Cold Case Files - Nacole's Killer: Part 1

Episode Date: August 24, 2021

This special two-part edition of Cold Case Files offers an inside look at an active cold case investigation as detectives work to solve the 1995 rape and murder of 14-year-old Nacole Smith, one of Atlanta's most notorious unsolved crimes.  Check out our great sponsors! Lending Tree: Download the free LendingTree app now to get started and see why thousands of people turn to LendingTree every day for smarter, easier finances. Progressive: Get a quote today at Progressive.com and see why 4 out of 5 new auto customers recommend Progressive! Total Wireless: Do amazing with Total Wireless! Learn more at TotalWireless.com 

Thank you for listening to this Podcast One production, available on Apple Podcasts and Podcast One. An A&E original podcast. This episode contains descriptions of violence and sexual assault. Use your best judgment. Nicole Smith was 14 years old in June of 1995. She was excited that it was almost time for summer break, and she couldn't wait to pick out a dress for her 8th grade graduation. On Wednesday, June 7th, Nicole woke up, got dressed for school, played with her baby cousin for a few minutes, and threw her hair into a ponytail.

Her mom told her she should pay more attention to her hair since they were going dress shopping after school. Nicole combed out her hair and said to her mom, you're so crazy, but I love you, and then left for school. Nicole walked to school with her older sister and some friends. But when they arrived, she realized she had left her homework at her house. Wanting to keep her A student status,

Nicole took a shortcut through the woods to go home and get it. She was never seen alive again. Inside those woods, a man attacked, raped, and murdered Nicole Smith. Her case, like so many other cold cases, would never be solved. At least not as of the recording of this podcast. But the evidence gathered in her case file plays a key role when the killer strikes again. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files.

I'm Brooke, and here's the legendary Bill Curtis with a special two-part episode, Nicole's Killer. I want to picture myself here and try to picture how this happened. Vince Velasquez is a cold case detective. This is not an area that a stranger would have just staked out to sexually assault a 14-year-old girl. Russell Popham is his partner. We're going to walk away today with the name of the person who did it now. But it gives us a better concept of what we're dealing with. In these woods more than 10 years ago,

14-year-old Nicole Smith was raped and murdered. Now Cold Case Files is given complete access as Fulton County's Cold Case Squad renews the hunt for Nicole's killer. Okay, this is our conference room slash war room. And as it relates to the Nicole Smith case, this here would be the murder of 95. Velazquez and Popham begin with a review of the Smith homicide. At about 8.30, she was walking to school

with her sister and some friends, where Nicole forgot something and turned around. They were in a wooded path. And shortly thereafter, people reported hearing gunshots. The neighborhood was canvassed. Hundreds and hundreds of homes were canvassed, and people were talked to. Statements were taken, and basically this case went cold. And of course, Russell until 2004.

June 20th of 2004, around 9.50 p.m., a 13-year-old victim was walking up the street, approached by a male, pulled into a wooded lot, overgrown lot, and raped. Detectives knew their killer was back when DNA from the 2004 rape matched to the 1995 Smith murder. You know, automatically we know our guy's back, but, you know, I guess the troubling thing is the fact that it's exactly nine years and 13 days apart, and there's no other DNA connection in nine years.

You know, we carry this everywhere we go. Besides a DNA profile, cold case detectives have one other piece of compelling evidence tacked to the walls of their squad room. This is what he looks like, right here. According to the rape victim, this is him. The day she was raped, this is what she says he looked like, right here. Popham and Velasquez need to find this man before he finds another child. They start by returning to the woods where Nicole Smith was raped and murdered

and recreating the crime scene. This is it. This is where we were last time we were here. All right, so we're going to start with that. We do not have a crime scene sketch in the Nicole Smith case. That is critical for trial. Well, we had word that that area is going to be developed, and so our fear was in a year the trees would be

torn down and commercial development would take place and we would lose that opportunity. But this is the position she was in when she was shot. Based on the fact that she was shot above the eye and the bullet exited at a left ear will suggest that she was looking at him when he shot her. The only viable defense would be consent. That is, that he had consensual sex with her, left her, and then someone came by and shot her. A crime scene sketch can help you disprove that defense because it can help you recreate the crime.

And when you recreate the crime, you're able to see the truth of exactly what happened to Nicole. Point blank, stippling on the skin, which means the gun was in close contact to the skin when he shot her. And it's nothing short of an execution, is what it was. Whoever killed Nicole Smith most likely knew these woods. In other words, the killer could be a local. We feel the person was very comfortable walking through or being in this area

because it's not an area that a stranger would really know about. You know, like I said, this same guy is somebody who is probably still living in this neighborhood. And it's not so much now. We need to find the person from back then. Those are the people we're looking for, people who would know this guy from back then. Detectives' next step, pay a visit to a man from back then, a man who detectives suspect might know the name of Nicole's killer.

We're going to a prison in northwest Georgia and we're going to talk to an inmate at this prison that back in 1995 he had shared some information and some knowledge possibly about the murder of Nicole Smith. The inmate's name? Jermaine Gray. So Jermaine Gray knew Nicole Smith. He knew her sister, he knew her mother. You know, he grew up with them. He mentioned that he knew who killed her. That was his statement in 95, and he mentioned a guy named Mack.

I guess the adrenaline is flowing because it's going to take just an inch of information for us to go a mile with it. Just after 10 a.m., Gray is brought down from his cell. Hey, Jermaine, you doing okay? I'm okay. Come down and sit over here. I think you know why we're here. Okay. You knew Nicole. you knew her mother, so obviously you want to help us, you know,

have the person arrested that did this and convicted, right? Yes, sir. Okay. You know, I just want to talk to you again about this. In 1995, you know, what you were doing the day that Nicole got killed. He's not a suspect. Through DNA, he's been eliminated, So he seems like he wants to help. He seems sincere, but he's either really, really confused

or he is just, you know, yanking our chain, for lack of a better word. So we're not quite sure what he's doing yet. We're going to try and figure that out. I was in class. I was going to Thera High School back then. Okay. That's when we walkedera High School back then. OK. That's when we walked up there, and I seen everything. Crime scene, the police with the tape around me.

And I seen her sister crying. We were like, what's wrong with you? She was like, her sister in the woods dead. And I was saying somebody killed her sister. But we had just told them. According to Gray, rumors surfaced that a man named Mac had killed nicole when jermaine was by himself that's when this mac character confronted him and said basically if you tell anybody

or hear you mention it again i'll kill you and just out of nowhere he said you know what i'm saying jumped out with a gun he said if you tell anybody i'm gonna shoot you i know where you stay and everything so i went back and told all my homeboys. I said, man, you know, Mac just pulled the gun out on me. He confessed that he killed the girl, but he didn't say it. He said, if I tell anybody, he's going to kill me. As far as saying, is it like McCain, McElroy, is it something like that? Or is this a nickname off the street or whatever, and we can never get a definite answer on who Mac was?

I met Mack. You know, is there some girl that we can go to today that he can point us in the right direction on to who Mack is? He had one or two girls, you know what I'm saying? You remember their names? I just know one name, Keisha. Keisha. Right now I'm in a rock and a hard place, so I have to rely on him. I mean, like I said, he gave us a couple leads here,

and I'm going to hopefully be optimistic about it and turn it into something positive. Thank you, Jermaine. All right. He mentioned a girl named Keisha that lived in Landrum Arms. Back in the squad room, Popham shares specifics of the Gregg interview with his partner. And this Keisha, and he explained right where her apartment was. It's like at the end, right across from the Candy Lady. The Candy Lady was the last building on the left. Okay, you know what?

Hold on a second. You know what? There's a Keisha. Hold on, let me grab the file for a second. I remember... There is a Keisha. Does that name ring a bell to you? When he talked about Keisha, he said that, you know, that was one of Mac's girlfriends.

Okay. He also talked about, you know, he believes that there's a little cool group of people that know everything. The woman ID'd as Keisha cannot be located by detectives. A second name mentioned by Gray, however, appears to hold some promise. Try this Reeves. He lives on Kimberly Road.

Kimberly Road. Dad drives a taxi cab and lives in a pink house. We were just able to figure out the address on Kimberly Road where both of these people live. We're going to go there tomorrow and just see what's going on, see if I've got a couple of names. For detectives, it's the break they've been waiting for. I think the visit with Jermaine was definitely worthwhile today, definitely. So I'm looking

forward to seeing these guys tomorrow. Tomorrow, cold case detectives will head out in search of a pink house and a man named Mac. Well, first, let's take a look at this, man, and tell me, does that look like anybody you remember back from 95? Nine years after Nicole was raped and murdered, her cold case came back to light. In 2004, a 13-year-old girl who preferred not to be identified by name was also assaulted by the same man with a DNA match to prove it. This time, the victim lived and was able to provide details to a police sketch artist about the suspect's appearance. Now police are hunting a serial rapist, one who could strike again.

This is one of the houses that Ms. Gray told us about yesterday. Vince Velasquez and Russell Popham are tracking a killer, a man who murdered 14-year-old Nicole Smith more than 10 years ago and who detectives believe might still live in this neighborhood. We were able to search on just the database of police calls, and we think this is the right house. We'll go see. East Point Police and Atlanta Police, can we talk to you? An informant named Jermaine Gray has ID'd a man

who might have information on the murder. His name? Steve Reeves. Steve is one of the guys that Jermaine Gray said that used to hang out with him back in 1995. We're here, we're sort of at a shot in the dark, so you know the Reeves that live around here, the Reeves family? Right there. Oh, okay.

They live right there? Mm-hmm. Did their house used to be pink or something? Yes, it did. Used to, huh? It did. I'm Captain Popham, and I work with the East Point Police Department, and Detective Velasquez is right here.

He works for the Atlanta Police Department. How are you? Okay. Nicole Smith. Yeah, that's what we're doing. We're investigating that case. We work cold cases, so. We talked to a couple individuals, and somebody gave us a name,

Steve, perhaps Steve Reeves. It might be your son. The woman says there is no Steve Reeves, but she has a son named Kenneth who might be able to help. We're going to go see her son now. So I talked to him on the phone. He's really, really willing to help us. So he's right down the street. So we're going to go over there real quick and go see him. This is what we do, knocking on doors and getting information. I'm Detective Velasquez. This is Captain Pop. I'm with East Point.

Did you know anybody named Mac from back down? I used to go by the name of Mac. Not really. You don't have no real name? She was a good friend to me or whatever i wish i could uh help you out you know like you knew her yeah i knew yeah we was all in the same class and stuff um well here's the thing man here's where we're at with this the guy that killed nicole that you remember back in the day from the crime has now raped the girl nine years later in east point didn't kill her though so he's back and see what i'm saying was there anybody that kind of looked like this back when you was going to school and hanging out around there?

Because this is him. According to the girl that got raped, this is the guy that killed Nicole. See what I'm saying? Yeah. That's a picture of him. Kenneth doesn't recognize the face and tells police Nicole's murder still haunts him. Just a week earlier, he painted a pair of shoes in her honor. I just did some shoes, some rest in peace shoes,

and put Nicole's name on there, sir. Did you really? Why made you do that, man, all of a sudden? What did you think about that? Just, uh... It was on your mind? Yeah. When he brought the shoe out and he showed me,

I really was surprised. You know, because I didn't know what to expect. It really showed me that this guy is somebody who, one of many people from that community who still think about that. You know, and that's what keeps us going, really. People still talk about this out here, or? Kind of like it is. It's like it ain't never died. Yeah.

Whatever you can come up with, man. Even if you don't think it's good, let me know about it, because you never know. Okay. It could be something that you think is nothing, and that little something could turn into something big. So, you know, put your ear to the ground, man, see what you can come up with.

I definitely will get back with you, or let you know whatever I can find out, sir. Okay, sounds good, man. Appreciate it. Thank you. It's almost like you feel like you're close to this guy. It's like we're knocking on the right doors and we're talking to the right people. So it's almost like the carrot's dangling in front of us and we just can't catch it. We just can't grab it yet. Velasquez and Popham find themselves in the neighborhood of Miriam Brown,

the mother of the rape victim from 2004. They decide to stop in. We're here, you know, 15 months, basically, after the incident happened, and we're just letting you know that, you know, we're still out here, we're still doing it. Of course, I'm fortunate I get to see you a lot. We're just going to ask her to tell us what she remembers again and you know who knows what she'll say who knows what she'll remember it's obviously taken a lot longer than I wanted it to take and a minute is too long but it's taken a lot

longer so exactly and we're not gonna rest until we do well at some point we want to do also is want to re-interview your daughter. Okay. You know, because every little detail, sometimes it takes a while for little things to come back out. You guys are part of my family, and you just don't know how that makes me feel. Because that's a terrible feeling. No mother, no one ever wants to go through that because it feels like somebody just stuck something in your heart and pulled it out, you know? I know you guys are working hard and it don't matter how long it take, we're going to catch him.

We come over here and see her, and she just, again, gives us energy and gives us a reason to do what we do. And this is the whole reason of being an investigator, to solve cases like this so other families won't have to go through what she is going through, but also to give her some kind of satisfaction and closure. It makes you want to hug your children a little tighter. I mean, because you see what they're going through and I can only imagine what I would be going through. The Nicole Smith investigation is moving forward slowly, one source at a time.

Detectives decide to up the ante and go public with their hunt. We want you to take a look at this picture. If you think you saw anything or know any information, please call the number on your screen. We still feel that this guy is right here with us. We've got the DNA profile, but still getting out here, just knocking on doors, talking to people. That type of work, we feel, is really what's going to solve this. Captain Russell Popham and Detective Vince Velasquez are tracking a killer, a man who murdered 14-year-old Nicole Smith in 1995. It's a crime this community has not forgotten.

What do we want? Justice We want it Nicole Smith could not make this walk But her mother, aunt, and countless others did in her name It's not a day go by that I don't think about her Often it's not a day go by that I don't cry I sure miss her

And if I didn't love her, I wouldn't be out here today trying to get some answers. More than ten years after her daughter's death, Aquanella Smith is still waiting for answers. I have my moments. Some nights I get home from work, I pull out every piece of paperwork, every article in the newspaper, every picture.

We're going to keep going, so we're not stopping. As long as I'm working in the APD, I'm on this case. Detectives Velasquez and Popham have good reason to offer Aquanella fresh hope. We're very excited about this. This billboard going up, and it's going up again right in the killer's backyard, the victim's backyard. On a gray morning in December of 2005, a billboard with the sketch of the suspect will be unveiled less than a mile from the spot where Nicole Smith was murdered. Wow, looks real good. Just after 10 a.m., cold case detectives, as well as the local media, got their first look.

What we have behind us is a billboard, and it's showing a composite of a suspect that has been linked from a 1995 murder in Atlanta of a young girl and a rape in East Point in June of 2004. Why are you taking this step now? These victims deserve justice. These victims' families deserve justice. And this is just another step that we want to take as law enforcement to get this information out to try to generate some more information.

The new efforts to catch a killer spark interest in a cold case within the hour the image of the killer is carried live on tv screens across atlanta good afternoon eleanor well good afternoon now many people not just here in southwest atlanta but all across the metro area remember the death of 14 year old nicole smith the media to us, I've always used it as a tool, a very positive tool, because television media, I mean, it goes out to hundreds of thousands of households every evening. And if we can just get, because all it takes is one person that has the right information to give us a call, and this case is solved. We want you to take a look at this picture. If you think you saw anything or know any information,

please call the number on your screen, 1-888-OLD-TIPS. They want you to call it right now. We're live in southwest Atlanta. Eleonora Andrews, Channel 2 Action News at noon. Cold case tip line. As soon as they aired that live at noon, I had the tip line folded into my phone. It immediately started ringing. As soon as they aired that live at noon, I had the tip line folded into my phone.

Immediately started ringing. We started getting calls in. Yes, I was calling to see if there was a way to get more information on I was watching the Channel 5 news. I didn't think it would take long, but that was pretty quick. Now you don't have to take them on charge. You are allowed to look at information about the rapist. Yeah, yeah. I remember. I remember. You said you got some new information?

Okay. Tipsters point detectives to a cable guy, a card shark, and a regular at a local bar. Everyone, it seems, knows someone who looks like the sketch. These are very sketchy. One guy is somebody knocking on doors. The other guy is a guy walking around downtown. So there's not much we can do with that right now. Here we go.

Here's another one. Cold case tip line. Well, what do you got? He looks like your boyfriend. Does he wear glasses, your boyfriend? Does he? Has he ever been arrested before? So she was a little apprehensive to meet us at first, but we kind of convinced her everything would be okay.

Go ahead and leave now. I'm going to be right at the entrance in a black car with dark windows, okay? This is probably the best one we got. She's got a photo, she's got a name, and we can follow up with that. So what we'll do is sit over there in our car and then let her come up. Detectives hunker down in the parking lot. 15 minutes later, the tipster pulls in. How you doing today? All right. The initial appearance of the photograph, it didn't appear to look anything like the composite to us. On a scale of one to ten, I'm like eight and a half that it's not him. But look, I mean, it doesn't look like him.

It doesn't look like him. The tip appears to be a dead end. Velasquez and Popham, however, forge ahead. Back at the office, they dig into a stack of fresh leads. How are you? I think you called our cold case tip line yesterday. Yeah, I did. Okay, what you got?

One lead in particular catches the detective's attention. It involves a name Velasquez noticed in the old murder file. Basically, we're going to see a guy whose name was mentioned in the file on a note, a scribbled note by a detective back in 1995. It was a call that was received, an anonymous caller, saying that this person killed Nicole Smith. This person is named Richard Mitchell. Richard Mitchell is the cousin of one of Nicole's good friends

from back in the day. There's no statement from him back in 1995. But someone phoned in and said, Richard Mitchell killed Nicole Smith. We're trying to eliminate as many people as we can. So what we're going to try and do is ask him to submit to an oral swab so we can test his DNA against our sample. Russell, if you want to come too. Just after 2 p.m., Velasquez and Papa meet

Richard Mitchell. This is a consent for oral swab. This is in relation to the Nicole Smith case. And he was more than willing to give us that. There's no hesitation whatsoever. Very cooperative. So what we're doing is we're trying to contact everybody that's

in that file and swab them. Now, I will say this. When I saw your photo, right, I did say you kind of look like the sketch a little bit. Okay, and especially the gap tooth. After he gets the DNA, Velasquez switches gears, treating Mitchell less like a suspect and more like an ally in the hunt for Nicole's killer. You know, our initial reaction is that, you know, probably it's not going to be our guy.

Told us if we needed anything else, we can come back to him. He remembered the case, he remembered Nicole, and he felt very bad about what happened to her, and he was willing to help us in any way he could. Remember, this is what he looked like in 2004. This is what she said, somebody said he looked like back in 95. But it's supposed to be the same person. Right. So anybody that looked like either of these two guys that you know of from back in the day is who we want to know about. What I'm going to do with

these is ask some people that I think might know too, might know more than me. Right, right, cool. All right, man, appreciate it, man. Appreciate the cooperation. We'll be talking soon. It could be months before Richard Mitchell's DNA work is returned from the lab. The person-by-person elimination is tedious, expensive, and time-consuming. Back in the office, detectives take a conference call from a woman who offers the equivalent of a forensic shortcut. Hello? Hey, Sharon. Hey. Hey, Sharon. Hey.

Hey, it's Vince and Russell here. For the past year, Sharon Pageling-Hagan has been working up a profile of Nicole Smith's killer. Today, however, Sharon wants to talk DNA and tells detectives about an innovative way to use the CODIS system. I think this is a DNA case. Right.

And for Mr. Chances, I still like the idea system. Hagan is suggesting detectives broaden the parameters of their CODIS search, looking not only for an exact match, but also for any partial matches. In other words, to search for individuals who have a similar genetic makeup as the killer. What you're talking about is a lower stringency search. And the reason that these guys want to do it is because then we could possibly get the names of relatives. They could go check out these individuals and see if they've got siblings, you know, fathers, sons, that possibly could be the person that murdered Nicole.

And then we can actually look at those hits, those 50% hits, and then see how they fit into our investigation of people, right? Yeah. We could look at that person and his family tree and see how another male fits into this investigation. I would suspect that if we did get a hit on a male relative of him, I think it would just be a matter of minutes. I mean, it would literally be, once I look at that person

and look at every male relative, you know, four times removed, I think we'd have him. I contacted the GBI to attempt to run a partial CODIS search, and they advised that to do that would violate their contract or their licensing agreement with the FBI and CODIS. So they cannot do that at all. It's a very powerful database. It's storing a person's genetic code and

it stores hundreds and thousands of genetic codes across the country. So I can, through privacy concerns, I can understand why they wouldn't want to do certain things. But some things don't make any sense to me at all. I don't know why we couldn't do a partial search and then leave it up to us to eliminate everybody that we get from that partial search. It is not the first time detectives have been stymied by CODIS guidelines. A second significant restriction involves suspects themselves who agree to give a voluntary sample to detectives. Like today, we swab somebody today. That DNA profile can only be compared to what we have. It does not allow that profile to be entered in CODIS

Although that person might have offended it might be Perhaps you know, he very well could have a sample out there floating around in CODIS that this person is responsible for crime We'll never know because the only thing we can do is compare it to our sample and that's it You know, which is another guideline and rule of CODIS that you can't do that. So I guess this is just another, you know, one of those obscure rules that, you know, and if it's a rule, you know, I'm of the opinion

that, you know, we can change those. You know, we just, you know, it's a matter of finding the right people, you know. So that's something I'm certainly going to work on. Despite the optimism, CODIS rules prohibit the expanded search. Meanwhile, a child rapist and killer remains at large, and detectives turn up a hot lead.

This 13-year-old girl came up with this description of the man. A brother. Wanted for rape and murder. Almost 10 years after Nicole Smith was brutally murdered, detectives were yet again facing a dead end. Privacy laws prevented them from expanding their search in the CODIS DNA database, and this newest roadblock threatened to put Nicole's case back on the shelf. That is, until a tip came in that might crack the case wide open.

Next week, on Cold Case Files, that tip will come to light.