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he allowed his victim to write a last will and testament to her family then taunted them with chilling phone
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calls a trace phone line couldn't trap the abductor but scientists would find a clue
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in the victim's last words [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] seventeen-year-old sherry smith had her
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whole life before her in two days she would have the honor of singing the national anthem at her
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graduation from the lexington high school then she would sail off on a cruise with
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her classmates she was kind of the cement that held our family together she was always the happy
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one at 3 38 p.m on may 31 1985 sherry arrived home from a graduation pool party she stopped at the mailbox
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some 700 feet from her house her father was watching from his home office as she pulled in
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five or ten minutes had passed and all of a sudden i was aware that sherry had not come to the house yet so
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something just told me that something was wrong and i ran through the house and into the garage and got in my car and
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cranked it up and drove to the mailbox bob smith found the door of his daughter's automobile open the motor
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running and shari's purse on the seat i saw barefooted footprints going to the
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mailbox but none coming back and he said honey i don't know how to tell you this but sherry's car is at the end of
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the driveway running and she's not in it and i can remember now i said oh my god
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not my sherry panic stricken the couple called the lexington county sheriff's office
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near the mailbox on the ground with some mail which indicated to us that she had gotten out of the car to
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pick up the mail and was probably abducted at that point if you find or spot anything out of the ordinary
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lexington county sheriff jim metz immediately organized the largest manhunt in south carolina history
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we really didn't know whether sherry knew her abductor or not we certainly had no reason to expect that she had run
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away or that she left on our own whoever it is that has our daughter sherry we want her back
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we miss her we love her and please send her back home where she belongs [Applause]
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all her parents could do was wait the smith family was a very influential family in the community and there was no
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reason that we could determine why she would be kidnapped other than maybe for ransom purposes so we anticipated that
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the individual individuals responsible would make contact with the family the sheriff's suspicions proved right
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two days after sherry had been abducted the smiths received a phone call a man with a strangely distorted voice
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demanded to speak to mrs smith to prove the call was not a hoax he described the
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black and yellow bathing suit cherry was wearing beneath her shorts and shirt he said he would release her
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he said that she was fine they were watching tv she was eating a little bit and but he was giving her lots of water
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and she was doing great he made no ransom demand but he told the smiths that they would be receiving a letter in
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the morning my reaction was an individual who's got some sophistication in the crime he's
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committing this is not the first time that he has engaged in a sex crime of some sort probably has been thinking
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about committing a crime like this for quite some time agent walker agreed that the best hope of finding shari
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could come from the letter her abductor promised was coming we woke up the postmaster in lexington
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on the weekend went over to the post office and started looking through the mail and everybody put on plastic gloves
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and we all sorted through the mail till we found the letter addressed to the smiths
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inside was a letter in sherry's handwriting at the top of the first page was the
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heading last will and testament sherry smith's abductor had allowed the teenager to write a two-page letter to
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her family in which she told them how much she loved them i had a very helpless feeling come over me but i was
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not without hope i held out my hope to the end but i was totally helpless the word last will and
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testament just knocked me back and i was totally helpless i did not know what to
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do or what to say and then i had the tough part was i had to show the letter to my wife
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please don't ever let this ruin your lives shari's letter read just keep on
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living one day at a time for jesus some good will come out of this my thoughts will always be with and in
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you in parentheses with the words casket closed [Music] sheriff metz immediately sent the letter
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to the south carolina law enforcement crime lab hoping forensic document examiner mickey dawson could find some
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clues i was looking for hand printing or handwriting i was looking to see if i could find any
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trace evidences into hairs and fibers after the letter arrived the abductor called the smith family
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again have you received the mail today yes i have do you believe me now well i'm not really sure i believe you
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because i haven't had any word from sherry and i need to know that sherry [Applause]
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later that same evening he called once more saying the cherry was alive and implied
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he would release her soon i want you to think sherry is now part of me physically
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mentally emotionally spiritually the call was traced to a public pay phone at a drugstore in downtown
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lexington but in 1985 trap and trace required 15 minutes for authorities to trace the call and reach its location
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the abductor remained on the phone for a very short time five days after shari's abduction
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the kidnapper called again and spoke to both sherry's mother and her 21 year old
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sister dawn okay 4 58 am no i'm sorry hold on 3 10. on saturday the first again
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she hand wrote what you received 4 58 am saturday the first degree okay saturday the 1st of june
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4 58 a.m do not kill my daughter please i mean please the next day he made another call
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hello please do carefully take highway 378 west to traffic circle take prosperity exit go one and a half miles
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turn right at sign loose large number 103 go one quarter mile turn left at white frame building go to
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backyard six feet beyond we're waiting god chose us and i begged the police officers i said
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let me go with you let me go i want to go with you to find sherry but investigators insisted on going
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alone sherry's body was found in the backyard on the body with the yellow top and white shorts
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she'd last been seen in the autopsy revealed sherry had been dead for several days
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investigators believe that sherry's abductor inadvertently revealed when he killed her when he corrected himself
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about the time she wrote the letter they believe sherry died at 4 58 on the morning of june first two
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hours after she wrote the letter if that were the case sherry remained alive for only 12 hours
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after her abduction one line i'll never forget when she says casket closed can you imagine
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what was going through her mind knowing what she was gonna face she knew at that point that her body
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would be in a condition that the casket had to be closed agent walker believes the killer tried
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to buy time while the body was outside diminishing the chances to recover crucial forensic evidence
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the medical examiner found residue of duct tape on her face suggesting that the cause of death was
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suffocation her hair was substantially shorter he had to cut the duct tape out of her hair
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to keep from leaving it behind and that told me that he had some experience at least or some level of criminal
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sophistication based on knowledge gained from past offenders of similar crimes the fbi had this hypothesis the profile
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that we developed of him described a white male prior married unsuccessfully married probably not
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currently married mid to late 20s to maybe even as old as early 30s who who had a history of sex crimes
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the signal analysis unit of the fbi engineering section told investigators that the voice distortion of the
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abductor's voice was accomplished by something called a variable speed control device
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we believed either through employment or through his technical education had some sort of background or
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experience in electronics investigators believe the killer had everything planned out and was reading
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from a script clearly evident when he corrected himself about the time of shari's letter
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4 58 am as a final assault to the family the killer called them on the night of shari's funeral
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it was a collect call he wanted to tell us just how he had murdered sherry and he said well can you
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take it who could take it but we didn't have a choice we had to try to keep him on the line to find out
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where he was a few weeks later the killer called again this time he no longer wanted to talk
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about sherry [Music] after the funeral of seventeen-year-old sherry smith her killer continued to taunt the family
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by phone but he no longer had any interest in sherry have you heard about deborah pay hamper
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no the 10 year old atl uh richland county yeah okay listen carefully two weeks after sherry smith was
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kidnapped deborah may helmet was abducted in front of her parents trailer in richland
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county 24 miles from the smith's home her father was inside just 20 feet away
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a neighbor saw someone pull up in a car get out and grab debra before speeding off
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like sherry deborah was a pretty blue-eyed blonde unlike sherry deborah was only a child
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turn right last dirt road before you come to stop sign at two knots road go through chains
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and no trespass inside go 50 yards and to the left spoke 10 yards deborah may just waiting
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god forgive us off i felt like we were dealing with the same individual investigators now knew
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they were hunting a serial killer based on vast criminal research authorities believed that the killer
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would be displaying more compulsive behavior losing weight drinking heavily not shaving regularly and would be eager
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to talk about the murder at the south carolina law enforcement division scientists were still going over their
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only piece of hard evidence sherry's last will and testament it had been written on lined paper from
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a legal pad forensic document examiner mickey dawson believed latent images or indentations
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from a previous page of the pad might be revealed with the use of an electrostatic detection apparatus
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when i received the letter took it into the laboratory and opened it up on sterile paper
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and with gloves took the pages apart looked at each page to the initial examination intake
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and then the each sheet would individually go into a humidified box increasing the humidity of the paper
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would yield a better result from the conductivity of electrical charges the document was then placed on top of a
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brass plate and the magnetic field activated the paper was then brushed with a substance similar to fingerprint powder
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through the combination of all of this latent images form dawson's first try
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yielded what appeared to be a grocery list there were some bills to pay and there was a list of names and
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telephone numbers left someone to call in case of an emergency dawson was able to make out what
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appeared to be a partial telephone number the first set of numbers 205 was the area code for alabama the next three
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eight three seven was the exchange for huntsville but they only had three of the last four
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numbers to finish the sequence they just plugged the nine digits in for the seventh and uh
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found a telephone number that was a good number i finally called this guy in alabama and said do you have any
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relatives in south carolina he said yes says my mother and father the man's father was 50 year old ellis shepherd
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who lived just 15 miles away from sherry smith's home telephone records indicated that some of
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the calls to the smith family after sherry's abduction were made from shepherd's home
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not surprisingly police wanted to hear what mr shepherd had to say [Music] fifty-year-old ella shepard was an
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electrician and telephone record showed that some of the calls to the smith's
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home after her abduction were made from his phone i wasn't worried but you know it was a little bit of a shock
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that they wanted to talk to me shepherd had no idea why his son's telephone number was found on sherry
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smith's last will and testament shepard said he and his wife were on vacation at the time of sherry smith's
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abduction an alibi which checked out then police played a recording of the killer's voice
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[Music] i said dirty son of a [ __ ] because i knew it was him and they said what i
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said that's larry gene bell and then of course they got very excited because you
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know they knew then that they they had their person larry gene bell he worked for ellis doing electrical
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wiring bell was house-sitting for the shepherds during the six weeks they had been away
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on vacation i'd left bail a lot of phone numbers that he may need to call in my absence
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while we're on our trip those pages were turned over to investigators a transparency of the shepherd's
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original note was superimposed over sherry's last will and testament the shepherd's note
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matched the indentations on sherry's letter proving that cherry used the piece of
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paper directly underneath the shepherds also said that when bell picked them up at the airport all he
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wanted to talk about was the kidnapping and murder of the smith girl bell had lost weight was unshaven and
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seemed highly agitated this is the police video taken inside the shepherd's home
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investigators found six blonde hairs in the bathroom that were microscopically similar to shari's hair
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the commemorative duck stamp used to mail her last will and testament matched a sheet of stamps in ellis shepherd's
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desk drawer bell was arrested the following morning he just seemed to be shocked
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that law enforcement now had centered in on him as the fbi had predicted bell had been involved in various sexual
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incidents since childhood he had been in trouble for making obscene telephone calls and at one point
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even attempting to kidnap a young co-ed from the university of south carolina when questioned bell denied any
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involvement in the murders of sherry smith and deborah helmick the only thing he wanted to say over and
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over was that this larry jean bell didn't do it it's the bad larry jean bell
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larry jean bell stood trial for the merger of shari smith in january 1986. during my closing argument i told the
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jury sheri smith had the fortitude and the courage to write out her last will and testament
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and i put the pen that we took from the shepherd's house in front of the jury i
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said now each one of you don't you have the courage to sign your name on a death penalty verdict
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who it was electrified the jury needed only 47 minutes to return the verdict of guilty of
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kidnapping and first degree murder larry jean bell was sentenced to death by electrocution
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that was the only punishment for him and probably this is horrible to say too good of a punishment for him
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he was tried separately for the kidnapping and murder of deborah hellmick that jury returned
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the same verdict ten years after his trial larry jean bell became the last man to die in south
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carolina's electric chair without that letter and without the ability to bring up
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things on that page that you couldn't see with the naked eye it would have been even longer before we
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would have gotten lara jean bell that piece of paper that indented writing is what made the case and what
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sealed his fate he ultimately signed his death warrant bob smith remains a chaplain for the
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sheriff's department his wife hilda recently authored a book the rose of sherry to honor their
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daughter's memory both are convinced as sherry predicted in her last will and testament
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some good has come out of their monumental loss that letter has has been more closure to
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me than any kind of closure that the courts can do for me just the fact that she knew where she was going and she had
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that kind of faith [Music] [Music] you