy bring Fran's door bell and

414
00:21:03.880 --> 00:21:08.480
handed her divorce papers. She was gobsmacked. When she confronted John,

415
00:21:08.839 --> 00:21:11.279
He said it was a big mistake, pleaded with her

416
00:21:11.319 --> 00:21:14.200
to forgive him, and withdrew the petition.

417
00:21:14.319 --> 00:21:17.200
How do you accidentally have divorce papers?

418
00:21:17.720 --> 00:21:18.319
I don't know?

419
00:21:18.519 --> 00:21:19.039
Okay.

420
00:21:19.319 --> 00:21:22.599
Soon after John lost his job at crow Alloy. He

421
00:21:22.720 --> 00:21:25.359
wasn't able to find work in Florida and was forced

422
00:21:25.400 --> 00:21:27.960
to take a job in New Jersey working for a

423
00:21:28.000 --> 00:21:32.839
company called carb Arundum as a manufacturing manager. Fran didn't

424
00:21:32.839 --> 00:21:35.480
want to leave her family behind in Florida, and moving

425
00:21:35.599 --> 00:21:38.920
even farther away from her daughter and grandchildren in Houston

426
00:21:39.160 --> 00:21:42.279
paid heavily on her Still, she couldn't bear the thought

427
00:21:42.319 --> 00:21:46.319
of facing a fourth divorce, so to New Jersey she went.

428
00:21:46.799 --> 00:21:49.440
They moved into a furnished condo and John put the

429
00:21:49.480 --> 00:21:53.119
rest of their furniture into storage. A year into their marriage,

430
00:21:53.160 --> 00:21:56.440
Fran was surprised to discover that John owned a house

431
00:21:56.480 --> 00:22:00.480
in Connecticut. He said his sister Kathy lived there tree

432
00:22:00.559 --> 00:22:04.279
while caring for his two Border collies, Amanda and Christopher.

433
00:22:04.759 --> 00:22:08.119
Until then, Fran hadn't known that John had two dogs

434
00:22:08.240 --> 00:22:11.000
or a sister. Do you remember me talking about John

435
00:22:11.039 --> 00:22:15.640
having a sister? I don't because he didn't. So Fran

436
00:22:15.799 --> 00:22:18.279
wanted to meet Kathy and see the beach house and

437
00:22:18.359 --> 00:22:21.960
meet the dogs, but John hedged making that meeting happen.

438
00:22:22.359 --> 00:22:25.240
He was off and away, tied up with frequent travel

439
00:22:25.319 --> 00:22:27.240
and long weekends at his new job.

440
00:22:27.559 --> 00:22:28.640
John's full of secrets.

441
00:22:28.680 --> 00:22:31.880
I guess he sure is. In August nineteen ninety one,

442
00:22:31.920 --> 00:22:34.440
Fran returned home to their condo to find that John

443
00:22:34.480 --> 00:22:37.359
had secretly moved out and left her with only fifty

444
00:22:37.400 --> 00:22:39.960
dollars to her name. She had no access to their

445
00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:43.000
bank accounts or even a credit card. He took their

446
00:22:43.119 --> 00:22:46.759
radio and TV and all of his possessions. Fran thought

447
00:22:46.759 --> 00:22:50.279
he was gone for good. She called her daughter Dede sobbing.

448
00:22:50.880 --> 00:22:53.640
John left a note, when you decide to start wearing

449
00:22:53.640 --> 00:22:57.720
your wedding band again, I'll come home. The diamond in

450
00:22:57.759 --> 00:23:00.559
her ring was loose, and she didn't even think about

451
00:23:00.599 --> 00:23:03.039
mentioning it to John because he wasn't around a lot,

452
00:23:03.359 --> 00:23:05.640
So she took it to the jewelry store to you know,

453
00:23:05.680 --> 00:23:09.920
have them tighten the so he noticed. Instead of like

454
00:23:09.960 --> 00:23:14.680
having a conversation, he's like, I'm leaving. A few days later,

455
00:23:14.799 --> 00:23:17.960
Fran called his office and he acted as if nothing

456
00:23:18.079 --> 00:23:20.640
was wrong. He answered the phone, Oh hi, honey, it's

457
00:23:20.640 --> 00:23:23.839
good to hear from you, and she was like, oh,

458
00:23:23.880 --> 00:23:26.880
what's going on John. He explained that he'd been sleeping

459
00:23:26.920 --> 00:23:29.359
in his car and just needed some time on his own.

460
00:23:29.640 --> 00:23:32.839
When he returned home, Fran told him things needed to change.

461
00:23:33.119 --> 00:23:34.960
He needed to be more open with her if their

462
00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:37.599
marriage was going to continue, and he needed to tell

463
00:23:37.640 --> 00:23:40.640
her about his past, and she insisted that he give

464
00:23:40.640 --> 00:23:44.400
her access to their bank accounts. After Fran broke her hip,

465
00:23:44.640 --> 00:23:49.119
she sank into depression. Normally outgoing and social, Fran hadn't

466
00:23:49.200 --> 00:23:51.720
yet built a circle of friends in New Jersey, where

467
00:23:51.759 --> 00:23:54.200
she and John had only been living for four months.

468
00:23:54.519 --> 00:23:57.880
Their condo was on the third floor with no elevator

469
00:23:57.920 --> 00:24:01.799
in the building, leaving Fran stuck inside, relying on crutches

470
00:24:01.880 --> 00:24:05.359
or a walker to move around. She hated being housebound.

471
00:24:05.720 --> 00:24:08.720
With John working long hours and rarely able to take

472
00:24:08.720 --> 00:24:13.480
her out. Fran felt increasingly isolated and alone. I think

473
00:24:13.480 --> 00:24:15.400
she was in a great deal of pain too.

474
00:24:15.640 --> 00:24:16.599
Yeah, I'm sure she was.

475
00:24:16.960 --> 00:24:20.359
Dedey hated to see her mother so unhappy. Although Fran

476
00:24:20.559 --> 00:24:23.599
was still in a cumbersome cast, she got her sewing

477
00:24:23.640 --> 00:24:26.400
machine out to pass the time. Determined to make their

478
00:24:26.440 --> 00:24:29.480
condo cozy, she sewed a dust ruffle for her bed

479
00:24:29.599 --> 00:24:32.880
and curtains. During one of their daily calls, Fran asked

480
00:24:32.880 --> 00:24:35.640
Dedy to send her some patterns so she could start

481
00:24:35.640 --> 00:24:39.640
sewing clothes for her grandchildren. The last conversation they had

482
00:24:39.759 --> 00:24:43.240
was on September twenty eighth. After her calls when unanswered

483
00:24:43.279 --> 00:24:46.720
for several days, Dee Dee began to worry John wasn't

484
00:24:46.759 --> 00:24:50.240
answering his phone at work either. Desperate, she called Fran's

485
00:24:50.279 --> 00:24:52.480
doctor to see if she'd made it to the office

486
00:24:52.599 --> 00:24:56.559
for her appointment that week. She had not, the receptionist

487
00:24:56.640 --> 00:24:59.680
told Dede. In a full panic, Dee Dee called John

488
00:24:59.680 --> 00:25:03.359
at work on Wednesday, October second, and this time he

489
00:25:03.480 --> 00:25:07.799
finally answered, where's my mother? John? She asked, I thought

490
00:25:07.799 --> 00:25:10.039
she was with you. I came home to a note

491
00:25:10.039 --> 00:25:12.680
on Tuesday that said feed the fish. I'll be back

492
00:25:12.720 --> 00:25:15.160
in a couple of days. She talked about coming to

493
00:25:15.240 --> 00:25:18.000
visit you and your brother in Florida, so I thought

494
00:25:18.079 --> 00:25:20.839
she had come to see you. Dede asked John for

495
00:25:20.920 --> 00:25:23.640
the note, but he said he'd thrown it in the trash.

496
00:25:24.039 --> 00:25:26.920
Detey knew it was impossible for Fran to travel with

497
00:25:26.960 --> 00:25:30.559
her broken hip, but John didn't seem the least bit concerned.

498
00:25:31.039 --> 00:25:34.680
Dredd settled into her gut. She knew Jean was lying,

499
00:25:35.039 --> 00:25:39.000
but why. Deete called her aunt Sherry, and together they

500
00:25:39.039 --> 00:25:42.480
came up with a plan. Sherry Gladden Davis, living in

501
00:25:42.480 --> 00:25:46.160
Indiana and Deedey in Houston, didn't have much money for

502
00:25:46.319 --> 00:25:50.319
unnecessary travel, but they were desperate to find Fran. They

503
00:25:50.440 --> 00:25:53.599
urged John to file a missing person's report, yet he

504
00:25:53.759 --> 00:25:59.039
seemed largely unconcerned. By Friday, three days after Fran had vanished,

505
00:25:59.200 --> 00:26:02.200
the women threatened to come to New Jersey themselves, and

506
00:26:02.319 --> 00:26:05.359
only then did John go to the West Windsor Township

507
00:26:05.559 --> 00:26:10.039
Police station to submit a report. John arrived at ten pm.

508
00:26:10.240 --> 00:26:13.279
Officer Tom Moody took down the report, but it was

509
00:26:13.319 --> 00:26:17.799
the young officer Robert hilland who couldn't shake him when

510
00:26:17.839 --> 00:26:21.440
their eyes met across the station, hilland saw something chilling

511
00:26:21.480 --> 00:26:26.240
in John's cold, vacant stare. Decades later that haunting memory

512
00:26:26.279 --> 00:26:29.759
would come full circle when Hilland and Smith based off

513
00:26:29.839 --> 00:26:32.599
once again. That's called foreshadowing.

514
00:26:32.759 --> 00:26:35.039
Rich oh I see very well done.

515
00:26:35.279 --> 00:26:37.200
Asked for a picture of his wife. He said that

516
00:26:37.279 --> 00:26:40.680
he didn't have any because Fran was camera shy. This

517
00:26:41.039 --> 00:26:43.720
was not at all true. Fran used to model and

518
00:26:43.839 --> 00:26:47.319
she loved having her picture taken. John admitted that he

519
00:26:47.359 --> 00:26:49.599
wasn't sure how Fran was getting around with a broken

520
00:26:49.680 --> 00:26:52.720
hip and limited money. Initially, he said that she only

521
00:26:52.720 --> 00:26:55.799
had two hundred dollars with her, but later he increased

522
00:26:55.839 --> 00:26:59.400
the amount to two thousand. Fran had her own car,

523
00:26:59.480 --> 00:27:02.559
but she left to behind. She must have taken the bus.

524
00:27:02.680 --> 00:27:06.000
Smith claimed he was sure that she was visiting her family,

525
00:27:06.200 --> 00:27:09.519
but Sherry and Deedi assured the police that she was

526
00:27:09.599 --> 00:27:13.119
not with them. Fran's beloved mother was in the ICU

527
00:27:13.319 --> 00:27:17.960
on a ventilator, struggling with emphysema, unable to talk. Every

528
00:27:18.039 --> 00:27:21.039
breath was a battle, and Franz's family knew that she

529
00:27:21.079 --> 00:27:25.079
would never disappear without contact during such a critical time,

530
00:27:25.599 --> 00:27:28.920
Franz's mother could only communicate by using a chalkboard. She

531
00:27:29.039 --> 00:27:32.359
wrote her daughter's name over and over her eyes, pleading

532
00:27:32.359 --> 00:27:35.960
with her family for more information. She died soon after

533
00:27:36.000 --> 00:27:39.440
at age sixty five, without knowing what happened to Franz.

534
00:27:39.799 --> 00:27:43.319
So sad, it is really sad. Detective Michael Dansbury was

535
00:27:43.319 --> 00:27:46.599
assigned to Fran's case. A week after her disappearance. He

536
00:27:46.680 --> 00:27:51.279
visited John at his condo, and John hesitantly invited him inside.

537
00:27:51.400 --> 00:27:55.359
Dansbury found the condo tidy and nicely furnished, but was

538
00:27:55.400 --> 00:27:59.400
immediately on alert when he saw Franz walker. John assured

539
00:27:59.440 --> 00:28:02.480
the officer that he and Fran had a happy marriage.

540
00:28:02.839 --> 00:28:04.960
He wasn't sure where she went, but he thought she'd

541
00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:08.279
gone to visit friends or family. The only items missing

542
00:28:08.319 --> 00:28:13.480
were her purse, a yellow suitcase, to two piece jogging outfits,

543
00:28:13.519 --> 00:28:18.839
and Fran's crutches. Officer Dansbury checked with bus drivers, taxi service,

544
00:28:18.960 --> 00:28:22.200
and even airlines to see if Fran had purchased a ticket,

545
00:28:22.400 --> 00:28:25.839
but the search came up empty. And surely like Fran,

546
00:28:26.119 --> 00:28:29.799
you know, with crutches, was having a hard time getting around, right.

547
00:28:29.839 --> 00:28:31.559
I think people remember seeing.

548
00:28:32.200 --> 00:28:35.960
Deeedy and Sherry created and dispersed missing persons fires with

549
00:28:36.000 --> 00:28:40.799
the following information. Betty Franz Smith missing person notification born

550
00:28:40.960 --> 00:28:44.279
eight four forty two. Age at time of disappearance forty

551
00:28:44.400 --> 00:28:49.359
nine female five two, one hundred pounds, blonde, medium length hair,

552
00:28:49.799 --> 00:28:54.720
blue eyes, white, light complexioned. Identifying marks a scar on

553
00:28:54.799 --> 00:28:58.559
her left knee scar from hysterectomy, pin and right hip,

554
00:28:58.799 --> 00:29:02.079
no bone in little hoe of right foot. Front teeth

555
00:29:02.119 --> 00:29:06.079
are temporary caps and slightly yellowed. Also known as Fran.

556
00:29:06.559 --> 00:29:11.400
Circumstances of disappearance unknown Missing October first, nineteen ninety one,

557
00:29:11.519 --> 00:29:15.319
from Princeton, New Jersey. John refused to help distribute the

558
00:29:15.319 --> 00:29:19.440
flyers beyond filing the missing Persons report. He hadn't lifted

559
00:29:19.440 --> 00:29:22.160
a finger to search for Fran and showed no sense

560
00:29:22.160 --> 00:29:24.519
of urgency or alarm in finding her.

561
00:29:24.960 --> 00:29:28.920
On October sixteenth, Officer Dansbury returned to John's condo to

562
00:29:28.960 --> 00:29:32.160
further question him. This time, John was more open about

563
00:29:32.160 --> 00:29:35.240
his past, admitting that he had been married once before Fran,

564
00:29:35.400 --> 00:29:38.720
to a woman named Janice Hartman in nineteen sixty nine.

565
00:29:39.079 --> 00:29:42.359
They had separated amicably a few years later, when Janie

566
00:29:42.440 --> 00:29:45.279
left him to join a commune in Florida. He explained.

567
00:29:45.640 --> 00:29:48.839
Dansbury wasn't willing to let the case go his twenty

568
00:29:48.839 --> 00:29:51.359
plus years as a police officer led him to trust

569
00:29:51.359 --> 00:29:54.559
his intuition that something was a miss. With John, I

570
00:29:54.599 --> 00:29:56.799
frankly don't think this would require a lot of intuition.

571
00:29:56.920 --> 00:29:59.680
I think it seems fairly obvious that something is a miss.

572
00:29:59.720 --> 00:30:00.480
But oh does it?

573
00:30:00.559 --> 00:30:04.079
Detective Bridge, But maybe that's hindsight. He interviewed John's boss

574
00:30:04.079 --> 00:30:06.799
and co workers and found that John hadn't told anyone

575
00:30:06.839 --> 00:30:10.519
that Fran was missing. On December third, nineteen ninety one,

576
00:30:10.720 --> 00:30:13.960
John agreed to take a polygraph test, Although the results

577
00:30:14.000 --> 00:30:18.160
weren't revealed publicly. John told Dede that he had failed miserably.

578
00:30:18.599 --> 00:30:22.119
After the polygraph, investigators narrowed their focus on John and

579
00:30:22.240 --> 00:30:25.160
requested that he come to the station for a formal interview.

580
00:30:25.640 --> 00:30:27.799
He was read his rights and declined to have an

581
00:30:27.799 --> 00:30:31.200
attorney present. The investigators learned that John had filed for

582
00:30:31.240 --> 00:30:34.880
divorce from Fran the previous year, which he'd failed to divulge.

583
00:30:35.319 --> 00:30:38.200
When confronted about the house he owned in Connecticut, he

584
00:30:38.240 --> 00:30:40.960
claimed it was rented by a woman named Kathy, not

585
00:30:41.119 --> 00:30:43.880
his sister, who he had known for seven to eight years.

586
00:30:44.440 --> 00:30:47.440
Detectives with the local police department visited the house at

587
00:30:47.480 --> 00:30:51.559
twenty three point Beach Drive in Milford, Connecticut tax records

588
00:30:51.599 --> 00:30:55.640
confirmed that John David Smith owned the beachfront home, purchased

589
00:30:55.680 --> 00:30:58.279
in nineteen eighty six for two hundred and thirty two

590
00:30:58.359 --> 00:31:01.799
thousand dollars. No one was home, but neighbors filled the

591
00:31:01.839 --> 00:31:04.680
officers in. The occupant of the beach house was a

592
00:31:04.759 --> 00:31:07.960
dark haired woman named Sheila Sawder. She had lived there

593
00:31:08.000 --> 00:31:11.240
for about five years and was frequently visited on weekends

594
00:31:11.279 --> 00:31:15.960
by a red haired man. M Detective Dansbury, along with

595
00:31:16.119 --> 00:31:20.079
Detective Frank Barr from Milford, Connecticut, knocked on Sheila's door

596
00:31:20.200 --> 00:31:22.519
with her sister and brother in law in tow in

597
00:31:22.599 --> 00:31:24.759
early January nineteen ninety two.

598
00:31:25.240 --> 00:31:27.559
So they hadn't been able to get a hold of Sheila,

599
00:31:27.799 --> 00:31:29.920
and they think they knew that what they were going

600
00:31:29.960 --> 00:31:32.759
to tell her was going to rock her world. So

601
00:31:32.799 --> 00:31:35.000
they had found her sister and brother in law and

602
00:31:35.160 --> 00:31:37.759
had them along to be there for her.

603
00:31:37.920 --> 00:31:38.680
Okay, so they.

604
00:31:38.720 --> 00:31:39.640
Questioned, g gotcha.

605
00:31:40.119 --> 00:31:43.079
Sheila was confused why they were all there, but soon

606
00:31:43.160 --> 00:31:46.240
she understood that her whole world was about to fall apart.

607
00:31:46.720 --> 00:31:49.200
The officers told her that they were there to investigate

608
00:31:49.240 --> 00:31:53.039
the disappearance of John Smith's wife, Betty fran Gladden Smith.

609
00:31:53.480 --> 00:31:56.640
Sheila told them that she was John's girlfriend. On his

610
00:31:56.759 --> 00:32:00.119
last weekend visit on December eighteenth, as he was leaving,

611
00:32:00.160 --> 00:32:02.920
he casually said, by the way, I'm married and my

612
00:32:02.960 --> 00:32:05.559
wife is missing this guy.

613
00:32:05.599 --> 00:32:08.240
Do you imagine, mare, Sheila, No, I can't imagine.

614
00:32:08.279 --> 00:32:10.279
This guy is just so strange.

615
00:32:10.319 --> 00:32:11.119
He's very odd.

616
00:32:11.640 --> 00:32:14.839
Sheila and John had been together for eight years. They

617
00:32:14.880 --> 00:32:17.400
met in nineteen eighty three when John applied for a

618
00:32:17.480 --> 00:32:21.359
job at Avco Lycoming, where Sheila was the HR manager.

619
00:32:21.920 --> 00:32:24.519
She knew that he was divorced from his first wife

620
00:32:24.559 --> 00:32:28.279
and had even met his family, his mother Grace, brother Michael,

621
00:32:28.359 --> 00:32:31.759
and grandparents Chester and ethel Cheney. They bought the house

622
00:32:31.799 --> 00:32:34.880
together and adopted the two dogs. John had moved to

623
00:32:34.920 --> 00:32:38.720
Florida for work, but Sheila stayed behind. John visited when

624
00:32:38.799 --> 00:32:42.039
he could. Between September and the last time she had

625
00:32:42.079 --> 00:32:45.799
seen him, right before Christmas, he had visited almost every weekend.

626
00:32:46.200 --> 00:32:48.880
The police asked if she would help them with their investigation,

627
00:32:49.160 --> 00:32:50.920
and she agreed tentatively.

628
00:32:51.359 --> 00:32:54.960
So remember that friend was alone a lot on the weekends,

629
00:32:55.119 --> 00:32:57.559
and John said that he was working while he was

630
00:32:57.559 --> 00:33:00.160
actually in Connecticut with Sheila.

631
00:33:00.359 --> 00:33:03.039
I mean he led a double life for a long time.

632
00:33:03.079 --> 00:33:05.960
It sounds like, well, hopefully you've gotten a sense too,

633
00:33:06.200 --> 00:33:09.400
that John moved around a lot. He was in these jobs,

634
00:33:09.480 --> 00:33:12.759
and he was constantly working at new jobs.

635
00:33:12.759 --> 00:33:16.559
Okay. By February nineteen ninety two, with no new leads

636
00:33:16.599 --> 00:33:19.720
and little information to go on, Dede and Sherry traveled

637
00:33:19.759 --> 00:33:22.920
to New Jersey. They stayed with John. While John was

638
00:33:22.920 --> 00:33:26.079
at work, they searched his condo for evidence. They found

639
00:33:26.160 --> 00:33:29.000
that Fran's closet and drawers were still filled to the brim.

640
00:33:29.400 --> 00:33:32.119
She took very few, if any, of her possessions with her,

641
00:33:32.200 --> 00:33:35.839
and Fran loved her clothing, shoe, and jewelry collections. There

642
00:33:35.880 --> 00:33:39.519
were also expensive family heirlooms left behind. It didn't make

643
00:33:39.559 --> 00:33:42.200
any sense to Deity and her aunt. It was also

644
00:33:42.279 --> 00:33:44.960
odd that John had very few possessions in the house

645
00:33:45.000 --> 00:33:48.000
and almost no food. When they found a blue comb

646
00:33:48.000 --> 00:33:51.160
in Fran's car, their worry turned to panic. While it

647
00:33:51.200 --> 00:33:53.960
seems like a trivial detail, she loved the comb and

648
00:33:54.039 --> 00:33:57.279
never left home without it. Searching through a storage closet,

649
00:33:57.319 --> 00:34:01.000
the women found one more startling thing, a yellow suitcase.

650
00:34:01.480 --> 00:34:04.119
Remember John said that she had taken a yellow suitcase

651
00:34:04.160 --> 00:34:04.839
with her right.

652
00:34:05.559 --> 00:34:08.760
They brought their findings and accounts of John's suspicious behavior

653
00:34:08.840 --> 00:34:11.840
to the police, convinced that he had done something to Fran,

654
00:34:12.320 --> 00:34:15.760
but officers told them there wasn't enough evidence to press charges.

655
00:34:16.119 --> 00:34:20.440
They were just as frustrated as the women. Devastated yet resolute,

656
00:34:20.559 --> 00:34:24.039
Deedy and Sherry returned home determined to uncover the truth

657
00:34:24.280 --> 00:34:27.360
and to make sure that John paid. They called John

658
00:34:27.440 --> 00:34:30.079
every day for a year and asked him where Fran was.

659
00:34:30.760 --> 00:34:34.480
Sherry was relentless. Over the years. John moved states and

660
00:34:34.599 --> 00:34:37.719
jobs often, and each time she found him. She told

661
00:34:37.800 --> 00:34:40.840
Dateline that she wrote letters to each new workplace, tucking

662
00:34:40.920 --> 00:34:44.320
a missing flyer of Fran inside. She wrote the letters

663
00:34:44.360 --> 00:34:47.639
not to hr. That's a waste, Sherry said. You write

664
00:34:47.639 --> 00:34:51.719
to the receptionist. She knows everything, She tells everything as.

665
00:34:51.599 --> 00:34:53.280
A farmer receptionists.

666
00:34:53.440 --> 00:34:56.679
It's very true, isn't it. I love a good story

667
00:34:56.679 --> 00:34:59.039
of a tenacious family member who is not going to

668
00:34:59.119 --> 00:35:01.000
give up and does whatever they can.

669
00:35:01.159 --> 00:35:03.480
You're going to make the emotional that these two are

670
00:35:03.599 --> 00:35:06.440
just just hats off to them. They're amazing.

671
00:35:07.239 --> 00:35:10.119
Sherry honed in on one fact that she knew about John,

672
00:35:10.280 --> 00:35:12.679
that he was from Ohio and had married a woman

673
00:35:12.760 --> 00:35:16.400
named Janice Hartman in the nineteen seventies. In Detroit. She

674
00:35:16.519 --> 00:35:19.400
called information and began dialing every Hartman with a two

675
00:35:19.440 --> 00:35:21.960
to one six area code, asking if they had a

676
00:35:22.000 --> 00:35:26.159
relative named Janice. After several days and hundreds of dollars later,

677
00:35:26.440 --> 00:35:29.920
a man named Gary Hartman in Wadsworth, Ohio, said that

678
00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:32.559
he had a sister named Janice who had married a

679
00:35:32.599 --> 00:35:36.400
man named John Smith from Seville, Ohio, in nineteen sixty nine,

680
00:35:36.679 --> 00:35:39.880
and they later divorced in November of nineteen seventy four,

681
00:35:40.199 --> 00:35:44.360
three days before Janice disappeared. When Sherry asked Gary how

682
00:35:44.400 --> 00:35:46.800
they could get in touch with Janie, his answer nearly

683
00:35:46.880 --> 00:35:49.760
knocked the breath from her. He explained that Janice had

684
00:35:49.840 --> 00:35:53.800
vanished days after her divorce from John was final. Sherry

685
00:35:53.840 --> 00:35:57.079
almost dropped the phone, her mind raised as she blurted

686
00:35:57.079 --> 00:35:59.199
out that her own sister had also been married to

687
00:35:59.280 --> 00:36:03.239
John Smith and had also disappeared. Gary later recalled the

688
00:36:03.239 --> 00:36:06.000
haunting moment, the hair on the back of my neck

689
00:36:06.119 --> 00:36:10.039
literally stood up. I couldn't speak for several seconds. DeeDee

690
00:36:10.039 --> 00:36:12.599
and her Anne then turned to the media, appearing on

691
00:36:12.679 --> 00:36:16.000
news magazine programs like a current affair and hard copy

692
00:36:16.280 --> 00:36:19.679
in hopes of drawing public attention to Fran's disappearance, and

693
00:36:19.719 --> 00:36:24.119
their efforts worked. Soon reporters were following John Smith under

694
00:36:24.119 --> 00:36:27.400
the spotlight. He made several awkward remarks. He told one

695
00:36:27.440 --> 00:36:30.880
reporter quote, the feeling is one of disappointment. I would

696
00:36:30.880 --> 00:36:33.239
have hoped fran would have been home by now. He

697
00:36:33.360 --> 00:36:36.000
suggested that DeeDee and Sherry didn't know all the facts

698
00:36:36.000 --> 00:36:39.400
about Franz's disappearance, saying, when you don't know what happened,

699
00:36:39.400 --> 00:36:41.599
you just have to look at all the angles. And

700
00:36:41.719 --> 00:36:43.880
when asked about the fact that both of his wives

701
00:36:43.880 --> 00:36:46.880
had gone missing, he brushed it off as one of

702
00:36:46.920 --> 00:36:52.960
those strange coincidences. Ye strange coincidence. John Gary Hartman, Janis's brother,

703
00:36:53.159 --> 00:36:56.280
was also talking to the media. He told the Trenorian

704
00:36:56.400 --> 00:36:59.960
newspaper that John fit all the characteristics of a sociopath

705
00:37:00.079 --> 00:37:04.599
to a tee. He lied, pathologically, manipulated people, and showed

706
00:37:04.679 --> 00:37:08.440
little remorse or empathy. His co workers, too, were relentless

707
00:37:08.519 --> 00:37:11.639
teasing and pulling pranks on him, once leaving a mannequin

708
00:37:11.719 --> 00:37:15.320
covered in ketchup in his locker. Oh man, we'll be

709
00:37:15.400 --> 00:37:16.519
back after a break.

710
00:37:24.039 --> 00:37:28.239
The Wayne County, Ohio Sheriff's Department sits near Wooster, about

711
00:37:28.239 --> 00:37:31.960
fifty miles southwest of Cleveland, a small community known for

712
00:37:32.039 --> 00:37:35.360
its fertile farmland and small town charm is home to

713
00:37:35.400 --> 00:37:38.360
the College of Wooster and has a vibrant downtown filled

714
00:37:38.400 --> 00:37:43.199
with shops, restaurants, and historic architecture. Surrounding Wooster are thriving

715
00:37:43.320 --> 00:37:46.239
Amish and Mennonite communities, which have been part of the

716
00:37:46.280 --> 00:37:50.159
area since the nineteenth century. Their presence has shaped Wayne

717
00:37:50.199 --> 00:37:54.639
County's agricultural heritage and cultural identity, giving the region a

718
00:37:54.840 --> 00:37:58.440
unique character that blends tradition with modern life. If you

719
00:37:58.480 --> 00:38:02.159
remember back at the beginning, said that John was Mennonite,

720
00:38:02.679 --> 00:38:05.199
and I really wasn't able to find any more information

721
00:38:05.320 --> 00:38:08.039
about that, and I am curious as to how it

722
00:38:08.119 --> 00:38:11.280
shaped his upbringing. Yeah, I really don't have any other

723
00:38:11.519 --> 00:38:15.079
information on that fourth story. In March nineteen ninety two,

724
00:38:15.679 --> 00:38:19.199
Detective Brian Potts sat at his desk and Booster when

725
00:38:19.199 --> 00:38:21.760
his phone rang. On the other end of the line

726
00:38:21.920 --> 00:38:26.360
was Detective Dansbury from the West Windsor Township Police Department,

727
00:38:26.400 --> 00:38:30.239
inquiring about the investigation Wayne County had done into the

728
00:38:30.280 --> 00:38:34.559
disappearance of Janice Hartman Smith in November nineteen seventy four.

729
00:38:35.000 --> 00:38:38.719
Potts dug up the police report, which described Janis as petite,

730
00:38:38.880 --> 00:38:42.800
pretty blonde haired, much like Fran Both women were friendly

731
00:38:42.840 --> 00:38:47.280
and warm. Janie, the report continued, frequented several bars and

732
00:38:47.440 --> 00:38:50.920
was known to be boisterous. The following incident was included

733
00:38:50.920 --> 00:38:54.679
in the report. Complaintant John Smith advised that he was

734
00:38:54.679 --> 00:38:59.239
with Janis at sun Valley Bar on eleven seventeen. Complaint

735
00:38:59.239 --> 00:39:01.599
advised that she was with another friend at the time,

736
00:39:01.920 --> 00:39:06.480
but he can't advise name, only descriptions. Stocky man with mustache.

737
00:39:06.800 --> 00:39:09.960
Complaint advised his wife was to meet at John Richardson

738
00:39:10.039 --> 00:39:13.639
there at twenty two hundred hours. Complaintant then left Janie.

739
00:39:14.079 --> 00:39:18.159
Janis later took Kathy Paradon home. Kathy advised a man

740
00:39:18.280 --> 00:39:20.559
was with Janis at the time, but she did not

741
00:39:20.760 --> 00:39:23.960
know who the man was. Complaint advised that Janie must

742
00:39:24.000 --> 00:39:28.320
have returned home sometime on Monday eleven, eighteen seventy four

743
00:39:28.639 --> 00:39:31.639
in early morning hours, as her car was back at

744
00:39:31.719 --> 00:39:35.079
Lot one sixty seven Melrose when he got up. He

745
00:39:35.199 --> 00:39:37.679
advised that he didn't think much about her not being there.

746
00:39:37.719 --> 00:39:40.079
Because he thought that someone had picked her up to

747
00:39:40.119 --> 00:39:43.519
take her into Wooster to file charges against Ron Pamer

748
00:39:43.599 --> 00:39:46.800
and several others. She has not been seen since taking

749
00:39:46.880 --> 00:39:50.519
Kathy parrod On home. Kathy advised Mail and Carr when

750
00:39:50.559 --> 00:39:54.320
she went home. Was white male, dark hair, beard, medium

751
00:39:54.440 --> 00:39:57.920
billed with a bad case of acne. County Alert was

752
00:39:58.039 --> 00:40:02.559
given to summarize Janis Hartman's final night was clouded in

753
00:40:02.719 --> 00:40:07.119
uncertainty and conflicting accounts. Although her family believed she was

754
00:40:07.159 --> 00:40:10.079
divorced from John Smith, he claimed that she was still

755
00:40:10.119 --> 00:40:13.480
living with him in Wooster in a trailer park. On

756
00:40:13.519 --> 00:40:17.119
November seventeenth, nineteen seventy four, Janis and John were seen

757
00:40:17.159 --> 00:40:20.039
at the Sun Valley Bar in Doylestown, where she was

758
00:40:20.119 --> 00:40:25.719
also accompanied by an unidentified stocky man, possibly named John Richardson,

759
00:40:26.000 --> 00:40:28.079
that she was supposed to meet that night, but it

760
00:40:28.119 --> 00:40:31.960
was unclear. Later, she reportedly took her friend Kathy home

761
00:40:32.320 --> 00:40:35.719
and this man accompanied her. He had a bushy mustache

762
00:40:35.760 --> 00:40:40.199
and bad acne, raising further questions about who she was

763
00:40:40.239 --> 00:40:44.000
really with. Investigators tried to track down Richardson, but a

764
00:40:44.079 --> 00:40:49.119
James Richardson in Doylestown denied involvement again leaving it unclear

765
00:40:49.199 --> 00:40:53.079
whether he or someone else was with Janie. The next morning,

766
00:40:53.199 --> 00:40:56.360
John Smith found Jan's Mustang at his Wooster mobile home,

767
00:40:56.440 --> 00:40:59.280
but assumed that she was staying with a friend. Her

768
00:40:59.320 --> 00:41:02.840
disappearance was especially troubling because it occurred just before she

769
00:41:03.000 --> 00:41:07.519
was scheduled to file criminal charges against several men, suggesting

770
00:41:07.519 --> 00:41:10.719
a possible motive. Remember those men that had attacked her

771
00:41:10.800 --> 00:41:16.079
right Conflicting witness accounts, questionable identifications, and references to other

772
00:41:16.159 --> 00:41:22.239
cases left investigators piecing together a confusing and mysterious timeline.

773
00:41:22.360 --> 00:41:24.840
Perhaps because she worked as a go go dancer and

774
00:41:24.880 --> 00:41:28.360
spent time drinking in bars, law enforcement didn't put much

775
00:41:28.400 --> 00:41:32.000
effort into finding her. There was never a formal investigation

776
00:41:32.079 --> 00:41:36.000
into her disappearance. Her car and mobile home were never searched.

777
00:41:36.400 --> 00:41:39.480
No one was questioned until years later, not even the

778
00:41:39.519 --> 00:41:41.760
men who had attempted to sexually assault her.

779
00:41:42.440 --> 00:41:45.239
That's really crazy. I thought maybe they didn't figure it

780
00:41:45.239 --> 00:41:49.239
out because there were a lot of potential culprits involved here,

781
00:41:49.320 --> 00:41:51.079
But it sounds like they didn't really do their job

782
00:41:51.159 --> 00:41:52.760
and do a thorough investigation.

783
00:41:52.760 --> 00:41:54.880
Money es Actually, if she was working with them, it

784
00:41:54.920 --> 00:41:57.719
seemed like they would have a lot of interest in

785
00:41:57.960 --> 00:42:02.280
helping to find right exactly. Betty, Janis's mother, was devastated

786
00:42:02.320 --> 00:42:06.920
by her daughter's disappearance. She relentlessly pressed law enforcement, reached

787
00:42:06.920 --> 00:42:10.639
out to the FBI, contacted her governor and senators, and

788
00:42:10.840 --> 00:42:14.280
even hired a private investigator. But despite her efforts, the

789
00:42:14.320 --> 00:42:18.119
trail went cold. Refusing to believe that Janie was dead.

790
00:42:18.360 --> 00:42:21.280
Each year, her mother still bought and wrapped Birthday and

791
00:42:21.400 --> 00:42:24.800
Christmas presents for her. And as for John, he never

792
00:42:24.800 --> 00:42:26.840
followed up with Betty or the police to see how

793
00:42:26.880 --> 00:42:30.719
the investigation was going. In nineteen ninety two, Betty was

794
00:42:30.760 --> 00:42:33.440
moved to erect a tombstone for her daughter in their

795
00:42:33.480 --> 00:42:37.360
family plot, eighteen years after she vanished. I just felt

796
00:42:37.360 --> 00:42:39.719
like she needed a place. I wanted to show that

797
00:42:39.800 --> 00:42:41.360
she had passed through this world.

798
00:42:41.960 --> 00:42:44.440
That is really heartbreaking, it really is.

799
00:42:44.519 --> 00:42:48.559
I don't know how families go on when someone is missing.

800
00:42:48.599 --> 00:42:50.920
Yeah, for eighteen years, that's a long time.

801
00:42:51.239 --> 00:42:54.599
After Janie disappeared, John moved back and with his grandparents

802
00:42:54.679 --> 00:42:58.039
and bought a flashy Mustang. By summer, he had landed

803
00:42:58.079 --> 00:43:01.559
a solid management job and started dating a woman named Sandy.

804
00:43:01.920 --> 00:43:04.840
Before long, the two were living together. He told Sandy

805
00:43:04.880 --> 00:43:07.159
how much he loved his first wife, but explained that

806
00:43:07.280 --> 00:43:10.960
she'd been killed after becoming addicted to drugs and owing

807
00:43:11.119 --> 00:43:12.159
her dealer's money.

808
00:43:12.440 --> 00:43:14.559
He told someone else that she joined a cult, right

809
00:43:14.679 --> 00:43:15.360
or a commune.

810
00:43:15.599 --> 00:43:19.360
Yeah, But Detective Potts wasn't going to give up on Janis.

811
00:43:19.639 --> 00:43:23.840
Wayne County decided to reopen her case. Potts sent over

812
00:43:23.920 --> 00:43:27.719
one hundred letters to every coroner and police station in Ohio,

813
00:43:28.079 --> 00:43:31.679
both big and small, seeking help in the investigation, although

814
00:43:31.679 --> 00:43:33.840
he didn't receive any promising leads.

815
00:43:34.079 --> 00:43:37.639
So this reopening the investigation on Janis. This happened after

816
00:43:37.880 --> 00:43:40.119
Fran's disappearance. Yes, okay, just want to make sure you

817
00:43:40.159 --> 00:43:40.880
have the timeline right.

818
00:43:41.119 --> 00:43:43.760
So the New Jersey detectives came to Ohio to work

819
00:43:43.800 --> 00:43:47.960
together on their related cases. They started by interviewing John's family,

820
00:43:48.000 --> 00:43:51.119
who weren't much help. They weren't a close family. Many

821
00:43:51.159 --> 00:43:53.639
of them were a strange and didn't know that John

822
00:43:53.719 --> 00:43:58.039
had remarried. They hadn't even met Fran. Investigators were able

823
00:43:58.119 --> 00:44:01.000
to track down Kathy Parrodon, who had been with Janis

824
00:44:01.039 --> 00:44:03.400
on the night that she went missing. She claimed that

825
00:44:03.440 --> 00:44:06.239
she did remember John Smith or much of that night.

826
00:44:06.800 --> 00:44:10.440
After traveling to Ohio, the New Jersey detectives felt confident

827
00:44:10.480 --> 00:44:14.039
that John Smith was involved in both of his wife's disappearances.

828
00:44:14.440 --> 00:44:17.480
In April nineteen ninety two, they searched his condo, car,

829
00:44:17.599 --> 00:44:20.039
and office and asked him to come to the police

830
00:44:20.079 --> 00:44:22.960
station for an interview. Nothing of note was found in

831
00:44:23.039 --> 00:44:27.199
his condo, but two yellow suitcases that Fran's daughter had

832
00:44:27.239 --> 00:44:30.920
found were still there, and police thought that was significant,

833
00:44:31.280 --> 00:44:34.920
along with the full closet and drawers. Nothing seemed to

834
00:44:34.960 --> 00:44:37.920
be missing. When the police asked John for a photo

835
00:44:37.960 --> 00:44:40.920
of Fran, he'd originally claimed that she was camera shy

836
00:44:41.119 --> 00:44:43.519
and that he didn't have any photos of her. Now

837
00:44:43.559 --> 00:44:46.519
that they'd been inside of his condo, they realized that

838
00:44:46.559 --> 00:44:49.320
he had been lying. There was no shortage of pictures

839
00:44:49.320 --> 00:44:50.840
of Fran, a former model.

840
00:44:50.880 --> 00:44:53.679
What a weird thing to lie about, which is very strange.

841
00:44:53.880 --> 00:44:56.400
John was questioned for twelve hours and submitted to a

842
00:44:56.440 --> 00:45:00.440
polygraph exam, which he failed. They questioned him about Nis.

843
00:45:00.760 --> 00:45:03.760
The detectives knew that Janie's musting had been found by

844
00:45:03.840 --> 00:45:06.559
John's mobile home, but he told them it had been

845
00:45:06.599 --> 00:45:09.320
found on the highway one hundred miles from Seville, with

846
00:45:09.400 --> 00:45:14.039
the doors opened. John was calm and unflappable during the interview,

847
00:45:14.280 --> 00:45:17.719
which was unsettling to the detectives. He displayed no emotion,

848
00:45:18.119 --> 00:45:20.480
never went to the bathroom, ate a bite of food,

849
00:45:20.840 --> 00:45:23.559
took a drink of water, or even removed his coat.

850
00:45:23.880 --> 00:45:26.039
Each time he told the story of what happened to

851
00:45:26.079 --> 00:45:30.360
his wife's it shifted slightly. He struck them as a

852
00:45:30.400 --> 00:45:34.639
compulsive liar and a master manipulator. After John was allowed

853
00:45:34.639 --> 00:45:38.480
to go home, Sheila, John's girlfriend, called him from Connecticut.

854
00:45:38.920 --> 00:45:42.760
Unbeknownst to John, law enforcement sat with her recording the call.

855
00:45:43.320 --> 00:45:46.480
Sheila told John that police had told her about Janice

856
00:45:46.639 --> 00:45:49.039
and showed her pictures. Who is she?

857
00:45:49.719 --> 00:45:52.320
Janis Hartman was my first wife when I was nineteen

858
00:45:52.400 --> 00:45:52.920
years old.

859
00:45:53.159 --> 00:45:54.039
What happened to her?

860
00:45:54.360 --> 00:45:57.119
Janis Hartman and I got divorced, I left the area.

861
00:45:57.320 --> 00:45:59.360
I have not seen Janis since I left, and I

862
00:45:59.400 --> 00:46:02.320
reported her missing. I found out today that in all

863
00:46:02.360 --> 00:46:04.920
these years, that she's never been found and that she

864
00:46:05.000 --> 00:46:09.079
was legally declared dead. That's it, point blank, simple facts.

865
00:46:09.400 --> 00:46:10.440
Do you know her family?

866
00:46:10.880 --> 00:46:13.199
No, I don't know her family, and no I haven't

867
00:46:13.239 --> 00:46:14.159
talked to her family.

868
00:46:14.559 --> 00:46:16.360
How could you not talk to her family?

869
00:46:16.880 --> 00:46:19.519
We were divorced. I thought that she was headed her way,

870
00:46:19.559 --> 00:46:21.679
and I headed my way. I mean, I didn't know

871
00:46:21.760 --> 00:46:23.199
she was missing all these years.

872
00:46:23.239 --> 00:46:25.880
You know, how could you not know that she was missing?

873
00:46:26.199 --> 00:46:29.079
Did anyone? Like, no one told you that she was missing?

874
00:46:29.400 --> 00:46:31.599
No one told me she was missing. All this time,

875
00:46:31.880 --> 00:46:34.000
I thought she was back with her family. By now,

876
00:46:34.159 --> 00:46:37.119
I hadn't maintained any contact. I didn't know it. I

877
00:46:37.159 --> 00:46:39.760
didn't know. I didn't know that. I didn't know that

878
00:46:39.800 --> 00:46:42.440
she was still missing all this time until today. I

879
00:46:42.480 --> 00:46:44.840
didn't know that she was still gone until today. I

880
00:46:44.840 --> 00:46:47.360
didn't know that she was declared legally dead until today.

881
00:46:47.880 --> 00:46:52.440
Well, let's get real simple here, okay, I mean real simple. Okay,

882
00:46:52.760 --> 00:46:55.760
let's just start with honesty. Right, You've got to start

883
00:46:55.800 --> 00:46:58.519
with honesty. You've just got to lay it on the line.

884
00:46:58.639 --> 00:46:59.920
I have started with honest.

885
00:47:00.559 --> 00:47:03.400
Here you are in your condo, this is totally Everything

886
00:47:03.480 --> 00:47:06.760
is just falling to pieces because you're lying to everyone

887
00:47:06.800 --> 00:47:07.360
around you.

888
00:47:07.800 --> 00:47:08.559
That's correct.

889
00:47:08.840 --> 00:47:11.719
Okay. So the officers now had John lying on tape,

890
00:47:12.000 --> 00:47:15.320
and while it was progress, it wasn't enough. There still

891
00:47:15.400 --> 00:47:19.400
wasn't any evidence tying him directly to Janis's disappearance.

892
00:47:19.800 --> 00:47:22.440
John Is just so weird getting trying to get in

893
00:47:22.519 --> 00:47:24.159
his head. There really is messed with me.

894
00:47:24.760 --> 00:47:27.119
I'm so sorry. I'm going to have to ask you

895
00:47:27.159 --> 00:47:28.639
to do it again later too.

896
00:47:29.000 --> 00:47:32.360
John grew tired of the attention and accusations in New Jersey,

897
00:47:32.559 --> 00:47:35.719
quit his job and moved to Connecticut to his little house.

898
00:47:36.159 --> 00:47:38.559
Sheila had broken things off with him and moved out.

899
00:47:39.039 --> 00:47:42.079
John met a sex worker named Janie Miller, who lived

900
00:47:42.119 --> 00:47:45.239
with him for a short time. After that relationship ended,

901
00:47:45.320 --> 00:47:47.599
John moved to New Hampshire and worked for a company

902
00:47:47.599 --> 00:47:51.199
that made labels and began dating a coworker briefly before

903
00:47:51.239 --> 00:47:54.519
he returned to Ohio in early nineteen ninety four to

904
00:47:54.559 --> 00:47:57.480
help his mother run the family real estate business after

905
00:47:57.519 --> 00:48:01.519
his stepfather's death. The business was very successful, worth almost

906
00:48:01.559 --> 00:48:05.000
thirty million dollars. John got into legal trouble in nineteen

907
00:48:05.079 --> 00:48:08.679
ninety seven when, after a car accident, he provided law

908
00:48:08.719 --> 00:48:12.840
enforcement with a false social security number. His driver's license

909
00:48:12.920 --> 00:48:16.760
was suspended, but he had continued to drive. Detective seized

910
00:48:16.760 --> 00:48:19.400
the opportunity and pulled him over and hauled him in

911
00:48:19.440 --> 00:48:24.119
for questioning. Again in the disappearances of the two missus Smiths, again,

912
00:48:24.159 --> 00:48:27.920
the Ohio and New Jersey detectives worked together. They kept

913
00:48:27.960 --> 00:48:30.760
Smith there for ten hours, but in the five years

914
00:48:30.760 --> 00:48:33.119
since they had last questioned him, there had been no

915
00:48:33.239 --> 00:48:36.679
new evidence and John was still slippery. They let him go,

916
00:48:36.880 --> 00:48:40.079
frustrated that they still didn't have enough probable cause for

917
00:48:40.199 --> 00:48:44.199
a rest. Soon after, John Smith disappeared from Ohio and

918
00:48:44.320 --> 00:48:47.039
law enforcement lost track of him for a couple of years.

919
00:48:47.239 --> 00:48:49.840
So this is the benefit of having the name John Smith.

920
00:48:49.920 --> 00:48:53.599
He was able to fly under the radar or move

921
00:48:53.639 --> 00:48:56.079
to a different area and they couldn't track him down.

922
00:48:56.199 --> 00:48:59.480
Yeah, I can imagine. The disappearances of Janice and Franz

923
00:48:59.519 --> 00:49:03.679
Smith haunted Detective Michael Dansbury of the West Windsor Police Department.

924
00:49:04.159 --> 00:49:06.679
He was convinced John had been involved in both of

925
00:49:06.719 --> 00:49:10.519
his wife's vanishings and was determined to prove it. Enter

926
00:49:10.679 --> 00:49:14.440
Bob hilland after seven years with the West Windsor Township

927
00:49:14.480 --> 00:49:17.559
Police hilland moved to the FBI's New York office in

928
00:49:17.639 --> 00:49:20.840
nineteen ninety seven. Early in his career, back when he

929
00:49:20.920 --> 00:49:23.559
was still a rookie patrolman, he had looked at John

930
00:49:23.559 --> 00:49:26.159
Smith in the eye and he had never forgotten the

931
00:49:26.239 --> 00:49:31.119
unsettling interaction. Years later, while catching up with Dansbury one afternoon,

932
00:49:31.320 --> 00:49:35.880
their conversation turned to his frustration over Smith's unknown whereabouts.

933
00:49:36.360 --> 00:49:39.719
Hilland now part of the FBI's cold case homicide unit,

934
00:49:40.000 --> 00:49:42.920
thought he might be able to help. His superiors told

935
00:49:42.960 --> 00:49:45.039
him he would have to pursue the case on his

936
00:49:45.119 --> 00:49:48.519
own time, and he agreed with that. He set out

937
00:49:48.559 --> 00:49:51.440
to re examine the evidence. Determined to bring a fresh

938
00:49:51.519 --> 00:49:55.000
set of eyes to the investigation, and he started from scratch.

939
00:49:55.559 --> 00:49:59.159
Bob worked with the FBI's profilers to better understand Smith.

940
00:49:59.519 --> 00:50:03.199
He used every resource at his hand to pinpoint John's location.

941
00:50:03.840 --> 00:50:06.639
Tracking down a man named John Smith wasn't easy, but

942
00:50:07.039 --> 00:50:10.800
investigators eventually located him near San Diego. Working at a

943
00:50:10.880 --> 00:50:15.320
high end Italian auto customization company called La Forza, where

944
00:50:15.360 --> 00:50:18.519
he was part owner. Bob found that John was renting

945
00:50:18.559 --> 00:50:22.000
a room from a coworker and dating a woman named Diane,

946
00:50:22.039 --> 00:50:25.440
whom he went on to marry in September nineteen ninety eight.

947
00:50:25.880 --> 00:50:28.800
She later told the FBI that John was very secretive

948
00:50:28.840 --> 00:50:31.480
about his past. She only knew that he had a

949
00:50:31.519 --> 00:50:34.480
wife who had died of cancer. John kept a large

950
00:50:34.519 --> 00:50:36.079
photo of Fran in their house.

951
00:50:36.400 --> 00:50:37.079
Isn't that weird.

952
00:50:37.320 --> 00:50:40.639
That is very weird. A neighbor in the apartment complex

953
00:50:40.639 --> 00:50:43.960
where Diane and John lived told the Akron Beacon Journal

954
00:50:44.000 --> 00:50:47.840
that John was unfriendly. Quote, he stayed to himself, He

955
00:50:47.880 --> 00:50:50.679
didn't talk to anyone. He was weird. He never went

956
00:50:50.719 --> 00:50:55.320
to the mailbox, and he always drove fancy cars Ferrari Maserati.

957
00:50:55.679 --> 00:50:58.800
They seemed like the perfect couple. She didn't say much either.

958
00:50:59.199 --> 00:51:01.480
I guess you can go into any neighborhood, no matter

959
00:51:01.519 --> 00:51:04.960
how nice, and people have their own little secrets. Because

960
00:51:05.039 --> 00:51:08.079
John Smith had lived in at least six different states,

961
00:51:08.280 --> 00:51:11.239
the FBI began to wonder if Janis and fran weren't

962
00:51:11.280 --> 00:51:14.440
his only victims. He certainly seemed to have away with

963
00:51:14.559 --> 00:51:17.679
women and was never single for long. Could they have

964
00:51:17.719 --> 00:51:20.599
a serial killer on their hands? I was kind of

965
00:51:20.639 --> 00:51:25.079
wondering that myself. On May fifth, nineteen ninety nine, twenty

966
00:51:25.119 --> 00:51:29.159
five FBI agents and detectives quietly fanned out across the

967
00:51:29.199 --> 00:51:35.480
country to interview people from John's past ex girlfriends, friends, relatives, acquaintances,

968
00:51:35.880 --> 00:51:39.840
while preparing to question John himself. The timing was deliberate,

969
00:51:40.119 --> 00:51:42.800
they didn't want word getting back to him. Among those

970
00:51:42.880 --> 00:51:46.400
interviewed was his brother, Michael, whom agents believed knew more

971
00:51:46.440 --> 00:51:49.840
than he had admitted previously. John agreed to come in

972
00:51:49.840 --> 00:51:53.000
for an interview. It took place at a nondescript holiday

973
00:51:53.039 --> 00:51:56.920
in express. John again didn't request a lawyer. As the

974
00:51:56.960 --> 00:52:00.480
interview began, agent Hillans showed him a photo John in

975
00:52:00.519 --> 00:52:03.880
the center, surrounded by the twenty five people being questioned

976
00:52:03.880 --> 00:52:07.920
that same day, spokes radiating out like a wheel. Hill

977
00:52:08.000 --> 00:52:11.719
and told John they were all being interviewed simultaneously. As

978
00:52:11.760 --> 00:52:16.079
the implication sank in, John shifted uneasily. His typical composure

979
00:52:16.280 --> 00:52:19.360
faltered when agents pressed him on every crack in his

980
00:52:19.480 --> 00:52:22.559
story about his missing wives. The weight of it finally

981
00:52:22.599 --> 00:52:25.599
broke him. My life is a nightmare. I'm tired of

982
00:52:25.639 --> 00:52:29.280
living this nightmare. I want the nightmare to end. Those

983
00:52:29.320 --> 00:52:32.400
words were music to the agent's ears. They could feel

984
00:52:32.440 --> 00:52:37.119
a confession coming, But soon John's demeanor shifted again. He

985
00:52:37.199 --> 00:52:41.039
began to cry, complaining of an excruciating headache and asked

986
00:52:41.079 --> 00:52:44.119
for a leave. While one agent ran to a nearby

987
00:52:44.159 --> 00:52:47.519
pharmacy to get the pain reliever. John sat rocking back

988
00:52:47.559 --> 00:52:50.159
and forth in the fetal position under a blanket on

989
00:52:50.199 --> 00:52:52.880
the couch. Moments later, he said he wanted to go

990
00:52:52.920 --> 00:52:55.480
to the hospital. He thought he was having a heart attack.

991
00:52:55.920 --> 00:52:59.599
The medical emergency cut the moment short, abruptly ending what

992
00:52:59.679 --> 00:53:03.960
agents believe was nearly a confession. When E. Mts arrived,

993
00:53:04.039 --> 00:53:06.440
they found no heart problem, but they needed to bring

994
00:53:06.519 --> 00:53:09.000
him to the hospital to be sure. As he was

995
00:53:09.039 --> 00:53:12.559
being wheeled out on a gurney, he winked at Agent Hillend.

996
00:53:12.880 --> 00:53:16.400
Oh can you imagine, Oh, Agent Hillen must have been

997
00:53:16.440 --> 00:53:17.559
ready to choke him.

998
00:53:17.639 --> 00:53:19.079
I think he really wanted to.

999
00:53:20.039 --> 00:53:24.400
Meanwhile, in Ohio, agents questioned John's younger brother, Michael. He

1000
00:53:24.440 --> 00:53:26.960
worked as a handyman for some of his mother's rental

1001
00:53:26.960 --> 00:53:30.800
properties and carried a quiet resentment toward John, who had

1002
00:53:30.800 --> 00:53:34.639
always been the favored son. Investigators new Michael had once

1003
00:53:34.719 --> 00:53:38.159
warned female tenants to stay away from his brother, calling

1004
00:53:38.239 --> 00:53:41.920
John dangerous, but when pressed, he denied ever saying it.

1005
00:53:42.440 --> 00:53:46.199
They also interviewed John's new wife, Diane. She was stunned

1006
00:53:46.239 --> 00:53:49.119
to discover that her husband had been married twice before,

1007
00:53:49.480 --> 00:53:53.519
and that both of those wives had vanished under suspicious circumstances.

1008
00:53:53.920 --> 00:53:57.119
I can't even imagine that feeling, like finding out you're

1009
00:53:57.159 --> 00:54:01.119
married to someone who had two wives disappeared suspiciously.

1010
00:54:01.400 --> 00:54:02.519
Yeah, poor Diane.

1011
00:54:02.639 --> 00:54:04.079
Yeah, well, lucky Diane.

1012
00:54:04.320 --> 00:54:04.760
Yeah.

1013
00:54:05.000 --> 00:54:08.000
About two weeks after his meeting with the FBI, guilt

1014
00:54:08.039 --> 00:54:11.800
began to gnaw at Michael Smith. Janie haunted his dreams,

1015
00:54:11.960 --> 00:54:16.039
appearing again and again in nightmares that he couldn't shake. Finally,

1016
00:54:16.079 --> 00:54:19.440
he decided he couldn't stay silent any longer. He had

1017
00:54:19.440 --> 00:54:23.079
to tell authorities what he knew. He recalled to investigators

1018
00:54:23.079 --> 00:54:26.960
that in nineteen seventy four, before the Ohio State Michigan game,

1019
00:54:27.280 --> 00:54:30.079
John had asked him to load bags of women's clothing

1020
00:54:30.159 --> 00:54:33.440
into his van. They drove to their grandparents' house, where

1021
00:54:33.480 --> 00:54:36.760
Michael settled in to watch the game while John disappeared

1022
00:54:36.760 --> 00:54:40.360
into the garage. At halftime, curiosity got the better of him,

1023
00:54:40.559 --> 00:54:42.960
and he went to check on his brother. John was

1024
00:54:43.039 --> 00:54:46.599
crafting a crude box made out of plywood, an oblong

1025
00:54:46.679 --> 00:54:48.840
box about a foot and a half wide and four

1026
00:54:48.880 --> 00:54:52.440
feet long. He said it was for Janis's belongings, but

1027
00:54:52.559 --> 00:54:55.199
Michael thought the box was too long and skinny to

1028
00:54:55.239 --> 00:54:58.039
be of much use. John told him that jan had

1029
00:54:58.039 --> 00:55:00.880
been working as a drug informant and was going into

1030
00:55:00.920 --> 00:55:04.800
a witness protection program. Michael said that John was emotional

1031
00:55:04.840 --> 00:55:08.800
while building the box, even shedding a tear. John filled

1032
00:55:08.800 --> 00:55:11.239
the box with Janis's clothing and stored it, and his

1033
00:55:11.320 --> 00:55:15.559
grandparents rarely used garage for five years until one day

1034
00:55:15.599 --> 00:55:18.840
in nineteen seventy nine when Chester called Michael in a

1035
00:55:18.880 --> 00:55:22.039
panic and asked him to come over. Together, they pried

1036
00:55:22.079 --> 00:55:26.519
the lid off of the box. Inside they found women's clothing, bones,

1037
00:55:26.760 --> 00:55:29.679
and what appeared to be hair that Michael described as

1038
00:55:29.800 --> 00:55:33.199
rainbow in color. Poking around the box. A skull with

1039
00:55:33.320 --> 00:55:36.280
skin stretched over it like a mummy, looked back at them.

1040
00:55:36.639 --> 00:55:39.800
Michael said it was undeniably Janis's face.

1041
00:55:40.039 --> 00:55:44.039
Although investigators said that this was not possible. I'll explain

1042
00:55:44.119 --> 00:55:45.599
when we get to the end, okay.

1043
00:55:46.159 --> 00:55:49.039
Michael told his grandfather that they had to call the police.

1044
00:55:49.480 --> 00:55:52.360
Ethel and Chester were both in failing health, with Ethel

1045
00:55:52.440 --> 00:55:55.880
recovering from a recent heart attack. Chester asked Michael not

1046
00:55:56.000 --> 00:55:59.639
to call the police. It was a brutal decision. Michael said,

1047
00:56:00.079 --> 00:56:03.119
I did not want to kill my grandmother. Unfortunately, there

1048
00:56:03.159 --> 00:56:05.280
was nothing I could do for her. The person in

1049
00:56:05.320 --> 00:56:07.800
the box. I did not want to kill my grandmother.

1050
00:56:08.440 --> 00:56:11.239
Chester ordered Michael to call his brother with a warning,

1051
00:56:11.800 --> 00:56:14.119
come get the box and never set foot in his

1052
00:56:14.199 --> 00:56:17.760
house or contact him again. He had kept John's secret,

1053
00:56:17.880 --> 00:56:21.360
but it came at a price. In Hammond, Indiana, John

1054
00:56:21.400 --> 00:56:24.000
got the message and tore off toward the house in

1055
00:56:24.039 --> 00:56:27.199
his sleek new black corvette with the tea tops removed.

1056
00:56:27.639 --> 00:56:29.920
During the drive, he had had enough time to conjure

1057
00:56:29.920 --> 00:56:33.159
a tale to tell his grandfather and Michael. John told

1058
00:56:33.199 --> 00:56:36.360
them that two men, allegedly an FBI agent and a

1059
00:56:36.360 --> 00:56:39.800
Wayne County Sheriff's deputy, had drugged him or knocked him out.

1060
00:56:40.159 --> 00:56:42.800
When he regained consciousness, he claimed he was in a

1061
00:56:42.800 --> 00:56:46.239
warehouse with Janis dead beside him, while the men laughed,

1062
00:56:46.280 --> 00:56:49.159
saying they would frame him for murder. He said he

1063
00:56:49.199 --> 00:56:51.480
was knocked out again and later woke in a trailer

1064
00:56:51.519 --> 00:56:54.920
in Wooster, Ohio, still with Janis's body, which he then

1065
00:56:55.000 --> 00:56:57.480
put in his van and drove away just as a

1066
00:56:57.480 --> 00:57:00.519
sheriff's car arrived. Well, it seemed like a perfectly plausible

1067
00:57:00.559 --> 00:57:01.719
story to me, So.

1068
00:57:01.599 --> 00:57:04.079
He can lie just as easily as he breathes.

1069
00:57:04.239 --> 00:57:08.000
Yeah, Michael admitted he wanted to believe his brother's story,

1070
00:57:08.119 --> 00:57:11.199
no matter how outrageous, because of their bond as brothers.

1071
00:57:11.639 --> 00:57:15.000
He struggled between accepting the bazaar tale or facing the

1072
00:57:15.039 --> 00:57:18.400
possibility that his brother had killed Janis, whom he had

1073
00:57:18.440 --> 00:57:22.280
genuinely loved. John loaded the box into his corvette. It

1074
00:57:22.360 --> 00:57:24.840
was a tight fit. They never spoke of it again,

1075
00:57:24.920 --> 00:57:28.760
although his relationship with his family was forever changed. One

1076
00:57:28.840 --> 00:57:31.840
last detail Michael provided to police was that one of

1077
00:57:31.880 --> 00:57:35.199
the properties he helped his family manage, a complex called

1078
00:57:35.320 --> 00:57:39.800
Grace Lane Apartments, was constructing garages in nineteen seventy nine.

1079
00:57:40.239 --> 00:57:42.440
He had mentioned to John that concrete would be poor

1080
00:57:42.559 --> 00:57:44.719
the next day and that might be a good way

1081
00:57:44.760 --> 00:57:49.079
to dispose of Janis's remains. Finally, twenty five years after

1082
00:57:49.159 --> 00:57:53.280
Janis's disappearance, Michael Smith had unburdened his soul and provided

1083
00:57:53.360 --> 00:57:57.320
law enforcement with information that could finally put John behind bars,

1084
00:57:57.719 --> 00:57:59.760
but there was still no evidence to back up his

1085
00:57:59.840 --> 00:58:03.599
eye landish story. The next day, a reliable search dog

1086
00:58:03.679 --> 00:58:06.760
named Eagle went to the Grace Lane Apartments and promptly

1087
00:58:06.760 --> 00:58:10.559
alerted on one particular garage floor. A large slab of

1088
00:58:10.599 --> 00:58:14.360
the garage floor was removed with small hand tools and screens.

1089
00:58:14.440 --> 00:58:18.119
The dirt beneath was searched for human remains. Fragments from

1090
00:58:18.159 --> 00:58:21.679
two teeth were found, a canine and an incisor, but

1091
00:58:21.760 --> 00:58:25.760
nothing more. When mitochondrial DNA from the found teeth was

1092
00:58:25.800 --> 00:58:28.719
compared to that of Janus's mother, there was no match.

1093
00:58:29.079 --> 00:58:31.639
Where did the teeth come from? Could it have been

1094
00:58:31.679 --> 00:58:33.480
another victim of John Smith's.

1095
00:58:33.960 --> 00:58:36.880
You might be wondering, Welcua that they have been Fran's teeth,

1096
00:58:36.920 --> 00:58:40.199
But the timeline was not right. The garage had been built,

1097
00:58:40.440 --> 00:58:44.519
the cement had been poured, okay, before Fran had disappeared.

1098
00:58:44.599 --> 00:58:49.800
Gotcha. Later investigators searched John's grandparents' house and garage once more.

1099
00:58:50.239 --> 00:58:53.480
No physical evidence was uncovered, but a scent dog alerted

1100
00:58:53.480 --> 00:58:56.480
in the garage, right where the box had sat for years.

1101
00:58:56.920 --> 00:58:59.800
So the dog was probably alerting just on the smell

1102
00:58:59.840 --> 00:59:02.480
of death that had been there, because that box had

1103
00:59:02.519 --> 00:59:05.119
been in the garage, not because there were any remains there.

1104
00:59:05.280 --> 00:59:07.679
Right, makes sense. We'll be back after a break.

1105
00:59:15.119 --> 00:59:18.199
Nervous that he may be charged as an accomplice, Michael

1106
00:59:18.239 --> 00:59:21.519
Smith agreed to cooperate with the FBI and allow his

1107
00:59:21.599 --> 00:59:25.280
phone conversations with John to be recorded. Here is one

1108
00:59:25.320 --> 00:59:29.599
conversation from June nineteen ninety nine. There's one thing I've

1109
00:59:29.599 --> 00:59:32.239
got to ask you, and I've never ever wanted to

1110
00:59:32.280 --> 00:59:36.920
discuss this with you again. John, Okay, the box and granddads?

1111
00:59:37.039 --> 00:59:39.280
Yeah, the goat? Yeah, what about it?

1112
00:59:39.280 --> 00:59:41.199
It's nowhere around Seville, is it?

1113
00:59:41.559 --> 00:59:44.079
No? No, the goat isn't anywhere near Seville.

1114
00:59:44.360 --> 00:59:49.440
Okay. After the first call didn't give them much incriminating information,

1115
00:59:49.639 --> 00:59:52.760
law enforcement wanted Michael to be more aggressive on the

1116
00:59:52.840 --> 00:59:56.039
next call and tell John that he'd been summoned to

1117
00:59:56.079 --> 01:00:00.159
appear before a grand jury. But also the goat. I

1118
01:00:00.199 --> 01:00:03.199
think he's trying to, you know, make it sound like

1119
01:00:03.280 --> 01:00:05.559
someone left a goat, right as a joke.

1120
01:00:05.840 --> 01:00:07.320
Yeah, and he put it in a box in his

1121
01:00:07.679 --> 01:00:08.360
dad's garage.

1122
01:00:08.840 --> 01:00:12.480
One right would never do. I'm going there to New

1123
01:00:12.559 --> 01:00:14.800
York and I'm going to tell them the truth. That's it.

1124
01:00:15.039 --> 01:00:17.119
That's exactly what I'm gonna do. I'm going to tell

1125
01:00:17.159 --> 01:00:19.920
them that we've seen you build a box, granddad, and

1126
01:00:19.960 --> 01:00:22.119
I opened the box we found Jan in it. You know,

1127
01:00:22.519 --> 01:00:25.079
That's what I'm gonna do. I cannot see another way

1128
01:00:25.119 --> 01:00:26.960
out of this. I'm not going to go to jail

1129
01:00:27.000 --> 01:00:27.559
for you, John.

1130
01:00:28.000 --> 01:00:29.320
No, I wouldn't expect you to.

1131
01:00:29.400 --> 01:00:32.199
Okay, you know, there's just no way around it. Okay,

1132
01:00:32.480 --> 01:00:33.639
unless you got some idea.

1133
01:00:34.280 --> 01:00:36.400
No, I don't have any idea.

1134
01:00:35.960 --> 01:00:38.760
Unless there's unless there's some kind of something.

1135
01:00:39.440 --> 01:00:42.639
No, there isn't. I mean, that wasn't. I don't know

1136
01:00:42.679 --> 01:00:44.480
what else to tell you. You know, that was a

1137
01:00:44.559 --> 01:00:47.079
joke or something that somebody dropped off in the box.

1138
01:00:47.280 --> 01:00:50.079
That wasn't Jan in it. But if that's what you believe.

1139
01:00:50.159 --> 01:00:52.320
John, that was Jan in the box. We opened the

1140
01:00:52.320 --> 01:00:54.800
box up. Her fucking legs were cut off. Do you

1141
01:00:54.800 --> 01:00:55.760
want me to continue?

1142
01:00:56.280 --> 01:00:59.159
No? Anyway? All right, So you're going to New York

1143
01:00:59.280 --> 01:01:00.880
on August fifth. Huh.

1144
01:01:00.960 --> 01:01:04.440
Yeah. And here's the best part. Okay, I get to

1145
01:01:04.480 --> 01:01:07.480
do a polygraph test the next day. You do, Yeah,

1146
01:01:07.519 --> 01:01:10.639
I do? Okay, So I'm not going to lie.

1147
01:01:11.119 --> 01:01:12.480
No, I don't expect you to.

1148
01:01:13.079 --> 01:01:16.039
So that wasn't true. Michael was just trying to get

1149
01:01:16.119 --> 01:01:20.079
John to admit to something. The next day, Friday, July

1150
01:01:20.199 --> 01:01:24.199
twenty third, nineteen ninety nine, John disappeared. His wife Diane

1151
01:01:24.239 --> 01:01:26.960
called the FBI. They moved Michael and his wife to

1152
01:01:27.000 --> 01:01:32.440
a hotel for safety, but by Monday, John resurfaced, looking dirty, rumpled,

1153
01:01:32.440 --> 01:01:35.599
and unshaven, with a large cut on his forehead. He

1154
01:01:35.679 --> 01:01:38.199
told his wife that the FBI had locked him into

1155
01:01:38.199 --> 01:01:41.320
a room all weekend and wouldn't let him leave. Of

1156
01:01:41.320 --> 01:01:44.719
course this wasn't true. We don't know where he was

1157
01:01:45.239 --> 01:01:49.840
or what he was doing. Possibly he was burying another body.

1158
01:01:50.800 --> 01:01:53.480
The prosecutor weighed taking the case to a grand jury,

1159
01:01:53.519 --> 01:01:56.840
but with no bodies and no forensic evidence, they chose

1160
01:01:56.880 --> 01:02:00.559
to wait in hopes that new evidence would surface. Remember

1161
01:02:00.639 --> 01:02:04.360
Dede and Sherry I do. They warned Diane about her

1162
01:02:04.400 --> 01:02:07.559
new husband, and they even hired a private detective to

1163
01:02:07.599 --> 01:02:11.480
follow John, trying to keep her safe. Soon after, Diane

1164
01:02:11.480 --> 01:02:16.679
discovered photos of John with other women, pictures that looked romantic.

1165
01:02:17.199 --> 01:02:20.639
She handed them over to the FBI agent hilland met

1166
01:02:20.719 --> 01:02:24.039
with her and warned her too of how dangerous John

1167
01:02:24.119 --> 01:02:27.800
Smith could be, especially if she tried to leave him.

1168
01:02:28.119 --> 01:02:32.119
By December, Diane filed for an annulment, and the filings

1169
01:02:32.159 --> 01:02:35.320
she wrote that she had a very brief dating relationship

1170
01:02:35.400 --> 01:02:38.920
with John before getting married, and that after their marriage

1171
01:02:39.079 --> 01:02:42.679
she learned that he was an accomplished liar, and although

1172
01:02:42.719 --> 01:02:46.440
he exhibits a gentle face, he has an explosive temper.

1173
01:02:46.840 --> 01:02:48.960
Among the lies that he had told her was that

1174
01:02:49.079 --> 01:02:52.280
he had been married to Fran for seven years, when

1175
01:02:52.320 --> 01:02:55.920
in fact it had only been seventeen months. Fearing for

1176
01:02:56.000 --> 01:02:59.559
her safety, Diane changed the locks, got a new phone number,

1177
01:02:59.599 --> 01:03:02.639
and her daughter move in with her for protection, but

1178
01:03:02.719 --> 01:03:06.039
John's temper was relentless. One night, he broke into the

1179
01:03:06.039 --> 01:03:09.760
house in a blind rage. The fury only subsided when

1180
01:03:09.760 --> 01:03:13.280
he suddenly came face to face with Diane's daughter Summer

1181
01:03:13.599 --> 01:03:16.760
and that brief pause, Diane managed to call the police.

1182
01:03:17.199 --> 01:03:21.400
Soon after, she secured a restraining order against him. Sensing

1183
01:03:21.440 --> 01:03:25.400
a breakthrough was near, Detective Brian Potts set out another

1184
01:03:25.559 --> 01:03:27.800
round of letters, similar to the one that he had

1185
01:03:27.840 --> 01:03:31.239
written in nineteen ninety two, but this time he focused

1186
01:03:31.280 --> 01:03:34.880
on Indiana's Jane Doe cases. Last time he sent the

1187
01:03:34.960 --> 01:03:39.440
letters to Ohio. He wrote, Dear Sirs, I am Detective

1188
01:03:39.480 --> 01:03:43.599
Sergeant Brian Potts with the Wayne County Sheriff's Office in Wooster, Ohio,

1189
01:03:43.920 --> 01:03:48.360
investigating the nineteen seventy four disappearance of Janice Hartman Smith.

1190
01:03:48.679 --> 01:03:51.880
She was last seen after her divorce from John David Smith,

1191
01:03:51.960 --> 01:03:55.559
who later reported another wife missing in nineteen ninety one

1192
01:03:55.679 --> 01:03:59.920
in New Jersey. Information suggests that Janis's body was preserved,

1193
01:04:00.159 --> 01:04:03.400
placed in a plywood box and hidden in a garage.

1194
01:04:03.599 --> 01:04:07.199
In nineteen seventy nine, the box was discovered by family members.

1195
01:04:07.320 --> 01:04:09.719
John later removed it and claimed to have dumped it

1196
01:04:09.760 --> 01:04:13.239
in a field. We are asking all Indiana coroners and

1197
01:04:13.320 --> 01:04:17.320
sheriffs to review records of unidentified Jane Does from nineteen

1198
01:04:17.360 --> 01:04:20.760
seventy eight to nineteen eighty. Janis was a white female

1199
01:04:20.840 --> 01:04:24.199
five four one hundred fifteen pounds with brown hair and

1200
01:04:24.239 --> 01:04:27.639
blue eyes. Date of birth three two, nineteen fifty one,

1201
01:04:28.039 --> 01:04:33.880
aged twenty three at disappearance. Sincerely, Brian Potts Sherry assisted

1202
01:04:33.880 --> 01:04:36.960
with a letter writing campaign. By then, the families of

1203
01:04:37.039 --> 01:04:40.320
Fran and Janice had become united in their grief, leaning

1204
01:04:40.320 --> 01:04:43.360
on one another for strength and support. Both determined to

1205
01:04:43.400 --> 01:04:46.880
find their loved ones and get justice. When the letter

1206
01:04:46.960 --> 01:04:51.199
crossed Detective Jerry Berman's desk later that month, his jaw dropped.

1207
01:04:51.519 --> 01:04:53.920
Whether it was fade or good luck, Berman had been

1208
01:04:53.960 --> 01:04:57.480
among the officers called at the scene along Hopkins Park

1209
01:04:57.639 --> 01:05:01.639
Road some twenty years earlier. He'd never forgotten the plywood

1210
01:05:01.639 --> 01:05:05.039
box filled with a young woman's possessions and skeletal remains,

1211
01:05:05.280 --> 01:05:08.320
whined the lady in the box, by local media. Her

1212
01:05:08.360 --> 01:05:11.280
remains were partially buried in a potter's field section of

1213
01:05:11.320 --> 01:05:15.599
a cemetery in Morocco, Indiana in nineteen eighty. Her skull

1214
01:05:15.679 --> 01:05:18.400
and a few bones had not been buried, but kept

1215
01:05:18.400 --> 01:05:22.079
in evidence and hopes her identity would someday be revealed.

1216
01:05:22.559 --> 01:05:26.000
On March second, Janice Hartman's birthday, the Lady in the

1217
01:05:26.039 --> 01:05:29.679
Box was exhumed and taken to Toledo for examination by

1218
01:05:29.719 --> 01:05:33.119
a forensic anthropologist. The bones were found to be from

1219
01:05:33.159 --> 01:05:36.000
a petite female in her early twenties. There was no

1220
01:05:36.079 --> 01:05:39.400
determinate cause of death. Remember, the Lady in the Box's

1221
01:05:39.480 --> 01:05:42.599
leg bones were cut, maybe by a circular saw, because

1222
01:05:42.639 --> 01:05:46.039
of the precise cuts. Well, further examination revealed that the

1223
01:05:46.079 --> 01:05:50.039
cuts were likely made by a serrated knife, which would

1224
01:05:50.079 --> 01:05:54.880
have just taken yeah, so much force and time. After

1225
01:05:54.960 --> 01:05:58.039
six weeks, the FBI confirmed the Lady in the Box

1226
01:05:58.119 --> 01:06:01.960
to be Janice Hartman by matching DNA from the femur

1227
01:06:02.039 --> 01:06:06.199
found in the box to that of her mother, Buddy House. Finally,

1228
01:06:06.320 --> 01:06:10.239
Prosecutor Joscelyn Stephenson felt like there was enough evidence for

1229
01:06:10.360 --> 01:06:13.679
a grand jury to hear the case. On August twenty fifth,

1230
01:06:13.719 --> 01:06:17.119
two thousand, the grand jury in Wayne County, Ohio, voted

1231
01:06:17.199 --> 01:06:21.519
to indict John David Smith her aggravated murder, facing up

1232
01:06:21.559 --> 01:06:24.880
to twenty years in prison, which was the maximum sentence

1233
01:06:25.119 --> 01:06:29.239
in nineteen seventy four. On Tuesday October three, two thousand,

1234
01:06:29.360 --> 01:06:33.000
John forty nine, was arrested without incident and taken into

1235
01:06:33.039 --> 01:06:36.920
custody at the San Diego County Jail. Detective Brian Potts

1236
01:06:37.000 --> 01:06:40.920
flew to California to accompany Smith back to Ohio. On

1237
01:06:40.960 --> 01:06:44.280
the flight, Smith didn't speak a word when they landed.

1238
01:06:44.360 --> 01:06:47.239
He was taken to the Wooster Jail to await his

1239
01:06:47.320 --> 01:06:51.480
first court appearance. Sherry told Dayline that a detective called

1240
01:06:51.480 --> 01:06:54.079
her from the jail. I have something you might want

1241
01:06:54.079 --> 01:06:56.039
to hear, he said, as he slammed the door on

1242
01:06:56.119 --> 01:06:59.599
John's cell. We did it, he said. At his arraignment

1243
01:06:59.639 --> 01:07:02.480
a week later, Sherry Fran's sister was there to look

1244
01:07:02.559 --> 01:07:05.920
John in the eye. He pleaded not guilty. Bail was denied,

1245
01:07:05.960 --> 01:07:08.880
and the trial was set for January two thousand and one.

1246
01:07:09.239 --> 01:07:12.280
Sherry told the Beacon Journal, I wanted him to see

1247
01:07:12.280 --> 01:07:15.239
me sitting there when he walked into court. I wanted

1248
01:07:15.320 --> 01:07:18.159
him to know I'm not going any place until I

1249
01:07:18.199 --> 01:07:20.840
know where my sister is. I'm just glad a body

1250
01:07:20.960 --> 01:07:23.920
was found to at least get this far. One down,

1251
01:07:24.199 --> 01:07:26.679
one to go. He has let it be known that

1252
01:07:26.719 --> 01:07:29.519
he despises me more than anyone else in the world

1253
01:07:29.639 --> 01:07:32.199
because of everything my family has done to make his

1254
01:07:32.320 --> 01:07:36.079
life miserable for the last nine years. After John was

1255
01:07:36.199 --> 01:07:39.800
arrested in two thousand, law enforcement was not satisfied with

1256
01:07:39.880 --> 01:07:43.199
their case against him. They continued to search for more evidence.

1257
01:07:43.519 --> 01:07:46.239
Once again, they hired Eagle to send dog to search

1258
01:07:46.320 --> 01:07:50.119
a storage unit that belonged to John. Eagle alerted he

1259
01:07:50.199 --> 01:07:53.519
found three small pieces of human skull. They did not

1260
01:07:53.599 --> 01:07:56.840
belong to Janice or Fran. What yeah.

1261
01:07:56.880 --> 01:08:00.719
Wow. The original trial date was postponed several times due

1262
01:08:00.760 --> 01:08:04.519
to pre trial motions, one motion forbade mention of Betty

1263
01:08:04.599 --> 01:08:08.119
Fran or her disappearance. The trial began in July two

1264
01:08:08.199 --> 01:08:08.840
thousand and one.

1265
01:08:09.440 --> 01:08:12.519
Isn't that so frustrating with it that evidence is excluded?

1266
01:08:12.599 --> 01:08:14.639
You know it just it seems awfully relevant to me.

1267
01:08:15.440 --> 01:08:19.279
It's a pattern, right. The jury, nine women and three men,

1268
01:08:19.399 --> 01:08:23.399
filed into the cramped courtroom, their faces set with quiet determination.

1269
01:08:23.960 --> 01:08:27.319
The room buzzed with reporters and curious onlookers eager to

1270
01:08:27.359 --> 01:08:30.920
witness the trial of John Smith. At the defense table, John,

1271
01:08:31.039 --> 01:08:35.840
now fifty years old, sat stonefaced, his expression unreadable, betraying

1272
01:08:35.880 --> 01:08:40.239
nothing as the proceedings unfolded around him. The prosecution portrayed

1273
01:08:40.319 --> 01:08:43.760
John as a controlling husband with anger issues who snapped

1274
01:08:43.760 --> 01:08:46.479
when his wife sought a divorce. Though he was first

1275
01:08:46.560 --> 01:08:50.000
drawn to her fun, rebellious spirit. Once married, he tried

1276
01:08:50.039 --> 01:08:53.520
to quash it. The defense tried to shift blame onto Janice,

1277
01:08:53.720 --> 01:08:55.960
arguing that her job as a go go dancer and

1278
01:08:56.000 --> 01:08:58.760
her drinking and drug use made her a target. The

1279
01:08:58.800 --> 01:09:02.880
prosecution suffered a back when key witness Kathy Paradon had

1280
01:09:02.880 --> 01:09:06.520
an anxiety attack just before taking the stand. A close

1281
01:09:06.560 --> 01:09:09.039
friend of Janie, Kathy had been with her on the

1282
01:09:09.119 --> 01:09:11.880
last night of her life. Janis had even driven her

1283
01:09:11.880 --> 01:09:15.399
home back in nineteen seventy four. Kathy reported that a

1284
01:09:15.439 --> 01:09:18.520
man with a bushy mustache and severe acne was in

1285
01:09:18.520 --> 01:09:20.960
the car with Janis when she got out. She had

1286
01:09:21.000 --> 01:09:25.520
also witnessed John's slap Janis, but overwhelmed and unable to testify,

1287
01:09:25.640 --> 01:09:28.600
Kathy was removed from the witness list. I think you

1288
01:09:28.680 --> 01:09:31.680
mentioned earlier that she said she couldn't even remember much

1289
01:09:31.720 --> 01:09:33.439
of that night anyway, So it seems like I'm not

1290
01:09:33.439 --> 01:09:35.600
sure how good of a witness she would have been.

1291
01:09:35.640 --> 01:09:39.000
Regardless, Well, she was going to testify that she had

1292
01:09:39.039 --> 01:09:42.439
made that story up. Oh, and that there was not

1293
01:09:42.520 --> 01:09:45.039
a bushy man, not a bushyman, but a man with

1294
01:09:45.039 --> 01:09:45.880
a bushy mustache.

1295
01:09:45.880 --> 01:09:48.920
Gotcha. A week into the trial, Michael Smith took the

1296
01:09:48.960 --> 01:09:52.920
stand with prosecutorial immunity. The night before, his mother had

1297
01:09:52.960 --> 01:09:56.399
allegedly begged him not to testify against his brother, but

1298
01:09:56.479 --> 01:10:00.000
Michael was determined to write his past wrongs. The defense

1299
01:10:00.039 --> 01:10:04.079
duns attacked his credibility, highlighting his lies, half truths, and

1300
01:10:04.119 --> 01:10:07.000
even his mistake about the weekend he saw John building

1301
01:10:07.000 --> 01:10:11.199
the wooden box, but the prosecution countered effectively arguing that

1302
01:10:11.239 --> 01:10:14.079
the timing didn't matter. What mattered was that he had

1303
01:10:14.119 --> 01:10:17.239
seen his brother make the box. The box, by the way,

1304
01:10:17.359 --> 01:10:19.640
sat in the courtroom every day of the trial.

1305
01:10:20.119 --> 01:10:24.800
That box sitting there in the courtroom must have been jarring. Yeah,

1306
01:10:24.840 --> 01:10:27.680
that would be showed you what a monster John was.

1307
01:10:27.760 --> 01:10:30.159
Yeah, I think that would be a very effective prop

1308
01:10:30.199 --> 01:10:33.439
to have in the trial. Another witness testified that John

1309
01:10:33.560 --> 01:10:36.079
used to wear a lady's diamond watch to work, and

1310
01:10:36.159 --> 01:10:39.119
coworkers often made fun of him for it. The watch

1311
01:10:39.239 --> 01:10:42.479
was significant because John had given Janis a diamond watch

1312
01:10:42.520 --> 01:10:44.920
as a gift and claimed that she had been wearing

1313
01:10:44.960 --> 01:10:48.279
it when she disappeared. It took twenty seven years to

1314
01:10:48.399 --> 01:10:52.119
finally bring John Smith to trial, yet the proceedings lasted

1315
01:10:52.199 --> 01:10:55.680
less than two weeks over the course of twenty seven witnesses.

1316
01:10:55.840 --> 01:10:59.399
No murder weapon was produced, and no forensic evidence linking

1317
01:10:59.479 --> 01:11:03.279
John to Shannis's body was ever found. The most devastating

1318
01:11:03.279 --> 01:11:06.359
blow came from John's own brother, Though the defense fought

1319
01:11:06.359 --> 01:11:09.720
hard to discredit him as unreliable, it took the jury

1320
01:11:09.760 --> 01:11:13.479
about eight hours to reach their decision. After their initial vote,

1321
01:11:13.560 --> 01:11:16.800
five jurors voted to acquit him, but they eventually agreed

1322
01:11:16.880 --> 01:11:20.560
and found John Smith not guilty of aggravated murder, but

1323
01:11:20.840 --> 01:11:24.399
guilty of murder. You had me scared right there as

1324
01:11:24.439 --> 01:11:28.680
I was reading that sentence, Smith sat stonefaced. The jury

1325
01:11:28.760 --> 01:11:32.319
later said the most convincing testimony was that of Michael Smith.

1326
01:11:32.600 --> 01:11:35.039
If Michael hadn't come forward, I really don't think they

1327
01:11:35.039 --> 01:11:35.600
had a case.

1328
01:11:35.720 --> 01:11:39.039
Yeah, it doesn't seem like it During sentencing, Gary Hartman

1329
01:11:39.119 --> 01:11:43.159
addressed the judge, the prosecution's done an excellent job. My mother,

1330
01:11:43.399 --> 01:11:46.399
even my father may forgive John for what he's done,

1331
01:11:46.520 --> 01:11:49.159
but my brother, my sister, and I will never forgive

1332
01:11:49.159 --> 01:11:51.520
you for what you've done. You kill women in your

1333
01:11:51.520 --> 01:11:54.399
life that you loved, and that's very hard to understand.

1334
01:11:54.840 --> 01:11:58.000
I'll say one other thing about Michael's testimony. The family

1335
01:11:58.039 --> 01:12:01.199
will forgive Michael. We hope that his nightmares go away

1336
01:12:01.520 --> 01:12:05.840
and that you receive them. Fran's sister Sherry spoke, as

1337
01:12:05.880 --> 01:12:07.840
a family, we have proved to be a force to

1338
01:12:07.840 --> 01:12:10.359
be reckoned with. For the past two and a half weeks,

1339
01:12:10.520 --> 01:12:13.960
Janice has spoken in this courtroom, and through these proceedings,

1340
01:12:14.079 --> 01:12:17.560
Janice has found justice for herself and her family. Fran

1341
01:12:17.680 --> 01:12:20.359
has not spoken yet, but we as a family will

1342
01:12:20.359 --> 01:12:23.479
continue our efforts to give Fran's memory the justice it

1343
01:12:23.560 --> 01:12:27.079
deserves with the help of authorities. This family has tracked

1344
01:12:27.119 --> 01:12:30.399
you for nine years, nine months, eighteen days to get

1345
01:12:30.439 --> 01:12:33.399
to this day. But this is not over for our family.

1346
01:12:33.720 --> 01:12:36.039
We are not going away until you tell us what

1347
01:12:36.079 --> 01:12:38.840
you did with my sister's body after you killed her.

1348
01:12:39.199 --> 01:12:41.439
I promised my mother on her deathbed that I would

1349
01:12:41.479 --> 01:12:44.640
find my sister. I will, to my last dollar, my

1350
01:12:44.760 --> 01:12:49.039
last breath, work to fulfill that promise. Finally, the judge

1351
01:12:49.079 --> 01:12:52.359
passed down his sentence. You are sentenced to a fifteen

1352
01:12:52.439 --> 01:12:55.640
year to life term. I can't speak for the parole board,

1353
01:12:55.680 --> 01:12:57.680
but I'm confident that you will serve the rest of

1354
01:12:57.720 --> 01:13:00.159
your life in an Ohio prison. And it's it's not

1355
01:13:00.239 --> 01:13:02.880
going to happen today, but maybe someday you will do

1356
01:13:02.920 --> 01:13:05.640
the right thing and respond to the questions of these people.

1357
01:13:06.039 --> 01:13:09.199
You can't overcome, you can't change the bad that you've done,

1358
01:13:09.319 --> 01:13:11.960
but since you are going to be living, albeit in prison,

1359
01:13:12.239 --> 01:13:14.640
you do have the opportunity to do good and to

1360
01:13:14.680 --> 01:13:17.239
answer their questions, and I would hope that you would

1361
01:13:17.279 --> 01:13:20.359
take that to heart. Even John's third wife wanted to

1362
01:13:20.399 --> 01:13:23.560
help get justice for Fran and Janice. After the trial,

1363
01:13:23.680 --> 01:13:26.079
she went to the prison and looked John squarely in

1364
01:13:26.079 --> 01:13:30.159
the face and asked him where Fran's body was. I'm innocent,

1365
01:13:30.359 --> 01:13:31.159
he responded.

1366
01:13:31.600 --> 01:13:34.760
The way these people bonded together to get justice just

1367
01:13:35.239 --> 01:13:35.800
is so touching.

1368
01:13:35.800 --> 01:13:37.880
It's really moving. Yeah, it is.

1369
01:13:38.319 --> 01:13:41.399
John Smith came close to winning an appeal the jury

1370
01:13:41.439 --> 01:13:46.279
had mistakenly been given access to States Exhibit number forty eight,

1371
01:13:46.600 --> 01:13:50.840
a document referencing the disappearance of Betty Franz Smith. It

1372
01:13:50.880 --> 01:13:55.000
was a clear prosecutorial error, but the judge ultimately ruled

1373
01:13:55.000 --> 01:13:59.319
that the information hadn't influenced the jury. Remember, fran wasn't

1374
01:13:59.319 --> 01:14:02.000
supposed to be mentioned at all. Just the fact that

1375
01:14:02.039 --> 01:14:05.199
this document had, you know, her name, could have been

1376
01:14:05.319 --> 01:14:09.680
enough to you know, change them. In October two thousand

1377
01:14:09.720 --> 01:14:12.560
and one, Sherry and Dedi sued John Smith for the

1378
01:14:12.600 --> 01:14:15.880
wrongful death of fran The judge found in their favor

1379
01:14:16.119 --> 01:14:19.119
and awarded them one million dollars, which, of course, they

1380
01:14:19.159 --> 01:14:22.119
will never receive a penny of. In twenty nineteen, a

1381
01:14:22.159 --> 01:14:25.760
new Jersey grand jury indicted John Smith for Franz murder,

1382
01:14:26.079 --> 01:14:29.279
thirty years after she vanished. When it was ruled that

1383
01:14:29.359 --> 01:14:32.920
evidence related to John's murder of Janice Hartman Smith would

1384
01:14:33.000 --> 01:14:37.439
be excluded, the prosecutors decided to offer John a plea deal.

1385
01:14:37.960 --> 01:14:41.159
If he gave up the location of Fran's body, they'd

1386
01:14:41.159 --> 01:14:44.960
offered him immunity. He accepted. Under the terms of the

1387
01:14:45.000 --> 01:14:48.039
plea deal, he didn't have to divulge why, how, or

1388
01:14:48.079 --> 01:14:51.560
even if he murdered fran He claimed that he wrapped

1389
01:14:51.560 --> 01:14:53.560
her body in a blanket and threw her into the

1390
01:14:53.640 --> 01:14:57.239
dumpster at Carborundum, where he worked at the time. Sherry

1391
01:14:57.319 --> 01:15:00.439
Dedey and Robert Hilen were all crushed by this decision.

1392
01:15:00.720 --> 01:15:04.560
The prosecutor defended their decision without being able to use

1393
01:15:04.600 --> 01:15:07.960
the evidence of Janice's murder, they really had no case.

1394
01:15:08.279 --> 01:15:11.399
They wanted to bring closure to Franz family and this

1395
01:15:11.640 --> 01:15:15.560
was their best option. Diane, John's third wife, told the

1396
01:15:15.600 --> 01:15:19.159
San Diego Union Tribune that she married him for financial

1397
01:15:19.159 --> 01:15:22.880
stability and had no idea about the first two missus Smiths.

1398
01:15:23.479 --> 01:15:26.279
I never loved him. The marriage was a farce. I

1399
01:15:26.319 --> 01:15:29.560
would never have married him had I known. Their marriage

1400
01:15:29.640 --> 01:15:32.840
wasn't old in July two thousand and one. But Diane

1401
01:15:33.039 --> 01:15:35.680
is one of the few people who maintained a relationship

1402
01:15:35.720 --> 01:15:38.640
with John once he was in jail, calling him and

1403
01:15:38.760 --> 01:15:39.560
writing to him.

1404
01:15:39.720 --> 01:15:40.439
That's surprising.

1405
01:15:40.720 --> 01:15:44.199
Today John Smith remains imprisoned in Ohio, with his earliest

1406
01:15:44.279 --> 01:15:46.840
chance of parole in twenty twenty nine, when he will

1407
01:15:46.880 --> 01:15:50.640
be seventy eight years old. Franz remains have never been.

1408
01:15:50.479 --> 01:15:52.920
Recovered, So so sad and.

1409
01:15:52.920 --> 01:15:56.079
Oddly, like Janice's beat whatever happened to like, you know,

1410
01:15:56.119 --> 01:15:58.520
her legs and her feet. They have never been recovered either.

1411
01:15:58.760 --> 01:16:01.920
Strange rest and peace to Janice Hartman Smith and Betty

1412
01:16:02.000 --> 01:16:05.560
fran Gladden Smith. Their lives were tragically cut short, leaving

1413
01:16:05.600 --> 01:16:08.960
behind grieving families who never stopped searching for the truth.

1414
01:16:09.239 --> 01:16:11.720
Made their memories live on, not in the shadows of

1415
01:16:11.720 --> 01:16:13.760
how they were lost, but in the love and light

1416
01:16:14.000 --> 01:16:16.840
that they brought to those who knew them. Never stop looking,

1417
01:16:16.920 --> 01:16:20.840
believing and hoping. There's always someone out there who knows something.

1418
01:16:21.359 --> 01:16:24.800
Remember when Michael Smith said that he saw Janice's face

1419
01:16:25.359 --> 01:16:29.359
in the box, right, what investigators think he saw was

1420
01:16:29.920 --> 01:16:32.000
there was a bunch of clothing in there, and one

1421
01:16:32.000 --> 01:16:34.479
of them was like a filmy nightgown that was a

1422
01:16:34.560 --> 01:16:37.760
multi colored nightgown and it was placed like over her

1423
01:16:37.800 --> 01:16:41.239
face and over you know the time that it was

1424
01:16:41.399 --> 01:16:46.239
over her face like the shroud of turin, like her

1425
01:16:46.279 --> 01:16:51.159
face was her face. Okay, yeah, and the multi colored hair.

1426
01:16:51.520 --> 01:16:53.760
I think that maybe some of the dye had leached

1427
01:16:53.800 --> 01:16:56.600
out from the you know, the clothing onto her hair.

1428
01:16:57.239 --> 01:16:59.720
So it wasn't that he was having he was wrong.

1429
01:17:00.199 --> 01:17:02.239
It was just that's what he saw, Okay.

1430
01:17:02.239 --> 01:17:04.640
Oh, that's interesting. So I have a question for you

1431
01:17:04.920 --> 01:17:07.159
about a couple of other things that we talked about

1432
01:17:07.199 --> 01:17:09.720
earlier that I don't think ever got resolved. So there

1433
01:17:09.720 --> 01:17:12.640
were teeth found under the garage of one of their

1434
01:17:12.680 --> 01:17:15.079
rental units, and I think there was pieces of a

1435
01:17:15.119 --> 01:17:18.199
skull found in a storage unit too. Were those ever

1436
01:17:18.600 --> 01:17:20.039
identified of who they belonged to?

1437
01:17:20.199 --> 01:17:23.479
No, they weren't. It's disturbing, isn't it. Yeah, so, and

1438
01:17:23.800 --> 01:17:26.840
we don't know where he was, you know, all these times,

1439
01:17:26.880 --> 01:17:29.520
and it's possible that you know, there are more victims.

1440
01:17:29.800 --> 01:17:32.000
Yeah, wow, that's really really disturbing.

1441
01:17:32.159 --> 01:17:33.960
I just wanted to talk about the family and how

1442
01:17:34.000 --> 01:17:37.680
amazing are you know these people who you know, didn't

1443
01:17:37.680 --> 01:17:40.600
give up finding their loved ones and working together. It

1444
01:17:40.680 --> 01:17:44.119
is just, yeah, it's really soving to me. How do

1445
01:17:44.159 --> 01:17:46.119
you think John got so many women?

1446
01:17:46.359 --> 01:17:49.000
I have no idea I was. I was wondering that

1447
01:17:49.119 --> 01:17:51.159
throughout the whole thing, because he didn't I mean, the

1448
01:17:51.199 --> 01:17:54.239
pictures he showed me didn't really seem like that much

1449
01:17:54.239 --> 01:17:56.000
of a look or he seemed like a very odd guy,

1450
01:17:56.199 --> 01:17:58.439
like just very weird. So I don't know.

1451
01:17:58.560 --> 01:18:00.640
So some of the girlfriends that he had said that

1452
01:18:00.760 --> 01:18:05.800
he was like very loyal and devoted and very sincere,

1453
01:18:06.880 --> 01:18:10.119
like in their one on one relationships with him, that

1454
01:18:10.199 --> 01:18:14.239
they really felt like he was earnest and meant everything

1455
01:18:14.279 --> 01:18:15.199
that he said to them.

1456
01:18:15.319 --> 01:18:17.920
Okay, yeah, it seems like he was a good manipulator.

1457
01:18:18.439 --> 01:18:21.119
Why do you think Janice's legs were cut the way

1458
01:18:21.159 --> 01:18:21.680
that they were?

1459
01:18:22.039 --> 01:18:24.640
I don't know, it's really weird to fit into the

1460
01:18:24.680 --> 01:18:25.560
box or something.

1461
01:18:25.600 --> 01:18:28.600
Maybe, I really I wondered if that was possible, But

1462
01:18:28.960 --> 01:18:31.279
that would have been such like a just a gruesome,

1463
01:18:31.359 --> 01:18:34.560
tedious task. I saw away with the serrated knife, and

1464
01:18:34.600 --> 01:18:36.600
the reason they thought it was a serrated knife was

1465
01:18:36.680 --> 01:18:39.560
just a serrated knife, just the way that the cuts look.

1466
01:18:40.239 --> 01:18:42.640
Yeah, it's such a bizarre thing to do.

1467
01:18:42.720 --> 01:18:45.880
I can't imagine the prosecutor in the case. I don't

1468
01:18:45.880 --> 01:18:48.720
want to take credit for saying this, but at the

1469
01:18:48.800 --> 01:18:52.279
trial she said that he cut the legs off so

1470
01:18:52.319 --> 01:18:55.479
she could never walk out on him again, because he

1471
01:18:55.560 --> 01:18:59.880
really and Fran was probably plotting to leave him too. Yeah,

1472
01:19:00.279 --> 01:19:03.119
and he really hated the idea of anyone leaving him.

1473
01:19:03.239 --> 01:19:06.800
Wow. Yeah, whatever the reason, that's really creepy thing to do.

1474
01:19:07.239 --> 01:19:09.960
We talked about Eagle, the scent dog a few times

1475
01:19:09.960 --> 01:19:12.840
in this story, and Eagle sounds like definitely at the

1476
01:19:12.880 --> 01:19:15.279
top of his game. He was like one of those

1477
01:19:15.319 --> 01:19:17.239
dogs that police really really trusted.

1478
01:19:17.399 --> 01:19:18.279
Sounds like a good boy.

1479
01:19:18.840 --> 01:19:19.840
Definitely a good boy.

1480
01:19:19.920 --> 01:19:20.159
Yeah.

1481
01:19:20.479 --> 01:19:23.199
I just want to shout out to dogs.

1482
01:19:23.800 --> 01:19:27.560
I mean dogs that police dogs and scent dogs, cadaver dogs.

1483
01:19:27.800 --> 01:19:29.640
They are amazing, amazing.

1484
01:19:30.359 --> 01:19:32.560
I think I have given scent dogs a hard time

1485
01:19:32.680 --> 01:19:38.239
sometimes because they don't always work out great. But Eagle was,

1486
01:19:38.520 --> 01:19:40.439
you know, really a superstar.

1487
01:19:40.760 --> 01:19:42.000
Yeah. Absolutely.

1488
01:19:42.239 --> 01:19:44.600
I did a little bit of research about scent dogs.

1489
01:19:45.239 --> 01:19:48.159
All cadaver dogs are scent dogs, but not all scent

1490
01:19:48.199 --> 01:19:51.359
dogs are trained to detect human remains. They're kind of

1491
01:19:51.399 --> 01:19:54.359
two different skills. That makes sense. Yeah, I do want

1492
01:19:54.359 --> 01:19:57.239
to name my sources. The main source that I use

1493
01:19:57.319 --> 01:19:59.720
for this case is a book called The Stranger in

1494
01:19:59.720 --> 01:20:02.960
My The True Story of Marriage, Murder and the Body

1495
01:20:03.039 --> 01:20:06.640
in the Box by Michael Fleeman, written in two thousand

1496
01:20:06.640 --> 01:20:10.039
and three. Who's a good book, a lot of great information.

1497
01:20:10.880 --> 01:20:15.760
Just on September second, Robert Hilland wrote a book called

1498
01:20:15.840 --> 01:20:18.760
Chasing Evil. Wow, And because I was halfway done with

1499
01:20:18.800 --> 01:20:21.640
the case, I didn't read his book. It sounds really interesting,

1500
01:20:22.079 --> 01:20:25.279
but he wrote it with John Edward. Do you know

1501
01:20:25.319 --> 01:20:27.479
who that is? No, he's a psychic.

1502
01:20:27.960 --> 01:20:28.279
Oh.

1503
01:20:28.479 --> 01:20:30.359
Interesting, So I just want to take a minute to

1504
01:20:30.399 --> 01:20:33.560
Oh and the other book I read, probably a third

1505
01:20:33.600 --> 01:20:37.560
of was written by Sherry Gladden Davis Fran's sister. It's

1506
01:20:37.560 --> 01:20:40.800
called My Sister Is Missing, Bring a Killer to Justice.

1507
01:20:41.000 --> 01:20:43.479
The book I don't think is in print anymore. I

1508
01:20:43.520 --> 01:20:45.880
will link this in show notes. I was able to

1509
01:20:45.880 --> 01:20:48.640
find it on archive dot org and I will put

1510
01:20:48.680 --> 01:20:51.760
that in the show notes. It was definitely interesting to

1511
01:20:51.840 --> 01:20:55.119
hear her account. I wanted to talk about Robert Hillan

1512
01:20:55.239 --> 01:20:57.880
and John Edward's book a little bit, Like I said.

1513
01:20:57.880 --> 01:21:00.960
It was just released on September second. Co authored it

1514
01:21:01.119 --> 01:21:05.039
about their twenty five year relationship, and it's called Chasing Evil.

1515
01:21:05.479 --> 01:21:08.960
John Edward is a well known psychic medium. Hilland claims

1516
01:21:09.000 --> 01:21:11.680
that over the years he has leaned on Edward for

1517
01:21:11.760 --> 01:21:15.079
help in solving cases. Here's an excerpt from the book

1518
01:21:15.199 --> 01:21:18.079
related to the John Smith case. It was the first

1519
01:21:18.119 --> 01:21:21.439
time the men had met hilland was a huge skeptic.

1520
01:21:21.840 --> 01:21:24.880
I'm seeing a woman. She looks older than her actual age.

1521
01:21:24.920 --> 01:21:28.279
She's crossed over. She has two names like Mary Anne,

1522
01:21:28.479 --> 01:21:31.119
Barbara Ann, but people call her by the second name.

1523
01:21:31.239 --> 01:21:34.960
There's an f like Fern or Fran. Wait, it's Fran.

1524
01:21:35.640 --> 01:21:38.520
She was vain about her appearance. She had breast implans

1525
01:21:38.560 --> 01:21:41.720
they're showing me serial numbers on them, and dyed blonde hair,

1526
01:21:41.880 --> 01:21:44.319
blue eyes. She wore a lot of makeup. Pran was

1527
01:21:44.359 --> 01:21:47.079
a smoker. I smell cigarette smoke and strong perfume, like

1528
01:21:47.119 --> 01:21:49.319
when a person tries to cover up the smoke scent

1529
01:21:49.359 --> 01:21:51.760
with a lot of perfume. She's also showing me that

1530
01:21:51.920 --> 01:21:55.239
she couldn't walk, like she broke her leg. She's showing

1531
01:21:55.279 --> 01:21:57.920
me crutches. I feel a strong pain in the back

1532
01:21:57.960 --> 01:22:00.640
of my head. She's struck in the head. Yes, she

1533
01:22:00.720 --> 01:22:02.840
was hitting the back of the head with something. She

1534
01:22:02.880 --> 01:22:05.760
didn't see it coming. Weird. I felt like she was

1535
01:22:05.800 --> 01:22:08.840
tricked into going somewhere by someone she trusted, a boyfriend

1536
01:22:08.960 --> 01:22:11.960
or her husband. He is still here, He hasn't crossed.

1537
01:22:12.119 --> 01:22:14.960
He has a simple name, a J name like John

1538
01:22:15.079 --> 01:22:18.319
or Jim or Joe, and a second name s very

1539
01:22:18.359 --> 01:22:22.600
common like Smith. I shivered. This was unreal. John put

1540
01:22:22.640 --> 01:22:25.039
down the glasses and picked up the hair brush after

1541
01:22:25.119 --> 01:22:27.199
she was hit in the head. The j S name,

1542
01:22:27.520 --> 01:22:29.880
let's call him. Smith strangled her to make sure she

1543
01:22:30.000 --> 01:22:32.560
was dead. Not like a bloodbath or anything. It was

1544
01:22:32.600 --> 01:22:34.159
like he knocked her out with one blow and then

1545
01:22:34.239 --> 01:22:37.760
strangled her. He was much younger than her, John continued,

1546
01:22:37.800 --> 01:22:40.600
maybe ten years. She was angry. Was there another woman?

1547
01:22:40.880 --> 01:22:42.920
She thought there was another woman, but not in the

1548
01:22:42.960 --> 01:22:46.399
same state they were living. She's showing me stairs. They

1549
01:22:46.399 --> 01:22:49.079
were upstairs on our third floor, if not higher. There

1550
01:22:49.119 --> 01:22:52.039
was an argument. She confronted him about a bunch of things,

1551
01:22:52.199 --> 01:22:54.520
not just one issue. Feels like a whole bunch of

1552
01:22:54.560 --> 01:22:58.039
different things. Smith was lying to her and she knew it.

1553
01:22:58.119 --> 01:23:00.600
She called him out. He felt like his worlds were

1554
01:23:00.640 --> 01:23:04.159
crashing together. So that's kind of wild. I don't know

1555
01:23:04.159 --> 01:23:07.119
how much I believe in that.

1556
01:23:07.600 --> 01:23:09.319
Call me a skeptic, but okay.

1557
01:23:09.159 --> 01:23:12.479
Right, no, I totally understand being a skeptic. But Robert

1558
01:23:12.600 --> 01:23:15.039
Hilland like, if you see him in person and you

1559
01:23:15.119 --> 01:23:18.760
hear him speak, he's like the most serious, like FBI

1560
01:23:18.880 --> 01:23:20.920
guy that you can see. Yeah, I just think it's

1561
01:23:20.960 --> 01:23:23.840
really interesting that these two men have had a twenty

1562
01:23:23.880 --> 01:23:27.880
five year relationship and Hilland feels like Edward has helped

1563
01:23:27.920 --> 01:23:29.680
him solve a lot of cases. And I know what

1564
01:23:29.720 --> 01:23:32.439
you're thinking, Well, if he has solved so many cases

1565
01:23:32.560 --> 01:23:37.000
where our France remains, Edward thinks that fran was dismembered

1566
01:23:37.079 --> 01:23:39.479
and possibly put in a storm sewer.

1567
01:23:39.760 --> 01:23:42.119
Oh okay, interesting. So I was going to actually ask

1568
01:23:42.159 --> 01:23:45.000
you about the deal that they made where he said

1569
01:23:45.279 --> 01:23:47.880
that he had put her body in the dumpster at

1570
01:23:47.880 --> 01:23:51.520
his workplace, which was he was disappointing because they never

1571
01:23:51.560 --> 01:23:54.159
actually found her body. So do you think he was

1572
01:23:54.239 --> 01:23:56.159
like lying about that or do you think that they

1573
01:23:56.239 --> 01:23:58.640
just never found her body because it was then taken

1574
01:23:58.720 --> 01:24:01.439
to a landfill or something and just you know, no way.

1575
01:24:01.479 --> 01:24:04.640
I think that's a really good question. And the investigators

1576
01:24:04.680 --> 01:24:07.680
believe that he was lying because they said that, you know,

1577
01:24:07.720 --> 01:24:10.079
it was an open air dumpsters. Dumpsters are a lot

1578
01:24:10.159 --> 01:24:13.680
different today, especially in you know, industrial settings, but it

1579
01:24:13.720 --> 01:24:16.279
was just an open air dumpster, and they just don't

1580
01:24:16.319 --> 01:24:18.439
think that he would have just thrown her body in there.

1581
01:24:18.560 --> 01:24:19.520
Yeah. Interesting.

1582
01:24:19.680 --> 01:24:21.600
And remember like at the at the end of the

1583
01:24:21.640 --> 01:24:24.319
episode when we were talking about how he disappeared for

1584
01:24:24.359 --> 01:24:26.720
a few days and he came back looking like really

1585
01:24:26.920 --> 01:24:31.399
dirty and disheveled, and they believe that he probably was

1586
01:24:31.479 --> 01:24:33.479
burying another body during that time.

1587
01:24:33.600 --> 01:24:36.239
Wow, it's John Edwards, the psychic. I do I've heard

1588
01:24:36.239 --> 01:24:37.279
of him, like he used to have.

1589
01:24:37.319 --> 01:24:38.119
Oh, he's very well known.

1590
01:24:38.159 --> 01:24:39.199
Yeah, think he had a commercial.

1591
01:24:39.760 --> 01:24:42.720
Yeah, I think he's worked with a lot of investigators.

1592
01:24:42.920 --> 01:24:46.199
Try to find more information about cases in which you

1593
01:24:46.239 --> 01:24:49.159
know a psychic has actually helped solve the case.

1594
01:24:49.359 --> 01:24:52.199
Yeah, it's I haven't heard of any either. I've heard

1595
01:24:52.199 --> 01:24:54.600
of quite a few where they've gotten involved.

1596
01:24:54.199 --> 01:24:57.000
But I can understand the allure of it, like, yeah,

1597
01:24:57.039 --> 01:24:59.439
we need help and we're gonna, you know, take every

1598
01:24:59.560 --> 01:25:02.840
opportunity that we can. Yeah. Yeah, So that is the

1599
01:25:02.880 --> 01:25:03.800
story of John Smith.

1600
01:25:04.000 --> 01:25:06.560
Wow, fascinating story and what a horrible guy.

1601
01:25:06.760 --> 01:25:09.159
Yeah. I forgot to mention this at the top. I'm

1602
01:25:09.199 --> 01:25:11.439
so glad I'm remembering it now. I want to say

1603
01:25:11.479 --> 01:25:15.039
thank you to our Patreon member Meredith for suggesting this

1604
01:25:15.119 --> 01:25:17.840
case a long time ago. I failed to put it

1605
01:25:17.840 --> 01:25:21.399
in our spreadsheet. I found it serendipitously when I was

1606
01:25:21.479 --> 01:25:25.560
going through email. So I really hope that you're hearing this, Meredith.

1607
01:25:25.640 --> 01:25:28.479
Thank you so much. Very interesting case. Oh before we

1608
01:25:28.520 --> 01:25:30.039
go to there's one more thing I wanted to mention.

1609
01:25:30.039 --> 01:25:31.840
There's always one more thing, always one thing we do

1610
01:25:32.000 --> 01:25:35.119
The Dateline episode that I watched was really good. We

1611
01:25:35.159 --> 01:25:37.920
are trying to be more careful about which clips we

1612
01:25:38.079 --> 01:25:40.920
use and not stealing anyone's clips. There's a lot of

1613
01:25:40.920 --> 01:25:45.279
like the conversation between John and Michael is in that episode,

1614
01:25:45.479 --> 01:25:47.960
as well as I think the conversation between Sheila and

1615
01:25:48.079 --> 01:25:50.399
John interesting. It was a really good episode.

1616
01:25:50.399 --> 01:25:52.399
We recreated a lot of that perfectly.

1617
01:25:52.439 --> 01:25:54.840
I'm guessing, right, I know, why would you want to

1618
01:25:54.880 --> 01:25:58.239
listen to the actual audio when you have our amazing recreations.

1619
01:25:58.279 --> 01:26:01.600
But a lot of times Dateline episodes are hard to find.

1620
01:26:01.680 --> 01:26:03.680
And I probably shouldn't even mention this because it's probably

1621
01:26:03.720 --> 01:26:05.319
going to be gone, but it'll be on show notes.

1622
01:26:05.359 --> 01:26:08.399
It was on YouTube, and that was a gift because

1623
01:26:08.399 --> 01:26:11.359
a lot of times we aren't able to find older episodes.

1624
01:26:11.840 --> 01:26:19.439
All right, well that was a lot.

1625
01:26:19.840 --> 01:26:20.520
That was a lot.

1626
01:26:21.399 --> 01:26:24.479
You are a little distracted. How dare you? You're looking

1627
01:26:24.479 --> 01:26:27.800
at sports scores? I'll see you, I see you over there.

1628
01:26:28.279 --> 01:26:30.119
I told you, I warned you. This time of year

1629
01:26:30.319 --> 01:26:32.319
is a busy time for me and sometimes I have

1630
01:26:32.399 --> 01:26:33.359
to multitask.

1631
01:26:34.119 --> 01:26:36.279
Well, I am proud of you. During this case, we

1632
01:26:36.319 --> 01:26:37.840
talked about Ohio quite a lot.

1633
01:26:38.239 --> 01:26:41.479
Yeah, and we even a Michigan Ohio football game reference.

1634
01:26:41.920 --> 01:26:44.359
I try to put Michigan in every case if I can.

1635
01:26:45.159 --> 01:26:47.680
But that was an interesting point too that they were

1636
01:26:47.680 --> 01:26:50.159
talking about. I didn't really talk about this, but they

1637
01:26:50.239 --> 01:26:53.079
said that Michael had the wrong weekend because win is

1638
01:26:53.119 --> 01:26:55.520
the Ohio State Michigan game every year.

1639
01:26:55.720 --> 01:26:58.560
It's right near Thanksgiving always.

1640
01:26:58.640 --> 01:27:01.079
Yeah, and he had said something about he gave the

1641
01:27:01.119 --> 01:27:03.960
wrong weekend, but it was easily proven. But it didn't

1642
01:27:04.000 --> 01:27:06.479
matter because you know, that's still when it happened. But

1643
01:27:06.520 --> 01:27:10.000
you didn't say anything derogatory about Ohio, And for that I.

1644
01:27:10.000 --> 01:27:14.000
Tried really hard. I know we have listeners that are

1645
01:27:14.000 --> 01:27:15.239
in Columbus.

1646
01:27:14.920 --> 01:27:17.720
Loved listeners from Ohio. We have a lot of yes,

1647
01:27:17.760 --> 01:27:21.479
But in general, people in Michigan and Ohio we don't

1648
01:27:21.520 --> 01:27:25.840
really get along, especially when you talk about the University

1649
01:27:25.840 --> 01:27:26.640
of Michigan and.

1650
01:27:27.159 --> 01:27:28.880
Yeah, when it comes to football though.

1651
01:27:29.119 --> 01:27:31.199
One of the great rivalries in college football.

1652
01:27:31.239 --> 01:27:32.439
I believe, yeah for sure.

1653
01:27:32.680 --> 01:27:35.319
All Right, So this episode is going to drop a

1654
01:27:35.399 --> 01:27:40.239
couple of days before our third podcast anniversary three years

1655
01:27:40.239 --> 01:27:41.319
we've been podcasting.

1656
01:27:42.119 --> 01:27:44.319
Believe it, No, I really can't believe it.

1657
01:27:44.439 --> 01:27:46.399
I feel like we're going to have the same exact

1658
01:27:46.439 --> 01:27:49.840
conversation that we had a year ago. So I apologize

1659
01:27:50.039 --> 01:27:52.720
if you have just listened to one of those episodes

1660
01:27:52.760 --> 01:27:54.960
that we talk about our anniversaries, I've.

1661
01:27:54.880 --> 01:27:57.720
Forgotten what that conversation was all about, and hopefully most

1662
01:27:57.800 --> 01:27:58.640
other people have to.

1663
01:27:58.880 --> 01:28:00.640
Did you think that we would make three years?

1664
01:28:00.720 --> 01:28:00.920
Hell?

1665
01:28:03.239 --> 01:28:05.199
Do you think we'll make it another three years?

1666
01:28:05.479 --> 01:28:08.119
Another? Oh gosh, I don't know. Three more years is

1667
01:28:08.880 --> 01:28:11.479
a lot. I don't know. I really, I really don't know.

1668
01:28:12.039 --> 01:28:13.680
I wouldn't have thought we'd made this far, So.

1669
01:28:13.880 --> 01:28:14.399
Yeah, who knows.

1670
01:28:14.439 --> 01:28:15.279
Maybe who knows.

1671
01:28:15.319 --> 01:28:17.800
Maybe we'll just keep going for another twenty five.

1672
01:28:17.720 --> 01:28:20.000
Years, a decade, two decades, Yeah, why not?

1673
01:28:20.079 --> 01:28:21.880
Well, one thing I know for sure is that we

1674
01:28:21.920 --> 01:28:24.880
would not be podcasting. Oh gosh, I'm gonna get emotional

1675
01:28:24.880 --> 01:28:27.760
if you guys weren't listening. We've had so much support

1676
01:28:27.880 --> 01:28:30.640
and love along the way, and we are just so grateful.

1677
01:28:30.880 --> 01:28:33.239
I think sometimes we talk about it too much, but

1678
01:28:33.279 --> 01:28:36.800
it still amazes us really that people like what we're doing,

1679
01:28:36.920 --> 01:28:40.840
that they can tell that we're nice people, because we

1680
01:28:41.439 --> 01:28:45.399
really are just like an average, nice couple next door.

1681
01:28:45.880 --> 01:28:48.920
There's nothing really super special about us, but we just

1682
01:28:48.960 --> 01:28:50.720
appreciate your support so so much.

1683
01:28:50.760 --> 01:28:52.319
We do and when we started it, you know, I

1684
01:28:52.359 --> 01:28:55.000
think we had like one hundred listens on our first

1685
01:28:55.039 --> 01:28:56.199
episode or something like that.

1686
01:28:56.479 --> 01:28:58.880
I remember the first day, the first day we had,

1687
01:28:58.960 --> 01:29:01.439
we had seventeen. I was like, that was just like

1688
01:29:01.520 --> 01:29:07.319
exceeded our expectations even by having seventeen. And now, you know,

1689
01:29:07.359 --> 01:29:09.520
we're still a small podcast, but we get thousands of

1690
01:29:09.560 --> 01:29:12.800
downloads every day, and you know, we started, you know,

1691
01:29:12.840 --> 01:29:14.840
with seventeen. It's just, yeah, remarkable.

1692
01:29:14.880 --> 01:29:16.680
I was just gonna say, I don't think we definitely

1693
01:29:16.680 --> 01:29:19.399
would not have kept doing this. We enjoy doing it,

1694
01:29:19.479 --> 01:29:21.760
Like I think it's really fun for us to have

1695
01:29:21.800 --> 01:29:24.119
something that we do together, but we definitely would not

1696
01:29:24.239 --> 01:29:25.119
have kept doing.

1697
01:29:24.880 --> 01:29:27.560
It unless people were listening, unless people were.

1698
01:29:27.439 --> 01:29:30.239
Enjoining it and yeah, really liking what we were doing.

1699
01:29:30.319 --> 01:29:34.399
So it really is very Yeah, it's it makes me

1700
01:29:34.520 --> 01:29:36.600
really emotional to think about it.

1701
01:29:36.680 --> 01:29:38.239
Yeah, right, favorite episode.

1702
01:29:39.800 --> 01:29:41.640
I have a really hard time with this because I

1703
01:29:41.680 --> 01:29:44.359
forget so many episodes that we've done, but the one

1704
01:29:44.640 --> 01:29:49.239
one that I always come back to is the Carrie Farvar,

1705
01:29:49.479 --> 01:29:52.960
Liz Galliar, Dave Krupa. I think I think I got

1706
01:29:52.960 --> 01:29:56.760
those names right. That episode was just Bananas. It's just

1707
01:29:56.800 --> 01:29:59.880
one of the craziest episodes. I think that I can remember.

1708
01:30:00.000 --> 01:30:03.439
How about you, that's really hard to answer. I think

1709
01:30:03.600 --> 01:30:06.479
the favorite thing about doing the podcast for me is

1710
01:30:06.520 --> 01:30:10.960
the connection I feel to the cases. Yeah. Yeah, and

1711
01:30:11.079 --> 01:30:13.680
like the case that you just did last week, I

1712
01:30:13.720 --> 01:30:15.840
could tell how emotionally connected you were.

1713
01:30:16.000 --> 01:30:17.359
That one is going to stick with me for a

1714
01:30:17.399 --> 01:30:19.640
long time. Then that's that's Corbett case.

1715
01:30:19.840 --> 01:30:22.000
That's how I feel about several of them, I think

1716
01:30:22.039 --> 01:30:25.119
because it's recent. I really did love the Betty Broderick. Yes,

1717
01:30:25.960 --> 01:30:30.119
and one of my probably emotion most emotional case is

1718
01:30:30.159 --> 01:30:33.560
the Heart Family. I just yeah, I'll never forget those

1719
01:30:33.600 --> 01:30:34.319
those little kids.

1720
01:30:34.359 --> 01:30:36.840
Well, yeah, when we do cases that involve children, those

1721
01:30:36.880 --> 01:30:39.079
are always really, really tough.

1722
01:30:39.239 --> 01:30:41.319
Yeah, I'm looking back at the cases we did this year,

1723
01:30:42.079 --> 01:30:45.159
the Phil Hartman case. I really enjoy that one. We

1724
01:30:45.199 --> 01:30:47.760
got to play so many funny clips. But yeah, I mean,

1725
01:30:47.760 --> 01:30:50.399
we really do enjoy doing the podcast. We hope that

1726
01:30:50.439 --> 01:30:53.439
we can keep doing it. And again, I mean, you guys,

1727
01:30:53.640 --> 01:30:56.800
we love you like family, and we're just so grateful. Yeah,

1728
01:30:56.880 --> 01:30:59.720
we know that not everyone wants to or can be

1729
01:30:59.800 --> 01:31:02.920
a Atreon member, and that's totally okay, all the ways

1730
01:31:02.960 --> 01:31:05.119
that you can support our podcast, and you guys are

1731
01:31:05.319 --> 01:31:08.319
really doing a great job supporting us on social media,

1732
01:31:08.359 --> 01:31:14.000
engaging with our content, leaving messages, leaving comments, and the

1733
01:31:14.039 --> 01:31:17.640
Reddit comments, Oh my gosh, those are just so bad.

1734
01:31:17.960 --> 01:31:20.640
It really helps us so much when people are hearing

1735
01:31:20.680 --> 01:31:24.039
from other listeners that they recommend this podcast, because we

1736
01:31:24.039 --> 01:31:27.319
can go out all we want and tout our own podcast, but.

1737
01:31:27.359 --> 01:31:28.119
We don't really do that.

1738
01:31:28.199 --> 01:31:30.000
No, we don't do that, first of all, and even

1739
01:31:30.039 --> 01:31:31.880
if we did, it wouldn't really mean a lot. But

1740
01:31:32.279 --> 01:31:35.119
when you all comment on Reddit or Facebook or wherever

1741
01:31:35.199 --> 01:31:36.720
and recommend us to people.

1742
01:31:36.520 --> 01:31:38.000
It helps a lot of new people find us.

1743
01:31:38.079 --> 01:31:38.479
Yeah.

1744
01:31:38.600 --> 01:31:40.520
Well, before we end this, I want to give us

1745
01:31:40.560 --> 01:31:43.279
sincere thank you to you for all the work that

1746
01:31:43.399 --> 01:31:47.279
you do and your support and encouragement. And I'm not

1747
01:31:47.319 --> 01:31:50.760
always the easiest oh wow. So I'm really proud of

1748
01:31:50.760 --> 01:31:53.039
both of us. But I love you and I'm thankful

1749
01:31:53.079 --> 01:31:55.000
for you and well done.

1750
01:31:55.479 --> 01:31:58.079
You put a lot into this podcast of your heart

1751
01:31:58.119 --> 01:32:00.640
and soul, and I really appreciate having you as a

1752
01:32:00.640 --> 01:32:03.800
partner in this effort. So yeah, thank you as well.

1753
01:32:04.000 --> 01:32:04.479
I love you.

1754
01:32:04.600 --> 01:32:07.840
I love you too. Until next time, don't kill your wife.

1755
01:32:08.039 --> 01:32:08.960
Don't kill your husband.