Disappearance Before Dawn

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George Smith went overboard. There’s no doubt about that. And even though it happened in the Aegean Sea on a Bahamian-registered ship, for the last four years the case has been handled by the F.B.I. bureau in New Haven, Connecticut, the lost man’s home state.

“This is a very active, ongoing investigation with the FBI,” says Clint Van Zandt, who was with the FBI for 25 years. “What we need to realize is that if the bureau came to the point where they felt strongly it was an accident, they would close their case.”

Dateline asked Van Zandt, an NBC News analyst, to look at the public record of evidence in the George Smith case.

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Van Zandt: First in a case like this, you’ve gotta go in and you gotta say, ‘Well, what happened? We got a missing person. If he’s gone, is it a homicide, a suicide, or an accident?

What about an accident? Both witnesses either side of the Smith cabin noticed one of the metal balcony chairs had been turned around so that its back was near the 4-foot railing.

Hypothetically, did George Smith, foolishly perch on the balcony rail for a breath of fresh air or literally a last cigarette?

Van Zandt: I push the chair up against the balcony. I sit up on the edge. I have a cigarette. The ship hits a bump or something and I go over the side? We can't say that didn't happen because we dont have the body to get the forensics from. So I cannot at all discount the idea of an accident.

The former F.B.I. man eliminates suicide right away since there’s nothing, he says, in George Smith’s background to remotely suggest it.

Van Zandt: We get homicide and accident. We take our legal pad. We draw a line down the middle and then we start to build a case on either side and see which one we can support with the evidence.

We looked at each bit of evidence, in turn, starting with the photo of the bloodstain.

Van Zandt: When you look at this picture here do you see this point right here? That looks like that was pooling blood. This is 10 feet-plus wide here so if a human body fell here, if this is perhaps evidence of a head injury.

Murphy: A bleeding kind of injury, right?
Van Zandt: A bleeding where there was continued bleeding. It can be blood that had been contaminated with water, sea spray something like that, that made it spread out like this. Perhaps, George Smith, by whatever means went over the balcony two floors down—he crashes on top of this metal awning. He lays there for awhile, he’s already bleeding. He bleeds out a little bit. And then he starts to crawl. Does he pick himself up? Does he zig when he should have zagged? Or does someone come up on the body and help it over the side?
Murphy: Does this picture tell you: ‘I am the victim of an accident? I’m a victim of foul play?’
Van Zandt: Don’t we wish.

Witness statements
Since the bloodstain doesn't tell the full story, that makes the statements by witnessess all the more important.

Here, they are not eyewitnesses so much as “ear-witnesses”: the two sets of people in the cabins on either side of the Smiths, starting with the deputy police chief Clete Hyman, a 31-year law enforcement veteran.

Van Zandt: In this particular case this is a cop who’s kind of leaning forward in the saddle and saying, ‘What’s going on next door?’

Assuming those three people had just come from George's room, Van Zandt thinks that could be important for the foul-play theory. Remember they had been a group of five.

Van Zandt: Four as a posse, plus George. Five. Three out the door. George is still there. Where is the other person? And who is that? Somewhere in between is the story of that fourth person.

But the attorney for one of the Russian boys now says Clete Hyman's recollection is wrong. He insists all four boys left George's room together, which would mean there is no fourth person left to account for.

Still, something else in the police officer’s recollection intrigues Van Zandt. After the three leave, the business about a lone voice in the cabin.

Van Zandt: The challenge here is this single voice. Is this allegedly highly-intoxicated man talking to himself? Is he rambling on because he drank too much, because he won money... or, is this, perhaps, George Smith laid out on a bed? And this other person still in the room of this group of four, this one is still there?
Murphy: The chief hears that voice moving.
Van Zandt: Who’s up moving around? Opening and closing cabinet doors. What would George Smith be looking for if he’s opening and closing cabinet doors? Moving furniture? Or what could somebody else be looking for?

Likewise, Van Zandt thinks the couple through the other cabin wall, Pat and Greg Lawyer’s description of loud noises is an important clue.

Van Zandt: This is not just let’s scoot a chair across the floor. This is banging. This is moving. This is dragging. This is something that has to reverberate against the wall to make that kind of sound.
Murphy: Purely speculation: what the couple hears, what they regard as this kind of violent moving about of furniture. Could it be a physical fight? Could it be guys exchanging blows and throwing one another around the room?
Van Zandt: What we’re missing is: ‘Why are you doing this to me? Don’t hit me again! You no good… and so-and-so.’ We’re missing the profanity that might normally accompany this kind of fisticuff. Now it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. And it may mean that one person was simply not capable of talking.

As for the three Russian boys and Josh Askin, their attorneys have said their clients did nothing wrong and are unfairly living under a cloud of suspicion.

Keep in mind, F.B.I. investigators have many more interviews, photos and presumably forensic evidence than we've talked about with Clint Van Zandt.