Violence and drugs litter kidnap suspect's history
The man accused of a Sarasota girl's abduction has had a yearslong battle with the law.
By LEANORA MINAI
Published February 6, 2004
[Dirk Shadd]
A banner that reads "We Love You Carlie" hangs from the front of the home of missing 11-year old Carlie Brucia on McIntosh Road in Sarasota. Carlie was abducted in front of a Sarasota car wash Sunday.
[Times photo: Cherie Diez]
Teri Jo Stinson, 26, of Bradenton says Joseph P. Smith grabbed her in 1997, but she got away.
SARASOTA - The man suspected of abducting an 11-year-old girl is a drug addict accused of attacking at least two women in Bradenton and Sarasota, court records show.
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.
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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.
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