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a go-go dancer in rural ohio vanished without a trace leaving investigators without a single
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clue as to her whereabouts the case went unsolved for 26 years until a homemade box
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tool mark analysis and an old car provided hints to where she had gone [Music] [Music]
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the rolling farm country of wayne county ohio was home to 19 year old janice hartman
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janice was a free spirit and she was raised with two brothers tomboy effect i mean she could climb a
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tree with the best of us and as with most teenagers she had a boyfriend 19 year old john smith he is
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kind of a nerdy howdy-doody looking guy the person you would forget right away after you met him
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the two were inseparable and both had a rebellious streak he rode a motorcycle at the time
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and she was that type of person that wanted to be on a fast item whatever it was
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when they finished high school janice and john got married but the union didn't last long and four years later
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they divorced [Music] to support herself janice took a job at a local nightclub as a go-go dancer
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i think it was more that free spirit again coming back out in her that's the
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way she was music was part of her life her family was very uneasy with this and she said hey
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come on down to the bar and see me dance she didn't take all her clothes off
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one night after work she was invited to a private party janice told friends later there was heavy drinking at the
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party and also drugs several men asked janice to dance and at some point things got out of
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control she was drunk these other guys appeared to be drunk some of the gentlemen at
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this party attempted to rape her attempted to sexually assault her became very abusive
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eventually janice talked her way out of the situation and left she immediately filed a formal complaint
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she went directly to the police department at the time and told him the whole story took
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statements and whole nine yards everything she needed to do and then she needed protection
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janice returned to the nightclub and go go dancing but what happened at the party haunted her
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she went over to my mom's couple of nights after that whole situation happened and she mentioned to my sister
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that hey i'm gonna wait for a while i'll be gone don't worry and with that janice disappeared without
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taking her clothes or her car if you're going to leave the area you're going to need things to go with that
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you're going to need your clothing you're going to need means of transportation
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police interviewed the men who allegedly assaulted janice at the party they admitted the situation had gotten
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out of hand but they said they had no idea where janice was because of her lifestyle
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this bar hopping go go dancer disappears one day just a few days after she was nearly raped by a bunch of guys
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police i think assume that she just led this dangerous lifestyle and it finally caught up with her
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and for the next 26 years no one saw or heard anything more from janice hartman [Music]
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janice hartman disappeared just days after several men tried to rape her at a party
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at first investigators assumed her disappearance was somehow related to the incident
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here's a young troubled girl who's in early 20s who's hanging out with a bunch
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of questionable people probably smoking some marijuana having a good time she probably ran away for a
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while the case eventually turned cold and after years with no further information
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the hartmann family gradually accepted the idea that they would never see janus again
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when there's someone missing you always have this hole i'm telling you it's like
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a hole in your heart you'll have it it's it's never filled 20 long years passed
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then everything changed with one telephone call it was from a woman who called gary asking for his sister janice
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i sat down on the edge of the bed and took the phone call and i'm saying yes
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i'm janice's brother and i said i understand your sister was married to john smith and i said yes she
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was married to john smith but she's missing and i said well our sisters have one
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thing in common they were both married to john smith and i said my sister's missing gary hartman's reply was my god
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lady you got a problem my sister's been missing since november of 74 never to be heard from again
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sherry the woman who called said her sister 49 year old betty fran had been married to john smith for only a few
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months and smith had lied to betty and her family about his past he presented himself as a 40 year old
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mennonite bachelor never been married a degree in aeronautical engineering from ohio state university with a
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specialization in jet propulsion none of that turned out to be true this was the turning point um what are
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the odds what are the odds that one wife would disappear under suspicious circumstances then a second wife would
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disappear under suspicious circumstances that they would both disappear with almost the exact same circumstances
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[Music] john smith denied any involvement in betty fran's disappearance john's initial report was that he came
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home from work and his wife had left and there was a very brief letter which said
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she had gone out and please don't forget to feed the fish smith denied having anything to do with
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his first wife's disappearance too the fbi's cold case unit got involved
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and discovered an interesting coincidence in the missing persons reports 20 years earlier witnesses told
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investigators that they saw john smith in the club watching his first wife dance on the night she disappeared
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john was not the type of person who would want his wife or even his ex-wife to be dancing in a skimpy outfit at a
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bar in front of men another witness saw smith and janice leave together at closing time
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the divorce was final john was still trying to win her back she was dating other men
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so this was like a pot that was just boiling and boiling and boiling and boiling
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janice's family long suspected john smith was somehow involved in her disappearance
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smith had a temper and had been abusive towards janus during their marriage i was playing a game of chess with him
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one day i nailed him with a checkmate and he just looked at the board took his arm slammed it
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across the chessboard all the pieces just scattered all over the room and i was odd i just sort of sat back i was
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thinking whoa what's coming next investigators had plenty of suspicion but no hard
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evidence all they knew was that smith was the last known person to see both janice hartman and betty fran before
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they disappeared dead in the water i mean we've got no leads it's exhausted
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i mean short of an accidental discovery or him confessing we've got nothing it was an astounding coincidence that
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john smith's first and second wives both disappeared without a trace in looking into smith's background
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investigators discovered that smith had a younger brother michael and they decided to pay michael a visit
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at first michael was unwilling to answer their questions after that interview michael went home
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and talked to his wife he searched his soul michael had had a secret and it had been eating at him for years and
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he searched his conscience and he decided that he was going to turn on his brother
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michael told the fbi a horrifying tale he said shortly after his brother's first wife janice disappeared
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he saw john building a wooden box in his grandparents garage he thought that the shape was odd it had
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an odd dimension to it it was about four foot in length but it was rather short john said he would use the box to store
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janice's belongings michael found this very perplexing and didn't know what to
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think of it and why was he building a box to put her clothing in if you're going to build a box to store
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things you need to build it deep like a chest and john became angry with his brother at this time so michael left the
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garage went back into the grandparents home later that night michael went back out to the garage
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and looked through the window john is now packing clothing items into that box which was completed
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michael thought it was odd how he was packing he was taking the clothing and rolling it up
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and laying it along the outside edges of that box his brother was crying during the time he was packing these clothing
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items the box was nailed shut and stored in their grandparents garage five years later when michael and his
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grandfather were cleaning the garage they pried the box open and looked inside michael saw something that he would
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never forget for the rest of his life looking up at him was the face of janice hartman
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and this corpse had the legs cut off below the knees michael and his grandfather closed the
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box and immediately called john who insisted he had nothing to do with janice's death he said someone else
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killed her and he was hiding the body because he thought he would be [Music] michael said john put the coffin in his
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black corvette and drove away he never saw it again and he said nothing about it for years
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he thought my god i might be an accomplice to a murderer i don't want to get in trouble for this so he just
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didn't say anything it's not neat and it doesn't speak well for michael but it's the truth
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but where was the wooden box now 21 years later investigators learned that john smith's
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stepfather was pouring the concrete foundation in an apartment complex around the time john removed the box
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ground penetrating radar found a potential grave underneath the garage floor the highway construction people actually
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using giant saws removed a portion of the garage floor and then with excavation materials were removed and screened
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by the fbi evidence response team but they found nothing investigators contacted every law
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enforcement agency and coroner in the state asking if they knew anything about a wooden box with a body inside missing
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the legs and they got a break the officer who got that letter had been on the force for 25 years or more and it
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was just the best bit of luck we could have ever hoped for that he would have been the person who
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got the letter because he immediately remembered the lady in the box from april of 1980
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ten years earlier a highway worker found human remains in a wooden box in some deep brush along the side of a road
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she's a jane doe they did all the things that they were supposed to do they didn't have the dna technology that
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we have now there's no database they could go to there were no fingerprints that they could look up so they didn't
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have the kind of forensic capabilities that they have now so they just buried her in a potter's
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grave and hoped for the best but authorities kept the box as well as the night gown that covered the victim's
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face and on the nightgown was a clue i could see her face in the dress it was like
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looking at jan like she was there with us and it was chilling to see it the image that is shown on that
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nightgown to this day is just a very unnerving image after all this time was it possible that forensic science
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could identify the remains and also expose her killer [Music] authorities in indiana exhumed the
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remains of the unidentified woman they had buried a decade earlier the bones were taken to forensic
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anthropologists frank and julie saul when we did the x-rays we determined that we were dealing with
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someone in early twenties the pelvic bones indicated it was a female by measuring the femur dr sol determined
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she was approximately five feet four inches tall the same height as janice hartman
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the skull was in almost perfect condition showing no signs of trauma unfortunately there were no dental
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records of janice hartman for comparison the smile was consistent with dennis hartman
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but we needed to do a more thorough job of establishing her positive identity the anthropologist noted the woman's
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legs had been amputated below the knee after death to find out more they sent the leg bones
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to forensic anthropologist steve sims i am more specialized in that i work in the more modern samples of anthropology
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or forensic anthropology and within that i have a specialty of bone trauma dr sims noticed several false starts on
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the bones which allowed him to see both sides of the instrument used hand saws have teeth which alternately
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bend to the right and left making a w-shaped cut the teeth cut a swath through the bone
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that's wider than the rest of the blade but the instrument used to cut these
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bones made a v-shaped cut jagged on one side and smooth on the other it has teeth on one side and it's a
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fairly good description of a serrated knife take a lot of strength to actually do that or what i would say is a lot of
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motivation a bone fragment was sent to the fbi lab in washington dc for mitochondrial dna
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analysis [Music] when compared with the mitochondrial dna from janice hartman's mother
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there was a match the body was janice hartman i don't know what kind of human being can do something
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like that he's a sick man sociopath was the term that i heard used more than
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once investigators searched motor vehicle records and discovered john smith's old
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corvette sports car was now in the possession of a car collector in new jersey who had kept it in pristine
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condition measurements revealed janice's coffin could have easily fit inside the car
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and there was other evidence the fbi agent noted scratches on the dash as well as the rear window of that
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corvette which would be consistent with the edges of a box that size being placed in the vehicle
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26 years after janice hartman disappeared john smith was arrested and charged with
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first degree murder [Music] prosecutors believe smith was angry the janice divorced him and that he also
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objected to her work as a dancer smith heard about the incident at the party janice attended
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and he used this as his cover for murder witnesses saw smith leave the nightclub
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with janice on the night she disappeared prosecutors think smith strangled janus
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to death later that night i think that the legs being severed from janus's body
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was symbolic in that she had walked out on john smith for a controlling man he could not
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handle that [Music] he made sure she would never walk away from him again smith built the coffin in his
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grandfather's garage and buried janice with her nightgown over her face he stored the coffin in his
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grandfather's garage until family members told him to remove it then he put it in his sports car and
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dumped it in the weeds along an indiana highway based on the evidence john smith was convicted of janice
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hartman's murder and he was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison these weren't just a pile of bones
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science was able to give these bones a name and relatives who loved her they were able to give these bones an
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identity they were able to bring this case to life and that's why they got a
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conviction michael fleeman wrote a book about this case the stranger in my bed and he doubts anyone will find smith's
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second wife betty fran john smith is not going to tell them where betty fran's body is if he is the
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one in fact who is responsible for this that would be a step in the right direction and that would probably get
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him a conference with god before he would be sent to hell to do that means facing execution and
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it's just not going to happen i don't think betty franz ever going to be found and i don't think her case is
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ever going to be finally solved investigators found evidence that betty fran was about to leave smith because
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she learned he was having an affair with another woman in my opinion that is a good portion of
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john's problem is abandonment if a woman is going to leave him it's i control when you leave
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[Music] [Music] [Music] you