Forensic Files - Season 8, Episode 23 - Sphere of Influence - Full Episode | Forensic Files

when a small child disappeared in alaska investigators were initially unsure whether the cause was a grizzly bear or
an abduction the discovery of a fiber a piece of molten steel and a chip of yellow glossy
paint pointed police in the direction of a human but others weren't so sure [Music]
[Music] [Music] as the alaskan summer drew to a close in 1991 children in the small town of taslina
spent as much time outside as possible they knew that in just a few short weeks school would start and along with it the
cold alaskan winter the lemaire family enjoyed life in the alaska wilderness with hunting fishing
and riding four-wheel vehicles eleven-year-old mandy lemaire was the oldest child
she was a real interesting mix between a tomboy and a pretty little girl she could be
just as comfortable and i freely dress at a at a social event as she could and hit
boots standing on the river fishing [Music] the town of taslina has only 241 residents so the homes are situated some
distance apart mandy and her best friend april often walked a mile or more to meet their
friends to play that was the plan on august 22 1991. mandy and i took off we got about down
to the wheel barrel down there i had a big fanny pack on and i had tripped and skinned up my leg i came back up
here to the store they helped me out i got all cleaned up mandy was supposed to wait for me
but mandy may have grown impatient i ran back down didn't find mandy mandy always played pranks and so we
thought she was hiding in the bushes going to come out and scare us or something
she never did two hours later mandy's father called police within hours 75 friends and neighbors
passed out flyers and searched the heavily wooded area from the ground and from the air
[Music] i knew that there was something wrong and that there was no way that she could
have got lost alaskan state trooper jim mccann drove five hours from fairbanks to join the
search i came down here with the opinion that there's more to this than uh than certainly a grizzly attack or a
child lost in the woods just from what i read in the paper and from what i've been told over the telephone
this is the poster they hung out when they found out mandy was missing that says missing mandy lemaire long
blonde hair straight five foot weighs 105 110 pounds age 11. i wrote she was my best friend
the search lasted for days search dogs were used but they weren't able to track mandy's scent
i've never seen such community action i've i've been in on and headed up a lot of searches
this community was just marvelous everybody from the valley got together tragically
ten days after she disappeared searchers found her body she had been shot to death
she was found about a mile from her home off of taslina terrace road back a side
road in a new subdivision there her body was found off that road that went down to the river from that area
without you have living something like this you probably will never have a clue and i don't know that i can describe it
my wife at the time she ultimately couldn't handle it i don't think no matter what you do
you always feel some kind of guilt and that was the big thing if i hadn't tripped what would have
happened and i remember asking my mom that what would it what would have happened
if i hadn't dripped complicating matters there had been heavy rains a few days before the body
was discovered washing away possible trace evidence as well as foot and tire impressions
it was clear to us that she'd been alive when she was down in that wash and had been struggling to climb back up
out of that wash her little fingernails were broken and and filled with dirt police knew they'd have to work harder
than usual to find necessary clues mandy lemire's autopsy revealed she had been shot twice at close range
with the 22-caliber rifle there were signs of sexual assault in a search for suspects an informant
told police that construction worker david deforest showed an unusual interest in the case and spoke of it
constantly at work twenty years earlier deforest was convicted of a car theft in new york
state and had some recent brushes with the law he had been in some trouble recently
when he went out of state and he was a suspect in a death out of state too deforest denied any involvement in
mandy's murder his employer confirmed he was at work on the day mandy disappeared
so he wasn't considered a suspect but deforest had some information of his own he saw another local man charlie
smithhart driving his pickup truck on the road where mandy was last seen [Music]
he was described as a good guy to the kids that all the copper center kids would
come to his shop and he would fix their bicycles give them candy certainly interesting to us
61 year old smithhart was a retired steel worker had been divorced twice and lived in a makeshift workshop behind his
mother's home coincidentally smithhart had assisted in the search for mandy he never put his name down on the search
roster at the fire station to say that i am a member of this search team i will search but he would show up
there and stand around and then he would go off on his own [Music] we found that strange
smithhart denied deforest's claim that he was near the crime scene on the day mandy disappeared and said he had an
alibi he said he was watching television with his mother and alibaia's mother confirmed
god knows he didn't do it and the person who committed this crime knows that charles didn't do it
in a town the size of taslina checking an alibi is easier than in most larger towns
and it helped investigators get their first break they learned that smithhart's mother
lucille had gone shopping at the copper river cash grocery store on the day of mandy's disappearance and paid for the
items with the check the time and date on the register tape was the same and the time was 3 17
when lucy said that she was home with her son she wasn't home she was at the grocery store buying groceries at that
time suddenly that blew a hole in charlie's alibi because it meant that his mother
was at the grocery store at 3 17 that she was not at home when smith art said she was at home to bolster his alibi and
that frankly he had no alibi for the two hours when mandy disappeared 200 miles away in anchorage criminalists
used a gel adhesive tape to gather any trace evidence left behind by the killer the tape lifts the evidence but the
adhesive isn't so strong that the trace elements can't be removed for later analysis
investigators noticed what was perhaps their first clue and i looked at him and he looked at me
and i said did you see that there's something shiny something and we kept moving around at
different angles until we could see something the spheres were no larger than the head
of a pin under a fiber optic microscope the spheres looked like metal they also found several red and blue
fibers and a yellow paint chip could these few microscopic items help investigators find
a killer this is an 11 year old girl who had her life savagely taken from her brutally
killed and her body was left in the woods for animals to find i think that made it hard on everybody
that dealt with this case and myself included in the weeks following mandela mayor's
murder investigators had a very promising lead a witness placed charlie smithart near
mandy's home on the day of the abduction [Music] and some young girls in town had even
more damaging information to report [Music] in the weeks before mandy's disappearance charlie smith a 60 year
old man had been seen offering rides to other young girls who bore a striking resemblance to
mandy lemare such that one of the young girls when her mother saw the sketch in the
newspaper of mandy mandy was missing the chief shot she thought she was looking at a
at a sketch of her own daughter armed with a search warrant investigators confiscated smith hart's
pickup truck for forensic analysis with the gel adhesive criminalists lifted microscopic particles from the
truck's interior during questioning investigators noticed something else about smith heart
i couldn't take my eyes off his shirt because he had little sparkly things on his
shirt and i finally asked him what are those little sparkly things on your shirt charlie
he says i don't know brass aluminum i'm i'm grinding stuff all the time that clue
led investigators to the workshop behind smith hart's mother's home there criminalists collected paint
samples hair fibers and all of the metal fragments they could find they also confiscated a pair of smith
hearts overalls all of the evidence was shipped to chicago illinois to skip palanik a
research microscopist palanek began by looking at the small yellow paint chip found on mandy's
clothing using x-ray spectroscopy palanik noticed something unique glossy layers
with no other layers behind it in a variety of colors that's quite unusual and children's bicycles of course are
painted with single layers of glossy paint in the samples collected from smithhart's workshop
palanik found a paint chip identical in elemental and polymer composition to the
paint chip on mandy's clothing we found one paint ship where the paint chip was in every aspect we could
measure was the same as as one of the yellow paint ships from his uh workshop next were the red and blue fibers
again palanek found they too were unusual it turns out these fibers had a very unusual cross section the fibers were
also very brittle they were brittle because of degradation due to age and exposure
the fibers were triangular in shape or trilobal using an infrared spectrometer palinic
discovered the fibers were polypropylene a synthetic manufactured by the philips
fiber company for carpeting palanek then analyzed the fibers gathered from smithhart's truck and
clothing we find in smithart's environment exactly the same kinds of fibers not only do they have the same
cross-sectional shape the same size they have the same pigments that are used to
color them everything is there the fibers in smithhart's truck were manufactured by the same company and had
the same degree of environmental damage as those found on mandy's clothing finally
palanek examined the most unusual evidence the metallic spheres found all over mandy's skin and clothing
the scanning electron microscope identified the spheres as carbon steel [Music] from his experience palanek knew
precisely what had shaped the metal in this way [Music] using a high speed cutting tool to cut
through steel you'll produce these little spheres metal particle is raised to a high
enough temperature that actually melts and assumes a spherical form the metal spheres from mandy's clothing
were compared to metal fragments found on the seat of smithart's truck these particles on mandy's body were
consistent in all respects with having originated from mr smithart's environment based on my knowledge of the
particles is that it would be extremely unlikely to have all those particles come together just by chance somewhere
else now armed with forensic evidence investigators wanted to learn as much as they could about smithart's background
so they flew to california to interview one of his daughters there they found evidence that mandy
lemayer wasn't his first victim we walked around out in her front yard and down her road for a couple of hours
until she trusted me and with tears in her eyes said that her her father had started
molesting her interestingly at the age of 11 the same age as mandy lemare was when she was
murdered and that all her sisters had also been molested after a three-month investigation
charlie smithheart was arrested for the kidnapping sexual assault and murder of mandy lemayer
it wasn't soon enough for mandy's family i can tell you the temptation was strong
to take matters in my own hands i will lie to you [Music] but i had told myself [Music]
that i could never explain it to two boys [Music] many residents of teslina found it
difficult to believe that a neighbor could commit such a heinous crime the community was very split up there
it's a very half-native half-white community and mandy was white and charlie was
native and he had the split down the center essentially that the white community felt that he
was involved and the native community felt that he was not involved charlie smithhart's trial began in 1993
two years after the crime mandy's parents and her two little brothers sat in the first row
every day of the trial smithheart insisted he was innocent mr smith you're going to have to be quiet at this
point you're going to throw me in jail i've been in jail 20 months falsely arrested for a crime i did not commit mr
smith i'm going to have to have you removed from the courtroom that's fine i want to do that throw me in jail
i've been in here for 20 months supposed to be a business for a crime i did not commit
prosecutors believe that molten steel from smithhart's metalwork formed the tiny spheres that were attached to his
shirt smithhart was wearing that same shirt when he saw mandy walking to meet her
friends it's unclear whether mandy accepted smithart's offer of a ride or whether he
forced her into his vehicle the forensic evidence suggests the tiny metal spheres attached to smith hart's
shirt were transferred onto the seat of his truck and later onto mandy's clothing during
the abduction the same red and blue synthetic trilobal carpet fibers were in the truck and on
mandy's clothing a single yellow speck of glossy paint from smithhart's workshop was also found
on mandi lemare even after two weeks in the woods and after heavy rains trace elements were
still there the murder weapon was never recovered prosecutors believe smith hart may have
dumped it in the taslina river this type of killer will do this again and hopefully i'll still be locked up
and then what are you people going to say if it happens my to my way of thinking
you're an accessory to him you're an accessory to him and the troopers that investigated this case because i know
i'm innocent skip palanik's testimony was particularly persuasive my role is to come in and report
factually on what i found and then be an advocate not for one side or the other for my opinion and i stated my opinion
in court and then hopefully gave the jury something useful to base their deliberations on and finally their
verdict i felt like they did a really good job of explaining it i'd ask our oldest son what he heard and
he could explain it adults should be able to understand it charles smithhart was found guilty of
murder kidnapping and sexual assault and he was sentenced to 114 years in prison
mr the mayor introduced me to his son who he said was someone interested in forensic science and what he handed me
is a courtroom sketch he had made hand-drawn picture with the words written on it thank you for
helping catch my sister's killer that kind of thing does tug at your heartstrings
this crime affected everyone in taslina in different ways now that i live in her old house it
it haunts me my memories come back certain smells bring back memories um my son sleeps in her old bedroom
and there's a sticker on the window that she and i had stuck there we were little
girls some people think it ought to be over it's never over i went through awful days
leading up to when mandy's graduation would have been for years prior i couldn't go to
graduations i then several years after that when girls that would have been men whose age were being married
were getting married i couldn't go to those it's a whole life long she's not here
she i'm missing this time of her life six years later alaska's supreme court overturned smithhart's conviction
because some evidence the defense team had planned to introduce had been denied smithhart died of lung cancer in an
alaska prison while awaiting a retrial [Music] [Music] [Music] you

When an 11-year-old girl disappeared from a small town in a remote area of Alaska, investigators wondered if she'd been attacked by a bear or become lost in the dense woods. It turned out neither was true.

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.

#truecrime #forensicfiles #fullepisodes Click here to watch full episodes from Forensic Files - Season 8: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gAB0hcY3Z0&list=PLC4mqmKvz1IbdnLKfCt8--pOV0xEpMIP5 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 covers the tragic case of Mandy Lemaire's murder and the investigation leading to Charlie Smithhart's conviction and later overturned sentence.

Key points

The Disappearance of Mandy Lemaire. In August 1991, 11-year-old Mandy Lemaire went missing in Alaska, sparking a massive search effort.
Tragic Discovery. Ten days after her disappearance, Mandy's body was found, having been shot to death.
Forensic Breakthrough. Forensic evidence linked Charlie Smithhart to Mandy's murder, leading to his arrest.
Trial and Conviction. Charlie Smithhart was found guilty of Mandy's murder and sentenced to 114 years in prison.
Overturned Conviction. Years later, Alaska's Supreme Court overturned Smithhart's conviction due to denied evidence.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I don't think no matter what you do, you always feel some kind of guilt.

4:48WatchDec 16, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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