09x19 - Deadly Martrimony

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NARRATOR: A go-go go dancer in rural Ohio

vanished without a trace, leaving investigators

without a single clue as to her whereabouts.

The case went unsolved for years,

until a homemade box, tool mark analysis, and an old car

provided hints to where she had gone.

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The rolling farm country of Wayne County, Ohio

was home to -year-old Janice Hartman.

-Janice was a free spirit, and she was raised with two

brothers, tomboy affect, I mean she would

climb a tree with the best of us.

NARRATOR: And as with most teenagers,

she had a boyfriend, -year-old John Smith.

-He is kind of a nerdy, Howdy Doody looking guy, a person you

would forget right away after you met him.

NARRATOR: The two were inseparable,

and both had a rebellious streak.

-And he rode a motorcyclist at the time.

And she was that type of person that

wanted to be on a fast item whenever it was.

When they finished high school, Janice and John got married,

but the union didn't last long, and four years later they

divorced.

To support herself, Janice took a job at a local nightclub

as a go-go dancer.

-I think it was more of that free spirit,

again, coming back out in her.

That's the way she was.

Music was part of her life.

-Her family was very uneasy with this.

And she said, hey, come on down to the bar and see me dance.

She didn't take all her clothes off.

NARRATOR: One night after work, she

was invited to a private party.

Janice told friends later there was heavy drinking at the party

and also dr*gs.

Several men asked Janice to dance.

And at some point, things got out of control.

-She was drunk.

These other guys appeared to be drunk.

Some of the gentlemen at this party attempted to r*pe her,

attempted to sexually as*ault her, became very abusive.

NARRATOR: Eventually, Janice talked her way

out of the situation and left.

She immediately filed a formal complaint.

-She went directly to the police department at the time,

and told them the whole story, took statements,

and the whole nine yards, everything she needed to do,

and then she needed protection.

NARRATOR: Janice returned to the nightclub and go-go dancing,

but what happened at the party haunted her.

-She went over to my mom's a couple of nights

after that whole situation happened,

and she mentioned to my sister that, hey,

I'm going away for a while.

I'll be gone, don't worry.

NARRATOR: And with that, Janice disappeared

without taking her clothes or her car.

-If you're going to leave the area,

you're going to need things to go with.

You're going to need your clothing.

You're going to need the means of transportation.

NARRATOR: Police interviewed the men

who allegedly assaulted Janice at the party.

They admitted the situation had gotten out of hand.

But they said, they had no idea where Janice was.

-Because of her lifestyle, this bar-hopping go-go dancer

disappears one day just a few days after she

was nearly r*ped by a bunch of guys.

Police, I think, assumed that she just

led this dangerous lifestyle, and it

finally caught up with her.

NARRATOR: And for the next years,

no one saw or heard anything more from Janice Hartman.

Dennis Hartman disappeared just days

after several men tried to r*pe her at a party.

At first, investigators assumed her disappearance

was somehow related to the incident.

-Here's a young, troubled girl who's in her early s who's

hanging out with a bunch of questionable people,

probably smoking some marijuana, having a good time.

She probably ran away for a while.

The case eventually turned cold.

And after years with no further information,

the Hartman family gradually accepted the idea

that they would never see Janice again.

-When there's someone missing, you always have this hole.

I'm telling you, it's like a hole in your heart.

You'll have it.

It's never filled.

NARRATOR: long years passed.

Then everything changed with one telephone call.

It was from a woman who called Garry

asking for his sister, Janice.

-I sat down on the edge of the bed

and took the phone call, and I'm saying,

yes, I'm Janice's brother.

-And I said, I understand your sister

was married to John Smith.

-And I said, yes, she was married to John Smith,

but she's missing.

-And I said, well, our sisters have one thing in common.

They were both married to John Smith,

and I said my sister's missing.

Garry Hartman's reply was, my god lady, you got a problem,

my sister's been missing since November of ',

never to be heard from again.

NARRATOR: Sherrie, the woman who called,

said her sister -year-old Betty Fran had been married

to John Smith for only a few months,

and Smith had lied to Betty and her family about his past.

-He presented himself as a -year-old Mennonite bachelor,

never been married, a degree in aeronautical engineering

from Ohio State University with a specialization

in jet propulsion.

None of that turned out to be true.

-This was the turning point.

What are the odds?

What are the odds that one wife would disappear

under suspicious circumstances, then a second wife would

disappear under suspicious circumstances,

that they would both disappear with almost

the exact same circumstances?

NARRATOR: John Smith denied any involvement

in Betty Fran's disappearance.

-John's initial report was that he came home from work,

and his wife had left and there was a very brief letter, which

said she had gone out and please don't forget to feed the fish.

NARRATOR: Smith denied having anything

to do with his first wife's disappearance, too.

The FBI's Cold Case Unit got involved and discovered

an interesting coincidence in the Missing Persons Reports.

years earlier, witnesses told investigators

that they saw John Smith in the club watching his first wife

dance on the night she disappeared.

-John was not the type of person who

would want his wife, or even his ex-wife,

to be dancing in a skimpy outfit at a bar in front of men.

NARRATOR: Another witness saw Smith and Janice

leave together at closing time.

-The divorce was final.

John was still trying to win her back.

She was dating other men, so this

was like a pot that was just boiling,

and boiling, and boiling.

NARRATOR: Janice's family long suspected John Smith was

somehow involved in her disappearance.

Smith had a temper and had been abusive towards Janice

during their marriage.

-I was playing a game of chess with him one day.

I nailed him with a checkmate.

And he just looked at the board, took his arm,

slammed it across the chessboard, all the pieces

just scattered all over the room.

And I was awed.

I just sort of sat back.

I was thinking, whoa, what's coming next?

NARRATOR: Investigators had plenty

of suspicion but no hard evidence.

All they knew was that Smith was the last known person

to see both Janice Hartman and Betty

Fran before they disappeared. -Dead in the water.

I mean, we've got no leads.

It's exhausted and short of an accidental discovery

or him confessing.

We've got nothing.

NARRATOR: It was an astounding coincidence that John Smith's

first and second wives both disappeared without trace.

In looking into Smith's background,

investigators discovered that Smith had a younger brother,

Michael, and they decided to pay Michael a visit.

At first, Michael was unwilling to answer their questions.

-After that interview, Michael went home

and talked to his wife.

He searched his soul.

Michael had had a secret, and it had

been eating at him for years.

And he searched his conscience, and he decided

that he was going to turn on his brother.

NARRATOR: Michael told the FBI a horrifying tale.

He said shortly after his brother's first wife, Janice,

disappeared, he saw John building

a wooden box in his grandparents' garage.

-He thought that the shape was odd.

It had an odd dimension to it.

It was about four foot in length,

but it was rather short.

NARRATOR: John said he would use the box

to store Janice's belongings.

-Michael found this very perplexing

and didn't know what to think of it.

And why was he building a box to put her clothing in?

-If you're going to build a box to store things,

you need to build it deep, like a chest.

And John became angry with his brother at this time,

so Michael left the garage, went back

into the grandparents' home.

NARRATOR: Later that night, Michael went back out

to the garage and looked through the window.

-John is now packing clothing items

into that box, which was completed.

Michael thought it was odd how he was packing.

He was taking the clothing, and rolling it up, and laying it

along the outside edges of that box.

His brother was crying during the time

he was packing these clothing items.

NARRATOR: The box was nailed shut and stored

in their grandparents' garage.

Five years later, when Michael and his grandfather

were cleaning the garage, they pried the box open

and looked inside.

-Michael saw something that he would never

forget for the rest of his life.

Looking up at him was the face of Janice Hartman.

And this corpse had the legs cut off below the knees.

NARRATOR: Michael and his grandfather closed the box

and immediately called John, who insisted

he had nothing to do with Janice's death.

He said someone else k*lled her, and he was hiding the body

because he thought he would be blamed.

Michael said John put the coffin in his black Corvette

and drove away.

He never saw it again, and he said

nothing about it for years.

-He thought, my god, I might be an accomplice to m*rder.

I don't want to get in trouble for this,

so he just didn't say anything.

It's not neat, and it doesn't speak well for Michael,

but it's the truth.

NARRATOR: But where was the wooden box now years later?

Investigators learned that John Smith's stepfather was pouring

the concrete foundation in an apartment complex

around the time John removed the box.

Ground penetrating radar found a potential grave

underneath the garage floor.

-The highway construction people,

actually using giant saws, removed a portion of the garage

floor and then with excavation materials were removed

and screened by the FBI evidence response team.

NARRATOR: But they found nothing.

Investigators contacted every law enforcement agency

and coroner in the state asking if they knew anything

about a wooden box with a body inside missing the legs.

And they got a break.

-The officer who got that letter had been on the force

for years or more, and it was just the best bit of luck

we could have ever hoped for that he would have

been the person who got the letter.

Because he immediately remembered the lady in the box

from April of .

NARRATOR: years earlier, a highway worker

found human remains in a wooden box in some deep brush

along the side of the road.

-She's a Jane Doe.

they did all the things that they were supposed to do.

They didn't have the DNA technology that we have now.

There's no database they could go to.

There were no fingerprints that they could look up.

So they didn't have the kind of forensic capabilities

that they have now.

So they just buried her in a pauper's grave,

and hope for the best.

NARRATOR: But authorities kept the box, as well as

the nightgown that covered the victim's face.

And on the nightgown was a clue.

-I could see her face in the dress.

It was like looking at Jan like she was there with us.

It was chilling to see it.

-The image that is shown on that nightgown to this day

is just a very unnerving image.

NARRATOR: After all this time, was

it possible that forensic science could identify

the remains and also expose her k*ller?

Authorities in Indiana exhumed the remains

of the unidentified woman they had buried a decade earlier.

The bones were taken to forensic anthropologists, Frank

and Julie Saul.

-When we did the x-rays, we determined

that we were dealing with someone in early s.

NARRATOR: The pelvic bones indicated it was a female.

By measuring the femur, Dr. Saul determined she was

approximately '" tall, the same height as Janice Hartman.

The skull was in almost perfect condition

showing no signs of trauma.

Unfortunately, there were no dental records

of Janice Hartman for comparison.

-The smile was consistent with Janice Hartman,

but we needed to do a more thorough job

of establishing a positive identity.

NARRATOR: The anthropologists noted the woman's legs had been

amputated below knee after death.

To find out more, they sent the leg bones

to forensic anthropologist, Steve Symes.

-I am more specialized in that I work in the more modern samples

of anthropology or forensic anthropology.

And within that, I have a specialty of bone trauma.

NARRATOR: Dr. Symes noticed several false starts

on the bones, which allowed him to see

both sides of the instrument used.

Handsaws have teeth, which ultimately bend to the right

and left, making a W-shaped cut.

The teeth cut a swath through the bones that's

wider than the rest of the blade.

But the instrument used to cut these bones made

a V-shaped cut, jagged on one side and smooth on the other.

-It has teeth on one side and it's

a fairly good description of a serrated Kn*fe.

It would take a lot of strength to actually do that

or, what I would say, is a lot of motivation.

NARRATOR: A bone fragment was sent to the FBI lab

in Washington, DC for Mitochondrial DNA analysis.

When compared with the mitochondrial DNA from Janice

Hartman's mother, it was a match.

The body was Janice Hartman.

-I don't know what kind of human being

can do something like that.

He's a sick man.

Sociopath was the term that I heard used more than once.

NARRATOR: Investigators searched motor vehicle records

and discovered that John Smith's old Corvette sports car was now

in the possession of a car collector

in New Jersey who had kept it in pristine condition.

Measurements revealed Janice's coffin

could have easily fit inside the car.

And there was other evidence.

-The FBI agent noted scratches on the dash

as well as the rear window of that Corvette, which would be

consistent with the edges of a box that

size being placed in the vehicle.

NARRATOR: years after Janice Hartman disappeared,

John Smith was arrested and charged

with first degree m*rder.

Prosecutors believe Smith was angry that Janice divorced him.

And that he also objected to her work as a dancer.

Smith heard about the incident at the party Janice attended.

And he used this as his cover for m*rder.

Witnesses saw Smith leave the nightclub with Janice

on the night she disappeared.

Prosecutors think Smith strangled Janice to death

later that night.

-I think that the legs being severed from Janice's body

was symbolic in that she had walked out on John Smith.

For a controlling man, he could not handle that.

He made sure she would never walk away from him again.

NARRATOR: Smith built the coffin in his grandfather's garage

and buried Janice with her nightgown over her face.

He stored the coffin in his grandfather's garage

until family members told him to remove it.

Then he put it in his sports car and dumped it

in the weeds along an Indiana highway.

Based on the evidence, John Smith

was convicted of Janice Hartman's m*rder,

and he was sentenced to years to life in prison.

-These weren't just a pile of bones.

Science was able to give these bones

a name and relatives who loved her.

They were able to give these bones an identity.

They were able to bring this case to life,

and that's why they got a conviction.

NARRATOR: Michael Fleeman wrote a book about this case,

The Stranger in My Bed, and he doubts

anyone will find Smith's second wife, Betty Fran.

-John Smith is not going to tell them where Betty Fran's body is

if he is the one, in fact, who is responsible for this.

-That would be a step in the right direction,

and that would probably get him a conference with God

before he would be sent to hell.

-To do that means facing execution,

and it's just not going to happen.

I don't think Betty Fran's ever going to be found.

And I don't think her case is ever

going to be finally solved.

NARRATOR: Investigators found evidence that Betty Fran was

about to leave Smith, because she learned

he was having an affair with another woman.

-In my opinion, that is a good portion of John's problem

is abandonment.

If a woman is going to leave him, it's nah,

I control when you leave.

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