Similar Transactions: A True Story Read online

  Similar Transactions

  S. R. Reynolds

  Copyright © 2016 by S. R. Reynolds • www.similartransactions.com

  Published by Simpson Point Press • www.simpsonpointpress.com

  Distributed by Smashwords

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission by the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  ISBN-10:0-9963837-1-9

  ISBN-13:978-0-9963837-1-4

  Editor, Clint Cargile

  Cover Design: Andrew Higdon • www.thebrandhq.com

  Book Design: Simpson Point Press

  Ebook formatting • www.ebooklaunch.com

  Images - Book One: Dedication photos, next page, courtesy of family; Chapter 1, mug shot, courtesy of the Knoxville Police Department; Chapter 3, snapshot, courtesy of family; Chapter 4, flyer (minus authentic phone numbers), courtesy of family; Chapter 7, forensic photos & document, courtesy of Dr. Bill Bass; Chapter 11, mug shot, DeKalb County, Georgia court records; Chapter 15, WATV screen shots. Images - Book Two: Chapter 1, photocopy, Georgia Department of Corrections; Chapter 2, mug shot. Knoxville County Sheriff Department; Chapter 31, “Band of Sisters,” photo by Herb Neu.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This is a true story. Some names have been changed to protect and promote the privacy of those individuals. Names of some geographic locales have also been altered to aid in protecting certain identities. The name of Michelle Denise Anderson has not been changed, nor has that of Larry Lee Smith for reasons that will be obvious to the reader. The names of most officials have not been changed, as they are serving in a public capacity. There are no composite characters.

  The narrative is based on many hours of interviews conducted over a number of years with the victims, their family members, friends, acquaintances, neighbors, and members of law enforcement. All events and dialogue not witnessed firsthand are based on personal accounts, published reports, court documents and transcripts. The author attended all related legal proceedings as allowed.

  This Book is Dedicated to Michelle and “Sara”

  Michelle Anderson (left)

  “Sara” Smith (right)

  Monster: one who deviates from normal or acceptable behavior or character; a threatening force, a person of unnatural or extreme wickedness or cruelty.

  Predator: an organism that lives by preying on other organisms; one that victimizes, plunders or destroys, especially for one’s own gain.

  Contents

  BOOK ONE

  Part One - Nature of the Beast

  1 - Near Saturn and Mars

  2 - Psychogenic Amnesia

  Part Two - Gone Missing

  3 - 24 Hours

  4 - Sightings

  5 - The Interviews

  6 - Captive Bride

  7 - Walking the Dogs

  8 - Atlanta Boogie

  Part Three - Georgia Justice

  9 - Friday the Thirteenth

  10 - Matters of the Court

  11 - State of Georgia vs. Larry Lee Smith

  12 - Okay. Then What Happened?

  13 - Ladies & Gentlemen

  14 - Lies & Leniency

  BOOK TWO

  Part One - Picking Up a Cold Trail

  1 - No Reason to Run Away

  2 - Now I Just Wake Up Sad

  3 - Anita and Doug

  4 - York

  5 - Investigating the Investigation

  6 - Differing Detail

  7 - The Survivors

  8 - Steed

  9 - Means, Motive & Opportunity

  10 - Sara

  11 - Release

  Part Two - Connecting the Dots

  12 - Okay, Then What Happened?

  13 - New Eyes

  14 - The Lone Note

  15 - Channel 6 News

  16 - Joey

  17 - Family Matters

  18 - Ruby and Edsel Smith

  19 - Caseload

  Part Three - Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

  20 - Can I Use Your Phone?

  21 - What She Said Happened, Happened

  22 - Eye to Eye

  23 - Timeline

  24 - Prior Bad Acts

  25 - Oh, I’ll Be There

  26 - Band of Sisters

  27 - Shades of Gray

  28 - Theatre of the Absurd Part 1

  29 - Theatre of the Absurd Part 2

  30 - Think About It

  31 - Something’s Wrong Here

  32 - In Closing

  Epilogue & Acknowledgements

  BOOK ONE

  Part One

  Nature of the Beast

  1. NEAR SATURN AND MARS

  Larry Lee Smith of the County of Pinellas and State of Florida, and on the 12th day of July in the year of our Lord, one thousand nine hundred eighty-one did insert his penis into the vagina of Katherine McWilliams without the consent of Katherine McWilliams, and in the process thereof used physical force and violence likely to cause serious personal injury, to-wit did choke and strike the victim, thereby causing Katherine McWilliams to submit to said sexual battery.

  State of Florida vs Larry Lee Smith

  He’d circled nearly-empty city blocks more than once, Katherine noticed, before the guy giving her a lift home, late on that summer Sunday evening, finally brought his small truck to a stop in front of an apartment building. Taking in elements of her surroundings, Katherine would remember the white picket fence and the rectangular shape of the four-plex: two units up, two units down, stairs running up the middle.

  “Come up with me,” Larry Lee urged his passenger as he reached for the door handle. “It’ll just take a minute.”

  “That’s okay,” she replied agreeably. “I’ll wait here.”

  “No, come with me. It’ll be quick. I want you to meet some people.”

  She breathed a sigh of reluctant submission. “All right,” she surrendered, hoping it would actually speed things along. She really needed to get home.

  Fourteen-year-old Katherine McWilliams hadn’t been living in Florida all that long prior to that July night in 1981. Her mother had moved there from New York, and Katherine—who’d admittedly become a somewhat difficult teen, playing her divorced parents against one another, moving back and forth between their homes in New York and Florida—had joined her about a month before.

  Precocious and somewhat rebellious, the pixie-cute, brown-eyed Katherine had made some friends in her New Port Richey neighborhood, although they were three to four years older than her. She rode off with them on a Sunday afternoon excursion that continued into the evening. First the group of teens decided to drive down to Clearwater, twenty miles or so south, to catch a movie showing at a theater there. But when they arrived too late for the opening, they elected to travel a few miles farther west over the Clearwater Memorial Causeway to Clearwater Beach, a barrier island lying within the city domain. As a younger tag-along, Katherine’s vote wasn’t a deciding factor in the changed plans.

  On the beach the kids hung out for a while, getting a little summer party going. The weather was ideal; from a high of ninety-five the temperature had dropped back into the eighties. A gentle breeze blew in off the gulf under the glow of a waxing moon, just six days away from making a full showing. Yet as the time got closer to Katherine’s curfew, her thoughts were on her need to head back home.

  She’d ridden to the beach party with a neighbor, Tom Spiller, his brother and a few other older teens. Katherine spoke with Tom about leaving, explaining that she had a curfew, one she’d missed before; it was important to Katherine that she not do that a
gain—not now.

  “Yeah, I get that,” sympathized Tom as they talked in the parking lot of the North Beach Pier. “It’s a little early for me though. I’m not quite ready to leave.” He hesitated. “Can you call your mother and tell her you’ll be a little late?”

  All Katherine could think of was how much she didn’t want to call her mother and say, “I’m forty minutes away,” knowing it was only ten minutes until her curfew. Katherine and her mother were working out some difficult issues. It was a challenging time. She didn’t want to mess up. Not like this.

  That’s when they ran into Larry Lee Smith. He’d just gotten off work from his job as a cook at the Holiday Inn on the other end of the parking lot. Neither Tom nor Katherine had noticed the bushy-haired twenty-year-old, leaning against his small truck nearby, eavesdropping on their conversation. “Where do you live?” the stranger asked. “She lives in New Port Richey,” Tom answered for her.

  “I’m going that way,” offered the friendly, soft-spoken guy. He was short, pudgy, with disarmingly blue eyes and a wide, pleasant grin. “I can give her a ride.”

  Katherine, feeling desperate to avoid a conflict with her parents, hesitantly agreed. He seems harmless enough, she thought. Kinda cute. Tom wrote down Larry Lee’s license plate number from his Tennessee tag and told him to take Katherine directly home. Then Tom wrote his own phone number on the same piece of paper and handed it to Katherine, who deposited the note in her purse. Tom did not think to keep a copy of the stranger’s plate number for himself. Larry Lee opened the passenger door, and Katherine climbed inside.

  He maneuvered his truck past the palm trees to the other end of the parking lot and over the causeway into Clearwater proper—the smallest of the three principal cities of the Tampa Metropolitan area. Then he informed his passenger that he needed to stop at a friend’s apartment “for just a minute. No problem, right?” Larry Lee asked. “It’ll be real quick.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Katherine said. “No problem.”

  It was dark inside as Larry Lee held the door and Katherine walked behind him into the building. She detected a pungent, slightly moldy odor that lingered unpleasantly in her nostrils as she followed him upstairs toward apartment number four. He pulled the key from his pocket and led the way inside. The loud, echoed clicking of the door closing behind Katherine startled her. The apartment seemed empty. A mild sense of panic moved through her body. She glanced back at the door, and then toward this guy she’d just met as he walked ahead down a short hallway and motioned for her to follow.

  “I want to show you something,” Larry Lee said.

  He stood facing an open doorway, perpendicular to Katherine as she advanced in his direction. When she got close enough that his right shoulder was just beyond her left, he swung his right arm up behind her, quick as a cobra’s strike, and grabbed her forcefully by the back of her neck. He spun her around and pushed her into the bedroom. Katherine let out a scream. He wrapped his hand around her throat, squeezing, pressing his thumb against her trachea.

  “Shut up or I’ll beat the shit out of you!” Larry Lee growled. Then he punched her in the stomach and shoved her into the middle of the bed. “Take off your clothes. Cooperate, and you won’t get hurt.” He pulled at her clothes himself while he simultaneously shed his own.

  As Larry Lee pushed Katherine’s hand toward his exposed genitalia, indicating what he wanted her to do, her thoughts raced, and she moved as if in a dream, a nightmare. Realizing how utterly alone she was, the teen rapidly reasoned that if she appeared cooperative, submissive, she might get through this. Larry Lee climbed on top of her and shoved his erect member inside her adolescent body.

  Time slowed down.

  In an effort to speed things up and prevent her assailant from turning violent—to encourage his warped ego, his perverted sexual deviance—Katherine pretended to come around, to enjoy the activity, to be turned on by this creep in the process of raping her.

  He seemed to fall for it. This was exactly what he wanted, to be in control of Katherine, to have her, to force her to comply. When he finally slid off, he informed her that she was going to take a bath. Then he ambled into the bathroom and filled the tub with warm water. His young victim would obediently wash away any evidence of his crime, he reasoned.

  All in all, Larry Lee seemed pleased with himself, borderline excited. “I believe you liked that,” he cooed from the bathroom doorway, a sly, crooked smile fixed upon his face.

  Katherine kept her eyes on her rapist as she groped around for her clothes, then walked in his direction. She could feel that she was winning him over and surmised that if he was having her bathe, he might not be planning to kill her. “Yeah, sure I did,” she replied, feeling her stomach tighten as she smiled uneasily back at him.

  Larry Lee sat on the closed commode and watched her. While she lathered her petite, pubescent body, he warned her he would come after her and her family if she didn’t keep her mouth shut. She absorbed his words in attentive silence, lifting her eyes briefly toward his. “No problem. It’s cool. I’m not going to say anything.”

  While her brain felt like it was exploding inside her skull, Katherine managed to put on a small theatrical show, indulging her captor by listening to him brag about his dubious exploits all of which were exaggerated or completely untrue. He bragged about how much he could drink. (His alcoholic older brother, Brad, was the big drinker). He claimed he had a bullet in his ankle, a combat wound from his days in the marines. (Again, a story appropriated from Brad, only it was a lie on top of a lie; Brad, who had been a marine, was shot in the ankle while fleeing a police officer in Knoxville, Tennessee). Katherine pretended to be amused and impressed. He’s trying to come off as a bad-ass, she thought in her masked, high-alert mode. But to Larry Lee, it seemed that Katherine might actually like him. His tone became warmer. She played along.

  After she dressed, Larry Lee told her to give him the note from her purse, the one Tom had written the license plate numbers on. Then he walked her downstairs to his truck. “Slide down and cover your eyes,” he instructed Katherine as she got inside, which prevented her from seeing the street names and landmarks as they drove out of the Clearwater neighborhood.

  “Okay. You can sit up now,” he said after a few blocks. Her eyes quickly focused on the unusual names of the streets. They were named after planets: Saturn, Mars—a detail that Katherine hoped would prove helpful.

  Katherine couldn’t tell Larry Lee how to get to her home from their location. She didn’t know if New Port Richey was north or south of Clearwater on U.S. Route 19. So they pulled into the parking lot of a Waffle House. “Stay here and be quiet,” Larry Lee warned her, and he went inside to ask for directions.

  Inside her chest her heart pounded wildly. It occurred to Katherine to get out of the truck and scream her head off, or to run inside and yell to the waitress that she’d been abducted, but it was very dark and very late and there appeared to be only one visible waitress in the Waffle House. Where was she, anyway? And how would this guy, whose name Katherine still did not know, react if she did tell? He’d already threatened to kill her and her family. Hard to know what to do. Katherine thought again: not safe. Stay put. She just wanted to make it home.

  Larry Lee got back in the truck and pulled out of the parking lot, pointing his vehicle north. The drive took thirty-five minutes, during which time Larry Lee made flirty small talk. He informed her that he was apartment sitting where they’d just been. Katherine continued in her efforts to come across as relaxed and receptive.

  “I just moved down here from New York,” she responded. “Brooklyn.” Larry Lee mentioned that he too had been living in Florida only a short time, just a few weeks. He didn’t say from where he’d come, or why.

  “You’re pretty cute,” he told her. “You know that?”

  Katherine forced the corners of her mouth into the arc of a strained smile. “Thanks.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Fourteen.”
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br />   As they reached Katherine’s neighborhood and then her street, she instructed her assailant to let her out in front of a house that was actually a half-block or so down from her own. “I was afraid,” she later confided. “Afraid that he might remember where I live, and that he might come back.”

  Larry Lee stopped and Katherine climbed out without a word. She walked at a steady pace as his small truck continued down the street. When it turned out of sight, Katherine broke into a run. She raced down the block, sprinting under the pencil shadows of the tall palm trees that lined her street. The emotions she’d kept in check during the hours of suppressed terror now came spewing out as she burst through her front door.

  “I’ve been raped!” she screamed through tears.

  By now, Katherine was many hours past her curfew. In fact, the sun would soon make a showing. Her mother, Jane, had been pacing the floor, anxious, ready to lower the consequence boom upon her defiant daughter. Now she was stunned, shocked, reeling as she processed the details of Katherine’s terrifying night.

  As Katherine cried and talked, describing her predicament, her acceptance of a ride from a guy at the beach and the subsequent assault and rape, Jane’s shock turned to rage, but now it was directed toward this man, this unknown predator.

  She called the cops—the New Port Richey Police—who responded and took a report of the night’s events. Yet they were initially cautious about buying into Katherine’s story and questioned her mother about Katherine’s behaviors and motives. Jane acknowledged that her feisty teen was a handful, but in this matter, the mother believed her daughter. Jane knew Katherine, and she knew her daughter had been traumatized. Besides that, bruises were now emerging along Katherine’s neck where her attacker’s choking hands had gripped her a few hours before.

  A salty Florida breeze blew as the officers escorted Katherine and her mother to the local hospital emergency room. A rape exam seemed to corroborate Katherine’s story. Inside her vaginal cavity Larry Lee’s semen remained. A bath couldn’t wash that away. One of his pubic hairs clung to her skin. Evidence obtained.