Chameleon
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Tonight on Dateline. What an unimaginable discovery. This is like a horror movie. It certainly was.

Good and evil are very real and they exist where you least expect them. I said, "John, where's my mom?" I was absolutely panicked. He came into the station to say his wife was missing. John, what is going on? You have a wife that's missing. Where is she? I don't know where she is. You have someone whose first wife disappeared.

And then a second wife who goes missing. This is major. There's another wife that's missing. We're like, we're going to get him. This is it. We've got him. John Smith was married to at least two women who disappeared. And now he's about to marry a third. Yes. He's a snake. He's slippery. Your mom's the third. Right. This is panic. They said, your mom is...

Three wives at the center of a heart-stopping mystery. I'm Lester Holt. This is Dateline. Here's Andrea Canning with Chameleon. There was one face he showed to the world. He was really, really nice, like overly nice. His girlfriends would tell me it was like God had heard my prayers and sent him to me.

But there was another side, an evil one. What happened to Fred? What happened to Janet? What is going on? We were terrified. What woman's going to die tonight?

For decades, he slipped away. We know he's not telling us the truth. We have no body, no weapon, no confession, no evidence. But none of that would stop them. We realized that this is a marathon. This is going to be a long haul. You would not let this go. I almost lost my job because of this case. Our story begins with a romantic weekend in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains.

Fran Smith was on a belated honeymoon with her new husband, John. Sherry Davis is Fran's sister, and Deedee is Fran's daughter. So she was going to take this delayed honeymoon with John to the Poconos? Yeah. Was she excited? Until an accident derailed their plans.

She got up to get out of the hot tub, walked into the bathroom and lost her footing and went down, broke her hip. Oh, what a honeymoon from hell. Right? It was. Her daughter, Deedee, down south in Texas, got the call. John called me. He called all of us. Hey, she fell. This is where we're at. They went to the hospital, of course. Fran needed surgery. I said, Fran, why don't I come up? And she said, no.

She said, "No, I'm fine." So then Dee Dee and I were calling her at least every other day. Back home in New Jersey, Fran began her recovery.

The one thing my mom did say, because she was a very high-energy, creative person, is that she was bored. Was she going a little stir-crazy being in bed? Yes. Slowly, Fran was getting stronger. She was ready to start physical therapy, and her spirits were up. She's like, I can't wait to get out of this house. And this was, of course, midday Saturday. She said, I'll talk to you on Monday. And I said, okay, Mom, I love you. She said, I love you, too.

On Monday morning, Dee Dee called her mom to check in. She knew she had a doctor's appointment the next day. And she did not answer. No. Which was really strange. It was really strange. Yeah, because she's barely going out at this point. Oh, yeah. She hadn't been going out. This was back in 1991. So Dee Dee was calling the landline at the condo her mom shared with John.

She tried again that afternoon. And I thought, well, maybe I got that doctor's appointment wrong. Maybe it's on Monday and not Tuesday. Maybe I misunderstood. So you keep calling and calling and calling and nothing. Nothing. Then it was Tuesday. Fran still wasn't picking up the phone. Neither was John. Dee Dee found a number for her mom's doctor's office. I'm calling from Houston. I was supposed to talk to my mom. I know she has an appointment with you. She goes, she missed it. She's not here.

Dee Dee called her mom's husband at work. I said, "John?" He said, "Yeah, this is he." I said, "This is Dee Dee. Where is my mom?" What did he say? He said, "I thought she was with you." What?

John told Dee Dee that her stir-crazy mom had left on a trip to visit family. He assumed that meant to see her in Texas or relatives in Florida. Fran hadn't been driving because of her injury, so he hung up to call one of Fran's friends who he thought may have given her a ride. And does he give you an update on that? He said that she had not seen Fran or talked to Fran in a week before.

John said he was as confused as they were. He told them Fran had left with little notice while he was at work, her yellow suitcase and favorite outfits missing from the closet. He said, well, are you sure she's not in Florida? I'm like, yes, John, I'm sure she's not in Florida. Yeah.

"Are you sure she's not with your aunt?" "Yeah, we've been talking. She's not there either. And you need to go to the police." John went to the local West Windsor, New Jersey, police department and filed a missing persons report. Dee Dee called the officer to follow up. They just reiterated what John had told them as well as asking us personal questions about my mother's behavior, what was normal, what was not normal. And he said, "She's an adult.

She can leave. Yeah, I understand this, but this isn't her behavior. Something is not right. And are scenarios running through your mind as to what might have happened? What I thought was, from what he had said, maybe somebody, maybe a friend did pick her up, but there had been a car accident or something. The only thing I could think of at the time, oh my God, she's been injured and she's laying there and can't communicate.

Detective Mike Dansbury went over to the condo to talk to John. There wasn't too much to be real concerned about. I was just trying to get some information. Did you see anything in the apartment? There was a furnished rental apartment they had. It was nothing looked out of place except for that she had taken a suitcase and just a few items of clothing. John told the detective he came home from work and saw a note that Fran left on the kitchen counter.

It said, gone to visit family. Call you in a couple of days. Be sure to feed the fish. And I asked to see the note, and John said, well, I guess I should have kept it, but I threw it out. John said Fran didn't leave in her car. It was still at the condo. But he also said he couldn't find her car keys. We checked all the area cab companies, buses, airlines. Any leads? No. No.

Fran's daughter and sister had called every hospital and rehabilitation center in the area and got nothing. Dee Dee also tried every number she could find for her mom's friends. When it was clear no one had heard from Fran, Dee Dee just knew. I said, Detective Dansbury, my mom is dead. And he said, oh no, we're going to find her. Why did you feel so strongly that she was gone?

because she hadn't contacted me, and she would have. We had called all the hospitals. We had called all the rehabilitation centers. We'd called all the police departments. We knew that that really, at almost two weeks, was not a viable option. Where was Fran?

The search for an answer would take decades. You can roll over and you can play dead or you can fight. And we chose to fight. It's getting hot in the kitchen. Yeah, it's getting real hot in the kitchen. Yeah, we're on to something here, we just don't know what we're on. A case that would take investigators and three families to a terrifying place. He looked monstrous. This is like a horror movie. For sure, it certainly was. ♪♪

I was absolutely panicked because I knew something was really wrong. One week had turned to two, and no one had heard from Fran Smith. I knew that that was nothing like my mom's behavior at all. Her daughter, Dee Dee, made missing person posters and sent them to Fran's husband, John, to distribute. Not a single lead came in.

Detective David Mansu from the West Windsor Police Department worked the case. I went to the train station at one point showing her picture to see if anybody had seen her there. At the time, there was a commuter bus that would pick people up almost right outside their building that would take you to Newark Airport. So that would have been a convenient method of travel for her if she wanted to fly. And, you know, you have the same driver every day. Yeah. You know, he didn't see anything.

John suggested that maybe Fran had run off somewhere and hurt herself. She'd been feeling really down. He kept saying, "Oh, I found these letters, and your mom was really in a dark place, and these letters that she had written. I think she might have killed herself." John told you this? Oh, yeah. He told me this. Maybe Fran was feeling isolated, depressed, and not just because of her injury, but also because she was in a new place without any roots.

Until recently, Fran had been living in Florida. That's where she and John met and married.

And they met at work? They met at work, right. She was a paralegal. He was an engineer. A little nerdy, but very smart. She felt like he was very bright, had a great work ethic. And so did she, because they were both there early and late, and that's how they crossed paths, right? And so she had the greatest respect for that. Fran was divorced with three grown kids. John was almost nine years younger, a 39-year-old bachelor.

They built a house in Florida right next to Fran's mother's place. Literally next door, they shared a fence line. Well, that's nice. Oh, yeah. It was wonderful because my mother, by this time's health, was very bad. And so Fran was able to help out. Fran was compassionate, energetic, humorous. And so incredibly strong because you didn't expect that behavior out of someone who looked so angelic.

I always described Fran as a blonde Audra Hepburn. My mom was very smart and very caring, very forgiving and incredibly creative. She had a way of making you think you could do anything. The only reason you can't do that is because you haven't tried it. Failure isn't failure until you quit. John was an introvert, a bit socially awkward, but he was good to Fran and her family. John was great with my mother and my grandmother.

Less than a year after they got married, John lost his engineering job. It didn't take him long to find a new one. But there was a catch. The job was in New Jersey. Did Fran have mixed feelings about New Jersey, or was she excited?

She was not excited. Not excited. No, she was not excited. She wanted to stay in Florida. Yeah. She was a southern girl, so she wanted to stay in the south. She wasn't a big fan of winter and snow and all of that, so she was not really looking forward. But she also thought that it would be another couple of years and they would move again.

So they sold their home in Florida and moved north. John owned a beach house in Connecticut a couple hours away from his new job, but living there wasn't practical. He had said, no, it's too far away. We need to have a place closer. The Connecticut house isn't winterized. Fran, you're going to be miserable. They rented a furnished condo in New Jersey. They'd only been there a few months when they decided to take that delayed honeymoon to the Poconos. The trip that ended with Fran in the hospital...

Now suddenly she was out of contact with her entire family. Dee Dee was 26 at the time and felt completely unmoored. I felt like I could do anything as long as my mom was there. Like she was my buffer zone. And when that disappeared, I really felt on shaky ground.

Fran's family was convinced of the worst. They knew what an attentive mom she was, even once her children were grown. She'd never just not call. I knew that she would never do that. She would never do that to us kids. So that's how I knew.

And they didn't even consider John's speculation that Fran had taken her own life. Not the Fran they knew. For Fran, suicide is a one-way ticket to hell. Don't pass gold, don't collect $200. I said no. I said, people who commit suicide don't usually hide their own bodies, John.

What's more, they thought it was totally far-fetched that she'd even left on her own. Fran was, of course, recovering from hip surgery, and the condo was a third-floor walk-up. She did not even really have the benefit of leaving the condo. She's on crutches. They're three stories up. No elevator. The detectives were still calling this a missing person investigation, but they did have a lot of the same questions that were nagging at Fran's family.

I've never had a broken hip, but I can't imagine that I would want to be going on a trip by myself so shortly after an injury like that. Right. So she had to come down three flights of stairs to get anywhere, which is not the easiest thing to do on a set of crutches. When Detective Dansbury first met John at the condo, he'd asked about their relationship. He said there was no problems with their marriage, they had no fights, and it just was probably, she wasn't happy being up in New Jersey.

So why didn't Fran talk to John about her trip instead of just leaving a note on the counter? In most healthy marriages, if you were going to travel, you would tell your spouse that, look, I'm going to travel. I'm going to fly back down to Florida and visit my family. I miss them. You know, these are the dates I'm going. So, you know, there were some signs that, you know, maybe there's something unusual here. How unusual?

Fran's daughter and sister were impatient to find out. And pretty soon they would be gathering information their way. You're walking a very fine line. We could have blown everything wide open. Fran Smith's family was desperate to find her alive, but increasingly convinced they would not.

And they didn't like how her new husband, John, was acting. To them, he didn't seem nearly concerned enough. He'd even hesitated before going to the police. And I said, why? And he said, because your mom's going to be really pissed. She's a very private person.

Dee Dee and Sherry had been talking to John every day, but say he wasn't much help. And when I spoke to him, he was always the victim. I can't believe she's doing this to me. Not, oh my gosh, where is she? Right. We need to find her. It was. It was very much that way. I can't believe this. My job is so stressful. All of the things that he was going through was very little about what he was doing to find her. It left them wondering, what did they really know about John Smith? After all, he and Fran had only been married for about 18 months.

And looking back on some of their conversations, it seemed like John kept his own wife in the dark about parts of his previous life, like that home he owned in Connecticut. She knew it existed. She had actually never seen it. The beachfront home was only a two-hour drive from the New Jersey condo. John went there frequently to check on the house. So why had Fran never been there? She wanted to go there, and she was really pushing hard to see that house.

He told Fran that his sister lived in the house. So it came as a surprise when the women learned this from detectives. Mike Dansbury knew that he had two brothers, one full brother, one half-brother, but there was no sister. No sister? What was going on in Connecticut?

Detectives wondered, too. They reached out to their local counterparts. I was contacted by Detective Mike Dansbury from the West Windsor Township Police saying he was investigating a missing person. And he asked me for his assistance and mainly some initial background information on a property incident.

Frank Berry was a detective with the Milford, Connecticut Police Department. He did some surveillance on the beach house and could see it was occupied. They determined that there was a woman living in the house and there were two dogs. Was she a renter? A friend? Knock on the door, realize nobody's home. I contacted Detective Dansberry and we had, I think, agreed beforehand, we'll leave a business card, but don't let on to what that, you know, involves.

Meanwhile, Fran and Deedee were pushing investigators to move faster. They wanted a full search of the New Jersey condo, convinced John was hiding something. And I said, well, go in and search. You'll see it's not right. And he said, we don't have cause. So that's where you come in? Yes. There was no evidence that there had been anything awry except for

my mom's family saying, "There is a big problem here." So legally, there were things they could not do. But that didn't stop us. - Dee Dee and Sherry decided they would get on a plane and do what police couldn't. - So I called John and I said, "We're coming." And he said, "I'll get you a hotel." And I said, "No, you won't. If I'm coming that way, I don't have the money for a hotel. We'll stay with you." And he said, "Okay." - It was now January. Fran had been gone four months.

The morning after they arrived, they waited until John got up and headed to the office. And he said, "Oh, I just wanted to let you know that I was leaving or something like that." And he said, "Oh, here. Hand us keys and make yourself at home." And I said, "Thank you very much. That's all I needed." The women started rummaging through the condo, snapping photos as they went.

Her makeup, her toothbrush, her comb, her brush, everything was there still. These are all things presumably one would take with them if they're going on a trip to see family. And when they snooped in John's office, they found something that shouldn't have been there. The missing person flyers they'd sent to him. John had not distributed a single one. They were all in the closet. The packages had not even been opened.

And they took a look inside a storage closet attached to the condo. In it, they found two suitcases, including the small yellow one John said Fran took on her trip. So there they were. There they were. So you just caught them in a huge lie. Good detective work. The women headed over to meet with the real detectives, reported what they found in the condo,

It was during their meeting that Detective Dansbury mentioned something he assumed the women knew. John told the detective he and Janice were married in 1970.

They were young, right out of high school. They'd eloped. But according to John, the marriage didn't last, and they parted ways. It was an amicable divorce that she had left and moved to a commune in Florida. The detectives planned to reach out to Janice, but hadn't found her yet. And I said, "Does she have family?" And he said, "She has two brothers, Ross and Gary."

Ross is in the military, he said, so I don't know where we would find him. But he said, I think Gary is still over by. So Dee Dee and I started calling 411. You start looking for Gary because that's what you do. Right. You don't have the Internet. You don't have those things that make it so easy today. So we would call 411. And you normally back then only got two numbers. And we would tell the operator the story real quick and she would give us four or five numbers.

And those are, we had these lists of Gary Hartmans to call. John and Janice had married in Detroit, so we're into Michigan and Ohio. Right. So are you just calling all the Gary Hartmans and then... Leaving a message. What you were doing is kind of like what a family would do if they hired a private investigator. Right. You were just, you're doing it yourself. Yeah. They called dozens of Gary Hartmans and got nowhere.

And then, at the very end of their list, an answering machine picked up. And I said, "I am looking for anyone who has knowledge of or might be related to Janice Elaine Hartman." Later that night, Sherry's phone rang. It was the Gary Hartman they'd been looking for. He said,

Janice, my sister, what's this about? I said, I think our sisters had something in common. I think they were both married to John David Smith. And I heard this big intake of breath, and he said, Lady, you've got a problem. It was now spring. Six months had passed since Fran Smith disappeared.

Dee Dee, you had a vision one night about your mom? This was probably right after I'd come to terms with the fact that my mom was dead. And I was wide awake, and I went downstairs, and there was my mom in this outfit that was very familiar. And I just hugged her so tight, and I could feel her, and I could smell her. Saw her in perfect color, like I'm looking at you right now. And she stepped back, and she said, see, I'm all right.

But somehow there was a peace. There really was a peace in my heart. Dee Dee accepted that she would probably never see her mom again. But that didn't mean she was going to stop seeking the truth. She and her Aunt Sherry had been trying to track down John Smith's first wife, Janice. And after dozens of wrong numbers, they finally had her brother on the line. And he said, "Lady, you got a problem."

My sister disappeared November of 1974, never to be seen again. Oh my gosh. He told them that within days of Janice and John's divorce, Janice had vanished. This is major. We thought so. What is going through your mind when you hear something like that? We're going to get him. We're going to get him.

This'll do it. We got him. There's another wife. Missing. That's missing. Another wife that's missing. That's right. And we're like, okay, now we're going to get somewhere. You find out from Sherry and Dee Dee that Janice Hartman has been missing for 20 years? It was a shocker. This can't be a coincidence. The detectives learned Janice Hartman had been declared legally dead many years earlier. Are you now concerned that...

Fran has perhaps suffered the same fate? Well, it's certainly my worry, yes. They contacted authorities in Ohio who faxed them a copy of Janice's missing persons report. The report said that John Smith thought she took off to Florida with a red suitcase. The details were eerily similar to Fran's case. John reported that Fran left with a yellow suitcase he believed heading to Florida as well.

And in both cases, their cars were out in front of the residence. Striking similarities to both situations. The detectives had a long list of questions for John Smith. They wanted to talk to him hooked up to a polygraph. I did get that appointment for a polygraph. I contacted John. He said, oh, that's fine. I'll be there. After the interview, the polygrapher shared the results. And what happened? He basically told me that John had...

failed miserably and it was probably the worst failure that they ever administered. The investigation was more urgent now. They raced to John Smith's hometown of Seville, Ohio. We traveled all the way out to Ohio. We met with the Ohio agency that covered the area that John lived in and his family lived in. We interviewed everybody we could possibly interview that knew John or was involved with Janice.

The detectives tracked down John Smith's brother, Michael, who invited them inside his house. He told them how he and John were essentially raised by their grandparents more than their own mother. Gained a lot of information from him about the whole dynamics between the family. In recent years, Michael said he and John had drifted apart. Michael told us a lot about John and Janice's life together. He was unaware of John being married to Fran.

They got the feeling Michael wasn't comfortable answering too many questions. Why did you feel like Michael was holding back? Just the way he was approaching the response to questions and some of the questions that he asked of us, you know, it just gave us a strong feeling that he wasn't being completely forthcoming in his responses. But we thought we were getting through it, and he was actually giving us more and more information.

But the interview ended abruptly when John and Michael's grandmother burst through the door. Ethel Chaney started screaming at Michael and then basically threw us out of the house. What did that tell you? That my feelings about Michael knowing something about what happened here were true. It's getting hot in the kitchen. Yeah, it's getting real hot in the kitchen. Yeah, we're on to something here. We just don't know what we're on.

There was now probable cause for a search warrant. It had taken half a year, but detectives were now inside John and Fran's condo.

In John's office, they found something that poked another hole in his original story. He told police he couldn't find Fran's car keys, but there they were inside his briefcase. But evidence of an attack or blood? They didn't find anything like that. After the search, John agreed to speak with detectives again down at the police department. He came in at 6.30 and speaking to John, confronting him with questions.

everything that we had learned to date. He didn't even take his overcoat off during our interview until nine hours into the interview. Are you getting tough with him at this point? Like, we know you killed your wives. Well, we kind of did all the things that you see on TV that the cops and the...

Do interviewing the suspects. Mike's going through the cat and mouse game with John. We know he's not telling us the truth, and it's getting frustrating. With no real evidence to hold him, John was free to go. We know there's been some bad deeds done here, and we're just not getting anywhere with it. But if John Smith wasn't telling the truth to them, they'd find a way to make him talk to someone else. Hello? John? Yes.

John Smith's life appeared to be full of secrets. Two wives missing, two decades apart.

Detectives wanted to know more about the woman living in his Connecticut beach house. Once again, Sherry and Dee Dee were on the case. They were relentless. If they thought they could develop something on their own, they did it. So you decide, with your little detective hats on, to call this house just fishing, really? Yeah.

John had mentioned that the house had some recent storm damage, so the women pretended to be contractors. A female voice answered the phone. Dee Dee started out. She said, Mrs. Smith? And she said, yes. Mrs. Smith? If she wasn't John's sister, who was she? I said, Mrs. Smith, this is, and I said the company name, and I said, we understand there might have been a lot of damage in your neighborhood. We'd like to come out and give you an estimate. And she said, oh, we didn't get any damage.

John's other woman in the beach house was news to Deedee. But truth is, she already suspected that her mother's new marriage was a rocky one. In fact, in their last phone call, she'd heard the couple bickering.

So these two are not on the same page right now. Right. Just things are not, they're not clicking. Right. She said, I mean, get this straightened out. And I said, okay, mom, I love you. She said, I love you too. And, you know, and she, and we hung up the phone and that was one of the most important I love you's ever because it was the last time anybody ever talked to her.

Had that fight been a serious one? Maybe it was about the woman in the beach house calling herself "Mrs. Smith." Detective Barry did some digging and found out her name was Sheila.

It was time to go talk to her in person. Sheila said she was John Smith's longtime girlfriend, not his wife, though they had talked about marriage. She was an HR manager at a manufacturing firm. They'd met when John applied for a job at her company.

They'd been together for eight years, long before he met and married Fran. He's got wife Fran, and then he's got girlfriend in Connecticut. He's living a double life. Things are starting to snowball here. But we wanted her to come to the police department so that we could explain some things to her that we didn't think she was aware of.

We told her John Smith is married to a woman named Fran, and he has a condominium in West Windsor Township, New Jersey, and he reported her missing. You know, she'd be dumbfounded. It's like, what do you mean? You know, he's married? Her whole world was upside down. She was crying, sobbing.

At times almost uncontrollable. All she knew is that he traveled a lot and no idea that he had another relationship, let alone married. Sheila felt betrayed, angry, and even scared. Especially after they revealed John Smith had a first wife who was also missing and presumed dead. So on the very same day that they were interrogating John and getting nowhere, they asked Sheila if she would help the investigation. She agreed.

Sheila called John with the detectives by her side. You check on me every day. How could you not know where she is?

That's what everybody keeps asking me. What does it mean? I don't know. No one can believe her. I don't know where my wife, where she left. In fact, because I can't answer that question, I think I must have heard her. Did you? No. She left me partially because of you. Because of me? Yes. Why me? She seemed to think that even though I was with her and my heart was in Connecticut...

As the conversation is going and the recording's going, we're feeding her notes, try to get her to focus. Him, you know, answer this question.

Is she dead? No, I don't think so. I wouldn't say that. Wait a minute. What do you mean you wouldn't think so? Well, I try not to think she's dead, but let me tell you. I agree with the police that because she hasn't contacted me or her leading family that something must have happened to her.

So you just think something happened to her? Well, I think, I don't know what. I think somebody may have killed her, yeah. Let me ask you this, okay? Because I went to the police department and they showed me pictures of Janice. Who's Janice? Janice Hartman. Janice Hartman was my first wife when I was 19 years old. What happened to her? Janice Hartman and I got divorced. I left the area and

I had not seen Jan when I left and I just ordered her missing. I found out today that she has never been found. How could you not know she was missing? No one told me she was missing all this time. Well, let's get real simple here. Okay. You have got to start with honesty. You've just got to lay it on the line. I have started with honesty. Start with me. But the only thing I worried about, she was, I think it's too late.

Too late for what? There was a possibility that his saying it was too late, it was more in reference to Sheila and John's relationship rather than it's too late for Janice and Fran. But in the context of the whole call, I know we took it as far as law enforcement. No, it's too late for Janice and Fran. Yeah, that's a big deal. You know, that's a crucial piece of evidence that we're

That's telling us we're going down the right road here. So did Fran find out about John's secret life? Maybe she was trying to leave him over Sheila. What happened to Fran? What happened to Janet? What is going on? At some point, I decided we're not going to get what we're looking for. I think he knows. And he probably knew that somebody was in the room with her while she was having the conversation with him. So at that point, we basically said, OK, you know, we're done.

To detectives, John certainly sounded guilty of something. The call ended where it began, with little more than overwhelming suspicion. You must have just wanted to solve this so badly at this point and know where these women are. Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, and throughout this process, you know, we're building a strong relationship with Sherry Aditi. We're trying to do our best to solve this thing, but we need answers for them.

After more than a year of intense investigation, the case was hitting a wall. Authorities had run out of people to interview and leads to follow. We know something's happened here. We just can't get to the root of it. But you probably know this already. Dee Dee and Sherry don't sit and wait for things to happen. Don't mess with Sherry. Yeah, you know, okay, we're victims, but I choose the kind of victim I'm going to be. I've always said, if I ever go missing, I want those two girls looking for me. Ditto. Ditto.

They are the families of the missing in America. And they're desperately searching for answers. Somebody knows something. I'm Josh Bankowitz. Join me for season three of Missing in America. Listen carefully, because just one small detail might allow you to solve a mystery. We have seen miracles happen. Dateline, Missing in America. All episodes available now, wherever you get your podcasts.

For true crime fans, nothing is more chilling than watching Dateline. Have you ever seen such a thing before? For podcast fans, nothing is more chilling than listening. What goes through your mind when you make a discovery like that? And when you subscribe to Dateline Premium, it gets even better.

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The years began to tick by. One turned into two, then more. And still no one had heard from Fran Smith, just like the case of Janice Hartman, who had been missing for over two decades. Police found themselves in an investigative desert, out of leads and out of ideas on how to solve the mysterious disappearance of John Smith's two wives.

But that didn't stop Dee Dee and Sherry. One of the things you're doing is making John Smith's life uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable. Well, I'm making him very uncomfortable. John was moving from state to state, changing jobs. And each time he did, Sherry would deploy a powerful weapon: her pen. Every time I found out where he was, where he was working, I wrote. Not human resources. That's a waste.

You write to the receptionist. She knows everything. She tells everything. She sometimes tucked a missing poster in with her letter about John's history. I would say John seems to meet the ladies in his life through work. And I just want you to be warned and very, very careful. She hoped the receptionist would complain and get John fired. And he did keep bouncing from job to job. Don't mess with Sherry. He was gone.

There was someone else just as determined to find justice. You would not let this go? No. I almost lost my job because of this case. I got kicked off of my squads. My wife almost left me. Bob Hilland was a young patrolman in West Windsor, New Jersey when Fran first went missing, though he didn't work the case. Six years later, Hilland was now a special agent with the FBI. And one day by chance, he ran into his old colleague, Mike Dansbury.

I asked him, hey, whatever happened with that case? And he said, it's dead in the water. That guy got away with at least two murders that we know of. So Hilland went to his bosses at the FBI and asked to take it on. They said, no. The reality is the FBI doesn't work murders per se. We work murders that may be connected to RICO conspiracy cases, organized crime matters. So we know that's not where the story ends. No, no. I, uh...

I persisted. Hillen says his supervisor agreed to let him work on it, but only if it didn't interfere with the rest of his caseload. Are you thinking to yourself, "Okay, I'm gonna solve this"? For sure. No doubt.

Just didn't know how hard it would be. No, I had no clue of what I was about to get involved with. The agent looked at all the evidence gathered by New Jersey detectives who were looking for Fran and by investigators in Ohio where Janice went missing. He spoke to Sherry, Dee Dee, and other potential witnesses. But he didn't speak to John. Turns out he'd moved again and no one knew where he was living. So Hilland ran John Smith's name through FBI records.

So I'm expecting a package and it's literally 25, 30 boxes of records with the name John Smith. Are you serious? Absolutely. Was the John Smith you were looking for in those boxes? Yes, but it was camouflaged in hundreds of other John Smiths with similar names and dates of birth. So he was in there. I just didn't know which John Smith he was.

At that time, the records were of no help. But in that evidence from other investigators, he saw that John had been arrested in Ohio about five years after Fran went missing. John was driving with a suspended license. Arresting officers found a photo of an unknown woman in his wallet and saved a copy. If Hillen could find her, maybe she'd know how to find John.

So this wallet-sized photograph in the bottom right corner had a logo of a photo studio called Glamour Shots. I remember those. You remember those? I'm sure you do. Glamour Shots was a 90s staple in malls across America. Hilland narrowed the photo down to a studio in New Hampshire and found the woman. He eventually persuaded her to meet him at a local hotel. She's very guarded. Her posture is closed off. She immediately started sobbing. She immediately started crying.

I didn't understand why she was crying. The woman told Hilland she had a husband and John was her lover. They started out as co-workers. She was married at the time, just gave birth to a child, and she has an affair with John. You would visit her every four to six weeks. They'd spend time together. And then she tells me, as you all know, Agent Hilland, John Smith moved to Escondido, California. This is exactly what you needed. Exactly what I needed.

It was valuable information, and it quickly became apparent that John's married girlfriend was very much in love with him. She explained that, you know, despite the fact that he was in California, we spoke three or four times every day. I was closer with John than I was with my own husband, and John proposed marriage to her. Her plan was she was going to take her daughter, leave her husband, and go to California and marry John and live happily ever after. But she said John had recently gone radio silent.

Desperate to reach him, she called a friend of his in California who delivered some heartbreaking news. She said to this woman, hey, I'm having a hard time getting hold of John. Any idea where he might be right now? And the woman says, oh yeah, he's out with Diane right now. They're shopping for the wedding. So when the girlfriend found out that John is now engaged to some other unknown woman named Diane, of course she loses her mind.

So once again, John was juggling full-time relationships with at least two women in two different states. You need a football diagram for all of John Smith's women. For sure. For sure. He was the man. Why do you think he was able to get all these women? I've interviewed many people that knew John, some of whom were his girlfriends. And I was shocked when they would tell me things like, Agent Hillen, when I met John Smith...

It was like God had heard my prayers and sent him to me. For some women, they were lacking certain things in their lives. So for some women, it could be financial things. For some women, it was religion. For some women, it was sex. John became those things. He's like a chameleon. Without a doubt. His name is John Smith. Soon, the FBI special agent was going to come face to face with that chameleon. John looks up at me and he winks at me.

And at that moment when he winked at me, my blood was boiling because I knew this was all nonsense. Then, a long-held family secret would come spilling out. I am not going to go to jail for you, John. And across the country, another woman was living with the enemy. We begged her to leave. This woman could be in danger, if you're right. Without question. He came through the door, busted through that door, full-on monstrous. ♪

The FBI had new information. John Smith was living in the San Diego suburb of Escondido, California. They immediately set up surveillance, secretly snapping photos of John at work and aerial shots of his home. They learned he was living in a guest house on this property, and they could see something else, a blonde woman living with him.

I started getting a trove of intelligence about John's current activity. What's he doing? He's married. His new wife's name is Diane Smith. Diane Smith was John's third wife. Summer Hathaway is her daughter. What'd you think of him? Well, he was like a little unusual looking. Not her normal guy she goes for.

And so I just said, "Well, maybe he's got personality. You know, there's something about him and she's looking past all that." Was he really nice to you? Did you think this, "Hey, he seems cool"? He was really, really nice. Like, overly nice. Just, um, just waited on her hand and foot, whatever she needed.

Diane apparently had no idea who she'd married. You believe that John Smith has killed his first two wives? No doubt. This woman could be in danger, if you're right. Without question. Hillen decided it was time to act. He came up with an elaborate plan to confront John.

Here's how it went down. Early one morning, Hilland and another agent surprised John as he arrived for work at a high-end custom car company. This is a photo of that moment. We introduced ourselves and we said, we'd like to talk to you, John. We're working out of a hotel a few minutes away. Would you mind talking to us? And he said, what is this about? Well, it's about your missing wives. John reluctantly agreed to go with them.

In one room, the agents taped up photos of people in John's life. Right next door were two FBI profilers watching everything from hidden cameras. There was a poster on the wall, like a pinwheel, a bicycle wheel, if you will, and John was at the hub of the middle, and there were all these people, photographs around him. You showed him that? Yeah, and I said, what do all these people have in common, John?

He said, "Well, they're people that I know." And I said, "Well, the other thing they have in common is, as I'm talking to you in this hotel room, the FBI is interviewing them all around the United States right now." About 25 investigators around the country simultaneously started interviewing people close to John: his mother, his coworkers, his brother Michael,

Hillen says John seemed overwhelmed as the agents pressed him for information. So the plan was we were going to tactfully and systematically walk him through the disappearance of Fran and Janice and pull apart his story.

One way to take that story apart was by using John's own words against him. You have a wife that's missing. Where is she? I don't know where she is. The FBI had that secret recording made years earlier of John and his Connecticut girlfriend, Sheila. Who's Janice? Janice Hartman. Janice Hartman was my first wife.

So I confront John. Do you remember talking to Sheila that day? He never said those things. So when he said that, I pulled out the tape recorder. I hit play, and John could hear in his own voice all those things that he had said. And there was more on that tape, including John admitting he lied to the police. Did you take a polygraph test? Yeah, absolutely, yeah. And you lied? I failed it. Wait, John, I don't...

Did you lie during the test? Yes, I lied during the test. You got him. Yeah. How did he handle that? Sat there, he turned beet red and shrugged his shoulders. Hilland noticed something else, something creepy. He would make this very strange sound, like somebody stepping on a cat or a baby crying. He made this weird noise when he was caught in a lie. What does that sound like, someone stepping on a cat? It sounded like he went...

Yeah, that's what he did. After several hours, the interrogation wasn't going Hillen's way. John wasn't giving anything up. And then at some point, there was a knock on the hotel room door, and a piece of paper came flying under the door. The note was from the two FBI profilers next door. They were getting information from the investigators in the field. So I got up, and I picked it up, and the paper said, Michael is talking in Ohio. John's brother. Yes.

Detective David Mansu had flown from New Jersey to Ohio to interview Michael again. Just like years before, he felt the brother knew something significant. I get right in front of him and I said, look, Michael, here's the deal. You are a classic example of someone who is harboring some information that you want to tell me, but you just don't know how. You've got to find a way to tell me this, okay? I know you know what happened.

But once again, Michael clammed up. Still. I can tell you that when I present to John the fact that his brother was talking, it absolutely hit him. You could see it in his affect, how he tensed up, how he became nervous.

Just when Hillen felt he was making progress, John suddenly said he was having a medical emergency, a heart attack. Something tells me you're not believing this. I'm not believing it for a second. Given his record of manipulation. For sure. And I know this is nonsense and this is a ploy on his part. The agents were obligated to call an ambulance. EMTs hooked John up to a portable EKG machine in the hotel room. His heart was fine.

But John insisted he needed to go to the hospital. Hillen's hands were tied and the EMTs started wheeling him out. The two men parted ways like this. John looks up at me and he winks at me. And at that moment when he winked at me, my blood was boiling because I knew this was all nonsense. That wink said a lot. It certainly said a lot to me. Like, I won this round. I reminded John that I was not Barney Fife from a local sheriff's office in Mayberry.

and that the next time he saw me, I'd be looking at him through bars. That was the hope, anyway, that John Smith would someday be behind bars. But for now, he was free. And for Fran's daughter and sister, every day he stayed that way was one day too many. Every night we went to bed with the idea of wondering what woman dies tonight. I mean, because why not? He's got away with it twice, maybe, you know.

Time to talk to wife number three. Would they get to her in time? Never miss a moment of the 2024 Olympic Games from Paris. For in-depth coverage of the athletes, events, and medal counts, download the NBC News app. ♪

Sherry and Deedee were relentless as they continued to pursue John Smith. It took over their lives. At first, we were running a race, and then we realized that this is a marathon. This is going to be a long haul. It turned into that. A long haul. What kept them going was their love for Fran. You never doubted for a moment that she loved you. They would repay that love by never giving up. When something like this happens to a family,

you automatically become a victim. But you have the choice of what kind of victim you're going to be. You can roll over and you can play dead or you can fight. And we chose to fight. Fight for Fran, fight for Janice, and fight for any other women who might cross John Smith's path. I was genuinely concerned for her safety. On the very same day the FBI picked up John for that marathon interrogation,

Two agents also went to talk to John's third wife, Diane. Your mom calls you one day and says she got a visit from the FBI. Yes. She told me John was being investigated for murdering his wife. Wow. Jaw-dropper. Yeah. Summer knew all about John's wife, Fran. He kept a large portrait of her in the California home he shared with her mother. All I knew is he had a wife.

that passed away from cancer and I saw her photo on his wall. So now we've gone from cancer to alleged murder. Right. What do you say to your mom? It was like, well, is this true? I think she said something like she didn't know if it was true either. She wanted to talk to John or get the other side of the story. John insisted it was all a huge mistake.

His story was he was being set up for some mob thing, and he was being set up by somebody. And he kind of like shoot it off. Like, did he really downplay it? It was a mob thing. What's for dinner? He really downplayed it? Yeah. And they believed him, at least until the next day when Diane had a one-on-one with Agent Hilland. I spent a couple hours with her, putting out the things, the evidence in front of her and saying, listen, I'm worried for your safety and your well-being.

A few days later, Diane got another warning, this time from Fran's family. We begged her to leave. I mean, we had no money and we were going to send this lady a plane ticket. Just, you know, leave. Sherry wanted her out. I just wanted her to be smart and aware of what was happening. Because you, there's two missing wives. That's right. You don't want Diane to be the third. No, I could never have lived with that.

And so all we could do was tell her, and then she had to make the decision on her own. Agent Hillen told Diane FBI profilers believed John was most dangerous when a woman tried to leave him. So as Diane saw it, she only had two options. She could make a break for it and hope John didn't kill her, or she could stay with him until a possible arrest. Diane went with option B, and she asked Summer to move in.

The reason why I was okay with staying with her and her staying with him was because we knew why he kills. And so if I'm there, you know... If you're there and she's not leaving him... Yeah. Maybe she'll be okay. She'll be safe as long as I'm with her. And that was the big thing. She cannot be alone with him. So you almost turned into her... Bodyguard. Yeah. Yeah.

And they turned into investigators, too, looking for anything that might connect John to Fran or Janice's disappearances. So when he would go to work, we would search all his pockets. He had some old suitcases, so I would, like, rifle through there. I would try to find, like, little secret hidden pockets here and there. Just rifle through anything I could while he was at work. When you're gathering all this information or trying, you know, about John, are you...

that he's guilty and you're helping? Or is it just as much trying to prove that maybe he didn't do this? I would say 90% guilty and we're helping. But there's sometimes you just go, wait, maybe, you know, maybe his story is right. Special Agent Hillen returned to the FBI's New York City field office to update his supervisors. You've been working the case a year and a half at this point. For sure, yeah. And they were okay with

You continuing? Sure. Ish? We can say that, yeah. So they, the true answer is no. But yeah, I still kept working it. Yeah, they didn't want me to touch this case any further. Oh, but you did. I did. On the DL. Absolutely. Bob, that's risky. Oh, yes, it was. It was very risky. Hilland put his career on the line, hoping there would be a break in the case. Then his phone rang.

I got a phone call from an attorney in Ohio who informed me that he had been retained by Michael Smith and that his client potentially had some information which may be of significance to my investigation. Michael Smith, John's younger brother, he had a story to tell, a story almost too creepy to be believed. I mean, I had nightmares where Dan chased me down the road and beat me with her legs, John. ♪

FBI offices downtown Manhattan. After so much disappointment for Special Agent Bob Hilland, there was finally a break in the John Smith investigation. John's brother Michael was finally ready to talk. Michael Smith had some explosive information, but there was a catch if you wanted to hear it. Yeah, so the attorney wanted us to negotiate terms of accepting the information. Michael wanted an immunity agreement, and the government said yes.

Soon after, John's brother was in the FBI offices sharing a long-held family secret. A family was having things skimming at the grandma and grandpa's house. Immediately next door to the grandparents' house is a garage. It was 1974, only a few days after John's first wife Janice was reported missing. Michael saw his brother working in that garage. When he walked in, he saw John with a piece of plywood building something. So he questioned his brother and he said, John, what is it you're doing?

John offered some obscure answer that his wife Janice had left him and that some of her belongings were left behind, so he was building a box to store her belongings. Michael said the box was about four feet long by two feet wide. He saw his brother putting Janice's clothing inside. What struck Michael as most unusual was that he saw John crying when he was doing this.

He told Hillen the brothers never spoke of it again. About five years later, Michael said his grandfather called him, upset, and asked him to come over. The box was on the garage floor, open. There was a smell coming from the box that was discolored to his clothes, and the first thing he noticed was rainbow-colored hair. It was red, blue, yellow, green. He specifically said it looked like a clown's wig. But this was not a wig, was it? It was not.

And he moved the hair, and as soon as he moved the hair, he said, "That's when I saw her face." I said, "Whose face, Mike?" He says, "It was Janice. John's wife was in the box." - This is like a horror movie. - For sure. For Michael, it certainly was, yeah.

According to Hilland, Michael said his grandfather convinced him not to tell anyone. He wanted the box out of his garage and said what they saw had to stay in the family. The grandfather said, if we call the sheriff, this is going to cause your grandmother to die. Granddad put a great deal of pressure on young Michael. Michael didn't contact the police. He said he called his brother and John quickly came and took the box away. You had some problems with Michael's story. I did. I wanted to believe him.

It didn't make sense to me. When he first came forward, he said, "What I'm about to tell you, you're probably not going to believe." And he was right. The story seemed so bizarre, Special Agent Hilland wanted proof. Hello. How you doing tonight? Hey, I got some serious deep here, John. What? Can you talk? Yeah. So Hilland asked Michael to make a call to his brother while he listened in. Well, I'm telling you what I'm going to do. I'm going there to New York

Michael made up a story and said he had been pressured by Hillen to talk. Okay.

John reacted casually and told his brother he was mistaken. What he saw was a prank. Somebody put a dead goat in the box. That was a joke or something that somebody dropped off in the box. It wasn't Jan in it, but it was definitely John. That was Jan in the box. We opened the box up. Then Michael brought up something gruesome. He told John that he could see that Jan's legs had been severed. That's something that's

We now have corroboration that Michael is telling us at least the truth about this box because... It exists. Investigators were puzzled over why Janice's body wasn't completely decomposed. They had a guess.

There was a funeral home next door to John's grandparents' house. Maybe he'd gotten his hands on some embalming fluids. So although we don't have the whereabouts of the box, we know that there's some merit to Michael's story. You want to find the box? We're going to find the box. In Ohio, where Janice went missing, investigators sent letters out to dozens of medical examiners and other authorities. Had anyone found a box with remains in it?

John Smith had also lived in neighboring Indiana. Investigators wanted to look there, too. And Sherry offered her help. My husband and I sat down and we made up sticky labels for every, all 90-some counties of Indiana for the coroners and every police department. Investigators sent the letters out and everyone waited. They knew the odds were long.

All the while, Hilland was keeping tabs on John, who was living in California with his third wife, Diane, until he wasn't. I get a call from my FBI colleagues in San Diego that say we have a problem. John is missing. Diane told the FBI he'd gone out one night and never came home. Hilland thought the worst. And our immediate concern was John was going to kill Michael or do something bad. So we had to take poor Michael and his family and hide them.

Just when the case had momentum, the man he'd been chasing was suddenly a ghost. So now I had to go to my supervisors in the FBI and say, hey, you know this case that you didn't want me to get involved with, that you told me not to spend a lot of time with? Not only did I not find either one of the victims, but the bad guy is now missing. After John Smith's brothers started cooperating with the FBI, John was suddenly in the wind.

And we had no idea, like, just racking our brains, where did he go? Like, where did he go? Summer's mom filed a missing person report. Then, three days later, John just as mysteriously reappeared, dirty and disheveled. And he just said, the FBI had me in a hotel room across the freeway. And then you think, you know, why is he dirty? No, this guy's lying. Where did he go? Why is he filthy?

In Summer's mind, there was only one logical explanation. I think he buried Fran. When he traveled to California, he had a trailer, and I always thought he hid her bones, because she would have been bones by then, somewhere inside her trailer, and he had to, something happened where he had to go find her.

Get rid of them. Not such a crazy theory. If what John's brother Michael told police was true, John held onto a box with Janice's remains for years. When I would speak to Diane about this, she said John was covered in dirt as if he had been digging. His fingers, his fingernails were covered in dirt. Maybe John's reappearance would get Hilland out of hot water. But... So at that point, my FBI supervisors had enough and...

it was time for me to pursue other adventures and another squad and told me not to have anything further to do with the case. Okay, but you didn't listen? No. You kept going? I did. More months passed, not knowing if John would ever be taken into custody. Diane was done living with a man she was now very much afraid of.

Summer helped her come up with a plan. They would have John served with annulment papers and a temporary restraining order while he was at work, and Diane would go into hiding. We were told he was going to get served at a certain time that day, and once the locks were changed, we were supposed to leave. And my mom got a phone call saying he was served early. Oh, no. So you're in the condo. Mm-hmm.

What happens? And we hear his car. Because you can hear his car from far away. It was a very loud engine. Okay, so you're, this is panic mode. This is panic. So we lock ourselves in the apartment and we heard the car stop. And we're all, oh no, he's coming. Okay, what do we, this is going to happen. You know, something's going to happen.

And so I was looking out at the out of the peephole and I was watching him basically run up the stairs like two or three at a time. His face was not normal. The only way I can describe it is he looked monstrous. That look I saw coming up those stairs was not normal.

a human being. And he started banging on the window and that's when I backed away because I thought he was going to break into that window next to the door. And I ran into the kitchen where the only weapon she could find was a heavy jar. You grab the first hard thing in front of you and you're going to whack someone over the head, you know, to make sure they don't kill your mom. This is straight out of a movie. Yeah.

And I was ready to, you know, end his life. And we just hear his body being slammed up against the door. And you hear the splintering of the wood. And he busted through that door, full-on monstrous. And then he sees me. And he goes, "'Oh, Diana, baby.'"

You know, let's talk about this. He changed his tone. He changed his demeanor. He became back to the John that he shows everybody else. Which tells you a lot about him and just how he can be a chameleon. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Summer's mother called police as John fled, but John was never charged with a crime.

He later asked to move back in, and Diane let him, thinking it was still safer to keep her enemy close. And as someone on the inside, she wanted to help the investigation. She was determined to stay. If there was any way she could uncover anything, if she could find anything that would help us. Diane talked to Fran's family constantly while back in New York. Special Agent Hillen continued to work the case during his off time, but was getting nowhere.

I had forgotten something in my office. It was leaked. And I went back and there was a message on my voicemail. It was from the detective who'd been sending out all those letters. And I sat at my desk in the darkness. I probably listened to that message like three or four times to make sure I was hearing it right. Hillen's pursuit of John Smith was about to take a very dark turn. ♪

Sam Kennedy was a road worker here in Indiana, and in the spring of 1980, he and his crew were working on this country road when they saw something that caught their attention. A box on the side of the road. Just on the edge of the water right there.

What did it look like? It's a box like so big, so big and about four foot long. What was it made of? It was made out of like a plywood, like a three quarter inch plywood. And then they had the like bars like in and it's screwed together. It's all screwed together. Sam grabbed a crowbar from his truck and pried the box open. Inside, under clothing, was a skull. This was a human. Yes. This was not an animal. No, no, no, it wasn't an animal. What a discovery. Oh, yeah.

Skeletal remains of a woman, it turned out. The authorities were unable to identify her, but they laid her to rest at a local cemetery. Over the years, she became known as "The Lady in the Box." Her story unknown. Until those letters, the ones Fran's sister labeled, went out to authorities in Indiana. One made it to the desk of a detective, who instantly remembered "The Lady in the Box."

That's when Hilland got that voicemail. And I sat at my desk in the darkness. I probably listened to that message like three or four times to make sure I was hearing it right. Did you call him immediately? Of course I did. It had to be Janice Hartman. Agent Hilland flew to Indiana and was stunned to find out the box and the clothes found inside were still being held as evidence. It was like a scene out of a movie. It's poorly lit and we have gloves on and

the clothes still smell like you might imagine and we're going through the stuff and all of a sudden I see this color of green and I pull it up and I hold it up, it's like she's looking right at me.

You could see her face in the dress. You could see clearly it was almost like the Shroud of Tern where you could see her eye sockets and you could see her mouth. But the part that was chilling was around the top of her head there was this plaid-colored, rainbow-colored pants. The dyes on those pants must have dyed her hair. So when Michael was telling us about this rainbow-colored hair,

He was telling us the truth. I mean, that is the ultimate corroboration right there. Yeah. Michael deserves an awful lot of credit. A DNA test proved it was Janice Hartman. You already believe it's Janice, but now you've got that solid confirmation. Yeah. Now it's time to arrest John. This is it. This is it. This is what you've been waiting for. For sure. It was something Diane and Summer had been waiting for, too.

Ever since John Smith broke down the door at their condo, they feared it was only a matter of time before they'd see John's rage again. One morning, Summer was asleep on the couch. Her mother and John had both left early for work. She was rattled awake by a pounding at the door and assumed the worst. You could tell they were law enforcement and homicides.

They're here. Oh, no. To tell you that she's... She was dead. Dead, you know. So I opened the door and they said, your mom is... They said she's okay. And that they arrested John. This is Diane. What's your reaction when he's finally arrested? Relief. Total relief. I didn't have to...

spy on him anymore. I didn't have to, you know, just total relief. I didn't have to worry about him coming after me again. Do you consider yourself the lucky one? I am totally the lucky one.

The man Diane married had been doting, generous. Looking back, she was hardly able to wrap her head around what everyone had been telling her about him. I wasn't believing it. I wasn't believing it because he treated me very well. Had he ever done anything that was suspicious or odd? No. But she had seen his other side that day she tried to leave him. I knew he was going to kill me. Summer knew he was going to kill me. Just with his bare hands? Yeah.

You were potentially this close to dying. Yeah. To being wife number three, dead wife number three. Totally, yeah. Summer totally saved my life. When John Smith was arrested for Janice's murder, Diane wasn't the only one relieved. Special Agent Hilland remembers the day like this. I felt redemption the day we arrested John. And true to my word, I walked down the holding cells feeling

And spoke to him behind bars. Which is exactly what you told him that day in the hotel room. Yes. The next time I talk to you, you will be behind bars. Sherry and Deedee got the news from a detective who was at the jail. He said, I have something I think you want to hear. And I heard a clank. And he said, he's behind bars. No. Yeah. He gave you a sound effect for the moment. Clank. And he said, he's behind bars. We did it.

Some answers for at least one family. It was a powerful moment. But would there be justice for everyone? There was more than enough to move forward, but that's not what happened. They hung our family out to dry. John Smith was charged with murdering his first wife, Janice Hartman. As his trial approached, John's lawyer, Kirk Migdal, won an early legal battle.

The judge blocked the prosecution from bringing up the case of his second missing wife. We had to have this to give us a fighting chance in the case. The jury would not hear a word about Fran.

I was afraid that would really hurt my case. So the prosecutor, Jocelyn Stefansson, leaned hard on the horrific story told by John's brother about seeing Janice's remains inside the box. And once the box was identified, it sat in the courtroom throughout the entire trial. So the jury got to see it every day.

they got to see where Janice was kept for all of those years. At one point, Special Agent Hilland held up Janice's nightgown, the one she was wrapped in, so the jury could see her facial imprint. You could hear them gasp. You could hear them. They clearly saw the face and the dress. You decided to attend Janice's trial. I was there every day. Why? Because I wanted him to look at me and know that I knew exactly the worm he is.

There was no reasonable doubt from the panel of jurors. They found John Smith guilty of Janice's murder. I honestly believe that if we didn't take John Smith out, that he would have continued to kill other women. I believe that firmly, you know? After the verdict, the judge allowed Sherry to give a victim impact statement about her sister Fran. I wanted him to know that as long as I lived, we would be looking for Fran. And I said, but John...

Diane got her moment with John when she went to see him in jail.

I wanted to ask him, point blank, what'd you do with Fran's body? And what did he say? I'm innocent. Why was that so important to you, important enough for you to go face him, to try to get that answer? I think it was just because this will put an end to all of this. You know, just tell me what you did with Fran, because Dee Dee and Sherry, you know, they're still looking for her.

John Smith got 15 years to life, though his first parole hearing happened nine years into his sentence. I didn't think that this was a person who deserved a chance at parole because he's shown no remorse and we still have this second wife that we don't know what happened to her.

Sherry and Deedee, with the New Jersey detectives by their side, have gone to every one of Smith's parole hearings since his conviction. Was it justice for Janice is justice for Fran? No. No. There's no tie to Fran. There's no tie to our family. Deedee sued John and won. A civil court found him responsible for Fran's death. But it was an empty victory. John still wasn't charged criminally.

And he was still eligible for parole. But all that changed on November 20th, 2019. Just a month before his next parole hearing, a New Jersey grand jury indicted John for the murder of Fran. You find out in 2019, they've indicted John Smith for Fran's murder. Yep. This is what you've been waiting for. Right.

Special Agent Hilland had continued to press Fran's case. And now, after almost three decades of not knowing what happened to Fran, there was a chance for some answers and justice. Sherry and Deedee knew it wasn't going to be an easy case to win. We have no body, no weapon, no confession, no evidence of foul play. This is a tough case. Yeah.

Before Fran's case went to trial, a judge ruled John's conviction for killing Janice could not be presented as evidence. Still, Sherry, Dee Dee, and Agent Hillen believed Fran's case was strong enough to prosecute. We have John in his own words on a phone call admitting that he lied to the police concerning Fran's disappearance. That he lied, failed the polygraph. There was more than enough to move forward, but that's not what happened.

Rather than take the case to trial, the prosecutor's office cut a deal with John Smith. They told him they would grant him immunity if he would tell them what he did with Fran's body. John jumped at the offer. And he said, I threw her body in the dumpster at Carborundum. Carborundum, the company in New Jersey where he worked in the 90s. He wrapped her in a blanket.

and was very specific about he did not mutilate her body in any way. Did he say how he killed her? Nope, didn't have to. He didn't have to. He didn't have to say why he did what he did, how he did what he did, how long it took him. There was no details. So what does that information do for you? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. And I don't believe it. I know John Smith for 20-some years of my life. I can tell you what he didn't do it, Fran. He didn't take her body...

to carborundum with hundreds, if not thousands of people working there and throw her body into an open-air dumpster that was being used by hundreds of people. That didn't happen. And shame on the prosecutor's office for accepting that because now they've given him immunity based on that information. They hung our family out to dry.

Special Agent Hilland retired from the FBI in 2022, frustrated that the case that consumed his career felt incomplete.

Now John Smith has a chance to get out of jail because now he can rightfully say, "Hey, I cooperated with authorities in New Jersey." Do you think it's possible that there are other victims out there? I absolutely believe that there are other women connected to John Smith we just don't know about. And who knows, maybe by showing this program, somebody out there is going to see this and say, "Oh my God, I remember him." I don't doubt that for a second.

You're never going to give up? No. Finding your mom, finding your sister? I still have faith that maybe someday we might find Fran. While they wait for that day, Sherry and Deedee want to make sure John Smith will never hurt anyone again. Smith's next parole hearing will be in 2029. He'll be 78 years old. Sherry and Deedee plan to be there. He's got to always know that

If he ever gets out of prison in anything but a casket, he better be looking over his shoulder.

That's all for this edition of Dateline. And check out our Talking Dateline podcast. Andrea Canning and Josh Mankiewicz will go behind the scenes of tonight's episode, available Wednesday in the Dateline feed wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you again Sunday at 10, 9 Central. And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.