This past Monday, September 19th I covered the case of Judy Smith on the Great Unsolved. And it was a very perplexing one that I wanted to also write out on here (I am trying to get back to writing cases out for every episode but it does take some time.)
Judy smith was a home care nurse in her 50s that resided right outside Boston, MA. She met her husband (at the time of the disappearance) because she was the home care nurse for his father after throat surgery in the mid 1980s. After dating for about 10 years and living together for 3 they got married in September of 1996.
Judy's husband was a prominant lawyer in the area that mostly dealt with healthcare related law. Due to this profession he had a conference in Philadelphia on April 9-11, 1997 and Judy was going to accompany him. She had never been to Philadelphia before and they were planning to spend a week in New Jersy with friends once the conference was finished.
On April 9th, 1997 the couple went to Logan International airport to catch their plane to Philadelphia. However, upon arrival at 1pm it was noted that Judy forgot her ID at home. Only 18 months early did the law go into place that stated you needed your ID to get on a plane so it wasn't odd that she forgot it. She told her husband she would go home, get it, and catch a later flight. Since he had to get to the conference he said okay and got on the original flight.
Around 9:30p.m. that same day it is alleged that Judy met her husband in the lobby of the Double Tree in Center City Philadelphia, the hotel where the conference was being held and where they were staying. Upon meeting him in the lobby she gave him flowers supposedly to apoligize for forgetting her ID and getting there later.
The next day on April 10, 1997 Jeff (Judy's husband) went downstairs to get breakfast alone, he states that Judy was still sleeping at the time. When he goes back upstairs he says that he finds Judy in the shower and tells her she needs to try the breakfast as it was very good. Then, before Judy gets out of the shower, he heads off to the conference confirming that Judy would go sightseeing and be back in time for the 6pm cocktail party at the hotel.
Around 9am Judy was said to have left the hotel with her signiture red backpack on to catch a PHLASH tour bus to go sightseeing, saying she would forsure see the liberty bell and independance hall, but it is unconfirmed that she ever got on one of these buses or was at any place she planned to sightsee.
Some accounts say that at 10am Judy talked to a hotel employee, asking them how to get to the PHLASH tour bus but it is unconfirmed as well.
Around 1pm there is another unconfirmed sighting of Judy entering a greyhound bus station nearby,
Around 3pm there is a sighting of someone resembling Judy, disoriented about 10 minutes away from the Double Tree hotel.
When Jeff returned to the hotel room at 5:30pm he did not find Judy there like they planned. Thinking maybe she went down to the cocktail party without him he heads down to look for her, but she is not there.
After going back and forth from the room to the party for a while and not finding Judy, Jeff starts expressing worry about her to a hotel employee. This employee starts calling hospitals to search for Judy around 6:15pm. After no reports of someone resembling Judy, Jeff hires a taxi driver at 6:30pm to start driving the route that the PHLASH bus would've taken that day (it is unconfirmed if he got out and searched the places that the bus would've stopped but it is assumed he didn't.)
Between 9pm and 12am Jeff called his stepchildren (Judy had two children from a previous marriage, she was actually married three times altogether but these children came from the second marriage) to go to his and Judy's home to see if Judy had left a voicemail. These individuals confirmed that there were no voicemails. ( I find it very odd that he thought Judy would've called home when she knew Jeff was in Philadelphia.)
Around 10pm this same night there was a unconfirmed sighting from a local homeless man. He states that he saw Judy sleeping on a bench and then left early on April 11th. This man is sure it was Judy and not the lookalike that would come up later in the case. Sometime this same evening, the night Judy did not return to the hotel, a woman in Ashville, NC, a 13hr car ride away during traffic, says that someone looking like Judy checked into her hotel until April 12th.
On April 11th at 12am Jeff goes to police to report Judy missing and police tell him to wait 24 hours, or at least until morning, since "it is not uncommon for women her age to take off due to midlife crisis." After this unfortunate experience with the police Jeff calls different friends and politicians complaining about the police writing off his wife's disappearance. He believes this made a huge difference in the case because that morning when he went back to the police station there were two detectives waiting for him and ready to work on the case. Therefore, investigations start early that morning.
Judy's two children also come out to Philadelphia and help Jeff print posters and put them around the town. I believe at this time Jeff also hired three private investigators that in the end didn't make a huge difference in the case.
Between April 13th and 15th there are many more sightings in both North Carolina, Easton, PA, Atlantic City, and more but most are confirmed not to be Judy and thought to be a known homeless woman with mental issues that looked like Judy. However, there was a sighting of Judy, or someone looking like Judy, at Macy's just across the Delaware River (easy to get to by a bus that goes every hour.) Witnesses state that this woman said she was shopping for her daughter even though her daughter often didn't like what she bought her. This rang true for those who knew Judy and her daughter so they thought it may be plausible. When this woman left Macy's she tried to get a younger woman to go with her and staff assumed it was her daughter even though we know now it wasn't.
By late April police state that they cannot confirm that Judy was ever in Philadelphia at all.
It isn't until about 5 month's later, September 7th, that anything new in the case would surface.
On September 7th, 1997 a man and his son were hiking in the Pisgah National Forest near Ashville, NC. They stumbled upon a human skeleton wrapped in a partially buried blue blanket. This was found near a picnic area on a normal trail, not way off the beaten track. This skeleton was labeled a Jane Doe for 21 days but it was noted it was found in hiking clothes, with a blue backpack, $160 some dollars, and expensive mens sunglasses. There were slashes in the bra and on the ribs which made investigators conclude this was a victum of a stabbing homicide.
Someone involved with the case saw a flyer for her and decided to get someone to compare her dental records with the Jane Doe...and they matched.
Judy Smith went missing in Philadelphia on April 10th, 1997 and her bones were found over 600 miles away in Ashville, NC just 5 months later. How did she get there? Did she leave voluntarily, was kidnapped? Was she murdered or was it suicide? Most importantly was it even her body that was found?
Listen to the podcast here: https://www.spreaker.com/episode/51301790 to hear me go over all the theories, oddities, and speculations within the case.