Forensic Files - Season 7, Episode 42 - Last Will - Full Episode | Forensic Files

he allowed his victim to write a last will and testament to her family then taunted them with chilling phone
calls a trace phone line couldn't trap the abductor but scientists would find a clue
in the victim's last words [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] seventeen-year-old sherry smith had her
whole life before her in two days she would have the honor of singing the national anthem at her
graduation from the lexington high school then she would sail off on a cruise with
her classmates she was kind of the cement that held our family together she was always the happy
one at 3 38 p.m on may 31 1985 sherry arrived home from a graduation pool party she stopped at the mailbox
some 700 feet from her house her father was watching from his home office as she pulled in
five or ten minutes had passed and all of a sudden i was aware that sherry had not come to the house yet so
something just told me that something was wrong and i ran through the house and into the garage and got in my car and
cranked it up and drove to the mailbox bob smith found the door of his daughter's automobile open the motor
running and shari's purse on the seat i saw barefooted footprints going to the mailbox but none coming back and he said
honey i don't know how to tell you this but sherry's car is at the end of the driveway running and she's not in it
and i can remember now i said oh my god not my sherry panic stricken the couple called the
lexington county sheriff's office near the mailbox on the ground with some mail which indicated to us
that she had gotten out of the car to pick up the mail and was probably abducted at that point if you find or
spot anything out of the ordinary lexington county sheriff jim metz immediately organized the largest
manhunt in south carolina history we really didn't know whether sherry knew her abductor or not we certainly
had no reason to expect that she had run away or that she left on our own whoever it
is that has our daughter sherry we want her back we miss her we love her and please send her back home where she
belongs [Applause] all her parents could do was wait the smith family was a very influential
family in the community and there was no reason that we could determine why she would be kidnapped other than maybe for
ransom purposes so we anticipated that the individual individuals responsible would make contact with the family
the sheriff's suspicions proved right two days after sherry had been abducted the smiths received a phone call
a man with a strangely distorted voice demanded to speak to mrs smith to prove the call was not a hoax he described the
black and yellow bathing suit cherry was wearing beneath her shorts and shirt he said he would release her
he said that she was fine they were watching tv she was eating a little bit and but he was giving her lots of water
and she was doing great he made no ransom demand but he told the smiths that they would be receiving a letter in
the morning my reaction was an individual who's got some sophistication in the crime he's
committing this is not the first time that he has engaged in a sex crime of some sort probably has been thinking
about committing a crime like this for quite some time agent walker agreed that the best hope of finding shari
could come from the letter her abductor promised was coming we woke up the postmaster in lexington
on the weekend went over to the post office and started looking through the mail and everybody put on plastic gloves
and we all sorted through the mail till we found the letter addressed to the smiths
inside was a letter in sherry's handwriting at the top of the first page was the
heading last will and testament sherry smith's abductor had allowed the teenager to write a two-page letter to
her family in which she told them how much she loved them i had a very helpless feeling come over me but i was
not without hope i held out my hope to the end but i was totally helpless the word last will and
testament just knocked me back and i was totally helpless i did not know what to
do or what to say and then i had the tough part was i had to show the letter to my wife
please don't ever let this ruin your lives shari's letter read just keep on living one day at a time for jesus
some good will come out of this my thoughts will always be with and in you in parentheses with the words casket
closed [Music] sheriff metz immediately sent the letter to the south carolina law enforcement
crime lab hoping forensic document examiner mickey dawson could find some clues i was looking for hand printing or
handwriting i was looking to see if i could find any trace evidences into hairs and fibers
after the letter arrived the abductor called the smith family again have you received the mail today
yes i have do you believe me now well i'm not really sure i believe you because i haven't had any word from
sherry and i need to know that sherry [Applause] later that same evening he called once
more saying the cherry was alive and implied he would release her soon i want you to think
sherry is now part of me physically mentally emotionally spiritually the call was traced to a public pay
phone at a drugstore in downtown lexington but in 1985 trap and trace required 15 minutes for authorities to
trace the call and reach its location the abductor remained on the phone for a very short time
five days after shari's abduction the kidnapper called again and spoke to both sherry's mother and her 21 year old
sister dawn okay 4 58 am no i'm sorry hold on 3 10. on saturday the first again she hand wrote what you received
4 58 am saturday the first degree okay saturday the 1st of june 4 58 a.m do not kill my daughter please
i mean please the next day he made another call hello please do carefully take highway
378 west to traffic circle take prosperity exit go one and a half miles turn right at sign loose large number
103 go one quarter mile turn left at white frame building go to backyard six feet beyond we're waiting
god chose us and i begged the police officers i said let me go with you let me go i want to
go with you to find sherry but investigators insisted on going alone sherry's body was found
in the backyard on the body with the yellow top and white shorts she'd last been seen in
the autopsy revealed sherry had been dead for several days investigators believe that sherry's
abductor inadvertently revealed when he killed her when he corrected himself about the time she wrote the letter
they believe sherry died at 4 58 on the morning of june first two hours after she wrote the letter
if that were the case sherry remained alive for only 12 hours after her abduction
one line i'll never forget when she says casket closed can you imagine what was going through her mind knowing
what she was gonna face she knew at that point that her body would be in a condition that the casket
had to be closed agent walker believes the killer tried to buy time while the body was outside
diminishing the chances to recover crucial forensic evidence the medical examiner found residue of
duct tape on her face suggesting that the cause of death was suffocation her hair was substantially shorter he
had to cut the duct tape out of her hair to keep from leaving it behind and that told me that he had some experience
at least or some level of criminal sophistication based on knowledge gained from past
offenders of similar crimes the fbi had this hypothesis the profile that we developed of him described a
white male prior married unsuccessfully married probably not currently married mid to late 20s to maybe even as old as
early 30s who who had a history of sex crimes the signal analysis unit of the fbi
engineering section told investigators that the voice distortion of the abductor's voice was accomplished by
something called a variable speed control device we believed either through employment or
through his technical education had some sort of background or experience in electronics
investigators believe the killer had everything planned out and was reading from a script clearly evident when he
corrected himself about the time of shari's letter 4 58 am as a final assault to the family
the killer called them on the night of shari's funeral it was a collect call he wanted to tell us just how he had
murdered sherry and he said well can you take it who could take it but we didn't have a choice we had to
try to keep him on the line to find out where he was a few weeks later the killer called again
this time he no longer wanted to talk about sherry [Music] after the funeral of seventeen-year-old
sherry smith her killer continued to taunt the family by phone but he no longer had any interest in
sherry have you heard about deborah pay hamper no the 10 year old atl uh richland county yeah
okay listen carefully two weeks after sherry smith was kidnapped deborah may helmet was abducted in front
of her parents trailer in richland county 24 miles from the smith's home her father was inside just 20 feet away
a neighbor saw someone pull up in a car get out and grab debra before speeding off
like sherry deborah was a pretty blue-eyed blonde unlike sherry deborah was only a child
turn right last dirt road before you come to stop sign at two knots road go through chains
and no trespass inside go 50 yards and to the left spoke 10 yards deborah may just waiting
god forgive us off i felt like we were dealing with the same individual investigators now knew
they were hunting a serial killer based on vast criminal research authorities believed that the killer
would be displaying more compulsive behavior losing weight drinking heavily not shaving regularly and would be eager
to talk about the murder at the south carolina law enforcement division scientists were still going over their
only piece of hard evidence sherry's last will and testament it had been written on lined paper from
a legal pad forensic document examiner mickey dawson believed latent images or indentations
from a previous page of the pad might be revealed with the use of an electrostatic detection apparatus
when i received the letter took it into the laboratory and opened it up on sterile paper
and with gloves took the pages apart looked at each page to the initial examination intake
and then the each sheet would individually go into a humidified box increasing the humidity of the paper
would yield a better result from the conductivity of electrical charges the document was then placed on top of a
brass plate and the magnetic field activated the paper was then brushed with a substance similar to fingerprint powder
through the combination of all of this latent images form dawson's first try yielded what appeared to be a grocery
list there were some bills to pay and there was a list of names and telephone numbers left someone to call
in case of an emergency dawson was able to make out what appeared to be a partial telephone number
the first set of numbers 205 was the area code for alabama the next three eight three seven was the exchange for
huntsville but they only had three of the last four numbers to finish the sequence
they just plugged the nine digits in for the seventh and uh found a telephone number that was a good
number i finally called this guy in alabama and said do you have any relatives in south carolina he said yes
says my mother and father the man's father was 50 year old ellis shepherd who lived just 15 miles away from sherry
smith's home telephone records indicated that some of the calls to the smith family after
sherry's abduction were made from shepherd's home not surprisingly police wanted to hear
what mr shepherd had to say [Music] fifty-year-old ella shepard was an electrician and telephone record showed
that some of the calls to the smith's home after her abduction were made from his phone
i wasn't worried but you know it was a little bit of a shock that they wanted to talk to me
shepherd had no idea why his son's telephone number was found on sherry smith's last will and testament
shepard said he and his wife were on vacation at the time of sherry smith's abduction an alibi which checked out
then police played a recording of the killer's voice [Music] i said dirty son of a [ __ ] because i
knew it was him and they said what i said that's larry gene bell and then of course they got very excited because you
know they knew then that they they had their person larry gene bell he worked for ellis doing electrical
wiring bell was house-sitting for the shepherds during the six weeks they had been away
on vacation i'd left bail a lot of phone numbers that he may need to call in my absence
while we're on our trip those pages were turned over to investigators a transparency of the shepherd's
original note was superimposed over sherry's last will and testament the shepherd's note
matched the indentations on sherry's letter proving that cherry used the piece of
paper directly underneath the shepherds also said that when bell picked them up at the airport all he
wanted to talk about was the kidnapping and murder of the smith girl bell had lost weight was unshaven and
seemed highly agitated this is the police video taken inside the shepherd's home
investigators found six blonde hairs in the bathroom that were microscopically similar to shari's hair
the commemorative duck stamp used to mail her last will and testament matched a sheet of stamps in ellis shepherd's
desk drawer bell was arrested the following morning he just seemed to be shocked
that law enforcement now had centered in on him as the fbi had predicted bell had been involved in various sexual
incidents since childhood he had been in trouble for making obscene telephone calls and at one point
even attempting to kidnap a young co-ed from the university of south carolina when questioned bell denied any
involvement in the murders of sherry smith and deborah helmick the only thing he wanted to say over and
over was that this larry jean bell didn't do it it's the bad larry jean bell larry jean bell
stood trial for the merger of shari smith in january 1986. during my closing argument i told the
jury sheri smith had the fortitude and the courage to write out her last will and testament
and i put the pen that we took from the shepherd's house in front of the jury i said now each one of you
don't you have the courage to sign your name on a death penalty verdict who it was electrified
the jury needed only 47 minutes to return the verdict of guilty of kidnapping and first degree murder
larry jean bell was sentenced to death by electrocution that was the only punishment for him
and probably this is horrible to say too good of a punishment for him he was tried separately for the
kidnapping and murder of deborah hellmick that jury returned the same verdict ten years after his trial larry jean
bell became the last man to die in south carolina's electric chair without that letter
and without the ability to bring up things on that page that you couldn't see with the naked eye
it would have been even longer before we would have gotten lara jean bell that piece of paper that indented
writing is what made the case and what sealed his fate he ultimately signed his death warrant
bob smith remains a chaplain for the sheriff's department his wife hilda recently authored a book
the rose of sherry to honor their daughter's memory both are convinced as sherry predicted
in her last will and testament some good has come out of their monumental loss that letter has has been more closure to
me than any kind of closure that the courts can do for me just the fact that she knew where she was going and she had
that kind of faith [Music] [Music] you

Authorities track a kidnapper who allowed his victim, 17 -year-old Shari Smith, to write a last will and testament on a note pad, then informed the family of her murder, as well as the later murder of a 10-year-old Debra May Helmick.

Forensic Files is the longest-running true crime series in television history. Evidence and interviews with experts help solve real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world.

Brief Summary

The episode details Sherry Smith's abduction, her last will, and the capture of her killer, Larry Gene Bell.

Key points

Sherry's Last Will and Testament. In a heartbreaking twist, Sherry's abductor allowed her to write a letter to her family, expressing her love and hope.
The Tragic Discovery. Sherry's body was found in the backyard, revealing the grim fate she faced after her abduction.
The Capture of Larry Jean Bell. After a series of taunting phone calls, investigators linked Larry Jean Bell to Sherry's murder, leading to his arrest.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Please don't ever let this ruin your lives.

Sherry's letter to her family.

5:44WatchDec 10, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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