The Bizarre Disappearance & Death of Judy Smith

The case of Judy Smith -- who went missing in Philadelphia and was then inexplicably found dead more than 600 miles away in Asheville, North Carolina – is one that has baffled police and amateur sleuths alike. Despite several eyewitness accounts and sightings, it remains unclear if Judy Smith ever even traveled to Philadelphia to begin with, let alone went missing from the city. The lack of modern technology, such as CCTV footage, traffic cameras, and cell phone data, made for a timeline of events that’s incredibly difficult to confirm. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Hey, hey, welcome back to Autumn's oddities. I'm Autumn. Well
it's finally a bur a month. As I record this,
it is the first day of September. I've already decorated
the inside of my house, you know, at least more
than it's usually decorated, because this is a lifestyle for me.
It is not a phase. It's permanent. I fear the
weather has been glorious here, and as I say that,

(00:58):
I fear that the weather God will smite me and
go ahead and crank that heat back up. But it'd
be real cool if they didn't, both literally and figuratively.
No real business to take care of today, Just a
friendly reminder that if you would like to take a
gander at my Patreon page, there's a lot of episodes
that have never been released to the public feed, and

(01:20):
you get access to those at any level of paid subscription,
and you also help offset the cost of making this tiny, baby,
Little Pumpkin podcast. That's it. That's all I've got for you.
Let's get into today's unsolved mystery. It's one that I
shockingly have not heard of. It's pretty pretty old. I

(01:40):
say that it's from the nineties and I'm saying that
that's old and it makes me feel just got awful,
But I hadn't really heard of it, and it's a
pretty confounding mystery. The case of Judy Smith, who went
missing in Philadelphia and was then inexplicably found dead more

(02:01):
than six hundred miles away in Asheville, North Carolina, is
one that has fascinated the true crime community for decades.
Despite several eyewitness accounts and sightings, it remains unclear if
Judy Smith ever even traveled to Philadelphia to begin with,
let alone went missing from the city. The lack of
what would be considered modern technology like CCTV footage, traffic cams,

(02:26):
cell phone data, and the like made for a timeline
of events that is incredibly difficult to confirm. So you
go ahead, listen and decide what you think. Judy Smith
was born Judy Eldridge on December fifteenth, nineteen forty six,
in Hyannas, Massachusetts. Judy worked as a home care nurse

(02:47):
in the Boston area when she met Jeffrey Smith in
the mid nineteen eighties. Jeffrey was an attorney whose father
had throat surgery, and Judy came to his home to
care for him afterward. Jeffrey later recalled that he was
really impressed with Judy and her devotion to his father's
care and how she used a window curtain rod in

(03:09):
the absence of a proper ivy poll for his father's
bag of saleine and medication. I am assuming so she
was very resourceful and dedicated, and he admired that about her. Soon, Jeffrey,
a divorcee with a grown daughter, began dating Judy, who
also had two adult children from a previous marriage. In

(03:29):
September of nineteen ninety six, the two were married. Jeffrey's
work as an attorney also related to healthcare. He actually
represented the Northeast Pharmaceutical Conference, an organization of researchers and
executives primarily from New England. Eight months after their marriage,
the couple planned their first trip together. They decided to

(03:52):
attend a conference together. It was Jeffrey's conference in Philadelphia
from April ninth to eleventh, nineteen ninety seven. Following that,
they planned to spend the rest of the week visiting
some friends in nearby New Jersey. So in April of
ninety seven, the couple took that trip to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
they were or they were going to anyway, and the

(04:12):
trip was of course planned around the work conference that
jeff was attending. While Jeffrey was at his conference during
the day, Judy planned to sightsee. You know, they're in Philadelphia.
There's lots to see. Once the conference was over. Like
I said, they planned to travel from Philadelphia to New
Jersey before heading back to Boston. The couple left on

(04:33):
April ninth, So they left together and they got to
Logan International Airport, and Judy realized that she did not
have any identification with her. She didn't have her driver's
license at the time. This was a new FAA regulation,
you know, before apparently before nineteen ninety seven, you could

(04:56):
just get on a plane with no identification whatsoever, which
is complete and utter insanity to me. And you know,
nine to eleven changed the way we'll travel forever. This
was pre nine to eleven, but they had just implemented
that rule, that regulation that required airlines to verify passengers'
identities before allowing them to fly. And that's not to

(05:18):
say that these processes were very strenuous. You know, it's
just a person looking at an ID. Somebody could have
had a fake ID who knows. We'll get in more
too that later. So she had to leave the airport
to return home, get her driver's license, and take a
later flight that day. Here's another part of the eyewitness

(05:39):
testimony that is shaky because we just don't know. Airline
workers confirmed that Judy Smith's ticket was used that night,
So her ticket was used. Do we know if it
was actually her that got on the plane? No, we
do not not at all. Actually, again, there was no
camera footage that anyone could speak of. Look through the

(06:00):
investigation files. There was no mention of footage showing her
getting on the flight. Also, like camera footage back then
was you could see like shapes at best. You're not
really going to be able to confirm someone's identity in
nineteen ninety seven using a security camera of any kind.
And again back then cameras were not everywhere. And if

(06:25):
there was a camera, sure there's probably a camera at
an airport. The quality of the pictures or the images
was solo that it could not have been used to
confirm or you know, dispute someone's identity. But the airline
employees do say that the ticket was used. Was it
Judy Smith that used the ticket? We don't know that

(06:45):
evening allegedly, all this is all of this is an allegation, really,
that evening, Judy caught up to Jeff and met him
at the hotel, bringing him flowers to apologize. In addition
to Jeff, some fellow conferences apparently reported seeing her arrive
in the lobby at the Double Tree Hotel. A hotel

(07:05):
desk employee also told police that she did see Judy
and she recalled her bringing the flowers, and that was
a detail that apparently had not been made public. The
next morning, Jeff said that he woke up before Judy
and went to eat breakfast at the hotel. When he
got back to the room, Judy was awake, but she
was in the shower. The two briefly talked, and Jeff

(07:28):
left for the day's first session, and this would be
the last time that Jeff spoke with Judy. Jeff said
that the evening before, he and Judy had discussed plans.
You know, she'd spend the afternoon of April tenth sightseeing
at tourist attractions like you know, Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, YadA, YadA.
They agreed to meet at six pm back at the hotel,

(07:49):
so the two could attend the conference cocktail party together. However,
when jeff arrived at the hotel room at their agreed
upon meeting time, Judy wasn't there, he said. He assumed
that she might have just gotten ready and gone down
to the cocktail party before him, but when he went
downstairs to see if she was there, he didn't find her.

(08:11):
After going back and forth between the party and their
hotel room several times, he grew concerned and informed a concierge,
who began calling area hospitals. Remember it's nineteen ninety seven.
I don't know if she had a cell phone. It
kind of sounds like she didn't. Cell phones were not
at all common. Again, if you didn't grow up during
this time, if you were born after you know, or

(08:34):
just too young to really remember that time, cell phones
were not at all prevalent, Like you had to be
super wealthy, like maybe Jeffrey had one. I don't know,
but his wife probably did not. It was not a
common thing to have. If anything, people had like pagers,
and I'm not even gonna explain it to you. It
makes me feel like I'm ancient and ready for the
urn to explain pagers to anybody. Google it please, for

(08:57):
the love of God. So after going back and forth,
like I said, he calls area hospitals, so does the concierge.
YadA YadA. So Jeff leaves the cocktail part and I
say YadA YadA. Not because I'm being dismissive, It's because,
like literally, none of this can be none of this
can be proven at all. So take it with a
grain of salt. But I'm not trying to be biased

(09:19):
and going over these facts. I'm just saying this really
can't be proven. It's a whole lot of eyewitness testimony.
And as I've covered in other cases, we know that
eyewitness testimony it is not reliable, like really almost at all. Anybody,
Like in false confessions, we see people coming up with

(09:40):
these false memories. We see whole groups of people who
witness an event, say a beating, a murder, a robbery,
identifying the wrong person. But they all identify the same person,
but it's the wrong person. Eyewitness accounts just are not
super reliable. And again, there weren't good quality cameras everywhere.

(10:02):
There wasn't any kind of a key card system to
you know, see who went in and out of the
hotel room at what time. This is before all of that.
This is the beforetime when you could just kind of,
you know, say this this and this happened, and everybody's like, Okay,
I guess that's what happened. There weren't a whole lot
of ways to confirm it. And also, any of these

(10:23):
people that saw Judy Smith did not know her before
this conference, so, you know, a hotel desk clerk seeing her,
it literally could have been anybody. You know. She was
a white lady, looked pretty normal. Nothing really, you know,
nothing really stood out. She had a backpack that I'll
get to later that was like her signature thing that

(10:45):
was really noticeable. But it really could have been like
any middle aged white lady to be to be truthful
like that they saw they Yes, she could have been
caring flowers, but it might not have been her. We
just don't know. So Jeffrey left the cocktail party and
he paid a cab to drive slowly around and to
follow the route of the Philadelphia Flash p h Lash

(11:11):
tourist bus, which Judy had told him she was planning
to use, and he was just looking really for any
sign of her. He called his step children in Boston
and asked one of them to go to their house
and check their answering machine for any messages, and none
of those things yielded any useful information. Finally, he went
to the Philadelphia Police around midnight to report Judy missing.

(11:36):
He went on to spend a lot of time and
money on the investigation himself, including or sending Judy's missing
person flyers to hospitals across the country, as could be expected. Police,
of course, obviously they looked into jeff as a suspect.
That's the first person you look into. She goes to
a new city with her husband and she disappears, you

(11:56):
know you're gonna look at him. The Philadelphia police told
jeff Free, though, that he could not file a missing
persons report until twenty four hours after he'd last seen Judy.
He recalled that a detective said that if he wanted
to push it good, he could file his report in
the morning, and after spending the remainder of the night,

(12:17):
you know, not sleeping at all in his hotel room,
he did. He went ahead and file the report. But wait.
Before Jeffrey could file the report, he spoke to Philadelphia
Mayor Edrindell and John Persill, a member of the Philadelphia
House of Representatives from the city, both of whom were
attending the conference, about what he felt was the police

(12:39):
department's dismissive attitude as to his complaint. So he's like,
I'm gonna go ahead and pull some strings while I
got these people here to listen to me. He said
later that he believed those conversations had made a difference.
You know, when he returned to the police station to
make the report, he had two detectives waiting there to
take that report, and he said he was treated with
courtesy and respect. He also said he overheard one of

(13:03):
the cops saying on the telephone that Commissioner Richard Neil
was to receive a copy of the report immediately. Nevertheless,
Jeffrey said several months later that there was some resistance.
One detective, he claimed, was still saying four days later
that he thought Judy had just had a midlife crisis.
You know, women do this if a midlife crisis. They

(13:24):
do this for attention. No, I don't think so. The
detective later repeated this speculation with some qualification to the
Boston Globe. So he really was letting people know what
he thought. I guess Jeffrey also believed the police, while
cooperative overall, seemed to be inordinately focused on him as

(13:45):
a suspect. And really, can you blame him when you
look at the statistics. Eighty five to ninety percent of
females who are murdered are killed by someone very close
to them a family member, spouse, boyfriend, etc. And that's
according to police Captain John McGinnis. Statistically, we have to
look at Jeffrey Smith as a suspect until it's proven

(14:06):
that he is not a suspect. And yes, I would agree.
While Jeffrey understood and cooperated when they asked to interview
his stepdaughter without him present, since she told the police
he quote didn't cheat on his taxes, he was distressed
that they expressed doubt that Judy had ever been in
Philadelphia to begin with. So they bring in Judy's daughter,

(14:28):
who's an adult, and she says that Jeffrey's a really
honest man. You know, he doesn't even cheat on his taxes.
He doesn't even try and pull one over. That she's
just testifying as to his honesty. But of course the
police are like, was she ever really even in Philadelphia?
And I'm like, yeah, that's a good question if they asked.

(14:49):
Judy was the experienced traveler who had once gone to
Thailand on her own to visit the family of a
grateful patient, why had she forgotten her driver's license? And
this seems like a pretty easy answer. Jeffrey later explained
in response to the Philadelphia City Paper that the rule
you know from the FAA had only been in effect

(15:10):
for eighteen months, and Judy had only flown once during
that time, so it was entirely possible that she made
an honest mistake. But you know, on the other hand,
it's entirely possible that that never happened. According to police,
only one other witness, a desk clerk, could corroborate having
seen Judy at the hotel, which did not have a

(15:31):
guest register, which back then you signed a book when
you came in, like really, it was that primitive. No
real computer system they like, maybe they had a computer system,
but it was like as basic as a guy. You
really you just signed the guest book until another conference
attendee recalled in August of that year that he had
seen her in the lobby when she arrived. And even

(15:52):
so police were cautious since you know, neither of them
knew Judy personally. Again, it could have just been any
aged white lady. A detective who searched the Smith's hotel
room said it struck her as unusual that the closes
Judy left behind did not appear to have been worn
at all, suggesting that she had worn the same clothes

(16:13):
both on her flight from Boston, which it's not a
long flight, the flight from Boston to Philadelphia. I've never
taken that flight, but even like even a driving distance
isn't horrendously bad, so I can't imagine the flight would
be too terribly long. But she would have had to
have worn those clothes the day she disappeared, and you know,

(16:34):
the day she went sightseeing in order for none of
her clothes to have been worn at all, nor did
she appear to have brought any cosmetics with her, And
you know, this struck detectives is odd. But Judy's daughter
said that that was actually typical travel behavior for her mother.
The police also made much of what they asserted was

(16:54):
Jeffrey's refusal to take a lie detective test. And I'm
gonna go ahead and stop them right there. Jeffrey's in a turn.
He and asn't a former attorney, I could say no,
don't take a friggin lie detector test, because they can,
the police or whoever issues the lie detector test can
lie to you about the results. Police are allowed to
lie to you in an interrogation, so they could come

(17:17):
back and say, Jeffrey, you failed that test miserably. We
know you killed your wife, and then downward spiral. He's
doing the right thing there by saying no. In turn,
Jeffrey says that he didn't outright refuse, He only insisted
that any such test be administered by the FBI. He's like,
if somebody's going to come in, it's not going to
be like a local yokel. You'all get the pros in here.

(17:39):
And he said if he passed, the police could formally
request that the Bureau assist with the investigation, But according
to then Captain McGinnis, at the time he made that demand,
Jeffrey already knew that the FBI would not join the
investigation and still declined to submit to the test, even
even when the Philadelphia Police arranged for it to be

(18:01):
administered by the Massachusetts State Police. Still he's like, I
want the FBI, I want the best there is. I
don't want you guys like you know, pulling some shenanigans.
Certain conditions were met, but as far as I'm concerned,
he refused, said Deputy Commissioner at the time, Richard Zappeal.
Jeffrey went ahead and hired two private investigators to aid

(18:23):
in the search for his wife. He distributed copies of
his wife's missing Persons flyer or missing person flyer to
hospitals all over the country and asked them to keep
an eye out for her. His efforts contributed to identification
of Judy down the line. There were several possible sightings
of Judy in and around Philadelphia on April tenth and

(18:45):
the following days, and these are to be taken with
a grain of salt. Yet again, in the days after
she disappeared, Philadelphia newspapers and television networks ran stories about
the case. Jeffrey, his friends and family put up flyers
with her picture seeking information. These flyers led to reports
of sightings, some of which Jeffrey found credible. Most were

(19:07):
in the city, but later reports came from outside the city.
A number of reports described a woman who matched Judy's
description but appeared to have psychological issues. She was described
by staff at the Society Hill Hotel as their weirdo
of the week when she stayed there between April thirteenth

(19:28):
and fifteenth, signing in as HK. Rich Collins. While there.
This is trigger warning. I guess this is just gross.
She masturbated in front of an open window, spoke to
herself in tongues, and then loudly exclaimed that the Emperor
would wire her money when she needed it to extend
her stay. Good God, I don't think that was Judy,

(19:50):
but I don't know. Another report mentioned a woman at
the junction of Broad and Locust Streets around three pm
on the day Judy was last seen, described the woman
as disoriented. There were some other reports of a similar woman,
also apparently disturbed in some way in the Penns Landing neighborhood,
which happened to be a flash you know, bus stop

(20:13):
and popular tourist attraction as well. But both the police
and the family believed that those who saw her confused
Judy with just a houseless woman in the area who
strongly resembled her, so much so that even Judy's son
thought that the woman was his mother when he saw
her from across the street. However, one other houseless man

(20:36):
in Penn's landing, when shown Judy's picture, insisted he had
seen her and not the other houseless woman sleeping on
a bench next to him the night before. On April fifteenth.
He told the family that they had just missed the woman,
but they were unable to locate her in the vicinity.
So I don't know how much I'm taking that with this,

(20:56):
this houseless lady. Judy's own son saw her across the
street and thought it was his mother. So I think
that the guy who allegedly slept on a bench next
to this woman that looked like Judy, I think he
very well could have mistaken her too, if her own son,
you know, did. The family believed that this was significant
because it was the last time anyone had identified Judy

(21:19):
based on seeing her picture. Sightings that seemed a more
positive identification were centered around the flash bus and its route.
A hotel employee said that she had asked later on
the morning of April tenth where she could catch the
bus nearby. Judy asked, and a driver said that he
had picked her up out front at Front and South

(21:39):
Streets early in the afternoon, and may have let her
off near the hotel. She was also reportedly seen entering
and leaving the city's Greyhound bus terminal, possibly to use
the bathroom. And that's according to her family. The terminal
is near Philadelphia's Chinatown, and since Judy loved Chinese and
Thai food, she might have gone there to eat. But

(22:01):
you know, family police went and checked, and no one
at any of the several many restaurants in the neighborhood
recalled seeing her there. Another report surface that Judy had
been shopping for dresses at Macy's in the Deptford Mall
in Deptford Township, New Jersey, just across the Delaware River,
and it is possible that she could have gotten there,

(22:23):
you know, investigators realized via New Jersey Transit bus route
four hundred, which makes hourly runs to the mall from
Market Street in Center City and the intersection of Broad
and Cherry Streets in Philadelphia. So there are several ways
that she could have gotten, you know, into another neighboring state.
How she got to where she ended up, I really

(22:46):
don't know, but there, you know, there are several many
different ways she could have gotten to New Jersey. So
this is possible. A salesperson and customer at Macy's gave
an account of the actions or interactions of a woman
there who may have been Judy, saying that she had
said she was shopping for her daughter, even though her
daughter didn't really like what she bought her, which apparently

(23:08):
rang true to her family, her daughter's like that's true,
I freakin hate everything she's bought me, and giving a description.
This employee at Macy's gave a description that included a
distinctive red backpack that Judy carried almost everywhere, especially when traveling.
As the woman left, they recalled that she tried to
get a younger woman, whom they assumed at the time

(23:30):
was the woman's daughter, to leave with her. There were
also reports that she'd been seen in Easton, which is
fifty five miles or eighty nine kilometers north of Philadelphia,
just a few days after going missing. Jeffrey Smith found
another report from Philadelphia more credible, though a private investigator
that he'd hired told a reporter that later in the week,

(23:53):
a man told Jeffrey that he had been leaving a
wah wah, which is a gas station near Rittenhouse Square,
where on his way to work just before six am
when he saw what he described as a well dressed
white woman sitting outside a nearby gourmet grocery store, a
site that he found pretty unusual for that time of day.
It was six am. I don't know if the grocery

(24:16):
store was open or not, but he said it was
strange to see. Later, he saw a newspaper article on
the case and realized that the woman looked a lot
like Judy. But again, so did that houseless woman. It
still could have been her. This is all really in
the same area. Some months pass and on September seventh,
nineteen ninety seven, a father and son hunting for deer

(24:38):
out of season so illegally on a hillside in the
area of North Carolina's Piskah National Forest, found what appeared
to be human bones near the Stony Fork picnic area,
a long Chestnut Creek, which was about nine point three
miles from Asheville, North Carolina. The bones had been scattered
around an area that was about three hundred t feet

(25:00):
or ninety one meters in diameter, most likely you know,
through predation by animals. At the center was a shallow
grave where the majority of a skeleton remained, still partially
buried and clothed. Some personal effects were found in the
area as well. The state medical Examiner determined that the
bones of the then unidentified decedent were those of a

(25:23):
white woman between the ages of forty and fifty five.
She had had extensive dental work and suffered from severe
arthritis in her left knee. There were alleged cut marks
on her ribs. This was not listed in the autopsy report,
but I saw it listed in news stories, so I'm
I'm really not sure. We'll again take that one with

(25:45):
a grain of salt. And among the clothing recovered from
the scene was her bra, which again allegedly also had
cuts and punctures. The investigation concluded that she had been
fatally stabbed, and her death was officially classified as a homicide.
The remains did not stay unidentified for long. An emergency
room position in Franklin, North Carolina, which is like sixty

(26:08):
five miles west of Ashville, saw an article about the
discovery in the newspaper, and smartly he connected it to
one of the flyers that Jeffrey Smith had sent out
and faxed a copy of the article to the Philadelphia Police.
A detective there asked Jeffrey for his wife's dental records,
which he provided. They were sent to the medical examiner

(26:29):
in Ashville, and using her dental records, the remains were
positively identified as those of Judy Smith. So now we've
got Judy Smith. Her remains are found in Ashville, North Carolina,
which is not even kind of close to Philadelphia. How

(26:50):
did she get there? Mmmm? We're going to speculate, because
you know, that's really all there is here. While the
discovery of Judy's remains ended the missing person investigation, the
homicide investigation it started posed new questions for detectives with
the Buncombe County Sheriff's Office, which took the lead role.
In order to identify her killer, they would most likely

(27:13):
need to figure out how in the hell she got
to North Carolina in the first place. She didn't have
a car with her like, they couldn't find records of
a flight. How did she get there? The evidence found
with her bones suggested that she had been with someone else,
possibly whoever killed her, and that she had been alive
when she reached the Asheville area. Most significantly, her leg

(27:37):
bones were still clad in jeans thermal underwear and hiking boots.
And these were not clothes that she was wearing when
Jeffrey or any of the other witnesses who may or
may not have seen her in Philadelphia saw her. But
you know, they were what she might have worn if
she were hiking in the mountains of Asheville, North Carolina,

(27:59):
in mid April. But she had none of those clothes
with her when she was in Philadelphia. She wasn't wearing
those clothes when she went missing. Nobody came forward and said, Yeah,
I worked at this hiking store in whatever, Philadelphia or
in New Jersey, and she came in and bought these
boots or these jeans or this whatever. None of that happened. Also,
no wallet or other identification was found in her pockets.

(28:21):
A blue and black vinyl backpack was found with her body.
In it were winter clothes and eighty dollars in cash.
A shirt buried nearby also had eighty seven dollars in
the pockets. The combined one hundred and sixty dollars is
consistent with the two hundred dollars Jeffrey believed that Judy
had on her person at the time she disappeared. The

(28:44):
presence of the money and her wedding ring led investigators
to conclude that robbery was not the motivation for her murder. However,
her red backpack was not found to remember her trademark
red backpack that she took with her whenever she traveled,
nor were any other clothes that she was wearing or
took with her on the trip found at the scene.

(29:07):
Judy's family also said that an expensive pair of sunglasses
found near the bones were not hers. As far as
they knew, Okay who was worth They I don't know.
Judy's family could not imagine why she might have gone
to the Ashville area. They're like, there's literally no reason
for her to go here. She was at a freaking
conference in Philadelphia, and she just took off for Ashville.

(29:29):
Why how according to them, she had never even expressed
a desire to go there and had only twice been
to the general region of the United States that she
ended up in. Once she had visited Jeffrey for a
week when he was at a weight loss clinic in Raleigh, Durham,
and on another occasion, she accompanied a patient on a

(29:50):
drive south as he visited family that either lived closer
in North Carolina to Ashville. Or in a neighboring area
of Virginia or Tennessee. This is according to her family's recollections,
and they do indeed differ, but several people in the
Asheville area recalled having seen Judy, or at least a

(30:12):
woman matching her description. In April, a clerk at a
local retailer said, she seemed very alert to me, she
was very pleasant. I didn't see anything about her that
would indicate that she wasn't right in any way. The
woman she talked to said her husband was an attorney
from Boston attending a conference in Philadelphia, and during that

(30:33):
time she had just decided to go to the Asheville area.
And I'm like, that's very very specific. How did you
remember that conversation? Also, I'm fairly certain that any news
stories broadcast about Judy's disappearance would have mentioned that her
husband was an attorney from Boston and that they were
attending a conference in Philadelphia, So she could have you know,

(30:56):
I'm not saying she maliciously made anything up, but I'm
saying she could have heard the story or you know,
seeing something about it on the news or in the paper,
and it just kind of like implanted itself in her memory,
and maybe she falsely remembered. I don't know, maybe she
really did see her. An employee at the Biltmore Estate,
which is a big, like old estate, really pretty house

(31:17):
and gardens and stuff in Asheville also recalled seeing Judy
at a campground near where her body was found. The
owner recalled that she drove up in a gray Sadan
filled with boxes and bags, asked if she could spend
the night there in her car, and drove away after
learning that she could not. And I'm like, okay, well,
if that was Judy, did she go home and get

(31:40):
the boxes and the bags? Like That's not making sense
to me. She didn't have boxes and multiple bags with
her in Philadelphia. She also didn't have a car with
her in Philadelphia. So where is all of this coming
from if it was indeed Judy. A deli owner in
the same area told the Philadelphia City Paper that Judy
came up to her store in a gray Sadan, which

(32:00):
again same car, and bought thirty dollars worth of sandwiches
and a toy truck. Very strange. Local investigators consider these
sightings credible. I don't know why they consider it credible.
I really feel like it could go either way. But
they did see the same car, so I'm like, Okay,
maybe they did see a lady that looked like Judy,

(32:21):
but I'm not sure if it was her. Investigators with
the Buncombe County Sheriff's Office have indeed ruled out Jeffrey Smith,
who died in two thousand and five, as a suspect.
Here's why, though. It was because he was morbidly obese,
and they believed that he would not physically have been
able to have made the hike or you know, or

(32:41):
have taken his wife's body up the slope where it
was found. They just don't think he was physically capable
of doing that. His presence at the conference during the
day Judy disappeared has also been corroborated, and I believe
that his presence like that could be confirmed. He was
there specifically for a comp Judy was just there with
her husband. Nobody knew her there. I'm sure that people

(33:04):
knew Jeffrey there and can confirm. The Philadelphia police, however,
never eliminated him as a suspect, so they're not so sure.
This is just the Asheville investigators that cleared him. Sam Constance,
the Buncombe detective who investigated the case, believes that Judy
was not abducted and came to the Ashville area voluntarily.

(33:28):
Constance also did not believe that Judy was killed elsewhere
and dumped at the site due to the distance that anyone,
you know, even in someone in peak physical condition, would
have had to carry her body where their intent to bury,
you know, or with the intent to bury her like
they just nobody was getting her up there. She was

(33:48):
a good size herself, so somebody in peak physical condition
could not have done it, and that's why that's the
only it's kind of terrible. Actually, that's the only reason
they're ruling Jeffrey out. But to that, I said, never
underestimate somebody with a strong will. He could have done it.
But it does sound like he was at the conference.
But again, you could have gotten away. We don't know.

(34:10):
While Jeffrey and Judy's children did not say that there
had been any problems in the marriage, one of her
friends said otherwise. And I think at this point they'd
only even been married, like eight months at the time
this happened. Jeff and Judy's marriage was very tenuous. Carolyn
Dicky told Unsolved Mysteries in two thousand and one. I
believe that something did happen that triggered her to want

(34:31):
to have some time away from jeff Although some of
Judy's jewelry was missing, the presence of most of it,
and of course the cash, suggests that robbery was not
a motive for the murder. It has also been suggested
that she might have encountered Gary Michael Hilton, a serial
killer who was later arrested and convicted of several killings

(34:52):
on hiking trails in national forests in the southern Appalachian
Mountains between two thousand and seven and two thousand and eight.
He has not been linked to Judy Smith's killing, though,
while he did leave the raped and murdered body of
one of his victims tied to a tree not far
from the site where Judy's body was found, his known

(35:12):
killings did not begin until October of two thousand and seven,
just over a decade after her murder. The State of
North Carolina and Jeffrey Smith combined to offer seventeen thousand
dollars in reward money you know, for any information leading
to the resolution of this case. And I would assume
that that reward money still stands, and that's it. That's

(35:36):
all anyone knows. So what the fuck happened here? I
don't know, let's get into it. I guess many theories
about the case abound. There are plenty theories abounding with
regard to who killed Judy Smith and why she was

(35:57):
in North Carolina. You know, did she go of her
own free will? If she went willingly, why did she
go to Asheville, North Carolina. I'm not knocking Asheville. I
love Ashville. I spent every summer there for I don't know,
like five six years at a camp in the Black Mountains.
It's gorgeous, it's an art town. It's just it's a

(36:18):
lovely place. But you know, did she know someone there
who killed her? Why did they kill her? That? These
are questions that there are no answers to. After thoroughly
discussing this with my husband over the past couple days,
just like bouncing ideas off of him and him trying
to ignore me, I'm just kidding. He listens occasionally. I've

(36:38):
narrowed it down to maybe two explanations that I believe
are the most probable. One Judy knew someone in North
Carolina that she wanted to see, so she went down there.
She used the business trip as an opportunity to go
down there. While she was in North Carolina, either the
person that she went to meet with or an entirely

(37:00):
different person killed her. I suspect that if Judy traveled
so far, you know, just to meet up with someone,
that person may have been a love interest, you know,
maybe she was having an affair, Maybe she was thinking
about having an affair. Judy had apparently been reluctant to
get married in the first place, and described Jeff as needy.
I'm like, that's not good. I feel like that would

(37:22):
leave to resentment pretty damn quick. I have no idea
what Judy and Jeff's marriage was really like, and will
most likely never know, but I believe it is a
possibility that Judy was, you know, kindling somewhat of a
relationship on the side, and perhaps meeting up with the
person is the reason that she went to North Carolina,
because otherwise that is just entirely random. I'm not entirely

(37:45):
sure whether this was planned in advance or a spontaneous
decision of hers. However, I think it's possible that Judy
did forget her wallet on the first trip to the
airport on purpose so that she could return later in
the day, maybe buy round trip tickets to North Carolina
without Jeff noticing. Who knows. Maybe she planned, you know,

(38:06):
to disappear for just a day. I don't know. I
imagine investigators would have come through whatever financial transactions they
could have before and after the disappearance. But you know,
people use cash back then, people used checks. It wasn't
like you could just, you know, get onto your online
portal and view your whole financial history. No, you really

(38:27):
couldn't do that. Things were done with cash, Things were
done with checks, things were done with money. Orders, Like,
there were a ton of ways that she could have
just disappeared. She could have just really without a trace.
Second option, Judy made a spontaneous decision to just up
and leave, either for a short time or indefinitely, a

(38:48):
lah Brenda heist. I also think it's possible that Judy
may have just needed a break from Jeff and you know,
she said he was needy, and for whatever reason, decided
to take a trip to North Carolina. Again, I feel
like there were other places she could have gone if
she didn't know someone in Ashville. But whatever, If an
alleged sighting of Judy in Ashville is true, then she

(39:09):
did tell a store clerk that she was from Boston
and decided to come to Asheville during her husband's business trip.
And maybe it is just as simple as that. And
maybe somewhere along Judy's trip she ran into, you know,
a bad character. And I see this as really the
least likely explanation, but I think it warrants a mention.

(39:30):
You know, she could have made a spontaneous decision to
just leave and start a new life. And I know
it sounds strange, doesn't make sense, but that's what people
said about the possibility of Brenda Heist abandoning her family
before it was discovered that she had just done that.
And that's a story for another time that I am
going to cover, but you've probably heard of that case.
I think those are the two most likely theories here. Again,

(39:53):
any of the eyewitness sightings of her, I think really
just have to be taken with a massive grain of salt,
like like a chum a salt like a salt lamp
sized chunk of salt like pink Himalan salt. I don't
know what other kinds of salt, white salt, table salt,
light sodium salt. Just take it with all the grains
of salt. Because there was indeed a houseless woman that

(40:17):
seemed to have some mental or psychological issues that was
roman around Philadelphia, and Judy's own son thought that this
lady was Judy. So I think we just need to say,
I don't think anybody saw her in Philadelphia, straight up?
Did she go in the first place? Did she ever

(40:38):
make it there? If she didn't, then Jeffrey Smith is
lying and most likely killed her. But where would he
have killed her. He probably would have taken her to
North Carolina beforehand, would have well, let's just spitball here.
I'm not saying he did it, but this you gotta
look at every possibility. We got to look at every
possibility here. So let's say Jeffrey knew he had this conference,

(41:03):
he invites Judy to go. You know, she tells her kids,
her adult kids, she tells her friends she's going to
this conference. Everybody knows she's supposed to be gone, right,
So that would buy him if Jeffrey were going to
do something to his wife, that would buy him a
couple of days, right, So let's say this whole id
thing never happened. She didn't, you know, forget her wallet

(41:26):
and have to go at a later time. Let's say
he killed her beforehand. Where he killed her, I don't know.
I couldn't find anywhere that they ever searched his home
if they could, if they got probable cause for a
warrant to search, you know, Judy and Jeffrey Smith's home.
I think Guy certainly would have if I were investigating
this case, I would have said, well, she's missing, and yeah,

(41:49):
sure you have this one day accounted for at the conference,
specifically the very day she disappears. Isn't that convenient? But
we don't really know that she ever got there because
you know Airport's back then it was Lucy Goosey. There
were really no rules. The only rule, you know, the
new rule anyway, was you had to get the ID.

(42:10):
So that would count for Jeffrey showing up alone at
the hotel. Right, he goes to check in his wife
isn't with him. He maybe tells the clerk, all, my
wife forgot her ID and had to go back to
the house and get it. And you know she'd go
back to the house and get it. She'll be meeting
me later. So let's say that never happened. Let's say

(42:31):
maybe or maybe it did. Let's just let's think about that. Okay.
So maybe Jeffrey hides her identification. He knows that he
hit it, and he's like, do you have your ID
with you? And she says, oh my god, no, it's
not in my wallet. I must have left it at home.
I have to go back. What if he has someone
waiting back at their house to kill her or perhaps
to kidnap her? Hmm, what if? What if the person

(42:55):
back at the house or even even better, even better, Well, no, no,
I'm I'm gonna end this very first. So they're back
at the house. Maybe Jeffrey has sent someone there to
abduct or to kill her. That happens, her body is
taken to Asheville and dumped right Jeffrey's hands are clean.

(43:17):
Maybe he pays another woman. Perhaps he's having an affair. Again,
these are all allegations. I'm purely speculating because this is
an open case, and you know that's what investigators would
be doing too, based on evidence. So let's say he
sends another woman that resembles Judy to the flight counter

(43:37):
has her check in with Judy's ID, or it could
have even been a fake ID. I made a fake
ID when I was like eighteen years old. It was
super easy to do because IDs used to be literal
pieces of paper, just laminated with some kind of hard
plastic sort of malleable, but not like not like they
are today. There weren't real IDs. There was nothing like that.

(43:58):
It was a piece of deeper laminated. So he could
have just taken someone's picture and put it over like
you know, printed a new thing and put someone's picture
in place of Judy's with all her information. Again, they
weren't checking super hard. It was nineteen ninety seven and
this was a brand freaking new regulation, so I don't

(44:18):
think anybody was being super strenuous on the verification. They
were just looking at the picture, looking at the name,
and going okay, yeah, surebye. So let's say somebody, you know,
she checks in airports and security were nothing like they
used to be. No one is confirming she lands on
the ground, you know what I mean? No one is
confirming was their security? Then I think you like straight

(44:39):
up just walked through. They weren't searching your bags. You
maybe went through a metal detector, and that was like
the extent of it. I don't remember. I did fly
back then, but like I was a kid, I was
very young, so I don't remember all the ins and
outs of travel in nineteen ninety seven. But let's say
someone who is not Judy goes in, checks into her flight,

(45:01):
maybe even gets on the plane, and goes to Philadelphia.
Maybe this woman walks around, makes sure to talk to
a few people, make sure to mention, you know, she's
there for a conference with her husband. That would also
account for the lack of her bringing any toilet trees
and for her clothes not being worn. He could have
taken that with him, or the other woman brings it

(45:25):
up with her when she arrives, and then conveniently there
really cannot there's not another confirmed sighting of Judy. We
see the lady that looks like her, and perhaps the
lady was a plant. Perhaps the houseless woman was a plant,
and she wasn't a houseless woman at all. Maybe this
was you know, Jeffrey's doing. Maybe he hired this lady,
maybe he knew this lady. Maybe he saw this lady

(45:46):
out one day and said, damn, that looks a lot
like my wife. I could build an alibi if I
paid her to pretend to be her for a little while.
So that's one possibility. And I like, I don't think
he got his own hands dirty. I think he would
have got and someone else to do it, because again
he has to have that alibi. But that does buy
him a couple of days, and it gives him really
an airtight alibi. She disappears on this day, and hey,

(46:10):
he just so happens to be at a conference with
a ton of other people, and he didn't leave, you know,
with enough time to drive his wife down to Asheville.
He immediately immediately, he doesn't even wait, which I do
find kind of odd, Like, I know, like especially back then,
because there weren't cell phones like now. If if you
had an arrangement like with your husband or your wife,

(46:32):
you're you know, you're gonna go sight see for the
day your spouse is or whoever's gonna go to a conference.
You're gonna meet back up, you're gonna go to the
cocktail party. There are cell phones now. If someone's cell
phone was off and you hadn't heard from them all
day and you knew they were going out by themself,
sight seeing in a city that they were unfamiliar with. Okay,
then maybe you freak out and you go to the

(46:54):
police that quickly. This was ninety seven nobody. You know,
she didn't have a cell phone with her, nothing like that.
Why he immediately jumps to calling hospitals, I don't know,
because it didn't even taken that long to be like,
I want to file a missing person's report. That does
strike me as kind of odd, Like I know it
might strike somebody is Oh he really cares to me.

(47:17):
It's like, all right, well, maybe she just changed her plan.
Maybe she's running behind You immediately went to the police.
Like That's why I think the police were hesitant to
take the report. They're like, well, maybe she just got sidetracked.
You know, maybe she went and ate dinner somewhere and
it's running long. Anything really, maybe she got off at

(47:37):
the wrong bus stop. You know, there are a lot
of possibilities. But to immediately go to the police and
be like, my wife is missing. I find that a
little odd because most people would just be like, all right,
well they'll show up, and then you'd wait. You wouldn't
go running back and forth and then go down to
the concierge and be like, you need to go call
the hospitals, call all of the hospitals. I don't know.

(47:58):
That's a little weird to me. And I think all
of that is the reason that the Philadelphia police did
not ever clear Jeffrey Smith as a suspect. But he
was also never convicted. So all of these are merely
allegations based on the you know what little evidence there
is at hand. Other possibility she did just take off.

(48:21):
Maybe she was just sick of him. Maybe you know,
she's like, he dragged me here, maybe they got into
an argument or something. Maybe she's like, he dragged me here,
I really don't want to be here. But again, why
did she take off to Ashville? The only reason that
I can think is what I said. You know, ninety
seven chat rooms were a big thing, like AOL chat rooms.
I was up in those. I should not have been.

(48:42):
I was a child. There were a lot of predators.
This was the advent of internet chat rooms, and you
were talking to people. There weren't webcams or anything like that.
If there were webcams, that was high tech. That was
not a normal thing that people had. You weren't verifying
somebody's identity. You weren't able really to verify who you
were talking to in these chat rooms. That could have

(49:03):
literally been anyone. Maybe she was, you know, carrying on
a little chat room romance with somebody in Ashville. They
lured her there and killed her. But again, like, why
would they Why would they kill her? Why would they
invite her there and then kill her unless they were
just like a straight up murderer, like just really wanted

(49:25):
to kill someone, that's a possibility. Why they would bring
them to where they lived. Perhaps they didn't live there.
But I find the account from the store clerk, I
think it was the grocery store clerk in Ashville that
said she bought thirty dollars worth of sandwiches. And I
know that doesn't sound like a great deal today, but
thirty dollars worth of sandwiches in nineteen ninety seven in Asheville,

(49:47):
North Carolina, that was a lot, Like there's a lot
of sandwiches. Where was she going with that many sandwiches?
Why did she buy a toy truck? Her family said
she didn't know anybody down there, like she'd maybe been
there the one time, and not to Ashville specifically, just
somewhere in the you know, region of the southeast southeastern
United States. I find the thirty dollars in sandwiches and

(50:12):
the toy truck to be odd because that sounds like
it's for a child. Was she meeting with, you know,
a man or perhaps a woman who had a child,
and they're like, let's go to the to the park
or to whatever the national forest and take a high
and eat sandwiches and blah blah blah. Could have been

(50:32):
something like that. But who was it. We don't know.
I don't know if she had a personal computer at home.
I would assume she did. In nineteen ninety seven, my
family had one, and we didn't have any money, and
we certainly like weren't important people that needed a computer
in our house. And Jeffrey Smith was an attorney, so
I would imagine that he did have a computer in

(50:53):
his home. Recovering forensic computer data back then was not
like it is to you know. I'm not even sure
they could have recovered any chats that she'd had in
a chat room, And if they could, I don't think
that any investigators did that. I'm fairly certain. Well, if
they didn't get a search warrant for the Smith family

(51:15):
home in Boston. Then they certainly didn't get one for
their personal computer, so none of that was checked. I
think this investigation, I mean, it would be difficult because
you know, the Philadelphia police lacked jurisdiction in Boston. The
Boston police would have to cooperate. This guy seems to
be a pretty well connected attorney, So would that happen.
I don't know. He pulled strings in Philadelphia with the

(51:38):
mayor and you know, represented state representatives, and he didn't
even live there, so I can imagine who he was
connected to in Boston. I don't know. The more I talk,
the more it sounds like he could have had something
to do with it. I know that the Asheville Police
cleared Jeffrey Smith, but again the Philadelphia Police indeed did not.

(51:58):
And it just doesn't really seem like like I don't
want to play into that trope of oh, she had
a mid life crisis and she just took off. I
don't think that's what happened, and not tell her kids,
you know what I mean, Like she would have to
know there was there would be like a lot of
consequences for just taking off from Philadelphia. Not telling your husband,

(52:22):
leaving all your stuff, not telling your kids, and then
going completely no contact with everybody. That doesn't make a
whole lot of sense to me. Judy did talk to
her kids like it wasn't that. It wasn't like they
never heard from her. They talked to their mother. They
showed up to look for her in Philadelphia. I'm just saying,

(52:42):
I don't think she would just be like, I'm going
to take off and start a new life if she
left on her own. I think she left to see someone,
and I would think that it would be someone that
she potentially was romantically involved with. It really could have
been a man or a woman. Ashville has always been
like a lesbian haven, and I'm not like saying that's

(53:02):
to be funny, it really is. I know tons of
lesbians who have lived there and loved to visit there,
so it's a very gay friendly city. That is one possibility.
Maybe she was trying to hide it. It was nineteen
ninety seven that was not at all, not at all,
not at all accepted. Like if you've I'm sure you've
never seen this movie because it's old. It's called In

(53:24):
and Out with Kevin Kleine and Tom Selleck, Joan Cusack,
and Matt Dillon. And it's about a high school English
teacher I think it's ninety six and ninety seven, and
his former student wins an Academy award and in the
acceptance speech he thanks his teacher, who's also gay, and
it causes a national media storm and he gets fired

(53:45):
from his job as a teacher for being gay, and
so on and so forth. It was that big of
a deal to be gay back then, So who knows.
Maybe she was closeted. Maybe she went down there to
meet with someone, maybe a lady, maybe a man who knows,
maybe something, and and perhaps they killed her, or someone
else killed her. Perhaps she was maybe it was This

(54:08):
is really all I know. I'm speculating wildly here, but
maybe it was. Maybe it was two women. Maybe she
was going down there to meet a woman. Maybe that
woman was married. Maybe that woman's husband found out about
this whole thing and killed Judy. That was a definite possibility.
But the whole her going down there on her own,

(54:29):
not carrying her red backpack, none of her money taken.
It sounded like this almost the exact same amount of
money that she had when she was in Philadelphia. I
don't know, so what was it was one eighty seven
or one sixty seven was found on her person. I'm
gonna have to scroll back up and look that she
spent thirty dollars on sandwiches. Did she spend any money

(54:49):
on gas? Did she spend money on a rental car?
You would have to spend money on those things in
order to get from Philadelphia to Ashville, it's six hundred
miles away. Would certainly need gas. I don't know. That's
just odd to me. Let's see thirty dollars worth of sandwiches.
I'm scrolling, and I'm scrolling. I'm trying to find the
exact number. I think it was one sixty seven, one

(55:12):
sixty seven, Okay, So that would literally just be the
thirty dollars in sandwiches that she could have spent and
had three dollars left. So if she was buying gas,
she would have to be writing checks or had had
more cash with her to begin with, because Jeffrey believed
that she had two hundred dollars with her when she disappeared,

(55:33):
and she was only down to one sixty seven, but
somehow she got down to Ashville. She's got brand new clothes.
She's got a brand new backpack, she's got brand new
hiking boots. She's bought sandwiches and a toy truck. She's
rented a car, and she's paid for gas and food
all the way down. That ain't adding up, adding up
to you, not really. I think the clothing is a

(55:54):
is a is a red herring. I think whoever killed
and dumped her body there or killed her there and
dumped her body, I think they dressed her like that
so that it would be extremely confusing, because that adds
a whole other layer to it. It's like, why was
this lady somewhere that she never went? Why was she

(56:15):
wearing clothes that didn't belong to her? How had she
only spent you know, less than well, yeah, she spent
like thirty dollars, thirty three dollars whatever, and went six
hundred miles and had a car that wasn't hers. And
where did that car go that two different people allegedly
saw her, And where's that car? Anybody ever locate that car?

(56:37):
Anybody call rental car services, anybody put out in APB
for the make and model of that car. Both witness
both alleged witnesses said that it was a gray Sedan.
Anybody find that car, No, because if she was murdered,
it would seem that somebody else was in the car
with her and then took it somewhere. Did they return it,

(56:58):
did they dump it, did they keep it, did they
burn it? Any of those things? Don't know. It just
seems like there were a lot of a lot of
balls dropped here, a whole lot of balls. There's balls
laying everywhere, and they all been dropped, they've been squished.
But those are I think those are the theories, more
questions than answers. Really like, the more you think about it,

(57:20):
I feel like I feel like there may have been
some sort of I don't know, friendship between Jeffrey Smith
and some high powered people that maybe kept him from
being too thoroughly investigated. You know, maybe back then they
didn't even realize they had the capability to find forensic

(57:42):
computer data like chat rooms and things like that. Maybe
they didn't even know that they could do that. You know,
we're looking back at it in hindsight, going, well, did
they do this and this and this? Because we've seen
every procedural crime show movie blah blah, blah, We've consumed
all of it, we know the steps. Now, we could
probably do it our with like a little bit of training,
you know what I mean, Like a little bit of training,

(58:03):
and I think we'd all be able to investigate some murders.
To be quite honest, I'm not saying it's easy at all.
I'm just saying we're all like so exposed to procedural
crime dramas and the like that, you know, we know
the things that investigators are supposed to do with whatever
mil you they're investigating. And now we're like, well, they

(58:25):
did they get his hard drive? Did they do this?
Did they do that? Well, maybe back then they didn't
even know they could do that. Maybe that wasn't a procedure,
Maybe they didn't have access to that kind of an expert.
Maybe that wasn't accepted as evidence in court back then,
maybe it wasn't admissible. You know, there's all kinds of possibilities.
But really, again, I think there's more questions than answers here,

(58:47):
and I feel like I've just spitballed a whole bunch
of theories. But I will say this, I'm not entirely sure,
like exactly like Philadelphia detectives thought. I'm not sure she
ever went to Philadelphia. To be quite honest, I find
it very strange that she forgot her ID. She was
a seasoned traveler. You would need your ID regardless, Like you,

(59:08):
you would take your ID even if it wasn't a
requirement to fly. You're going to a different city, and
perhaps you need that identification for something. You know, as
an adult, you just don't leave without your driver's license.
You just don't. You know, if she wanted to use
a check, let's you know, let's say she used a
personal check. They require ID for that too, and did

(59:30):
back then you had to show them your ID, so
that you know, the clerk at whatever store or place
you're spending money or trying to write that check at
knows that it's your checkbook. If the check bounces after that,
that's another story. But she would have brought her ID.
And I find it very strange that a very capable woman,
as she was described by her own husband, that a

(59:51):
very capable, very seasoned traveler, would have just forgotten her
ID and then you know, had to go back and
take a different flight. Now, why wouldn't they just go together?
Why wouldn't you just go back with her. Why did
they take flights at different times? If it was so
easy to change the ticket, you know, why didn't they
just wait? And why didn'y wait and just go with her?

(01:00:14):
Why did she send him ahead? I don't know. Like again,
I know the ticket was confirmed, that somebody used the ticket, Well,
that just means that they checked in. That doesn't even
mean that they got on the flight, and it certainly
doesn't mean that they landed in Boston. And it certainly
doesn't mean like again, him being him checking it alone.

(01:00:35):
That makes a lot of sense. And she if she's late,
why would she sign the hotel log book or the
register because her husband already signed in and no one
there knew her, No one there knew her, and so
how would anyone have recognized her? Like, I don't know,
not making sense? Those are the theories. I don't know
what you think. Let me know, this is a bizarre case,

(01:00:57):
is it not? Because if you go on the assign that,
you know, if you believe the version of offense that
Jeffrey Smith tells, then his wife just you know, she's
just up and vanished, Like that's it, up and vanished
ends up in Ashville, all or most of her money

(01:01:17):
still on her her wedding ring, wearing someone else's clothes.
I don't know, it ain't adding up. If it adds
up to you, let me know. I'm really bad at math,
but this one ain't adding up to me. And I
feel like I don't really feel like it should add
up to anybody. I know he's deceased, But come on, guys,
open up that investigation a little bit. I mean, whatever

(01:01:38):
evidence was there is now long long gone. But I
feel like a lot of balls were dropped, so many
dropped balls, And I'm gonna stop speculating because I don't
really think it's gonna help. But like, somebody, come on,
like investigate, please, for the love of God, Like, are
you gonna be able to figure out who murdered her?

(01:01:58):
I'm not sure. Maybe exum her body and see, maybe
see if you can find, you know, some evidence of
who killed her with technology that did not exist in
nineteen ninety seven. Again, nobody's going to be able to
recover anything from that hard drive unless, like you know,
one of Jeffrey Smith's kids just happens to have that

(01:02:18):
old family computer, like I don't know, in a storage
shed or something like that. There's no way that is
ever going to be recovered. There's no way to confirm
that she ever went to that airport, there's no way
to confirm that she ever made it to Philadelphia. There's
just really no way to confirm much of anything except
for where she was found. And that's about it. Well,

(01:02:42):
if you like what you hear, if it confounds you
to no end, you can hear more episodes every Friday,
released on all podcast platforms. On social media, you can
find me on Facebook at Autumnsodities, Patreon at Autumnsodities and Threads,
and Instagram at Autumn's Oddcast. As always, I appreciate you listening,

(01:03:02):
and remember, if it's creepy and weird, you'll find it
here