Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 12, 1995 TAG: 9506120105
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DIANE STRUZZI STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The last words Carol Ann Smith is known to have uttered were to her husband.
"You won't have to worry about me anymore," she said, a small bag of clothing in her hand as she walked out the front door of their Roanoke County home.
Carol Smith had two children she adored and a stake in the community she had grown to love. On the morning of June 6, 1994, her husband says, she walked out and into the car of another man. She drove off, never to be seen or heard from again.
"She'd say off-the-wall things all the time, that she'd never come back; and then she'd say she was just blowing off steam," said David L. Smith, who is the last person to have seen his wife.
"At times over the years she'd get stressed out about something, her response verbally was, `I'll just leave,''' David Smith said. "When she was upset about the actions of friends, she'd say, `I'll just go and live in a cave for the rest of my life, I don't want to live with people.' [But] I'd never thought she would have done it."
No one did. And some still don't.
"Based on our investigation, there was no reason for her to just leave on her own free will," Roanoke County Detective Rick Moorer said. "She had every reason not to take off and leave."
Police and Carol Smith's family in Frederick County, Md., believe the 37-year-old mother of two is dead. Her disappearance has kept them baffled. How could this woman who closely watched her children never contact them?
"I think my sister is dead because she wouldn't walk out on her kids," said her sister, Cindy Keilholtz.
Carol Smith's husband is virtually the only person who believes she is still alive. To his wife, he offers a plea:
"Let somebody know where you are so everyone can quit worrying."
In the bizarre missing-person case of Carol Smith, not much makes sense. The slight woman with a mop of curly brown locks, who loved animals, children and flowers, has vanished.
From the beginning, the case took strange twists. Roanoke County police say they were notified of her disappearance only when Carol Smith's sisters were unable to get in contact with her - almost five weeks after her husband said she'd left with an unknown man.
David Smith said he did not know the man who drove the car, and he could not describe him. He could describe the vehicle only as a full-size, American-made car.
Police have checked Carol Smith's bank account, the airport, various bus stations and unidentified bodies around the country.
Each time, investigators have found no link to Carol Smith.
"I don't feel that Carol ran off with anybody," Moorer said.
Even though the sky was overcast the morning of June 6, 1994, Carol Smith was, as usual, watering the flowers in her yard. A neighbor beckoned hello about 7 a.m. It was the last time Smith was seen outside her house.
David Smith will not talk about that day or the time leading up to it.
"My personal life, my family has had to deal with it, but I won't discuss the details of my personal life in the paper," he said during a recent interview.
Smith filed for divorce a month after he says his wife left him. In those court papers he recounts what led up to her disappearance, alleging that his wife had an affair between May 25 and May 27, 1994, when he was away on business.
He attempted to discuss the issue with her June 5 and she refused to talk about it, according to the divorce filing.
The next day he brought up the subject again, shortly after she came in from watering the flowers. She told him that she had made arrangements to move out.
Smith said he had been through a similar ordeal with his wife several months before her disappearance. She had walked out for several hours and just drove around.
"This time she took things with her," he said, adding that she grabbed several hundred dollars in cash before leaving. "I figured she was coming back, that she'd get things straight and come back."
Within several hours of her leaving, David Smith told his two children that their mother had walked out of their life. It was his job, he said, to pull things together and give his children some stability.
"How do you describe hell?" he said of the days after his wife's disappearance.
"They were extremely stressful," he said. "I was trying to take care of the responsibilities I had - work, coaching a Little League team, the kids. ... I believed she was coming back, I guess because I couldn't believe she left to begin with."
He said he did not notify police or her parents because, if she did return, she would not have wanted her parents to know.
"I was willing to protect that secret if that's what she wanted," he said.
For weeks, Carol Smith's family tried to call, but could never reach anyone at the Smiths' Richards Boulevard home. Five weeks after Carol Smith disappeared, family members had their first contact with David Smith, who explained what happened. Immediately, her sisters called police and traveled to Roanoke County to help with the investigation.
From the onset of the police investigation, David Smith cooperated. When detectives asked to dig up his newly poured patio, Smith gave the go-ahead. After a nine-hour dig, police found nothing.
"Digging it up didn't bother me, but when the press people showed up, that's what bothered me," he said. "It's no one else's business, quite frankly."
When police requested a search of his truck, after neighbors became suspicious because he washed it soon after his wife's disappearance, he let them crawl through it.
"The police are doing their job," he said. "That inference that I've done something to my wife - I never raised a hand to my wife. Anyone who ever knew me knows I'm a pretty passive person. The whole inference is what blew my mind."
In the 11 months of the investigation, Roanoke County police have interviewed more than 100 people. Most described the Smiths as the quintessential couple, the all-American family. They regularly attended Christ Lutheran Church in Grandin Court. Each year, the whole family went to the beach for a weeklong summer vacation.
To those with whom police spoke, Carol Smith was a woman content with her suburban life, who deeply loved her son, now 10, and daughter, 8, and who was involved in her children's school life.
In her husband's eyes, Carol Smith was a woman beset by insecurities and inner frustrations. She was the type of person who would yell at the children, then feel guilty and brood over her actions, David Smith said.
Police and David Smith keep in touch monthly. He is the only person who has been able to re-create the last known hours that Carol Smith was seen alive. But investigators say they still have trouble following some of the details of his story.
"The people that we've talked to other than David [Smith] have been consistent" about what we've asked them, Moorer said.
"I'm still the last person that the police can reach out and touch who last saw Carol," David Smith said. "If that continues to make me a suspect, I don't know. There's nothing [police] have been able to come up with that I've ever done to Carol."
In September, David Smith won custody of his children. His divorce after 12 years of marriage is not yet final. Several months ago he rented out his Richards Boulevard house and moved closer to his work in Pulaski County. Smith is the superintendent of the Pulaski Correctional Unit.
His son and daughter have adjusted to their new life, he said. They rarely ask when their mother will return, but do bring her up in everyday conversation.
"We talk about things she's done in the past," he said. "I'll be cooking something and the kids will say, `Mom used to do it that way.' But there's not a whole lot of emotion attached to it. Maybe it's their way of dealing with rejection."
For Cindy Keilholtz, her sister's disappearance has ravaged her family.
"It's rough, I'll tell you," Keilholtz said. "It's something you think about constantly. We used to talk about what we'd look like when we'd be 60. I'll never know what she's going to look like when she's 60. She loved life. ... It's a terrible loss, something we'll never get over."
Last Tuesday, on the anniversary of Smith's disappearance, Keilholtz said she and her family planted a Japanese maple outside their mother's kitchen window. They decorated it with yellow ribbons and a large, colorful bow. Underneath they placed a statue of an angel and another of a baby, "because Carol loved kids."
"Since we have no grave, we planted a small tree in her memory," Keilholtz said. "I would like to see my sister again. But I just don't think I'm going to."
Anyone with information on this case can call Roanoke County Detective Rick Moorer at 561-8098.
Keywords:
ROMUR
by CNB