True Crime Vault: Deadly Vows

Murder in the Heartland explores real crimes across small town America,

towns that might look a lot like your own. Every week uncover shocking stories of murder and betrayal, from a suspicious hunting accident, to a college student who disappears after her shift at the local bar. Here from investigators, witnesses, and family members

as they share the chilling details behind each case. If you're interested in true crime with a small town twist, you might love this podcast. Listen to Murder in the Heartland, wherever you get your podcasts. This is the 2020 True Crime Vault.

A wife goes missing. Is her stalker responsible 2020 starts right now? You look into that bright open face of hers,

“and you think, how could she be hiding so many secrets?”

There was a lot of pictures all over Rockford, of a Katrina Smith that was missing. Seconds count minutes count, and so we were doing everything we possibly could to try to find her. Maybe Katrina's hiding, maybe she doesn't want to be found.

It's been horrible. She said it'd be that way, her. And that's what makes me hate her, man. You can't even believe that you're going to a park or a wooded area to search for your sister's body potentially.

And it's like, we want it to find her, but you don't want to find her either. Katrina Smith had reported that someone was stalking her. There was a teenager who had some sort of a unhealthy infatuation with her.

Katrina's boss comes into the detective bureau and says something bizarre happened in this parking lot. Bizarre barely covers it.

“Some guy throwing flyers out of the car,”

containing some really outrageous accusations against Katrina. Where does that piece of the puzzle fit in? We knocked on every door. We went through almost every backyard. Looking for evidence.

And so what did you discover? Looks like some of my sprinkling breadcrumbs like a trail. Why are you throwing them in these odd places where they can likely be found? Is somebody playing a game of cat and mouse?

Is Katrina herself leaving clues? Nobody knows. But everybody's terrified. It's another wise ordinary Friday in October of 2012. A missing person call comes in.

Here's communications, can I help you? Yes.

“My wife is house sitting for somebody who's at town.”

We haven't been in a restaurant. Haven't been able to reach your wife? Right. What's your wife's name? Katrina.

How unusual is it to get this kind of call? It's common to have missing person cases come in. I guess the reason I'm concerned is for her work called me and said that she didn't show up. So not really something she would do.

Even though missing person cases are common, the families involved are pretty traumatized. I would imagine.

The families are always very traumatized

when a family member loved when it goes missing. My phone rang and it was Todd. He said, "Hey, have you talked to Katrina?" He said, "No, why?" And he said, "Well, she didn't show up for work today."

And immediately, my stomach sank because that's not my sister. My daughter Miranda called me and said, "Cut Katrina's missing." I was asterical. I thought, "Oh, my God, what do you mean she's missing?" Katrina was my second child.

First daughter. She was just a happy girl. She really was. You know, Katrina was eight years older than me. You know, I always wanted to just grow up and be like her. Katrina liked to take care of people.

She just always went out of her way to put other people first.

I know Katrina now looks Smith from Achesi Park High School. She was a student of mine her senior year in the year 2000. We did the yearbook together. She was my senior editor. Katrina, I thought, was really smart.

She was very well driven. She was very mature for her age. Katrina has vanished from the very play.

It's a town that's part of the larger community of Rockford, Illinois. Rockford is located about a hundred miles from Chicago about 20 miles south of the Wisconsin border. It's a big small town. Definitely more of a blue-collar community, a lot of manufacturing,

a lot of people working hard to just make a better life for themselves. Right away, you notice that manufacturing history when you come to this town. You can see so many industrial plants as you stroll along the river downtown.

“To locals, that's what Rockford is known for.”

But to outsiders, this place is usually known for something else.

When a lot of people first hear about Rockford Illinois,

they think of the Rockford Peaches. It's the first a women's baseball league. Of course, a league of their own was based on our own Rockford Peaches. Are you crying? No, there's no crying. There's no crying in baseball. Even though Tom Hanks and the rest of the cast didn't film a league of their own in Rockford,

the field where the Peaches actually played is being restored as part of a tourism push. For Rockford's future. But outside that ballpark, other parts of the area have more immediate problems. It's a very high crime area. For cities that have less than 200,000 people,

the city of Rockford always ranks in the top three for most violent cities in the entire country.

So with that in mind, what questions come to mind when you're meet a guy who's reporting his wife missing?

“The response is, why is his person missing and why are you calling the police?”

You obviously think something really bad is happening. Let's have somebody start looking into this and start contacting family members and friends. As detectives begin their investigation into this missing person's case, they wonder, well, what could have been happening in Katrina's life? That would cause her to simply disappear.

So the first person they wish to speak with is the man who filed that missing person's report, her husband, Todd Smith. One night, nine years earlier, Todd Smith was working as a DJ and he met Katrina, who had been out having fun with some of her friends. They hit it off immediately. He just fit in with our family pretty quickly.

I thought he was a great guy. He was the cool dude that I enjoyed hanging out with. Todd was quite a bit older than Katrina, 15 years and had three daughters from a previous marriage, but it didn't seem to matter. Jim and the girls moved in and that was it. She had built in family. When I met Katrina, I immediately liked her. She played with me. She remembered details

about things that I liked. She was really fun. She was an extremely good step mom to Todd's daughters. The girls really adored Katrina.

“She brought a lot of light into our family and I think that he liked having a whole family unit”

versus a being a single dad. She, you know, was a second mom to them and would go to their soccer games or cheerleading events and I know she loves the girls very much. They got engaged and then married. Their wedding video is full of warm moments. I love you. You are my best friend. Today I give myself to you and manage.

I obviously remember like the wedding and how excited she was on her wedding day. I know she was crazy about them, you know. So now you make history bright.

There was never doubt that Katrina was happily married to Todd and they were always doing

stuff together, working together every day at home, you know, running a family business. I don't think Katrina ever really told me why she stopped working with Todd and went and got a job. She worked at Cameron Industries in Belvedere and she was in the human resources department there. She was on good employee, never missed work. But for some reason, right about the time that she disappeared, Katrina was actually looking

She said I'm coming over Wednesday night to talk to you about something and then Wednesday never came.

What did she want to talk about? Turns out, others in the family were getting hints to that something was up. I do remember around that time Katrina had told me like, hey can you watch the dog for us? Like we really need this vacation right now. Like we really need to get away. I feel like Katrina was trying to tell me something. I got a boy smell. She was crying and she said, you know, hey, I'm all right, but it's needed talk.

And now Katrina is missing, vanished into thin air. Soon, secrets are about to be revealed and the family is going to learn. There was plenty.

They didn't know about her.

Freaking out, driving home fast. I was sobbing like the whole way home just instantly panicking

“that something's wrong, especially after something turns up. And so what did you discover?”

She's missing. We don't know what happened here. Smith has been missing since Monday night when she told her husband she was going to run errands. It was truly like a nightmare because every day you're waking up and realizing like this is actually happened. I still kind of felt like maybe she was at a friend's house or just had a stressful day and just needed some time to herself.

Maybe Katrina's hiding. Maybe she doesn't want to be found.

We didn't know what the situation truly was or want to be a county sheriff's department was investigating a missing person's case. And there wasn't a lot of information.

“Police are not revealing all they know, but they are finding clues,”

including one huge discovery, just hours after Todd's missing person's call, Katrina's abandoned car. So, Ronald Bispel, where Katrina's car was found. And the car is literally on the embankment here. The road really cuts down at a heart angle and the vehicle was pulled off the side of the road and it looked out a place. We had the car towed down to our police department

so that the crime scene could go through the car with a fine tooth comb, get any and all evidence that we can't hide this car. And so, what did you find inside the car? Later, once we got into the vehicle and we were able to look new, we found this letter

“was in the car and it was being a love letter from Todd to Katrina.”

That note reads in part to the love of my life. I love you and cherish you, Katrina. Love Todd. And it suggests that the last thing that's in here is a message of love and devotion from her husband. That's right. When we found Katrina's car on the side of the road, it really changed our mindset

and that now we're genuinely concerned about her welfare and where she at she alive, she dead, she injured, she'd been held captive. We don't know, but now things have gone up a little bit. Todd Smith told me he had no marital issues with his wife Katrina. They had a normal relationship as a husband and wife that they had their normal amount of arguments, but nothing big.

In fact, detectives say that Todd told them that the night before Katrina disappeared, the couple was actually discussing adopting children. So with this, Todd is certainly making it seem this marriage was as good as it gets. As the police analyze the car for clues, while also looking for other possible leads about Katrina, her family and the community, spring into action.

I went everywhere, passing out Katrina's missing photos, putting them up in gas stations and stores and factories and laundromats and telephone poles and you name it and I put it up there. All the publicity leads to total strangers helping the family to search. We'll be at every day from tomorrow until night and we're going to continue to do that

It's a large part and it goes back pretty far so they wanted to look for any kind of evidence.

Judy Lassala and Bikki Lerke were like a lot of people in rockford. They didn't want to just sit idly by. This is the way you went, right? Yep, we have a search up the hill. Yeah, there. We cover all the fields back there. There was a lot of pictures all over rockford of a Katrina's Smith. That was missing.

“My heart was just broke for her. You know, how could she just show up missing like this?”

And nobody knows where she's at. I don't know why. I just felt like I needed to help find her.

You can't give up hope. We just gotta keep thinking that we're going to find her.

I think a lot of people could relate to Katrina because she's the young woman who could be anyone's wife or sister, mother, friend and you know, everyone wanted to come out and do what they could to try to find her. They were there to try to find Katrina. It wasn't like they were paid to go up there or, you know, they were forced. They all came there on their own. We wanted to solve the mystery. Yeah. The family of missing 30-year-old Katrina Smith

not giving up in the search to find her.

“You can't even believe that you're going to a park or a wooded area to like search for”

your sister's body potentially. And it's like we wanted to find her so that we could find her and bring her home but you don't want to find her either. And yet at the same time, everyone's hearts went out to Todd. He became the face of the tragedy and the search. When I saw Todd, you know, we embraced each other and we cried and it was hard, you know, because

his wife was missing. Todd was my family so I was hurt for him. So Todd reported his wife missing. He seems heartbroken. If you look at him, you're like,

"Oh, this poor guy." And horrible. So I was the first reporter to interview Todd.

And I really felt like this was a big step for him that he was going to take a second to do something that was really hard for him to try to find his missing wife. I just wanted to come home. I'm seeing him crying and I felt really bad for him that he was going through this horrible thing and that something had happened to his wife and just my heart was like breaking for him.

The community started rallying around him. It gave a lot of pressure on us as the sheriff's department to find her and get the answers. With a case where somebody may be either being held captive, is maybe gravely injured and left laying somewhere. Seconds count, minutes count and so we were doing everything we possibly could to try to find her. But as that investigation continues, the police, as well as everyone out searching for Katrina,

are about to be stunned by what is uncovered. The phone was essentially dropped into the bush right here. Flues turned this case from a missing person to something more sinister. This is pretty dense woods. You found a person. We find her purse in the woods making things look really bad. [Music]

On November 1, 2012, a candlelight vigil is held for Katrina at Scoonmaker Park 10 days after she went missing. Todd and other family members plead on local news for the safe return of Katrina.

“When I think everybody's been on your efforts becoming else tonight. Todd, on the news,”

he was begging people to help find her. He was really hurting, you know, and really concerned about where Katrina was. When we were going on the searches, he originally didn't want to go on TV. He was worried people would judge him for wanting attention. Somebody convinced him that it might help. I was feeling a lot of compassion for this man who really was missing his wife. His whole world

provided with names of possible suspects. Early in the investigation, the detectives learned that

“Katrina had filed a police report about a disturbing incident in her neighborhood. Katrina Smith had”

reported that someone was stalking her. We thought, "Here we go. This is probably the guy that has her, you know, wherever she's at." He was somebody from her church group that had been looking to her bedroom window. He was a teenager who had lived in Katrina's neighborhood who had some sort of unhealthy evacuation with her. She was worried about this evacuation. This young man was attending college at a university near Winnipego County at the time of her

disappearance. That person is my number one suspect. Katrina's alleged stalker had left town

for college. As detectives try to track him down, they intensify their search for Katrina in the area where they found her car abandoned. There's no reason for a car to be here. There's no reason. And it just looked very out of place. When the searches were underway, you create search teams to go into these woods? It's correct, yeah. We had searched every square inch for a very long distance. We also had the help of the community that showed up

and helped in these very large-scale searches. So they were expanding this search. It's gone from

“this park to a 20 mile radius around it. And that search pays off with a key discovery.”

This is pretty dense woods. You found the person here. We find her purse in the woods

in the brush. It's making things look really bad at this point. Also found near the car, some paper towels. Someone had thrown out. We found some towels that had what looked like blood on them. The towels looked as though they were used to clean something. We were able to determine that the car had actually been wiped down clean on the inside. And we found DNA Katrina's DNA on the paper towels. But was any DNA found inside the car? There was some DNA found inside the car.

The things that we were finding, clearly led us to believe that something bad had happened. The mystery of Katrina's disappearance deepens when another vital clue has found her cell phone. So this is where you found the cell phone. The phone was essentially dropped into the bush right here. It was down at the bottom of this thing. We don't know how these pieces got there. They were being found and collected as evidence. Like bread crumbs along a route.

There's like some sprinkling bread crumbs like a trail. Once you look at where everything was found, you can see where it looked like one person or two persons had everything in their hands. You're throwing it there as they were walking along. We're as detectives trying to figure this out. Bloody towels looked like somebody cleaned something up. You've got a cell phone that was

“discarded over here. Why are you throwing them in these odd places where they can likely be found?”

Anytime we have a case that we feel may be involved with somebody that has been kidnapped, being held for ransom homicide, the whole department in general, goes 110% towards that until we find this person. Remember, police have a suspect that teenager who Katrina suspected of stalking her, detectives are able to track him down at a university in Illinois and immediately drive there to

speak with him. I personally interviewed that person and he did confirm the things that were he was being accused of in the past with Katrina Smith. We were able to verify his location during the time of Katrina Smith disappearing. He was at school at that time. We confirmed the log-in information of when he was at the school and that completely eliminated him from being a suspect in this investigation. We were confident after follow-up that this

individual was excluded from having anything to do with the Dr. Katrina Smith. He was nowhere near town clear-all-by. We were able to dismiss him as being involved in this in any way, shape, or form. With the Illinois College student in the clear, the detectives are stomped, until they're able to examine the contents of Katrina's cell phone. Katrina's cell phone reveals a treasure trove of text messages between her and a male co-worker.

Cameron Industries. We start looking at his background and lo and behold, he's got issues in his

“past that raise a lot of red flags with us as detectives. There's no question that we have our guy.”

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and Chime card provided by Chime's bank partners qualifying direct deposits required terms and limits apply. Go to chime.com/disclosures for details. When detectives examine Katrina's cell phone, they make a startling discovery. They find texts between Katrina and a man who worked in her office. Turns out Katrina was having

“a secret affair with a co-worker. During the background investigation of Katrina Smith,”

we interviewed a lot of people including co-workers. One of these first persons that showed up at

her up condo the day that she was reported missing was a person by name a guy Gabriel. Guy Gabriel was a co-worker that worked with her at Cameron Industries. She worked in HR, and he was a supervisor and another department so they've met and began a relationship. When we learned that Katrina Smith was having an affair with a co-worker, it opened up like Pandora's box. It was a moment that we all looked

ourselves like are you kidding me? She's having an affair with a guy. It was kind of a bombshell moment. There was a number of texts from him where he was like, "Just tell Todd, you want to divorce." Just tell him. Katrina's secret affair was hidden from almost everybody. On the outside, it appeared Katrina and Todd had a loving, happy marriage. Katrina loved Todd and they had its solid marriage. They had a great relationship. Katrina was happy. I mean, she was a happy

us, I've ever seen. Campy or with him, then she's ever been with anybody. And when detectives dig deeper, they find out Guy Gabriel had a serious brush with the law in the past. He was living in a temporary residence on a campground, which they also considered suspicious. Detectives discovered that in 1989 Gabriel was charged with a felony, aggravated battery during a bar fight. Gabriel pleaded not guilty and was eventually acquitted of that charge.

We started focusing on Guy at this moment because he's got an arrest in the past. Mr. Gabriel knew exactly where she was on the night that Katrina went missing. Guy Gabriel became a suspect because he had a relationship with Katrina. Detectives also learned about a bizarre incident involving Katrina and Guy Gabriel. It took place exactly two weeks before she disappeared.

Some of Katrina's co-workers are sitting outside when they see an unknown car driving deliberately through the office parking lot. A day that everybody was hanging outside the door here as they come outside get air of this black Volkswagen comes pulling into the lot quickly. The person driving the car is rolls his handful of flyers out the sun roof of the car and then speeds off. So what a bizarre incident. It was a complete bizarre. The person driving the car was masked

and loved driving the car with no plates on it. It was just a black car. Some of these flyers actually drop at the feet of the co-workers who naturally picked them up to

There was the name Guy and right in the middle was a profanity.

“Some rather vulgar comments let's say. Those flyers detail the affair between Katrina and”

Guy Gabriel with Katrina's name deliberately misspelled. Somebody is out there to cause problems at her job. Whoever it was wanted, everybody at her work to know that she was having an affair or having a relationship with Guy Gabriel. On top of that disturbing incident Katrina also had the feeling that someone was using

her cell phone to track her movements so she went to her cell phone dealer for help. Katrina had gone to the store with concerns that she was being followed. The contract she thought someone was trackered so she brought the cell phone to the store. She requested time off to go over to US cellular to see whether or not her phone had been compromised.

The cell phone rep said Katrina seemed fine the first couple of times she visited the store,

but on that last visit something was clearly wrong. That bay was different. When she came in she was worried. She was afraid. She like her whole demeanor was not what it had been before. She was way more fidgety. She was moving her phone a lot. She's between her hands messing with her fingers. Katrina was scared.

“I believe she feared for her life at that point. Katrina texted her stepfather about how to”

get a void card and be able to obtain a gun. Katrina wanted to get a gun for protection.

With his previous arrest for battery and Katrina's fear that someone was tracking her movements,

police believe it's more and more likely that Guy Gabriel may have had something to do with her disappearance. You got a female that is missing. You got somebody who is dating her and then we find this information about the prior arrest. There's no question that we have our guy. We grabbed Guy Gabriel brought him into the police department. We felt we had it. We thought we were going to find Katrina. We thought we were going to

get information of where Katrina was. But when Gabriel sits down to talk to police, he has an astonishing story to tell. One that will take the investigation into a shocking new direction. We come to find out that Katrina was leaving Todd. That she was leaving this marriage and that she was done. It was the day that she went missing. Investigators say there are a lot of reasons for them to suspect Guy Gabriel might have

had something to do with Katrina's disappearance. The two were having an affair. Plus, Detective say they had some questions about Guy. And without knowing anything about Guy Gabriel, we thought we had a Guy. We interviewed him. We asked for a timeline of everything where he has been from the time that Katrina went missing up to now. So now he's a potential suspect, but he's cooperating with you.

He was completely cooperative with us. He told us everything we wanted to know. He let us in his house. He let us search everything. He provided an alibi as to where he was and actually was confirmed. He was not there. He was not

“anywhere close to Katrina. So you have to dismiss him as a suspect because he has an ironclad”

alibi. We were able to easily disclude him from being involved in her disappearance. But talking with Guy Gabriel is invaluable to investigators anyway. He drops a bombshell bit of information according to detectives. He claims Katrina told him her marriage to Todd was ending. She was about to leave him and had already moved out of the house. He even tells detectives that he saved the text message as she said him about all of this. So these are texts that Katrina sent to Guy.

Guy shares them with you. The text reads, "I already told him before. I wanted a divorce." Appointment with the attorney next Monday. Numerous times, I've said I've nothing to give. This is painting a very different picture than what you would have imagined.

her marriage with Todd and that she's revealing her true feelings to this person.

I had heard about Guy Gabriel was someone that Katrina was confiding in that she worked with. During the initial investigation and talking with Todd about his marriage with his now missing wife, he tells us that everything's fine. He says she's simply house sitting for a friend. That's it. The fact that you caught him in a lie, what did that tell you? We have to start wondering why is Todd not being straight with us.

“Remember that card from Todd that was in Katrina's car when it was found on the side of the road?”

Well now detectives say they have to look at it in a whole new light. Instead of a simple

love letter, Katrina had really seen it as a threat. He says, "I am scared to death that you're going to start talking to someone who will take advantage of the situation and that feelings will develop to confuse the situation more." When Guy Gabriel told us what Katrina told him, it opened up the book of, "Okay, Guy is being honest with us and we have to maybe shift back towards somebody else being involved in this."

And some fascinating detective work leads them here to what used to be a used card dealership.

Now investigators are still trying to figure out who threw out those flyers about Katrina's

affair. This surveillance camera showed a black VW with no license plates. Does that mean it

“came from a card dealership? That's why cops scour every car lot in town to find just one”

man's here so they come for a chat with the owner. And he goes, "Yeah, I don't know, Todd Smith. He was in here not too long ago looking for a car. He was perked a weight what? He goes, I think it was at Volkswagen out there, that black Volkswagen." We were able to verify on the same day October 9th of 2012, Todd Smith actually test drove a black Volkswagen facade with the sunroof and he goes, "Anybody that test drives a car,

we make a photocopy of the driver's license." And there's a stack. There's a lot of them. I'm just that going through it and I get to the bottom. There's a photocopy of Todd Smith who would take an car for a test drive. We were not able to see and verify that that was Todd other than it fits the description of him. He had a dark hooded sweatshirt. He was covered. It appeared then he might have been wearing a wig. When questioned by a detective, Todd denied

throwing those flyers. And of course even if police suspected he was behind the incident, that would only make him a jealous husband. It's not proof he had anything to do with Katrina's

“disappearance. And the fact is even some of Katrina's family and closest friends didn't know she”

wanted to end the marriage. Finding out that she had moved out, I didn't know that she had moved out. She was kind of keeping it close to her heart and not letting everybody know that there was a problem. But that's not all they didn't know. Katrina's family thought Todd was running a prosperous business. Turns out maybe not. Todd had some financial issues. Todd was telling people that he had all of this money and that he was so successful. But in truth, Katrina was the

bread winner. Todd was being investigated by the FBI. He's involved in a wire fraud case that the federal government is investigating. Investigators now have plenty of reasons to look more closely at Todd. And they say the more they dig, the more they find out he is not what he appears to be at all. It was just a non-stop barrage of information that were uncovering. We found some pretty disturbing things that made us question that the type of person Todd was. It's hard to wrap my head around

the fact that this nice quiet seemed to be happy. Guy could be such a monster.

recognizable detail? Probably within 20 yards. I knew that it was a body and there's no need to go any closer.

You could see the clogging in the torso. It can't have been easy to see Katrina's body. It's really sad. The news you absolutely don't want to hear. Todd has been looked at as a suspect.

“No one really knew who this man was. A failing marriage wasn't the only secret Todd Smith was hiding.”

Todd Smith wasn't even Todd Smith. Every time we had a new lead, it opened up kind of a Pandora's box. The home exploded and burned. Any put his hands on my chin and my back and my head. I know he was gonna break my neck.

Here's a really crazy twist in this case.

John, got to get in here. Come in here right now. Guy would've gone to my grave with the secret. Thirty-year-old Katrina Smith had been reported missing by her husband Todd on the evening of October 23rd. Desperate for answers and help, the emotionally distraught father of three took to the local airwaves in Rockford, Illinois. It's been horrible.

I felt like when I was interviewing Todd that he was putting on a show more than he was answering questions to find his wife. It didn't see a single tear. They said they'd be back later.

“That's what that's me here to be. Katrina was Todd's second wife, 15 years younger.”

She had embraced the role of stepmother to his three daughters and the blended family were living a seemingly picture-perfect life. We didn't know what the situation truly was. Our Winneville County Sheriff's Department was investigating a missing person's case and there wasn't a lot of information at the start of that. Friends and family are worried. They organized searches in this desperate attempt to find her.

We'll be here every day from tomorrow until night and when I continue to do that until she's found. The groups that are all searching, they're finding little things. The police are all searching, we're finding little piece of evidence. Katrina's abandoned car was discovered the very night she was reported missing. In the days that followed, a trail of evidence, like red crumbs, surpass, cell phone, bloody paper towels, but for nearly three long weeks,

“no Katrina Smith. The discovery of a secret lover from Katrina's work,”

Guy Gabriel, has given investigators pause, but police learned Gabriel has an airtight alibi, and he's cleared. But then a discovery that changes everything. In November 9th, we got a phone call. There was an off-duty fireman fishing on the rock river in Byron, Illinois. It's a good 20 miles south of where Katrina's vehicle was found. So, this feeds into the Mississippi where her case is. Ryan Bruce is out fishing on Halloween.

When his boat runs up on a log, it's pitch blackout, and while he's working to free himself, he notices something odd stuck on the upstream side. Being so dark, I couldn't see what it was, so I got a flashlight out. I shine my light on it, which only illuminated a small, maybe four or six inch circle. It's a brief encounter, and even though he can't make out what that object was, his gut tells him something isn't right. The next time I was able to go out on the water,

I came out as daytime middle of the day, and I was going fishing again, but I knew I had to stop

and check that first, just to either confirm or see that it was trash.

And you remembered exactly where it was. Yes, you go. How close were you when you started to see recognizable detail? Probably within 20 yards. What registered with you?

closer. I called the sheriff's department and waited for them to come there.

“It would have literally been right here. Right over the side of the boat. Yeah.”

It's just awful to think about it. I was the detector bureau. My boss came out and said, they found a body. Go down there, see if it's her. The medical examiner was able to compare the dental records, and it was able to verify and confirm that it was Katrina Smith. My first reaction was just utter sorrow. You can't believe it, but there was also this tiny bit of relief that it was over that we found her because a lot of

people never find their loved ones. There was some sense of relief in a way that they found her

but obviously it's the news you absolutely don't want to hear, and it was just awful knowing that this is the reality like she's gone. The autopsy revealed that Katrina Smith died as a result of blunt force trauma to her head. She mistruck many, many times by a very hard object right on top of her head. It was tremendous damage. It changes everything at this moment. This investigation just went from being a missing person

to murder. Todd Smith tells investigators his marriage is solid, but that co-worker Katrina is having to fare with shares text messages with investigators that suggest the relationship between Todd and Katrina is anything but solid. It was over. He shows you a message that says I didn't point it with my attorney. Next Monday. Katrina did have an appointment with the divorce attorney. We found out this wasn't just talk. She was making actions to get divorced.

“And a failing marriage wasn't the only secret Todd Smith was hiding. The other sort of facade”

if you will is that everyone thinks that Todd is a successful investment professional, but you start digging into that too. There couldn't be anything further than the truth about Todd being a successful businessman. Joseph Peterson is a former assistant federal prosecutor

for the Northern District of Illinois. I first became familiar with the name Todd Smith when I was assigned

a case regarding investment fraud of a individual who was soliciting individuals through his insurance business to invest with a company called Electus Asset Holdings. The FBI has been investigating Todd Smith for his alleged role in running a Ponzi scheme. He's got a partner. His partner has already been arrested. Todd has been looked at as a suspect. And he's having these meetings with people that we found out he was calling like chicken dinners where he would have people come and he would

pitch the sales pitch to them and they would invest money with him. Todd Smith's role was recruiting the investors and he would get a commission for the investors who invested. But according to authorities there was just one problem. The documents that he was presenting to the investors were fraudulent

because they stated that their money was 100 percent guaranteed that they could get all of it back.

One of the individuals in this case was a couple who were there in their 80s. They invested over $500,000 in they lost all of it and that was their life savings. For Winnebago County detectives investigating Katrina's murder, Todd's background raises some troubling questions and slowly as investigators continue to dig that carefully crafted image Todd Smith had built begins to crumble. This was a situation where for a lot of people no one

really knew who this man was. In fact Todd Smith wasn't even Todd Smith. I found out my grandfather's Charles Manson. A whole new original true crime documentary. I submitted my DNA to unlock my grandfather's sealed records. This is all the phone calls that I had with Charles.

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“and based on the best selling thriller by Grant Easton Ellis. How's terrifying?”

FX is the Shards, from his office fit on FX and Lill. The body of Katrina Smith was discovered in the rock river by an off duty firefighter. Now, an autopsy reveals the 30-year-old died as a result of blunt, forced trauma to the head. And with the missing person case now officially homicide investigators turn up the heat on Todd Smith. As we're looking at Todd's background, we found some pretty disturbing things that made us

question. The type of person Todd was, every time we had a new lead, it opened up kind of a

Pandora's box. One of the most startling discoveries was that Todd Smith wasn't always Todd Smith.

He used to have a different name. He was a wrap-brainer that was his last name. Todd wrap-brainer grew up in Machesney Park, Illinois, where he lived with his mother, stepfather, and three younger half siblings. The first time I met Todd was at our lockers, our freshman year at our home hospital. Our lockers were next to each other all through high school. Todd was short,

“very thin, kind of quiet, a good-looking kid. I thought he was cute. He was in band. I believe”

he was on the football team, our freshman year. He seemed like a really nice kid. That thin, quiet, good-looking kid was friendly and light, but he rarely spoke of his life outside of Harlem High School. Todd seemed like there was maybe something going on in his home life. That home life became the subject of intense scrutiny when Todd was just 17 years old. In March of 1985, Todd was involved in an incident wherein he had an argument with his family

and went for a walk. But before he left on the walk, he unplugged the natural gas line to the home. While he was out walking, the home exploded and burned.

“In interviewing the owner, he said that he and his wife were awakened by an explosion.”

The ceiling was falling in, Adam. He got his wife out of the house, along with one of his youngest child out of the house, but he couldn't find Todd rapper. According to the reports, he was outside screaming for him, thinking that he was trapped in there.

Ultimately, an interrogation of Todd, resulted in Todd confessing to the fact that he had been,

the one that disconnected the gas line. With intent that there was going to be a fire, he just wanted to scare his mother because they had not been getting long for an extended period of time. There had been an ongoing conflict between him and his mother. Todd waved his right to a jury trial and he entered a plea of guilty to the arson. He got 30 months probation and 160 hours of community service. Looking back at it, you'd have to say,

he was a troubled boy, probably needed some help, some professional help somewhere along the line. Todd moved away shortly after the fire that destroyed his family's home and three years later, with his legal troubles behind him, he found love with Teresa. When I met Todd, he was working full-time at a local factory, Teresa asked that we not reveal her last name. I was 21 and he was 20, so we're both very young.

We met at a party just with friends and we headed off and he seemed very kind and fun to be with. Seems like a genuinely nice person. We were married in Jamaica in 1992. We decided to go that route because of his family situation.

His troubled past was in the rear of your mirror. Todd seemed to embrace his role as husband and father.

What was he like as a father? He was very excited to be a father. He was very loving, very attentive, very protective. My dad was fun to be around. He was funny. He's a good listener. Whenever you're having a problem with your upset about something, he noticed and he would listen fully and offer comfort and advice like all the things that a normal dad would do.

“The early years were good. We were happy. You said it was the happiest time of your life?”

It was.

While the family appeared to be living a perfect life, behind closed doors, Teresa says the reality

was that after nearly a decade of marriage, their financial struggles were taking a toll. What did he claim to be doing in employment-wise and what was he actually doing? I don't know what he was actually doing. He was involved in the financial world and insurance and was he making money, bringing home money? Not on a consistent level. Like there was money coming in, but there wasn't anything that could be counted on.

Teresa says with mounting debt, they were forced to sell their house and move the family into her parents home. I had returned to work after having our third child. I had accepted both a full-time end-apart time position and having carrying the burden of trying to pay our bills and also be the primary parent caring for the children. It became too much. The couple separated and shared custody of their three daughters. Later that same year,

Teresa was the victim of a brutal robbery and assault, an experience that has haunted her

for more than two decades. Something she has never talked about publicly until now.

Do you remember the mouse look like? Uh, yes, it was aware of. Even though I couldn't see his face because he had a mask on, I could still see his eyes. Todd Smith had settled down with Teresa, and seemingly left his tortured past behind, starting a family of his own, while embracing the role of husband and father. But Teresa says he struggled as a provider for his young family. I get the sense that in every way, Todd

“walked around like he was the perfect husband, perfect father. I think that”

image was everything to him and he full people into believing that he was successful and that he was providing and that we were the perfect family. You were the breadwinner of the family? Yes. And you were raising the kids? Yes. And you were paying for his life? Yes. When Teresa was forced to sell her home and move her family into her parents' house, well, she had reached her breaking point. Teresa and her three girls were living here in this

love's park neighborhood at her parents' house. Todd had officially moved out. But on October 6, 2001, Teresa says something happened that would haunt her for more than two decades. Teresa says she hasn't spoken publicly about it until now. We had been separated for a few months and I had gone out for the evening. Came back home, pulled into the driveway and I was carrying my keys, my purse,

“and a Capri Sun. I'll never forget that. And it went around the corner”

and I was punched in the face. Full force knocked me off balance and he was wearing a Halloween mask. Do you remember what the mask looked like? Yes. It was a werewolf and he started to beat me up. Do you fall into the ground at this point? I was off balance and he started punching

and he put his hands on my chin and my back and my head. And he was, I know he was

gonna break my neck and I just remember thinking that my mom was gonna come out in the morning and find me dead in the yard. And when that thought went through my head I just like burst up like I had like a adrenaline rush or something and I just like stood up really fast and it knocked him backwards and then I ran. She called me that night to tell me that she was attacked outside the house and I had a calmer down to understand that she was okay. I mean she

she survived and somebody trying to to kill her. She reports it to the police and who does she say

“that she thinks this person is? She says her husband, Thomas Smith. How can you be sure it was him?”

I mean I was married to him. I could see his eyes. I could see his body. I mean it was him. Todd told police he'd been home at the time of the attack and Theresa says when she confronted him days later he denied being responsible. Fingernail scraping's taken from Theresa at the scene were compared to fibers on a jacket belonging to Todd but the results were inconclusive. Theresa also had blood under one of her fingernails and detectives wanted to test it for DNA

and compare it to Todd but police say Todd refused to cooperate and with no probable cause for a search warrant to obtain a DNA sample they closed the case. Theresa says she was actually

“relieved by that decision. I was keeping it a secret. I didn't want people to find out because I”

didn't want my kids to be ashamed so I just thought it was my secret. My my cross to bear I would have gone to my grave with the secret and when she shared with you some of the dark

parts of what had happened to her. How did you react? First of all I could tell at least I felt

and I believed that you know she was telling you the truth. Theresa married her second husband, Jason in 2013. It was obvious to me that Theresa did what she did for the girls and that she put what happened to her aside in order to protect the girls and that put that on them. For detectives doing a deep dive on Todd Smith in 2012 the attack on Theresa was a stunning discovery that only added to the suspicion surrounding Todd. Lots, lots of red flags. The investigation

is now heating up and when police canvas the neighborhood surrounding the area where Katrina's abandoned car was found they catch a break. surveillance footage of an unidentified man walking in the rain less than a mile from Todd's house. We have found surveillance cameras from houses showing this figure walking with a hood up over his head small statue guy walks down on a side street. Investigators didn't know who the mystery man in the video was but they were convinced

that they were watching Katrina Smith's killer. In a sunny California in summer one family's home is unusually quiet. When detectives walked into that house they said that it was like time just stood still. It's 2010 and the mixed day family is nowhere to be found. Inside the home no clear answer where the family could have gone. husband, wife and two children all gone like puff disappeared. The search for the mixed days

quickly captures the nation but for years the search for answers only brings more questions. Who's ever heard of an entire family going missing? A family of four doesn't just drop off the

“face of the earth with no contact. Is this a family on the run or is the truth far more sinister?”

For maybe see audio in 2020 this is what happened to the mixed days. Coming August 11th wherever you

access to new episodes and so much more.

“Stasi is back. Most people know me for a fan or pump rules but I'm a mom of a wife, a podcaster.”

I'm traumatized by reality TV but I can't stay away from it. It's like it's not on your payroll.

They don't get to be in your life. Wow reality has never been this real. Not everyone is built

for this. Am I good at ice? Anyone else? When you said that? Don't pop me off. This time I get to do it on my turn. I showed up for you! What could go wrong? House of Stasi wednesdays at 10 on free form and now streaming on Hulu. If you went probably a mile or two mile diameter round where we found that part. We've knocked on every door of every house. We went through almost every backyard looking for evidence.

Some of these houses have surveillance cameras. We find a couple of houses that show this small, statured person walking in the middle of the storm of this hood pull-up. So there's the camera on the corner of the house. Oh yeah. That caught this figure walking down here and he walks all the way down right to the dead end

“and then disappears into the brush back in here. Right. So what's on the other side of this fence?”

You could cut right through this field right here. They've cleared all the land. There's a world that runs through here. But you can see you could walk from this point to Todd's house in about 10 minutes maybe. It fit the description or at least the physical description of Todd's man. But the image in that surveillance video is too grainy and the subjects too far away to make a positive ID. Meanwhile police are pursuing other leads. They execute a search warrant at Todd's house

where a forensic examination of his laptop reveals that he was using GPS tracking software. Katrina Smith may have been being tracked by Todd Smith with a tracking device.

The search warrant also leads to another crucial piece of evidence.

One of the items that was found was a baseball bat that was leaning begin the corner of a garage. The crime scene investigator noticed something on the bat. Well that's something ended up testing positive for blood. We then submitted that to DNA testing and we had several matches to Katrina Smith's profile. We had it on the barrel of the bat. We had it on another area of the bat. When Todd found out that the bat was no longer in his

garage and had been taken as evidence by law enforcement officers, he became very upset and nervous. But once Katrina's body had been discovered, detectives take it to another level. We would often find reasons for Todd to come down to the police station to talk to him, fill him in on some things. So this is interval number seven. This is the last room that I talked to Todd personally in detective insulin. We're going to set right here. Todd was sitting in this chair

here. This was one of the least started making the accusations that he wasn't ball in his last murder. Todd immediately said, "Where are you going with this?" I don't know what you're talking about. He got upset. The Jack Vlemberg is explained to me. We have all of this evidence. It all points towards you. You know, your wife has been murdered and you did it. He stands up. The chair goes against the wall because he's angry. Points of the ceiling were the cameras that ran through

the ordinary search screen. I want my (beep) attorney. I want my (beep) attorney. And you walked out of here and every conversation after this was involved in his attorney. On Wednesday, November 21, 2012, just 12 days after Katrina Smith's body was found in the walk river, Winnebego County Sheriff's arrested Todd Smith. He's charged with four counts of

first degree murder and one count of concealing a homicide and Todd Smith pleads not guilty to all charges.

When we got the phone call and they said, "Hey, we got on like we just arrested Todd." And it was so surreal. I mean it's like the moment we're waiting for her. For him to know that he wasn't just

“going to get away with this. I think as soon as he was arrested for Katrina's murder,”

the community flipped. I think the community felt a sense of betrayal there. Even though police believe they arrested the person responsible for Katrina's death, Todd Smith case is not a slam dunk. We had a lot of evidence. Nothing relating directly to Todd.

is found to have no traces of Todd's DNA on it. You've got somebody that you're looking at

and you've got all of this stuff that points to a certain person. You still in the back of your mind you're like, "I wish we had the smoking gun. We didn't have that yet." This case even though it was strong, it was charged on circumstantial evidence. In cases like that, I very hard to prove in court. I truly believe based on the evidence that Todd thought this was a crime he was going to get away with. Defense attorneys also file a motion to disqualify that

evidence that Todd had GPS tracking software on his computer saying there's no proof that he was

tracking Katrina. That was our impetus to go in a second time to analyze that computer.

In 2016 before we went to trial in this case, we conducted a second search on it. There was new technology, new software. I was able to find the logs and recover the logs from a GPS device

“that had been deleted. I will never forget the day in my office when I was sitting at my desk”

and detected one of his stuck his head out of the office and goes, "Jah, got to get into your combing here right now." I found the tracking software. It got turned on at her car. We believe that when Todd dumped the body, that he thought he had turned off the tracking device

when he had detached it from her vehicle. And he had not. It was actually still on.

Police say that GPS data provided a roadmap for Todd's movements tracking him from Katrina's car along the path where her purse and cell phone and the bloody paper towels were found. And then in front of that home with a surveillance video of the man walking by was recorded. And this track takes a great to the front door of Todd Smith's house. The tracking device did not lie. It's computer data. So his jealous tracking essentially exposed himself. Absolutely.

This was the smoking gun we were looking for. Prosecutors now think they have a rock solid case against Todd Smith. But it turns out his defense attorneys also have an ace of their sleeve. They say they now have evidence that police have arrested the wrong man. The high profile murder trial of Todd Smith got underway today. He's the husband of Katrina Smith who went missing in October of 2012. It's January 2017. Four years since Katrina Smith disappeared

and now her own husband Todd goes on trial for her murder. It was a huge deal just in the rock for an area and everybody was following the case. What was your mindset going into trial? Did you

“think you had a good case? Absolutely. I think a prosecutor has to be confident in the integrity”

of the investigation and the strategy that we have put together. In the opening statements, the prosecution explained that they were going to show that Todd was guilty through the evidence and it was evidence that Todd had left behind. So death was part. A valve trainer Smith spoke. She married the defendant and that valve approved to be a deadly valve. The reason I believe that that was her epithet is because she was not going to reconcile

with the marriage and she was moving forward with her life. He was not going to have that and he literally took the worst so ductuous part seriously. The prosecution takes jurors through their main evidence including that aluminum baseball bat. They alleged to be the murder weapon. Another key piece of evidence, all that information and Todd's computer that pointed to his

“use of a tracking device to follow his wife. I think one of the stronger piece of evidence was”

the tracker was taken off of Katrina's car and it continued to send pings or GPS markings which coincided with a path of evidence from the car back to husband's house. Prosecutors also call a parade of witnesses including Katrina's co-worker, Guy Gabriel,

Just encouraging her to be open and honest to let people know how she felt at home, how she felt

“about their relationship. Her desires to get out. Guy Gabriel was an important witness because”

the night that Katrina disappeared. She had taxed him that she had told Todd the marriage was over. In its opening statements, the defense had its own message to send to the jury and that was rushed to judgment. You've got the wrong guy. This is a case that's completely built on a shaky foundation of rumors and speculation. Throughout this entire case, you could see that the police narrowed it on Todd Smith. They didn't really look at other suspects. They really focused exclusively

on him. And in the dramatic move, defense lawyers point the finger at Guy Gabriel as a possible suspect. They drop a bombshell in court revealing that just a month before the trial, Gabriel was arrested and charged with aggravated domestic battery. According to the police report, Gabriel's wife said after an argument, he knocked her to the ground and slammed her head into the pavement at least three times. His wife admitted they had physical domestic in the past.

The first thing I noticed was she had a large knot on her forehead. Her face was really red

and it looked like she had been crying. We wanted the jury to know that the person that she suddenly became involved with on a very personal level was also somebody who was violent. Guy Gabriel admitted guilt to the charge. But the state's attorney has an irrefutable rebuttal. Guy Gabriel was at work when this was happening to Katrina. They showed the jury actual video evidence surveillance footage of him going into his place of employment.

All of the evidence regarding Katrina's disappearance in her murder. It all led to Todd Smith. It did not lead to Guy Gabriel. It did not lead to anyone else. But Todd Smith.

“The one part of the trial that I will never forget was Marilyn Hightrass. The prosecutor's”

closing arguments. It was so emotional, so raw. What is she going to try to cover her hand? You were not within the fat side. He's probably, he's probably, he's probably. You didn't just pick up the bat. You swung the bat in the courtroom. I needed to do that. I needed them to visualize how he would have swung the bat when he was murdering his wife. How did the courtroom the jury the family reacted on? I know my colleague was shocked. You had the bat and you were swinging

it. I wanted to show the motion. It was dramatic. I thought it was a little over the top in theatrical and kind of distracting from the actual evidence in the case. The whole purpose of the closing argument had to do with I didn't think that they had proven the case beyond a reasonable doubt. The jury has now sat through two weeks of testimony listening to 40 different witnesses. Now this case is in their lap. Will that jury find Todd Christopher Smith guilty

of the murder of his wife? We were a nervous wreck sitting there waiting for them to announce the verdict. The trial of accused murder or Todd Smith comes to a close only a few hours after closing arguments jurors reach a decision. It is a time where I would definitely say you're sitting on pins and needles when you're waiting on a verdict. The courtroom is filled with anxious family members and people from the community as the jury format delivers the long-awaited

verdict. We have the jury find that the defendant has given the guilty the first to be murdered.

I remember I was sitting next to Todd Smith and he slump back in his chair and didn't react beyond that. It was just the biggest relief imaginable because you're just so scared what if something

“goes wrong and they have a different verdict. The verdict comes in. What was your reaction?”

Thank God we got justice for her and her family and he does not go unpunished for taking this young life. Sentencing day has arrived and loved ones of the victim have their opportunity to stand up and say something about the person that they are grieving. It all hurt so much Todd and all you had to do was walk away and let the adrenaline of the life she deserved. But out of greed and jealousy and rage,

and he smart, to smart. I never forget the smart kind of face. When it's Todd's turn to speak,

“he continues to maintain his innocence. It was a blessing that you don't make sure that”

it won't go beauty in your soul or smile in your heart. Although I had not been with the guys the state for training. Todd said that he harbored no ill will against the state. Did it matter to you at all? Whether or not he thought badly of your case. Well let's just say that I care about

the opinion of the people because we represent the people and so Todd's opinion about the state means

nothing to me. He received 55 years in the Department of Corrections for 1st degree murder and

“Tatsmith was sentenced to an additional four years for the concealment of a homicidal death.”

Extremely happy with the sentencing because he definitely doesn't deserve to see the lady of the day ever again. Todd was indicted for his alleged role to fraughting investors as part of that Ponzi scheme. Before he could enter a plea, the government decided to dismiss those charges. To this day he's housed in a state penitentiary in the state of Illinois. I talked to him on the phone and I asked him to tell me what happened. I said okay you can either

tell me the truth or I won't be talking to you anymore because I can't do this and he's like I'm sorry I can't tell you anything and so I hung up the phone and I haven't talked to him since. While justice may have been done, the collateral damage from the case lingers to this day.

Todd's first wife Teresa says she still wonders if Katrina's murder could have been prevented.

This whole entire process I have felt numb and just hurt broken for for everyone for Katrina and her family and my children. It's shattered a lot of lines. So much devastation and there's really no complete healing that can happen. Jason, what could through your heart? It's just her pain and it's my pain. I mean and it just it hurts to see her in pain. I don't want people to remember Katrina just by how she died and what happened to her. I want

people to remember who she was as a person and how she lived her life and how full of life she was.

“I just want people to remember that she was kind and giving and loving and just do the same,”

you know, be like her. We should note tonight that Todd Smith filed an appeal to overturn his murder conviction but it was denied he continues to maintain his innocence. The earliest he'll be eligible for parole will be the year 269 which David is essentially a life sentence he would be 102 years old. That's our program for tonight. Thanks so much for watching. I'm Deborah Roberts. And I've David Mure from all of us here at 2020 in ABC News. Good night.

And you can find all new broadcast episodes of 2020 Friday nights at nine on ABC. In 2023 a source sent me a tip. It tied baseball's biggest star to a vast, illegal sports betting operation. But then someone surprising confessed to me. His best friend from 30 for 30 podcasts. This is the betrayal of Showhail Otani. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.