Forensic Files - Season 9, Episode 19 - Deadly Matrimony - Full Episode | Forensic Files

a go-go dancer in rural ohio vanished without a trace leaving investigators without a single
clue as to her whereabouts the case went unsolved for 26 years until a homemade box
tool mark analysis and an old car provided hints to where she had gone [Music] [Music]
the rolling farm country of wayne county ohio was home to 19 year old janice hartman
janice was a free spirit and she was raised with two brothers tomboy effect i mean she could climb a
tree with the best of us and as with most teenagers she had a boyfriend 19 year old john smith he is
kind of a nerdy howdy-doody looking guy the person you would forget right away after you met him
the two were inseparable and both had a rebellious streak he rode a motorcycle at the time
and she was that type of person that wanted to be on a fast item whatever it was
when they finished high school janice and john got married but the union didn't last long and four years later
they divorced [Music] to support herself janice took a job at a local nightclub as a go-go dancer
i think it was more that free spirit again coming back out in her that's the way she was
music was part of her life her family was very uneasy with this and she said hey
come on down to the bar and see me dance she didn't take all her clothes off one night after work she was invited to
a private party janice told friends later there was heavy drinking at the party and also drugs
several men asked janice to dance and at some point things got out of control she was drunk these other guys appeared
to be drunk some of the gentlemen at this party attempted to rape her attempted to sexually assault her became
very abusive eventually janice talked her way out of the situation and left she immediately filed a formal complaint
she went directly to the police department at the time and told him the whole story took
statements and whole nine yards everything she needed to do and then she needed protection
janice returned to the nightclub and go go dancing but what happened at the party haunted her
she went over to my mom's couple of nights after that whole situation happened and she mentioned to my sister
that hey i'm gonna wait for a while i'll be gone don't worry and with that janice disappeared without
taking her clothes or her car if you're going to leave the area you're going to need things to go with that
you're going to need your clothing you're going to need means of transportation police interviewed the men who allegedly
assaulted janice at the party they admitted the situation had gotten out of hand but they said
they had no idea where janice was because of her lifestyle this bar hopping go go dancer disappears
one day just a few days after she was nearly raped by a bunch of guys police i think assume that she just led
this dangerous lifestyle and it finally caught up with her and for the next 26 years
no one saw or heard anything more from janice hartman [Music] janice hartman disappeared just days
after several men tried to rape her at a party at first investigators assumed her
disappearance was somehow related to the incident here's a young troubled girl who's in
early 20s who's hanging out with a bunch of questionable people probably smoking
some marijuana having a good time she probably ran away for a while the case eventually turned cold
and after years with no further information the hartmann family gradually accepted
the idea that they would never see janus again when there's someone missing you always
have this hole i'm telling you it's like a hole in your heart you'll have it it's
it's never filled 20 long years passed then everything changed with one telephone call it was from a woman who
called gary asking for his sister janice i sat down on the edge of the bed and took the phone call and i'm saying yes
i'm janice's brother and i said i understand your sister was married to john smith and i said yes she
was married to john smith but she's missing and i said well our sisters have one
thing in common they were both married to john smith and i said my sister's missing gary hartman's reply was my god
lady you got a problem my sister's been missing since november of 74 never to be heard from again
sherry the woman who called said her sister 49 year old betty fran had been married to john smith for only a few
months and smith had lied to betty and her family about his past he presented himself as a 40 year old
mennonite bachelor never been married a degree in aeronautical engineering from ohio state university with a
specialization in jet propulsion none of that turned out to be true this was the turning point um what are
the odds what are the odds that one wife would disappear under suspicious circumstances then a second wife would
disappear under suspicious circumstances that they would both disappear with almost the exact same circumstances
[Music] john smith denied any involvement in betty fran's disappearance john's initial report was that he came
home from work and his wife had left and there was a very brief letter which said
she had gone out and please don't forget to feed the fish smith denied having anything to do with
his first wife's disappearance too the fbi's cold case unit got involved and discovered an interesting
coincidence in the missing persons reports 20 years earlier witnesses told investigators that they saw john smith
in the club watching his first wife dance on the night she disappeared john was not the type of person who
would want his wife or even his ex-wife to be dancing in a skimpy outfit at a bar in front of men
another witness saw smith and janice leave together at closing time the divorce was final john was still
trying to win her back she was dating other men so this was like a pot that was just boiling and boiling
and boiling and boiling janice's family long suspected john smith was somehow involved in her
disappearance smith had a temper and had been abusive towards janus during their marriage
i was playing a game of chess with him one day i nailed him with a checkmate and he just looked at the board
took his arm slammed it across the chessboard all the pieces just scattered all over the room and i
was odd i just sort of sat back i was thinking whoa what's coming next investigators had plenty of suspicion
but no hard evidence all they knew was that smith was the last known person to see both
janice hartman and betty fran before they disappeared dead in the water i mean we've got no leads it's exhausted
i mean short of an accidental discovery or him confessing we've got nothing it was an astounding coincidence that
john smith's first and second wives both disappeared without a trace in looking into smith's background
investigators discovered that smith had a younger brother michael and they decided to pay michael a visit
at first michael was unwilling to answer their questions after that interview michael went home
and talked to his wife he searched his soul michael had had a secret and it had been eating at him for years and
he searched his conscience and he decided that he was going to turn on his brother
michael told the fbi a horrifying tale he said shortly after his brother's first wife janice disappeared
he saw john building a wooden box in his grandparents garage he thought that the shape was odd it had
an odd dimension to it it was about four foot in length but it was rather short john said he would use the box to store
janice's belongings michael found this very perplexing and didn't know what to think of it and why was he building a
box to put her clothing in if you're going to build a box to store things you need to build it deep like a
chest and john became angry with his brother at this time so michael left the garage
went back into the grandparents home later that night michael went back out to the garage
and looked through the window john is now packing clothing items into that box which was completed
michael thought it was odd how he was packing he was taking the clothing and rolling it up
and laying it along the outside edges of that box his brother was crying during the time he was packing these clothing
items the box was nailed shut and stored in their grandparents garage five years later when michael and his
grandfather were cleaning the garage they pried the box open and looked inside michael saw something that he would
never forget for the rest of his life looking up at him was the face of janice hartman
and this corpse had the legs cut off below the knees michael and his grandfather closed the
box and immediately called john who insisted he had nothing to do with janice's death he said someone else
killed her and he was hiding the body because he thought he would be [Music] michael said john put the coffin in his
black corvette and drove away he never saw it again and he said nothing about it for years
he thought my god i might be an accomplice to a murderer i don't want to get in trouble for this so he just
didn't say anything it's not neat and it doesn't speak well for michael but it's the truth
but where was the wooden box now 21 years later investigators learned that john smith's
stepfather was pouring the concrete foundation in an apartment complex around the time john removed the box
ground penetrating radar found a potential grave underneath the garage floor the highway construction people actually
using giant saws removed a portion of the garage floor and then with excavation materials were removed and screened
by the fbi evidence response team but they found nothing investigators contacted every law
enforcement agency and coroner in the state asking if they knew anything about a wooden box with a body inside missing
the legs and they got a break the officer who got that letter had been on the force for 25 years or more and it
was just the best bit of luck we could have ever hoped for that he would have been the person who
got the letter because he immediately remembered the lady in the box from april of 1980
ten years earlier a highway worker found human remains in a wooden box in some deep brush along the side of a road
she's a jane doe they did all the things that they were supposed to do they didn't have the dna technology that
we have now there's no database they could go to there were no fingerprints that they could look up so they didn't
have the kind of forensic capabilities that they have now so they just buried her in a potter's
grave and hoped for the best but authorities kept the box as well as the night gown that covered the victim's
face and on the nightgown was a clue i could see her face in the dress it was like
looking at jan like she was there with us and it was chilling to see it the image that is shown on that
nightgown to this day is just a very unnerving image after all this time was it possible that forensic science
could identify the remains and also expose her killer [Music] authorities in indiana exhumed the
remains of the unidentified woman they had buried a decade earlier the bones were taken to forensic
anthropologists frank and julie saul when we did the x-rays we determined that we were dealing with
someone in early twenties the pelvic bones indicated it was a female by measuring the femur dr sol determined
she was approximately five feet four inches tall the same height as janice hartman
the skull was in almost perfect condition showing no signs of trauma unfortunately there were no dental
records of janice hartman for comparison the smile was consistent with dennis hartman
but we needed to do a more thorough job of establishing her positive identity the anthropologist noted the woman's
legs had been amputated below the knee after death to find out more they sent the leg bones
to forensic anthropologist steve sims i am more specialized in that i work in the more modern samples of anthropology
or forensic anthropology and within that i have a specialty of bone trauma dr sims noticed several false starts on
the bones which allowed him to see both sides of the instrument used hand saws have teeth which alternately
bend to the right and left making a w-shaped cut the teeth cut a swath through the bone
that's wider than the rest of the blade but the instrument used to cut these bones
made a v-shaped cut jagged on one side and smooth on the other it has teeth on one side and it's a
fairly good description of a serrated knife take a lot of strength to actually do that or what i would say is a lot of
motivation a bone fragment was sent to the fbi lab in washington dc for mitochondrial dna
analysis [Music] when compared with the mitochondrial dna from janice hartman's mother
there was a match the body was janice hartman i don't know what kind of human being can do something
like that he's a sick man sociopath was the term that i heard used more than once
investigators searched motor vehicle records and discovered john smith's old corvette sports car was now in the
possession of a car collector in new jersey who had kept it in pristine condition
measurements revealed janice's coffin could have easily fit inside the car and there was other evidence
the fbi agent noted scratches on the dash as well as the rear window of that corvette
which would be consistent with the edges of a box that size being placed in the vehicle
26 years after janice hartman disappeared john smith was arrested and charged with
first degree murder [Music] prosecutors believe smith was angry the janice divorced him and that he also
objected to her work as a dancer smith heard about the incident at the party janice attended
and he used this as his cover for murder witnesses saw smith leave the nightclub
with janice on the night she disappeared prosecutors think smith strangled janus
to death later that night i think that the legs being severed from janus's body was symbolic in that she had walked out
on john smith for a controlling man he could not handle that [Music] he made sure she would never walk away
from him again smith built the coffin in his grandfather's garage and buried janice with her nightgown
over her face he stored the coffin in his grandfather's garage until family members told him to remove it
then he put it in his sports car and dumped it in the weeds along an indiana highway
based on the evidence john smith was convicted of janice hartman's murder and he was sentenced to
15 years to life in prison these weren't just a pile of bones science was able to give these bones a
name and relatives who loved her they were able to give these bones an identity they were able to bring this
case to life and that's why they got a conviction michael fleeman wrote a book about this case the stranger in my bed
and he doubts anyone will find smith's second wife betty fran john smith is not going to tell them
where betty fran's body is if he is the one in fact who is responsible for this that would be a step in the right
direction and that would probably get him a conference with god before he would be sent to hell
to do that means facing execution and it's just not going to happen i don't think betty franz ever going to
be found and i don't think her case is ever going to be finally solved investigators found evidence that betty
fran was about to leave smith because she learned he was having an affair with another woman
in my opinion that is a good portion of john's problem is abandonment if a woman
is going to leave him it's i control when you leave [Music] [Music] [Music] you

A go-go dancer told her family she needed to get away for a while, and then she simply disappeared. Investigators were suspicious, because she took neither her car nor her clothes. 20 years later, her family received a call that changed everything.

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

Janice Hartman vanished in Ohio; her remains were found 26 years later, implicating her ex-husband John Smith in her murder.

Key points

The Disappearance of Janice Hartman. Janice Hartman, a go-go dancer, vanished without a trace, leading to a 26-year cold case.
A Shocking Discovery. After years of searching, a horrifying discovery was made in a wooden box.
John Smith's Arrest. After 26 years, John Smith was arrested and charged with first-degree murder.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

She disappeared without taking her clothes or her car.

Describing Janice's sudden disappearance.

3:48WatchJan 1, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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