Honeymooner's disappearance: Was it murder?

Clint Van Zandt • Profile • E-mail

Tuesday night on MSNBC’s “Rita Cosby Live & Direct,” two noted forensic scientists offered insight into the disappearance of George Smith.  Six months ago Smith, a honeymooner from Connecticut, disappeared from his cabin on deck nine of the Royal Caribbean cruise ship Brilliance of the Seas.   Dr. Henry Lee (of O.J. Simpson fame) briefly discussed his forensic examination this past Monday of the cabin occupied by George and Jennifer Hagel Smith when they were passengers on this ship.  I was also there in Miami and saw Dr. Lee and his team as they went about taking various measurements and looking for forensic evidence in the bedroom and balcony of the cabin that had been occupied by the Smiths last May.  Although the FBI is believed to have the carpet and other items of potential forensic interest from the cabin, Dr. Lee, who is working for George Smith’s wife, Jennifer, still conducted a belated “CSI-Miami”-type investigation.  Looking for evidence of blood and other trace evidence, Dr. Lee also spent time 22 feet directly below the Smith’s former cabin, as it was there on a white metal awning used to cover a lifeboat that the bloody outline of a human body was photographed by a fellow passenger on the morning of George Smith’s disappearance.  Although understandably cryptic in what he was willing to tell the media, Dr. Lee did suggest that he found something of some significance, perhaps evidence of blood, or scratches or cuts on the metal awning.           

Dr. Lee had already indicated that he had been able to conduct three of five experiments that he wanted to do while onboard the ship.  One test he wanted to run was squashed by the cruise line.  Dr. Lee wanted to throw a manikin the same height and weight as George Smith over the cabin balcony railing to see where, and how, it would land on the life boat cover below.  Dr. Lee believed it important to his investigation, but the cruise line was probably right in its refusal to allow this experiment.  For one, it is presumed that Smith disappeared while the ship was under way and at sea.  Therefore throwing the manikin from the balcony to the metal awning below while the ship was tied up in port would be nothing like a ship moving at 20 knots in a rough sea, perhaps with sea spray washing over the ship.  Further, at the time Dr. Lee proposed conducting the test, 2500 new passengers were boarding Brilliance of the Seas and would have witnessed the test.  Also, there were dozens of TV cameras pointed at the balcony, waiting for the “money shot,” one that would have been shown dozens and dozens of times as the “dummy” arched over the railing and hit the awning over two stories below.  Probably not a good marketing photo op for the cruise line….

The second forensic scientist to be interviewed on MSNBC Tuesday night was Dr. Lawrence Kobolinski (Dr. K).  Dr. K offered an interesting perspective to this case, especially noting that I continue to suggest that the three options to explain Smith’s disappearance, ruling out natural causes of course, are homicide, suicide, and accidental death.  Dr. K offered his belief that the Smith’s cabin was indeed a crime scene and that Smith had been murdered.  He based this on the amount of blood seen in the passenger’s photograph of the life boat cover, one that appears to show a significant amount of “red” on an otherwise white metal surface.  He further suggested his belief that this loss of blood would be consistent with Smith having been stabbed with a knife and then thrown over the cabin railing by persons unknown.  When he hit the awning, Smith might have been dead already, or might have died shortly thereafter.  Dr. K evidently does not believe the blood loss is attributable to, say, a possible head injury sustained from a fall of 22 feet.

Were Dr. K to be correct in his analysis, this act of foul play might then be laid at the feet of one of the last three or four men to be in Smith’s cabin with him.  At the assumed time of George Smith’s death his wife was lying unconscious on the same deck, but half way around the ship, apparently having become lost on her way back to her cabin.  Inexplicably, she was curled up in a dead-end hallway on the 9^th deck.  Again, if Dr. K is correct, there could be, even some 6 months later, trace evidence of blood in the room, on the walls, ceiling, furniture, that an application of a Luminol-like spray might uncover.  CSI fans will know that Luminol is often used at crime scenes in the visualization of blood.  It is highly sensitive and can usually locate faint blood that is invisible to the eye.  When sprayed on surfaces where blood is evident, the Luminol will make the blood patterns appear a bright green.

If I continue with Dr. K’s theory, then there would probably have been blood on the clothing of the assailants, something that would have been evident to a crime lab had the clothing of any such suspect been seized by Turkish authorities in their very limited investigation aboard ship the day Smith disappeared.  And then there’s the question of how Smith’s body disappeared from the awning where he apparently fell, or was dropped.  Did he lie there bleeding for an unknown time period, then perhaps awake and attempt to climb down from the awning, slipping instead into the dark and unforgiving sea?  Or, again were he the victim of foul play did he lie there under the now-frightened eyes of his assailant or assailants, who now had to somehow climb down onto the lifeboat awning him or themselves to slide or push Smith to his watery grave?

We still don’t know the truth.  The cruise line has turned over approximately 98 surveillance tapes from various cameras throughout the ship, tapes that some suggest depict an argument between the Smiths shortly before George disappeared, one in which witnesses suggest that Jennifer kicked George in the groin because he called her a “hussy.”  Others suggest that the surveillance tapes do not show the corridors, halls or passageways leading to the cabins, so there would be no footage of who came and went from the Smith’s cabin that fateful night.  But if the tapes showed staircases or elevator entrances, for example, the timing on the tapes could depict who entered, say, the elevator on the Smith’s floor at about the time George is believed to have gone overboard.  After all, how many people were up and about the halls between 4 and 5 a.m. that morning?  And the key cards would show who used a key to get into a state room at that time of the morning.  Finally, there are witnesses, both eye and “ear,” on either side of the Smith’s cabin who either heard or saw some evidence of a possible argument or people leaving the cabin at that hour of the morning.

This investigation has deteriorated into a she said (Jennifer Hagel Smith), they said (the cruise line) type of case.  Jennifer has gone on national television recounting how she was mishandled by cruise line personnel.  Cruise line defenders say that at the time they thought they had done what was needed to help Jennifer and to facilitate the investigation.  The parents of George Smith continue to demand answers to the ultimate fate of their son and seek reform concerning the investigation of crimes on the high seas.

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