Connie Smith Pt. One

July 16, 1952. Salisbury, Connecticut. While spending the summer at Camp Sloane, ten-year old Connie Smith skips breakfast and leaves the campground. Numerous witnesses see Connie walking down the road and attempting to hitchhike, but before she reaches the nearest town, she vanishes without a trace. Since Connie’s grandfather is the former Governor of Wyoming, there is a massive search effort and her case receives extensive publicity. Over the years, there are a number of unusual leads, including an anonymous letter stating that Connie might be an unidentified murder victim named “Little Miss X”, whose skeletal remains were found in Arizona in 1958. Did Connie Smith become an unidentified Jane Doe? If not, what actually happened to her? And what compelled her to walk away from Camp Sloane to begin with? We explore one of America’s most baffling unsolved missing children’s cases on this week’s episode of “The Path Went Chilly”.

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Additional Reading:

http://charleyproject.org/case/constance-christine-smith

https://www.registercitizen.com/news/article/Missing-girl-s-unsolved-case-draws-theories-13164163.php

https://www.courant.com/hc-cc-smith-051709-story.html

http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/1193ufaz.htmlhttp://charleyproject.org/case/donnis-marie-redmanhttp://charleyproject.org/case/michael-lawrence-griffin

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Welcome back to the Path Went Chili. I'm Robin, I'm Jules.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
And I'm Ashley. Let's dive right into this week's case.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
July sixteenth, nineteen fifty two, Salisbury, Connecticut, while attending summer camp,
ten year old Connie Smith skips breakfast and leaves a campground.
Numerous witnesses see Connie walking down the road and attempting
to hitchhike, but before she reaches the nearest town, she
vanishes without a trace. Over the years, there are a

(01:01):
number of promising leads, including an anonymous letter stating that
Connie is an unidentified murder victim from Arizona named little
Miss X, but the investigation fails to turn up any
trace of her.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
After that, the Path Went Chiley. So today we're going
to be chronicling an older missing children's case which took
place over seventy years ago, the nineteen fifty two disappearance
of ten year old Connie Smith. This is the tragic
story of a girl who was attending summer camp but
then made the inexplicable decision to walk away from the campground,

(01:33):
possibly after an altercation with our fellow campers, and she
was never seen again. At the time, this case was
a pretty big deal because Connie hailed from a wealthy,
affluent family and her paternal grandfather just happened to be
the former governor of Wyoming, so no expense was spared
in the search efforts. For What adds an extra level

(01:53):
of intrigue to this case is that it also contains
an unusual mystery within a mystery. A decade after Connie
went missing, police received an anonymous letter claiming that Connie
was an unidentified murder victim known as Little Miss X,
whose Skelton remains were found in Arizona in nineteen fifty eight.
You'd bethink that proving or disproving that Connie and Little

(02:14):
Miss X were the same person would be relatively simple,
but there have been numerous complications, and even if the
two cases aren't connected, the story of Little Miss X
is quite a rabbit hole on its own. So on
today's episode, we're going to explore Connie's misths, disappearance and
the numerous twists and turns which have ensued from it.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
What a heartbreaking case from the start. This is really
really fascinating because it is one of the older cases
that we've talked about but here you have little Connie
whose parents drop her off at summer camp and she
ends up just going missing, and no one.

Speaker 4 (02:49):
Knows what happens, and what's so sad?

Speaker 2 (02:51):
This is like, you know, the same concept as when
parents drop their kids off at college or a parent
drops their kiddo off at daycare. You're taking your child
to a place where they're supposed to have an experience.
They're supposed to be learning, making new friends, all of
these life skills that you're anticipating that your child's going
to get as a benefit and so giving them opportunities.

(03:13):
And then the very people who are supposed to be
taking care of her are unable to find Connie. And
so my heart absolutely shatters because I'm a mom and
I drop my babies off of people every single day,
knowing that I'm going to go and pick them up
after school or after daycare after summer camp gets out,
and here Connie is nowhere to be found. Like you said,

(03:36):
it's very very possible that she got in an altercation
with somebody, that she's homesick, that she got her feelings hurt, right,
I didn't feel like she fit in.

Speaker 4 (03:45):
And then you see reports that maybe she.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Was even trying to hitchhike. Was she trying to get
home to her parents?

Speaker 4 (03:51):
It makes it so sad.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
I want to know more, particularly about this idea that
it really should be easy at this point to if
I have Connie and little miss X are the same,
but I would love.

Speaker 4 (04:04):
To know more.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
Our central figure is ten year old Connie Smith, who
hails from an affluent family and lives on a sizeable
horse ranch in Sundance, Wyoming. Connie's parents are Peter Smith
and Helen Jensen, and she is a thirteen year old
brother named Nels, who was named after their paternal grandfather, NELLS.
Hanson Smith, who served as governor of Wyoming from nineteen

(04:27):
thirty nine until nineteen forty three. Peter and Helen have
been divorced since nineteen forty nine, but the separation was
a pretty amicable one, as Helen was allowed to live
in a separate home on the Smith's family ranch, and
while Helen had primary custody of Connie, both parents played
a significant role in her life. During the summers, Helen

(04:48):
usually took Connie to visit her maternal grandmother in Greenwich, Connecticut,
but on this particular year, Connie would instead be attending
summer camp for the first time. The location in question
was Camp's Law, a two hundred and fifty acre YMCA
camp located in the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains, just
over three miles outside the town of Salisbury. Connie would

(05:10):
spend her time there inside a platform tent with bunk beds,
alongside seven other girls. By the morning of Wednesday, July sixteenth,
Connie had been at the camp for three weeks. At
around seven fifty am, the campers were ready to go
to the mess hall for breakfast, but Connie told her
tent mates that she was going to the infirmary to
return an ice pack. She had been using the ice

(05:32):
pack on her bruised hip, which was supposedly caused by
a fall off the elevated tent platform the previous evening.
The other campers went to breakfast as planned, but Connie
never showed up. When they returned to the tent at
around eight forty five, they discovered that the ice pack
was still on Connie's bunk, but Connie herself was nowhere
to be found. The camp director, Ernest Roberts, was soon

(05:56):
informed about Connie's absence and in search of the camp
ground was performed for her. By eleven thirty, she'd still
not been found, so the Connecticut State Police were notified
and Connie was officially reported missing. Once word reached Connie's grandfather,
former Governor Nel Smith, he used his influence to ensure

(06:16):
that a full scale search operation, both on the ground
and in the air, would be conducted. This turned out
to be one of the very first missing persons cases
in which posters of the victim were circulated offering a
reward for information, this time for three thousand dollars.

Speaker 2 (06:34):
And remember this is back in nineteen fifty two, so
I had to quickly look this up of how much
money that would be today, that three thousand dollars would
be about thirty seven thousand dollars. And you know, when
you think about it and you look at reward posters
even today, even today, you'll see things that say, you know,
five thousand dollars, seventy five hundred dollars, and back in

(06:55):
nineteen fifty two, they're offering, you know, the today's equivalent
of thirty seven thousand dollars from the start.

Speaker 4 (07:03):
To find this child.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
And it's fascinating, as just a side fact that one
of the very first times you're sitting there with these
posters coming out with a reward. Is there any chance
that her grandfather, being the governor would have drawn attention
to her specifically? I don't feel like it would because
of the fact that she just so oddly was at
this camp for the first time. It's not as if

(07:27):
this was a routine that someone could follow and know.
But is it possible Have they ever looked into if
grandfather's roots had something to do with her being targeted?

Speaker 1 (07:36):
I don't think so, because he was governor of Wyoming,
and this camp was in Connecticut, and he had not
been governor for nearly a decade at that point, and
so I don't even know how many people there knew
that her grandfather had been the governor of an entirely
different estate, and also the fact that she had been
in the camp for a couple weeks at that point.
And I'm thinking that if someone was targeting her, figuring

(07:58):
that she's alone, that they would have gone after her
much earlier. But no, it seems like something happened to
her because she made the decision to walk away from
the camp on that particular morning. And I've always had
the feeling it was just kind of a wrong time,
wrong place thing where she just crossed paths with the
wrong person.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
And you often see that with children who go missing.
It's either someone incredibly close to them, like an estranged
parent or uncle or something like that, and or more commonly,
it's an opportunistic type of crime, and that was where
my default went. Here, you have a camp where if
someone's looking for a child, they know that a camp
area has potential to have children, and or there's going

(08:38):
to be very little supervision of a child hitchhiking, and
so someone drives by and sees a young child all
by themselves and they think, wow, no one else is
even around here, right, and they pull over and take her.
So I'm leaning towards this as an opportunistic crime, and
this is just a very vulnerable child who is desperate
to get out of there for some reason, makes this

(09:00):
decision to try to hitchhike home.

Speaker 3 (09:02):
Yeah, it kind of reminds me of the Asia degree case,
where she is this young girl unprotected walking on this highway,
and there's a parallel there with Connie's case, where she's
this ten year old girl who is walking along the
side of the road, potentially hitchhiking, which is like inconceivable

(09:23):
for a ten year old child. We know that she's
taller and appears more mature, which just adds more layers
and more complexity to it because somebody who is wanting
to approach her or predate on her may assume that
she is older than she actually is.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
Yeah, I've always felt thought of the Asia degree case
while I was researching this episode, and I'll be making
a direct reference to it later on in our series
of episodes. But it's essentially two mysteries rolled into one,
where you wonder what happened to the victim and why
did they feel compelled to leave the comfort of their
own space to go walking a lot and could they
have been meeting someone and what was their ultimate destination.

(10:06):
So it soon became a parent that Connie had willingly
left the campground on her own and walked a half
mile down the driveway to Indian Mountain Road, as no
fewer than nine witnesses reported seeing her shortly after she
separated from her tentmates. The first of these witnesses was
the camp's caretaker, who claimed he saw Connie emerging from
the driveway and turning right on Indian Mountain Road and

(10:27):
stopping to pick some daisies at eight fifteen am. Now
it should be mentioned that Connie was already five feet
tall and had developed earlier than normal, so she looked
older than the age of ten. The caretaker would state
that since Conye looked tall enough and old enough to
be one of the camp counselors, he did not have
any concern about her leaving the camp and walking down
the road alone. After this, a couple out for a

(10:50):
morning walk claimed they passed Connie about a quarter mile
from the camp's entrance, but they didn't speak to her.
It wasn't long before Connie knocked on the door of
a nearby house, which was answered by a woman named
Alice Walsh. She claimed that Kanye asked for directions to Lakeville,
a small village which was part of the town of
Salisbury and located just under two miles northeast of the camp.

(11:12):
Walsh provided the directions, but said that Conie looked like
she had recently been crying. A few minutes later, a
pair of maids sitting outside of servant's cottage at another
residence on Indian Mountain Road also said that Kanye approached
them and asked for directions to Lakeville. The maids told
her to keep walking and turn right on Route forty four.

(11:32):
The next sighting of Conyie took place on Route forty
four when a couple drove past her. They said she
appeared to be sticking out her thumb and attempting to hitchhike,
but they did not stop for at around eight forty
five am, a neither motorists would see Conye walking along
Route forty four near the intersection of Belgo Road, but
this would turn out to be the last time she

(11:52):
was confirmed to be alive. The location was about a
half mile outside of Lakeville, but even though residents and
business owners from the village were extensively questioned, none of
them are called seeing Connie that morning. It seemed a
parent that something happened to Connie before she made it
to Lakeville, but even though Route forty four usually at
heavy traffic, no one saw anything.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
Okay, A couple of things that I want to ask about.
The first just a statement. Miss Reagan is eleven and
she's five three, and so when you just started describing Connie,
you know, I forget when I hear about a ten
year old.

Speaker 4 (12:27):
I'm like, oh, that's a little girl.

Speaker 2 (12:28):
And then I got to remember, I have one who
looks like a sixteen seventeen year old and she's only
eleven years old, and so I'm trying to put Connie
into that perspective where I go, wait, I have one
of those types of kids, and so people treat her
like they're talking to a high schooler. Right, They're like, Okay,
she's going to go walk to a friend's house, or oh, okay,
she's going to go into town.

Speaker 4 (12:49):
It is what it is. But this is a baby.

Speaker 2 (12:51):
Connie's ten years old and she's running into person after
person asking for directions to the town of Lakeville. We
talk about it all the time about eyewitnesses and witnesses
to these kinds of things are not always reliable. But
when we have so many consistent stories of her appearance,

(13:11):
of where she's asking directions to that it looks like
she had been crying, you have many people who are
telling the police the same story. Back then, their media
wouldn't have been as significant as it is now, and
so I think that's pretty reliable, which means Connie had
her mind made up to go to this place called Lakeville.
Did she have familiarity with it? Does someone live there?

(13:35):
Is it possible that camp took fild trips into Lakeville?
How does a ten year old remember that I want
to get to this city if there's nothing significant in it.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
Yeah, we still don't know if Connie had been to
Lakeville on any previous occasions, or how much familiarity she
had with the town. As we're going to talk about.
One of the prominent theories is that maybe she was
just looking for a payphone somewhere in order to call
her family. But you mentioned Connie being tall for her age.
If you look at photographs of her that are available online,
she definitely looks older than ten years old. So you

(14:08):
can understand why the caretaker and all these other witnesses
were not concerned about the idea for walking down the
road alone, because they figured she was just a teenager
and knew where she was going. And like you said,
this is one case where I completely believe all the
eyewitness accounts, even though, as we've talked about, in a
lot of other missing persons cases, eyewitnesses can often be mistaken,

(14:29):
but here they could tell such consistent stories that each corroborate,
each other that I can totally believe that all of
them really did see Connie on the road that morning,
and that's how we're able to pinpoint a specific point
where she just happened to go missing before she reached Lakevil.

Speaker 3 (14:45):
It can be a weird experience when you're young and
people think you're a lot older. Like when I was ten,
I was probably about five four. I stopped growing by
the time I was thirteen and a hit five nine,
but people always assumed that I was older than I
was when I was a kid because I.

Speaker 4 (15:03):
Was so tall.

Speaker 3 (15:04):
And I remember being even like seven or eight and
going trigger treating and having people think that I was
like too old to be trigger treating because I was tall.
It's a very odd feeling having adults assume a certain
thing about you because of your appearance, but your maturity
isn't there yet. So I can only imagine what type

(15:24):
of experience Connie could have had with any of the
adults that she interacted with if she wasn't volunteering her
age upfront and being like, Hey, I'm a ten year
old kid and I need help. They're just looking at
her and they're assuming like she's a teenager. She's got
this and they're not really thinking about the danger that
could be out there lurking.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
And pretty much and if she was abducted by a predator,
it could have been someone who decided to target her
because they assumed she was a teenager and didn't even
realize that she was ten years old until after they
took her.

Speaker 3 (15:57):
So upon learning of Connie's disappearance, her parents, Peter Smith
and Helen Jensen, immediately traveled to Salisbury and were actively
involved in the search efforts for her. In spite of
their divorce. There was no reason to suspect that either
parent had any knowledge or involvement in their daughter's disappearance.

(16:17):
Given the family's wealth, there was some speculation that Connie's
disappearance may have been around some kidnapping, but no ransom
demand ever arrived. Peter personally chartered and flew a plane
over the area to search for Connie, and the locals
often called him the Marlborough Man since he was a
six foot seven cowboy with a ten gallon hat who

(16:38):
also rode horses through the forest to look for his daughter.
The one thing which no one could understand is why
Connie walked away from camp sloane to begin with, as
she was not carrying any money and had left behind
her extra clothing and belongings. Since July eleventh happened to
be Connie's tenth birthday, her mother in matun Cornal grandmother

(17:00):
had gone to visit her at the camp two days later.
According to Helen, Connie appeared to be in good spirits
and was looking forward to the upcoming weekend because there
was a square dance in horse show that she wanted
to attend. Connie even asked her mother if she could
stay at the camp a little longer than planned. Helen
said no because she had already arranged Connie's trip back

(17:21):
home to Wyoming, and Connie didn't seem to mind. Since
the children at camp were not allowed to carry money,
Helen deposited five dollars in Connie's camp account, which could
be used for future purchases. A half written letter was
also found in Connie's belongings, where she described what was
a wonderful time she was having at camp, but it

(17:41):
was unfinished. However, one camp official would recall seeing Connie
crying right after her mother and grandmother left, and there
were hints that she was very homesick and things were
not as good for her at the camp as she
let on.

Speaker 2 (17:55):
Well, that's incredibly sad. I feel like a ten year old.
Why would she hide it? Why would she ad ask
for more time at the camp if she wasn't enjoying herself.
I wonder if there could have been somebody coercing her
or manipulating her at the camp that was also a
predator and then ends up apprehending her away from camp.
But I just don't see a ten year old who

(18:17):
has access to their grandmother saying oh, I'm loving it,
Oh I need to stay here longer, all of these
other things, because in any grandma even superseding a mom's expectations,
if a grandmother thought their baby was struggling, right, they
would say, oh, I'm taking my grandbaby home. And so
wouldn't you think that she just closed that if she

(18:37):
wasn't happy.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
I guess it's possible that she was genuinely enjoying her
time at the camp at that moment, but then something
happened in the next few days which suddenly changed her
whole outlook, and that's why she decided to leave. So,
in addition to her bruised hit from the night before.
Connie suffered another injury on the morning of her disappearance,
which left her with a bloody noe and broke her eyeglasses.

(19:02):
Since Connie was very nearsighted, she really could not see
much at all without her glasses. The official story was
that Connie's bloody nose and broken glasses were a cos
when one of her tentmates accidentally kicked her in the
face while climbing out of her bunk. However, there were
rumors that this may have actually been the result of
a violent altercation, and that Connie did not get along
well with most of her tentmates. Since Connie was raised

(19:25):
on a horse ranch and was known for being a tomboy,
and many of the other girls hailed from New York City,
there could have been a cultural divide which caused them
to clash. Camp Sloan did have a telephone, but officials
discouraged the children from using it, so this created speculation
that a violent altercation may have prompted Kannie to decide
she wanted to go home. She then decided to walk

(19:46):
away from the camp and was heading towards Lakeville in
order to find a payphone to call her mother to
come pick her up.

Speaker 2 (19:53):
Okay, it's definitely possible. She's clearly presenting with physical harm
to her body.

Speaker 4 (19:58):
But if these are these city.

Speaker 2 (20:00):
Slicker girls from New York City and she's a country girl,
isn't it possible too that those New York girls would
be like.

Speaker 4 (20:08):
Oh, Connie hit me. Connie's rough housing with me.

Speaker 2 (20:12):
I wonder if they would really allow themselves to just be,
you know, in a violent altercation and then not then
go tattle on Connie, right, or people wouldn't tell that
something was going on if they're not used to this
rough housing and tomboy attitude. So it's almost like Connie
would be someone who was like, I don't care that
there was a fight, versus these city type girls who

(20:33):
might be like, what the heck there's violence at summer camp.
But I'm wondering, is there any potential that someone older,
even like an older counselor but not an adult, could
have been maybe trying to do something to Connie, you know,
take advantage of her. She does present as an older girl,
and you have these you know, you have predators, even

(20:55):
teenage predators, who are looking for someone who's vulnerable. Is
it possible that some of the physical injuries could have
come from maybe her getting into an altercation where she
was about to be assaulted or being abused, and then
once that happened, she says, I got to get out
of here somehow.

Speaker 1 (21:12):
That is a possibility, but investigators never found any evidence
to support it. I do think it could be plausible
that even if Conye decided to leave, that if there
was some other counselor at the camp who had access
to a vehicle or something, they could have followed her
and picked her up, and that's why she vanished without
a trace. I mean, I know that they never found
any evidence that anything like this was going on at

(21:34):
the camp, but I do have to add the disclaimer
that this was nineteen fifty two and there just wasn't
as much general public knowledge about child abuse and predators.
So it does make me wonder, because people were more
trusting back than that if there was a counselor or
anyone affiliated with the camp who was manipulative and abusive,
that they could have fooled the authorities and that they

(21:55):
just slipped under the radar and nobody looked at them
as a potential suspect.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
And remember, even if it was identified this idea that
Connie would have known you keep your mouth shut, that
it's just quote something that happens, and that men do
that girls keep their mouth shut. It was very very
much led by just a lack of knowledge and ignorance,
that little boys don't get hurt, that it's just something

(22:21):
you men can't control themselves, and all of these these
myths that were so deeply believed, really, I mean still
are believed.

Speaker 4 (22:29):
By some, you know, some people.

Speaker 2 (22:31):
But back in the fifties, I think even if something
was happening to Connie, it's not like that's something you
just go up to another counselor and you say, I
need help. Now today, I think children are being taught
and children see examples of using your voice to fight
for yourself. But back then, I don't know that she
could have done that, and leaving could have been the
next best thing.

Speaker 3 (22:51):
It can take children, like you know, twenty something years
to talk about abuse that they've suffered when they were little.
They don't always come forward and they don't always say something.
It's not a guarantee even now, But in the nineteen fifties,
I think that the amount of shame that would have
been attached, and probably the lack of dialogue around sex

(23:13):
and around what to do in a situation where an
adult touches you inappropriately, it just wouldn't have been there.
And so while she's in the actual summer camp with
if that scenario is correct that you're proposing ash, then
she may have been very scared to say something. She
knows she can't leave right away, and what would the

(23:33):
ramifications be, what type of punishment could she receive, And
so she might have just been weighing her options and
she thought that like the best option was to leave.
And then if that is the case, then you've got
two potential scenarios that the person who could have done
that to her then follows her out and disposes of

(23:54):
her in some way or ends her life, or you
have an opportunistic abduction that happens after she suffered some
type of abuse, if that theory is indeed correct. But
to me, it would ring really true that that would
be a real catalyst for wanting to leave and wanting
to get out of there and potentially putting yourself at

(24:15):
risk being a ten year old child going out into
the world and hitchhiking and relying on the kindness of
strangers to get you from point A to point B.

Speaker 4 (24:25):
And it could be just as easy as you know.

Speaker 2 (24:28):
Remember I got a eleven year old and twelve year
old little girl, and so it could also be the opposite,
where they come home and they tell me the nightmare
stories from school, and I wait for it to get bad,
and I'm like, oh, that's that's the bad thing that
happened to day at school. Okay, Well, you know, we
talk through it, and I'm thinking, man, what a blessed day,
you know, like, Okay, so she told you she hated

(24:49):
your haircut, or she told you that no one wants
you to sit at the lunch table, which at the
time is devastating, But you know, it's possible too that
in Connie's mind, something simple like children being mean bullies
is also what triggered her. So there's so many options,
and so far we really don't know anything about even
the circumstances at camp.

Speaker 3 (25:10):
Anyway, Investigators pursued quite a few leads in the search
for Connie, and some of them were quite ridiculous. For example,
there was a traveler encampment located near camp's loan, so
officers from the Connecticut State police would hide in the
forest for several days to watch over the encampment to
see if Connie was being held there against her will,

(25:31):
but there was no sign of her. However, one ridiculous
lead took the cake. And we'll say this right up front.
What we're about to say might be the goofiest thing
that we've ever shared of this podcast, so believe it
or not, is so called telepathic psychic chorus named Lady
Wonder was brought in to assist the investigation. You see,

(25:52):
whenever Lady Wonder was asked a question, she would answer
it by using her snout on a lever to flip
up alphabet cards on a giant keyboard. No seriously, Lady
Wonder was a popular attraction during this time period, and
in the months prior to Connie's disappearance, she apparently once
provided information which helped police find the body of a

(26:13):
missing Massachusetts boy. At the very least, this meant that
Lady Wonder had better success rates than Sylvia Brown.

Speaker 4 (26:20):
So the horse was.

Speaker 3 (26:21):
Asked questions about what happened to Connie Smith, and she
apparently spelled out Los Angeles well. Since Peter Smith was
desperate to try anything, he traveled the Los Angeles to
search for Connie, but this lead went nowhere. Regardless, Peter
used his time in LA to book an appearance on
the popular TV show ar at Link Ladder's House Party,

(26:41):
which gave his missing daughter's case national exposure.

Speaker 4 (26:46):
This has mixed emotions. What I mean, there are anything
almost that they used.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
To predict the Super Bowl, you know, or I don't know,
to predict the election or things like that, which always
makes me giggle, like the puppy.

Speaker 4 (27:01):
Super bowlid and things like that.

Speaker 2 (27:03):
But the poor horse, and I'm so sorry that I
couldn't hold back my laughter when you said better success
rates than Sylvia Brown, because man, what a interesting bird
that lady is. But yeah, pack it, peck it out, kiddo.
Flip those alphabet cards as best you can. What's sad
is that when you actually think about the implications of

(27:25):
a tool like that, where like you said, the poor
dad is so incredibly desperate that he's like, Okay, what
information did you get? You have this incredibly successful animal
being used as a tool to help in these cases,
and he and it spelled out something in my case
Los Angeles, and he not only puts his resources there,

(27:45):
but his time and his hope in that lead in
Los Angeles, and now I'm grateful he was able to also
pair it with something that hopefully did provide a sound
launchboard for information about Connie to be shared. But you
know it's it's hilarious.

Speaker 4 (27:59):
I couldn't hold in my aughter. But then you step back.

Speaker 2 (28:02):
And you think about the dad, and this dad said like,
I'll take it, Like that's the best information he had
at the time. To say I'll take it and I'll
go how incredibly heartbreaking.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
And if you want a major rabbit hole, just do
a Google search on Lady Wonder, because she was famous
enough back in the fifties that she has her own
Wikipedia page like that. This was not the only case
that she worked on involving missing children. And while it
seems hilarious now, it's crazy to think that back in
the nineteen fifties people took this seriously and at that
if your child goes missing and you have no other leads,
you're going to think, while this horse found at least

(28:35):
one missing child, so I guess we'll go to her
because we're desperate.

Speaker 3 (28:39):
Didn't they used to have all of those segments on
was it on unsolved mysteries where they would have like
the cat that was at like palliative care or or
like a retirement home, and the cat would always know
when people were going to die.

Speaker 1 (28:54):
Yes, they had quite a few segments like that where
they would barker something or react and then their owner
had a seize and stuff and they would say that
my pet like sensed that I was going to have
this medical issue and pretty much saved my life. So
I do think there is something to that, but it's
much more likelyhearted when you see these so called psychic
animals working on stories involving medical issues and saving lives

(29:16):
rather than dealing with missing children and grief stricken parents. However,
because of the extensive publicity surrounding the case, there would
be a number of false tips, sidings, and confessions over
the years. One of the most infamous false confessions was
made by a death row inmate named George Davies, who
was incarcerated at Connecticut's Weathersfield State Prison for the murders

(29:38):
of two girls in nineteen fifty nine. Davies confessed that
he had been responsible for the murder of Connie Smith
and offered to lead investigators to a spot near the
Naugatuck River, where he claimed he had buried her remains.
When police took Davies to the location, they did not
find anything, but right before he was executed in the
electric chair, Davies finally admitted that he had lied about

(30:00):
murdering Connie and only made up the story so that
he would have an opportunity to leave his prison cell
and spend some time outdoors in the sunshine. Another unusual
tip took place in nineteen fifty five when a Connecticut
state trooper named Leo Turcott received a phone call from
a man calling himself William Dugan, who claimed he was
a former carnival worker and had information about the disappearance

(30:23):
of Connie Smith. Dugan said he was calling from Montreal
and wanted to arrange a meeting with Turcott to share
everything he knew well. Turcott's commanding officer ultimately decided that
he wanted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to pursue this
tip instead and turn it over to them. After that,
Turcott had no idea what became of this lead and
pretty much forgot about it. But a lightbulb suddenly went

(30:46):
on over his head thirty three years later, when he
learned about the arrest of a man named William Henry Redmond.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
Okay, are you going to tell me more about William
Henry Redmond in a minette? Yeah, momentarily Okay, I was like,
who is this man? Okay, because they got the trooper
gets a call from a man named William Dugan who
says he's a former carnival worker and has some information,
and then there's going to be this other William. I
assume that sparks some kind of interest there. But you know,

(31:15):
God bless George Davies confesses to this, right, And it's
incredibly infuriating when you think about this idea that if
the family is aware that he confesses, they are going
to believe that this is this is solved.

Speaker 4 (31:30):
Do we know that the parents had this information?

Speaker 1 (31:34):
Oh? Yeah, she they definitely would have heard about this.

Speaker 2 (31:36):
Oh man, Okay, So at that point, right, they're thinking, Okay,
after a couple of years, we have this information, we
know that something happened to her.

Speaker 4 (31:45):
She is deceased.

Speaker 2 (31:46):
Because again, if you don't have a body and you're
not sure what happened, there's so many things that go
on in your head, like maybe she's blossomwhere maybe she
has amnesia and a family founder and they raised her
as their own because she didn't know who she was,
and maybe she's in, you know, being hurt by somebody
and being held captive. So all those things would be
going through your head, but not now, because now someone

(32:06):
has confessed.

Speaker 4 (32:07):
Now you have peace.

Speaker 2 (32:08):
You know that he is about to be executed, so
you don't have to worry about him hurting anybody else
these kinds of things because you have some answers, and
then all of a sudden you find out, oh my gosh,
he falsely confesses just so he can get out of
his cell and get some attention for himself, which is
not unheard of. You see that very commonly. Hey, you
come talk to me, and I have this information. And

(32:30):
all they've been doing is playing with a deck of
cold case playing cards. You know they don't have any information.
But it's heartbreaking because there was a hint of promise
and an idea that we know what happened to her,
and then all that was ripped away until dun dundum.
This other man's name comes up, tell me more about him.

Speaker 3 (32:50):
So in April of nineteen fifty one, an eight year
old girl named Jane Marie Altof was strangled to death
while attending a carnival in Trainer, Pennsylvania. Fingerprints from the
murder scene were eventually matched to William Henry Redmond. Why
do they always have three names?

Speaker 1 (33:06):
I guess just so that the innocent William Redmans don't
get falsely implicated in the tribes.

Speaker 3 (33:11):
Yes, a Ferrisville operator with a record for child molestation.
A warrant was issued for his arrest, but for over
three decades police could not find him until Redmond was
eventually tracked down to Nebraska and charged with the murder
in January of nineteen eighty eight. After hearing about this
in the news, Leo Turcott suddenly remembered the phone call

(33:33):
he'd received in nineteen fifty five and whatdered if perhaps
William Dugan might have been Redmond, so he notified the authorities.
While in a prison hospital awaiting trial, Redmond allegedly told
a fellow inmate that he was responsible for the murders
of three girls besides Jane Marie Altoff. Redmond was questioned
about the disappearance of Connie Smith, but denied being responsible and.

Speaker 5 (33:56):
Passed a polygraph.

Speaker 3 (33:59):
Since Redmond was sixty six years old by this point
and suffering from heart disease and emphysema. It was ultimately
decided that he was too ill to stand trial for
Jane Marie's murder. He died in nineteen ninety two, but
investigators were unable to find any link between him and
Connie or place him in the Connecticut area at the
times she went missing.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
Okay, so when you look at this case of the
child in nineteen fifty one strangled to death while attending
this carnival, we find out that that case gets solved,
and they're thinking that this is a direct tie to Connie,
or at least shows some kind of semblance to this
idea that there's already a little girl who's been hurt

(34:40):
not to you know, and then all of a sudden,
Connie's is unsolved. Do you guys, do you guys feel
that there's a link here?

Speaker 1 (34:48):
Well, the link is pretty tenuous because the only reason
that Turcott thought about it decades after the fact is
because this William Dugan claimed that he was a carnival
worker and had information about Connie's misdisappearance. And then he
hears about this carnival worker William Henry Redmond, who has
been arrested for the murder of another girl, and he
starts thinking, Hm, could this have been the mysterious William

(35:09):
Dugan and was he trying to confess to Connie's murder.
But of course, by this point Redman was in a
prison hospital and he was directly questioned about Connie's disappearance.
But even though he allegedly said that he had killed
other girls, he said that he had nothing to do
with Connie's disappearance. So it's a very tentative connection. But
I am glad that Turcotte still had it in the
back of his mind three decades after the fact, in

(35:32):
order to check it. But even though Redmond, because he
was a carnival worker, would have traveled around the United
States quite a bit during the nineteen fifties, they just
couldnot fight anything to prove that he was in Connecticut
in nineteen fifty two.

Speaker 2 (35:45):
He did pass a polygraph in the eighties, and so
you know, those cannot be admissible in corpor they do
provide a tool for law enforcement.

Speaker 4 (35:52):
And so for someone who's so open.

Speaker 2 (35:54):
About, look, I've killed multiple girls, anyone who's comfortable saying
that and this point, he's already sick and you know
there's issues going on. Why would he deny it at
that point. I mean, this is three decades later, so
he doesn't really have much longer to live, and he's
very open about the crimes he's committed. So in my
mind when I heard this, it's like, it's interesting because

(36:16):
there are these.

Speaker 4 (36:16):
Kind of loose connections.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
But I feel like he would have just said, like,
you know what, she is possibly one of the ones.
Maybe she's one of the ones I don't remember, But
he flat out says no, Ann passes a polygraph.

Speaker 1 (36:30):
Another individual who popped up in the radar as a
suspect was a traveling jewelry salesman from Indianapolis named Frederick Pope.
In April of nineteen fifty three, Pope walked into an
Ohio police station and confess to being involved in the
murder of Connie Smith. According to Pope, he had been
driving along Route forty four with an accomplice named Jack
Walker when they picked up Connie hitchhiking and promised her

(36:53):
a ride all the way to her home in Wyoming.
Later on, when Connie complained they weren't taking the right route,
Walker responded by murdering her. POPEA Walker subsequently buried Connie's
body near highway in Arizona, but the two men later
got into an argument, which led the Pope beating Walker
to death with a tire iron and burying his body. Well.

(37:13):
Upon closer scrutiny, Pope's story completely fell apart. It turned
out that four years earlier, Pope confessed to killing and
bearing another man in Los Angeles, but this story turned
out not to be true, and the authorities began to
suspect that Jack Walker did not actually exist. Pope finally
admitted that the entire story about Connie's murder was a

(37:34):
hoax and that he only made it up because he
had a history of mental issues and wanted to be
committed to a hospital. But oddly enough, there would eventually
be another intriguing lead in this case, which linked Kannie
to Arizona.

Speaker 2 (37:47):
Okay, well, before you get there, what is up with
people just wanting to claim this, you know, claim to
fame with Connie's disappearance.

Speaker 4 (37:54):
This one's bizarre.

Speaker 2 (37:57):
He goes into depth, not only and it would have
made sense, like Okay, my friend and I were riding
down the road, we see this young girl, and again
they're probably assuming she's like fourteen fifteen because of the
way she looks, and they pick her up, let's say
they assault her, and then they decide to kill her
to get away, get away with it, and then two

(38:17):
people know information.

Speaker 4 (38:19):
It's not a good thing when.

Speaker 2 (38:20):
You're a criminal to have somebody who knows information, especially
if you get into a quarrel with them, or if
you think that they're going to turn on you. So
the story actually had me quite excited at first, so
this could be a lead.

Speaker 4 (38:33):
And then you.

Speaker 2 (38:34):
Realize I was waiting for you to say Jack's alive,
but there isn't even a Jack.

Speaker 4 (38:38):
And so this man.

Speaker 2 (38:40):
Has so many disturbing stories he can weave multiple deaths.

Speaker 4 (38:45):
He's weaving into it.

Speaker 2 (38:46):
I pray to god he actually got committed to a hospital,
because this is beyond just a storyteller who wants attention.
This is someone who really has a mind that's quite
quite dark.

Speaker 1 (38:57):
I mean, I know it's not uncommon for people to
falsely can fast to murders that they did commit in
order to receive attention, but I think it's especially bizarre
when people falsely confess to murdering children. Because that's an
act where you're considered to be the ultimate evil and
everyone will hate you. So why even if you get attention,
why would you like claim that you murdered a ten
year old girl when this didn't actually happen.

Speaker 3 (39:19):
On October thirty first, nineteen fifty eight, a pair of
deer hunters found the skeletal remains of a young girl
on Skinner Ridge, a hillside off a dirt road in
Cocanino County, Arizona. The location was near the town of
Williams and about ten miles southeast of the Grand Canyon.
The victim was believed to have been either white or Hispanic,

(39:40):
and between eleven and seventeen years old, and it was
estimated that she had been deceased for around nine to
eighteen months. Since the victim could not be identified, she
was given the nickname little Miss X. Little Miss X
was unclothed when she was found, but when the area
was searched again a short time later, some articles of

(40:01):
clothing suddenly appeared. This clothing included a white wool cardigan
and brown capri pants, but oddly enough, these articles appeared
to be too big to belong to the victim. Other
items were found near the scene, including a comb, a
jar of Pond's cold cream, and a blue plastic nail
filecase which had the letters P and R engraved on them.

(40:22):
While there was speculation that this nail file case might
have belonged to Donnis Redman, a fourteen year old girl
from San Pedro, California who went by the nickname Pinky.
Earlier that year, Pinky and her eighteen year old boyfriend,
Michael Griffin had traveled to Las Vegas to a lope
and were last seen on March first. They both vanished
without a trace, and Michael's car would be found abandoned

(40:45):
in Williams, not too far from where Little Miss X's
remains were discovered. Since Pinky was last seen wearing a
yellow sweater and brown capri pants, there was speculation that
she might have been Little Miss X, who was eventually
excluded well. The case took an interesting turn in nineteen
sixty two when the Connecticut State Police received an anonymous

(41:06):
letter from Colorado claiming that Connie Smith was Little Miss X.
As a result, the victim's remains were exhumed and her
skull was taken to the Smith Ranch in Wyoming, so
that her family dentist could compare her teeth with Connie's
dental records. The results were inconclusive, so the skull was
subsequently taken to Denver to be examined by a team

(41:27):
of forensic experts. A dental surgeon and a pathologist. Both
concluded that the skull probably did not belong to Connie,
and it was subsequently reburied. However, given the technology has
advanced so much over the past six decades, there's been
speculation that the conclusion may have been a mistake.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
Oh man, I would love to know where that skull
is at this point. Was it still retained in evidence,
and could they do anything with it, because, like you said,
it's been over six decades, and that's a big difference
in technology from the fifties, you know. Anyway, so when
we're looking at this and we see that initially.

Speaker 4 (42:06):
They're thinking it's this fourteen year old girl.

Speaker 2 (42:08):
The P and R on this case little bit bizarre
because Connie doesn't have either of those initials. But you
also have to remember how odd this would be if
they think this this person had been left nine to
eighteen months prior. What animals and elements and things like
that could have done to this body. And again, when

(42:29):
you're looking at technology at the time, I'm wondering how
much was missed at the scene, how much was changed
at the scene, given scavengers and the weather, all kinds
of stuff. So even finding that body and assuming it's
been nine to eighteen months, you've lost significant information already,
And then how limited technology was I also would say, hey,

(42:52):
I know you had experts at the time analyze these things,
but what if we use today's technology, what would we find?

Speaker 1 (43:00):
And the bizarre thing is Connie went missing in nineteen
fifty two, and if they believed that the remains were
only out there for nine to eighteen months, that would
imply that if the victim was Connie, then she would
have been alive for a couple years after she went missing,
until about nineteen fifty seven or so. So that only
opens up more questions. If she was alive, then where
was she? Why was she hiding out in Arizona all

(43:21):
these years in what ultimately led to her being killed?
But right about now, I'm going to explain why there
has been complications trying to conclusively prove or disprove that
Kanyie and Little Miss X are the same person. So
a little Miss X had four fillings in her teeth,
and according to Connie's dentist, three of them were pretty
much identical to fillings he had given her. There has

(43:43):
been a lot of debate about a small indentation found
in little Miss X's palette. The experts from Denver seemed
to believe the indentation was naturally occurring, but Connie's dentist
thought it may have been the result of the surgical
removal of an extra tooth known as a super numerary tooth,
as Connie did have one removed before she went missing.
In recent years, dental experts have taken a fresh look

(44:06):
at little Miss x's dental charts and compared them to
Connie's records, but cannot say with one hundred percent certainty
whether or not they belong to the same person. Well,
the Smith family wanted a more conclusive answer to this,
so in two thousand and four, Connie's surviving relatives agreed
to submit DNA samples to the Connecticut State Police in
order to compare them to little Miss X. But there

(44:28):
turned out to be a problem. Little Mess x's remains
could no longer be found. She was buried in the
County Section of Citizens Cemetery in Flagstaff, Arizona. But the
issue is that the section has no gravestones or markers
and is nothing but a wide open field. A number
of deceased victims are buried there, but after all these years,
there are no longer any records to determine the exact

(44:50):
spot where little Miss X is buried, making it impossible
to exumer remains for DNA testing.

Speaker 4 (44:56):
I'm officially depressed. That makes me real, really depressed.

Speaker 2 (45:02):
You know, they have graves like this all over the
United States where unidentified bodies are placed where they're not
sitting there, you know, making sure each body has its
own perfect They're definitely not put in a real nice
casket and things like that. They are buried with other
remains that haven't been claimed or identified. And so I

(45:24):
get it. But man, in a case like this, they're
thinking it's a child, they're thinking there's potential links to
other cases, and now there's just no way to know
if that one's true. I don't see it as as
incredibly promising, except for the fact that you said the
family did confirm that supernumerary tooth that looks like it

(45:44):
might have been missed Connie had actually had that same
procedure pretty much.

Speaker 1 (45:50):
Yeah, so the wow, that's why. Like back in the
fifties they thought, Okay, there's not enough a conclusive match.
I don't think this is the same person. But having
a fresh look at it decades later, they're thinking, hmm,
this is a compelling link here. But of course it
only opens up a whole bunch of unanswered questions about
why Connie would be in Arizona and could she have
been alive for a couple of years after she originally

(46:11):
went missing. I mean, I'm inclined to believe that little
Miss X and Connie are not the same person, but
I can still understand the frustration about being unable to
find the remains. Because little Miss X with somebody and
without being getting the possibility of obtaining her DNA, it
seems unlikely she will ever be identified.

Speaker 3 (46:30):
Anyway. Connie's family never stopped hoping that they would receive
answers someday. Her mother, Helen, believed the best case scenario
was that Connie's injuries from the camp were much worse
than expected, causing her to develop amnesia and wander off.
She clung to the hope that Connie might still be
alive somewhere, But tragically, Helen's succumbed to a heart attack

(46:52):
in nineteen sixty two at the age of forty seven,
and many would say that she died from a broken heart.
On the other hand, and Peter Smith was relentless in
his pursuit of his daughter and continued returning to the
Salisbury area to search for her as late as the
nineteen eighties. He once stated in an interview that as
the years went on, he imagined his daughter in the

(47:14):
face of every woman he passed by who would have
been her age. Peter managed to live until the age
of ninety seven before he passed away in twenty twelve.
Much like his paternal grandfather, Connie's older brother, Nels Jensen
Smith had a successful political career which included serving as
Speaker of the Wyoming House of Representatives. In August of

(47:35):
twenty eighteen, Nells was interviewed in an extensive two part
article in the Connecticut based newspaper The Registered Citizen, and
he expressed his belief that Connie might be little Miss X.
In that same article, the Cocadino County Sheriff's Office announced
that they believed that they might have figured out the
exact spot in Citizens Cemetery where little Miss X is buried.

(47:58):
They hoped that once they peece everything together and made
a conclusive determination, they could exhume little Miss X's remains
and finally extract your DNA. However, this has never occurred,
and in September of twenty twenty three, another major tragedy
occurred when Nels and his wife were both killed in
a car accident. So, for the moment, little Miss X

(48:20):
is still an unidentified Jane Doe and the disappearance of
Connie Smith continues to remain unsolved.

Speaker 1 (48:27):
So I guess you could say the path went chili.

Speaker 2 (48:31):
Okay, So when you guys look at that tooth that
little Miss Ex's skull was you know, had it had
surgically removed or it wasn't you know, it had been
actually a procedure performed, and you could see it in
the dental records. Only four percent max. It says one
to four percent of people have this supernumerary tooth or teeth,

(48:53):
and so that's actually quite rare. I mean, the fact
that these two skulls might be aged around the same. Again,
the location makes it a little problematic, but people can
take victims and travel with them or unless especially you know,
deceased bodies, to dispose of them.

Speaker 4 (49:10):
But I thought that was pretty interesting.

Speaker 2 (49:11):
I was expecting, oh, you know, like twenty percent of
people have one you just never know, or something like that,
on one to four percent. And so that is quite
an interesting little tidbit. And when you back up and
you look at the fate of her mother dying at
age forty seven, I cannot imagine the grief and trauma
and the physical toll that it takes on someone's body

(49:35):
to lose a child, and to lose a child in
the way that she did. You know she I know
that she blamed herself daily, which is so not you know,
the actual earthly truth, but any mother and any parent
would do it. I took her to summer camp. I
changed the plans. I'm the one who was responsible for her,
and I took her to this camp and I never

(49:57):
got her back. Right, what if I had picked up
on the the fact that she was unhappy, What if
I had been able to communicate with her? And so,
even though I would think that would lessen over time,
the grief stays in your body it's heavy, and so
the fact that at forty seven years old, she dies
of a heart attack, it's I.

Speaker 4 (50:19):
Do not think that that's kind of a coincidence.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
I think it could very much be tied to the
actual emotional heartbreak that she suffered from losing her child.

Speaker 1 (50:29):
Well, yeah, and you look at the timeline. This was
only about three years removed from when George Davies made
that false confession claiming that he murdered Connie and buried
her remains and then just admitted, oh, I made that
up because I just wanted to get out of the prison.
And you can only imagine that hearing that at first
Helen bleeding that it was real and that this man
killed her child, only to find out this was nothing

(50:51):
more than a false lead that would have caused like
a measurable bound of additional stress on her and may
have played a role in her dying. I have a
heart attack only three years later. So it's just so
sad because I covered this story on the Trail Went
Cold back in twenty nineteen, and I was reading that
Connie's brother, Nells was still alive and holding out hope
that they could recover little Miss X, and then maybe

(51:13):
make a DNA comparison to determine if it's Connie. And
then when I'm doing the script for this episode, I
found out that oh Nells was killed in a car
accident in September of twenty twenty three, even though he
was eighty four years old. So that's two children from
the same family who went missing or died under tragic circumstances.
So this whole story is just a big ball of
tragedy for the entire family. So I think that about

(51:36):
brings an end to Part one. Joining us next week
as we present part two of our series about the
disappearance of Connie Smith.

Speaker 5 (51:44):
Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
about the Trail Went Cold Patreon.

Speaker 1 (51:47):
Yes, the Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three
years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like
early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers
and signed thank you cards to anyone who's up with
us on Patreon if you join our five dollars tier
Tier two. We also offer monthly bonus episodes in which
I talk about cases which are not featured on the

(52:10):
Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon,
and if you join our highest tier, Tier three, the
ten dollars tier. One of the features we offer is
a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsolved Mysteries,
where you can download an audio file and then boot
up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or
YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in

(52:33):
the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about
the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very
first episode that I did a commentary track over was
the episode featuring this case. So if you want to
download a commentary track in which I make more smart
ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join
Tier three.

Speaker 6 (52:52):
So I want to let you know a little bit
about the Jeweles and Nashty Patreon, so there's early ad
free episodes of The Path Went Chilly, Our Pathwent Chili mini's,
which are always over an hour, so they're not very mini,
but they're just too short to turn into a series,
and we're really enjoying doing those, so we hope you'll
check out those Patreons.

Speaker 5 (53:10):
We'll link them in the show notes.

Speaker 1 (53:12):
So I want to thank you all for listening and
any chance you have to share us on social media
with a friend or to rate and review. Is greatly
appreciate it. You can email us at the Pathwentchili at
gmail dot com. You can reach us on Twitter at
the Pathwin. So until next time, be sure to bundle
up because cold trails and chili pass call for warm clothing.

Speaker 5 (53:31):
Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy