Badpuppy Gay Today |
Monday, 11 August, 1997 |
Last Monday, the Associated Press (AP) brought national attention to Donna Smith. Mrs. Smith is the 54-year mother of 18-year old Chucky (Charles Frank Smith) who, on the final evening of his life,became the first victim of a serial killer (presumed to be a male) in 12 gay-related area cases. Nearly half of the nation's cases-- believed divided among 5 gay-bashing serial killers-- are attributed to one persistent strangler in the Norfolk/Chesapeake, Virginia area. Each of this murderer's killings have been marked with nearly the same identifying methodology, including strangulation and the discarding of bodies on deserted roadsides. Chucky was found wearing his pants, socks and shoes. Others murdered were entirely nude. All had a few similar physical characteristics, including dark complexions, their ages ranging between eighteen and thirty-eight-years-old.
The AP story also told of unsolved serial murders of gay men and transgender people "from New Jersey to Virginia to Texas, the slayings of as many as 30 gay men or transvestites, which activists believe are the work of five serial killers... unsolved." Our Own Community Press, a Norfolk-Chesapeake area gay publication, has criticized police for insensitivity toward gay men. Norkfolk gay activists too have cried foul due to the fact that a serial killer task force continues to ignore many recent murder leads that have been offered. Donna Smith's son , dark-haired Chucky, was felled by the killer in 1987. He had been a playful, good-natured boy, according to Mrs. Smith, a woman who now, in the face of police inaction, has decided to pull all stops to prod lawmen into finding her son's killer. "I'm not doing this just for myself," she says clearly, "but for all the other parents and friends of young people, gay or straight, who are victims of police inaction and police disinterest in gay-related cases." The Associated Press makes clear how in some localities working relationships between the police and the gay community have recently been forged, yet "other activists remain frustrated and say it still takes a lot of pushing to get many officers to take seriously any crimes involving homosexual victims, even homicides." Donna Smith stands to become a key figure in the struggle to bring attention to police disinterest in gay and lesbian cases, showing--as only a determined and loving mother can-- how such inhumanity affects heterosexually-inclined people as well as gays. Chucky, she believes with good reasons, was heterosexually inclined, leaving behind a distraught female lover and her then unborn child. "I'd have loved him as much if he were gay," said the grieving mother in last Tuesday's GayToday news story, "Love is unconditional." But even so, points out Mrs. Smith, "my son's murderer runs free because police are treating it as a gay case, and they don't care about solving gay cases because they're too prejudiced, too biased against gays and lesbians. And that's why I am standing side by side with lesbian and gay activists in the struggle to make sure police departments everywhere realize how everybody, no matter their orientations, should be equal before the law. That's the way our country is supposed to work. Only with these Chesapeake, Virginia police, anti-gay prejudice overrules all justice. Its a very sick macho thing. We've got to change their attitudes." In her one bitter recrimination against the entire established system in her ten-year fight to get something done, Donna Smith puts a disturbing question to America: "What's the difference between my son's case and Versace's? Money and notoriety, that's all." |
The Chesapeake, Virginia Police Department and the Isle of Wight Police Department are two institutions she hopes to goad into taking seriously the deaths of 12 young men, most of whom were deemed gay. "If we can only put the spotlight on these police and get them moving," she says, "maybe we can educate everybody a little bit and make our world a little safer too." "This AP article was a positive step," believes the tiny determined woman, " to generate awareness around the lack of attention to these murders by some law enforcement officials and some of the media." She believes that now that Andrew Cunanan is dead, its important that the often vulgar show of police prejudices and unconcern, when addressing reputed gay and lesbian murders, be exposed. She pointedly gives focus to the fact that of the thirty unsolved serial murder cases believed to have been committed against gays, nearly half are the work of Chucky's murderer. "This ought to make my son's case meaningful to lesbian and gay activists and anti-violence projects, shouldn't it?" she asked GayToday, indicating that she's willing to stand up for the need for gay rights ordinances to publicize police mishandling of her (mistakenly-presumed gay) son's strangulation. "The reason the police don't want to deal with my son's case," she says, "is that they don't care about someone they think is gay or a druggie. Also many of the murdered young men were Black. My son had a wonderful mixture of Native American blood and French Canadian." Mrs. Smith has written asking for help from Virginia's Senator Robb and U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno. From Senator Robb she received two short, nearly identical form letters that said, "Thank you for taking the time to express your thoughts,". Janet Reno issued not even one response to Mrs. Smith's plea to goad Chesapeake, Virginia area police into solving their department's embarrassingly lengthy string of gay-related murders. A Chesapeake detective, Cecil E. Whitehurst, in charge of the 12 cases, has never called her. When she called him, she says, he was unsympathetic and curt, saying, "I don't discuss my cases with anybody." Though the murders multiply, the Chesapeake Police have not called even once to express to Mrs. Smith their will to solve the case. "Even if they'd just phone once a year," she nods sadly, " to let me know they're still interested in finding my son's killer." The May 26 edition of The Virginian-Pilot, also devoted front page headlines to Mrs. Smith's dilemma: "Victim's Mother Longs for the Day When Pain of Son's Death Will End.----After a Decade and a Dozen Victims, She Will Have no Peace Until Serial Killer is Found." "Each time a body has been found," writes the Pilot's June Arney, "each time there has been a new twist in the case, (Donna) Smith has been transported back in time, to July 1987 when she first learned about her 18-year old son's death." "Every time there's another victim, I know that someone else is going through what I went through, and it breaks my heart," Mrs. Smith is quoted as saying.
To get on with her life, the anguished mother moved in 1992 from Virginia to Florida where she first earned her high school diploma and proceeded to get her associate's degree as a paralegal. She is now working toward a bachelor's degree in criminal justice, and in her classes she studies serial killers. Chucky's ashes she keeps on a credenza in an urn watched over by a porcelain angel wearing and halo and robes of white satin and gold lame. "I have him here with me," she told the Pilot reporter, "and no one can ever hurt him again." Reporting for GayToday, I spent a full day, August 8, with Donna Smith. As we walked together in a shopping mall, she pointed to a porcelain angel in a store window. "Isn't that beautiful," she asked. She told me how her anger over police inaction began surfacing all over again as she watched in wonder at Florida's inept police search for Andrew Cunanan, their arguments with other police and Miami Beach's initial refusals (now rectified) to grant the houseboat caretaker, who found him,a reward . In her son's case a Virginia suspect, she explained, a drug dealer, was arrested and tried twice in 1991 for Chucky's murder, but two trials failed to find the dealer guilty. There was no physical evidence to link the suspect to the killings and the gay-related strangulation murders have continued unabated since these trials. A second suspect, Elton M. Jackson, has recently been charged, as a result of Detective Whitehurst's work, in the death of one Andrew "Andre" D. Smith, though the Jackson case bears no known connections to the other serial killings, and is considered to have only a "possible" link. Mrs. Smith, who attended both of the 1991 trials for the acquitted drug dealer, is not enthusiastic about attending Jackson's September 8 trial. "There's no proof he's the killer and there's no proof he isn't," she says. Suspect Jackson, who is black, does not fit into the usual patterns said to be characteristic of serial killers. Also, Jackson, 41, knew the 38 year-old victim he's accused of murdering. The killer's victims, including 18 year-old Chucky Smith, have been Joseph Ray, in his 30's; Stacy Reneau, 21; John W. Ross Jr, 37; Billy Lee Dixon, 32; Reginald Joyner, in his 30's; Ray Bostick, 27; Robert A. Neal, 24; Garland L. Taylor, 24; Samuel E. Aliff, 31; Jesse James Spencer (age ?) and, possibly, Andrew ("Andre") D. Smith, 38. Police waited, "unfortunately," until the seventh victim's body had been found before expressing serious concerns about the nation's longest-running series of unsolved homicides. Mrs. Smith points out that no efforts were made to collect murder-site evidence until after that seventh victim was found. Backing up her commentary, Chris Bull's lead article (June 29) in The Washington Post Magazine, says, "It was only after Raymond Bostick's homocide....the seventh (victim), that police concluded that it and the others were the work of a single killer." Bull quotes Detective Fischetti, who was originally assigned to the case, as saying, "We didn't do a very good job comparing murder cases." and he points out that it was not until Bostick's corpse was discovered that "Fischetti convened a meeting of homicide detectives from Suffolk and Chesapeake. The assembled lawmen, according to Detective Fischetti, sat around "talking about this (serial murderer) as a group and decided we had to do something." Forensic evidence---"hairs, fibers, medical data and the like", according to The Washington Post Magazine, "was either uncollected in the earlier cases or inconclusive in later ones." Police do believe that the killer must have immobilized his prey somehow inasmuch as there have been no signs of struggles between any of the victims and the strangler. This is significant, they think, because some of the victims, carrying as much as 250 muscular pounds, would have fought, leaving at least some traces of their struggles, including, perhaps, the murderer's skin under their fingernails. Chris Bull says that the murderer has exhibited "signs of formidable intelligence." Some of the victims, he points, out, were kept by the murderer for a few days. His "substantial" strength is indicated by the fact he was able to snuff out lives either with his bare hands or by garrote. Donna Smith, armed by her newly acquired college education with the latest legal know-how, is now primed, more than ever before, to help gay and lesbian activists make a powerful case for increased police action in the nation's longest running spate of serial murders. "My anger over police bumbling in this case is at an all-time high," she says, "and I'm willing to network with justice activists without cease and to speak out about the unseemly injustices gay men and lesbians regularly face because of biased machomanic police. I believe that my son's murderer is still on the loose because of such unworthy police bias." (See GayToday news, August 5)
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