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Unsolved murders and police corruption reinvestigated Is There Justice for B.J.?
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Is There Justice for B.J.?Part One: The VictimsA Sierra Times Injustice Files ExclusiveReport by Wayne Hicks 09.08.01
Who would believe that a nineteen year old boy could be murdered in his own bedroom, and yet his killer walk free... with no effort by police to apprehend anyone?Billy Joe, DeLois, and B.J. Smith... just a few short months before B.J. was tragically murdered. On December 20, 1999, in a suburb of West Memphis, Arkansas, Billy Joe Smith, Sr., walked into his home at 3 P.M., happy with the day's work he had just done, and excited about his family's plans for Christmas. He, his wife DeLois, and their son B.J. were looking forward to the holidays, and as he came home from work that day, Billy Joe noticed that the door to B.J.'s room was open, and called out to the boy as he walked that direction.Seconds later, a hysterical Billy Joe ran out the door, and seeing a neighbor in the garage next door, he ran to him, repeatedly stuttering, "B.J.... B.J.... B.J...."Billy Joe had walked into his son's room to find B.J. lying on his bed, on his left side. His body was unnaturally rigid, there was blood on the pillow and bedclothes, and his right hand lay upon its back on his right hip. Laying on his hand, but not held in it, was Billy Joe's .44 magnum handgun, known to gun aficionados and "Dirty Harry" fans as "the world's most powerful handgun".The neighbor, Dennis Janes, accompanied him back to the house, hurrying, aware that something was wrong. Mr. Janes, who as far as Billy Joe knew had never been in his house before... the two men were acquaintances, but not friends... ran straight through the living room and short hall to B.J.'s room. Billy Joe followed him, and as Dennis cried, "Oh, my God!", Billy Joe reached out and grabbed the pistol from his son's hand, turned back to the living room, and placed it to his own head. The frightened, shocked father did not want to live without his son.Dennis caught him before he could pull the trigger, and wrestled the gun from his hand. He later told police that he "took the bloody gun" from Billy Joe "and hid it in the garage", for safety reasons.After hiding the weapon, he turned back to the hysterical man and said, "Oh, Billy, I heard the dogs over here barking about one o'clock, and I shoulda come over here to see what was happenin' to your boy... I'm gonna have to live with this the rest of my life!" He then picked up the telephone, dialed 911, said "suicide", and gave the address.Police officers arrived moments later, and one of them wrote the following:"Subject Billy J Smith Jr. lay dead of a gunshot wound to the head a small entry wound is visible just under the right ear a small exit wound is visible just over the left ear. Bullet traveled through the victim's head and through the bedclothes the mattress and entered the carpet. Subject when found by father was holding a 357 caliber pistol, the bullet found under the carpet appears to be a 357"(note: the handgun was a .44; the officer was in error in reporting a .357)The report goes on to say that the father was too hysterical to be coherent, and in the officer's preliminary investigation portion of the form, the word "suicide" is circled.B.J. Smith..."Justice Delayed is Justice Denied!" Under the bed, the carpet was cut to allow a flap of it to be pulled back. There, a second hole was found, in the padding under the carpet, so the padding was cut in the same manner, and under the hole in the padding, a slight discolored mark, such as lead will leave when rubbed against something, was found on the smoothly finished concrete pad on which the house was built. The concrete itself was undamaged. As observed by this reporter, the bullet apparently passed through the carpet and padding, bounced upward without sufficient force to again penetrate the padding, and traveled approximately three inches along the underside of the padding. A gouge can be seen in the underside of the padding, and a second discolored mark can be seen on the concrete, just under the portion of carpet where the gouge ends. The gouge ends with a small indentation in the padding itself, as if the bullet were hot and may have slightly melted the under surface at that point.Billy Joe's wife, DeLois, is a customer service representative for a large insurance company in Memphis. As people from Billy Joe's family began to arrive, someone realized that she had not yet been told, and there was talk of sending someone to tell her and bring her home.Dennis Janes' wife, Aloha Janes, arrived about this time. She volunteered to drive into Memphis and get DeLois. She had not entered the house, and as far as is known, had not spoken to her husband before she left on her errand. Two of Billy Joe's uncles rode along.At the office where DeLois worked, she was notified that there was someone waiting for her in the lobby, and thinking that it must be a customer she had spoken to earlier in the day, she rode the elevator down unconcernedly. However, when she saw Billy's uncles and the woman who lived next door, she immediately felt a sense of apprehension. "Is there somewhere we can talk?" one of the uncles asked. She led them into a small conference room, where Aloha Janes blurted, "DeLois, B.J. has killed himself."DeLois says she can remember saying, "No, he didn't..." before the awful import of the words struck her. She had spoken to B.J. on the telephone at about 12:30 that day, and he had seemed fine and happy. She immediately demanded to know if it was true, and Mrs. Janes volunteered, "Oh, yes, he shot hisself in the head!"On the ride back to her home, Mrs. Janes repeated that statement several times.The rest of the day is a blur to the parents of B.J. Smith, Jr. Various comments are recalled... such as the one by the policeman who noted "suicide" on his investigation report that "the father might be a suspect", or the comment by a friend that whoever killed B.J. was not going to be able to sleep at night.That last statement came back to Billy Joe the next day.Unable to rest, he had paced around his own house most of that night. He looked out of the windows of his home several times, perhaps just looking for some bit of normalcy... but one thing he saw stuck in his mind: Dennis Janes was also awake... and he was pacing his own floor, holding the urn containing the ashes of his own dead son, talking to it in an animated manner. Billy didn't think much of this at the time... like himself, Dennis had seen B.J.'s body, and it was understandable that he might be distraught and restless. It was not until Dennis called him the next day and made a cryptic remark that Billy began to think about some other strange things.Dennis called Billy in the afternoon of the day following B.J.'s death, and said, "I can't sleep..." Billy replied that, of course, he and his wife weren't getting much rest either, and then Dennis said something that sent a chill down the bereaved father's spine.He said, "Well, maybe when they put me in prison, then I can sleep." And then he hung up.Several things about B.J.'s death are not compatible with the original ruling of suicide:First, medical professionals will tell you that a large bore handgun, fired at close range, will do a significant amount of damage to a human head. The bullet leaves the barrel at an incredible rate of speed, and has sufficient mass and energy to literally explode a victim's head... and yet, B.J.'s head was intact but for the two small wounds... which are compatible with a shot fired from, say, a .22 pistol loaded with short rounds. Second, a bullet from such a large-bore gun would have more than enough energy to pass through a head, a pillow, a mattress and carpet, it's true... but it would still have enough energy after that to make a damaging impact on the concrete underneath, leaving a crater up to several inches wide.Third, the .44 magnum was laying on top of B.J.'s outstretched hand, as if he had been holding it. According to forensic specialists contacted by Billy or on his behalf, a gun will almost never remain in the hand of a person who has just shot himself in the head... the recoil alone, combined with the sudden relaxation of the muscles of the hand, are sufficient to make it fly out of the victim's grasp.Dennis Janes, as reported earlier in this story, went directly to B.J's room upon entering the house... although he had never been inside the house, to Billy's or DeLois' knowledge. Dennis told police that he wrested "the bloody gun" from Billy's hand... but the gun, when turned over to police, had no blood on it... and later tests revealed that it had been wiped clean of fingerprints. Only a small portion of a latent print was found on it, despite the fact that it had been handled by both Billy, in his attempt to join his son in death, and by Dennis, before being turned over to police.Dennis, in almost the same breath, told the 911 operator that the emergency he was reporting was a suicide... but told Billy that he had heard Billy's dogs barking, and knew he "should have come over to see what was happening to your boy..." Billy and his family have only one dog. It was inside the house, asleep on the couch, when Billy arrived to find his son's body. Billy, along with his father, is a successful framing contractor. B.J. regularly carried money in his wallet. Billy estimates that $200-300 is missing, since the wallet was empty when B.J. was found. On the day of B.J's death, a folded afghan with a hole... apparently a hole made by a bullet passing through it... was found on the floor near B.J's bed. It and the .44 magnum pistol were taken by police. The gun was seen by the medical examiner, who noted that it was clean of blood. Since that time, neither it nor the afghan have been mentioned, and police have declined to answer questions about their whereabouts.A paraffin test, used to detect gunpowder residue which is always present on a hand which has fired a handgun, found no such residue on B.J.'s hand. Blood tests also performed found no evidence of drugs or alcohol.Dennis Janes has never been properly questioned by police. An officer told DeLois that he seemed "evasive" about coming in for questioning. No attempt has been made to require him to do so.Billy, determined to seek justice and frustrated by the obvious stonewalling of police officials, finally took matters into his own hands and hired a Private Investigations agency to begin looking into his son's death. The forensic evidence they have uncovered has already accomplished what many told Billy would be impossible.The medical examiner who first ruled B.J's death a suicide has overturned his own original ruling, based solely on that evidence... and Billy Joe Smith, Jr.'s death is now officially listed as a homicide. According to state officials and specialists, this is the first time in history that any such ruling was ever overturned without an exhumation of the body involved... but the medical examiner agrees that the evidence of murder is overwhelming.And yet... other than the efforts of the private investigators... there is still no investigation of the murder of B.J. Smith.The Injustice Files will continue with Part Two of "Is There Justice ForB.J.?: The Suspect" on Tuesday.
Who would believe that a nineteen year old boy could be murdered in his own bedroom, and yet his killer walk free... with no effort by police to apprehend anyone?Billy Joe, DeLois, and B.J. Smith... just a few short months before B.J. was tragically murdered. On December 20, 1999, in a suburb of West Memphis, Arkansas, Billy Joe Smith, Sr., walked into his home at 3 P.M., happy with the day's work he had just done, and excited about his family's plans for Christmas. He, his wife DeLois, and their son B.J. were looking forward to the holidays, and as he came home from work that day, Billy Joe noticed that the door to B.J.'s room was open, and called out to the boy as he walked that direction.Seconds later, a hysterical Billy Joe ran out the door, and seeing a neighbor in the garage next door, he ran to him, repeatedly stuttering, "B.J.... B.J.... B.J...."Billy Joe had walked into his son's room to find B.J. lying on his bed, on his left side. His body was unnaturally rigid, there was blood on the pillow and bedclothes, and his right hand lay upon its back on his right hip. Laying on his hand, but not held in it, was Billy Joe's .44 magnum handgun, known to gun aficionados and "Dirty Harry" fans as "the world's most powerful handgun".The neighbor, Dennis Janes, accompanied him back to the house, hurrying, aware that something was wrong. Mr. Janes, who as far as Billy Joe knew had never been in his house before... the two men were acquaintances, but not friends... ran straight through the living room and short hall to B.J.'s room. Billy Joe followed him, and as Dennis cried, "Oh, my God!", Billy Joe reached out and grabbed the pistol from his son's hand, turned back to the living room, and placed it to his own head. The frightened, shocked father did not want to live without his son.Dennis caught him before he could pull the trigger, and wrestled the gun from his hand. He later told police that he "took the bloody gun" from Billy Joe "and hid it in the garage", for safety reasons.After hiding the weapon, he turned back to the hysterical man and said, "Oh, Billy, I heard the dogs over here barking about one o'clock, and I shoulda come over here to see what was happenin' to your boy... I'm gonna have to live with this the rest of my life!" He then picked up the telephone, dialed 911, said "suicide", and gave the address.Police officers arrived moments later, and one of them wrote the following:"Subject Billy J Smith Jr. lay dead of a gunshot wound to the head a small entry wound is visible just under the right ear a small exit wound is visible just over the left ear. Bullet traveled through the victim's head and through the bedclothes the mattress and entered the carpet. Subject when found by father was holding a 357 caliber pistol, the bullet found under the carpet appears to be a 357"(note: the handgun was a .44; the officer was in error in reporting a .357)The report goes on to say that the father was too hysterical to be coherent, and in the officer's preliminary investigation portion of the form, the word "suicide" is circled.B.J. Smith..."Justice Delayed is Justice Denied!" Under the bed, the carpet was cut to allow a flap of it to be pulled back. There, a second hole was found, in the padding under the carpet, so the padding was cut in the same manner, and under the hole in the padding, a slight discolored mark, such as lead will leave when rubbed against something, was found on the smoothly finished concrete pad on which the house was built. The concrete itself was undamaged. As observed by this reporter, the bullet apparently passed through the carpet and padding, bounced upward without sufficient force to again penetrate the padding, and traveled approximately three inches along the underside of the padding. A gouge can be seen in the underside of the padding, and a second discolored mark can be seen on the concrete, just under the portion of carpet where the gouge ends. The gouge ends with a small indentation in the padding itself, as if the bullet were hot and may have slightly melted the under surface at that point.Billy Joe's wife, DeLois, is a customer service representative for a large insurance company in Memphis. As people from Billy Joe's family began to arrive, someone realized that she had not yet been told, and there was talk of sending someone to tell her and bring her home.Dennis Janes' wife, Aloha Janes, arrived about this time. She volunteered to drive into Memphis and get DeLois. She had not entered the house, and as far as is known, had not spoken to her husband before she left on her errand. Two of Billy Joe's uncles rode along.At the office where DeLois worked, she was notified that there was someone waiting for her in the lobby, and thinking that it must be a customer she had spoken to earlier in the day, she rode the elevator down unconcernedly. However, when she saw Billy's uncles and the woman who lived next door, she immediately felt a sense of apprehension. "Is there somewhere we can talk?" one of the uncles asked. She led them into a small conference room, where Aloha Janes blurted, "DeLois, B.J. has killed himself."DeLois says she can remember saying, "No, he didn't..." before the awful import of the words struck her. She had spoken to B.J. on the telephone at about 12:30 that day, and he had seemed fine and happy. She immediately demanded to know if it was true, and Mrs. Janes volunteered, "Oh, yes, he shot hisself in the head!"On the ride back to her home, Mrs. Janes repeated that statement several times.The rest of the day is a blur to the parents of B.J. Smith, Jr. Various comments are recalled... such as the one by the policeman who noted "suicide" on his investigation report that "the father might be a suspect", or the comment by a friend that whoever killed B.J. was not going to be able to sleep at night.That last statement came back to Billy Joe the next day.Unable to rest, he had paced around his own house most of that night. He looked out of the windows of his home several times, perhaps just looking for some bit of normalcy... but one thing he saw stuck in his mind: Dennis Janes was also awake... and he was pacing his own floor, holding the urn containing the ashes of his own dead son, talking to it in an animated manner. Billy didn't think much of this at the time... like himself, Dennis had seen B.J.'s body, and it was understandable that he might be distraught and restless. It was not until Dennis called him the next day and made a cryptic remark that Billy began to think about some other strange things.Dennis called Billy in the afternoon of the day following B.J.'s death, and said, "I can't sleep..." Billy replied that, of course, he and his wife weren't getting much rest either, and then Dennis said something that sent a chill down the bereaved father's spine.He said, "Well, maybe when they put me in prison, then I can sleep." And then he hung up.Several things about B.J.'s death are not compatible with the original ruling of suicide:First, medical professionals will tell you that a large bore handgun, fired at close range, will do a significant amount of damage to a human head. The bullet leaves the barrel at an incredible rate of speed, and has sufficient mass and energy to literally explode a victim's head... and yet, B.J.'s head was intact but for the two small wounds... which are compatible with a shot fired from, say, a .22 pistol loaded with short rounds. Second, a bullet from such a large-bore gun would have more than enough energy to pass through a head, a pillow, a mattress and carpet, it's true... but it would still have enough energy after that to make a damaging impact on the concrete underneath, leaving a crater up to several inches wide.Third, the .44 magnum was laying on top of B.J.'s outstretched hand, as if he had been holding it. According to forensic specialists contacted by Billy or on his behalf, a gun will almost never remain in the hand of a person who has just shot himself in the head... the recoil alone, combined with the sudden relaxation of the muscles of the hand, are sufficient to make it fly out of the victim's grasp.Dennis Janes, as reported earlier in this story, went directly to B.J's room upon entering the house... although he had never been inside the house, to Billy's or DeLois' knowledge. Dennis told police that he wrested "the bloody gun" from Billy's hand... but the gun, when turned over to police, had no blood on it... and later tests revealed that it had been wiped clean of fingerprints. Only a small portion of a latent print was found on it, despite the fact that it had been handled by both Billy, in his attempt to join his son in death, and by Dennis, before being turned over to police.Dennis, in almost the same breath, told the 911 operator that the emergency he was reporting was a suicide... but told Billy that he had heard Billy's dogs barking, and knew he "should have come over to see what was happening to your boy..." Billy and his family have only one dog. It was inside the house, asleep on the couch, when Billy arrived to find his son's body. Billy, along with his father, is a successful framing contractor. B.J. regularly carried money in his wallet. Billy estimates that $200-300 is missing, since the wallet was empty when B.J. was found. On the day of B.J's death, a folded afghan with a hole... apparently a hole made by a bullet passing through it... was found on the floor near B.J's bed. It and the .44 magnum pistol were taken by police. The gun was seen by the medical examiner, who noted that it was clean of blood. Since that time, neither it nor the afghan have been mentioned, and police have declined to answer questions about their whereabouts.A paraffin test, used to detect gunpowder residue which is always present on a hand which has fired a handgun, found no such residue on B.J.'s hand. Blood tests also performed found no evidence of drugs or alcohol.Dennis Janes has never been properly questioned by police. An officer told DeLois that he seemed "evasive" about coming in for questioning. No attempt has been made to require him to do so.Billy, determined to seek justice and frustrated by the obvious stonewalling of police officials, finally took matters into his own hands and hired a Private Investigations agency to begin looking into his son's death. The forensic evidence they have uncovered has already accomplished what many told Billy would be impossible.The medical examiner who first ruled B.J's death a suicide has overturned his own original ruling, based solely on that evidence... and Billy Joe Smith, Jr.'s death is now officially listed as a homicide. According to state officials and specialists, this is the first time in history that any such ruling was ever overturned without an exhumation of the body involved... but the medical examiner agrees that the evidence of murder is overwhelming.And yet... other than the efforts of the private investigators... there is still no investigation of the murder of B.J. Smith.The Injustice Files will continue with Part Two of "Is There Justice ForB.J.?: The Suspect" on Tuesday.
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