Posted on 02/06/2004 3:35:51 AM PST by YankeeGirl
Just heard on WCBS newsradio NY that CNN reports Carlie Brucia found dead in Sarasota.
They did it so that the scum defendant can't say the cops were biased against him and try to get a mistrial and he's out to kill another day.
Face in the news triggers memories for Manatee woman
By ROBERT PATRICK and TOM KIM
BRADENTON -- As Teri Stinson and her husband sat on their couch Thursday morning watching the news, the mug shot of the man repeatedly shown seemed eerily familiar.
Then when she heard the words "acquitted in 1998," it dawned on her who he was, and the anger set in.
"I thought, 'God, he did it again,'" Stinson said Thursday.
With Joseph Smith being named the prime suspect in the disappearance of 11-year-old Carlie Brucia, his acquittal in 1998 on a charge that he tried to kidnap Stinson has become a subject of intense scrutiny.
"He goes after young girls because women are just too strong for him," Stinson said.
According to court records, Stinson and a witness:
On Nov. 7, 1997, just before 9:30 p.m., Stinson, a 20-year-old Wal-Mart employee, left Livingston's pool hall in the 6200 block of 14th Street West and was walking south along Tamiami Trail to her cousin's house. Near Bowlees Creek, she saw a man standing on the sidewalk.
Assistant State's Attorney Dawn Buff said Joseph Smith's acquittal in the abduction case was "the most shocking verdict" she and co-prosecutor Brian Iten had ever received.
"Come over here," he said.
She refused and told him she had no money.
"I don't care," he said, then grabbed her and tried to pull her over the wooden railing and into a dark bed of reeds and bushes.
The attacker wore a light blue uniform shirt with a name tag and had short dark hair.
Stinson slipped and fell, and the man jumped on top of her. "If you don't quit screaming, I'll cut you," he told her.
Stinson struggled out of her shirt and fell on her knees in front of a vanload of vacationing Midwestern golfers on their way to dinner.
One of the men, a salesman from Indiana who was afraid to be identified by the media, said he and the van's driver saw the pair struggling.
The Indiana man said they first saw Stinson running away from the reeds.
"This son-of-a-bitch crawled out of those weeds, running after her," he said Thursday.
The golfers jumped out and yelled at her attacker, who ran from them. Several of the golfers chased him for about 50 feet into the vegetation. The Indiana man said he was holding a golf club like a weapon as he chased the man, but they all soon realized that they could be in danger if the man had a gun.
The girl, who looked younger than 20, was "visibly shook up," the Indiana man said. "She had the fear of God in her face."
A manager from the nearby Holiday Inn called 911.
Rocky, a Sheriff's Office tracking dog, followed a trail along the creek, through a field and back to Tamiami Trail, then under the bridge and up to a house on Magellan Drive, where a man was hiding.
The man "immediately said, 'You got me. I give up,'" according to the sheriff's report. He also said "It was a mistake of identity," the report said.
After deputies handcuffed Smith, he said "I didn't mean to hurt her. This is a mistake."
The two golfers and the victim all identified Smith as the attacker.
On his application to be represented by a public defender, Smith said he worked for a Sarasota auto repair business and couldn't afford a lawyer because he made only $300 a week and owed $12,000 to the IRS and thousands in hospital bills.
At trial, Smith argued that he was trying to save the woman, said assistant state attorneys Brian Iten and Dawn Buff, who prosecuted the case.
Buff said his defense was that "she was freaked out by my tattoos."
Smith told jurors that Stinson tried to run out into the road, and he grabbed her to save her.
The two golfers in the front seat of the van testified, as did Stinson.
But jurors believed Smith. Some even congratulated him by shaking his hand after the trial. None of the jurors could be reached for comment Thursday.
Iten and Buff said they felt they had a very strong case and were shocked by the verdict.
"It is the most shocking verdict either of us has ever received," Buff said. "That's why it's so memorable."
"We just could not believe it," she said.
Stinson said she heard about the verdict after one of the state's attorneys called her at home with the news.
"I thought he would've been convicted," she said. "But that's the way juries work, I guess.
"It makes me mad. It's unbelievable."
He killed her and went out to get high...again.
RIP, sweet Carlie. A world weeps for you.
sw
When it's an innocent, unborn child, they don't have a problem with it.
Sadly, the scum probably doesn't have a conscious or else he/she wouldn't be in the profession.
In both cases, Joseph P. Smith grabbed the young women as they walked, striking one in the face with a motorcycle helmet and threatening to cut the other if she screamed. Each time, the women fought him off and ran to safety.
"He came out from behind the bushes and tried to pull me over," Teri Jo Stinson, 26, of Bradenton said Thursday in an interview with the Times. "I didn't know what he was going to do to me, but I wasn't going to let it happen."
Court documents of the attack on Stinson in 1997 and the 1993 assault paint a more detailed portrait of Smith, a mechanic with "Mom" tattooed on his arm, a father of three young girls, an addict who was hooked on painkillers and arrested at least 13 times over the past decade in Sarasota and Bradenton.
Smith, 37, remained in police custody Thursday, accused but not charged, still refusing to cooperate with investigators, still believed to be the key in finding Carlie Brucia, said Sarasota County Sheriff Bill Balkwill.
A Sarasota public defender, Adam Tebrugge, has been appointed to Smith's case. He did not return a call for comment Thursday.
By late evening, Carlie had not been found.
Chasing more than 750 leads, detectives released few new details Thursday. They still maintain that a 1992 Buick station wagon Smith had been driving was used in Carlie's abduction, but refuse to discuss what, if any, evidence has been found.
In the meantime, Carlie's family begged for the return of their blond-haired, blue-eyed girl, missing since Sunday.
"I need my daughter home," Susan Schorpen, Carlie's mother, said at a news conference Thursday.
As Carlie's family held out hope, a more complete picture of Smith began to emerge.
Found with cocaine and a syringe during his arrest Tuesday, he is being held without bail, charged with drug possession and violating his drug probation.
* * *
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Smith long has worked as a mechanic, holding jobs at several Sarasota auto shops and opening his own, Saurus Auto, last February.
He owes $70,000 in hospital medical bills and $12,000 to the Internal Revenue Service, court records show.
Besides the "Mom" tattoo, Smith has several others, including a panther head on his upper left arm. On his chest, he has a skull with an American Indian headdress, and a woman clad in a bikini.
He suffered from depression and back pain and had a ferocious drug habit, injecting cocaine and heroin and forging prescriptions, records show.
At times, he turned violent.
Teri Stinson says she encountered Smith as she was walking to her cousin's house along U.S. 41 in Bradenton shortly after 9 p.m. Nov. 7, 1997. She said he emerged from a tree-lined, vacant lot and said, "Come over here."
Wearing a work shirt with a name or emblem on the chest, Smith grabbed her hands and wrists and tried to pull her over a wood railing into the vacant lot, she said. Stinson, who was 20 at the time, struggled, lost her footing and fell down, then offered Smith $50 to leave her alone.
He jumped on top of her.
"If you don't quit screaming, I'll cut you," Smith said, according to records.
Smith pulled her up by her shirt, but she squirmed away, landing in oncoming traffic. A van stopped to help her, she said. The people in the van jumped out, armed with golf clubs to fend Smith off, but he fled.
A police dog named Rocky found Smith shortly after, and he was arrested and charged with battery and false imprisonment, records show.
"I didn't mean to hurt her," Smith told Manatee County deputies. "This is a mistake."
The battery charge was dropped, and a jury acquitted Smith after a trial in 1998.
Stinson said Smith testified that she was trying to kill herself by running into traffic and that he was only trying to save her.
Brian A. Iten, assistant state attorney, said Thursday that he was surprised by the jury's verdict.
He recalled Smith on the stand, wearing a short-sleeved shirt that showed his tattoos. Inked on his upper right arm was a red heart with a banner that said "Mom" and a green rose. "Brooklyn" was written in script on his upper left arm.
"He said that he meant no harm and she must have been frightened by his appearance," Iten said.
Stinson, now married and a mother of two young children, said she did not recognize Smith from the car wash surveillance video. But when she saw his mug shot on television, she realized it was Smith.
"That son of a b----," Stinson said.
She wasn't the first to accuse Smith of a violent attack, records show.
A month after moving to Sarasota, he approached a woman as she walked home from a beach club on April 26, 1993, court records show.
Michelle R. Warner, a 21-year-old server, said a motorcycle passed by about 2:15 a.m., and she kept walking. Suddenly, Smith jumped out and struck her in the face with a white motorcycle helmet, records show.
A Sarasota County deputy, on routine patrol, passed by, and Smith quickly left. Hysterical, bleeding from the face, her nose fractured, Warner ran over to the deputy.
She said she didn't know the man. Deputies found Smith hiding behind nearby homes and took him to the crime scene so Warner could identify him.
"That's him. That's him," Warner screamed amid tears, according to an arrest report. "Oh God, that's the bastard."
He was arrested and charged with aggravated battery. Five months later, Smith pleaded no contest to the charge.
He was sentenced to 60 days in the county jail and two years of probation.
He has had several more brushes with the law, serving a little more than a year in state prison for drug charges. On Jan. 9, 2003, eight days after his release, he was behind bars again.
Smith had passed out in a Lincoln parked in front of the Salvation Army in Sarasota, and someone called to report it. A deputy stopped, searched Smith's car and found a needle and two plastic baggies of cocaine.
"I checked the subject's forearms, and I located fresh injection sites on them," a deputy wrote in the arrest report.
He was sentenced to three years' probation for cocaine possession and is under supervision, said Joe Papy, a regional director for the state Department of Corrections.
During his probation, Smith was a co-partner at Saurus Auto Repair on 12th Street in Sarasota. He left in August after going on a drug binge and trying to kill himself, according to records and interviews.
His partner, Edward R. Dinyes, said he thought of Smith when seeing the surveillance video and called the tipline Tuesday morning.
As detectives continued an around-the-clock investigation, they appealed for the public's help in finding Carlie's pink backpack, which she was carrying when abducted.
"If you can look in any particular area in this particular county," said Sheriff Balkwill, "we would really appreciate it."
Mysara Wujnovich, a volunteer in the search for Carlie, wishes that Smith would start talking. "I just can't help thinking," said the 39-year-old mother of two, "that the girl is alive and is going to die because of his silence."
- Times researcher Kitty Bennett and staff writers Curtis Krueger, Carrie Johnson, Jamie Jones, Joni James and Marcus Franklin contributed to this report, which includes information from the New York Daily News.
The man was a druggie and a scum. He claims that he got hooked on prescription drugs because he had back pain. He had to obtain the drugs illegally.
I am sick of people excusing druggie behavior. Have you ever met a family who said " You know, Johnnie is a doper, but he has made our family so much better. We don't know what we would do without his sweet spirit, his lying, stealing, and walking around stoned".
No, because it doesn't happen. I am not going to write the judge and congratulate him for letting Smith go because he had back pain and forged prescriptions for his pain. I am not going to protest with signs about all his dope convictions being a witch hunt and how drugs should be legalized.
He is not a positive contributor to society and his wife is an idiot for reproducing with this dirtbag and raising 3 daughters who have to live with the horror that this monster is their father.
How sad. It wont be long before they are found out and their names public knowledge....Sadly I dont feel sorry for them.
Aptly named the Criminal Justice System rather than the Victims' Justice System.
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