This is the first of the promised pieces of my fiction. It is a little longer than a typical blog
post, but read on, and please, please, please leave me some feedback.
In 1997, as many of you know, my ex-wife and I were living in
the St. Petersburg area of Florida.
Across the bay in a suburb of Tampa, a four-month-old baby girl
disappeared from her crib in the middle of the night. Based on the anecdotal evidence of a garage
door left uncharacteristically open, a family dog that never barked, and the
nursery being the only room intruded, the police quickly began to target little
Sabrina’s parents, Marlene and Steve Aisenberg as the probable cause of the
infant’s disappearance.
Over the next several years, transcripts of unintelligible
wiretaps, police press conferences offering potential scenarios and wild speculative suspicions in
the press, were weighed against verifiable facts, unidentified fingerprints, and detectives
caught lying on warrant affidavits.
Charges were eventually levied and then thrown out by the courts. The Aisenbergs have never wavered in their
protests of innocence and many in law enforcement believe they got away with an
unspeakable crime.
With no answer to the whereabouts of Sabrina Aisenberg, popular
opinion is as divided as the accused and the accusers. There are as many people convinced of Marlene
and Steve’s guilt as there are certain that the botched investigation and “malicious
prosecution” is the only reason Sabrina is still missing.
As a writer, I was intrigued with the juxtaposition of
opinion and contradictory evidence. The
following story is my attempt to create an unresolved conflict of truths and
beliefs. Fauna has evolved from a typical third person story, to a
monologue, to a one act play, and finally to the interview form as it exists
today. I don’t think any writing is ever
finished, but I think this is ready for you to read.
Please leave a comment, and share it with
friends (there are links for Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and email at the end of
the post).
Fauna
FOREWORD
The
following is the story of Warren Thomas Smith as it was told to me by the
convicted murderer himself just months before his death. This is essentially the same tale he used as
his defense during his trial. The
purpose of recounting this saga is simple:
I promised Mr. Smith that I would.
The promise was in exchange for his granting me the interviews from
which this account has been derived.
I
admit that I entered into this agreement suffering the same biases and prejudices
that many of my readers are sure to have.
It should also be understood that Warren Smith’s genuine sincerity and
indisputable consistency, coupled with events that coincided with his suicide
on April 19, 2000, has given me reason to question my initial judgment. With the exception of this foreword and the
attached postscript which details certain news accounts that corresponded with
his death, Mr. Smith’s depiction of the events leading up to this tragedy is
presented without editorial comment or opinion.
The
interviews represented here were conducted over three consecutive Mondays in
November 1999. I generally write (as I
hope many of you already know) stories of life’s anti-heroes, damned by
innate evil or uncontrollable circumstances.
I was tediously researching a (still unpublished) plot line in which my
protagonist murders his one true love.
In the course of my endeavors to write credible characters, I
interviewed and studied eighteen convicted killers. Each of the fifteen men and three women had
killed someone for whom they professed a deep and undying love. None of the slayings were spontaneous
incidences of rage or passion, rather each was
apparently carefully planned and executed with total deference to the professed
affection between murderer and victim.
It
was with this purpose that I traveled to Raiford ,
Florida Florida ’s
Ocala National Forest
Smith
had acquiesced to my interview for the reason already stated, and was relaxed
and unencumbered by manacles or shackles during each of the sessions. His stature and demeanor were much the same
as we all remember from the televised coverage of his trial. The nine-and-a-half years of confinement had
somewhat grayed his hair and added more than twenty pounds to his stringy
physique. He had just acknowledged his
fifty-third birthday (he laughed when I asked if it was a celebration) with an
unauthorized tattoo of a broken heart crossed with Fauna’s name. He was obviously troubled by the juxtaposition
of his devotion to the girl and his participation in her tragic fate.
The
following account is edited modestly.
Some omissions are intended to delete repetitions and reiterations that
resulted from the various breaks in our conversations. I employed a minimal amount of editorial
correction of syntax and grammar, and only where I was concerned that his poor
use of English might detract from the significance of his account. I was more diligent in omitting profanity as
it added little depth of meaning and I desire the widest possible audience for
this story. There are times that Mr.
Smith’s chronicle appears to be nothing more than a ludicrous, self-serving,
logorrheic fantasy, but it is my considered opinion that Warren Thomas Smith
believed every word of his tale.
Union Correctional
Institution
- Raiford , Florida
November 1999
Okay,
if you want to know what [...] happened to Fauna, I’ll try and tell you, then maybe you can tell me why I’m in this [...] jail.
I
found her back in ‘70. It was kind of
fluky that I was where I was. Right
place, right time, I guess. Maybe it was
the wrong [...] place, I don’t know. But
it was all because of my job.
I
had had a tough week. Back then I was
pounding nails for some […] want-to-be contractor. He was the kind of […] hole that would stand
over you and tell you exactly what to do, and then bust your nuts in front of
God and everyone for doing it wrong.
He’d cuss and call me names for doing a job exactly the way he told me
to. He was a good one for screaming in
your face. I didn’t like him much.
Friday
came and I thought about going out and getting wasted. I drank a lot back then, but instead I
just went home. I was feeling
strange. Kind of antsy, if you know what
I mean, like I needed something. I don’t
how to describe it. This is what those
detectives said was supposed to be my pedophilia. It wasn’t anything like that. I wasn’t horny or lonely or nothing. What I think it was, was a prem... What's that word, yeah, premonition, like
ESP or something. I knew something was
going to happen, like an itchy palm before you find money.
Anyway,
I cashed my check at the grocery store, bought a can of Dinty Moore, and went
home. I didn’t do much that night. I ate the stew while watching some movie on
TV, and went to bed. Back then I didn’t
go to sleep much without having a couple of drinks. But that night I fell asleep stone-cold
sober. It was kind of weird, I slept all
night, but I remember when I woke up, I was dog-tired. It felt like I’d been up all
night.
I
know this might sound like a load of bull […], especially after everything that
happened, but something was playing on my mind, you know, inside my head, and I
think it was Fauna. I think she was
trying to let me know.... Like she was telling
me to come get her. Ever get a feeling
like that?
It
was Saturday morning; I was up early, dog-tired, and I had nothing to do. Thought about it and decided to take a drive. You know, get out and cool down; mellow out
and take it easy. I needed to forget
about work for a while. I thought about
calling up some of my friends, but figured I was better off going solo, besides
I didn’t know what I was going to do and I didn’t want to be obligated to no
one.
I stopped at the Circle K down on
the corner for one of those big cups of coffee to clear my head and started out
east on 40. I don’t know if you’ve ever
driven that road, but its mostly just two lanes that winds its way out through
the Ocala National Forest Florida
There
was a lot of traffic that morning; mostly bikes and trucks pulling boats. That’s why I decided to get off the highway
and take the side roads.
I
was pretty near into Lake
County Railroad Grade Road
This
part of the woods is really empty; nobody out there. There’s a few lots cleared like they was
going to build something, and every once in a while you’ll see an old trailer
or a little cabin, but no people. I
guess there must be some somewhere, but there’s no place to shop; no business to work;
not much of nothing except hunting and fishing.
I
seen a short gravel driveway that ended at a gate ‘bout twenty feet off the
pavement. I pulled in it so I wasn’t
blocking the road, climbed over the gate, and stood behind a bush to take a
pee. Sounds kind of strange doesn’t it,
way out in the middle of nowhere and I had to hide behind a bush to take a
piss. Funny how things stick in your
mind.
You ever been out in that part of
the forest? It’s pretty cool out
there. Nothing around but Nature. I didn’t know whose property I was on or if I
could get in trouble for trespassing or something. Out there you got to be careful, you know,
you could get shot. But I... I just... I don’t know. I felt right there, you know, inside; I don’t
know what, happy maybe? Not scared. I don’t know.
It was a weird feeling.
I decided to walk around a
bit. Just wanted to see more of that
place. I was thinking, it was pretty
cold and wet that morning, so I wasn’t too scared that I’d run into a snake or
something. I wasn’t dressed for walking
out in the woods; only had on a T-shirt and cutoff jeans.
It’s pretty out there. I mean, real back country Florida Florida
kind of way; not like the beaches or in the city; old Florida
I was trying not to make noise,
just listening, in case I could sneak up on a deer or a coon or something, and
I was trying to keep a good track, you know, my bearings, so I wouldn’t get
lost. You know how your senses get kind
of sharp when you’re out in the woods?
I’ll tell you, I could feel something out there. I was being drawn by something; something was
guiding me, leading me to where she was. I can’t say what it was, but something was
telling me where to go.
I don’t know. I was just walking and looking and listening,
and then something made me stop. I stopped
right next to a bush. Don’t know what it
was, there wasn’t a noise or a smell or nothing. I just kind of sensed, or felt, like ESP, you
know, that I was supposed to be there. I
could feel it there. There was
something in that bush; something I needed to find.
It wasn’t really a bush; it was briers. The thickest […] I ever
saw. Dense, you know, like a solid bunch
of thorns. There was no way through it,
no break, no thin spot, no nothing. The
vines were all tangled and man, was it full of thorns. There was no way in.... I know this don’t make sense, but I wanted... I knew I
had to get in there. I knew she was in there. Don’t ask me how.
Anyway, I picked this spot that
looked like it was a little thinner, you know, less thorns, and I plowed right
in. Jees, even now, thinking back, that
was so weird... And stupid. How my life would have been different if I
hadn’t have gone in there.
The cops were wrong. She was
in there. I’m not making any of this
up. Right in the mess of that. Right in the middle of all those briers.
I swore before, and I’m swearing
now. You make sure that whoever reads
that […] knows, I ain’t lying. This is
the whole [...] truth and nothing but the [...] truth.
She was in there; that’s where I
found her. Inside those briers and you
get this right. Inside there, there was
a hole in the ground. Not deep, sort of like a bowl or
something, I don’t know, maybe like a bed or some animal’s nest; right in the
middle of those thorns. And right there,
in that hole was that little baby. She
was naked, just lying there in a pile of green leaves, not crying or
nothing. What? Huh?
Yeah, they were green, like someone has just picked them off a
tree. Made a little bed for her.
Anyway, I was really freaked by
it. I thought about trying to forget the
whole thing and book it out of there. I
was thinking I didn’t need no trouble; I didn’t need to deal with someone’s
lost baby, but then she looked up at me and smiled. Man, I can’t tell you what that did to
me. And not the way those […] holes
tried to make it seem, I ain’t no pervert.
Yeah, right, I got a record: sex
offender. I got three years for humping
a girl who was only fifteen. I did my
time for screwing that little slut. It
don’t have nothing to do with this. Besides, a nineteen year old boy doing his
underage girlfriend ain’t the same as molesting a little baby or doing
something to his daughter. I ain’t a
pervert, and them […] holes knew that.
Yeah, that’s part of the story
too; getting her out of there. I’ll tell
you, it wasn’t easy, but I got her out of there without her even getting a
scratch. I got pretty tore up though; I
was a bloody mess; cuts all over my chest and arms. I had took my T-shirt off and wrapped it
around her. Folded it up like a diaper
you know, then I wrapped my arms around her as tight as I could and pushed my
way back through the way I come. It
didn’t matter that I was getting cut up; I knew I had to protect that little
baby.
Once we were out of there, I ran
like hell all the way back to my truck.
It took me about twenty minutes
to find a damn 7-Eleven and call the law.
Man... That’s when all [...] broke loose.
Some State people came and took
little Fauna and the cops put me in cuffs.
There was all kinds of cops there; local Sheriff's deputies, game
wardens, even some Feds, ‘cause it was in the National Forest.
I took all of them back to where
I found her. I showed them the briers
and that hole with the leaves. I showed
them everything, told them how I got there, everything... But they said I was lying. They were saying she was in too good a shape,
that she wasn’t cold enough, that no one could have put her into those briers
or got her out without her being scratched up.
They said that there was no shit or piss or anything in them leaves that
showed she had been in there. They said
there was no evidence at all except for what I was saying, and that didn’t make
no sense to them. I thought I was
screwed.
Yeah, well that’s the way it
happened. Think about it, why would I
lie? I was the one who called the
cops. Why would I finger myself? I could of just left that baby in the woods
and nobody would’ve known. No, they got
it wrong; I wasn’t lying. They still got
it wrong. Besides, why would I be lying
now? After all that’s happened, I got
nothing to gain. It ain’t like they’re
going to change their minds. No, I ain’t
lying. I swear to you, this is the [...]
truth! But they won’t believe me.
They finally let me go around
midnight, pending the outcome of their [...]
investigation. I’m sorry, I’ll watch
my language. I guess you can’t print
that, huh?
See, they didn’t have no evidence
to say I was lying or that I was telling the truth, so they had to let me
go. Our legal system at work, ha! They still ain’t got no evidence, but here I
sit.
Anyway, I asked if I could see the kid. They said she wasn’t none of my
business, that the State of Florida
I was stewed about that all
weekend. All I could think about was my baby. I don't know how, but I knew she was supposed to be with me. Monday came, man; I didn’t even call in to
work. Screw it! My new baby was more important than
work. I just started calling every damn
state phone number I could find. I had
to figure out where she was, so, you know... Listen, I wanted to see her, nothing
more. I still don’t know why everyone
still tries to make more out of this. In
my head, she was my kid, you know. What
would you do?
I don’t remember who it was that
slipped up and told me, but I found out that Fauna was being kept by Mrs. Mary
Adamson. I didn’t know Mrs. A back then,
but it didn’t take me long to figure out who she was and where she lived. It wasn’t but about thirty miles away. I went straight out there.
Mrs. A was calling her Baby Jane
Doe when I got there. What a [...] name. Sounded like something they’d put on a dead
body in a morgue, not on a live baby.
Mrs. Adamson was all right. She’s a nice lady. Widowed. I never told her how sorry I was for what
happened. She loved Fauna too. If you see her, would you tell her I’m
sorry? And tell her I’d like to see her;
tell her to come visit if she can. I
really liked her.
Anyway, I told her who I was,
that I was the one that found the baby and all, and she let me right in. I got to see little Fauna right away. Mrs. A could tell I didn’t like it when she
called her Baby Jane. I told her right
out why. I told her that I found her out
in them woods and until they could find her real momma or whatever, I thought
she should be called Fauna. I told her,
you know, like in school, you know, Flora and Fauna. I always liked Earth Science.
Mrs. Adamson liked that name
too. Said it fit her. That’s how she got to be Fauna.
Anyway there was a lot [...]
going down over the next couple of weeks.
Half the time the cops acted like they believed me and were looking for
whoever left her in the woods, and half the time they where trying to figure
out whose kid I had taken and if I had did anything to her. Funny, at the time, I thought my [...]
nightmare couldn’t get any worse. Look
at me now. At least they ain’t going to
kill me.
Mrs. A said that even the doctors
from DCF were acting suspicious. They kept checking
Fauna to see why was she so healthy and if she had been violated, and how if she had really been out in them woods, why she
didn’t even have a rash?
It is pretty weird you know, you
claim she was out there naked as a jay-bird without even a diaper, yet there
were no signs of hypo..., whatever
that word is where you get really cold on the inside. Besides, how was someone going to get her out
there without leaving some kind of trail or footprints or a cigarette butt or something? Hell, I still can’t figure it out, if it were
people or something, how’d they get her into those briers without cutting her
up real bad? Not to mention, why. Why leave her out there? I guess that’s why they never really believed
me.
Mrs. Adamson let me see Fauna almost
every day I could.
I had to get a new job; I kind of
never made it back to the other one. He
was an […] hole anyway. I started
driving a truck for a laundry company.
You know, like for nursing homes and restaurants. It paid pretty good and I had plenty time at
night and on weekends to go over to Mrs. A’s and play with Fauna. After a while, the law started to leave me
alone some, stopped asking me questions and hassling me. Everything was going pretty good. I thought all that [...] was finally passed
me.
Fauna was doing great too. She got big, real fast, like I mean one day
she’s pissing in a diaper and the next she’s walking around and talking and […]. You know I never had a kid of my own, except
Fauna. You got any kids? Kids grow up fast. It’s like those first ten years are a
blur. Man...! You know, learning her to ride a bike... Learning her to talk... Birthday parties... Damn, it all happened so fast. She just got big, I mean, I guess I was
getting old too, but man... She just
got big so fast. I wish I remembered
more.
I had found her in February, so
me and Mrs. Adamson decided to make her birthday February 2nd. You know, Groundhog’s Day? Came out of a hole...? I don’t know, maybe it’s only funny to me and
Mrs. A. Anyway when she was... I don’t know, she was pretty young, Mrs. A
said we had to have her christened. We
just told them her birthday was February 2nd and that’s what they
wrote down. She got christened and
that’s when she legally became Fauna Adamson.
They had to use Adamson, not Smith, I guess because I wasn’t her real daddy. Not that Mrs. A... It don’t matter.
You know what? That was when I learned how to spell
Fauna. I thought it was like the deer,
you know F - A - W - N - A, but it was really F - A - U - N - A. I laughed about it that night, you know, I
named her and the whole time I didn’t even know how to spell her [...]
name. I guess I remember some stuff from
school pretty good, but I wasn’t no good at spelling. Since I quit school, I don’t do much reading
and I never did write much, you know you don’t need to do much reading and
writing when you’re a delivery man; bed sheets, tablecloths, towels; invoices
are already made out. I just count [...]
and get them to sign for it. Anyway,
that don’t matter, she was legally Fauna Adamson.
Things were going along pretty
good up until about the time she turned ten.
I don’t remember the day exactly, but it was sometime in February, not
long after her birthday. Mrs. A said
that DCF had found some people who wanted to adopt her. It didn’t sink in too good right away. Mrs. A said she couldn’t keep her anymore;
they wouldn’t let her. She said Fauna
was going to have to move up in the panhandle with some Christian minister’s
family. She said she wasn’t legally mine
or hers, and this new family had
rights. Right, they got rights? What about
me? What about Mrs. A? She said that some state psychiatrist said I
should stop coming by to visit. He said we
needed to get Fauna used to me not being around so that she wouldn’t get upset
when she moved. Some […], huh? We’d been together for ten years, and some
shrink, never been around her and me at all, thinks it would be better if we
just stopped seeing each other, like that wouldn’t screw both of us up. Mrs. A said we didn’t have no choice; we
didn’t have no rights.
Man, I hadn’t had a drink since... Well, since before I found
Fauna. […], I made up for it that night
though. I got really messed up. I must have been drunk out of my mind when I
decided to take her. It was pretty
stupid I guess, but I’m still sure it was the right thing to do. They didn’t have no right to take away my
little girl. I did have rights and so did Fauna.
I took her right out her bedroom
window. It was on the second floor, so we
had to use a ladder. I’d seen a show on
TV about, what was his name, Limburger?
Anyway, that give me the idea how to do it.
All I had was $482.00 and an old
Ford pickup that was running pretty good.
Fauna said she didn’t care; she wanted to be with me. She said I was her daddy. We took off and made it all the way to the northwest
corner of Texas
No, why would they ask? She was my daughter. Nobody ever asked. No, I didn’t say nothing about Adamson. We just used Smith. I had ID and they took my word about Fauna.
The Johnsons, the people that
owned the ranch, liked us. They helped
out a lot with Fauna. She got to live
with them in their big house, she had her own room, and she went to school and
everything. Nobody really said nothing
about her, even at the school. I told
them her records was lost.
I stayed out in the bunk house
with the other hands, but we were still just like a family.
You should have seen her back
then, she was really happy. She loved
all them animals on the ranch. It was
like she had some kind of power with them.
The horses, the cows, all them animals, even the chickens, they’d
just come up to her, you know. They were
never scared of her, like they knew she wouldn’t never hurt them, like she
understood them. It was pretty cool.
You know, one time I remember, we
were out walking around in the pasture and she went right up to a
jackrabbit. She just bent over and
petted it. That damn jackrabbit, you
won’t believe this, he went down in his hole and brought out a whole bunch of baby
rabbits. I ain’t […] you, it brought out
its own babies for Fauna to pet. She
just set down on the ground and they all come right up to her. She did [...] like that all the time.
We should have stayed there
forever, you know, in Texas
Homesick for Florida Texas Florida
Fauna had grown into a real lady, you know, developed and all. She had this great, long, straight, blond
hair, and a perfect face, I mean perfect, like really perfect features and she
had a perfect figure too. She looked
better than any of them women on TV or in the movies. I know that some people are going to think
that I mean this in some bad way, but man, she was hot. I mean, I know what hot means, but she was
like my daughter. She was pretty and all,
but I never thought of her as anything but my daughter, I swear.
We came back because she wanted
us to. I wanted to stay there, but she
kept talking about coming back. She said
that she wanted to see where I had found her; where she came from. She wanted to see what her woods looked like. Let’s
face it; there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t have done for Fauna. So we come back to Florida
No, I wasn’t too worried; I
figured nobody was looking for us very hard after all that time.
So, I bought us a truck, we
packed up everything we had, said good-bye and left. We came across I-10 to 75, turned south to Lake City
Anyway, we got in pretty late in
the day. We didn’t do anything except buy some groceries and eat. We watched some show on TV and went to
sleep.
The next day, I guess that had to
be Thursday, April 12th; we got up early. We took turns getting showered and
dressed. I always gave her privacy. I decided that we could eat breakfast on the
road even though we didn’t have much money left. I figured McDonald’s wouldn’t be too
expensive.
We ate and got out on the
highway. Not far, you know, just a few
miles. I drove down to the 40 turn off
and turned east. It was like I had just
driven it yesterday, I knew exactly where I was going without thinking about
it. I don’t think that I hesitated even
once. I drove right out there to that
spot; that same driveway; that same gate.
We hopped the fence and walked into the woods. It was exactly the same as it was back in
’70. Nothing had changed except it was
foggy that morning. The fog didn’t
matter ‘cause I knew where we were and exactly where we were going.
It didn’t take too long to get
there, I told her, “It was here, honey.
Somewhere right around here.”
I knew what to look for, but she
seemed to know too. I was looking one
way and she walked off in the other.
I know this sounds strange, and I’m
going to swear to you again that this is the truth, but there wasn’t a sound or
a smell or anything. I just suddenly
knew. I knew Fauna had found it; the
brier patch. It was still there. Looking exactly as it had all those years
ago. How she found it, I don’t
know. It was like she had some instinct,
you know, or ESP. She knew what to look
for and right where to go. I felt it
too. I know you won’t believe this, but I
felt her feel it.
I turned around and Fauna was
about thirty yards from me. She had
taken off all of her clothes. She was
naked. She was... beautiful. I’m not saying she was sexy or I was turned
on or anything, you know, she was really, really beautiful, but she was my
daughter and all grown up. It was like I
was seeing her for the first time. I
never saw her bare-ass naked before, not since she was a little baby. Now she was all grown up and developed like a
woman. She was... beautiful! Like no woman I’d ever seen before.
I swear, it might have been the sun coming through the fog, but she seemed to glow, like there was a spotlight on her or something. I’ll never forget how she looked. She was so beautiful. That was the last time I ever seen her.
I swear, it might have been the sun coming through the fog, but she seemed to glow, like there was a spotlight on her or something. I’ll never forget how she looked. She was so beautiful. That was the last time I ever seen her.
She was standing right where I had
been back in 1970. She looked up at me
and waved and then she walked right into those [...] briers.
I thought, “Christ, she got no clothes
on and them thorns..., them [...] thorns!”
I ran as hard as I could. It couldn’t have taken more than a couple of
seconds to get there. The briers ripped
my shirt right off my back. I ran right
through them. I was back in that hole,
that dip, or nest, or whatever [...] it is, and she wasn’t there... She wasn’t anywhere. She was gone...
I screamed. I ran back through the thorns. I kept screaming and yelling. She didn’t answer. I ran and I looked and I called and I
ran. I couldn’t find her nowhere. I swear, she was there and then she wasn’t. I swear.
She walked in them briers and just disappeared.
I didn’t do anything to her, I
swear. I ain’t lying. Nothing happened to her except she was
gone. The blood on her clothes was mine
from the thorns, I don't give a [...] what the cops say. I picked them up, you
know, her clothes, and got my blood all over them; my blood! That’s why they were bloody. I didn’t hurt her. She didn’t scratch me like they said. Nobody will believe me ‘cause it’s too... I don’t know... I don’t know what to say anymore. She’s out there, somewhere in them woods, I
know she’s out there, she’s got to be out there and she’s got to be alive
‘cause I didn’t kill her. I swear I
never hurt her. I couldn’t have hurt her... I couldn’t have...
Someday... Someday I’ll prove it. The truth will come out. It has to.
You’ll see. They’re going to let
me out of here one day and as soon as they do, I’ll prove it to you. To you and all of your [...] readers. I’ll prove it to that [...] sheriff and that
[...] Judge; to everyone. I didn’t
murder no one. Fauna’s out there. She’s still alive, she has to be, and I’ll
find her again.
POSTSCRIPT
The following two news clips came
to my attention while I was still compiling my notes and editing this
interview. I make no assertion that,
with the exception of the embedded references, these items have any relevance
to the veracity of Warren Thomas Smith’s account.
In a related story,
Warren Thomas Smith, the man convicted in the disappearance and murder of Fauna
Adamson, was found dead in his cell at the State Prison in Raiford today. Officials say that he apparently hung himself
shortly after learning that the Parole Board had denied his request for early
release. His remains will be interned at
the prisoner’s cemetery on the penitentiary grounds tomorrow morning. He has no known relatives.
The heroic rescue is
being credited to a troop of Boy Scouts on a weekend wilderness hike. Park Rangers have been unable to determine
the trail used by whoever left the baby in the woods. There are no suspects or persons of
interest. US Forest Department officials
are requesting information on any suspicious activity in or near the Olympic
National Forest last weekend.
The child was taken to Children’s
Hospital for a medical evaluation. When she is released, she will be placed in
the care of the Department of Social and Health Services.
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