Murder With My Husband - 168. Donna Payant - The Prison Guard Murder

Episode Date: June 12, 2023

On this episode of MWMH, Payton and Garrett discuss the first female prison guard murder in US history. New Merch and More: https://linktr.ee/murderwithmyhusband Case Sources: Forensic Files, episode “Pastoral Care,” aired October 29, 2001 on CourtTV The Evil Within: A Top Murder Squad Detective Reveals the Chilling True Stories of the World's Most Notorious Killers (2013, London), by Trevor Marriott wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemuel_Smith wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Payant Newspapers.com sources: newspapers.com/image/370400867 newspapers.com/image/87033830 newspapers.com/image/115328943 newspapers.com/image/119909573 newspapers.com/image/277367567 newspapers.com/image/86931174 newspapers.com/image/713059508 newspapers.com/image/703422808 newspapers.com/image/545819507 newspapers.com/image/164356875 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Yes, you energy. Energy for everything. Casp the banner now to learn more. Hey everybody, welcome back to our podcast. This is Marta with my husband. I'm Peyton Morlens. And I'm Garrett Morlens. And he's the husband.

I'm the husband. We hope that you guys are all loving our new merch drop. It'll be up for probably another week. And then it will be gone and we'll be doing a different drop. So if you like this drop, please go and check it out and thank you for supporting us. Yeah, there are links everywhere so you can check it out and see if it's a drop that you are interested in. But we've had such a great response so far and I personally love this drop. So thank you so much for those who have supported us.

And I think we're going to hop right into Garrett's My 10 seconds. Tired. And I think we're gonna hop right into my 10 seconds this week, just a reminder that our bonus content on Apple subscriptions and Patreon, you get two bonus episodes a month and all of the content is ad-free. But I'm not gonna lie, Peyton and I have been making the ads pretty entertaining lately,

so maybe you wanna listen to them. Alright, well, if you follow Peyton on social media, you might have seen a glimpse of this, but I was upstairs in the office and Peyton was downstairs just in the couch. Yeah, I was actually watching Law and Order S for you. Also, when I hear just, Garrett, Garrett, I was like, what is happening right now? I was like, for sure Peyton's getting murdered right now.

Like, something is going on. So Peyton's screaming my name and I'm like, what, she's like, I need help right now. It's like, okay, so take my headphones off. I start running downstairs. I run downstairs. I look at Payton, and daysies in her arms covered in mud.

It wasn't even a mud, it was like cement. I mean, it was mud, but it looked like just, it was just caked all over her, her paws, her mouth, just everything. But it was wet. Oh yeah, I was super wet. I don't know how wet it could be, but it was really wet. Just super wet.

Just super wet. You know, there was like wet and then there was like extra wet. It was extra wet. So basically what happened was I was just sitting there mining my business, watching Law and Order S for You. And I had the back door open. So I don't let Daisy go out back alone.

So I opened the door and was like, I'll just keep my eye on her while I'm watching. Well, you know how that went. I just started watching. Stop keeping my eye on her. And next thing I know, she's running up to the door and I see her through the glass. And I don't realize that she, like, I know something's off because she's booking it. But she jumps in, gets two steps into the door, full speed. And I realize that she's covered in mud. She comes running through the living room and then jumps up on our white couch,

gets like to the second cushion in before I snatch her up and the floor is covered in mud. The white couch is covered in mud. We have a white couch, we have a white rug, we have a like creamish floor, like everything is just covered in my we have a white couch. We have a white rug. We have a like creamish floor like everything is just covered in mud She's just she's kind of a little demon anyways. I mean it was kind of our fault We let her out there and we weren't watching her and she found the whole that she loves to dig I love to dig and I don't know anyway, so she found a little hole she some mud, and we'll put some pictures on our social media,

YouTube, Instagram, everywhere. But anyways, that's how Jay-Z ruined our couch. Don't worry, it's washable. So that is my 10 seconds. We also did by two electric beach cruisers. So I'm kind of excited about that because we've been wanting some for a while. We've just been kind of waiting to pull the trigger, I guess, and we finally did it.

And we're going to start riding those around because who needs to ride an actual bike when it can do all the work for you. All right, our case starts as our forensic files, the evil within, a top murder squad detective reveals the chilling truth stories, the chilling true stories of the world's most notorious killers, Wikipedia and newspapers.com. Okay, you would think that being a guard in a prison is, despite the kind of people you're around all day, many of whom are violent, dangerous, convicted murderers, a relatively safe job because those dangerous individuals are prisoners.

People who are under constant watch, whose movements are controlled, who spend much of their day confined to their cells, or restricted or designated areas, and guards, despite not being armed with fire arms, are well supported by their co-workers. But working as a prison guard is no less dangerous than any other occupation, and probably more so because things do happen. Riots, crimes of opportunity, and circumstance, brutal assaults. In today's story, we look at the dark of being a prison guard, specifically a female prison guard at an all-male penitentiary, as we cover a landmark case from 1981

that became the first murder of its kind. So here we go. Rural Clinton County in New York is a place where people are born to become prison guards. With the sprawling Clinton correctional facility being one of the area's largest employers, it's the most logical career path for the people who grow up in this part of the country, many of whom come from generations of correctional workers. And Donna Payant was one such person.

Donna was raised by a family of prison guards, and when she grew up, she married one. Her father, her uncle, her cousins, they were all prison guards. Her father had worked at the Clinton Correctional Facility as a guard for three decades, and her husband Leo himself worked at Clinton as well. In this remote part of New York,

corrections work was part of the backbone of the local economy. And prison guard work provided more security, no pun intended, and stability than most other professions. Compensation in the correctional field for guards was decent enough that, combined with her husband's salary, it would give Donna a living wage to make it easier to raise her three children. And she also hoped that someday soon she and her husband could own, it would give Donna a living wage to make it easier to raise her three children. She also hoped that someday soon she and her husband could own a home of their own.

But Leo knew how dangerous this kind of work was. He saw it every day at the maximum security prison where he worked. He urged Donna to reconsider. But she wouldn't give in. She was a strongwilled and determined woman who was not afraid of much in this world And she felt she could hold her own against the most hardened criminals. I have to work, Donna argued Why should I work for seven or eight thousand dollars a year when I can double that? So Leo gave in but secretly Leo was hoping that his wife Donna wouldn't succeed

He hoped that she would somehow fail the exams. And when she didn't and she began training, he was waiting for her to wash out. And certainly, training didn't go smoothly for Donna. After just six days of the training academy, Donna left. She left because late one night while she was lying in her bed on the academy campus, a male supervisor entered her room without being invited. She watched quietly as the man stood silently and still, and then just a few minutes later, walked back out.

This was Ferdana, a culmination of discomfort that had been building across her first week at the Academy. The instructors used obscene language and behaved like military drill sergeants. It just felt abusive. But then then a male staff member entering her room at night without permission, that made her feel so unsafe that she left and initiated a lawsuit. Eventually though, the department apologized to Donna, she dropped the suit and returned to the academy. This was only a couple months after she left, but by this time, funding had been cut and what was originally a six-week program was now a three-week program. And when she was done, she got assigned not to the Clinton Correctional Facility where her husband worked,

but to the Green Haven Correctional Facility. At that time, Green Haven was an overcrowded institution that housed over 1800 of the most violent inmates in the state of New York. Many of them were lifers, and over 500 of them were convicted murderers. It was one of the toughest maximum security prisons in the entire country. But what was even tougher was that Greenhaven was five hours away from Donnus home. Five hours. Her home was about half an hour south of the Canadian border, whereas Greenhaven is about 60 miles north of New York City. So this would have been about a five hour drive each way.

So that's obviously not doable. So Donna had to find temporary lodging near Greenhaven, and she now could only live part time with her husband and three children, traveling back home on weekends and on her days off. I mean, that's intense. Yeah, you know, I'm sure there's not another way to do it, but it's just crazy to think that you put 500 plus convicted murders in like the same building and think like it would be okay.

I think there won't be that many problems, right? Yeah, I think maybe they just hope they heard each other, which isn't really any better, but I think they hope that all guards and other personalities are safe. I don't know another way you do it. It seems like maybe the only solution. So it's hard not to think that Donna being assigned to one of the most violent prisons in the country,

five hours away from home, wasn't punitive in some way. The correctional department saying in FU for even thinking of filing that lawsuit against them. But you know Donna wanted to be a guard and she wanted to do this. She had hoped that and expected that after a short stint at Greenhaven she would be reassigned to Clinton so she could resume a normal life living with her family full time and working at the same correctional facility as her husband. So the afternoon of Friday, May 15, 1981, began like any other workday for Donna. She checked in through the front gate,

punched her time card, and reported to the lineup room for her daily assignment. She was only in her third week of work at Greenhaven Correctional Facility. And on this particular day, Sargent Lee Stowe assigned her to work in the yard for inmates from Cellblox A and B, which he had done before. This was a very familiar assignment for Donna. So after leaving the lineup room where the guards are given their assignments, Donna walked over to the arsenal to get her portable alarm, which is basically like a panic button that you can carry around with you. She walked south east through this corridor that had windows overlooking the exercise yard where she'd been assigned.

Inside the yard at the time, like through much of the day, there were prisoners lifting weights on homemade exercise benches, there were inmates jogging around and tight circles. Her job was basically to just stand in the yard with one other officer, supervising or overseeing what was going on until the yard closed for the day which happened at 4pm. But before she stepped into the yard that day, Donna was stopped by another female guard who was using a phone. And the phone was located near the gate before a corridor to the B&C cell blocks, and that corridor was teeming with people. There's a guy on the other end asking to speak with you, the female guard said, handing the phone to Donna, who put the phone to her ear and covered her other ear so she could hear the caller on the other end. When she was done with the call, Donna handed her portable alarm and her keys to another officer and said, with this

tone of annoyance in her voice, I'll be back in a few minutes. Before stalking away, walking back down the way she'd just come. A few hours later, during evening roll call, it was noticed that Donna was still absent and unaccounted for. And the other guard that was posted in the yard told the superior officers that Donna never reported to her station that day. Once it was realized that Donna was missing, an emergency lockdown was ordered. All 1800 inmates were locked in their cells while the prison grounds were systematically searched. Curious why it took all day. Right?

I feel, I mean, I don't know. I feel like you're working out of prison. You guys all know each other well. You would know if you've had seen someone for a while. And I'm not knocking them right now. I don't know, it's a long time. Devils advocate, she is only in her third week. True. She's a new employee.

And remember, maybe the Academy doesn't like her that much. I feel like after a couple hours, it'd be like anyone seen Donna. Yeah. I don't know. So individual units, cell blocks, offices, closets, every nook and cranny was scoured inside and out for any sign of the missing guard. But nothing turned up. Finally at 7pm that night, the commander of the Bureau of Criminal Investigations, Captain

Francis D. Francesco was telephoned at his home and briefed on the situation that one of the female guards at Greenhaven was missing. So Captain Francis D. Francesco got word of Donna's disappearance and gave an authorization for the use of search dogs. A band of bloodhounds was then brought to the prison and taken up and down the property inside and out, and again, nothing. The search dogs tracked her scent to the dumping area, but that's where the trail ended with no sign of Donna. But then, early the next morning, on what had begun as a rainy day, a bulldozer was moving trash around the local dump, including all the trash that had come from Greenhaven Correctional

facility. And among the trash that had been put into the trash compactor and dumped into the trash pit, was a black plastic garbage bag, which broke open and spat out a mingled human body. Officials were immediately contacted and soon after the body was identified as that of missing Donna Payant who had now become the first female correctional officer in the United States history to die in the line of duty. Yeah how does that happen? How does that happen? And how does she go through the whole compactor? I don't know.

I don't know. After she was killed, Donna's body had been placed into a 55-gallon prison garbage bin, where it was dumped into the trash truck and taken to the landfill 30 miles away, where her body was busted by the trash compactor and flattened by the bulldozer. So there's nobody see this.

Every bone in Donna's body was broken. And she was covered in wet filth and dirt and debris, which right away contaminated whatever forensic evidence would have been left on her body. But the medical examiner was able to conclude that Donna was bound, raped, and strangled to death, and she was found with ligatures still around her arms and her neck. And it looked as though she had been bitten multiple times and at multiple places on her body. It was a savage attack.

What began as a missing person investigation had now become a homicide investigation. And at a facility housing nearly 2,000 inmates, a quarter of which were convicted murderers. How many suspects do you need? Yeah, I mean, I guess the upside is they didn't go anywhere. Right, but also they're in the prison somewhere. You have 500 suspects.

I mean, normally if someone gets murdered in a neighborhood, you go on one person's, you know, has a history, you're like, okay, there you go. There's our suspect. Yeah, I'm at least they can find them though. Right. No one knows escaped. Okay, you guys, we are getting into an ad. I know you guys have both heard the story about how Garrett and I were both paying separately

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That therapy be your map to a better life. Visit BetterHop.com slash husband today and get 10% off your first month. That's better help, help.com slash husband. So the two dozen state police investigators on the case were faced with the challenge. Many of these men weren't about to cooperate with them. You know how it is. One of the worst things you can do in prison is be a snitch. No one wanted to cooperate and risk being seen as a snitch. And of that population of 1800, only 50 of those inmates could be accounted for at the time that Donna pay ant vanished

inside the prison walls. And complicating the investigation was all the activity around the prison the afternoon she disappeared. I guess I'm confused though because I imagine and I could be wrong that there's prison guards everywhere. And so how does some how does a guard get taken and then bound and sexually sold like how does this happen without any of the other guards seeing. I don't know. Well, I mean, it happens to other inmates without any guards noticing until they make their rounds. I mean, do the guards notice? They're just like, okay, I'm just saying, you're saying it's corrupt. I'm watching too many TV shows. Yeah. So there was a revival meeting taking place inside the gymnasium

during the hours that Donna went missing and this threw off everybody's schedule. And also a group of new hires were being trained and one of the trainees looked a lot like Donna as did two of the other female guards. So it made it hard to pin down exactly when she was last seen. And investigators lost some time trying to weed out who had really seen Donna that afternoon and who hadn't.

Finally, it was determined that the last time Donna had been seen by anyone was after she was handed that phone call by the other female guard and she left back down the same way she'd come. Who was the caller? No one could say. The guard who took the call did not ask the man to identify himself, so she did not follow standard protocol. And then Donna herself made a rookie mistake.

She didn't tell anyone where she was going. She just went there and disappeared. But based on the fact that her body was dumped into the prison trash, they knew her killer had to be somebody inside the prison with more access than your typical inmate. So investigators were asking the question of who would have wanted to hurt Donna, who would have had the motive and who would have had the opportunity. Because this was an overcrowded prison and privacy would have been much needed to carry out a crime like this.

And prison guards, unlike the inmates, had the freedom to move around wherever they pleased. Because of this, investigators were thinking that the most likely perpetrator of this murder was another guard, not even an inmate. How would I was thinking? And so that's where they put their focus. Very soon, investigators learned that just three days before the murder, Donna was seen engaged in a heated altercation with a male guard who was getting in her space

and getting physical with her. When she turned her back to walk away from him, he started poking her on her shoulder and on her back. And it was learned that this guard in fact had something to hide. He was part of a network of guards who were engaging in illegal activity at the prison. Oh man, so I was right. So he wasn't the only guard there who would have had motive to kill her if she found out. Yeah. Donna was a rule follower with a strong sense of

justice. And she would have not taken kindly to wrongdoing among her co-workers. An official report that was filed two weeks before Donna's murder revealed that some of the guards at Green Haven were engaging in quid pro quo activities, which included providing drugs and sex workers to the prisoners in exchange for money and other favors. And there was kind of a fraternal code among the guards that had kept this under wraps for years. So yes, very corrupt for years. But in 1981, female guards were allowed to begin working at Greenhaven, which before that only

male guards because it was an all-male prison. But when the guard population became intersex, many of the new female guards weren't interested in being a part to this corrupt system to this racket. And Donna, in particular, was not popular among the male guards because of the complaint and the lawsuit that she had filed when she was a trainee. They saw her as a whistleblower, who might end their careers and possibly result in criminal prosecution. They had a lot to lose, if Donna found out.

When that male guard, the one who was seen arguing with her and poking her, was questioned. He admitted he had been selling cocaine to inmates. And as a result, he lost his job. But he claimed he had nothing to do with her murder. And really, the level of brutality, the bite marks, the sexual assault, the ligatures, this was all more consistent with a sexually motivated attack, not necessarily revenge. As the investigation progressed, it was learned that after the phone call, Donna was last seen taking a right into the hospital corridor toward the offices of the Catholic Chaplain Reverend Edward Donovan.

And one of the only other people who had access to those offices was the Chaplain's assistant, an inmate named Lemuel Smith, which if you've watched prison break, this is very similar to how he breaks out of prison because he becomes the assistant and is able to get into all the offices and stuff even as an inmate. Okay, I've never watched Prison Break. Really? You watched it? Yes.

When, not since we've been married? Like, when it first came out, I was like in middle school. Oh, is there a bunch of seasons? Yeah. It's good. We should watch it. Maybe, I don't know. It's good.

It doesn't sound that good. Oh, everyone tell Garrett that Prison Break is good. It's so good. We should watch it. Maybe I don't know. It's good. Oh, everyone tell Garrett that prison break is good. It's so good. It's good. I have to say Lemuel Smith was an odd choice to be the chaplain's assistant. Lemuel Smith was serving a life sentence for two murders, had confessed to five altogether, and had what you would call an epic rap sheet. But a green haven, he had been a model prisoner, with only one minor infraction on an otherwise spotless disciplinary record. Smith had become an altar boy and was so deeply involved in the Catholic chaplain's services that he rose on to become the chaplain's assistant. And this was a position that gave him a lot of freedom to move around inside the prison

and go places other inmates who didn't have the same privileges couldn't go. But when a forensic ontologist named Loel Levin was given images of the bite marks to review, the bite marks immediately looked familiar to him. They were very, very distinctive. He had used images of the same bite marks just a few days before, in a lecture he had given on a case he had seen four years earlier up in New York.

This case was the rape and murder of a 30-year-old woman named Marley Wilson, who had been raped, strangled with a ligature, and bitten. The perpetrator of the murder? Lemuel Smith. Whoever had bitten Donna was missing one of their bottom insiders and Lemuel Smith was indeed missing a bottom insizer. Oh, this seems like a pretty easy. And he had all open and shut case. Yeah. So now the investigation was definitely centering on Lemuel. 39-year-old Lemuel Smith's criminal history spanned decades all the way back to the 1950s when he was still a juvenile. His first brush with the law was in January 1958. A 48-year-old mother of five named Dorothy Water Street, who was the wife of a mortician, was found dead in a supermarket

parking lot in Amsterdam, New York. She had been beaten beyond recognition, robbed and stabbed in the head with an ice pick. Dorothy's body was found directly across the street from where Lemiel Smith, who was then only 16 years old, lived at the time. And the person who discovered the body was Lemiel's father, who was a minister at the town's first Baptist church. His name was Derwoodrwood. Reverend Dürrwood told police he was looking out through the window of his house watching the midnight rain when he noticed the body in called authorities. Dorothy's shoulder bag was later found right behind the church where he preached. Evidence at the scene pointed to 16-year-old

Lemuel, but the case unraveled when the DA was too aggressive in his tactics to get Lemuel to confess. He was let go and the case was never officially solved even though they had a suspect. To get out from under the heat of police, Lemuel moved out of the area to Baltimore, Maryland, and it wasn't long before he was in trouble again. In the summer of 1958, he was arrested for kidnapping and assaulting a 25-year-old clerk at a cleaning company, a woman named Edna Johnson. He had entered the store where she worked, forced her into the back room at Knife Point, bound her hands and feet, and beat her nearly to death with a lead pipe. Oh, see, this is where I get confused because I get that, I guess in prison, right? They can get access to extra curricular activities,

things, I don't know, whatever you want to call it. But you go in here, they're background, and you're like, why was this guy the assistant to Chaplin? Why was this guy the assistant? Why did he get these extra? Well, that's why I noted earlier that this was to me an odd choice for some, like an inmate. Just because I am sure there's other inmates in there

that have killed people, but they were for different things. There's also other inmates who weren't murderers. Or weren't murderers, yeah. In general, I mean, so the woman almost certainly would have died had another customer not entered the store and saved her, but she was beaten so badly that she was in the hospital for two months and required life saving surgery. The following so badly that she was in the hospital for two months and required life-saving surgery.

The following year, when he was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison, Lemuel maintained that he didn't do it. God knows I'm innocent, he told the court, which obviously didn't agree. But then, after serving half of his 20-year sentence, Lemuel Smith was paroled in May of 1968, moving back home to the Amsterdam area outside Albany, New York. And this is, how do you get paroled in May of 1968, moving back home to the Amsterdam area outside Albany,

New York. And this is, how do you get paroled after she would have died? She would have died, but it just so happened that another person came in the store. So how did he get paroled? I mean, this would have basically been a murder charge. And not only that, the very first murder he did, like he didn't even get charged for it. No. He's he did. Yeah. Like he didn't even get charged for it. No. So he's just escaping.

Yeah. Now, a year after he was paroled, this might be shocking to you. He abducted and raped a woman who luckily managed to escape. But this left Lemuel unsatisfied. So he went back out that very same day and kidnapped a 46-year-old woman who was a friend of his mothers. A friend of his mothers.

Yeah. He raped this woman and then was going to kill her but the woman was able to talk some sense into him and he let her go. She promptly notified the police and he was arrested. How does this guy just not in a cell by himself and never able to look again? He pled guilty and was sentenced to a term of four to 15 years in prison. And he only served four years of that term. See, this is where I get confused because we have a load of inmates that have committed other minor crimes. There's various types of crimes that get way longer sentences than someone who had killed somebody.

And abducted a girl was going to kill her. She talked him out of it. I don't, I don't get it. Four years. He was paroled again in October of 1976 and it only took Lemuel Smith a month to reoffend. On the day before Thanksgiving, 1976, Smith entered the Hedermann and Sun's church Good Store

in Albany and murdered the owner, 48-year-old Robert Hedermann, and his secretary, 59-year-old Margaret Byron. This guy's insane. He not only brutally stabbed them both to death and slit their throats, but before he left the store, he defecated on a pile of clothing, which would later prove to be useful evidence

to tie back to him. That's disgusting. It's just weird. It's a new level of evil. Because it's like, why do that? Why do that? At that point, it's just weird. But in the meantime, this double murder was proving tough for Albany investigators to solve,

but Lemuel Smith was on their radar from almost the onset as he was a known violent offender and he worked nearby. And Heron blood evidence recovered from the scene could not exclude him as a suspect. And then a month later, two days before Christmas, Smith confronted a 24-year-old woman named Joan Richberg in the parking lot of the colony center mall outside of Albany. He forced her into her car and proceeded to rape her, murder her, and then mutilate her. He was eyed as a suspect in this crime, too,

but once again, the case against him stalled. And two weeks later, he tried to force a 22-year-old woman out of an Albany gift shop, and when she resisted, he took the woman's grandmother hostage and threatened to kill her if they didn't cooperate. Wait, I'm so confused. How is he getting away with all this? Because the cases are proving longer to, like, get charged with. So these are only weeks apart. So they haven't arrested him because they need solid evidence. They need a test DNA and he's just going on this spree. Someone called the police during this attack

and when helped showed up, Smith knocked the grandmother unconscious, stomped on her hand, breaking it and fled. Seven months then passed. And then in July 22nd, 1977, a 30-year-old woman named Marley Wilson was found strangled and mutilated near some train tracks in Schenectady. The mutilation that occurred after death, which included bite marks on her nose, was the worst that many seasoned investigators had ever seen.

If you remember, this is the exact victim that then goes on to later narrow him as a suspect in the prison murder. Obviously, Lemiel Smith's name came up during the investigation because he frequented this area, the area where Mara Lee's body was found, and he resembled a man that witnesses saw a costing Mara Lee shortly before she was murdered. So, he became the prime suspect in her murder, and police were trying to gather enough evidence to arrest him, but they weren't able to do it soon enough. Less than a month later, Smith abducted 18-year-old legal secretary Marian Maggio from the same area raped her and forced her to drive him back to Albany.

During the drive, the car was pulled over by police and Smith was arrested. At this point, he was a suspect not only in Marley Wilson's murder, but also the double murder at the headroom in store. And so he was taken to bleaker stadium in Albany and placed behind a screen and then four other men were placed behind separate screens. A police dog was given the scent of the clothing that had been defecated upon at the headermen shop. And I think this might be the only context where you'd use the word scent to describe the odor of feces, but the police dog was then able to cross the entire length of the stadium

where it stopped directly at Lemiel Smith. So he was literally identified by the smell of his poop. Pupil machine. The men were then rearranged behind different screens, two more times and both times the dog once again landed at Smith's feet. And then not long after, the bite mark from Marley Wilson's nose, and we know that bite mark evidence is highly problematic, but I'm just reporting the facts here. That bite mark was matched to an imprint of Lemuel Smith's teeth. But you know, junk science, though forensic on-dontology may be, this was enough for Lemuel Smith to decide to confess to this murder.

And he confessed not only to the murders of Robert Hedermann and his secretary Margaret Byron and to the murder of Merrilyermann and his secretary, Margaret Byron, and to the murder of Merrily Wilson, but he also confessed to Joan Richberg's murder at the Colony Center Mall and Dorothy Waterschreed's murder two decades earlier. So at this point, he just confesses to every murder he's ever committed.

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other personalities or Sam possessed or claim that they were responsible for the crime, not me. I'm frustrated that it took so long to catch him. Right. He was able to kill and hurt so many people That's so annoying and also I am I don't know yeah, I'm kind of convinced that maybe one of the guards was still involved But I guess we'll we'll see you see keep going so Lemuel told one of his court appointed psychiatrist He was being controlled by the ghost of his dead brother John junior who had died as an infant before Lemuel himself was even born. So basically, the spirit of an eight-month-old baby was inside Lemuel Smith and guiding him to rape and kill women. That's his defense. Another mental health counselor

documented the extensive head injury as Lemuel supposedly sustained as a teenager, and the way his Reverend Father's psychological abuse in the name of his religious beliefs may have also damaged Lemuel, which is probably more grounded in reality than any claim that Lemuel had multiple personalities. But his psychiatrist diagnosed Smith as a paranoid schizophrenic with a borderline personality. This was the same psychiatrist that Smith warned, you'd better make sure I never get out because I can't control myself. I'll do it again. Nonetheless, no one quite supported Lemuel's defense team efforts to use the insanity

plea and he was convicted for rape in 1978 and given a 20-year prison sentence. Convicted separately for kidnap being received 25 years to lie for that crime and then before he was able to stand trial for the headerman double murder, he tried to kill himself. Obviously, he doesn't succeed because he's coming up later in our story. And he ended up being found guilty and sent his 50 years to life. He was also indicted for Joan Richberg's murder as well as Merle will sin, but because there was no chance he'd ever leave prison of free man, those cases were not tried. So he was sent to Greenhaven where he became a model prisoner, and despite the warnings in his file, he was given an ample amount of freedom and privileges when he became the Chaplin's assistant.

Nice, that's what I like to hear. That's good stuff right there. He had access to numerous offices, which he was free to enter alone and occupy alone, and those offices all had telephones, which he could have used to place that phone call to Donna Payant. And he was the only inmate who had access to those offices. And since the chaplain was away on military leave, Lemiel would have had free reign over those offices during this time. But there's just no way that if I worked in a prison, I'm not trusting anybody. Like, they're all criminals.

And not just like any prison, like that prison is bad like there are a murt nah there's no what do you smile on I move for I just you gotta believe in reform Garrett no okay that's a that's a complete different topic we're talking about a prison that has hundreds multiple hundreds of murderers and I do have to say if in someone's file he he himself told a psychiatrist, do not let me out because I can't stop myself. I will reoffend. Yeah, that's probably a prisoner. I'm not going to. Here's the issue. I barely trust anyone now. If I wasn't a prison, well, I wouldn't be trusting anybody. That's crazy. So with the bite mark resembling

Lemiel Smith's bite pattern and all these other factors pointing to him, crime scene investigators launched a thorough search of the chaplain's offices, and it was quickly apparent that the floor had been recently cleaned, cleaned with dirty water too, so it was done in haste. In one of the office closets, CSI collected several blonde hairs that were consistent in color and length with Donna's hair. It was also learned from Leo Payant, Donna's widow where she was planning to buy a jewelry box from one of the inmates at the prison, a piano-shaped jewelry box, which is exactly something that Lemuel Smith did in his spare time. He made piano-shaped jewelry boxes. Smith also lived in

Cell Block D where Donna Payant often worked and would have the opportunity to get to know her. On top of that, he had access to the garbage run from the hospital corridor where Donna was last seen, and he had access to the dumping area where the tracking dogs lost her scent. With all of this evidence against Lemuel, he was formally charged with Donna Payance murder three weeks after it took place. It was believed that he had the jewelry box ready for her, phoned her from the office, and Donna probably confronted him about the bad optics of being an inmate placing a personal call for a rookie guard.

And it was believed that Lemuel thought Donna was interested in him, and when he felt spurned by her, he flew into a rage, raped her, and killed her. But Lemuel insisted he didn't do it. And his defense team contended that what the corner was saying were bite marks were actually just damage from Donna's body being put through a trash Compactor and then being crushed his attorneys were trying to get the bite mark evidence thrown out as worthless But they weren't successful on April 21st 1983 Lemiel Smith was found guilty of Donna's murder and in line with New York law that then mandated a death sentence for prisoners already serving life sentences

Who kill again while incarcerated, Smith was sentenced to die. But a sentence was commuted on appeal a year later. However, as punishment for Donna's murder, Smith was made to spend the next 20 years in virtual solitary confinement. He has never admitted guilt in Donna's murder and has claimed that the images of the alleged bite mark were manipulated to make it look like his bite pattern. Donna Payant's sister Judy believes him and she believes that Donna was murdered by a prison guard and the murder was covered up and made it to look like Lemuel Smith was responsible. As of today, Lemuel Smith is still alive at 81 years of age and he's housed at the one correctional facility near Buffalo in upstate New York. So sad that she died because she was going to move prisons and work with her husband.

Yeah. So that's absolutely horrible. And I, I think it's him, but also part of me thinks a guard was involved, like a guard gave her to him. Like there's something more that's going on. Yes. But I think it's also where he has, he hasn't admitted to it because he admitted to all his other crimes So that's a little weird. So why wouldn't he admit to this one? Right. That's the only thing that gets me to and I I tend I tend to err on the side of trusting family

I'm not saying they're always right But sometimes I feel like they have a little bit more intuition into things than we do. And she has family that believes that he didn't do it and that it was a prison guard. I kind of think, I feel like it would be hard if you haven't killed before though for a prison guard to brutally murder somebody like that. And she was killed in the same exact way that he had killed previous persons. Yeah, I just don't know how well you can really duplicate that. So I mean I do think he was I do think it was him, but I think that also a prison guard was

involved. Okay. It set everything up. Yeah. Well that's it. That's our case for this week and I guess we will see you guys next week with another episode. I love it. I hate it. Goodbye.