The service for Lou Smit Friday, Aug. 20, 2010, at New Life Church. KEVIN KRECK, THE GAZETTE: Top Stories Photo : Colorado Springs Gazette, CO

The service for Lou Smit Friday, Aug. 20, 2010, at New Life Church. KEVIN KRECK, THE GAZETTE: Top Stories Photo : Colorado Springs Gazette, CO

'Whatever the case called for'....

By Pam Zubek
Colorado Springs INDEPENDENT
www.csindy.com

I can't remember the first time I met Lou Smit, because he was the kind of person that, once acquainted, you felt you'd known him forever.

Gentle, wise, diligent, Smit made his mark on our world by going about his business of capturing what he called "Tiga Gatas," a make-believe creature with a tiger's head and an alligator's tail. The creature had no way to excrete. It was vicious.

"Tiga Gatas" was the term he used to describe the worst of the worst, bad people, people like Robert Browne, who claimed to have murdered 48 individuals, including 13-year-old Heather Dawn Church, who was kidnapped from her Black Forest home in 1991. Smit helped solve that case in 1995, by using a single fingerprint on a screen at the Church home.

In a career spent almost entirely in this area, Smit served as a homicide investigator for the Colorado Springs Police Department, Fourth Judicial District Attorney's Office and the El Paso County Sheriff's Office. He died last week of colon cancer at 75.

After he moved to Pikes Peak Hospice in mid-July, his room was often filled with the voices of visitors. John Ramsey, father of slain 6-year-old JonBenét Ramsey, traveled from Michigan. Actor Kelsey Grammer called from New York and talked with Smit days before he died. Smit had helped solve the 1975 rape and murder of Grammer's sister Karen, and decades later, Grammer wanted to pay for any last-minute tests or treatment, no matter what the cost. ....continued

Read full story HERE

Stephen Singular on Lou Smit

The most important thing to understand about Lou Smit is that he deeply cared about the truth. In another time in American history, this remark might seem so obvious that it wouldn’t need to be pointed out, but we are not living through that era. As someone who’s written numerous books about true crimes and watched the criminal justice system misfire in several high-profile cases because homicide detectives or District Attorneys ignored forensic evidence and jumped to conclusions, I cannot state this strongly enough. What made Lou special in the JonBenet Ramsey case and many others was that he did not assume he knew things when he didn’t yet know them. He had the rarest of all things -- a genuinely open mind -- the one piece of equipment those working on criminal investigations need the most. These are not small matters, especially these days.

In the past few years, the United States has leaped to a number of conclusions about crimes associated with terrorism, which have led us into countless deaths and injuries, incalculable financial and human costs, and wars without end. What if we’d simply followed the Lou Smit model, gone after the handful of people actually responsible for the carnage of September 11, 2001, and matched the 90% solved murder rate that distinguished his entire career? Lou’s endless curiosity, his compassion for everyone involved in a criminal situation, and his instincts for sniffing out the truth never betrayed him.

I spent many hours speaking with him about the Ramsey case and on one occasion at his home I watched an elaborate and highly-informative, audio-visual slide show he’d put together on the homicide. This was years after he’d “officially” stopped working on the murder and sitting with him during the presentation was in some ways a heartbreaking experience (you couldn’t help but feel that the person most capable and most committed to solving the crime in Colorado was not welcome to do his job in co-operation with law enforcement.) The Boulder Police Department had its way in focusing on JonBenet’s parents as her killers and in driving Lou out of the investigation. The results of this strategy speak for themselves. Nearly fourteen years after the girl’s death, the case remains unsolved and former Boulder DA Mary Lacy cleared the Ramsey’s as murder suspects in 2008, based on hard DNA evidence. To the end of his life, Lou never stopped working on his own to break the case, but there wasn’t enough time or enough help from the right people.

The death of JonBenet would never have been easy to solve, but I’m convinced that if Smit had been given a real chance to pursue leads he never spoke about publically, and to interview potential suspects he was never able to get to, the story of the Ramsey case might be far different today. He wasn’t a great man because of what he knew about this homicide or any other. He was a great man because he understood how little you could ever know about human beings or human reality until you took the time to look below the surface of events and make the deeper connections. His passion for that was unlimited. We’ve never needed people like him in public service more than we do today.

Stephen Singular, a two-time “New York Times” bestselling author, grew up in Lyndon, Kansas. In 1972, he graduated with a history degree from the University of Kansas and became a freelance writer in New York. His articles have appeared in New York Magazine, Psychology Today, Inside Sports, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, and American Photo. From 1983 to 1987, he was a staff writer at The Denver Post. Since then, he’s published 20 books about high profile crimes, social criticism, and business and sports biographies. He’s appeared on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” “Anderson Cooper 360,” FOX-TV, MSNBC, COURT-TV, ESPN, and many other media outlets. His website, www.stephensingular.com, provides more information about all of his books. He lives in Denver, Colorado, with his wife and son.

The Wichita Divide: The Murder of Dr. George Tiller, the Battle Over Abortion, and the New American Civil War will be published by St. Martin’s Press in early 2011.

Hard-working Smit brought honesty, integrity to muddled Ramsey probe

By Bruce Plasket
Special to Speaking of JonBenet

Lou Smit, the previously obscure retired homicide detective upon whom overnight fame was thrust 13 years ago when he was hired to fix the badly-broken investigation into the murder of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey, died last week.

So, too, did any realistic chance of solving Boulder’s most infamous unsolved murder case.

Smit, who lost his wife to cancer six years ago, succumbed to cancer at a Colorado Springs hospice five days after what would have been JonBenet’s 20th birthday. The ill-fated investigation that made him a household name in 1997, however, had long ago succumbed to the incompetence, inexperience, arrogance and collective ego of a Boulder Police Department that had privately scoffed at the short, bald man who had been brought in to clean up its mess.

And it was quite the mess.

Books could be written about the inept investigation that began in the wee hours of December 26, 1996 inside the Ramseys’ upscale brick Tudor home on 15th Street. But, for the sake of time and space, one need only look at the initial hours of the investigation that began when Patsy Ramsey woke to discover her daughter missing from her bed and a ransom note sitting on the stairs. That sequence tells the story of an investigation that would embarrass any professional police officer and most CSI Miami viewers.

Arndt, like every other detective on the Boulder force, had never investigated a murder. When called to 755 15th Street to investigate a reported kidnapping, she was out of her element and out of her league.

Years after the crime, after quitting the force and filing a federal lawsuit claiming the department had stifled her free-speech rights by blaming her for mistakes in the case and prohibiting her from defending herself, she took the stand in a Denver federal court room.

During two days of direct and cross-examination, she literally confessed her ineptitude in the case – causing U.S. District Judge William Downes to dismiss the case before Boulder put on its defense. As a reporter covering that case, I remember it felt like a high-school football game that had been called at halftime because of a mercy rule. Arndt was lucky she was saved further dismemberment in open court.

In her own testimony, Arndt admitted to not securing the crime scene and instructing the Ramseys and a gaggle of friends to search the house unaccompanied by police. Shockingly, she also admitted to placing a blanket that had been laying on a couch over the body of JonBenet after her father found the body in a basement wine cellar and brought it upstairs to the living room. Any relevant evidence on the child’s clothing was immediately and permanently tainted by the placing of the blanket on her body.

The department’s ineptitude continued past those first few hours as detectives, including “lead” detective Steve Thomas, zeroed in on John and Patsy Ramsey as the lone suspects while disdaining help from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and the FBI. Three months later, frustrated District Attorney Alex Hunter – reportedly on the advice of deputy DA Trip De Muth - hired Smit to provide what he politely called a fresh set of eyes. It would actually be the first set of professional eyes to examine the case.

Smit immediately drew the wrath of his new colleagues in the Boulder PD by wiping clean the preconceived notions and prejudices that had hamstrung detectives since the onset of the investigation. He started from the beginning, using tried-and-true investigative techniques that had made him one of the most respected homicide detectives in the state. Smit, along with some of Hunter’s deputy prosecutors, soon developed a theory that an intruder had murdered JonBenet. The Boulder detectives were beside themselves. They had investigated the case like it was an episode of “Law and Order,” where Det. Lenny Briscoe assumed the parents were guilty and the case was solved in an hour. In the real world, however, thing s didn’t work that way.

Unfortunately, their theory that one or both of the parents were guilty was not accompanied by any evidence. During the next 18 months, Smit collected evidence pointing away from the parents and pointing toward an intruder he believed was a pedophile and a sexual sadist. The split between the PD and Smit-Demuth, et al. was widening and Smit finally resigned. In a letter to Hunter, he decried the department’s focus on the Ramseys in spite of evidence pointing in another direction. He later had to fight to become a witness before a grand jury investigating the murder and went to court to force Hunter to allow him to keep the case files he had developed.

Smit kept fighting for the case while those around him operated on various other agendas, even after he left the case. Prior to Patsy’s Ramsey death to cancer and his own losing battle with the disease, Smit continued to work on the case. While the media, the Boulder community -- and to a large extent the law enforcement community-- tried to put the notoriety and embarrassment of the Ramsey case behind them, Smit went to his grave trying to make sure that didn’t happen.

Hunter, meanwhile, had failed in his leadership as Boulder’s highest-ranking law enforcement official.

He never got his arms around the fights between the PD and his own office and Smit. In essence, his failure to rein in the department’s thinly-veiled contempt for Smit’s work and his failure to stop the childish bickering contributed to a stalemate that has doomed the case to this day.

While the Boulder PD had no experience in murder investigations, Smit had plenty. He had investigated more than 300 murders. Every murder arrest he had ever made resulted in a conviction. In 1995 he solved the four-year-old murder of 13-year-old Heather Dawn Church when he matched a single fingerprint from the crime scene to Robert Charles, a neighbor who lived a half-mile away from Church in the Colorado Springs suburb of Black Forest. Browne eventually pleaded guilty to avoid a possible death sentence and later entered a similar plea to the 1987 murder of 15-year-old Colorado Springs resident Rocio Sperry. He has subsequently hinted that he killed as many as 48 people. Smit, though his work in the Church case, had taken a twisted serial killer off the streets.

The Boulder PD’s record was and is a joke when stacked up against that of Lou Smit.

In spite of his credentials and track record, Smit was also a bad cultural fit among the Boulder detectives and the Boulder community. Although he didn’t beat anyone over the head with his faith, he was an unabashed Christian. He prayed on his way to work each day and drew the scorn of the media when it was revealed that he prayed with the Ramseys when he questioned them. Speculation said he had been taken in by the Ramseys because of his faith. In lieu of actually covering the case—and ignoring the ineptitude of nearly everyone involved in it -- reporters focused on Smit’s faith and the Ramseys’ wealth. Smit’s role would be further scrutinized and clouded by the case’s distinction as the first big “Internet Case.” The public’s hunger for information was being fed daily by thousands of web posters – some serious and responsible and most hell-bent on railroading the Ramseys to satiate the public thirst hunger for quick justice.

Smit would later say that his faith had never clouded his investigative work, claiming he had put “plenty of Christians” in jail. Detectives use lots of techniques to get close to suspects and he was no different. Detectives can give suspect a cigarette or a soft drink without raising eyebrows, but Smit was vilified for praying with a “suspect.”

Smit’s insistence on the Ramseys’ innocence would be vindicated years later. In a 2003 ruling that dismissed a defamation case filed against the Ramseys by part-time Boulder journalist Robert Wolfe, who had been interviewed by police as a possible suspect, federal judge Julie Carnes wrote there was virtually no evidence against the Ramseys and lots of evidence leading to an outsider. Almost immediately, Boulder DA, Mary Keenan, who succeeded Alex Hunter, issued a statement – and later wrote a letter to the Ramseys – in which she exonerated them, saying there was no evidence of their involvement.

In spite of the dark cloud that features the work of Lou Smit as its only silver lining, there is, of course, always a chance the case will be solved.

The death of Lou Smit, sadly, has greatly diminished those chances.

Maybe someone will make a TV-episode-esque, deathbed confession.

Or perhaps an increasingly-sophisticated national DNA database will connect the material found under JonBenet’s fingernails with some as-yet-unknown person.

In any case, if the case is ever solved, it will be because of, and a tribute to, the integrity and rubber-meets-the-road work ethic of Lou Smit.

And perhaps the spirit of a humble, hard-working, short bald man will smile down on a job finally done.

Bruce Plasket is a former award-winning Colorado journalist who, in addition to the Ramsey case, covered such stories as the Columbine shootings and the Oklahoma City bombing case during his 20-plus years as a reporter. He is currently working on a screenplay and performing stand-up comedy, he recently made appearances in three feature films.

bonus mocking

My career as a CIA operative disguised as the stunt double for Angelina Jolie has become a bit old hat, somewhat of a bore, and I have been looking for something stimulating and excting. Something new I can really sink my claws into.

This morning I have a vision of becoming what David Pogue is to technology in the NYT - but the sassy sister of sensational smut. Gossip Goddess.......

The Tabloid Police.

Of course that means I will have to actually start reading the tabloids. I wonder if over the course of his career as a film critic there were movies Roger Ebert simply didn't want to see....

Seriously though, Matty Boy over at his "It's News 2 Them" blog has developed his own take on teasing the tabloids, dishing up some pretty silly stuff. Find Matty Boy "Keeping tabs on the tabs, so you don't have to. Now with Extra Bonus Mocking™!" - -

Creepiest story of the week:Jonbenet Ramsey's 20th Birthday
Posted at It's News 2 Them™
By Matty Boy

"I didn't include this as a nominee for Meanest Story, but I have given it the new label of Creepiest Story of the Week...The Globe makes no new allegations of cracking the case. They just wanted to put her picture on the cover because we haven't milked the last creepy drop out of this story yet."[read more]


For even more fun, if you have seen a a tabloid report of eminent death or tragic romantic break-up send it right over to Matty Boy - mookasaurus@gmail.com

today, in the NYT

Lou Smit, Detective in JonBenet Ramsey Case, Is Dead at 75
By NADIA TAHA

"Lou Smit, a longtime police detective who was called out of retirement to help investigate the 1996 slaying of JonBenet Ramsey, the 6-year-old beauty pageant winner, but resigned after concluding that the police had wrongly focused on her parents, died Wednesday in Colorado Springs. He was 75...

Detective Smit helped solve several cases that gained national attention, including the killing of Karen Grammer, the sister of the actor Kelsey Grammer, in 1975.

He is also credited with identifying the killer of 13-year-old Heather Dawn Church. She was killed in 1991, and her father was among more than 40 suspects, but in 1995 Detective Smit arrested Robert C. Browne, who confessed to the crime and has since admitted to 47 other murders... "[read more]

unFREAKINGbelievable

Looks like it is going to be another long day - -

JonBenet Ramsey murder missing from CBI's new cold-case database
Published in the Daily Camera
By John Aguilar

CBI director says technical glitch may have led to omission of Colorado's most notorious unsolved killing.

Stop the presses: The murder of 6-year-old Boulder beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey has been solved.

At least it appeared that way Thursday on the Colorado Bureau of Investigation's freshly launched cold-case database, colorado.gov/coldcases, a Web site that lists 1,714 unsolved homicides and missing-persons cases in the state from the past 40 years....

Boulder Police Chief Mark Beckner said he didn't know for certain if his department sent the Ramsey case to the CBI as part of its cold-case list. He said because investigators have "never stopped working it," it may not technically qualify as cold..."[read more]

Faith, family defined legendary detective Lou Smit

BY MATT STEINER
THE GAZETTE

Faith, family and profession.

Combine these facets of Lou Smit’s life with his humility and an impeccable attention to detail and you get what former El Paso County Sheriff John Anderson calls “the most thorough investigator and detective I’ve ever met.” Read more here

Former Police Detective Lou Smit Passes Away - News Story - KRDO Colorado Springs

Former Police Detective Lou Smit Passes Away - News Story - KRDO Colorado Springs

20

The anniversary of JonBenet's birth date came and went last week as many case followers, true-crime sleuths noticed by posting happy birthday messages in a variety of forms and content remembering JonBenet. It is good her case is not being forgotten by so many caring people out there.

This year more poignantly than others such remembrances and good wishes are still a tad unsettling for me. I think Mary Bowman has described that discord best in her blog --

JonBenet Ramsey
Posted by Mary Bowman

"I had to think a long time about this one. So, this entry is a day late. Yesterday, JonBenet Ramsey would have been celebrating her twentieth birthday...

One thing is happening that I find very disturbing. It happened to Etan Patz and Kelsey Briggs, as well. People are forgetting that these were children. They were NOT angels. They were human beings...

JonBenet Ramsey was not an angelic beauty queen. She was a normal six year old who loved to play outside, and was excited when Christmas came.

That's the hardest part with JonBenet's death. Her killer took her life in 1996. And her admirers have been murdering her memory ever since."[read more]

Mary Bowman is a child psychiatrist and blogger from New Jersey.

bewteen good and evil

An excerpt from Roger Depue's memoir of his work at the FBI on JonBenet's case and others that the investigators at the Fair Justice Foundation have also been called to consult - -

Bewteen Good and Evil

Chapter 1

"...Today, in a related incarnation, I am the founder of The Academy Group, an elite international crime consulting firm whose half dozen members, all FBI, CIA, or Secret Service veterans, constitute a brain trust of the world’s top forensic behavioral science experts in their respective fields: from sexual homicide and child predation, to international terrorism and espionage.

In that role I have listened to tapes of the Columbine school shootings, studied the rage wounds inflicted with a golf club on Martha Moxley’s skull, analyzed the JonBenet Ramsey ransom note, and helped a colleague plan his approach in debriefing the notorious FBI agent-turned-traitor Robert Hanssen. I am summoned to cases when all other investigations have failed, when law firms, police jurisdictions, or the emotionally devastated families of victims have nowhere else to turn..."[read more]


About Roger Depue

In addition to his work as head of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit and founder of the elite private sector consulting firm, The Academy Group, Roger L. Depue has also worked as a police chief, a SWAT Team member, and is a former Brother of the Order of Missionaries of the Holy Apostles. He speaks widely as a corporate consultant and has been interviewed by People magazine, CBS’ 48 Hours, and most recently The Discovery Channel, for whom he constructed a hypothetical profile of Deep Throat for an upcoming program pegged to the 30th anniversary of the Watergate break-in. The Academy Group also served as the real-life basis for the Fox television series, Millennium.

Most recently, in addition to his ongoing casework with The Academy Group, Depue acted as a consultant on Universal Studio’s Red Dragon, a feature film version of Thomas Harris’ first Hannibal Lecter novel, which opened in October 2002 starring Anthony Hopkins, Ralph Fiennes and Edward Norton. His memoir, Between Good and Evil co-written by Susan Schindehette, was recently published by Warner Books.

threat to public safety

When JonBenet was murdered in 1996, community officials appeared to downplay the potential of a killer on the loose in Boulder, so as not to 'alarm the public'. Not so in the case of 19 year-old Vanessa Pham, where the authorities have been straight-up with the public about the potential that in June 2010 an unknown murder - even a serial killer - took this lovely girls life. And Vanessa's killer, like the one that tortured and murdered JonBenet, is still on the loose - -

Police: Vanessa Pham's Unknown Killer a 'Threat' to Public Safety
Published in the Falls Church News-Press
By Natalie Bedell


A cousin of the 19-year-old Falls Church woman murdered last month described herself Monday as a “wreck” who’s been playing detective from her Norwalk, Conn. home while the stabbing of her relative, Vanessa Pham, goes unsolved by Fairfax County police.

Theories ranging from a slaying by a member of nearby homeless communities to the plotted jealous rage of a female acquaintance are being mulled by friends and a local private investigator. But Fairfax County Officer Don Gotthardt said Tuesday police are now convinced the killer is an unknown person, having already eliminated any potential suspects from Pham’s inner circle.

“I don’t want to scare the public, but we believe this is a whodunit,” he added.

Monday marked the one-month anniversary of her death, a reminder too her murderer is still on the loose...

“I don’t want this to be a JonBenét Ramsey-type case, where no one ever knows what happened,” [Vanessa's cousin Tracy To] she said. “That would make me a very angry and bitter person for the rest of my life. I need to have closure.” [read more]

spendy spitball sessions

There are some crimes that have benefited from true crime enthusiast research and internet forum discussions, but this would be the exception, not the rule. So far as these somewhat downright nasty discussions can go, these often slanderous or ugly discussions between armchair detectives may be just one of the prices that victims families pay while searching for or waiting for justice for their children, as in the case of adorable little Kyron Horman.

How much does this social phenom hurt an investigation?
That is yet to be fully articulated and monetized, but there is a cost to investigations for good or ill. We can recall that obsessed armchair detective pedophile who convinced himself he was JonBenet's killer, costing tax payers tens of thousands of dollars and law enforcement man-hours. Much of the content of that pitiful character's false confession and writings can easily be tracked to (bogus) public domain information he would have found in media articles and interaction on internet forums - -

Armchair detectives:
True-crime websites are nonstop outlets for facts and opinions on Kyron Horman case
Published in The Oregonian
By Kimberly A.C. Wilson

"When word broke Thursday that authorities were putting the squeeze on DeDe Spicher...In real time, members of true crime Internet forums around the country began searching for the woman's footprint in the public domain.

What happened to little Kyron? And the hobbyists' work raises a larger question: Has it helped or hindered the real police work?

That depends on whom you ask. And entering the eighth week since Kyron was seen, it may not even be a fair question.

Or even the right question...

Court of public opinion

Trying to make sense of the morass is nothing new for veterans of unresolved mysteries, including the 1997 death of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey in Colorado...the late Richard Jewell, the security guard at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics whose journey from hero to bombing suspect ...The Justice Department formally cleared Jewell of involvement in the bombing, and another man, Eric R. Rudolph, was eventually convicted of the explosion that killed one and injured 111 others. But Jewell, who died of natural causes in 2007, went down as the man wronged by hasty judgment.

And the blogosphere is nothing if not a watering hole for hasty judges..."[read more]

the greats

I am just going to press submit on this post referencing an article mentioning cold cases like JonBenet's and the contributions of incredible-invaluable investigators like Lou Smit - -

Lured by cold cases, retired detectives go back on the beat
Published in The Denver Post
By Kirk Mitchell

Homicide Detective Alex Jameson retired from the Lakewood Police Department and went on a long-awaited cruise to Bermuda with his wife.

A few years passed. A honey-do list was completed. Then in 2008, current Division Chief Dan McCasky was on the phone. Lakewood police were opening a cold-case unit and McCasky wondered if Jameson had any interest in joining.

Jameson is one of a growing number of retired homicide detectives and law enforcement officers from around Colorado who have returned to their old offices — or new ones — to volunteer or work part or full time to try to solve decades-old cases around the state.

In some instances, detectives had specific cases in mind that haunted them and compelled In some instances, detectives had specific cases in mind that haunted them and compelled them to come back. In others, detectives just missed the hunt and hated sitting around. Strapped budgets and cutbacks in police agencies have helped make part-time officers an attractive option.

The detectives include Lou Smit, the legendary Colorado Springs homicide detective, who came back and consulted on the JonBenet Ramsey case and other homicides from around the state and the nation...[read more]

open source rules

Anyone that knows me is probably familiar with convictions that technology, and lots of it, will serve a major role in solving the murder of JonBenet Ramsey - -

CIA Software Developer Goes Open Source, Instead
Published in Wired
By Noah Shachtman

"For three years, Matthew Burton has been trying to get a simple, useful software tool into the hands of analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency. For three years, haggling over the code’s intellectual property rights has kept the software from going anywhere near Langley. So now, Burton’s releasing it — free to the public, and under an open source license...


Burton, for example, spent years on what should’ve been a straightforward project. Some CIA analysts work with a tool, “Analysis of Competing Hypotheses,” to tease out what evidence supports (or, mostly, disproves) their theories. But the Java-based software is single-user — so there’s no ability to share theories, or add in dissenting views. Burton, working on behalf of a Washington-area consulting firm with deep ties to the CIA, helped build on spec a collaborative version of ACH. He tried it out, using the JonBenet Ramsey murder case as a test. Burton tested 51 clues — the lack of a scream, evidence of bed-wetting — against five possible culprits. “I went in, totally convinced it all pointed to the mom,” Burton says. “Turns out, that wasn’t right at all.” ...[Read More]

Reward offered in the 2007 drowning death of Joshua Whittier

Information sought that leads to an arrest and conviction in the death of the 21 year-old Florida man.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRLog (Press Release) – Aug 04, 2010 – SANTA ROSA COUNTY, FLORIDA — A $5,000 reward is being offered for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the February 2007 death of 21 year-old Joshua Whittier.

News of an anonymous reward gave new hope to Joshua’s mother, Melody Schmidt, who has moved away from Florida to Colorado. Schmidt said "We hope and pray that this generous reward will help give someone the courage to come forward.”

The weeks before Josh’s death were a busy and exciting period in the popular young man’s life. He had just signed with Ford Models of Miami, started a new job in Gulfport, Mississippi and travelled home to Navarre, FL on the weekends.

On Feb. 18, 2007, Josh’s body was found face down in the sand at the water’s edge of Santa Rosa Sound between Juana’s Pagoda and the Navarre Beach Bridge located on the Gulf of Mexico in the Florida panhandle. A pack of cigarettes and a bottle of Corona beer were close by. Josh’s wallet was found empty a bit farther up the beach but his state identification was located in a truck belonging to the brother of a police officer; the brother has since left the state. And there were scrapes on Josh’s chin, hands and knees that are consistent with being pulled by his feet along the drag marks found in the sand that lead to where Josh’s body was eventually discovered.

Despite speculation from Josh’s friends that foul play was involved and with no fluids in the lungs to support an accident in the water, the cause of death was instead eventually determined to be accidental drowning.

In 2009 Melody Schmidt retained the assistance of the seasoned homicide investigation team at the Fair Justice Foundation. The FJF team has investigated numerous high profile crimes and cold cases such as JonBenet Ramsey; Columbine; Charles Manson and the Tate-LaBianca murders - - just to mention a few. OM Gray, retired Sherriff’s Captain and Municipal Court Judge, reports that there are at least 50 newly uncovered pieces of evidence further support that Joshua’s death was no accident. Gray said “we remain fully committed to following this evidence wherever it may lead us in seeking justice for Joshua.”

Robin Sax, former Prosecutor, author, legal analyst, and victims advocate had said, “If this young man had drowned, even in an inch of water, there would have been clear evidence." Sax continued "since there was foreign DNA found on the outside of Josh’s clothing and the cell phone in his pocket was still operational, it is pretty obvious that something more than an unfortunate accident happened to Josh." Sax praised the efforts and interest in this case, stating "I applaud Melody’s tenacity in seeking justice for her son. The generous reward offered by the unknown donor is deeply encouraging as is the professionals over at the Fair Justice Foundation and the ongoing support of the Gulf Coast community to demand justice for Joshua."

An escrow account has been established by the anonymous benefactor’s attorneys to manage the reward until the right person comes along with the right information about what happened to Joshua. All information will be evaluated by investigators with the ultimate goal of an arrest and conviction.

“It is never too late to do the right thing,” investigator Gray concluded. “I invite anyone with information to come forward. It will only take one phone call or email to bring justice for Joshua.”

To report information: Call the anonymous Fair Justice Foundation tip line at 206-312-7399 206-312-7399 or email tips@fairjusticefoundation.org

# # #





About the Fair Justice Foundation:

The Fair Justice Foundation was founded to provide information and awareness to state legislators considering passage of a DNA Fingerprint Law. The DNA Fingerprint law would require that any person arrested for a felony be DNA Fingerprinted and that data be submitted to the National CODIS database.

The Discovery Project was initiated in late 2008 to serve families of victims of violent crimes where the case remains unsolved by reassuring them that people continue to care and will not let the case be forgotten.

Please contact us if you would like more information, if you have information on a case, or if you would like to offer your services to assist us in our mission. You may visit us on the web at www.fairjusticefoundation.org