Snake had laughed at this. “Where you’re going you won’t be needing shoes,” he had said.
And then he ordered both boys to take their shoes off. Jim and Daryl, their eyes filled with fear, looked at each other and followed the command, taking off their shoes and tossing them in the bushes.
They walked along a little bit further and then they reached a clearing. The scrub brush was filled with cockroaches and crickets and other crawling insects but Snake didn’t care. He ordered the boys to lie facedown in an area that was wet with several inches of mud and moss.
“You do one,” Snake had said. “And I’ll do one.”
Spider took a deep breath at this point in the story and closed his eyes again. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined recounting this story in all its truth before a sheriff’s deputy with a tape recorder. But now he had no choice. He released an anguished sigh, opened his eyes, and continued.
Next, Spider said, he cocked the gun he was holding and held it to Daryl’s head. But the image of the helpless teenager lying with his face in the mud and a gun to his head had been too much for Spider and he suddenly stood up.
“Can’t do it like that, man,” he had said.
So Snake laughed and picked up a tree limb which was lying nearby.
“Then do it like this,” he had said.
He walked up to Daryl and began swinging the limb at Daryl’s head until the boy was screaming in pain. Again and again Snake swung the tree limb at Daryl’s head but the boy refused to die.
“Hang in there, Daryl,” Jim had cried out to his friend. “Please hang in there.”
Daryl could no longer talk by then but he moaned loudly and Jim knew he was still alive.
“I’m tired. You take a turn at him,” Snake had said, handing the tree limb to Spider.
“You hit him, too?” Deemer interrupted the frightening tale.
“You bet I did. We had to kill ’em. That was the plan,” Smith said. “And that stupid kid wouldn’t die.”
Spider said he took four hard swings at Daryl’s head with the tree limb and then stood up and looked at Snake. “Look, Snake. This ain’t working,” he had said. “The kid’s still alive.”
“Maybe this’ll do it, then,” Snake had said. He walked up to Daryl and, holding his .38 in his hand, smashed it against the boy’s skull. Daryl moaned again but was obviously still very much alive.
“Here, take this,” Snake had said and he handed the gun to Spider. “Watch ’em till I go get the car.”
Minutes later Snake returned with the car and he ordered the boys to take off their belts—a task especially painful for the beaten Daryl. Snake and Spider then used the belts to tie the boys’ hands behind their backs. They put the boys in the backseat, ignoring the blood that was gushing from Daryl’s head. But then before they pulled onto the main highway they changed their minds and ordered the boys out of the car.
Daryl was dizzy, his eyes dilated and his head swollen from the places where blood was pouring from his scalp. Jim used his body to hold his friend up and kept whispering words of encouragement to him. Snake saw what Jim was doing and suddenly smashed his gun over Jim’s head. Then he removed the traveler’s checks from Jim’s wallet and shoved them at the trembling boy.
“Sign them,” he had ordered, slapping the boy once across the face. “Fast!” As the boy scribbled frantically Snake continued to beat Jim, punching his face and using the gun to hit his head.
Deemer thought about this detail and decided it had a distinct ring of truth to it. The signature on the checks had been almost identical to Jim Boucher’s actual signature. Perhaps the tiny inconsistencies were not caused by the checks having been forged by Snake but rather by the fact that Jim had been beaten continuously while he was signing them.
Spider continued with his story.
At that point, Snake collected the signed checks and opened the trunk of the car. Together Snake and Spider lifted Jim into the trunk and forced him to lie on his side, facing the rear of the car. Daryl, who had fallen to his knees, obviously suffering the side effects of a severe concussion, was then picked up and placed in the front part of the cavity facing the same direction as Jim.
Then Snake closed the trunk.
Unsure of what to do with the badly beaten victims in the trunk of the car, Snake drove back to his trailer where both men went inside and pondered what to do next. Finally, they agreed on a plan. There would be no trouble, no mess, no problems. They would take a piece of hose, some tape and drive the boys back to the deserted area off Indian Lake Road. Then they would gas them to death.
With Snake driving, they returned to the spot and drove half a mile down Indian Lake Road and another four-tenths of a mile down a fire trail. They stopped the car and opened the trunk. The boys were alive. Daryl was moaning loudly and trying to squirm free of the belt that bound his arms behind his back. Jim was crying softly, begging for Snake and Spider to let them go.
“Right, exactly what we’re going to do boys. Let you go,” Snake had said. Then he had laughed. “Tell you what. You boys count out loud to one thousand and when you’re finished you can get out and you’ll be free to go your own way. Got it?”
Both boys, as badly beaten as they were, nodded their understanding.
“You come out too soon and I’ll kill you, you hear me, man?” Snake had asked.
Again the boys nodded and Snake slammed the trunk shut. Instantly, Snake took the hose and connected it to the tailpipe, sticking the other end into the trunk. Then he took the roll of tape and began sealing the seam of the trunk.
It was at that point that Daryl realized what was going on. Perhaps, as he had done most of his life, he was thinking of Jim, doing whatever was necessary to protect his friend even while he himself was in such bad shape. For whatever reason, obviously realizing that they were about to die, he began using his feet to kick the hose out of the trunk.
“That’s it, man,” Snake had muttered angrily.
He reached into the car’s glove compartment and removed a hunting knife which Daryl kept there for safety reasons. He took the knife and began jamming it through the seam in the trunk until he must have felt it sinking into Daryl’s chest.
He heard the boy cry out in pain and then suddenly the boy stopped trying to kick the hose out of the car. Satisfied, Snake dropped the knife and continued taping up the trunk. When he was finished he started the car, flooding the trunk with deadly carbon monoxide.
For the next two hours Snake and Spider sat on a nearby log, smoking pot and telling jokes.
At first they could hear the sounds of at least one of the boys kicking at the inside of the trunk with his feet. But after a short while there was only the sound of the car’s engine in the background.
Finally, in the early hours of the morning while it was still dark, Snake walked back to the car and turned off the engine. Then he pulled off the tape and opened the trunk. When he saw that the boys were dead, he pulled their bodies from the car. With Spider’s help they moved the boys into a clearing and lay them side by side. Since they didn’t want anyone to see the bodies, they found a blanket in the back of Daryl’s car and covered the boys. Then they left as quickly and quietly as they could.
“And that,” Spider said, taking another deep breath, “is what really happened that night.”
Joe Deemer hit a switch on the recorder, stopping the tape. As he removed it and placed it in an envelope, he said absolutely nothing to Spider. Finally Spider shouted in frustration at the lack of response.
“Well, man, ain’t you gonna say nothin’ ‘bout that story?”
Deemer stared at Spider evenly.
“It’s the coldest, most cruel story I’ve ever heard, Mr. Smith,” he said. “But I’d bet everything I own—and I mean that—everything I own, that what you just told me is the truth, exactly like it happened that night.”
Spider leaned back, a satisfied look on his face.
&n
bsp; “You believe me, then?” he asked.
“Every word, Mr. Smith. Every word.”
CHAPTER 40
When the others involved in the case found out about Spider’s version of what happened to the boys, they agreed with Deemer on two very definite points.
First, they agreed that Spider was telling the truth. By late December members of a highly sophisticated autopsy team had reconstructed the skeletons of the boys and proven that there had been severe trauma to Daryl Barber’s skull before his death. They had also located a rib from Daryl’s left side which showed a knife mark that would support Spider’s story that Snake had stabbed the boy. In addition, an expert in forgery had proven that Jim had indeed signed the traveler’s checks. The shaky signature on the checks had no doubt been the result of the beating he had received while he signed them.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, they agreed that Spider’s decision to confess to the murder would be used against both him and Snake when the time came for trial. Because by the end of the year Spider had made what members of the prosecution believed to be a fatal mistake. Literally. He had opted for a trial in lieu of a guilty plea.
Of course, a trial for either Snake or Spider had been something State Attorney Watson thought they might very well be able to avoid. Especially after Snake and his attorney, Howard Pearl, had agreed to their deal.
In light of the details provided by Spider, Snake had agreed to plead guilty to two counts of first-degree murder in exchange for his life. That is, he would receive a life sentence without the possibility of parole but because of his assistance in finding the boys’ bodies and because he was willing to plead guilty, he could avoid the death penalty.
Watson was thrilled with this deal would put Snake in a high-security state prison for most of his life while sparing the boys’ families and the taxpayers the pain and cost of a trial.
He had hoped that Spider would be equally willing to plead guilty and accept these conditions. Instead, after Spider had spilled his guts for Deemer and the tape recorder, he had spent the next few days sitting around his cell convincing himself that he truly was not responsible for the boys’ murders.
In fact, as he pondered his poor childhood and the influence Snake had had over him, he had decided that any reasonable jury would probably find him innocent of murder charges. So what if he faced the death penalty? He could win a trial and avoid any punishment at all. But if he pleaded guilty he would spend the rest of his life in prison. And for what? For helping Snake take care of a little business. The way he saw it, it was Snake’s idea to kill the boys and Snake’s fault the deed had been done.
And so, despite the risk of the electric chair, on February 9,1979, Judge James Foxman of the Seventh Judicial Circuit Court of Volusia County appointed Attorney Thomas Bevis to represent Spider in the case of the State of Florida versus Earl Lee Smith.
Bevis was a young attorney with a surprisingly successful record despite the types of criminals he often defended. He wore dark-rimmed glasses and nondescript suits to trial, all of which led people to sometimes overlook him in a courtroom. But Bevis’s voice was laden with emotion, and once he began speaking a jury couldn’t help but give him its complete attention.
Because of his youth and relative inexperience, Bevis took a number of court-appointed cases and usually tried to make the best of them. Many times he even won cases for defendants who hadn’t seemed to have a chance at acquittal. But after analyzing the details of the case against Spider Smith, Bevis could probably sense the prosecution’s victory ahead.
Here was a case in which his defendant had been fingered as an accomplice by a man who had willingly pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. If that wasn’t damaging enough, Spider himself had given a two-hour oration in the company of a sheriff’s deputy and a live tape recorder in which he admitted to participating in the murders. Bevis had heard the tape and he must have figured Spider did a better job proving himself guilty than any prosecutor he’d ever worked against.
Still, he was obligated to work the case and he was going to give Spider the best defense he could muster. He would try to focus on the angle of Snake being a manipulative ringleader type who had coerced Smith into assisting with the murders. But it wouldn’t be easy and the attorney couldn’t have expected in his wildest dreams to win.
Spider, meanwhile, did not care one way or another about his attorney or the opinions he held regarding the case. He figured the facts would speak for themselves. The murders hadn’t been his idea so naturally he would be found innocent of the charges and released. Then he could get back to the beach life he so badly missed while sitting in his windowless cell at the Volusia County jail.
Bob Brown had stayed in contact with Ziegler and Deemer, the chief investigators for the prosecution, and he knew that the case against Spider was better than airtight. It would take a truly terrible set of legal fumblings to manage anything less than a first-degree murder conviction against Spider.
Now that Bob was back working private investigations and no longer chasing down murder suspects, he’d had quite a bit of time to reflect on the case involving Snake and Spider and the missing teenagers. Most private investigators, especially those who typically handle only domestic cases, would probably have resigned from the case as soon as they realized there was criminal activity involved. In the private investigation field it was not thought to be sound practice to continue in an area that for safety reasons was best left in the hands of the police.
But Bob knew that if he had abandoned the investigation after learning about Snake and Spider’s involvement, the boys might never have been found. He thought about the times he had placed himself in danger, the times he boldly approached biker gangs and allowed himself to be pushed around in the dark shadows of the Boot Hill Saloon. And he thought about Larry, the way God had answered his prayers by providing such a man who could turn up the whereabouts of Snake Cox. But also the way Larry could have gotten both of them in deep trouble when he kidnapped Fat Man.
It had been an exciting case, no doubt. Bob knew he would never regret the fact that he had stayed with the case through the end. Despite the danger, he had never been afraid. Cautious, yes. But not afraid. And because of his efforts and the answers to his prayers two very deadly criminals would be put behind bars for a long time. Except, of course, for Spider.
According to Ziegler and Deemer, after the trial Spider wouldn’t spend too much behind bars. The reason being that he was, they believed, headed straight for the electric chair.
And by the spring of 1979 no one involved in the case was losing much sleep about the fact. Especially one particular guard who happened to be working the night shift at the county jail when Spider and one of his newly made criminal buddies decided to have a little fun.
Apparently, in Spider’s twisted opinion, a fun night in the cell meant assisting another man in capturing this certain guard, disarming him, beating him, and subjecting him to a gang rape.
When the guard was asked to testify about this hideous incident in a trial completely separate from that of the double murder involving the Michigan teenagers, he was barely able to talk. He said that Spider had done unspeakable things to one of his specific body cavities and that he had finally stopped fighting the rape because Spider had threatened to “bite my jugular vein if I cried out for help.”
When Bob Brown and Deemer and Ziegler got word of that incident, they were thrilled that Spider had opted for a first-degree murder trial. Because when he lost, and they believed it was merely a matter of when and not if, he would surely get the death penalty. And by that time each of the three, not to mention the jail guard and many other people who had followed the case, would have personally fought for the chance to pull the switch on Spider Smith.
The person who intended to see the deed done, regardless of who did the pulling, was Assistant State Attorney Gene White, one of the most brilliant prosecutors in Watson’s office. After reading the
case file and listening to the tape recordings of the confessions from both Snake and Spider, White had to agree with Spider’s attorney. The whole idea of going to trial was ludicrous, given the evidence against Spider Smith, which had been graciously provided almost in its entirety by Spider himself.
Still, he was aware that the governors of both Florida and Michigan had been involved in this case and that they were watching carefully to see that justice was served. He prepared for the case as if it had gaping holes that needed to be shut. The fact that the holes in this case were invisible and a few pieces of mending thread were all that was needed to sew them up did not matter in the least. Gene White was taking no chances.
Almost from the beginning White decided to sidestep the investigation conducted by Bob Brown. Although Bob’s work was detailed in the court file, there were parts that would certainly be subject to scrutiny by the defense. Especially the parts about paying witnesses and kidnapping people who were then forced into giving information. Gene White appreciated Bob’s work immensely and was thankful for his unorthodox techniques. But he would just as soon not have to justify them before a curious jury.
Also, early in his preparation for the case he spoke with the parents of the boys. He wanted to know the victims, know their families. That way when he spoke of the cruelty of the murders, the devastation their deaths had caused, he would be speaking from the heart.
White liked to speak from his heart and he was brilliant at doing so. Typically jury members would listen as he wove the tale of the crime and when he reached the climax they would have tears in their eyes. In a case like this one there was no need for dramatics. The facts provided all the drama anyone would ever need to convince the jury of Spider’s guilt.
As the months went on and the Barbers and Bouchers waited for the trial, they spent considerably less time together than before. It was time to get on with their lives, however empty and painful they had become.
For the Bouchers there were the younger children, who seemed to need constant attention. Especially John, whose nightmares had gotten worse despite the fact that the bad guys were now in jail. The other boys were struggling with their schoolwork, and with everything else falling apart, Roy’s health had continued to fail. He was in the hospital numerous times in 1979 while the defense filed one continuance after another.