Tragic Murder of 11-Year-Old Carlie Brucia | Murdered at First Sight | Forensic Files

JOE BRUCIA: Here it is January 4, 1997, and Carlie just got here. Hi, Carlie! - Hi, Papa.
[LAUGHTER] [CHUCKLES] JOE BRUCIA: Hello, there. - [LAUGHS] [EMOTIONAL MUSIC] JEANNE BRUCIA: This is a picture of Carlie.
She is missing one of her front teeth, and she just looks adorable. Carlie is more like a little sister to me than my niece.
We were only eight years apart, so it was like having a little sister around. - The head.
Pedal, push. - Here we have a video of my brother teaching Carlie how to ride her new bike outside.
There's a lot of snow on the ground 'cause it was March. - Jeanne! - [CHUCKLES] She's calling out for me.
[LAUGHS] Her calling out for me. You know, it was-- the love went both ways. CHERI LANGWORTHY: Everybody loved her.
She loved people. When she walked into a room, her energy, you just felt it. She would have been something special.
I know that because she was, she was special. [OMINOUS MUSIC] [PHONE RINGING] - A child was reported missing Sunday evening
during the Super Bowl. CRAIG SCHAEFFER: Carlie was an 11-year-old girl. Everybody in the community was very concerned.
JEANNE BRUCIA: I turned on the news and there is my brother being interviewed about Carlie's disappearance.
- I'd like to say to the man who abducted her, you've done a considerable amount of damage.
Please stop. Release my daughter. JEANNE BRUCIA: Reality sets in very quickly that this is really happening, and it's terrifying.
- The second that video came into our possession, this case took a whole new turn.
- When you see the video, you know in your pit of your stomach that it's probably
not going to end well. DR. BRYANNA FOX: This is a broad daylight interaction. Carlie was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And that's everybody's worst nightmare, especially a parent. DET. TOBY DAVIS: We had this great piece of evidence
that showed this crime having occurred, but we were stumped. We simply had no suspects to work with.
JEANNE BRUCIA: Watching my brother navigate through grief and loss, it's excruciating.
It changes you forever. This bright future that we had for Carlie, all those hopes and dreams, you realize
they're never going to happen. It's just gone in a second. Yeah, he took that away from us.
[SOFT PIANO MUSIC] This has to be my most favorite picture of Carlie. I love that it was taken here in my backyard.
We all have so many memories of pushing each other on the swing and she just looked so happy.
[CHATTER] JOE BRUCIA: Come on. I can't hear you. - When my sister and I found out
that we were going to have a niece, we couldn't wait for her to be born. I was eight years old at the time.
My sister was around 11. We were just beyond excited. Carlie was born on March 16, 1992.
She arrived several weeks early. She was perfectly healthy. It was just so exciting to be able to hold her.
Carlie was the cutest. She had these big electric blue eyes, this beautiful blonde hair, and she was always smiling.
- [LAUGHS] Smile! JEANNE BRUCIA: My brother Joe was just the greatest dad. He was so excited to have a baby girl
and to share her with our family. - But what do you have? JOE BRUCIA: Hmm? - What do you have?
JEANNE BRUCIA: Yeah, this must have been the video [SOBS] right before she left for Florida.
She was probably leaving the next day. - Well, you know, Carlie's going to Florida.
She's taking a big, big trip. Mm-hmm. MAN: Are you going to Florida with Mommy? Are you going to miss your daddy?
- Yeah. I do miss my daddy. JOE BRUCIA: Yes, and we're all going to miss our little Carlie.
JEANNE BRUCIA: Carlie was about two when I found out my brother Joe and his wife, Carlie's mom, were separating,
and she was going to be moving to Florida. We were devastated. I remember my parents telling us
that we would see Carlie over the summer and we would see her again over the Christmas break.
My sister and I were very upset about the fact that we would only see her twice a year.
We were so used to having her in our everyday life. But my brother and Carlie, they just
had a wonderful relationship and even though she was living in Florida, they were in contact all the time.
So they maintained a close connection. [GENTLE MUSIC] - My daughter's name is Mandy, and her and Mandy were
just like two peas in a pod. Carlie is in kindergarten and her and my daughter were in the same class.
When they first met, they didn't like each other. They used to fight [LAUGHS] and they
ended up being best friends. Sarasota has changed a lot. But back then, it was much smaller and very laid back.
It was very like a quaint kind of a town. You could play outside until dark and not worry.
You could ride your bicycle around town and not worry. Carlie was just a typical five-year-old.
She was always at my house. We'd have dinner at her house, she'd have dinner at our house,
and we'd go grocery shopping together. We were more like family than we were friends.
[SOFT MUSIC] [WIND BLOWING] She loved going to visit her father, and she loved her aunt.
- Carlie's last visit to New York, she was 11 years old, and she was really, you know, and
turning more into like a teenager than a little girl. CHERI LANGWORTHY: She was growing up
and she was starting to find her own way. I think she would have done well in life,
I really do, if she would have had the chance. JEANNE BRUCIA: Our last conversation that we had,
I remember being in her room at my brother's house. We were always upset when we had to leave each other.
We talked about big plans of her coming back to New York when she was 16, finishing up high school in New York.
I look back on that conversation. So thankful that I have that memory and that moment with her
because that was our goodbye. [OMINOUS MUSIC] [PHONE RINGING] - It was February 1, 2004, Super Bowl Sunday.
- Detectives responded out to her house and took the report from the mother. - Even though she's a child, she was still 11.
And she was responsible kid, by all accounts, that everybody I spoke to. - Carlie's mom was living a pretty good life.
She was a blue collar worker, was a good mother to Carlie. DR. BRYANNA FOX: Carlie left her friend's house around 6:15.
She was walking along a relatively busy road. There were fast food restaurants, coffee shops,
but there aren't a lot of people out. - We were sitting at the dinner table and the news came on.
It was like a news break thing that she was missing. And my daughter Mandy screamed, Carlie,
and we turned the TV off. None of us could believe it. I mean, it was shocking. - The only thing that I was told
was that Carlie is missing. That's all that I knew. I was 19 at the time. My family may have known more information that they
were shielding me from. The gravity, and the seriousness wasn't something that entered my mind right away.
I was like, OK, well, we're going to find her. It's just we have to find her. But it was shortly thereafter that the panic did set in.
CHERI LANGWORTHY: I got on the phone and I called her mom, Sue, and she was in tears.
Everybody went out looking. It was just surreal. It didn't seem real. It was like a nightmare.
DET. TOBY DAVIS: Detectives got a list of Carlie's friends. They got a list of other places that she could possibly be.
And they searched throughout the night into the early morning hours, but could not find Carlie.
JEANNE BRUCIA: My brother Joe flew down to Florida right away to help with the efforts to find her.
[INTRIGUING MUSIC] - In my job, you're kind of jaded in many respects. You see horrible, horrible things.
You relate to it, you empathize with the parents who are missing their child, and you don't
know where that child is. And I had kids, so it's really hard to just turn off being a father or a citizen.
DET. TOBY DAVIS: It is not a common thing for children of that age to be missing overnight.
And so when she didn't come back home that evening, we recognized that this is an unusual case.
We contacted the Sarasota County Canine Rescue, which is a group of volunteers who
have bloodhound tracking dogs. In this case, Carlie had spent the night at a friend's on Bee Ridge Road,
and so we started a track from her friend's house. CRAIG SCHAEFFER: The police took bloodhounds
from the friend's house and they tracked her four or five blocks away. It makes sense that she would walk on Bee Ridge Road.
It's a main road, but the path of the bloodhounds showed that she went behind the car wash facility
and then the bloodhounds scent stops. DET. TOBY DAVIS: The owner of the business
came out and questioned, what was going on? The detectives told them that we had a missing girl in the area, and that we had done this track
to the middle of the car wash. The owner said, well, I have just installed a video camera system and he would go check
to see if he saw anything. And that's kind of where this story took a turn. [SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
It is immediately shocking. CRAIG SCHAEFFER: You see Carlie walking in the back of the car wash.
And you see a man walking right up to her, and you see him say something, and you see him grab her above the wrist,
and then they walk together out of the video's view. It's a tough video to watch.
- When I watched their surveillance video, I could tell by her body language that she was kind of taken aback,
and she looked kind of frozen and like she didn't know what to do. I mean, she was only 11 years old.
And then he pulled her away and he pulled her off the screen and never saw her again.
- She was smart. And I was shocked that-- you know, it's like, why is she going with him?
Did he have a weapon? It's like, uh-oh. And also thinking she's got to be terrified.
I can't even imagine what that poor child went through. - There was still hope by law enforcement in our office
that we would find her, but it's a scary video. JEANNE BRUCIA: The feeling that you
get when you watch that video, you know, you just want to yell at your TV. Don't go!
Don't go with him! I wish that last time Carlie and I saw each other that we had talked about stranger safety.
But it's not something that you typically talk about with your friends or your little sister or your niece,
but I wish that I did. [SOMBER MUSIC] CHERI LANGWORTHY: Law enforcement couldn't identify
the man at that point. They didn't know who he was. He wasn't related to the family.
When they checked with the family members. DET. TOBY DAVIS: The video revealed that we were looking for a white male,
somewhere between the ages of 25 and 40. CHERI LANGWORTHY: He was wearing a darker
blue mechanics uniform. He had a name tag there, but we couldn't make that out from the video.
He walks with a distinctive gait. DET. TOBY DAVIS: You could tell by the way he walked up to Carlie that he wasn't very tall.
He had short cropped black hair, what appeared to be tattoos, and was wearing some work shoes.
DR. BRYANNA FOX: Police are immediately trying to do everything they can, especially in a case where it seems like a child is abducted
by somebody who's a stranger, but at the same time, they're also very aware that they
don't want to do something that is going to spook that offender and make them cover their tracks by harming that child.
So there's a fine line that police walk. DET. TOBY DAVIS: We weren't close to finding
who this person was. And so that night, in time for the 11 o'clock news, we released the video to the newspapers and the TV stations.
REPORTER (ON TV): An AMBER Alert is in effect for Carlie Brucia. She was seen on this surveillance
tape being approached by a man and then led away. JEANNE BRUCIA: My mom told us, don't listen to the radio.
Don't listen to anything. Because she's afraid that we would hear something that we
shouldn't hear over the radio. [INTRIGUING MUSIC] DET. TOBY DAVIS: We were immediately inundated
with information and tips. And the problem with it is everyone who saw that film believed that they knew that person.
Everyone thought their kind of creepy neighbor was that person. Hey, my mechanic is that person.
And so these tips just started pouring in. [OMINOUS MUSIC] CHERI LANGWORTHY: One person called in and
said based on his gait, the way he looked, his haircut, the uniform that looks like Joseph Smith.
- Smith at the time of this event was 37 years old. He had a few run-ins with the law already.
He had served time. He was on probation for a drug offenses. This was a man who wasn't exactly an upstanding citizen.
DET. TOBY DAVIS: When we looked into Joseph Smith, we found out that he was employed
as a mechanic at that time. His employer identified him by his walk, by his haircut,
by his tattoos, and just his general appearance. DR. BRYANNA FOX: The former co-worker
of Joseph Smith said to police, that's the way he grabbed the girl, actually looked like the way
that Joseph Smith would grab tools. Police wanted to talk to Joseph Smith immediately.
DET. TOBY DAVIS: I responded to this residence and we were there for quite a while, banging on the door.
After about 30 minutes or so, Joseph Smith came to the door, and we sat down on his front porch
and we talked about Super Bowl Sunday and what he had been doing. [SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
He said that he was watching the Super Bowl at the house, that he had basically been with people,
and I could check his alibi. In front of this house was a vehicle that Joe identified as his own.
At that point, the probation parole officer arrived and searched the vehicle. Drug paraphernalia was found and
Joseph Smith was arrested for violation of probation and taken to jail. While that is occurring, a white female pulls up driving
a yellow station wagon. She identifies herself as Joseph's roommate and that she and her husband lived there together with Joe.
I took the roommate aside and I asked about Joe's whereabouts on Super Bowl Sunday.
The roommate told me that Joe was home the whole day, that she actually saw him in the house,
and that they had watched pretty much the whole Super Bowl. At that point, I eliminated Joseph Smith as being
a suspect in this case. We're at a loss as to what to do. [INTRIGUING MUSIC] JEANNE BRUCIA: I would go to bed
at night just worried about her, thinking, where could she be. Is she alone? Is she uncomfortable?
Is someone hurting her? I definitely played scenarios in my head that she could still be with us.
Could just be someone took her somewhere and they're holding her for a ransom? Anything but to think that she's no longer with us.
CHERI LANGWORTHY: The entire community stepped up to try to find this 11-year-old girl.
There was people in my own family that were out searching dumpsters and looking for her.
There was a lot of prayers trying to find her alive, but the first 24 hours after somebody
goes missing, the longer it takes, the harder it is to find the person as a survivor.
DET. TOBY DAVIS: Later on that evening, the front desk officer at the Sheriff's Office
contacted me and said that a man was at the front desk and that they were dropping off a car
because the car was involved in the Carlie Brucia abduction. And the front desk officer told me
that it was the husband and wife, roommates of Joseph Smith. The husband stated that his wife had simply lied.
When I interviewed the wife again, she had no explanation for why she ever had said that Joseph Smith was at the house
during the Super Bowl. According to them both now, Joseph Smith had stolen their yellow station wagon the previous Saturday
and had been missing the entire weekend. Joseph Smith's alibi completely fell apart.
Not only was it not substantiated, it was a false alibi. - At that point, the car is seized as potential evidence
in the case. A search warrant is conducted. You have a forensic unit scouring the car for trace evidence.
Fibers, dirt, blood, anything that would connect Carlie to the car. Ultimately, it did find little threads
of pinkish, reddish cotton in the back seat of the station wagon, consistent with the shirt that Carlie had on,
which let everybody know that she was basically in that back portion of that vehicle
at some point. [OMINOUS MUSIC] DET. TOBY DAVIS: When it's time to re-interview him,
Joseph Smith refused answering. And he requested his rights to remain silent. But with his identification and with the presence
of this vehicle, and with now the roommate's help, we're able to start building the case against Joseph Smith.
[INTRIGUING MUSIC] The first thing we do is we go back to the videotape. When we discover other cameras at the car wash,
showed views of the parking lot, showed views of the car wash bays, and showed views of the west bound
traffic on Bee Ridge Road. CRAIG SCHAEFFER: It turns out that vehicle is seen in the videos in the front of the car wash,
right before Carlie is abducted. You see the station wagon that was lent to Joseph Smith
that Sunday, driving in the parking lot, doing a loop, circling back out onto Bee Ridge Road, the main road.
Then you see it on Bee Ridge Road heading west. And ultimately, we know based on connecting the dots,
he came on the west, parked on the west side of the car wash, abducts Carlie and takes her into the car.
And that's why the bloodhound scent ends right there, at that property line. DET. TOBY DAVIS: It definitively
put Joseph Smith in the Bee Ridge area, driving that yellow vehicle in the area of the car wash.
I knew that we had caught Carlie's abductor, that Joseph Smith had committed this crime,
but Carlie's been gone 72 hours, and she's not with the guy that she's on the film with.
We need to find Carlie. [EMOTIONAL MUSIC] JEANNE BRUCIA: Carlie, being a Florida girl,
loved the beach and the ocean. When Carlie would visit in the summer, we would typically have a couple
of days of vacation planned where we went to the beach. We build fires on the beach.
We went out to dinner and it was just one of those special vacations that you never forget.
There's definitely a feeling of dread when someone that you love has been missing for days,
and you know that someone purposely took her. There's a feeling of helplessness.
You're just sitting around waiting to find out what has happened to your loved one.
[OMINOUS MUSIC] DR. BRYANNA FOX: Joseph Smith asked police if he could talk with his brother.
This was something that the police were a little hesitant to allow, so they said that only if it would
be approved by his lawyer. Interestingly, Joseph Smith's public defender approved the meeting, and a few days after the conversation
that John and Joseph had, and this is after Carlie had been missing for several days,
John alerts the police that there may be information that he has. John was sort of, I would say, torn on whether to go
to the police. It wasn't until he kind of thought it over and then decided, OK, I have to share this information
with law enforcement. Which is ultimately what he did. DET. TOBY DAVIS: Joseph Smith's brother
stated that he could get Joe to tell us where Carlie was. CRAIG SCHAEFFER: Law enforcement
assisted having Joseph Smith meet with his brother John Smith and his mother to talk about things privately.
DR. BRYANNA FOX: He told his brother, oh, I thought she was older. I thought she was 16 or 17.
He wanted to see if that helped to minimize his culpability and made him look less bad.
He said it was an accident. To me, every single thing that Joseph said to his mother
and to his brother was like pilot testing what he was ultimately going to tell police and jurors,
and he wanted to see if they were willing to believe it. If his family didn't believe it,
why would a stranger who's on a jury? JEANNE BRUCIA: My biggest fears were that they were going
to find her body somewhere. But I still had some hope that maybe she was just being held somewhere.
All those hopes were distinguished pretty quickly. [SOMBER MUSIC] DET. TOBY DAVIS: Joseph's brother and mother
contacted the Sheriff's Office and said Joseph had confessed to killing Carlie and had described to his brother
where Carlie's body was. We were going to put Joseph on a phone and Joseph was going to describe
where he had taken Carlie and where he had dumped her. Myself and two other agents went to the brother's house.
We picked him up. The brother sat next to me in the passenger seat and a phone was provided to Joseph in the jail.
Joseph stated that he had dumped her body at the first church on Proctor Road, and that Carlie's body would be found along a fence line.
We pull into the parking lot, and I can see that there is a fence line along the backside
of this church. I knew at that point that we were in the right area. I knew that Carlie's body was out there,
but I also knew that, evidence-wise, I wanted the first person to see that body to be a forensic tech, because that
was going to enable us to collect the best evidence possible. - The body of a beautiful 11-year-old girl,
Carlie Brucia, has been found. Joseph Smith is under arrest for the abduction and murder of Carlie.
DR. BRYANNA FOX: When police found Carlie's body, she was naked from the waist down.
It was pretty clear that she was sexually assaulted, and she had very obvious this ligature marks on her neck,
meaning it was very clear this little girl was strangled to death. CRAIG SCHAEFFER: It was tough.
It was a somber day in our community. I knew tons of friends and family that were out searching for her.
I mean, an 11-year-old girl was brutally murdered for no reason whatsoever. I wanted to bring him to justice,
and it was just a sad day. [MELANCHOLY MUSIC] - I walked in the front door and I can see my extended family being
in the house, my aunts, uncles, my parents, and it was just like a blur. But I just remember my mom hugging us and
telling us that they found her, and she was no longer with us. Our lives were never going to be the same.
CHERI LANGWORTHY: I went to Sue's house every day to help 'cause she was just really having a hard time.
The night that the sheriff came by, I had this feeling. When I went home, I just knew.
I just-- something told me that they had found her. Just as I pulled up in front of the house,
the sheriff knocked on the door and he told her. She dropped to her knees and she let out this--
[SIGHS] this bellow I've never heard in my life. When he told her that she was dead, it was horrible.
JEANNE BRUCIA: When we found out who had committed this crime, it was a bit shocking to know that it was
a father of three daughters. Words can't describe the anger that someone has towards someone who abducts,
assaults and murders a young girl. DR. BRYANNA FOX: A lot of people mistakenly assume that because somebody is a child abductor,
rapist and murderer, that they are just horrible and evil throughout every single aspect of their entire life,
that they are a terrible parent, that they are terrible at their jobs. That's not often the case.
In fact, usually the people that are really vile and commit such despicable acts tend to live
relatively normal lives. They blend in, they have children of their own. They have a family.
They have a job. [EMOTIONAL MUSIC] JEANNE BRUCIA: We were lucky enough to have our own funeral service here in New York for Carlie.
It was definitely a difficult day. We had it in a local church and our neighbor is a deacon
and he knew Carlie, so he talked about memories of seeing Carlie swinging on the tree swing
and just having a great time in the yard. The church was packed. Friends and family.
Friends I haven't seen in years. Everyone just wanted to come out to support us that day.
- Once you find a little girl's body, you want to bring him to justice. You know, frankly, you want to give him
the death penalty right then. That's the human side of it. But there's a process, and you have
to build the case properly. As a parent, you feel for the family, you feel for the community, but for him,
you want to bring him to justice as swiftly as possible. [OMINOUS MUSIC] Joseph Smith was charged with first degree murder,
with kidnapping of a child under 12, and then sexual battery on a child under 12.
DET. TOBY DAVIS: The videotape was an amazing piece of evidence. And you have a picture of-- of at least the beginnings
of that crime. CRAIG SCHAEFFER: John Smith, he had to testify against his brother in a case
where we're seeking the death penalty. And he did the right thing. JEANNE BRUCIA: Watching my brother navigate through grief
and loss, and I have to go and sit through a trial where they used to go through every single step
of what happened to your loved one, it's excruciating. In a way, focusing on making sure that justice was served,
was a distraction from the grief and the loss that we had all experienced. DET. TOBY DAVIS: We know what's about to happen to Carlie.
That's what makes that video so shocking. And you just want to reach through there
and you want to stop her, you want to stop him. You want Carlie to scream, you want her to shout.
A bad guy has grabbed her, and you can't fathom the trouble she's in, and you can't stop it.
CRAIG SCHAEFFER: The forensic lab ultimately testified in trial that those pinkish reddish cotton
fibers found in the car were consistent with the pink shirt that Carlie had on when she was found.
JEANNE BRUCIA: As a child went on, evidence showed that she put up quite a big fight.
But you know, how can an 11-year-old overpower a 38-year-old man? The fear that she must have felt, she was all alone.
Just such a horrible thought to have to think about an 11-year-old girl being all by herself when
this was happening to her. Really no words can describe the feeling that I get when I think about her last few moments.
She must have been so scared. [SOMBER MUSIC] CRAIG SCHAEFFER: The evidence was strong.
There was no doubt the jury was going to find him guilty. JEANNE BRUCIA: What we were all worried
about was his sentencing. Our minds went right to the next thing. Let's get him the death penalty.
That was our focus. If Carlie didn't get to live, why-- why should he get the chance to live?
DET. TOBY DAVIS: We went into a penalty phase, which talked about the atrociousness of these crimes,
about the cruelty of the crimes, and about the heinousness of the crimes. And then the state asks the same jurors
to pass a sentence of death on Joseph Smith, and he, by attended to margin, was found guilty
and was sentenced to death. JEANNE BRUCIA: There was another sigh of relief from me and my family.
We were all happy for this very small victory. What we didn't know was that it wasn't over yet.
[INTRIGUING MUSIC] CRAIG SCHAEFFER: There is a case that came out of the US Supreme Court on the death penalty.
And unfortunately, the Florida Supreme Court looks at that case, interprets that anything
that was not unanimous, was being reversed for sentencing, a new sentencing. He would still have life in prison.
There was no question he would have life in prison. The question is, do we get the death penalty?
In my eyes, my boss's eyes, law enforcement's eyes and the victim's family's eyes, you can't do what
he did to an 11-year-old girl and not receive the death penalty. So we were gearing up to do a resentencing, which
means you have to bring everybody back in, the medical examiners, present all the evidence to a new jury
to seek the death penalty again. JEANNE BRUCIA: While we were waiting for that to happen,
I got a phone call from my mom to let me know that Joseph Smith was dead. CRAIG SCHAEFFER: Joseph Smith died in prison of liver cancer,
and I was happy. And I think most people, when I told them the news felt the same.
JEANNE BRUCIA: It was surprisingly very emotional. I broke down and started crying.
It was finally over. It was just a moment of, like, a sigh of relief that this is really over now.
This battle has ended. CRAIG SCHAEFFER: Carlie's mom was a devoted mom and wanted justice for her daughter.
Unfortunately, she died before Joseph Smith died. And she didn't actually get to learn
he had passed away in prison. DR. BRYANNA FOX: Carlie's mother died of a drug overdose.
It seemed like this was just her only coping mechanism. It didn't matter that Joseph Smith
received a death sentence, or probably even that he died. There was nothing that was going
to fill the void that Carlie's loss caused, and the family was just never going to be the same again.
CHERI LANGWORTHY: Life wasn't the same when she lost Carly. He destroyed that family.
The whole family just-- it destroyed them. [EMOTIONAL MUSIC] JEANNE BRUCIA: I did go to Florida, probably within a year
after Carlie's death. It felt special to go and visit Carlie's school, where she spent so much time and made friends.
CHERI LANGWORTHY: The church where they found her body, they made a garden there for Carlie.
I go down to the garden on her birthdays, holidays or whatever. I talked to her.
Just tell her what's going on and tell her we miss her and tell her we love her, that we won't forget her.
JEANNE BRUCIA: Not only did this horrible tragedy affect my immediate family, but it affected
my extended family as well. I have a cousin, Matt. When Matt found out about Carlie,
he had the same feeling of helplessness that we all did and it really impacted him and he just wanted
to do something to help. MATTHEW BARBIS: Nothing was going to bring Carlie back,
but I wanted to make sure that it never happened to anyone else's family. And that inspired me to create the Rose
Bush Educational Foundation. [INSPIRING MUSIC] Carlie is our image of our foundation,
and we do everything in memory of Carlie, but the motivation for naming it after my grandmother
was so that I would never exploit Carlie's name. I just wanted to go to my local elementary school
and talk to the kids in my neighborhood and tell them, these are the things that you need to do to stay safe.
The program is in 92 countries across the globe. I'll always do this because of Carlie's memory
and in honor of Carlie. So for me, it's the rest of my life. [EMOTIONAL MUSIC] JEANNE BRUCIA: I think about Carly every day.
She wanted to be the life of the party. She loved being around other kids, be involved in what everyone else was doing.
She just wanted to be part of it. WOMAN: Merry Christmas. - Merry Christmas! - Hi!
CHERI LANGWORTHY: She would have been somebody's special. You could see it. She was somebody special.
I think she should be remembered like sunshine. JEANNE BRUCIA: Butterflies kind of became the symbol
of her still being with us. My brother often sees butterflies and thinks of her.
He has a garden and-- on his deck and his backyard yard, and a lot of the plants
that he has kind of draw in the butterflies, and it's just something that reminds us of her.
[THEME MUSIC] [AUDIO LOGO]

11-year-old Carlie Brucia is kidnapped in broad daylight by a stranger while walking home from a friend’s house in Sarasota, Florida. Her body is found days later.

Murdered At First Sight is a true crime documentary series that tells the first-hand stories of the most complex and hard-to-solve homicide cases: murders committed by strangers.

Brief Summary

The episode recounts Carlie Brucia's abduction and murder, detailing the investigation and its emotional aftermath for her family.

Key points

Carlie's Disappearance. On Super Bowl Sunday, 11-year-old Carlie Brucia goes missing, sending shockwaves through the community.
The Ominous Video. Surveillance footage captures the moment Carlie is approached and abducted by a man.
The Search for Carlie. As the community rallies to find Carlie, the urgency grows with each passing hour.
A False Alibi. Joseph Smith's alibi collapses as new evidence emerges linking him to Carlie's abduction.
A Brother's Confession. Joseph Smith's brother reveals crucial information about Carlie's fate after a private conversation.
Carlie's Body Found. The body of 11-year-old Carlie Brucia is discovered, leading to the arrest of Joseph Smith.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It's just gone in a second.

Jeanne Brucia expresses the sudden loss of hopes and dreams for Carlie.

3:07WatchAug 29, 2025

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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