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Tonight on Dateline. She's like, have you seen the news? I turn on the TV and I'm like, oh my God, she's really gone. This really happened. The police said a woman was stabbed at East Baltimore by panhandlers. Her husband had advised that Jacqueline wanted to give the female money. The male started stabbing the victim. I feel like I'm stuck in a nightmare. I'm trying to wake up and say that didn't happen. I can't even fathom having my wife dying next to me.
Can you imagine any situation in which Jackie would offer money to a panhandler in the middle of the night? In the pouring down rain in the middle of Baltimore City. No. Something wasn't right. You feel like you know a person. But sometimes you really don't. We obtained a wiretap. She starts losing it on the phone. Things are falling apart very quickly. He was asking to get a one-way trip to Cuba. We knew that he was fleeing the country. They were literally 10 miles from the border. We're about to lose him. If you can imagine what that moment feels like, it's sickening. Nail-biting. A terrifying story of late-night street violence. The only thing scarier, the truth. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.
is Deadly Intersection. Winter's gloom blew into Baltimore on the night of November 30th, 2018. As the temperature headed toward freezing, a cold, steady rain washed over the city. But behind the doors of American Legion Post 19, it was all warmth and love. There was music, dancing, a birthday celebration, and among the revelers, 54-year-old Jacqueline Smith and her husband, Keith, toasting her stepdaughter, Valeria, who had just turned 28. Their selfies captured joy, a tight-knit family, not a hint of the unspeakable violence about to tear them apart.
Baltimore City 911, 1138. What's the address of your emergency? Yes, sir. I got a serious emergency. He stabbed my wife about four or five times. Keith told 911 the attack happened about a half hour after they left the party to drop off Valeria in Keith's luxury sedan on the corner of Valley and Chase Streets. What's the address? Where are you at, sir? I'm leaving. I'm leaving. I'm on my way to the hospital. He said Jackie was hanging on by a thread. Are you able to put pressure on the wound, sir? Yeah, I got a towel. All I had was a towel that I had. All I had was a towel. How's your wife doing? She's not talking, man. She's not talking. She's not talking.
We received a call advising that a female had been stabbed and she was currently at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Detective Jill Beauregard was on duty that night. She raced to the hospital. So did case supervisor Sergeant Daniel Santos. When we responded to the hospital, I recall seeing Mr. Smith and his daughter Valeria Smith. They appeared to be distraught, crying. You know, the normal emotions that we're used to seeing when there's some type of tragedy like this that we come across. And this was the worst of tragedies. Jacqueline Smith was suddenly, inexplicably dead.
Detective Mike Moran interviewed a distraught Keith several hours after the murder, and what he told him was horrifying. They had stopped to give money to a pair of panhandlers, and as Jackie handed the woman $10, the man stepped forward and stabbed her. It was a nightmare twist on the story of the Good Samaritan, a woman murdered while trying to give a little money to a stranger in need. No wonder local media were all over it. Police say that the victim was riding in a car when she saw a woman holding a sign that said, please help me feed my baby. And she decided to give the woman some money. The terrible news reached one of Jackie's closest friends, Michelle Kenny. I was sleeping and my phone kept ringing. And I answered a call and she's like, have you not seen the news? She's like, they're saying Jackie's been murdered. And I'm like, what? Jackie? My Jackie's been murdered? Michelle turned on the television. Then she called her sister, Sarah Rucker, another of Jackie's close friends. Historical.
Jackie's gone, Jackie's gone. It was so surreal. Like it wasn't, you know, in and out of body experience, that's what I was feeling like, this cannot be possible. Jackie's not gone, you know. Two days later, Keith, with a tearful Valeria by his side, was ready to tell the public what had happened. The killer, Keith said, snatched Jackie's diamond necklace. The woman reached in and stole her purse.
We're in our last days and we need to understand that there's some desperate people that they don't need help. They're trying to hurt you. Keith had this warning for his community. Be careful when we see these panhandlers out and get in close proximity to your car. Because like me, I'm from Baltimore. The last thing I thought that they were going to take my wife's life. And so now I got to live with that. I got to live with that every day.
So for the coward that took my wife's life, I hope it was worth it because you're going to answer to that one day. You're going to answer to it. We're seeking the public's help in identifying the suspects involved in what we consider to be a very heinous murder. Baltimore's police commissioner amplified Keith's message. Two individuals, one of which reported to be a mother in need of food for a child. And as we now know that that was a ruse to rob him. Now you have a husband who no longer has a wife and a daughter who no longer has a mother. Finding that killer would lead investigators on a wild ride where nothing was what it seemed.
With an unknown killer in the wind, Keith Smith and his daughter Valeria wanted the public to know about the pain that wouldn't go away.
I feel like I'm stuck in a nightmare. And every day I wake up, I'm trying to wake up and say it didn't happen. Just days after the murder, they sat down with a local reporter to recount the awful night that ended Jackie's life. She stopped talking when I got back in the car. She was not responsive. And all I could do was just keep screaming her name, telling her, hold on, hold on.
Yeah, we both haven't really been able to sleep, and I slept for the first time in about two, three days last night, and I've been having this reoccurring nightmare. I feel like I'm in a movie, and, you know, everything, the days have just been running together, but we've been receiving so much support, not just from family, everyone. I can only imagine what my father's going through. That's why I'm just being here with him, because if not, he would be here by himself, and I'm not going to let him go through this by himself. And again, they warned how Jackie's selfless act had provoked a sudden lethal response. You can't let your guard down, even when you're doing something you think is good, because everyone doesn't have good intentions. And that's why I'm going to push the government to actually start thinking about banning, panhandling, because this has shown me just how deadly.
giving money, winding your window down to these people because they're everywhere. But before he finished, he spoke about his wife and her accomplishments. She graduated from North Carolina, cum laude. and living what she wanted to do. She loved electrical engineering. If you wanted to ask me what she'd do, I'd probably get a headache trying to tell you because it's so sophisticated dealing with weaponry and advanced missile guiding systems. Investigators learned Jackie was indeed a remarkable person. An electrical engineer by training, she supervised about 100 professionals at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, a military research and development installation in Maryland. She was Michelle's boss. She would always tell me, you know, Michelle, all you can do is come to work and do the job. As long as you do your job, everything else will fall into place.
Michelle's work friendship with Jackie blossomed into a full-on sisterhood. She was awesome. Very smart, caring. One of the things that stands out of some of the pictures I've seen of her are her eyes. They are expressive. They are warm. You obviously have keyed into that as well. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You could tell how she was feeling by how her eyes looked. Like, if she's happy, even if she wasn't smiling, her eyes smile. Jackie and Michelle had a posse of like-minded women. You had a group called The Divas. Explain what that was about. So The Divas is a group of us women who love to travel.
to places like Jamaica. Sarah says that when Jackie joined the Divas, she was a perfect fit. Was she a girl's girl, if you will? Yes, a girl's girl. Was she private? To a certain extent. She wasn't one that was just going to let you know everything at one time. Yeah, I think we all know people like that who standoffish, but once you pass some test, all is good. All is good. Mm-hmm. Years before, Jackie married a guy she met in college. He joined the Army, and they had two sons. But the marriage didn't last. They got divorced in 2005, and the boys lived with her.
She put her children first, her two boys first, and she just was a family person. As the years went by, Sarah says there was something missing in Jackie's life. Was Jackie looking for a relationship? Yes. Yes. She was looking for love. She was big on love. She wound up meeting the love of her life. And who was that? Keith.
It happened in 2014 when Sarah invited Keith Smith to a get-together one night. What do you know about Jackie and Keith's first meeting together? Well, that would be at the party. She loved to dance. He loved to dance. I told anybody who can stay on the dance floor with you, he's a winner, because she could dance. Like, oh my gosh, I'd be like, Jackie, get some water. Jackie called Sarah a couple of days later to tell her she was planning to go out with Keith. Sarah approved. And you knew Keith? Yes. And what was your read on him?
Keith was energetic. Keith was a family man. You know, I love Keith. Describe him to me. Keith was a jokester. Liked to play all the time. Keep you laughing. You know, I mean, he had a good heart. You know, was heavy in church. That was huge for her. They became a very intricate part of the ministry. During the week, Keith had a good job driving tractor trailers. It sounds like they were a great match. They lived well. They had a yacht. A 50-foot yacht, no less.
Keith wanted us all to know about the yacht. To me, it was just Keith's nature. He liked nice things. What did she like particularly about Keith? She said he made her laugh. Made her laugh. She said she ain't been this happy in a long time with anyone. Just a few months after they met, Jacqueline and Keith got married. Did that feel okay to you? I'm not one to talk. I married my first time. I was in six months. I got married the first time at 18 with a six-month sock. So that answers that. Right.
Sarah says Jackie and Keith seem to enjoy their new life together, dancing, driving nice cars, hanging out on the yacht. But four years after the wedding, Jackie was dead from stab wounds on that rainy night in Baltimore. We had so many things planned about what we wanted to do with our lives. And just like that, it's over. A baffling, pointless crime that put a city on edge and a police department on notice. This case is obviously generating a lot of heat. How did that affect how you approached this? We really got pressured to step up the investigation.
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The leaves are changing. The weather's turning. It's a perfect time to get cozy and listen to a few stories. Since it's Halloween, of course, it'd have to be mysterious, suspenseful, perhaps a little creepy. Join me for an all-new Morrison Mysteries featuring the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Coming soon, wherever you get your podcasts. Listen now. Jackie's tragic death shook a city already weary of violence. In 2018, Baltimore topped the nation's per capita murder charts.
During that time, we were between 290 to 300 plus murders, you know, in a particular year. So your guys must have been just stressed to the end. Yeah, I would think my squad normally would have about 30, 38 homicides, you know, for a squad of six people. Like many big cities, most of these killings stem from turf wars over narcotics in neighborhoods far removed from the ordinary life of most residents. But this crime hit closer to home. Fear crept in. When a case like this happens, it's a real punch in the gut.
to the city, to the community. Patrick Seidel, a Baltimore assistant state's attorney, was assigned to Jackie's case on day one. People started to second guess. Should I trust this person on the corner? Should I give that person a dollar? Should I give this person some food?
Baltimore residents weren't the only ones questioning their suddenly complicated feelings about some of the city's most vulnerable. Jackie's senseless murder had become a national story. Police asking for help in the urgent search for suspects in the murder of a good Samaritan. Former Baltimore news anchor Oprah Winfrey weighed in, supercharging attention on the case through social media. The national response was, roll your windows up and stay away from these people and protect yourself.
Detectives Jill Beauregard and Mike Moran were up against it. This case is obviously generating a lot of heat. How did that affect how you approached this? We really got pressured to step up the investigation, but as any investigation, we're going to put our all to it. But we did get pressure from the higher-ups to really get this closed quickly. So Keith pulled onto Valley Street right before the stop sign. And I'm sitting where Jacqueline was. That's correct. The detectives had first examined the crime scene in the early morning hours after Jackie died.
What would you expect to find? Blood potentially, you know, if she's stabbed and he's pulling his arm out, if he cuts himself or it's her blood on him, he could have dropped something like clothing or something out of the wallet because, you know, that's happened where a suspect will take a purse and they just start throwing things as they're running and keep only what they want. But any hope for evidence quickly vanished. When we get out here, there's nothing here. It's a dark street. It's raining. So even if there was blood on the ground, it would be washed away with the rain. There were no witnesses. There were some gentlemen that were playing basketball in the courts right here. We approached them and asked them if they had seen or heard anything. They said no.
Investigators returned to the scene several times, once with an entire police academy class searching the surrounding area for Jackie's purse and the killer's knife. They found nothing. Murder weapon we were never able to locate. There were a few cameras in the neighborhood, but they didn't show anything helpful. And when it came to a detailed description of the attackers, Keith and Valeria weren't much of a help. Jill, you're sitting in the seat that Valeria would have been in, correct? Yes, that's correct.
She couldn't really get a good look at anybody's faces because she was in the backseat and from her angle, she couldn't really see outside the window. She knows that the man comes up to the window and then the next thing she sees is her stepmom getting stabbed. And then they run. And they ran back behind us towards the basketball court. And Keith says he gets out of the car and begins to chase him. Keith said he gave up the chase without getting a good look at the assailants either. All he could give investigators were the basics.
A black male, mid-30s, wearing a black hoodie with the hood up and a goatee, and the female was wearing a three-quarter length of brown coat. In other words, it could have been anybody? Yes, correct. Despite the lack of evidence, Seidel believed police had a good chance of finding the killer. On paper, it looked relatively simple. Finding which panhandler in this case? Yeah, the way that panhandling works in Baltimore, it's pretty common. They set up at busy intersections. They're heavily trafficked. The people that frequent that intersection on a daily basis, the commuters, it would not be difficult to identify who the person was. Seidel's hunch seemed about to pay off.
Someone was trying to buy stuff on Amazon. Someone who had Jackie's purse. We received information that Jackie's credit cards were being used. Is that in the big break category? Absolutely. A week after Jackie Smith's murder, more than 150 people came to say farewell. You know, it was a full pack church. Church.
It was heavy. You could feel it heavy because of the situation. All funerals and memorials are emotional, but was this one especially emotional? It was, because even though what happened happened, I lost a sister. I lost a friend. I was just shocked. Like, she's really gone. Like, this really happened. It was crushing. It was like a heartache, like I felt when I lost my husband. It was just very painful.
And yet joy found its way through the gloom. Their choir sung beautiful songs. It was a great way to memorialize her. Showing the person that she was, the kind person that she was, the giving person she was. Keith gave a eulogy, visibly torn up. He was just speaking on how much he loved her and, you know, all that she had done for him and what they were gonna do. He loved his wife and can't believe this has happened and he crying.
Historically, everybody's consoling him, giving him a hug, crying, you know, saying, oh, my God, I'm so sorry this is happening. This is someone who's going through this enormous loss. Yes. Sarah recalled that Keith and Jackie had been there for her. My first instinct, you know, we got to be there to support Keith. Comfort him. Yes. And I know how they were there for me for the loss of my husband. But even as they celebrated Jackie's life, they were struggling with how she died. It was all so confusing.
This story turns to a report of a homeless person or a panhandler. Yes. I had a lot of arguments with people and reference to it. You know, we got to let the police do their job. The police were doing their job. In fact, detectives Beauregard and Moran already had some leads. One tantalizing tip came from a credit card company. Remember, Jackie's wallet went missing when she was murdered.
We received information that Jackie's credit cards were being used. Someone was trying to purchase items on Amazon. With Jackie's credit card? Correct. Is that in the big break category? Absolutely. So as soon as there was activity on her credit cards, the accounts had all been flagged. You've got to find out who has this pocketbook. Right. This one was a little unusual. You wouldn't expect somebody to commit such a horrific murder and then go use the credit cards. But there's a reason why they say criminals are not the smartest individuals.
The detective subpoenaed Amazon and tracked down delivery addresses for the items. Where does the trail lead? To a group of juveniles. I remember at one location, which was close to the crime scene, so that was something else that kind of gave us hope. The police showed up at one of the juveniles' addresses and went in heavy, guns drawn. Obviously, we're yelling police, and the mother was kind of shocked that we were at the house. We grabbed everybody, put them in the living room. We started searching the house, and in the juvenile male's room, we started finding things that were property of Ms. Smith, the credit cards. You know, when we grabbed everybody, we brought them back to the headquarters building and interviewed them.
Interview the teens with their parents present. They were walking home from the inner harbor and they found a wallet sitting at a bus stop. One of the juveniles actually still had the wallet and credit cards in his house, but the transactions declined. As for the murder? The teens denied any involvement, but the detectives needed to check. We pulled video from the location, and you see them walking to the bus stop where the wallet is located. It was apparent pretty quickly that, at least from their perspective, they didn't have any idea what was going on. And then when we showed them pictures of Keith and Valeria, they had no idea who they were. These kids weren't killers. They were not killers. They were just opportunists. Yes, that's exactly what they were. The teens were off the hook for Jackie's murder. But even as detectives were investigating them, they were hot on the trail of two other suspects, a man and a woman.
It was a homeless individual with a homeless female holding a baby, so everything messed up. It was like, oh man, we got our guy, we got our guy. In those feverish early days of the investigation into Jackie Smith's murder, Keith and Valeria were doing all they could to get their story out. The media blitz paid off. Maryland's Metro Crime Stoppers hotline lit up. Most tips were insignificant. One most certainly wasn't. We receive a tip saying that the individual responsible for Jacqueline's murder goes by the name of Baby J.
and that his real name is Marcus Wilkes. But why was someone suspecting him of this murder? Because of the description that Keith and Valeria had given us of who was responsible. Does he travel with a woman? He does. He travels with a female by the name of Tia Sabri, and we were advised that they had a child, a young child. What can you tell me about baby J? Young black male, and by I say young, he was probably upper 20s, early 30s, brown-skinned, the way he was described. By Keith, he had a goatee. Does he have a record or a history of violence?
He does have a record. As a matter of fact, he was wanted on a robbery warrant. And the young lady, Tia, was a young black female, which is what was described by Mr. Smith. These people were checking the boxes in terms of what a suspect might look like. Yes, we're starting to get our little funny feelings inside of her stomach. And we're getting happy because, again, we're like, oh, man, everything sounds right. To find Baby Jay and Tia Sabree, they probe the nooks and crannies of Baltimore's underworld. We had officers scanning the streets. We contacted informants, confidential sources. We had officers speaking to drug dealers, drug users.
After a few days, they put eyes on Baby J. But getting their hands on him was another matter. As soon as the officers would approach him, he would take off running. So now we're really getting excited because we got a guy that matches our descriptions that the citizens are telling us it's him. And every time patrol approaches him, he's taking off running. They finally cornered him and brought him in for questioning. Explaining he wasn't there. He's not that kind of person. He'll be out there selling drugs or robbing people or even burglarizing your house. But to kill somebody, it's not something he could do.
This baby Jay gets very emotional about being accused. Yeah, when I say emotional, he's like crying. He was adamant that he didn't do the crime. His alibi? He said he and Tia were at a hotel. He said then they came back to the hotel. In the days ahead, detectives would need to figure out if baby Jay's story was true. His apparent accomplice, Tia Sabri, was still on the street. If they could bring her in, they could perhaps tie a bow on this case. But she wasn't easy to find either. You gotta remember, they're homeless, so there was really no location, specific locations to find them. They were being elusive.
They finally got Tia in. But her alibi was different from Baby J's. She said they were not at the Envy Hotel, as he had told detectives. It was the Executive Inn, Taco Bell, not 7-Eleven, as Baby J had said. She said getting food took about 30 minutes, and they both returned to the hotel. And that meant they were there well before the time of Jackie's murder. The detectives had two stories that didn't match up. Fortunately, the Executive Inn had security cameras that would reveal the truth.
Baby J and Tia's alibis seemed flimsy. They told different stories, but Tia's was more detailed. She claimed they'd been at the executive inn at the time of Jackie's murder. So Detective Beauregard and myself went to the hotel and pulled up the video. Screen grabs from the video showed the couple arriving on scooters at about 4 p.m. the evening before the murder. Tia left the hotel close to 10 p.m. Then Baby J also left, and they both returned. The detectives learned Baby J had been mistaken about where they stayed and got food. But his story basically lined up with Tia's. You see them on the video, and the date and time of the murder, they're in the hotel at that time. They had a solid alibi. Solid alibi. Good for him, bad for you. Once their story checked out, it was just crushingly devastating. It was depressing because now we had to start.
all over again. But you can't live in that moment of frustration. You've got a murder to solve. That's correct. We have to keep going. All the while, Jackie's friend Sarah saw Keith struggling to cope with his loss. He came over one time to my house. He was sitting there. He was on the sofa. He was sobbing. She did her best to comfort him. He was just like, it's been rough, sis. It's just been rough. And I said, I only can imagine, you know, this is murder. I just hope they find people that did it. He was like, yeah, Baltimore's going to do their job. He was expressing the idea that they're going to solve this. Yes.
Sarah talked to her sister every day about the friend they lost and the friend who was struggling. Sarah and I both had friendships, you know, with Keith and Jackie. And of course, I trust my sister with my life. So I said, I want to find out what's going on. So of course, anything that happened, I'm calling her. But as weeks went by, the two sisters found themselves asking more pointed questions about the murder. When I start hearing more in the news about the...
The panhandler and the baby and the woman panhandling on that corner. Things just started adding up to me. Can you imagine any situation in which Jackie, your friend, would offer money to a panhandler in the middle of the night? In all honesty. I can see her wanting to help in a certain way, but I honestly can't see her rolling down her window in the pouring down rain and trying to hand somebody money in the middle of Baltimore City. No. And was that one of the first flags in your mind about the story, their story? Two other people were in that car. Yes. Valeria. Did you think about Valeria? Knowing that she didn't care for Jackie, you know, that's where my eyes went. The sisters sensed tension between Jackie and Valeria soon after Keith and Jackie met.
I felt the energy was off with her and Jackie because I feel that she thinks that she was taking her dad away. So the two of them were kind of sideways. Yes. In short conversations that I had had with Jackie, there just was no love there. Like, they just couldn't seem to hit it off. So I just knew that she didn't care for Jackie. The animosity between Valeria and Jackie seemed to grow as Jackie and Keith planned to spend the rest of their lives together.
And then comes the wedding. And that's where things got really awkward. Got a little awkward, yeah. And at the reception, it got very ugly. A few family members had, was trying to make a little altercation habit. They really didn't want Keith to get married. And they waited to the wedding to express that?
Yeah. And so did they speak out publicly at the wedding? Mm-hmm. Made it very clear. And Jackie broke my heart that she was in the room crying. This was her day. This was her wedding day. It was her day. I mean, that's all she ever wanted. It was a beautiful day. She was a beautiful bride. You know, don't let this ruin your moment. It's still your day. You're beautiful. You pat her down so she didn't ruin her makeup. And I said, go out there and put a smile on your face and, you know, you're going to be Mrs. Sniff. You must have crushed her. Did crush her. My heart went out to both of them, Keith and Jackie, because he was just as upset as she was. Keith, the stand-up guy, stood up for his new wife and asked his family to leave.
His family had to be removed from the building in order for the reception to continue. They got that ugly? Yeah, they removed them. They were no longer welcome. And we got Jackie calm in the room, got her fixed back up so she can finish her day. Valeria was among those forced to leave the reception. And the conflict between her and Jackie grew as Valeria struggled with substance abuse, leaning heavily on her father for support. That grated on Jackie, who wasn't officially in the military, but acted like it, says Sarah.
Jackie's military at the end of the day. She still had like a little militant attitude about children taking care of themselves and being financially take care of their own responsibilities. You cannot keep giving, giving, giving to your child. You gotta make them responsible. So that's what she used to say. And that's talking about Valeria. Yes. What's more, after Keith moved into Jackie's townhouse, Jackie urged him to sell his own home, forcing Valeria to live in a rental apart from her father.
The more she thought about it, the closer Sarah came to a searing conclusion that Valeria was involved in Jackie's murder. You couldn't really see Keith killing his wife, but you could see Valeria possibly killing her stepmom. Yeah. Police were already on it, taking a hard look at Valeria. She was kind of jealous. Why would she need a towel and gloves in the backseat if they were going out to celebrate? We employed a strategy called tickling the wire.
We applied for and obtained a wiretap. So this is your day to tell me the truth. We had her in a separate room with a separate group of detectives, and they grilled her. That story you just told me? We know that's . At that moment, it gets even more intense. It looks scary. Hands out the window.
Baltimore police had been diving into the family dynamics surrounding Jackie Smith and arrived at the same conclusions as her friends. Valeria had serious issues with Jackie. She didn't like the relationship with Jackie and her father. She was kind of jealous. There wasn't necessarily a good connection between Jacqueline and Valeria. Valeria was kind of the black sheep of that relationship. They took a closer look at the contents of a bag they had found in the backseat of the car, right where Valeria was sitting.
It's all type of book bag in the back that had a towel, yellow latex gloves, the kind you would use to wash dishes. That appeared to be as odd because why would she need a towel and gloves in the back seat? You know, if... They were going out to celebrate. Latex gloves at a crime scene? That presented all kinds of possibilities. Or maybe not. But there was no blood in the gloves. There was no blood in the towel, you know, in the back. When it came to Valeria, police had a lot of suspicions, not a lot of evidence. And as they returned again and again to the intersection of Valley and Chase, police also returned to the story told by the father and daughter. Does this look like a likely place that we would see panhandlers, especially at that hour of night? Not at all.
Panhandlers, they're opportunists. They're not going to be stopping at a stop sign where it's dark, it's cold, and it's even raining. They're trying to make money quickly, and this is not the spot where a panhandler would be. Something else bothered police. All those TV appearances. Your wife was murdered next to you, and you just kind of want to be in front of the camera. You want the world to see you. WBAL-TV's David Collins found it strange, too. My colleague Barry Sims covered the news conference, and when he arrived, Keith Smith, may have been starstruck, he says, Barry, we need to get a picture together. And a police officer took a picture of those two together at the press conference. And then Smith asked the police officer, one of them, can you recommend a car detailing place? Now keep in mind, his wife was killed in the car he once detailed.
It was crazy. Were you zeroing in on some of the things that were being said? Were you zeroing in on behavior? Both. The way that Keith kind of took the stage and really was pushing a particular narrative coupled with the way that Valeria would act in these interviews was unusual. At one point, Valeria gave her father some rambling advice about surviving loss by holding on to memories. And that's what's going to help you, Dad. That's what's going to get you through. Because God doesn't, even if we don't like it, he doesn't make mistakes. Everything happens for a reason. With all this in mind, detectives brought them in for another conversation.
He wasn't emotional. He was very factual. Detective Moran felt the same way about Valeria. It's like someone told her exactly what to say. Stayed on message. Correct. And that's what it felt like was a message? Absolutely. It was scripted. It was almost rehearsed. Investigators were also taking a harder look at Keith and Valeria's timeline that night.
We know when Keith leaves the American Legion. We got video surveillance from the American Legion where he was with Jackie. We know what time he made the 911 call, and we know the distance between those two locations. It should have taken about 10 minutes to drive that far. But it was about a 40-minute window. So very early on, we were trying to figure out why is there this disparity. Police wanted to know if they drove somewhere else, so they got a warrant for cell site location information for Jackie's, Keith's, and Valeria's cell phones and sent it to the FBI for analysis. They subpoenaed Google for Gmail location data and ordered in all the CCTV footage for the route Keith and Valeria said they took that night.
And they did something else. Sergeant Santos took father and daughter for a ride. He asked them to recreate the drive that ended in murder. Keith gave directions with a lot of help from Valeria, whose nickname is Shea. Sergeant Santos was struck by Keith's behavior during the drive. It was like he had better things to do.
This is the head-scratching stuff. Yeah, the information we were getting from Keith was not reliable. But at one point, Keith did something that caught detectives by surprise. It happened during a routine exchange.
He stabbed me. You know, he makes the motion as he stabbed me. I'm driving. And then when he did that, I'm shocked. Santos caught the eye of another detective sitting in the back of the car. He caught on to my look as icy as it must have been, I'm sure. And we both knew what that look meant. What that meant was that detectives were now looking at Keith in a whole new way. And if they needed any convincing, some new evidence was about to enter the picture. Now we know that they are definitively lying to us.
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Over the years, I've met people whose lives were changed forever in a single moment. In my new podcast, Before and After, I explore what happens after that decisive moment. Personal, powerful conversations with Colin Kaepernick, Jeremy Renner, Gabby Giffords, and others. Join me wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to all episodes of Before and After with Lester Holt now, wherever you get your podcasts. Five weeks after Jackie's murder, police had cleared all suspects but two, Keith and Valeria.
But after they considered his suspicious behavior during the car ride, his curious need for the cameras, and his hard-to-believe panhandler story, investigators zeroed in on Keith. Definitely Keith. Definitely Keith. In my mind, Keith was the mastermind of this, and Valeria was kind of his pawn. So we had to get to Keith. The divas were also wondering about Keith. Was all of his public grief just a big show? Michelle had already made up her mind. When she arrived to comfort Keith on that morning of the murder, she'd assume that Jackie had been alone in the car when she was attacked. But when Keith told her he'd been with Jackie, a gut feeling took hold.
And I was like, you was there. I said, you did. And he's just sitting there looking crazy. But you just accused a grieving husband of killing his wife. I did not believe the story. I did not believe it. Sarah stepped in to defend her friend. They were throwing him under the bus. And I'm like, y'all don't know him like I know him. He don't have a mean bone in his body. I never, you know, see no angry side of him. I didn't see him murdering anyone in my eyes. By now, investigators were convinced the murder could not have happened at the intersection. To prove it, Detective Beauregard canvassed some 40 cameras along the route Keith and Valeria said they'd driven.
She didn't spot the car on any of them, but most of those cameras rotated constantly, leaving open the possibility they'd simply missed him. Possible that it could happen? Possible, but highly unlikely. However, this camera right here, the Mulberry camera, is a fixed camera. If there was one camera that was going to pick him up in motion on the route that he said he took, it would be this one. That's correct. Did you see him? Never. Then, the FBI returned its analysis of Valeria's cell phone, and now they were getting somewhere. They plotted it, and we were able to put, it was actually Valeria's cell phone, in Druid Hill Park for a window of about 10 to 15 minutes.
Drew at Hill Park, busy by day but deserted at night and almost four miles from the intersection of Valley and Chase. Far from where they told you they were where this happened. It's the exact opposite. Now we know that they are definitively lying to us. It was time for an in-your-face one-on-one with Keith. The problem, Keith was moving to Florida to start a new life. Detective Moran got to him in the nick of time. He was down in southeast Baltimore, had his truck all packed, and he was literally heading out to Florida when I picked him up. So I brought him back here, and I told him I just have a few more questions for you.
At this point, does he have any reason to believe that you're suspicious of it? No, I didn't give him any reason to think that I was looking at him as a suspect or his daughter. Moran started with a bluff. He told Keith a witness had come forward. And then I told him, I said, hey, look, you know, I have a list of people that I can say didn't do it, but I can't say that you didn't do it. The gloves were off. The gloves were off. Detective Moran dropped the charade and confronted Keith with what the FBI found on Valeria's phone. Wow. Every time I came at him and accused him, that's all he could say was wow. By now, Keith seemed to realize where this interview was going. He would not break. No way.
Keith didn't fess up. Without a confession, witnesses, or direct evidence, police had to let him go. But as Keith headed to Florida, detectives were already planning their next move. Time to start tickling the wire. Valeria starts freaking out. And she says, you're leaving me here to take the fall. You're abandoning me.
Baltimore detectives did their best to lean on Keith Smith, and he wasn't budging. But this was all part of a bigger plan, to drag the truth out of him or his daughter. You wanted one of them to flip on the other? Correct. How likely is that, though? It's a father and daughter. That's a tall hill, isn't it? Yeah, the likelihood is low. Police no longer believed anything Keith and Valeria were saying to them. But what were they saying to each other on the phone? We employed a strategy called tickling the wire, which is, once we'd exhausted all the possible investigative leads, we applied for and obtained a wiretap. Tickling the wire isn't just listening in.
It's putting out information to the public or an individual that gets your suspects chatting and maybe incriminating themselves on the phone, all while police are monitoring 24-7. This is a wire room similar to the wire room that we were in when we were up on Keith and Valeria Smith's phones during the investigation. What did you expect to get? So through a wiretap, you hear incoming phone calls, SMS messages, and location data. So the same day they brought in Keith, they also made a move to rattle Valeria. It was Valeria, they thought, who would cave or make a misstep.
We made a calculated decision that of the two of them, she was going to be the weaker link, more likely to crack. For Valeria, this would be a tough day all around. It began with a raid. Police had gotten a warrant and searched her apartment. We gathered everything we could. I remember obtaining books of writings, wraps that she had made. She was not happy, especially when they brought her down to headquarters. She didn't know her father was also being questioned at the same time. We had her in a separate room with a separate group of detectives, and they grilled her.
And she told the same old story he was telling about the night Jackie was killed. To tell me the truth, you've been put in a situation that you keep riding or die, and you're about to die. They really went after her, confronted her about being in the park, confronted about the previous lies. I'm trying to remember, like, I'm trying to, I've been through a lot in my life, and when bad things happen to me, I block them out. I'm trying to forget that. The detective persisted, sometimes using Valeria's nickname, Shay, until Valeria had enough. Okay, don't cry, don't cry. No, I'm really getting upset, and I don't appreciate being called a liar, like, I'm gonna sit up here and... No, no, no, Shay, I did not, I did not call you a liar. Did I come out and call you a liar? You said that's...
She asked for a lawyer, and then we released her, knowing that the first call she was going to make once she left us headquarters was to Keith. Keith was back on the road to Florida by the time Valeria left the station. And it took a couple of days before she actually reached him on the phone. But when she did, police heard every word. Valeria starts freaking out. And she says, you're leaving me here to take the fall. You're abandoning me.
I love you! And I will never do the things you do to me! So he is trying to, like, calm her down and hush her immediately. Chayvon, you already know how much I love my daughter. You already know how much I love you. Don't call my love. I feel like I gotta f*** my life up. Everything is f***ed up to me. Everything. Everything. I ain't got my iPad, my computer. I don't have nothing. Well, that wasn't quite true. All I got is my phone. So, they let her keep her phone. Did that get Keith's attention?
So he's like, I got you, baby girl, I got you. And in that same phone call, he says, listen, I'm going to send you something, and we'll be able to talk. Just hang tight, I'm going to send you something. And we knew immediately that it was probably a cell phone. He was sending her a phone. He was going to be sending her a cell phone. It was the only way they would be able to communicate. They intercepted the package in the mail, and yep, it was a new cell phone. So they bugged that one, too. And then we put the phone back in the box and put it back in the mail, and it was delivered to her house. And we knew about when it would be delivered to her, and then we just sat and waited. And while they waited, they learned more about Jackie and Keith's supposedly...
happy marriage. We quickly learned that Keith had been unfaithful to Jackie on numerous occasions. Jackie found out, and she was tired of it. Michelle never heard anything specific, but she remembers something Jackie said to her at church a couple of months before the murder. We were sitting there talking, and she just kept saying, sis, I gotta talk to you. We gotta talk. And I'm like...
Okay. And she's like, yeah, we got to talk soon. And she went on ahead and sat up front. But you never had that talk? Never had to talk. Is it your feeling that it was about Keith, about their marriage? I believe it was. I believe something was going on and she needed someone to talk to. Keith has denied cheating on Jackie, but police wanted to know more. They brought in Keith's brother, Vic. So we bring in Vic Smith, and he mentioned that his brother knew that Jacqueline was going to divorce him. Although Vic didn't come out and say it, he kind of got the feeling that Keith could be responsible for Jacqueline's death.
Assistant State's Attorney Shandria Hanna joined the investigation early on. I believe from the beginning we treated Valeria and Keith Smith equally, but as we continued to investigate further and piece everything together, that's when we realized that Keith is really the person, the mastermind behind this. The wire kept doing its job, but police were running out of time. He started acting exactly like you would expect a suspect on homicide. Yes, I want to book a flight from MTO Orlando to Canada for tomorrow. That's one way, 48 March 1st. Yes.
Two and a half months after Jackie was killed, Detective Beauregard was in BPD's surveillance room, monitoring the wire on Keith Smith's cell phone in Florida. It was routine stuff, until she heard Smith on the phone with a travel agent. That's a one-way flight, or that's a launch flight? One way. Honestly, at that moment, we had him, right? I jump up out of my chair, and you can imagine just, like, the exhilaration that you feel. And I slam my hand down on the table, and I'm like, we got you. You're asking for a one-way ticket to Cuba. But once Smith realized he needed a passport to go to Cuba, he pivoted and chose a different location. Yes, I want to book a flight from MTO Orlando to Canada for tomorrow. Just one way, for the March 1st. Yes. May I have the name of the passenger as for your passport? Keith Smith.
Did I need a passport to get into Canada? He started acting exactly like he would expect a suspect in a homicide. He was asking for what it would take to go to Canada, to Mexico, to the Virgin Islands. I'm thinking that must almost be laughable to experienced prosecutors. It was comical in the moment because I'll give you an example. When he says, I want to go to Canada, it's a country, right? He's not specifically identifying a particular city. From a prosecutor standpoint, that's all consciousness of guilt. It's evidence of his intent to flee.
They were certain their man was about to skip town and scoot across a border. So he makes those phone calls from Winter Haven, Florida. He is now like in full panic mode. The next day, he rented a car and headed north. At first, we weren't sure where he was going, but then we quickly realized that he's actually coming back to Baltimore. And at that point, we realized he's coming back to pick up his daughter, Valeria. Were they in contact? They were in contact. And was there...
or their bid for escape becoming clear at this point? We were not sure what they were going to do. We certainly were thinking that they were probably trying to come up with some sort of game plan, but we were not sure at this point. Keith Smith stayed in Baltimore for a day and a half. Then father and daughter were on the move. The detectives got more tickles on that wire and some tells. Valeria texting her boyfriend, telling him they were leaving Maryland. And then...
And then everything goes dead. Which way is it going? We don't know. And when you think everything goes dead, you lost all your tracking information? Yes, essentially it went what we call dark. I can tell you it's a terrible feeling and like panic sets in because we could tell he is potentially leaving Maryland. It certainly does look like that, but we have no idea where he's going and we don't know when we're going to get it back. They paced, stared at a blank screen and listened to the void. You thought you lost him? Absolutely. And, you know, at one point I thought for sure wherever he was going, right, whatever border he was going to cross, we were going to lose him.
They alerted Homeland Security and kept staring at the screen. Eight hours later, a signal. And we see that he is 20 minutes, 20 minutes from the Mexican border in Texas. The race was on. Oh, it was a race against time. Because so much has to happen in that small amount of time. Unbeknownst to Detective Beauregard, Texas troopers were already on the case. Keith Smith's rental, a white sedan with Florida plates, had been picked up by a license plate reader near Corpus Christi, Texas. Trooper Juan Ciceta was assigned to track it down.
So we received a bolo from our West Coast dispatch communications and advised that the vehicle was last seen north of here, about two and a half hours. The trooper had a dilemma. Which of the two main routes to Mexico should he stake out? He gambled, chose U.S. 77, parked on the side of the road, and concentrated on the cars roaring by.
So as I'm looking in the mirror, I'm just focusing on the white cars that are passing. Once that white car passes, I then turn and look at the license plate, and if I see anything other than Florida, I'm looking back in the mirror for the next white car. The trooper got lucky. And lo and behold, they come out of my rearview mirror, I face forward, and there it is, Florida license plate. Adrenaline pumping, he took off in pursuit. They know I'm behind them, I know I'm behind them, and it's just a matter of...
What's next? What's next? The white rental exited the highway, turned into a gas station, and pulled up to a pump. The trooper followed them. So then I noticed that they're leaving without getting off the vehicle. So it's telling me they know that something is about to occur. I come around, get behind them, turn on the lights, hit the sirens to get their attention. He comes to a stop. At that moment, it gets even more intense, a little scary. Hands out the window! Hands out the window!
Open the car door. Keith Smith's frantic bid for freedom, a desperate 1,800-mile drive across the country, ended at a gas station in a place called Harlingen, Texas. Turn around, turn around, turn around. Just 20 miles from the Mexican border. Walk back, walk back, stop, go to your right. Texas trooper Juan Ciceta had pursued Keith's white sedan into the station, but he had no idea how the arrest would go down, no idea if Keith was armed. In the end, it was a felony arrest for the textbooks. Come back, on your knees, lay flat on your stomach, hands out. First Keith, then Valeria.
A stunning twist in the Good Samaritan murder that made headlines. It was huge news when the Smiths were extradited back to Maryland to face first-degree murder charges for Jacqueline's death. Until then, as far as the public knew, the Smiths had been the innocent victims of a violent crime. It was an absolutely stunning turn in the case. WBAL-TV reporter David Collins. The news that they were fugitives, that they were prime suspects in the murder, in which they claim a pain-handling couple did, was a big shock. I was like, if you're innocent, why are you running? So that made me change my mind about what happened. It was hard to deny the evidence that was mounting. Yes. This must have been very painful for you in the fact that you were instrumental in bringing them together. Yes. Did that cross your mind at all? I had a lot of regret about it. Yeah, it's okay.
I felt my fault. She would have never met him. Had a lot of guilt. It took three years for the trial to begin. Finally, December 1st, 2021, the third anniversary of Jackie's death, proceedings began here in Baltimore's Mitchell Courthouse. There were no cameras in the courtroom. Michelle didn't miss a day. I knew if it was me, Jackie would have been there for me. It's not a big courtroom. Did you ever come eye to eye with Keith? I did. I wanted him to know that I saw him. Prosecutor Shandri Ahana's case was heavy on circumstantial evidence. Those wiretaps, that location data from the park, Keith's absence from the cameras on the route he said he drove.
and the flight to Texas. We do have holes, but all of the evidence and extent of the investigation, I felt pretty confident going into trial. The prosecutor told jurors Keith Smith had lied to the police about almost everything. I did play each of his statements for the jury as well as the judge to see how his story changed, how the facts changed, how the details changed. Family members, spectators, even some of the jury members, they were on the edge of their seats listening to this police interrogation. And the motive? Money, Hannah said. Jackie wanted to divorce Keith, the prosecutor told the jury.
And that would likely cramp Keith's lifestyle. But not if he could lay his hands on Jackie's $800,000 life insurance policy, of which he was the sole beneficiary. Was this his last-ditch effort to secure his financial freedom by getting the life insurance policy based off her death? He, by himself, didn't make as much as Jacqueline, and she provided the lifestyle that he's now accustomed to. So without Jacqueline, who was Keith Smith? He's a cold-blooded killer. That's who he is, the prosecutor said. And she had receipts.
Video of the American Legion party that she argued revealed the truth of the night Jackie was killed. They play slow music, so me and my wife, because we like to slow dance, and it was just a beautiful night, man. The prosecutor played the video of the party for the jury, only she sped it up. So as you speed through the cameras, she's sitting there. You don't see that one time that she gets up for the entirety of the video. She actually looks very unhappy, and you can see that she is not drinking. She's barely even eating. We danced the night away, as well as additional evidence from the route of travel. It seems very planned and deliberate. He left the club. He went directly to the park, right? The prosecutor told jurors that Keith Smith had planned the whole thing. Jackie's death was premeditated murder, and she had more show and tell.
Remember how upset Keith sounded on the 911 call? In court, the prosecutors synced that call with footage of Keith Smith arriving at the hospital with a wounded Jackie. The 911 call by itself, it seems pretty helpful for Keith Smith in that he's crying, he's distraught. But when you sync that with the hospital footage to see exactly what he's doing at the time, he's allegedly distraught. He's actually opening the car doors, reaching for something in the car. We don't know what he's actually reaching for, but it's not that sense of urgency to assist his wife, as you would expect. I think a lot of people have looked at that video and said, well, I would be grabbing my wife and running in, or I'd be screaming for a nurse to come with a gurney. Yes, exactly. None of that occurs. None of that. The prosecutor wasn't done. She had a star witness waiting in the wings, a daughter who traded her old story for a new one. Which one would the jury believe? I just did not want my father to leave me high and dry, and for me to take the fall for this crime.
Early on, there was a conspicuous hole in the prosecution's case against Keith Smith. Valeria Smith was not a part of the narrative. Yet of all the pieces that needed to fit together, the young woman who'd been in the car when Jackie was stabbed, who supported her father's account, who went on the run with him, that Valeria Smith was now a weapon for the prosecution? Yes, she was. Valeria Smith had turned on her father, and she would testify against him at trial.
That's Valeria speaking of what's called a proffer session, where she was expected to tell police and prosecutors the truth in return for a reduced charge. One lie, and the deal was off the table. So again, Valeria told them about Jackie's murder. But this time, Keith was the killer.
He tells her, you have to tell the story or we're both going to jail. So they're rehearsing the story even as Jacqueline is dying. Yes, terribly so. And you believed her? We were skeptical. She'd lied to us multiple times. And so one of the things that we did with her is we tried to identify information that we knew that we knew she didn't know. A good example of it is the pocketbook that was recovered by the teenagers. That had not been revealed publicly. She talked about how she had put it on a bus bench. She had sat, waited, saw a group of teenagers pick it up and leave with it.
That was the type of information that you can't just make that up. Brandon Mead was Valeria's attorney for the proffer sessions. As he saw it, Keith had an ulterior motive when he asked his daughter for help after the murder, like his request that she dispose of the wallet. I looked at it as him setting her up, him having a plausible deniability to say, well, she's the one who ditched the wallet. So it wasn't me. Obviously, it was her. Once she realized how she was being manipulated, she recognized that he needed to be punished. He needed to take accountability. Prosecutors said there were other reasons to believe Valeria, like the white pants she wore on that night. How much blood was found on her? None. Nothing? Nothing. You can zoom into every picture of her white pants, no blood.
What convinced them in the end was a diary Valeria kept during her three days on the run. One of the entries from March 1st, Valeria writes, today has to be the craziest day of my life. I'm officially on the run. You flip to the next page, there's an entry from March 2nd of 2019 where Valeria writes, I've never been to prison. I never want to go there, especially under someone else's actions. Did that appear to you to be like a confession on Valeria's part? Not necessarily a confession, but knowledge of what happened and transpired that night. In fact, Valeria told them she never wanted to flee.
prosecutors had heard enough. They went with the daughter's story. At the end of the day, we believe that Keith Smith is truly the mastermind and the murderer in this case. We need Valeria to get us to that conviction for first degree murder. They offered Valeria a lesser charge, accessory to murder after the fact. In return, that testimony against her father. To hear her say that Keith planned it all, it just floored me.
I was like, wow, you really have to be, I don't even know what the word is, deceitful and all that to plan what he did. I think most of us would agree that it would be tough to testify against someone you love. Especially the way that particular courtroom is set up. The witness stand and the defense table are almost on top of each other. And so she had to look at him right in the face that she's doing it.
The defense attorney attacked Valeria's credibility, calling out those lies about the murder, describing the diary entries as self-serving, and arguing Valeria was a willing partner in that run for the border. The public defender told the jury that Valeria had plenty of opportunity to tell police what happened, and she chose not to until she learned what her fate could have been, and that's when she copped the plea. Prosecutors countered using Keith's own words. We have Valeria on the stand telling her story, and we have Keith from his own admission saying that she would tell the truth. A week after the trial started, jurors had the case, and Shandria Hanna had the butterflies. You believe you've done the best job that you can do with the facts and the evidence that you had at the time, but at the same time, you never know. The jury deliberated for a day and a half, then returned with a verdict.
Keith Smith, guilty of first-degree murder. We fought for justice on behalf of Jacqueline Smith, and we achieved it. I was glad that he would not be able to hurt anybody else. What I question all the time and what I say when I think of her is that you stared in the eyes of this man that you loved as he killed you. Keith was sentenced to life plus three years. In fact, it would be a return to prison. Keith did time before he ever met Jackie, seven years for bank robbery. He declined to be interviewed but told us in a statement, this ordeal has destroyed my life, adding, I loved her with all my heart and soul, and my biggest mistake was running when I was accused of her murder. For her part, Valeria served less than three years in prison.
Jackie's murder still haunts the city of Baltimore and all those affected by it. What Keith did in this case, blaming a vulnerable population, you know, panhandlers, homeless, people who are less fortunate than us, it's, in my mind, just so disgusting. And it had long-lasting damage on the city. Almost a decade later, a homicide raid in Baltimore has plunged. Not soon enough for Jacqueline Smith. We dismiss her.
I often wonder what we'd be doing today, you know, how many trips to Jamaica Shida went on and all the gatherings that we would have had. I just want people to just know she was an angel on earth and I got to see the best of her. And I know she's an angel looking down on us. That's all for this edition of Dateline. And don't forget to check out our Talking Dateline podcast, which will go behind the scenes of tonight's episode. Available Wednesday in the Dateline feed, wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8 Central. I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night. Friday night on an all-new Dateline. I'm sorry, the way you had to die. Someone she knew, a darkness she never saw. He was obsessed with her. Whoever did this knew what they were doing. This one was going to rock the community. An all-new Dateline, Friday night at 9, 8 Central, only on NBC.