Connie Smith Pt. One

vanishes without a trace. Over the years, there are a number of promising leads, including an anonymous letter stating that Connie is an unidentified murder victim from Arizona named little Miss X, but the investigation fails to turn up any trace of her.

was never seen again. At the time, this case was a pretty big deal because Connie hailed from a wealthy, affluent family and her paternal grandfather just happened to be the former governor of Wyoming, so no expense was spared in the search efforts. For What adds an extra level of intrigue to this case is that it also contains

an unusual mystery within a mystery. A decade after Connie went missing, police received an anonymous letter claiming that Connie was an unidentified murder victim known as Little Miss X, whose Skelton remains were found in Arizona in nineteen fifty eight. You'd bethink that proving or disproving that Connie and Little Miss X were the same person would be relatively simple, but there have been numerous complications, and even if the two cases aren't connected, the story of Little Miss X

is quite a rabbit hole on its own. So on today's episode, we're going to explore Connie's misths, disappearance and the numerous twists and turns which have ensued from it.

taking care of her are unable to find Connie. And so my heart absolutely shatters because I'm a mom and I drop my babies off of people every single day, knowing that I'm going to go and pick them up after school or after daycare after summer camp gets out, and here Connie is nowhere to be found. Like you said, it's very very possible that she got in an altercation with somebody, that she's homesick, that she got her feelings hurt, right, I didn't feel like she fit in.

thirty nine until nineteen forty three. Peter and Helen have been divorced since nineteen forty nine, but the separation was a pretty amicable one, as Helen was allowed to live in a separate home on the Smith's family ranch, and while Helen had primary custody of Connie, both parents played a significant role in her life. During the summers, Helen usually took Connie to visit her maternal grandmother in Greenwich, Connecticut, but on this particular year, Connie would instead be attending

summer camp for the first time. The location in question was Camp's Law, a two hundred and fifty acre YMCA camp located in the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains, just over three miles outside the town of Salisbury. Connie would spend her time there inside a platform tent with bunk beds, alongside seven other girls. By the morning of Wednesday, July sixteenth,

Connie had been at the camp for three weeks. At around seven fifty am, the campers were ready to go to the mess hall for breakfast, but Connie told her tent mates that she was going to the infirmary to return an ice pack. She had been using the ice pack on her bruised hip, which was supposedly caused by a fall off the elevated tent platform the previous evening. The other campers went to breakfast as planned, but Connie

never showed up. When they returned to the tent at around eight forty five, they discovered that the ice pack was still on Connie's bunk, but Connie herself was nowhere to be found. The camp director, Ernest Roberts, was soon informed about Connie's absence and in search of the camp ground was performed for her. By eleven thirty, she'd still not been found, so the Connecticut State Police were notified

and Connie was officially reported missing. Once word reached Connie's grandfather, former Governor Nel Smith, he used his influence to ensure that a full scale search operation, both on the ground and in the air, would be conducted. This turned out to be one of the very first missing persons cases in which posters of the victim were circulated offering a reward for information, this time for three thousand dollars.

be about thirty seven thousand dollars. And you know, when you think about it and you look at reward posters even today, even today, you'll see things that say, you know, five thousand dollars, seventy five hundred dollars, and back in nineteen fifty two, they're offering, you know, the today's equivalent of thirty seven thousand dollars from the start.

But is it possible Have they ever looked into if grandfather's roots had something to do with her being targeted?

much earlier. But no, it seems like something happened to her because she made the decision to walk away from the camp on that particular morning. And I've always had the feeling it was just kind of a wrong time, wrong place thing where she just crossed paths with the wrong person.

my default went. Here, you have a camp where if someone's looking for a child, they know that a camp area has potential to have children, and or there's going to be very little supervision of a child hitchhiking, and so someone drives by and sees a young child all by themselves and they think, wow, no one else is even around here, right, and they pull over and take her.

So I'm leaning towards this as an opportunistic crime, and this is just a very vulnerable child who is desperate to get out of there for some reason, makes this decision to try to hitchhike home.

for a ten year old child. We know that she's taller and appears more mature, which just adds more layers and more complexity to it because somebody who is wanting to approach her or predate on her may assume that she is older than she actually is.

So it soon became a parent that Connie had willingly left the campground on her own and walked a half mile down the driveway to Indian Mountain Road, as no fewer than nine witnesses reported seeing her shortly after she separated from her tentmates. The first of these witnesses was the camp's caretaker, who claimed he saw Connie emerging from the driveway and turning right on Indian Mountain Road and

stopping to pick some daisies at eight fifteen am. Now it should be mentioned that Connie was already five feet tall and had developed earlier than normal, so she looked older than the age of ten. The caretaker would state that since Conye looked tall enough and old enough to be one of the camp counselors, he did not have any concern about her leaving the camp and walking down

the road alone. After this, a couple out for a morning walk claimed they passed Connie about a quarter mile from the camp's entrance, but they didn't speak to her. It wasn't long before Connie knocked on the door of a nearby house, which was answered by a woman named Alice Walsh. She claimed that Kanye asked for directions to Lakeville, a small village which was part of the town of Salisbury and located just under two miles northeast of the camp.

Walsh provided the directions, but said that Conie looked like she had recently been crying. A few minutes later, a pair of maids sitting outside of servant's cottage at another residence on Indian Mountain Road also said that Kanye approached them and asked for directions to Lakeville. The maids told her to keep walking and turn right on Route forty four. The next sighting of Conyie took place on Route forty

four when a couple drove past her. They said she appeared to be sticking out her thumb and attempting to hitchhike, but they did not stop for at around eight forty five am, a neither motorists would see Conye walking along Route forty four near the intersection of Belgo Road, but this would turn out to be the last time she

was confirmed to be alive. The location was about a half mile outside of Lakeville, but even though residents and business owners from the village were extensively questioned, none of them are called seeing Connie that morning. It seemed a parent that something happened to Connie before she made it to Lakeville, but even though Route forty four usually at heavy traffic, no one saw anything.

telling the police the same story. Back then, their media wouldn't have been as significant as it is now, and so I think that's pretty reliable, which means Connie had her mind made up to go to this place called Lakeville. Did she have familiarity with it? Does someone live there? Is it possible that camp took fild trips into Lakeville? How does a ten year old remember that I want to get to this city if there's nothing significant in it.

she definitely looks older than ten years old. So you can understand why the caretaker and all these other witnesses were not concerned about the idea for walking down the road alone, because they figured she was just a teenager

and knew where she was going. And like you said, this is one case where I completely believe all the eyewitness accounts, even though, as we've talked about, in a lot of other missing persons cases, eyewitnesses can often be mistaken, but here they could tell such consistent stories that each corroborate, each other that I can totally believe that all of them really did see Connie on the road that morning, and that's how we're able to pinpoint a specific point

where she just happened to go missing before she reached Lakevil.

old kid and I need help. They're just looking at her and they're assuming like she's a teenager. She's got this and they're not really thinking about the danger that could be out there lurking.

demand ever arrived. Peter personally chartered and flew a plane over the area to search for Connie, and the locals often called him the Marlborough Man since he was a six foot seven cowboy with a ten gallon hat who also rode horses through the forest to look for his daughter. The one thing which no one could understand is why Connie walked away from camp sloane to begin with, as she was not carrying any money and had left behind

her extra clothing and belongings. Since July eleventh happened to be Connie's tenth birthday, her mother in matun Cornal grandmother had gone to visit her at the camp two days later. According to Helen, Connie appeared to be in good spirits and was looking forward to the upcoming weekend because there was a square dance in horse show that she wanted to attend. Connie even asked her mother if she could

stay at the camp a little longer than planned. Helen said no because she had already arranged Connie's trip back home to Wyoming, and Connie didn't seem to mind. Since the children at camp were not allowed to carry money, Helen deposited five dollars in Connie's camp account, which could be used for future purchases. A half written letter was also found in Connie's belongings, where she described what was a wonderful time she was having at camp, but it

was unfinished. However, one camp official would recall seeing Connie crying right after her mother and grandmother left, and there were hints that she was very homesick and things were not as good for her at the camp as she let on.

But I just don't see a ten year old who has access to their grandmother saying oh, I'm loving it, Oh I need to stay here longer, all of these other things, because in any grandma even superseding a mom's expectations, if a grandmother thought their baby was struggling, right, they would say, oh, I'm taking my grandbaby home. And so wouldn't you think that she just closed that if she wasn't happy.

much at all without her glasses. The official story was that Connie's bloody nose and broken glasses were a cos when one of her tentmates accidentally kicked her in the face while climbing out of her bunk. However, there were rumors that this may have actually been the result of a violent altercation, and that Connie did not get along

well with most of her tentmates. Since Connie was raised on a horse ranch and was known for being a tomboy, and many of the other girls hailed from New York City, there could have been a cultural divide which caused them to clash. Camp Sloan did have a telephone, but officials discouraged the children from using it, so this created speculation that a violent altercation may have prompted Kannie to decide

she wanted to go home. She then decided to walk away from the camp and was heading towards Lakeville in order to find a payphone to call her mother to come pick her up.

But I'm wondering, is there any potential that someone older, even like an older counselor but not an adult, could have been maybe trying to do something to Connie, you know, take advantage of her. She does present as an older girl, and you have these you know, you have predators, even

teenage predators, who are looking for someone who's vulnerable. Is it possible that some of the physical injuries could have come from maybe her getting into an altercation where she was about to be assaulted or being abused, and then once that happened, she says, I got to get out of here somehow.

a trace. I mean, I know that they never found any evidence that anything like this was going on at the camp, but I do have to add the disclaimer that this was nineteen fifty two and there just wasn't as much general public knowledge about child abuse and predators.

So it does make me wonder, because people were more trusting back than that if there was a counselor or anyone affiliated with the camp who was manipulative and abusive, that they could have fooled the authorities and that they just slipped under the radar and nobody looked at them as a potential suspect.

And so while she's in the actual summer camp with if that scenario is correct that you're proposing ash, then she may have been very scared to say something. She knows she can't leave right away, and what would the ramifications be, what type of punishment could she receive, And so she might have just been weighing her options and she thought that like the best option was to leave.

And then if that is the case, then you've got two potential scenarios that the person who could have done that to her then follows her out and disposes of her in some way or ends her life, or you have an opportunistic abduction that happens after she suffered some

type of abuse, if that theory is indeed correct. But to me, it would ring really true that that would be a real catalyst for wanting to leave and wanting to get out of there and potentially putting yourself at risk being a ten year old child going out into the world and hitchhiking and relying on the kindness of strangers to get you from point A to point B.

happened to day at school. Okay, Well, you know, we talk through it, and I'm thinking, man, what a blessed day, you know, like, Okay, so she told you she hated your haircut, or she told you that no one wants you to sit at the lunch table, which at the time is devastating, But you know, it's possible too that in Connie's mind, something simple like children being mean bullies

is also what triggered her. So there's so many options, and so far we really don't know anything about even the circumstances at camp.

What we're about to say might be the goofiest thing that we've ever shared of this podcast, so believe it or not, is so called telepathic psychic chorus named Lady Wonder was brought in to assist the investigation. You see, whenever Lady Wonder was asked a question, she would answer it by using her snout on a lever to flip

up alphabet cards on a giant keyboard. No seriously, Lady Wonder was a popular attraction during this time period, and in the months prior to Connie's disappearance, she apparently once provided information which helped police find the body of a missing Massachusetts boy. At the very least, this meant that Lady Wonder had better success rates than Sylvia Brown.

information did you get? You have this incredibly successful animal being used as a tool to help in these cases, and he and it spelled out something in my case Los Angeles, and he not only puts his resources there, but his time and his hope in that lead in Los Angeles, and now I'm grateful he was able to also pair it with something that hopefully did provide a sound launchboard for information about Connie to be shared. But you know it's it's hilarious.

that she worked on involving missing children. And while it seems hilarious now, it's crazy to think that back in the nineteen fifties people took this seriously and at that if your child goes missing and you have no other leads, you're going to think, while this horse found at least one missing child, so I guess we'll go to her because we're desperate.

rather than dealing with missing children and grief stricken parents. However, because of the extensive publicity surrounding the case, there would be a number of false tips, sidings, and confessions over the years. One of the most infamous false confessions was made by a death row inmate named George Davies, who was incarcerated at Connecticut's Weathersfield State Prison for the murders

of two girls in nineteen fifty nine. Davies confessed that he had been responsible for the murder of Connie Smith and offered to lead investigators to a spot near the Naugatuck River, where he claimed he had buried her remains.

When police took Davies to the location, they did not find anything, but right before he was executed in the electric chair, Davies finally admitted that he had lied about murdering Connie and only made up the story so that he would have an opportunity to leave his prison cell

and spend some time outdoors in the sunshine. Another unusual tip took place in nineteen fifty five when a Connecticut state trooper named Leo Turcott received a phone call from a man calling himself William Dugan, who claimed he was a former carnival worker and had information about the disappearance of Connie Smith. Dugan said he was calling from Montreal and wanted to arrange a meeting with Turcott to share

everything he knew well. Turcott's commanding officer ultimately decided that he wanted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to pursue this tip instead and turn it over to them. After that, Turcott had no idea what became of this lead and pretty much forgot about it. But a lightbulb suddenly went on over his head thirty three years later, when he learned about the arrest of a man named William Henry Redmond.

assume that sparks some kind of interest there. But you know, God bless George Davies confesses to this, right, And it's incredibly infuriating when you think about this idea that if the family is aware that he confesses, they are going to believe that this is this is solved.

cold case playing cards. You know they don't have any information. But it's heartbreaking because there was a hint of promise and an idea that we know what happened to her, and then all that was ripped away until dun dundum. This other man's name comes up, tell me more about him.

While in a prison hospital awaiting trial, Redmond allegedly told a fellow inmate that he was responsible for the murders of three girls besides Jane Marie Altoff. Redmond was questioned about the disappearance of Connie Smith, but denied being responsible and.

But of course, by this point Redman was in a prison hospital and he was directly questioned about Connie's disappearance. But even though he allegedly said that he had killed other girls, he said that he had nothing to do with Connie's disappearance. So it's a very tentative connection. But I am glad that Turcotte still had it in the back of his mind three decades after the fact, in

order to check it. But even though Redmond, because he was a carnival worker, would have traveled around the United States quite a bit during the nineteen fifties, they just couldnot fight anything to prove that he was in Connecticut in nineteen fifty two.

Later on, when Connie complained they weren't taking the right route, Walker responded by murdering her. POPEA Walker subsequently buried Connie's body near highway in Arizona, but the two men later got into an argument, which led the Pope beating Walker to death with a tire iron and burying his body. Well.

Upon closer scrutiny, Pope's story completely fell apart. It turned out that four years earlier, Pope confessed to killing and bearing another man in Los Angeles, but this story turned out not to be true, and the authorities began to suspect that Jack Walker did not actually exist. Pope finally admitted that the entire story about Connie's murder was a hoax and that he only made it up because he had a history of mental issues and wanted to be

committed to a hospital. But oddly enough, there would eventually be another intriguing lead in this case, which linked Kannie to Arizona.

eighteen months. Since the victim could not be identified, she was given the nickname little Miss X. Little Miss X was unclothed when she was found, but when the area was searched again a short time later, some articles of clothing suddenly appeared. This clothing included a white wool cardigan and brown capri pants, but oddly enough, these articles appeared

to be too big to belong to the victim. Other items were found near the scene, including a comb, a jar of Pond's cold cream, and a blue plastic nail filecase which had the letters P and R engraved on them. While there was speculation that this nail file case might have belonged to Donnis Redman, a fourteen year old girl from San Pedro, California who went by the nickname Pinky. Earlier that year, Pinky and her eighteen year old boyfriend, Michael Griffin had traveled to Las Vegas to a lope

and were last seen on March first. They both vanished without a trace, and Michael's car would be found abandoned in Williams, not too far from where Little Miss X's remains were discovered. Since Pinky was last seen wearing a yellow sweater and brown capri pants, there was speculation that she might have been Little Miss X, who was eventually

excluded well. The case took an interesting turn in nineteen sixty two when the Connecticut State Police received an anonymous letter from Colorado claiming that Connie Smith was Little Miss X. As a result, the victim's remains were exhumed and her skull was taken to the Smith Ranch in Wyoming, so that her family dentist could compare her teeth with Connie's dental records. The results were inconclusive, so the skull was subsequently taken to Denver to be examined by a team

of forensic experts. A dental surgeon and a pathologist. Both concluded that the skull probably did not belong to Connie, and it was subsequently reburied. However, given the technology has advanced so much over the past six decades, there's been speculation that the conclusion may have been a mistake.

of stuff. So even finding that body and assuming it's been nine to eighteen months, you've lost significant information already, And then how limited technology was I also would say, hey, I know you had experts at the time analyze these things, but what if we use today's technology, what would we find?

But right about now, I'm going to explain why there has been complications trying to conclusively prove or disprove that Kanyie and Little Miss X are the same person. So a little Miss X had four fillings in her teeth, and according to Connie's dentist, three of them were pretty much identical to fillings he had given her. There has been a lot of debate about a small indentation found

in little Miss X's palette. The experts from Denver seemed to believe the indentation was naturally occurring, but Connie's dentist thought it may have been the result of the surgical removal of an extra tooth known as a super numerary tooth, as Connie did have one removed before she went missing. In recent years, dental experts have taken a fresh look at little Miss x's dental charts and compared them to Connie's records, but cannot say with one hundred percent certainty

whether or not they belong to the same person. Well, the Smith family wanted a more conclusive answer to this, so in two thousand and four, Connie's surviving relatives agreed to submit DNA samples to the Connecticut State Police in order to compare them to little Miss X. But there turned out to be a problem. Little Mess x's remains could no longer be found. She was buried in the

County Section of Citizens Cemetery in Flagstaff, Arizona. But the issue is that the section has no gravestones or markers and is nothing but a wide open field. A number of deceased victims are buried there, but after all these years, there are no longer any records to determine the exact spot where little Miss X is buried, making it impossible to exumer remains for DNA testing.

get it. But man, in a case like this, they're thinking it's a child, they're thinking there's potential links to other cases, and now there's just no way to know if that one's true. I don't see it as as incredibly promising, except for the fact that you said the family did confirm that supernumerary tooth that looks like it might have been missed Connie had actually had that same procedure pretty much.

went missing. I mean, I'm inclined to believe that little Miss X and Connie are not the same person, but I can still understand the frustration about being unable to find the remains. Because little Miss X with somebody and without being getting the possibility of obtaining her DNA, it seems unlikely she will ever be identified.

On the other hand, and Peter Smith was relentless in his pursuit of his daughter and continued returning to the Salisbury area to search for her as late as the nineteen eighties. He once stated in an interview that as the years went on, he imagined his daughter in the face of every woman he passed by who would have been her age. Peter managed to live until the age of ninety seven before he passed away in twenty twelve.

Much like his paternal grandfather, Connie's older brother, Nels Jensen Smith had a successful political career which included serving as

Speaker of the Wyoming House of Representatives. In August of twenty eighteen, Nells was interviewed in an extensive two part article in the Connecticut based newspaper The Registered Citizen, and he expressed his belief that Connie might be little Miss X. In that same article, the Cocadino County Sheriff's Office announced that they believed that they might have figured out the exact spot in Citizens Cemetery where little Miss X is buried.

They hoped that once they peece everything together and made a conclusive determination, they could exhume little Miss X's remains and finally extract your DNA. However, this has never occurred, and in September of twenty twenty three, another major tragedy occurred when Nels and his wife were both killed in a car accident. So, for the moment, little Miss X is still an unidentified Jane Doe and the disappearance of Connie Smith continues to remain unsolved.

that these two skulls might be aged around the same. Again, the location makes it a little problematic, but people can take victims and travel with them or unless especially you know, deceased bodies, to dispose of them.

the way that she did. You know she I know that she blamed herself daily, which is so not you know, the actual earthly truth, but any mother and any parent would do it. I took her to summer camp. I changed the plans. I'm the one who was responsible for her, and I took her to this camp and I never got her back. Right, what if I had picked up on the the fact that she was unhappy, What if

I had been able to communicate with her? And so, even though I would think that would lessen over time, the grief stays in your body it's heavy, and so the fact that at forty seven years old, she dies of a heart attack, it's I.

And you can only imagine that hearing that at first Helen bleeding that it was real and that this man killed her child, only to find out this was nothing more than a false lead that would have caused like a measurable bound of additional stress on her and may have played a role in her dying. I have a

heart attack only three years later. So it's just so sad because I covered this story on the Trail Went Cold back in twenty nineteen, and I was reading that Connie's brother, Nells was still alive and holding out hope that they could recover little Miss X, and then maybe make a DNA comparison to determine if it's Connie. And then when I'm doing the script for this episode, I found out that oh Nells was killed in a car accident in September of twenty twenty three, even though he

was eighty four years old. So that's two children from the same family who went missing or died under tragic circumstances. So this whole story is just a big ball of tragedy for the entire family. So I think that about brings an end to Part one. Joining us next week as we present part two of our series about the disappearance of Connie Smith.

ten dollars tier. One of the features we offer is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsolved Mysteries, where you can download an audio file and then boot up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very first episode that I did a commentary track over was

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