Jack R. Smith-1964

This is a peculiar case I’ve started to look into a bit more. In 1964, Jack R. Smith, a recently retired 20-year Navy veteran and WWII veteran, was enjoying civilian life with his wife Dorothy and mother Ida in Potomac, Maryland. The 38-year-old Smith parlayed his Navy career as a photographer into a job at a photo business in D.C., although he had ambitions to open his own photo studio. On June 25, Smith took the day off from work, as he was expecting a concrete truck to come by to lay concrete for a patio project he was working on. His wife said farewell to him around 7 a.m. as she left for work. Smith planned to head to Alexandria to buy some bricks for the patio project; he never returned. A very concerned Dorothy reported him missing to the police on June 26, but according to her, they “didn’t believe me; they said he’d just gone away.” Dorothy and Ida were left to mourn the missing man without any apparent effort from authorities to find him. Dorothy was sure her husband hadn’t disappeared willingly, and noted that no money was withdrawn from their checking account since he vanished. Then, in late July, the situation became even more peculiar.

At that point, Mrs. Smith unexpectedly received a telegram from her husband’s insurance company. To her shock, she was informed that her husband’s station wagon had been involved in an accident and was currently sitting in a Martinsburg, West Virginia impound lot. Over the course of several trips to Martinsburg to speak to the West Virginia State Police and witnesses, Dorothy and Ida heard a strange story. About 8 p.m. on the day Jack disappeared, his car slammed into a utility pole four miles south of Martinsburg on Route 11. A man, blood streaming down his face, leapt out of the car, grabbed a small canvas bag from the back seat, then ran through several yards, screaming incoherently. He did pause long enough to shout to a local furniture store owner, “My God, help me, they’re trying to kill me.” Before the startled witness could reply, the bleeding man fled westward into some woods, quite literally heading for the hills. West Virginia State Trooper T. G. Freeland responded to the scene about 10 minutes later. Other officers arrived and they checked the area for the fleeing man, but didn’t find him. The State Police checked the car’s registration and found that it was registered to Jack Smith. For reasons that are unclear, either the West Virginia police didn’t bother to contact Maryland authorities, or they did and Maryland police even more inexplicably didn’t tell the Smiths. The investigation of the car crash apparently triggered some sort of alert to the insurance company, who tracked down a State Police report of the incident. The State Police assumed that Jack Smith was the fleeing man, and apparently weren’t interested in investigating the strange episode further. They spoke to Dorothy and Ida when they visited Martinsburg seeking answers, but, they still thought her husband was the man in question. Trooper Freeland obtained a photo of Jack Smith, presumably from Dorothy, and showed them to the “two or three” witnesses to the car crash. They thought he could be the fleeing man, and Freeland noted that the witness descriptions generally aligned with Smith’s appearance. West Virginia was not interested in investigating further.

Left unaddressed was a witness sighting of Smith’s car an hour before the crash. Two men were in the car; how this fit into the already odd circumstances was never sorted out. As far as physical evidence, a number of bricks were found in the car, so Jack clearly had completed his brick-buying plans. Much more puzzling was an Air Force jacket found in the car bearing the name “Ross” and a partial service number. Dorothy insisted that the jacket didn’t belong to her husband, nor did he have a canvas bag like the one the fleeing man carried, but the State Police remained uninterested in investigating further. Dorothy went to the trouble of speaking to Jack’s friends and Navy buddies to see if he might know someone named Ross, but no one knew anything of the jacket’s owner. Dorothy must have worked to mildly interest Maryland police in the case, for on August 20, a brief Washington Post article noted that authorities belatedly issued a “be on the lookout” for Smith.

Things changed on October 3. In the much-different Fairfax County of 1964, Joseph Gray Hale of Fairfax was doing some squirrel hunting around 10 a.m. off of the dead end of Rugby Road. About 300 yards behind Navy Elementary School, he stumbled on a disturbing site: a human skeleton. He quickly notified police, who responded to the scene. Only a pair of shoes and a belt were located with the remains. However, Fairfax County police apparently weren’t in a rush, for a thorough search of the scene didn’t occur until Monday the 5th. At that time, six officers searched the woods and found, within 100 feet of the body, a wallet, two combs, a receipt from a photo supply store, and a one dollar bill. Identification papers remained inside the wallet. They bore the name of Jack Smith. Dorothy viewed the belt and shoes found with the skeleton and confirmed that they belonged to her husband; comparison of dental records further solidified the identification. The Washington Evening Star drily observed that “[w]ith the discovery of the body, police said the witnesses apparently were mistaken about the identity of the man running from the car.”
Once the body was removed, Police Chief William Durrer dispatched a metal detector to the site. Officers found a solitary, but important clue: a .38 caliber fired slug. Covered by leaves, the bullet was found where the skeleton had lain. Medical Examiner Claude Cooper couldn’t find any bullet wound to the skeleton, but given the circumstances, he still concluded that it was a case of homicide by a gunshot wound. With a body on their hands, Fairfax police exhibited the most interest of any authorities so far as it related to Jack Smith. Two detectives were dispatched to Martinsburg on the 5th to talk to the State Police and reinterview witnesses. In Martinsburg, they examined Smith’s car again for clues; no newspaper accounts ever spoke of whether the car was checked for fingerprints. The Fairfax detectives returned home with the Air Force jacket on hand, described as old and “badly in need of cleaning.” Chief Durrer told the press that his department was in contact with the Air Force to search for Ross. No press report ever followed up on the story, so it is not clear what information the Air Force relayed or if it advanced the case at all. With that the story of Jack R. Smith vanished from the headlines without any resolution.