Last Will and Testament: Shari Smith and Debra Helmick

Welcome to the Eastern Crime Zone, the podcast that takes you inside investigations of real, true crime cases. I'm your host, cassie Millay, and each week I'll guide you through the twists and turns of some of the most fascinating cases in history, from the familiar to the obscure. We'll deep dive into the details and explore new angles you've never considered before. But I don't want this to be one-sided conversation. I want to hear from you too. If there's a case that's been on your mind, head over to EasternCrimeZonecom to leave me a voicemail or slide into my DMs on Instagram at Eastern Crime Zone. Who knows, your suggestion just might be featured on an upcoming episode. So sit back, grab your detective hat and get ready for a journey through the criminal underworld. This is Eastern Crime Zone. Sherry Faye Smith was born on June 25, 1967, to Hilda and Bob Smith in Columbia, south Carolina. Sherry was the middle child. She had an older sister, dawn, and a younger brother, robert Jr. The Smiths were a tight-knit, loving family. They were highly regarded and influential in Lexington, where they were active in their church and the community. Sherry had blonde bouncy curls, a rosy complexion and bright blue eyes. She was bright, outgoing and radiated positivity. Friends and family could always count on her to lift them up if they were ever feeling down. On May 31, 1985, schools across the United States were finishing up for the summer. 17-year-old Sherry Smith of Lexington, south Carolina, had just completed her final year at Lexington High School. The following days were busy, but Sherry was excited. Her graduation ceremony, where she would be singing the national anthem, was taking place on June 2. Then she and a group of friends would set off for a cruise to celebrate the end of their high school years and the beginning of a new chapter. It was sunny that final day of May. Sherry had spent the afternoon at a pool party with her friends. At 3.38pm she arrived back at her home on Platt Springs Road in Lexington, a driveway about 200 meters long, light up from the main road to the Smith House. At the end of the driveway was their mailbox. Bob, sherry's father, glanced out the window of his office and saw Sherry turning onto the driveway. Sherry's father, bob, glanced out the window of his office and saw Sherry turning onto the driveway with her car, expecting that she would come through the door at any minute. He went back to what he was doing. About 5 or 10 minutes later, however, he realized he hadn't heard Sherry come back in. Looking out the window again, he saw her car sitting at the end of the driveway next to the mailbox. What's taking her so long? He got a feeling that something wasn't quite right. So Bob hopped in his own car and sped down the driveway, and once he arrived at the mailbox it was clear that he was right to be concerned. There was Sherry's car, but no Sherry. The engine was still running and the door was wide open. On the passenger's seat sat Sherry's purse. There were bare footprints leading from the driver's side door to the mailbox, but none coming back. Several pieces of mail lay on the ground next to the mailbox. From the beginning it was clear that Sherry did not leave on her own. She was content and happy in her life, loved her family and was excited for her busy summer ahead. Furthermore, she was diabetic and would not have gone anywhere without her insulin. On examining the scene, it appeared to investigators that Sherry had gone from her car to the mailbox and was taken by someone and dropped the mail Right away. Investigators from Lexington County Sheriff's Department organized a manhunt. At the time this was the largest to ever take place in South Carolina history. Despite this, it did not turn up any clues to where Sherry was. The Smith family was worried, sick and publicly pleading with Sherry's captor to let her go. Otherwise all they could do was wait. The feeling of helplessness and lack of control was unbearable. Hope would later recall. For the first time in my life, as a father and protector of my household, I was not in charge of my home. Two days after Sherry disappeared, on the evening of June 2, the Smiths got a call from an unknown man who had distorted his voice. He asked to speak to Sherry's mother, hilda. Sherry is with me, he told her. The man described the black and yellow swimsuit Sherry had on under her clothes to prove to Hilda that the call was not a prank. He told her that Sherry was doing well and they were watching TV together. He did not demand any money in exchange for her return, but he did tell Hilda they would be receiving a letter the following day. Detectives traced the call to a pay phone 20 miles from the Smith home in Columbia, but time was not on their side. By the time they were able to pinpoint a more precise location and travel there, whoever had made the call was already gone. Detectives arrived at the Lexington Post Office the following morning and began sorting through the mail. Sure enough, they found a letter addressed to the Smiths. The letter, which was two pages in length and written on paper from a yellow legal pat, was in Sherry's handwriting. Across the top she had written Last Will and Testament. Several times throughout the letter Sherry emphasized to her family how much she loved them. She wrote that she would never let this ruin their lives. The most frightening was her request that she had a closed casket at her funeral. Here is what the letter says. At the top, in the left-hand corner, it says 6185, 310 am. In the right-hand corner it says I love y'all. With an exclamation point and underlined several times. Down the left-hand margin, it says God is love. And at the top it reads Last Will and Testament. Sherry wrote I love you Mommy, daddy, robert, dawn and Richard and everyone else and all other friends and relatives. I'll be with my father now, so please don't worry. Just remember my witty personality and great special times we shared together. Please don't worry. Please don't ever let this ruin your lives. Just keep living one day at a time for Jesus. Some good will come out of this. My thoughts will always be with you. Casket closed in parentheses. I love you all so damn much. Sorry, dad, I had to cuss for once. Jesus forgives me. After this part I can't read a lot of what the letter says, but on the next page, the part I can read said I know y'all love me and will miss me very much, but if y'all stick together you can do it. I just can't imagine how Sherry would have felt writing this letter, knowing what was going to happen to her. I think that's the most terrifying part of all of this is that there's nothing you can do and you know that you're going to die. And she had the strength to write this letter and comfort her family and ask that they not let her death ruin their lives. I don't think that I would have the mental capacity to write this letter in the way that Sherry did. She's so kind in this letter and she's thinking about her family and she has such faith in her religion. It's really admirable. I wish she didn't have to do this, but I know that her family is really, really glad for this letter. Having accompanied detectives to the post office, bob was the first to read the letter. He was devastated but refused to abandon hope that his daughter might still come home. What he dreaded most was telling Hilda what the letter said. The letter was sent to the South Carolina law enforcement crime lab. Here it would be examined by a forensic document examiner for any clues, for example fibers, fingerprints, hand prints or any discrepancies in the spelling or handwriting. Another call came to the Smith's house that afternoon. The same distorted voice was on the other end. The man asked Hilda if they had received the mail, to which she replied that they had. He then asked if Hilda believed him. She replied that she wasn't sure because she hadn't heard from Sherry herself. I didn't know whether Sherry was actually okay. The man replied that she would know in two or three days. That evening the Smiths received another call, and this one was very ominous. The man said to Hilda Sherry is now part of me, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. Our souls are now one. The Smiths received another call the next day, june 4th. This time Sherry's sister, dawn, spoke to Sherry's captor. He told her that 3.10 am on Saturday, june 1st, sherry wrote the letter. At 4.58 am he said they became one soul. When Dawn asked what he meant by that, he told her not to ask questions. He asked that. Sheriff James Metz of the Lexington County Sheriff's Department, stop searching for Sherry. In the background, hilda pleaded with him not to kill her daughter. Sherry loves and misses y'all. He said. Get good rest tonight. Good night On June 5th around noon he called the Smiths again. He told Hilda to listen carefully, then proceeded to give detailed directions to a specific location. He ended the call saying we're waiting. God chose us. Detectives followed the directions he provided. Hilda begged to go along, but they convinced her it wouldn't be a good idea. Then they found what confirmed everyone's worst fears. Sherry's body was exactly where the man said it would be, in an old Masonic lodge in Saluda County 18 miles west of the Smith home. The autopsy showed that Sherry had been dead about four days. In fact, the medical examiner estimated she'd been killed about 12 hours after being kidnapped. They were unable to determine her cause of death, but a residue of duct tape on Sherry's face suggested she had died of suffocation. Pieces of her hair had been cut off because the tape had gotten stuck in it. This indicated to detectives that whoever killed Sherry knew what he was doing, as any clues he left on the body may lead to him. For example, his fingerprints may have ended up on the duct tape. Due to the extended period of time Sherry's body spent in the elements, no forensic evidence was recovered. They could not definitively prove whether or not Sherry had been sexually assaulted. When the man on the phone said that he and Sherry had become one soul on June 1st at 4.58 am, detectives assumed this was the time she had died. Fbi agents John Douglas and Ron Walker of the Behavioral Science Unit came up with a detailed profile of Sherry's killer. They categorized him as an organized killer. He was sophisticated in his methods and had been planning this murder for a while. It was possible he had committed sex crimes or crimes of a similar nature before. According to their profile, he would be young, in his mid to late 20s or early 30s, white, homely and overweight. He had likely been married but was now divorced or separated. He was above average intelligence with the knowledge of electronics. Given that he had altered his voice for the phone calls, he was not impulsive or one to take chances. From listening to recordings of the phone calls, the FBI agents and detectives working on the case were convinced that he was reading from a script he had written. The giveaway was that he had stumbled and would go back to the beginning of a sentence and start over saying the exact same phrase again. Full examination of the evidence led Douglas and Walker to the conclusion that this was not a one off for Sherry's killer and in all likelihood he would kill again if not captured. He was drunk on the feelings of power and control that manipulating Sherry's family gave him. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that he yearned for these feelings to continue, even after Sherry's body was found. Her killer was not done with the Smith family. He particularly enjoyed speaking to Dawn on the phone. On June 6th he called the Smith home again. Dawn answered and he told her he was planning to turn himself in the next day but was contemplating killing himself instead. He then asked for her forgiveness. Sometimes he would mix up Dawn and Sherry's names. He accidentally said that everything had gotten out of hand and all he wanted to do was make love to Dawn. When Dawn questioned this, he corrected himself, saying he meant Sherry. The next call came on the day of Sherry's funeral. Once again he asked to speak to Dawn and chose this time to be particularly cruel. He described to Dawn the details of Sherry's death, including the various disgusting ways he sexually assaulted her. He explained to Dawn that he let Sherry make her own decisions regarding her death, as if that somehow justified it. For example, he let her choose what time she would die. He also gave her a choice of dying by shooting, a drug overdose or suffocation, and she chose the last option. According to the killer, he wrapped duct tape around her head and she died right there in front of him. Two weeks after Sherry had been kidnapped from outside of her own home, her killer struck again, just as the FBI was sure he would. This time he took 9 year old Deborah May Helmick from her front yard in nearby Richland County, 24 miles from the Smith home. It was broad daylight. Just like Sherry, and also like Sherry, deborah was pretty, blonde and blue eyed. She had been playing outside with her younger siblings and her father was inside the house. And just like Sherry, deborah was there one second and gone the next. At this point it had been 8 days since his last phone call to the Smith family. Detectives needed him to get in contact again. So FBI agents Douglas and Walker came up with a plan Ever killed Sherry and kidnapped Deborah. Loved attention. As previously mentioned, he was likely above average intelligence, so no doubt he believed that he was smarter than the detectives on the case. The agents thought they may be able to lure him out of hiding with a memorial service for Sherry at the cemetery, with Don playing a central role, given that he was obviously very fond of her. He'll be paying close attention to the media, carefully consuming every story relating to Sherry and Deborah. If local media made a big enough story out of the memorial service, there was a good chance he would attend, stand in the back and silently gloat. The media coverage of the memorial was just what the agents had hoped for. Members of the community came far and wide to support the Smith family. At the instructions of agent Douglas, don brought a small stuffed guava bear Sherry's favorite animal, to lay at her sister's grave, along with a bouquet of flowers. If Sherry's killer did attend the service, he would see Don with the bear. With any luck he might return after the service finished and take the bear as a souvenir. Detectives stood out of sight taking down license plates of all the vehicles that attended the service. Once it was finished they hid lying in wait for their suspect to appear and take the bear. But he never did. Just after midnight on June 23rd, the Smiths got another call. While Sherry's killer had not been brought out in the open by the memorial service, it clearly awoke something in him. No doubt he wanted to go to the service but didn't feel it was safe. Instead, he satisfied his need for attention by calling the Smiths again. Dawn answered the phone. Of course she didn't want to speak to him, but keeping him on the line was vital in tracking down who killed her sister. At this point he was feeling untouchable and no longer distorted his voice in the calls to the Smiths. The first thing he said to Dawn on this call was particularly alarming God wants you to join Sherry, fay. It was only a matter of time and you can't be protected forever, he warned. Then he changed the subject to what he really wanted to talk to Dawn about. He asked her if she had heard of Deborah May Helmick. At first she didn't. Then she remembered a young girl that had been abducted in Richland County. Listen carefully, he said. Then he rattled off a series of directions, just as he had two weeks ago on the phone to Hilda when she gave directions to Sherry's body. He ended the call by saying Deborah May is waiting. God forgive us all. It was like deja vu for the detectives. They followed the directions he had given them, knowing what they would find when they reached the destination. Sure enough, just off a dirt road, amongst thick brush, lay the body of Deborah May Helmick. Sherry, and Deborah's killer was enjoying having the detectives and the Smith family at his mercy. As was covered in the FBI profile of him, he was above average intelligence. He knew not to leave any evidence on the bodies that could be traced back to him. His fund was about to come to an end. However, thanks to a piece of evidence, he had practically placed directly in the hands of the detectives Sherry's last will and testament letter. Given that the letter was written on a piece of paper from a legal pad, not just loose paper there's a good chance that things the killer had written on previous sheets from the pad could have left indentations on the sheets. Forensic document examiner Mickey Dawson used an electrostatic detection apparatus on the letter to detect any sort of indentations. What he found was pretty incredible. The machine detected a list of names and phone numbers. It appeared that it was a call in case of emergency sort of list. One of the phone numbers was nearly complete with indentations, only missing the final digit. It began with 205, which was an Alabama number. The next three digits 837, was the exchange for Huntsville, alabama. Detectives had nine out of ten digits they needed and there were only nine possibilities for what the tenth digit could be. They tested the phone number with nine different options for the tenth digit until someone picked up. It was a young man who answered the phone. Detectives asked if he had any connections to South Carolina. He told them, yes, his parents lived there. The young man's father was Ellis Shepherd, who lived just 15 minutes from the Smith home. Ellis Shepherd had no clue how he could help detectives, but he agreed to speak with them. He told them he had been on vacation with his wife when Sherry Smith had disappeared. They played Shepherd a recording of the killer's later phone calls to the Smiths. When his voice was not distorted Immediately, he was able to identify the voice that's Larry Jean Bell. Larry Jean Bell had been house sitting while they were away on vacation. On examination of Shepard's phone records from when they were away, detectives discovered that some of the calls to the Smiths after Sherry was kidnapped were made from the Shepard's home. Shepard explained that he had left the list of phone numbers for Bell while they were away. The list included the number of his son, who lives in Alabama. Little information is available on Larry Jean Bell's childhood. He was born in Ralph, alabama, on October 30, 1949 and was one of five children. The Bell family never settled in one place for long, moving between Alabama, south Carolina and Mississippi. Bell graduated high school in Mississippi and went to trade school to become an electrician. When his training was finished, he moved to Columbia, south Carolina, where he got married and had one son. In 1970, bell joined the Marines but was enrolled for less than a year and he would be discharged after accidentally shooting himself in the knee while cleaning a gun. After leaving the Marines, he worked for a brief period at the Department of Corrections in Columbia. In 1972, he moved his family to Rock Hill, south Carolina. In 1976, he and his wife divorced and I'm assuming she got full custody of their son. When Larry Bell picked up Ellis Shepard and his wife from the airport after their vacation, he was not himself. He seemed nervous and on edge. He had not shaved and he had lost a significant amount of weight. All he wanted to talk about was the missing Smith girl. Larry was a textbook example of a killer beginning to lose his cool. The behaviors he was exhibiting are precisely what the FBI behavioral analysts look for when trying to track down a killer. Sheriff Metz would later discuss in the application of behavioral analysis. Sheriff Metz would later discuss the application of behavioral analysis in this case. Church in the field was well in its early stages at the time, he explained, but John Douglas as well as other agents from the FBI Behavioral Science Unit worked on the case with him. Their profile of Sherry and Debra's killer was spot on. The only part they were slightly off on was his age. Larry was slightly older than the agents thought he would be. He was 35 and they guessed he would be in his mid to late 20s or early 30s. They were, however, correct regarding the following he was white, slightly overweight, he was divorced, he was intelligent and he had a good knowledge of electronics. Larry's past also included sexually motivated crimes. He had been caught harassing women over the phone before making threats of sexual nature. He had also attempted to kidnap a female student from the University of South Carolina, but was unsuccessful. On June 27th 1985, 28 days after kidnapping and murdering Sherry Smith, larry Bell was arrested. Police found further evidence in the Shepherd home, which incriminated him Six long blonde hairs that were almost definitely Sherry's. They were never forensically tested but they were said to be microscopic leaf similar to her hair. They did not belong to Mrs Shepherd or anyone the Shepherds knew. Larry denied having anything to do with the kidnapping and the deaths of Sherry Smith and Debra Helmick, but rather than just outright denying it, he claimed it was the bad Larry Jean Bell who was guilty of the murders. In February 1986, larry went to trial for the murder of Sherry Smith. He made a scene during his six hour long testimony yelling and making bizarre comments like the following Mona Lisa is a man and silence is golden, my friend. It was obvious he was trying to manipulate the jury into believing he was crazy. Nobody bought this. The jury deliberated for just 47 minutes and they returned verdicts of guilty on both charges of kidnapping and first degree murder in the case of Sherry Smith, and Larry was sentenced to death. He was tried separately in 1987 for the kidnapping and murder of Deborah Helmick. The jury in that trial came back with the same verdict guilty on both counts. It was not only Sherry and Deborah's families and friends who were shaken by the heinous acts of Larry Jean Bell. The entire state of South Carolina was on edge from the time Sherry was kidnapped to the day Bell was arrested. Worried parents were weary. Worried parents were scared to let their children play outside without adult supervision. Teen girls were fear-stricken, and for good reason. They began traveling in groups, no matter how short the distance. To walk alone, for even the shortest amount of time was not worth the risk. Even after Larry was arrested, the fear never completely lifted. The scars he inflicted on the community Sherry and Deborah left behind, though faded, still remain to this day. Larry was given a choice between being executed by lethal injection or by electric chair, and he chose the chair. On October 4, 1996, after 10 years on death row, 46-year-old Larry Bell died silently in South Carolina's electric chair. He had no parting words as he left this world behind. Bell remains a suspect in cases of two women, 26-year-old Sandy Elaine Cornett and 21-year-old Denise Newsom-Porch. Both women disappeared from Charlotte, North Carolina. Sandy was engaged to a co-worker of Bell's and apparently Sandy was engaged to a co-worker of Larry's and apparently Larry had attended a party at her apartment before she was last seen in November of 1984. Denise managed the Yorktown apartments where she also lived in Charlotte. The last time anyone saw her was when she was showing a man around Yorktown apartments on July 31, 1975. She had left her husband a note letting him know what she was doing. Despite extensive research, denise was never seen again. She was legally declared dead in 1982. Larry became a suspect in Denise's disappearance after he was convicted of the murders of Sherry Smith and Debra Helmick. As it turns out, larry had been living just 300 yards from the Yorktown apartments when Denise disappeared in 1975. Unfortunately, there is very little information on Debra May Helmick. She was only nine years old when Larry Jean Bell ripped her away from her friends and family. Dawn Smith, determined not to let the grief of her sister's passing take over her life, decided she would enter into the 1986 Miss South Carolina pageant, as Sherry always encouraged her to do. She would be crowned the winner and then go on to be second runner-up in the 1987 Miss America competition. Dawn is now a Christian singer-songwriter and motivational speaker. Her book Grace so Amazing A True Story of God's Grace in the midst of life-shattering tragedy, is a tribute to Sherry in a testament to the pivotal role her faith played in guiding her after Sherry's murder. Dawn would later say Sherry's murder had the potential of ruining my family's life, it did. It could have, but by the grace of God we chose not to allow it to. It's only by the grace of God that helps us any of us to be able to say this will not define me, this will not destroy me. This is going to make me a stronger person and still be used for good. Bob Smith later praised the fortitude and strength his daughter, sherry, displayed when she wrote the letter to her family, all while knowing how close she was to death. He said that letter has been more closure to me than any kind of closure that the courts could do for me, just the fact that she knew where she was going and she had that kind of faith. This case feels more like a horror movie or an episode of Criminal Minds than it does True Crime. It just feels like a killer taunting the family is something that only happens on TV. So hearing about it and it actually happened and these are real people and this is their real story of what happened to their loved one is almost unbelievable. I am curious why he never reached out to Deborah Helmick's family. He continued to reach out to Don even after he had taken and murdered another girl. So I just wonder why the fascination with the Smith family? A lot of people have put it out there that maybe Don was the original target and he took the wrong sister because Don was at college at the time, which is completely possible, we don't know and he did like to speak to Don on the phone afterwards. So maybe that is why he continued to contact the Smith family even after he took Deborah. I'm sure that the Helmicks are very glad that he didn't taunt them and call them all the time, but it is very curious to me. I just wonder about these sorts of things. That is all I have for you on this case today. There are additional resources if you want to look into it further. The full letter from Sherry is available online. There is a book from the FBI Profilers John Douglas and Mark Olshaker that is available if you'd like to read that as well. There are even recordings of the original phone calls between Larry, jean Bout and Sherry's family. I'll try to remember to link everything below so that you can find these resources. If you do want to look into this case further. There's plenty out there, but next week I'll be back with a different case and this time there will be a YouTube video accompanying it, if you'd prefer to watch it that way. But until then, stay safe, stay kind and remember to question everything. Bye.