Abdulmujib Yakubu

Was Jacquelyn Smith a victim of her charity or of trust and betrayal? On November 30th, 2018. The Smith family in Baltimore, Maryland, were having a night out. Valeria Smith was with her father Keith and her stepmother Jacquelyn, belatedly celebrating her 28th birthday at the American Legion Hall. They ate, drank, danced, and took photos. When the family exited the legion just before midnight, no one would have predicted that the night was about to turn deadly. Jacquelyn was in a pool of her own blood. Smith and her father, Keith, were in the same car with Jacquelyn when she was murdered. In Keith's statement, he claimed that a few blocks from Valeria's home, Jacquelyn slowed the car to a stop and rolled down the passenger window. Jacqueline wished to offer money to a new mother who was out on the street with a sign that read, Please help me feed my baby. As Keith would later tragically recount, stopping to help a woman in need was Jacquelyn Smith's fatal mistake, as two panhandlers appeared with a knife. She was stabbed five times to her torso and a single cut to her lower right arm. They ran away with valuables; she was later pronounced dead before 1:00 a.m. at John Hopkin Hospital. The murder case of Jacquelyn could be described as a roller coaster of fabrication and deception. At 54, Jacqueline had raised two adult sons, one in college and the other a graduate who had joined the US Coast Guard professionally. She was an electrical engineer working for the Department of Defence in Maryland. In 2014, she married Keith Smith, who was with his daughter and the only eyewitness to the Jacquelyn murder. Law enforcement relied on the statement of Keith and descriptions of the two suspects, ostensibly panhandlers who are targeting charitable individuals. Homicide detectives met with Keith and Valeria on the night of the murder at John Hopkins and took their statements. Then they drove straight out to secure the crime scene. Detectives arrived within a few hours of the incident, yet they were unable to find any indications of the stabbing at the location where it had taken place. The next morning, detective Borgard Singer and Santos tried again, this time in the light of day. They began to conduct a canvass of the neighbourhood after walking the streets, searching the surrounding area, and speaking with local residents. They found nothing of evidentiary value. The team was unable to independently verify where Smith's had stopped for the panhandlers. They could not locate any witnesses, and the murder knife was not found. Obvious to the team of experienced detectives was that the thousand block of Valley Street was neither a well-travelled nor a very well-populated area. This was not an area where panhandlers would typically be found. Most of the houses on the thousand block were vacant. Why would a panhandler seek alms in an unoccupied environment? Keith and Jacqueline's 2012 Audi A7, driven by Keith that night, was brought to Police Headquarters directly from the hospital for processing. Latent prints were recovered from the exterior of the vehicle, on the passenger side, but these were determined to be those of Keith Smith; no other prints were identified. There was no unidentified DNA or fingerprints in the vehicle that could assist law enforcement in tracking down the unknown panhandler murderers. Investigators find it difficult to corroborate the details provided by Keith and his daughter, so they sought to verify the route taken by the vehicle. The homeless outreach team was also notified based on the descriptions provided by Keith and Valeria. This team used all its existing resources but was unable to develop any suspects. The inability to verify the crime scene was an obvious hindrance to the investigation. Investigators began by acquiring surveillance footage across the city to track Smith's movements. They arrived at the American Legion Hall on Madison Avenue. cameras there confirmed that the Smiths left the hall together at 11:45 p.m., reviewing the footage of 27 CCTV cameras from the legion to Valley Street near Valeria's home. The team sought to recreate the path taken by Keith and verified by his daughter. Detectives were unable to locate the Audi on any of the cameras around the areas described. They reviewed motion-activated residential security cameras that could have captured angles of the incident itself. First, at East Chase Street, they found nothing. Then they reviewed the cameras. Facing East Edgar Street, and again, the cameras failed to capture any footage of the incident or of Keith Smith's vehicle. Their next step was to acquire the cell phone data from Keith and Valeria's phones. Hopefully they could use signal data to map the family movements that night. Keith's cell phone showed no activity throughout the evening before he placed the call to 911, but data from Valeria's cell phone proved to be insightful. It showed that the family had not gone south after leaving the American Legion to take Valeria home, as they had told detectives. Instead, they turned North. Connected Towers indicated that the family had travelled to Druid Hill Park near the Maryland Zoo and had remained in that location for 15 minutes, which neither of the Smiths had mentioned. Efforts to track Jacquelyn's phone and other items proved abortive. However, after some weeks, Jaclyn's Visa card was flagged. Detectives track down three male teenagers who claimed to have found the card in a Michael Kors clutch on Caroline Street in Madison Avenue. The teens were detained and questioned as potential suspects; they were ultimately released, however, when the location of the bus stop was confirmed to be on the exact route taken by Keith and Valeria after leaving the legion. Baltimore detectives had failed to uncover a single piece of evidence linking Jacqueline's murder to a pair of panhandlers; what they had discovered was a series of inconsistencies and contradictions in the statements offered by the Smith's. For instance, Keith told police at the hospital that the male panhandler had reached into the car and stolen his wife's purse; in subsequent statements, he said it was the woman who did. Police confronted Keith with the location data at that stage, and his story changed once again. He claimed that he had been lost that night and was embarrassed to admit it. After he was released from that interview, Keith Smith drove home remotely, agreed to a year-long lease for a modest home in Florida, ordered and packed a rental truck, and left the state. On February 4th, he came in one night with a very large moving truck and rapidly loaded it the next day, and he was never seen again. Valeria later left Maryland as well to meet up with her father. Law enforcement knew Keith was fleeing, and they were tracking him. Keith suspected that he was being watched. He attempted to dodge a wiretap on his phone by changing his number, changing his phone provider, and shipping a new cell phone to his daughter, but law enforcement was still listening. In February 2019, Keith attempted to book two flights out of the country. These attempts failed because he did not hold a US passport. Keith eventually deduced that he could fly to the US Virgin Islands by providing only a driver's licence. While placing these calls, his search engine was locating information on how one might travel to Mexico without formally going through a border crossing. On March 1st, Keith rented a car in Texas. This move prompted an immediate response by police in Baltimore. An arrest warrant was issued for Keith and his daughter two days later. Both suspects were arrested 20 minutes away from the Mexican border in an obvious attempt to flee prosecution for first-degree murder. The arrest warrant did not outline how investigators believed the father and daughter had committed the murder. However, it outlined the many lies and deceptions fed to detectives throughout the murder investigation, which was not enough evidence to prosecute Smith. The police had no concrete evidence to keep him in custody. After rigorous effort, investigators learned through a friend of Keith's brother, Vic, that Keith had previously asked for help getting rid of his wife. According to his brother's friend, in the months leading up to her death, Jacqulyn had spoken to Keith about wanting a divorce. According to Vic, this was not the desired outcome for Keith since he was the beneficiary of her life insurance policy. Keith did exactly that two days after her murder. He arrived at Jacqueline's work, requesting the paperwork to make the claim. Law enforcement, already deeply suspicious of his story, told the insurer to hold off on the payment. 20 years earlier, Keith had committed armed robbery three times at the same bank in December 1999. He was caught on his third attempt and served six years in jail. Valerus Smith was charged with assisting in covering up the murder and helping her father dispose of the knife and other property. Valeria admitted guilt as an accessory after the facts were obvious, and she did agree to testify against her father for a plea bargain. The trial took place in late 2021. Valeria told the jury that after celebrating her birthday, her father drove the family to Druid Hill Park with Jacqueline, whom she believed had dozed off in the front seat. There, her father stabbed her stepmother five times. He disposed of the knife in the woodland. He gave me two wallets belonging to Jacqueline, including Michael Core's clutch, and said that she was instructed by Keith to get rid of them and that the panhandler story was given to her by Keith. The 32-year-old recovering addict testified that she was forced by her father to lie but was telling the truth now because she did not want to go to prison for a murder that she did not commit. Keith Smith was convicted of first-degree murder in December 2021, and he was sentenced to life in prison. Valeria was also sentenced; she was given 5 years for her role in covering up the murder. The verdict and sentencing came as a relief to Jacquelyn's family. Do you think such judgements were truly a relief for Jacquelyn's family, or do they deserve more? Let us read your comments in the commentary section. Also, subscribe for more crime stories. Thank you.