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.