When a Killer Calls /// Part 2 /// 554 | Forensic Files

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GameChanger [Music] [Music] this is true crime garage and this is part two of When a Killer
[Music] calls [Music] hello hurry and you listen to the recordings and there'll be a see you probably the
next day with pictures and detailed information from the time I picked Sherry up at the mailbox until up to
tonight in my departure from this Earth Sheriff me might as well call it off it's over I will not be taking Alive Don
told me to turn myself in or turn myself over to God or I'll never live in peace
and never be forgiven and go to heaven well turn yourself over to I am and this is the only way I'm not
going to spend my life in prison and go to electric chair Dawn knows everything and God
bless all those listen I want to ask you something something this got out of hand
this this got out of all you had to do was let her go I was scared she she was dehydrating so damn bad you could have
called me from medicine I would have met you anywhere well that's irrelevant now
oh I mean all you had to do was let her go such a beautiful young life I know that I mean that's why I have to join
her now hopefully and U Mrs Smith please please under okay well that's it I I got to go did
she know you when you stopped yeah I there'll be pictures I asked her to stand at the
mailbox and you'll see by the picture her car door and cars in the background and um there'll be pictures all there I
think there's about eight pictures and Charlie Ka will be receiving a set and a detailed letter like I told you at his
house and I if the mail doesn't slow it down which you probably will if you don't get it tomorrow you get it the
next day you'll get exact copy of pictures that he gets and uh exact letters too do you know all of us or
just Sherry I know the whole family unfortunately that's why I can't face you if I decide different I've already
told Don what's going to happen night only and it'll be collect and I'm going to allow myself enough time just enough
time to get back in the area to set everything up if you don't hear from me tonight and sheriff mits and Charlie K I
used him as a medium today because I knew the cause were being traced and they came real close to catching me
three or four different times and they were correct I am in a red vehicle what kind I'm sorry I don't want them to
catch me before I meet my maker Judgment Day you think the Maker's going to forgive you
now he'll he'll do that or I'll be crucified and go to hell that's right well and you need to meet with somebody
that can talk to you well I got a lot to think about and I'm I'm gone Mr Smith and uh please I I know this might be
selfish but y'all please ask a special prayer for me your your daughter said that she was not afraid and she was
strong welded she uh knew that she was going to heaven was going to be an angel and like I toon she was going to be
singing like crazy when she said that she was smiling did you tell her you were going to kill her yes I did and I
gave her the choice like it's on the recording I asked her if she wanted to be drug overdose shot or uh suffocated
and she picked Suffocation my God how could you well forgive us God God know why this
happened I don't know it just got out of hand I thought you you know what goodbye
M I thought you were consider it in loving and a kind person the day after they found the body
of Sher Smith the killer called the home again and this time he called collect he
asked to speak with Dawn he told her he would be sending the family the photos of Sherry and he asked her for
forgiveness and for their prayers he said he was going to commit suicide because this thing got out of hand and
all he wanted to do in the beginning was to make love to Dawn and that is why he
was watching her Dawn startled by this interrupted the man and asked the man Make Love To whom then he corrected
himself and he said the name Sherry and he hung up the phone later that same day
the killer called a local TV network and asked for a specific reporter and told that reporter he planed to turn himself
in at some point and he would give the reporter an exclusive interview yeah this guy's changing his stories I'm
going to kill myself I'm going to turn myself in he should have just killed himself yeah you wonder if it's just
does he need to get for forgiveness from the family for some reason or is this attention seeking it seems like a lot of
work and a lot of effort risky behavior for some attention yeah but he's a complete whacka do mhm and the FBI
didn't believe or they say they didn't believe the man would turn himself in or kill himself at any point they believe
that the calls were in fact seeking forgiveness from sher's family but also to manipulate and control the situation
as much as he possibly could and that this guy would eventually kill again yeah well this guy's a giant piece of
[ __ ] what what would have been nice though is if he would have put himself in a brown paper bag and then rang
somebody's doorbell and lit himself on fire okay so I do want to touch on this though because we do know from this last
phone call that he says that in the beginning all he wanted to do is make love to Dawn Dawn's 21 years old sh
Smith is 17 and they actually you can find there's quite a bit of uh photos and images of both of them on the Internet
and you can see that the two of them look very much alike okay so this is when he makes this slip when he says
Dawn instead of Sherry when he's on the phone with Dawn I was really curious why
the FBI didn't update their profile because remember they said at one point that if he h killed before his victims
would have been children or young girls right okay well Sher yes she's 17 and that's more closer to being an adult but
Dawn is absolutely an adult so you almost wonder if now at this point if you're going to say if he is killed
before is there a chance that Dawn was actually the intended victim you know because he he's not going to see her or
see a girl that he perceives to be Dawn at the mailbox and walk up and ask her if that's are you Dawn you know right
but he did take some pictures before so then you wander throwing it out there maybe this individual's supposed to wear
glasses but doesn't and so is it is it that simple of a mistake and then when he gets closer it's the wrong girl but
it's too late at that point I think it's I think it's very much like that I think
it's he the intended victim was Dawn he hoped to abduct her and do whatever he did with Sherry with her but I think at
some point he would accept the substitution or like you said I mean I think it's kind of too late look he
probably opened up the door for the person mhm and and at that point it's too late in his mind well the man called
Don Smith again and this time he told Don that he gave Sherry a choice of how she would be killed and the choices were
overdose shooting or Suffocation and Sherry chose show Suffocation he told Dawn he killed Sherry by placing duct
tape over her mouth and nose until she died two weeks after the Abduction of Sherry 9-year-old Deborah May helck was
playing with her three-year-old brother at their home in Richland County when she was abducted from the front yard of
the family's home a neighbor saw a vehicle pull up and a man get out of the car the man spoke with Deborah then
grabbed her through the screaming girl into his car and drove off now the neighbor immediately alerted Deborah's
father who was inside their home they called police and after the two of them jumped into a vehicle and they went
speeding after the abductor car but were unable to track down the vehicle well this sounds similar to is the FBI
immediately thinking this is our guy and sher's case yeah yeah they believe the offender is one and the same and with
the addition of the second victim especially a younger victim the FBI didn't really change their profile but
they did add to the profile they added that the Killer and abductor is a white man outwardly shy may be overweight but
at the very least is not attractive to women so he's no Bradley Cooper those close to him May notice one or more of
the following the offender is experiencing weight loss drinking heavily not shaving regularly
and he would be eager to talk about the crimes as he is following the investigation coverage on the evening
news or in the papers he's also a collector of pornography that likely focused on bondage and or is of satom
masochistic nature and because of the young age of the second abducted victim Deborah only being 9 years old they
believe the offender would be too ashamed to call or correspond with de family well this turned out to be true
no phone calls and no letters the killer also stopped calling the Smith house the
FBI believed that the phone calls would be the easiest way to trap the killer yeah I believe it would be as well and
since he's not calling or writing it's almost like they would want to put out a taunt to him like you know he already
contacted news reporters before have that same news reporter do a report on how this guy uh has become weak and
vulnerable because he hasn't reached out to the FBI so knowing that the Unknown Subject Was following the case in the
news and in the papers the FBI decided to enlist the help of a reporter of a single reporter see they wanted to force
this man out into the open or at the very least get him to call the Smith's home once again they wanted to use Dawn
Smith as bait for their trap now the Smiths begrudgingly went along with this so they held a memorial service for
Sherry Fay Smith they wanted the Smith family and Dawn present at this memorial service and during the ceremony they had
reporters Snap photos of dawn holding a stuffed animal belonging to Sherry and flowers for her Memorial meanwhile
undercover agents wrote down license plate numbers for all the vehicles that were present in the
area now this didn't seem to flush out the killer out into the open but he did once again call the Smith home this time
calling long distance and collect you have a collect call from a giant piece of shot well that's interesting that you
say that Captain because okay so in these collect calls you would if you were calling someone collect you would
be given a brief uh set of time there where you could announce who you are so it would say you have a collect call
from so and so and then the person receiving the call who would be paying for it can decide if they're going to
accept the call except the charges are not M so during this portion where the caller can announce their name and who
they are it's a man's voice but he says that his name is Sherry F Smith okay Dawn
does accept this call this time the man was not using the voice Distortion device he told Don that God wants her to
join Sherry Fay saying it's just a matter of time this month next month this year next year you can't be
protected forever then he asked Don if she had heard of Deborah May helmi Don said she had to
which he tells her listen carefully go One Mile West turn left at Bill's Grill go 3 and 1 half miles through Gilbert
turn right at the last dirt road before you come to Two Notch Road go through the no trespassing sign go 50 yards
Deborah May is waiting God forgive us all Cherry face Smith uh yes I'll take the call uhhuh
thank you Don yes you know this at the hoax correct right uh did you find Cherry face
ring uh no I didn't okay I don't know where it is okay um you know uh God wants you to join Cherry Fay it's just a
matter of time this month next month this year next year you can't be protected all the time and you know uh
have you heard about Deborah May Hammer uh no the 10y old atlm I uh Richland County yeah uh-huh okay listen
carefully go one North well one West turn left at Peach Festival Road or Bill's Grill go 3 and 1 12 miles through
Gilbert turn right left dirt road before you come to stop sign at Two Notch Road go through chain and no trespass
inside go 50 yard and to the your time is there God forgive us and protect us all wait a second here
what happened to the pictures that you said you were going to send to me what happened to those pictures that you were
going to send apparently the FBI must have them no sir because when they have something we get it too you know
are you going to send them I think you're jerking me around because you said they were coming and they're not
here Johnny Smith I go listen you said you were going to wait for God's Direction you did not give me
lat he's going hang up that's it but obviously he's using Sher Smith's name so they know who is calling without
him giving his name just like they keep asking him hey you got a red car is it a
Jetta but he can control the conversation because he can always hang up mhm and and he knows that well and
he's controlling the conversation too by reading from a script so you can hear anytime he's kind of sidetracked with a
question that's exactly what happens to him he gets sidetracked and he doesn't know he hesitates he doesn't know where
to pick up where he left off from the script but the script is very smart on his part
and it shows a certain level of organization by this killer that this is probably an organized criminal because
he has a message that he wants to give to the family and by creating that script in advance he is assuring himself
that oh if I'm going out of my way for this risky behavior of contacting the family mhm then at least it's worth it
because I I am I'm guaranteed to get my message out to them if I stick to the script the thing here we get to see a
little bit of it's either just straight up lies by the killer which we we know these types lie often but it might also
be some of his psychosis where he says in one of the calls that he's a family friend and
that's why I can't face yall and that's not true at all he doesn't know these people these people do not know him
right but he was also watching Don for a time period so like you said in his thoughts in his mind he might have been
a family friend to them in his mind right and you see this situation where he's kind of all over the shop and what
he's telling Don Smith and the family he's saying look I'm going to kill myself I I need to meet my maker you
can't take a life and continue living your life right but you know and he goes on to say that he won't live in a cage
and he doesn't want to go to prison and he's not going to be electrocuted yeah he's not going to be caged like a dog
yeah and I think the the statement of well I'll be armed but I'll no longer be dangerous when they find me meaning
he'll probably still have the gun in his hand from offing himself right uh he won't be using that gun on law
enforcement when they find him but then he goes out of his way to say Sherry Fay
wants you to join her Dawn and you can't be protected all the time it could be next week or next month or a year from
now you would think that if he's not completely gone off the rails here that he is somewhat aware that he can't both
kill himself or even turn himself in and then follow through on that threat that he's
just made to Dawn yeah I wonder because and it's your contention that Dawn was the initial
Target and that possibly he just took Sherry by accident or he took Sherry as a surrogate for for Dawn right and I I
almost wonder if he takes this 9-year-old Deborah as whatever I say to Don on the
call by me taking another victim makes everything I say more real this is not a hoax I mean he says it again on this
call you know this is not a hoax like why do you have to keep bringing that up mhm and it's almost like he's saying
like look what I just did and your time's coming whether it's next week next month next year your time's coming
it's almost like I have this victim I've been stalking and I did not take and I didn't take her to be my
Victim but I am not going to to stop until she becomes my Victim right and with the Deborah helmet case we're
probably talking about a situation that's a a crime of opportunity he sees this little girl in her front yard and
for whatever reason he makes a connection to his previous crimes and decides to abduct the girl I really
think that it's a crime of opportunity that he just happened to see her and it was a victim that he knew he could
easily snatch and flee with uh with very little trouble to himself but it goes against everything that he's saying to
Dawn in regard to the Sherry Fay Smith case right where oh this just went too far I just wanted to make love to her
making it sound like he loves her or or believed that he loved her and it just went too far and he didn't know that she
was sick she had a rare form of diabetes that required her to consume large amounts of water if she couldn't get her
medicine and obviously when he abducts her he's not taking her with her medicine because he one doesn't know
that she's sick and she's not prepared to be without that medicine so it it really flies in the face of everything
that he says to Dawn in regard to the Sherry face Smith case it it really makes it feel like a lot of his words
have no real meaning yeah well he's a ly ship ha but I almost he feel like he took Deborah to keep living out this
fantasy of what he wanted to do to Dawn what's up next is the final call that we
have and this is a call to a different person it is still from our perpetrator but now he is calling Charlie Keys who's
with a local news outlet and he wants Charlie keys to be relaying information from him to law enforcement TR or if it
are hang up no the ability to do that all right this is concerning Cherry P Smith uhhuh and I'm going to use you as
a medium can you handle it uhhuh okay now listen carefully uhhuh um I'm can't live with myself Charlie
and I need to turn myself in and I'm afraid uhh and you're very intelligent person and I want you to be there with
Sheriff Mets and all officers he wants and uh at his home in the morning at 6:00 a.m. and
you answer the phone home at whose home at Sheriff mat's home all right now don't answer any questions unless I ask
yes or no uh ask uh you be there and you enter the phone and his home phone is 356
2118 now I'll verify that when you report tonight on channel 10 TV at 7 cuz I want to make sure this is not a hoax
call and I'll prove it to you by after I finish talking you call Sheriff Ms and talk to him directly and tell him that
he received a letter from Sherry handwritten it was her wheel and last Testament and on the top page it had 310
in the morning and the date 6185 and on the left hand side it had God is love and it was two pages long it
was a legal yellow pad and he'll know this is not a hoax char and please help me now are you willing to work with me
yes okay now be there like I said you after the phone and reconfirm that phone number over the uh TV tonight to make
sure I got it right okay I don't know if I'll be able to do that you could just call me back no no just on the TV say if
anyone has any information call Sheriff M or well no that's his home phone well just find out if his name is James R
Mets and if it is it's the right number then in the phone book can you work it in somewhere another like that uh well
we try to do that where it's not won't stick out yeah I'll see what I can do okay now at 7:00 do that and Charlie
please now you call him right now and you'll know this is not a hoax and I'm going to give you an exclusive interview
you only and when you be there and all I expect also is to have sherry fa priest
be there sher's priest yeah from Lexington Baptist uh-huh I mean yeah lexingon Baptist okay uh-huh now Charlie
please just it just went bad I know her family and her well and uh I just made a
mistake it went too far all I wanted to do was make love to her and I didn't know she had the rare disease and it
just got out of hand and I got scared and I have to do the right thing Charlie now please work with me cuz I feel like
I can trust you and and I've listened to you many times and that's why I picked you as the medium 6:00 a.m. tomorrow
morning Charlie okay I'll see what I can do don't see please work with me right don't worry okay now as soon as you call
the sheriff he'll know when you tell him that information that only I will know the real person that's responsible sh's
death would know what was in that wheel in last Testament okay and and also in parentheses it has cast it closed is
there her request and also you personally tell the family for me that uh please forgive me God forgives me and
take care of me I need to help that and I want to do the right thing and tell them to please honor sh's request cast
it closed plus take her hands and fold them on her stomach like she's praying do you understand that uh okay Charlie
I'll be listening for 7:00 and if I don't hear the number and well I don't I can't read the number realize what we're
doing there well just tell them just say James are met somewhere another work James are if that's the right number cuz
see I looked it up and there's several Mets and okay I'll see what I can do and if not call me back okay but please if I
can hear it being taped or traced and don't take me L Charlie okay you what Take Me Alive oh yeah okay don't worry
don't worry you be the only reporter now oh I don't want to make a circus out of
this right I understand and I'll give you an exclusive interview from the time I picked Sherry up until her death
everything all right fine okay thank you very much oh Charlie God bless us do you
want do you want do you want to tell me where you are now Charlie I'll listen for news and be there and you R your
Sheriff met flone in the morning okay thank you Charlie byebye [Music] this show is sponsored by better help do
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[Music] 2023 all right we're back you filthy animals cheers to everybody cheers to
everyone make sure you check out our other show off the record you can find that at truecrime garage.com if you need
a little more True Crime Garage in your life the FBI is now worried and regretting the ploy of using Dawn's bait
because of the received threat uh during all of this law enforcement was still submitting the letter from Sherry titled
the last will and testament to every possible test the letter was drafted on yellow lined legal paper from a pad so
they decided to use an SD machine this device can detect even the slightest indentations on a piece of paper they
wanted to see if they could pull any possible information from indentations that were made from writing on pieces of
paper above the last will in the legal pad and they found some interesting leads they found a partial grocery list
and a sequence of numbers with further testing they could detect nine numbers of a possible 10 digigit sequence the
numbers are in this order 205 83713 blank8 this was a phone number in Huntsville Alabama so working with the
phone company they checked all 10 possible phone numbers for a connection to Lexington County South Carolina where
Sherry and the Smith family lived one of the numbers in Huntsville received several calls from a residence
just 15 miles from Sheri Fay's home the home belonged to Ellis and Sharon Shepard law enforcement went to the home
and interviewed Ellis and Sharon the Shepherds told police they had made phone calls to Huntsville where their
son was stationed in the Army but they were out of town when both of the murders were committed they explained a
man who worked for Ellis as an electrician Larry Jean Bell was put in charge of house sitting for the 6 weeks
that they were away Larry was in his early 30s divorced lived with his parents he was neat and orderly and when
he picked them up from the airport he spoke constantly about the unsolved murders that occurred while they were
away he had noticeably lost weight he was unshaven and he was irritable the sheriff asked Mr Shephard to show him
the room where Larry stayed while watching the home under the bed they found Mr Shephard's handgun jammed in
pornographic magazines featuring bondage on the cover now regarding the sequence
of numbers the couple wrote down the telephone number for their son and gave it to Larry Jean Bell before they left
for their vacation with instructions that if anything were to come up with the house to call their son the police
played a portion of the last call received by The Smiths this is the one where the killer did not used the voice
Distortion device right and the Shepherds confirmed it sounded just like Larry's voice armed with this
information they did some digging and they found that a vehicle registered to Bell was seen at the memorial service
for Sher Fay the officer wrote down the plate number and noted that the driver did not exit the vehicle he simply drove
by the vehicle was less than 3 years old early the next morning police surrounded
Larry parents' home and arrested him as he was leaving their home to go off to work a quick background check revealed
Belle was twice arrested for attempted assaults on women on both of these occasions he attempted to force a young
woman into his car at knife Point unsuccessfully under questioning Bell admitted to nothing inside Bell's
parents home in his bedroom police found hairs on the bed matching hairs from Sherry fa Smith in Larry's desk they
found a sheet of stamps from which the stamp used to marry Sherry's last will in Testament originated from the
neighbor that witnessed the Abduction of Deborah May told police after the arrest
it was in fact Belle who he saw pulling the screaming child into his car that day under further questioning Belle
still admitted nothing so they played the tape of his voice from the phone calls for him and still Bell admitted
nothing so they brought in the FBI to further continue the questioning they took a different approach rather than to
continue to question him they explained to him that they had a lot of experience
in dealing with these types of crimes and that the perpetrator of these types of crimes never gets the opportunity to
explain themselves and their side of the story often the offender is too afraid and ashamed to admit what they have done
and once they are in court their attorney will not let them take the stand right so this individual is then
trapped in a nightmare that never goes away and he goes away to a lengthy prison sentence and no one understands
him no one knows what the hell he was going through at that time well I like their tactic here but we could always
employ my scary clowns where we dress up like clowns and we beat the guy to the inch of his life to get them to start
confessing well as they're explaining this to Larry they notice that Larry Bell is nodding his head up and down
he's he's agreeing with what they have to say uhhuh and seeing that he's responding they leaned in for the kill
and asked him when did you start to feel sorry about the crime Larry did they whisper this I don't know okay seems
like it' be a powerful move you know come on Larry tell us what you know we got you
well they ask him when he started to feel sorry about this crime and to which he says it was when he saw a photo
of the Smith family right then they asked him if he could have possibly done this sort of thing and Larry told them
quote all I know is the Larry Jean Bell sitting here could not have done this but the bad Larry Jean Bell could have
so that is going to be the closest thing to a confession that Larry Jean Bell would ever give regarding both of these
murders so we do have a confession or a loose confession right implied confession we have some of sher's hair
is found in his room on his pillow in his bedroom okay and then we have eyewitness that saw him taking the
9-year-old girl away and the and and then the car registered the yeah so him driving by
the memorial is not really any evidence you know it's stacking pieces on the case right yeah but but there is a lot
of evidence like you said you not only do you have the hairs that match Sher F Smith's hair in his bedroom I mean how
the hell is that going to get there two you have the sheet from which the stamp came from that the last will and
testament was mailed you also have all these little connecting factors to the letter itself you know the indentations
that they found using that estd machine and then you have the uh Shepherds for which he is home you know he's house
sitting for and they say yeah that's his voice on right on that recording and this is the killer that's calling and
taunting the Smith family and that's not as good as picking him out of a lineup or anything but that's that's something
right and and to which I guess for the lineup purposes you have a bit of less evidence regarding the abduction and
murder of the little girl of Deborah May helmi yeah but you do have that eyewitness who says okay you know I see
this picture of Larry Bell on the news and he calls up police and says that's the same guy that I saw take that little
girl so we have all this evidence mounting up and like you said this real Loosey Goosey somewhat of a confession
you know he doesn't say I didn't kill these girls he says the bad Larry Jean Bell could have done this would have
been uh capable I guess of doing this but the good Larry you know he's serving his community and he's serving God Sher
F Smith's older sister Dawn she was super brave and strong during the investigation into her sister's
abduction and murder she went on to be crowned Miss South Carolina and the following year she was the runner up in
the Miss America contest in February of 1986 Larry Jean Bell was convicted of murdering and kidnapping Sherry fa Smith
the jury recommended the death sentence and the trial judge imposed the sentence
in a ordance with the jury's findings in 1987 in a separate trial Bell was convicted of murdering and kidnapping
Deborah May helck and again he was given a sentence of death for N9 years Larry Jean Bell filed and played the appeals
game trying to work the courts but on October 4th 1996 the state of South Carolina in accordance with his
sentences Larry Jean Bell was strapped into the electric chair and killed a large crowd cheered as the hearse
carrying Bell's body left the Broad River Correctional Institution one of his defense lawyers said quote we have
executed a sick delusional psychotic man this is one of those weird situations Captain where life kind of mimics art
here and things that we've seen on TV in these fictional crime stories where a town and area is aware that there's a
serial killer out there on the loose claiming the lives of victims and it's a race against the clock to catch the
perpetrator and stop the madness stop the murder Larry Jean Bell was very much that situation he terrorized this area
for a little less than a month and it was a situation where the police needed to bring in the Heavy Hitters the FBI
and sled and people that were better equipped with better resources to track down this killer before the list of
victims continued to grow now unfortunately as far as Larry Jean Bell is concerned these are not the only
cases that he was suspected of there has been some suspicion over the years that
he may have been involved in three cases that remain unsolved to this very day two of which are Denise Nome porch from
1975 and Sandy Elaine cornette from 1984 and in those two cases neither of their remains have ever been
[Music] recovered but wait we have more more exclusive audio content for our beautiful listeners this week we were
very excited to re-release our original coverage of the last whe and Testament case the Sherry fa Smith case and that's
because as we said earlier John Douglas well he wanted to sit down and talk about his involvement in this case and
his new book that's coming out that's titled When a Killer calls a haunting story of murder criminal profiling and
Justice in a small town for those of you that don't know of legendary FBI profiler John Douglas well he is a
former FBI special agent in the bureau's criminal profile F in pioneer he's a founding chief of the investigative
support unit at the FBI Academy in Quantico Virginia and one of the creators of the crime classification
manual and we were lucky to speak with him this week in regard to his new book When a Killer calls but he's been on our
show before and we're happy to have him on again if you'd like to check out our previous John Douglas episodes those are
titled the Mind Hunter episode number 302 and mind Hunter John Douglas episodes 445 and
446 and now here is a preview of my conversation with the great John Douglas one of the worst things about this I
mean it was it was horrific was that the mother uh receiv received some of the calls as well as the sister Dawn and
then the mother asked him the mother says that my daughter know she was going to die and Belle says yes uh you know
she did and I gave her a choice and she could pick uh drug overdose gunshot or Suffocation and your daughter selected
Suffocation and so what he did he proceeded to use duct tape while she was alive and duct taped her her head and
then he waits he waits days for the body to uh decompose uh before he tells us tells
the family through now Dawn the other the other sister where we can find find Sher F Smith and the reason that began
that tells you something about him too because he doesn't want to leave anything forensically for us to
determine like the cause of death locate any kind of hair and fiber evidence but
what we could see is that and we we knew about the duct tape just by the evidence
she uh uh her hair after he duct taped her head he removed the duct tape because he didn't want to leave any
fingerprints on the duct tape and he would end up cutting some of the hair on her head to to totally remove the duct
tape but us so it was just it was just an unbelievable case and and uh to to set up um he stopped communicating with
us that's that was a problem when I finally went down there he stopped communicating with with the police uh
with the the family I had to get him to talk I had to get him to get back on the
phone so I I sat down with the investigative reporter and I told the investigative reporter uh that I I
wanted her to uh come up with a story where Sherie Fay is uh is buried we want to have a memorial service and uh I'm
not going to write it for you I can't do that as an asan but I want you make it poetic and we're going to set up at the
the grave site we're going to put a u kind of a lecturn a white lecturn with Sher face picture on it and uh when I
was at the house I asked to see Sheri's bedroom and Dawn her sister showed me the bedroom and and in the bedroom were
were dozens upon dozens of of koala bears and I started thinking in my brain what can I what can I do here what can I
do and I saw a small koala bear that was hanging from a string and I took that you pinch the shoulders and it opens up
and I'm thinking without telling anyone I'm going to use this at the gravite I'm
going to have Dawn who now he was targeting Dawn uh the other sister placed that at the uh at the gravide on
a flower and the whole is uh Nick is that he will we will peque his curiosity because we do know from the research
that I conducted and my colleagues they like to collect souvenirs momentos relative to the to the crime so we did
all it did all those things uh unfortunately from investigative perspective had no control over this uh
but she was buried very very close to the road if and he would not take that kind of risk but we were monitoring the
vehicles and we would catch him another way but had we not caught him another way that
we talk about in the book we would we would have come across him eventually because we had we had his license plate
number he stopped along with other cars and we were recording all of those uh vehicles and from him once we would do a
say a criminal check you know on these people who were stopping we would find with him that he had history he had a
criminal history of attempted abduction early on in his life he was involved in obscene telephone calls he tried to
abduct a 9-year-old girl besides a uh another teenager so we would have got him sooner sooner than later but uh we
got him other ways [Music] forensically join the colonel and John Douglas for their interview on part
three until then be good be kind and don't [Music] litter [Music] Angie's List is now Angie and we've
heard a lot of theories about why I thought it was an Eco move few your worse less paper no it was so you could
say it faster no it's to be more iconic must be a tech thing but those aren't quite right it's because now you can
compare upfront prices book a service instantly and even get your project handled from start to finish sounds easy
it is and it makes us so much more than just a list get started at angie.com that's Angi or download the app today

When a Killer Calls /// Part 2 /// 554

Part 2 of 3

www.TrueCrimeGarage.com (http://www.truecrimegarage.com/)

This week we have a real treat for all of our Garage friends. A three part series featuring an in depth case review by the True Crime Garage guys that includes rare audio from the killer. In Part 2 we pick up where we left off with a review of our “Last Will and Testament” case. It’s a case that rocked and terrified the great state of South Carolina. It’s the rare occurrence when a community is aware that a serial killers is at work, right under their noses. Who is next and how many lives will he claim before they finally catch the killer. We have gone back and added the actual phone calls that the victims family received from the killer. Additional commentary has been added as well so the listeners can hear the calls from the killer and analysis of the calls. There is even a special surprise at the end of part 2. This is the case of Shari Faye Smith and Debra May Helmick. Gather 'round, grab a chair, grab a beer and join us for this special three part series.

Recommended Reading: When a Killer Calls; A Hunting Story of Murder, Criminal Profiling, and Justice in a Small Town

This is the latest book from Legendary F.B.I. Profiler John Douglas and Mark Olshaker, the best selling authors of Mindhunter.

Our show - True Crime Garage “Off the Record” is available only on Stitcher Premium. For a FREE month of listening go to http://stitcherpremium.com/truecrimegarage and use promo code GARAGE

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Brief Summary

The episode details the abduction and murder of Sherry Fay Smith by Larry Jean Bell, including chilling phone calls and the investigation that led to his capture.

Key points

The Killer's Regret. The killer expresses regret over his actions, revealing a chilling choice given to his victim.
Chilling Choices. The killer recounts the horrifying choice he gave to his victim before her death.
A Disturbing Call. The killer contacts the victim's family, insisting that God wants them to join the deceased.
The Last Will and Testament. A handwritten letter reveals critical information about Sherry's death.
Larry Jean Bell's Arrest. Larry Jean Bell is arrested after police connect him to the murders.
Confession of a Sort. Larry Jean Bell implies guilt in a chilling statement.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

All you had to do was let her go.

The killer expresses regret over his victim.

3:19WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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