Edgar Herbert Smith Jr. (1934 – 2017)[1] was an American convicted murderer sentenced to death for his 1957 killing of 15-year-old Victoria Ann Zielinski in Ramsey, New Jersey.
With the help of an elite legal team retained by Buckley, Smith litigated his conviction through multiple court hearings and wrote a book proclaiming his innocence.
Shortly after 8:30 pm on the evening of March 4, 1957, 15-year-old Victoria Ann Zielinski of Ramsey, New Jersey, disappeared while walking home from a friend's house.
The following morning her parents, searching for their missing daughter, found one of her black penny loafers and a grey scarf near the entrance to a sand pit at the intersection of Fardale Avenue and Chapel Road not far from their house.
Vickie's dungarees remained fastened but her sweater was pushed up and her brassiere pulled down, and there was a human bite mark on her right breast.
"[4] On the night of the murder, 23-year-old Edgar Smith, who lived a short distance from the sand pit, was using a light-blue, 1950 Mercury sedan borrowed from his friend Joseph Gilroy.
Smith brought officers to locations where he had discarded his blood-stained shoes (in a trashcan outside an apartment building) and Vickie's pocketbook and school books (recovered a distance off the side of a road).
[9] The brutality of the murder and the possibility of a capital penalty, along with Smith's claim of temporary amnesia, warranted the examinations.
It was known to the examiners that at age 14 Smith sexually assaulted a ten-year-old girl and received a term of five-years probation in Bergen County Juvenile Court.
[10] The psychiatrists each concluded that Smith (1) was a sociopath, perfectly sane but "prone to act on impulse with little regard for the rights of others and little respect for constituted authority," and (2) had fabricated a false claim of temporary amnesia in an attempt to avoid responsibility for murdering Vickie.
[12] Barbara Nixon also testified, corroborating Myrna Zielinski's testimony concerning Vickie's attire on the night she was murdered.
Detectives testified about recovering the physical evidence, including Vickie's scattered clothing, her clump of hair, the bloody bat and her body.
Smith claimed that after Victoria left the vehicle, he heard "a commotion" coming from the vicinity of Chapel Road, where he saw two people approaching.
On cross-examination, Smith claimed that he did not tell the story during his police interview, when he gave a contradictory statement, because he feared retribution by Hommell.
Near the intersection, Smith caught the girl and struck her in the head with the bat, leaving articles of her clothing (a shoe and the scarf), her hair-pin, and a bloody clump of her hair at that location.
Affirming the conviction and sentence, the unanimous New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that, "The record leaves no room to disturb the jury's finding.
The woman who occupies property across the road from which Smith claimed to have thrown the pants ... swore at the trial that she had seen Hommell rummaging there the day after the murder.
The pants were later found [by the police] near a well-traveled road ... Did Hommell find them, and leave them in the other location, thinking to discredit Smith's story, and make sure they would turn up?
[4]Scrutiny of the case increased with the 1968 publication of Smith's well-received book Brief Against Death by leading American publishing house Alfred A. Knopf, also urging his innocence.
[18] In 1971, Smith was successful with his 19th appeal, in which an elite legal team retained by Buckley claimed, inter alia, that his confession was obtained under duress.
[20] Judge Gibbons vacated the 1957 New Jersey conviction and ordered the State to conduct a new trial at which Smith's statement to police was to be excluded from evidence.
Prior to accepting the plea deal, Bergen County Superior Court Judge Morris Pashman stated at a plea hearing that he had examined all aspects of the case, including the evidence from the 1957 trial, had read Smith's book Brief Against Death, and had "arranged for Edgar Smith to be examined by a doctor of my choice.
"[21] Judge Pashman stated that the new psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Brancale, had concluded that Smith was a changed man, and "there is nothing in the personality pattern that would suggest the probability of a recurring similar offense, or that manifests other antisocial behavior.
[24] In public statements after his release, Smith claimed that he was in fact innocent, and only accepted the plea deal to get out of prison.
In the wake of his release Smith lectured at a number of colleges and made television and radio appearances, including talk shows hosted by David Frost, Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, and Barbara Walters, also giving multiple keynote speeches garnering up to $1,000 per appearance.
In San Diego, California, in October 1976, Smith kidnapped 33-year-old Lefteriya "Lisa" Ozbun, holding a knife at her throat and forcing her into a car.