Tennessee State Highway Report Confirms Crash Did Not Kill Woman Who Died In Flaming Car

Associated Press / SFGate

[RCW2001]

Tennessee State Highway report confirms crash did not kill woman who died in flaming car
WOODY BAIRD, Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, March 5, 2002
©2002 Associated Press

URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2002/03/05/national2227EST0835.DTL

(03-05) 19:27 PST MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) --

A state Highway Patrol report released Tuesday confirmed a driver's license examiner charged in a bogus license scheme was not killed by the impact of her car ramming into a utility pole last month.

Investigators are still awaiting a coroner's report on the cause of Katherine Smith's death. Smith, 49, was found Feb. 10 burned beyond recognition in her car about 20 miles from her Memphis residence.

Witnesses told the FBI that the car was ablaze before it crashed into a utility pole. Smith had been scheduled to appear in court the following day on charges she helped five Middle Eastern men get licenses illegally.

Tennessee Highway Patrol Capt. Jimmy Erwin said an investigation determined Smith was traveling just over 20 mph, which he called a survivable crash. He did not to speculate on the cause of the fire.

Erwin said the few pieces of her clothes recovered from the car showed traces of gasoline.

"This was not a traffic fatality," Erwin said.

Memphis FBI spokesman George Bolds said Tuesday that the cause of the fire remains undetermined.

"We know she was alive but not necessarily conscious after the impact with the pole. She did breathe in superheated gases from the fire," Bolds said.

Smith was arrested five days before her death along with the five Middle Eastern men. She was accused of taking payoffs for helping them get driver's licenses without proper documentation.

Smith had been released on her own recognizance. The other suspects are being held without bond and were behind bars when Smith died.

The men are charged under federal law with illegally trying to produce identification documents.

©2002 Associated Press  

[Fred Mertz]

No guess about it. That is exactly what happened.

I don't believe it happened that way, because there were eyewitnesses (on the highway, late at night in another car) that saw her car in flames veer off the highway. It's in one of Shermy's links way up this thread, it came out in the first few days of reporting.

[Fred Mertz]

Was Katherine Smith an arab/islame ?

She was a black woman aka African-American. I believe she was a church-going Christian.

[BJungNan]

it came out in the first few days of reporting.

...when much of the story is not known, the reporter is rushing to get out what they have and accuracy can be served with later corrections and qualifications.

This one is too obvious. Whatever was reported in the first few days can't change that.

[monday]

"I don't believe it happened that way, because there were eyewitnesses (on the highway, late at night in another car) that saw her car in flames veer off the highway"

Then she killed herself by dousing herself with gas? Wow, what a sick way of killing yourself?

[monday]

Guess she wanted it to look like an accident, but didn't know much about modern forensics?

[Fred Mertz]

Then she killed herself by dousing herself with gas? Wow, what a sick way of killing yourself?

I didn't say that. My theory is that the car she was driving (this car belonged to one of the ME men in jail - she was in the process of buying it from him) was booby trapped with some sort of fire bomb. I am unsure whether it was a time-fuse thing or whether it was command detonated. I would guess the latter.