Seven marriages, big life insurance policies, a suspicious death and tales of a murder plot: the life of Janet Smith reached a mysterious crescendo with her last two husbands.
By STEPHEN NOHLGREN
Published August 3, 2003
[Times photo: Scott Keeler]
Largo resident Barry Reitz took out a $50,000 life insurance policy 13 years ago, naming Janet Smith as beneficiary. He wants to cancel it, but can't because she pays premiums.
MOUNTAIN HOME, Ark. - Janet Smith lives in a cheap motel room on S Main Street, her bed wedged between her remaining furniture and cardboard cartons overflowing with court papers. Her chihuahua, Princess Diana Queen of Hearts, snoozes on a pillow.
Janet seems harmless enough - just a 61-year-old out on bail and down on her luck.
Prosecutors call her a murderous schemer. They have charged her with plotting to kill her longtime companion to collect on life insurance and enlisting her son to do the deed. Instead, he wore a tape recorder and turned his mother in.
In Florida, a Largo woman and her brother are following Janet's legal troubles with satisfaction.
Thirteen years ago, their father met Janet through a personal ad and married her. Five months later, he drowned mysteriously on the Suwannee River. He was a $20,000-a-year plumber, but life insurance policies paid Janet almost $250,000.
His children claimed it was murder and challenged Janet in a highly publicized lawsuit in the 1990s. Investigators found two forged insurance applications, but no one could prove anything.
Barry Reitz took out insurance years ago that pays Janet Smith $100,000 if he dies accidentally. They were dating at the time, but he grew scared and moved to Pennsylvania for a time to hide.
Reitz, of Largo, can't cancel the policy, because Smith still pays the premiums.
A husband, a handyman
Janet Smith and men are a volatile mix.
She married seven suitors and accepted engagement rings from two others. Her domestic battles stretch through five decades, three states, numerous lawsuits and criminal charges set for trial Sept. 22.
She says she was searching for the love she never received from an abusive mother. She never worked much, except for an occasional dog-breeding business. But she never had trouble finding lonely men who would help support her.
"A more evil woman I have never met," says 87-year-old William Joseph Robertson, husband No. 5, who lasted eight months before he filed for divorce in Marianna.
Robertson says Janet tricked him into giving her a nearly finished 40-foot sailboat, which he had been building with money he earned working oil rigs in Saudi Arabia. Court records show she paid him "$10 and other valuable consideration" for the boat.
Two months after her divorce from Robertson, Janet married husband No. 6: Cecil "Jay" Griffin, a retired Air Force veteran who would remain her partner in dysfunction for two decades.
Janet and Jay say they gave up intimacy after several years but never strayed far from each other until last year. That's when she was charged with trying to kill him in Arkansas.
Husband No. 7 was Randall Smith, a 47-year-old Largo plumber. Janet was still married to Jay when she met Randy through the personal ad.
"It was just one of those . . . once-in-a-lifetime things," she would later testify. "You meet somebody and know right then and there that this is the person you have looked for all your life."
Randy told friends that Janet owned a jeans factory in Ohio and was going to buy him a Corvette. She drove a 1977 stretch limo. When she moved in two months later, Janet's "handyman" often stayed overnight in a spare room or in Randy's driveway in a recreational vehicle.
The handyman was Jay Griffin, who was still Janet's husband. He worked on Randy's house. He tended to several dozen chihuahuas that Janet was breeding for sale. The three made weekend jaunts to a ramshackle house that Jay and Janet owned on the Suwannee River.
Janet describes Randy as intensely jealous, but she testified that he knew Jay was technically her husband. "If Randy and I was going to have anything permanent, somebody had to take care of those dogs."
In May 1990, she divorced Jay and married Randy.
Randy never mentioned to friends and relatives that the "handyman" was Janet's ex-husband. Randy's uncle and supervisor, Shirley Shrewsbury, says Randy once came to work agitated. He had just returned from the river, where a store clerk had referred to Jay as "Mr. Griffin," Janet's surname from her previous marriage. Randy demanded to see Jay's driver's license. When Jay refused, "that really set (Randy) off."
A few weeks later, Randy was dead.
The drowning
On Oct. 14, 1990, Jay Griffin showed up at the Dixie County jail at dawn. The previous night, he said, he and Randy Smith had paddled a homemade raft into the middle of the Suwannee to fish. It was roped to a tree and held in place by an anchor.
The two men argued over Janet, tussled and fell in, Jay said. Neither could swim, but Jay said he grabbed onto the tether rope and made his way to shore. Randy - husband No. 7 - drowned. Janet slept through the ruckus at the house, which was 1,200 feet away on high ground.
Special agent Bill Pfeil of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement worked nearly four years on the drowning before closing the case.
"I really believe they killed this man, whether or not I'll ever be able to prove it," Pfeil says.
In a 1994 memo, he summarized his suspicions.
- Randy's body was found about five feet upriver from the raft, lodged on the upriver side of a submerged log. "People don't float against the current," Pfeil says.
- Randy's friends and family said he was deathly afraid of the water. "Smitty wouldn't even get in a canoe with me and the kids," says Karen Purdy, Randy Smith's first wife.
- During Randy's first marriage, his only life insurance was a $10,000 policy his employer provided. In his five-month marriage to Janet Smith, he took out several policies that ultimately paid nearly $250,000. An FDLE handwriting analyst concluded that Randy's signature was forged on two $30,000 policy applications, although the analyst couldn't say who had signed them.
Randy Smith's children - Kathryn Riddlebarger of Largo and Randall Smith Jr. - sued their stepmother in Pasco-Pinellas Circuit Court, trying to prevent her from collecting on the insurance and inheriting their father's house.
They noted that their father's watch and wedding ring were missing when divers pulled his body from the river. Janet had an answer.
"Randy was a clock watcher," she testified. "I told him, "Honey, when we are on the river, time doesn't mean anything.' So he took it off and put it in the bait box."
She testified that two months after Randy's drowning, she accepted engagement rings from two Pinellas men. One was Barry Reitz, 64, who took out life insurance naming her as beneficiary. The other was Charlie Miller, 66, who was found dead in his house by Jay Griffin. Miller had heart troubles, and his doctor ruled it a natural death without examining the body.
Janet denied having any insurance on Miller, though FDLE agent Pfeil notes that there's no central registry that can track insurance polices. "I don't know how many more she might have had on Randy or anyone else. I have no clue."
"I thought it smelled to high heaven," says Circuit Judge George Greer, who ruled for Janet in the civil case. "There was truly a lot of suspicious stuff going on. But there was no proof."
The tapes
After Randy Smith's drowning, Janet Smith and Jay Griffin moved to her native Ohio, then to the Arkansas Ozarks, land of catfish fries and a car dealership that advertises itself as Christian.
They paid $229,500 for a house they called the "mansion," complete with front porch columns and a swimming pool out back. They were bankrolled by Randy's life insurance and an $80,000 insurance payout from their Suwannee River house, which burned down. Janet was on Social Security disability, and Jay had Social Security and an Air Force pension.
In May 2002, they squabbled over money and Jay moved to a motel. A few weeks later, Janet's son showed up at the sheriff's office to say his mother wanted him to kill Jay to collect on life insurance.
As a boy, Matthew Paxton - son of husband No. 2 - and his six siblings were removed from Janet's care by child welfare workers. He had served 12 years in prison and was no angel. While visiting Arkansas a few weeks before he turned in his mother, he says, he served as a lookout while Jay drove his Dodge van over a cliff to collect the auto insurance.
But Paxton says he drew the line at murder.
His mother began to discuss killing Jay after he had moved to motel and began withdrawing money from the bank and running up credit cards, Paxton told investigators. He said he thought she was joking at first, but talk grew more serious, he secretly turned on a tape recorder.
The tapes, which a jury will evaluate, are rife with gaps and incomprehensible conversation, according to transcripts. But some sentences are clear, as Janet and her son discuss various options. They first talk of having Paxton drive Jay off a cliff in Janet's car. "That would get the car paid off. That would get me a new car," Janet says on tape. "I'd get the insurance money and get me the f-- out of here."
They discuss shooting Jay in the head, then telling the police it was suicide.
"I was up half the night thinking about it," Janet says. "He could be sitting at the table and walk up, like just do it right-handed, so that you're standing right behind him like this. And then, when there's blood splattered, it goes out that way."
The final plan, Paxton said, was to ask Jay to help pull a tarp over the swimming pool. Paxton would push Jay in, throw the tarp over him and jump on top so he couldn't get out. "You got to get him while the pushing's good," Janet says on tape.
Melani Barnes, a friend who traveled with Paxton to Arkansas, told deputies she heard Janet discussing these murder plans as well.
Janet says it was all a huge joke. Her son watched TV crime shows and pestered her to talk about the perfect murder, she says. They just used Jay as an example. Her son set her up, she says, so he could steal her Jeep and other possessions.
The tapes also hold interest for Florida: Janet repeatedly tells her son on the tapes that Jay recently had confessed to drowning Randy Smith 12 years ago on the Suwannee. Jay became enraged with jealousy, pushed Randy in and shoved a cane down his mouth, Janet says. She reiterates that she was asleep in the house at the time.
"He killed Randy," she tells her son. "He told me that just last month. He finally admitted it."
After her arrest, Janet gave the St. Petersburg Times a copy of what she called a signed confession from Jay. She wrote the FDLE to tell them about it as well. She didn't tell any authorities before her arrest, she says, because she wanted to gather more evidence and "go for the jugular."
In an e-mail interview, Jay Griffin denies drowning Randy or signing any confession. "Janet has somehow managed to add my signature to that document," he says. "She can manipulate documents to look as if they are genuine."
He also denies staging a phony car-over-the-cliff accident. It really was an accident, he says. He blacked out and somehow rolled out before the car went over.
Back in Florida
When FDLE agent Bill Pfeil checked 13 years ago, six of Janet Smith's seven husbands were still alive. Pfeil suspected that Randy Smith was murdered, but the evidence was circumstantial. Even the lawsuit against Janet was unsuccessful.
"If you can't win a civil trial," Pfeil asks, "how do you expect to win a criminal trial?"
Janet's Arkansas charge of solicitation for the murder of Jay Griffin resurrects the possibilities: Besides the tapes, there is Jay. In Florida, he never could be subpoenaed to testify. In Arkansas, he presumably will take the stand.
Pfeil says he expects to reopen the Florida drowning investigation "after Arkansas has run its course. They've got more in their case than we ever obtained down here."
No one can insure other people's lives without their consent. But once granted, a policy is very difficult to reverse.
Barry Reitz was on the rebound 13 years ago when he met Janet Smith through a personal ad. He cashed in his IRA and gave her money. He took out a $50,000, double indemnity life insurance policy, naming her as beneficiary.
"She has such a way about her," he says now. "It was the craziest thing I ever did."
He moved to Pennsylvania for a while to get away from her. Janet discusses him on the secret tapes.
"We need to set up the computer to find out if that old guy in Pennsylvania is alive or dead. Right there's 50 of it. If he dies in an accident, that's 100. There you go. I couldn't do that. That there, that's nasty."
That statement implies that Janet would not consider killing Reitz. But he's not convinced.
John Hancock Insurance Co. won't cancel the policy, because Janet owns it and has faithfully paid the $104 monthly premium. Nina Bannister, spokeswoman for Florida's Office of Insurance Regulation, agrees that the owner controls the policy, not the person whose life is insured.
Reitz says he alerted John Hancock and the state attorney to investigate if anything untoward should happen to him.
- Times researcher Kitty Bennett contributed to this report.
