Similar Transactions: A True Story

by S. R. Reynolds

  “Oh, this one,” Sasha said and began to explain that it was from Larry Lee’s 1989 arrest in Georgia. But when she turned toward Sara, she was surprised to see tears pooling in Sara’s eyes.

  “It just looks so much like him,” Sara said, choking back the tears. “That’s what I see in my dreams.”

  Sasha encouraged Sara to allow those tears to flow, then reframed the circumstances for her. “Remember,” she told Sara, “you’re in control now. He doesn’t have power over you anymore.”

  Sara’s tears slowed. “I need a cigarette,” she said.

  11. RELEASE

  Kidnapping is a felony known as one of the seven deadly sins under Georgia’s state-sentencing guidelines. Conviction of one of these sins results in a minimum sentence of ten years served without the possibility of parole. During the sentencing phase of Larry Lee’s 1990 trial for the kidnapping and assault of Amanda Sanders, the judge had informed him that because his term was longer than five years, he had a right to have his sentence reviewed by the Judges Review Panel. As an interested party, Anita received notice in 1991 that Larry Lee’s case had been reviewed by the panel and his sentence upheld.

  Ten years later, at the halfway mark of his twenty-year sentence, Larry Lee first came up for parole. Anita and other family members bombarded the parole board with letters and emails and ensured that he stayed behind bars. They continued their efforts each year his early release was considered. But now Larry Lee neared the completion of his twenty-year sentence. In August 2008, nine months after Sasha first made contact with her, Anita received notice from the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles that Larry Lee was being considered for their prison work-release program, a nine-month transitional plan leading to parole.

  Sasha joined in the family’s letter-writing campaign protesting any kind of early release. She crafted a letter to the attention of Ms. Shalandra Robertson, Director, Georgia Corrections and Parole Board Office of Victim Services, in which she carefully organized her research and laid out Larry Lee’s criminal history. She covered his previous conviction for rape in Florida and emphasized that he remained a person of interest—in fact, the primary suspect—in the disappearance and murder of fifteen-year-old Michelle Anderson in Knoxville, a crime that occurred before his Georgia conviction. Citing verifiable sources, including the various people she had interviewed, Sasha profiled Larry Lee as a serial rapist with a strong, impulsive desire to violently dominate women. Most importantly, he would offend again.

  While Sasha and Anita awaited the board’s decision, Sasha made some calls to Pinellas County, Florida, and DeKalb County, Georgia, both places where Larry Lee had been convicted of sex crimes. She learned that in neither state would Larry Lee have to register as a sex offender. In Florida, his sexual assault was committed before the passage of laws creating the sex offender registry, so he wasn’t required to be on it. In Georgia, the same condition applied, but there his conviction was actually for kidnapping, albeit committed during an attempted sexual assault, but not a sex offense by itself (he’d been found not guilty of the attempted sodomy charge in that case even though his lawyer had argued that he had been unsuccessful in his efforts to force Amanda to perform oral sex on him, thus acknowledging the criminal attempt to commit aggravated sodomy; the not guilty finding was somewhat baffling).

  On December 5, 2008, two months after the last notification, Anita and Sasha received a letter from the Georgia Corrections and Parole Board Office of Victim Services:

  The Board has determined that Inmate Smith is not eligible for the work-release program. However, the Parole Board has voted to proceed with parole in this case and feels strongly that inmate Smith receive intensive supervision upon his return to the community. Inmate Smith will be placed on Electronic Monitoring immediately upon release. You will be notified once the Board has set the actual parole date. The notice will include the name and telephone number of the chief parole officer assigned to supervise the case.

  Then another ten months passed with no further news or updates from the Georgia Parole Board—not until Tuesday, October 13, 2009. A light rain fell on East Tennessee that fall day, with temperatures climbing into the low seventies. Anita attended the funeral of her father. He’d passed away the previous Sunday after struggling with a long-term illness. When Anita returned home, the message light on her answering machine was blinking.

  She pressed play and listened to the brief message. It was from the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles. Larry Lee Smith had been released from prison, twenty years to the day after he’d kidnapped and assaulted Amanda Sanders in Stone Mountain, Georgia. Neither Anita nor Sasha—or anyone else, for that matter—had received prior notification. Anita called the Office of Victim Services and asked why Larry Lee had been set free. The person on the phone said it was because he’d served out his full twenty-year sentence. Anita also learned that there would be no work release and no electronic monitoring.

  “It sickens me,” she said in an email to Sasha. “At least my dad didn’t have to hear the news.”

  Sasha immediately put in a call to Randy York, who, in turn, called Deputy Chief Gary Price at the KPD. Larry Lee Smith was bad news, York alerted Price, and he was probably headed back to Knoxville. It was at this point that an ironic twist of fate came into play: Tennessee may have been the one state where Larry Lee got away with rape and murder, but by returning there now, he came back to the one place he had to register as a sex offender.

  “Tennessee passed legislation a couple of years ago,” Deputy Chief Price explained to Sasha in a subsequent phone call. “We require anyone residing in the state to register regardless of the date of their conviction of a sex offense. I checked the Tennessee Sex Offender Registry and determined that Smith is in compliance with requirements and has registered.”

  Larry Lee Smith, the serial rapist and murder suspect, was now a free man and back in Knoxville.

  Part Two

  Connecting the Dots

  12. TRACKING LARRY LEE

  When Larry Lee was released from a Georgia prison in October 2009, he had to navigate all new terrain in a family system almost completely altered. His brother Brad had died while he was in prison. A half-sister, Carrie, who also lived in Knoxville, had committed suicide. Larry Lee’s son, Joey, whom he hadn’t seen in more than a decade, was grown, married, and also a father; Larry Lee had a granddaughter he’d never met. Joey and his wife, Natalie, lived in Ruby’s old house on Fern Avenue. They were well aware of Larry Lee’s history—the Georgia part, at least—and wanted little to do with him. They especially didn’t want him around their daughter. Larry Lee moved in with his mother, Ruby, now seventy-nine-years-old and living in nearby Sevier County, southeast of Knoxville.

  Larry Lee had reentered a world drastically changed—two decades into the digital age. Sex offender registries were available online, accessible in almost every home, and Larry Lee was on one. He was under someone’s official radar at all times, meaning that he was obligated to report certain aspects of his personal data and any changes in residence or employment. His page on the TBI Sex Offender Registry (SOR) showed his picture and included a physical description, his home address, date of birth, date of registration, date of last update, driver’s license state and number, vehicles owned (or to which he had access) and their related tag numbers, employer(s), and dates and types of sexual crimes.

  Sex offenders registered with the TBI are grouped into two broad categories: Violent and Non-Violent. Offenders deemed to fall into the violent category remain on the registry for life. By virtue of Larry Lee’s 1981 Florida conviction that qualified him for the Tennessee registry—the kidnapping and rape of Katherine McWilliams, pleaded down to “attempted sexual battery”—Larry Lee was not grouped with the violent offenders, although violence was clearly a part of his pattern. If he didn’t reoffend by 2019, ten years from the date of his release, Larry Lee would be off the registry altogether.

  After Larry Lee’s release, Sasha cont
acted KPD Deputy Chief Gary Price about the cold case of Michelle Anderson. In a series of email exchanges she reviewed the history of the case: Michelle’s disappearance, the treating of her disappearance as a missing person—a runaway—by Detective McNair and the KPD, and then the finding of her remains two years later in Cumberland County when virtually all forensic evidence was gone. Sasha told Price that she’d met with York, discussed his work on the case some twenty years before, and had learned that York’s investigative file was missing from KPD. She inquired as to whether the file had been located and offered to meet with someone there to share what she had learned about Michelle’s case and the recently released suspect, Larry Lee Smith.

  Price wrote a polite and official-sounding response:

  As you recall, Michelle’s remains were discovered in another county close to Knoxville, so the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation assisted that county with the homicide investigation. Investigator York did interview numerous people to assist the TBI after her remains were found… We have not located the [Investigator York’s] file to date, however, the official file would be kept by the TBI, since they would be the official investigating agency. Lt. Doug Stiles is the supervisor over our Violent Crimes Unit and Cold Case Initiatives. He would be glad to meet with you.

  The Deputy Chief’s message had been copied to Lt. Stiles.

  Not long after first making contact with Anita, Sasha had briefly corresponded via email with Lt. Doug Stiles. He’d told her then that he’d never heard of the Michelle Anderson case but was interested in learning more about it. At the time, Sasha had been a novice to the case, but since those earlier communications, she had gathered much additional information. Now she was ready to share what she knew in an effort to stir some interest in this old and unsolved murder. After a couple of introductory emails, followed by a few attempted phone calls, Sasha finally had Lt. Stiles on the phone.

  At first, she wasn’t sure how open to be regarding McNair’s inadequate investigation into Michelle’s disappearance. Doug Stiles’ father, Tommy Stiles, had been a police officer before him, a homicide detective. Tommy Stiles and Jerry McNair had been close. Doug Stiles had grown up coming to the station with his dad, and McNair had been like an uncle to him.

  “I’ve heard some stuff about his work,” Stiles said of his father’s late colleague, “but I thought a lot of him. The only thing I don’t like about this is that it [the lack of an initial investigation] will all be blamed on him.”

  The last thing Sasha wanted to do was alienate the KPD lieutenant before she’d even met him. She drew a deep breath and chose her words carefully. “I understand,” she said. “He was a nice guy, I agree. I mean… it’s not all about him.”

  “Okay!” Stiles said, suddenly shifting to an upbeat, take-charge tone of voice. “Let me know when you’re coming to town and we’ll get together.”

  The elevator dinged, the door slid open and Lt. Stiles appeared. He was tall, handsome and commanding, with dark, tightly curled hair, graying on the sides and top. Sasha joined him in the ride to his second-floor office where a Sgt. Walker, smaller in build and with an air of order and precision about him, awaited. Both men were dressed in suits. Stiles took his jacket off, hung it over the back of his office chair and rolled up his sleeves before taking a seat behind his desk. Sgt. Walker grabbed a seat along the wall and turned it toward Sasha.

  “Okay,” Stiles began in his professionally polite manner. “What do we have?”

  Sitting across the desk from Lt. Stiles, Sasha felt that she needed to address the matter of the late Detective McNair. “You said that you were bothered that McNair might be singled out or blamed…” Sasha started to explain to the lieutenant.

  “I kind of regret having said that,” he politely cut in and the subject was dropped.

  So Sasha launched into her story. She shared what she’d learned about the history of the now-cold Michelle Anderson case and everything she knew about convicted serial rapist Larry Lee Smith. She informed the officers about the trial transcript from Georgia, updated them on the people she’d talked and met with, including the investigators on the previous investigation, and the people she still wanted to locate. Lt. Stiles didn’t say much, but he took notes. She made a point to emphasize Larry Lee’s pattern in the sexual assaults, the similarities between them. With one major difference in this case: Michelle was dead.

  “He’d learned his lesson,” Stiles surmised. He referred to Larry Lee having allowed his earlier victim, Katherine, to go free. Larry Lee thought he’d covered his tracks, and then he got fingered by her, arrested and sentenced to prison.

  Sasha had brought a lot of her research with her. She shared several documents with the detectives, and Sgt. Walker stepped out to make copies. She had deliberately cultivated no expectations in advance of this meeting, but it was her opinion, as it came to a close, that it had gone reasonably well. Lt. Stiles seemed alerted to and concerned about the gravity of the matter—the danger of Larry Lee back in the community.

  “Well,” he concluded, with a half-smile. “Let’s just solve this.” Sasha raised her eyebrows and laughed. His demeanor was professional, his vibe authentic. She liked him. Maybe, she thought, something would develop from all of this.

  A larger-than-life statue of Sevier County native and country music legend Dolly Parton stands on the courthouse square in Sevierville, the county seat. A block away from the star’s statue is the Bruce Street office of Chief Detective Jeff McCarter, with the Sevier County Sheriff’s Office. Sasha had contacted the sheriff’s office to determine to whom Larry Lee would be reporting as a registered sex offender residing in that county. Detective McCarter was the man.

  In McCarter’s wood-paneled office, complete with a mounted bass hung high on one wall, Sasha provided the stocky, middle-aged detective with a history of the Michelle Anderson case and the other known crimes of Larry Lee. He made notes and reviewed the timeline, tapping his index finger against his mustache as he studied it. “He’s disorganized,” McCarter finally pronounced in his Southern Mountain dialect.

  Detective McCarter was referring to Larry Lee’s pattern of abductions and assaults, noting that the serial rapist was impulsive and did not stalk his victims or plan his attacks far in advance. Like nearly every other detective in the area, McCarter was a graduate of the University of Tennessee National Forensic Academy, the premier school of its kind in the country. Leaning back in his office chair, still stroking his mustache absentmindedly, McCarter observed: “Twenty years in prison. We don’t know what he’s like today.”

  Sasha gave the chief detective copies of the documents related to the Florida and Georgia convictions. Only Larry Lee’s Florida conviction, involuntary sexual battery (1981), was indicated on the TBI’s Sex Offender Registry. All-in-all, not a very clear picture for the community of this violent sexual predator in their midst. “Had Larry Lee mentioned these other crimes?” Sasha asked.

  When the offenders reported to him, McCarter explained, he rarely got into their pasts, their crimes. “Of course, they’re all innocent,” the detective mocked. “I just want you to know right off the bat, I’m innocent, they’ll say. Then they’ll tell you some lawyer talked them into pleading guilty.

  “And the momma thing,” McCarter continued. “Do you know how many of these guys show up here with their momma! I’m talking fifty-years-old, forty-years-old. They show up here to register with their mommas. It’s kind of a running saying around here: Chester Molester brings his momma with him. You’d be surprised.

  “I do talk to them,” McCarter clarified. “I have a pretty good rapport with them. They do like me. I’m nice to them. I’m cordial. And they say to me: ‘I appreciate you being nice to me. Not everybody treats me well.’ I don’t argue with them. I tell them: ‘You follow the rules, no problem. You violate this and you won’t like me anymore.’”

  Detective McCarter updated Sasha on his contacts and communication thus far with Larry Lee, who’d moved in with his mot
her on Alpine Road in the Seymour community and had been “very compliant so far.” Larry Lee had reported to him twice: once to register, and the second time a month later to tell him that Ruby had given him her 1988 Chevrolet Celebrity. So far, Larry Lee hadn’t found work.

  “I’ll definitely have a renewed interest in him,” McCarter told Sasha. “I may start sending someone out to check on him a little more frequently. With a lot of these guys, it’s a domination thing.

  “I’m just going to be very honest with you. Bottom-line, my role at this point is to monitor him. Monitor. That’s not even a good word. We don’t monitor. We register them. We verify that they do live there. The law says we have to do that once a year. We try to do that a little more often, twice a year or so. Smith reports in yearly. I’ve told people this before: Is the Sex Offender Registry to keep people from reoffending? No, it’s so if they do reoffend, we know where to go to find them.

  “I’ve got a mapping program that we developed here in this department. Got every sex offender plotted on it. If my patrol people get a call about a missing kid, the first place we’ll go is the nearest sex offender.

  “Can we guard Larry Lee Smith? No. I’ve got one hundred registered sex offenders. I’m surprised some of them don’t have electronic monitoring with ankle bracelets.”

  13. NEW EYES

  In the months following Sasha’s meeting with the KPD’s Lt. Stiles and Sgt. Walker, she tried to stay on their radar, to keep a flag waving from the sidelines: Don’t forget about this case! But she would soon learn that the KPD rarely handled cold cases. They didn’t have the time, budget or resources. They didn’t even have a cold-case investigator.