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.
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.
Standing on my chair cheering. I nominate this quote for the freeper statement hall of fame.
So he DOES have a pattern of attacking women. I wonder how many more unreported attacks are out there.
I'll be the first to tell you drugs should NOT be legalized (except maybe marijuana, which is really in the same class as alcohol). I was in the grip of one of the most deadly and insidious ones, cocaine.
But I do think drug addiction is a medical issue that should be treated as one, with the threat of prosecution ONLY if the druggie-in-question refuses to piss clean.
The jury let him GO?!! What is wrong with people these days!!!!
sw
Smart gal for struggling, screaming and getting out of her shirt to get away. She called attention to herself which saved her life. This morning I had a long discussion with our kids on avoiding getting taken. Not blaming Carlie a bit, but she did have options she failed to act upon. 1) Be away of your surroundings. 2) She let the sicko get too close. Never let anyone get within arm's distance. Don't let strangers enter your "space". 3) Listen to that inner voice telling you something isn't right. She seemed to have hesitated and almost stepped back but didn't follow through. 4) Never talk to strangers. She stopped and allowed contact. Doesn't matter if he had a gun. Doesn't matter if he had an ID showing he was a security guard for the car wash. 5) She didn't avoid him, walk around him, or run away, and she allowed him within her space. This signalled to him she was vulnerable and an easy victim. 6) She had a weapon - her backpack. She may have had time while he approached her or was talking to her to take off her backpack. Once she was grabbled she or in the car use the backpack to hit him. 7) After she was grabbed - NEVER ALLOW YOURSELF TO BE TAKEN TO THE SECOND SCENE! Time and time again we've been told the second scene is where victims are killed. Once he grabbed her arm - twist, kick, hit, scream your lungs out, whatever it takes. If you can't get away then go limp and fall to the ground to gain time. It's hard to pick up 120 lbs of dead weight quickly. If he does pick you up then start fighting again. He will have his hands occupied by holding you but you have your arms and legs free. Gouge eyes out and bite. 8) Scream, kick over trash cans, kick the building, kick the car, whatever makes noise to draw attention. 9) NEVER GET IN THE CAR! Your legs are stronger than your hands so kick the sicko or use legs to delay him putting you in the car. 10) He has you in the car - A car is a weapon. He tells you to sit still, be quiet or he'll kill you - screw him. Go crazy!!! Hit him, kick him, kick his driving leg especially, grab the steering wheel, put it in reverse, turn on radio loud, kick windows, roll windows down, start pulling wires under the dash, honk horn, hit him with the back pack or whatever you can get out of the backpack (pencil, sharp cornered book, toy with pointy edges). Do NOT be afraid of wrecking the car. You have a much greater chance of surviving an accident than you do at the second deadly scene. An accident will draw attention, people will come, police will come, the ambulance will come. The sicko will be more concerned in saving his hide than you. Most likely he will quickly escape the scene and you will be safe. 11) Role play. Review, review, review. Think of scenerios and what you would do. The more you can think of the more automatic you can be in your reactions and avoidances of dangerous situations. Carlie had mere seconds before he got her to the car and probably only an hour before she was killed. If you've gone over and thought about what to do in those precious few moments, it may save your life. Again, I'm NOT putting any blame on Carlie however our children can learn from her mistakes. Prayers for Carlie and the other children who have been taken from us.