I found myself reading the following case over and over. The picture haunted me, and I kept staring into it, looking for new details, almost willing the woman to move, like I used to do at wakes when I was a kid.
Mostly, though, I was fascinated by the idea of finding your own photograph under the heading possible victim. I wondered what I would do, how I would respond. If I would contact police.
These questions and many others inspired a speculative essay. Here, I want to share the initial notes and impressions I had. This case is so incredibly horrifying - just the sheer violence of John Smith, and the way he treated his wife and her remains.
I hope police do find this woman alive and well someday. Or failing that, I simply hope she is alive and well, though I have my doubts.
image from the Doe Network/FBI
This woman may be a murder victim. Or she might be alive out there, somewhere. Investigators have no idea.
They found her photograph mixed in with loose teeth, skull fragments, and other photos, all in the possession of a known - and now convicted - killer.
The woman's fine hair, plaid button-down, and beaded necklace all feel so familiar to me - not in the sense that I actually recognize them, but in the sense of evoking a particular time and place. She looks a lot like my mother in the 1970s & 80s, and a lot like the women I remember in my house, my neighborhood, local bowling allies, union parties, and school open houses.
I wonder if she lives out there somewhere, unaware that police desperately hope to find her, confirm she is okay - that the loose teeth and skull fragments do not belong to her. What would that feel like? To find your own face featured as a hot case. To be classified as a possible victim. To have your identity lost in the possible.
I wonder what I would do if I found my face on a hot case listing. Would I respond?
The backstory:
Shortly before Thanksgiving 1974, a woman named Janice Hartman went missing. She disappeared just a few days after divorcing her husband, John Smith.
John explained her disappearance away, claiming she was placed in a witness relocation program.
On Thanksgiving day, John's brother, Michael, witnessed him constructing a long plywood box for the storage of Janice's things. The box looked more like a coffin than a storage crate.
Five years later, Michael looked inside the box for the first time. It had sat undisturbed - its lid nailed shut - inside an old gas station the family owned:
[Michael] said he took the box home, pried off the top, and discovered the circles he was seeing were the ends of cut-off leg bones and kneecaps. At the other end of the box he said he used a stick to brush back a large amount of multi-colored hair - blond, brown, blue, green, and red - and recognized the face of Janice Hartman. (the-daily-record.com, from a report on the trial of John Smith, for Janice's murder)
But he did not turn his brother in. Instead, he called his brother and tipped him off. John came, picked up the box, and disposed of it.
In 1980, an unidentified woman's remains were discovered inside a coffin near Morocco, Indiana. In 2000, those remains were identified as Janice Hartman.
John was arrested, tried, and convicted for her murder.
But that is not the whole story.
Smith had a second wife - after Janice. Her name was Fran Gladden-Smith, and she disappeared in 1991, never to be seen or heard from again.
I read this, and I feel sick. What about the bone fragments and loose teeth? The photos of unidentified women?
If the woman in the above photo were not dead, surely John Smith would reveal her identity. Surely he would want the police to find her - alive and well, not even possibly a victim.
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These notes later evolved into a whole series of notes, followed by a speculative essay, which I may post here in the future, depending on how I feel about some revisions.