Don Smith

A man on a road trip is found bludgeoned to death near Twin Falls, Idaho.

Smiling Don Smith with a mustache

Don Smith
Composite sketch of an african american male with dark hair

Composite drawing of the murder suspect

CASE DETAILS

On May 16, 1987, at two in the morning, two vehicles collided on a downtown street in Denver, Colorado. One driver fled the scene, leaving his pickup truck. A few minutes later, police arrived. When they searched the truck, they found a room key from a local motel and a bloody jack handle. At the motel, police discovered the room was registered to Larry Monroe. In his room, they found a pair of pants and a sweatshirt, both covered in blood.

Two people stumbling across the lifeless body of Don Smith off the side of a road

Don’s body was found near a road

It turned out the truck belonged to a man named Donald Smith, from Hemet, California. Donald’s wife had not heard from him for 12 days. What started out as a simple accident then turned into a bizarre case of murder.

On May 11, 1987, Don left Hemet towing a trailer. He was headed to Idaho to visit his daughter, Brenda Walker. Except for his two dogs, Don was traveling alone. Brenda was the only child from Don’s first marriage. For most of her life, she and her father had been kept apart:

“My mother kept me away from my father. They didn’t get along real well after the divorce. I think I only saw him once, up until the time my mother died and then I started searching for him. He was searching for me as well.”

When Brenda was 26 years-old, she and her father were finally reunited:

“He was very protective of me. And if I ever had a problem, he said, ‘Just let me know. I’ll take care of it for you.’ He was kind of a macho man. Basically, it was a good relationship, with the exception of when he was drinking, which he didn’t do very often, thank God. He turned into kind of a different person when he was drunk.”

A car accident at a four way intersection. A man is fleeing the scene

After the accident, the suspect fled

The day after Don Smith left home, he and another man pulled up in front of the hospital where Brenda worked as a nurse. Don stayed in the truck while his companion went in.
The receptionist referred the man to Brenda’s supervisor, a hospital administrator named John Slane. Slane went outside to talk to Don:

“He had obviously been drinking. And he said, ‘You know where Brenda is?’ And I said, ‘Well she’s fishing with her girlfriends.’”

Fifteen miles away, Brenda and her two friends had given up fishing and stopped by a tavern near the lake. According to Brenda:

“We’re sitting there at the bar, by the front door. The door opened and everyone in the bar turned around. There was a black man with sunglasses on. He took the sunglasses off and walked into the restroom. About a minute later this man came in with wild hair and his shirt was untucked. It took me a minute to really realize who it was, but it was my father. When he hugged me and sat at the bar with me for a minute, I realized he was drunk. I was a little upset because he had shown up this way. He embarrassed me in front of my friends, and I went to the restroom.”

When Brenda returned, her father broke down:

“He started crying immediately and was babbling about how he doesn’t want to be alive anymore, how he’s got cancer and how he was going to be with my mother in heaven. Then his companion, the black man, came out of the restroom. He looked over at my father and just kept walking, kind of ignored him. He went out and got into the driver’s seat of my father’s truck. I don’t know, he looked really impatient and disgusted at being there.”

When her father became belligerent, Brenda walked out of the saloon. After a few minutes, Don followed Brenda outside, but she left without speaking to him:

“I wish that I would have had more patience with him. I wish I would’ve understood the situation. I wish I would have tried to be more compassionate with him. That was the last time I saw him. He opened up the camper to let the dogs run around and I just drove away.”

Two weeks later, in the high desert outside Twin Falls, a couple out for their morning walk made a horrifying discovery. Twin Falls Sheriff’s Department Corporal Bill Tilson was first on the scene:

“We observed a body that appeared to have been thrown over the guard rail. The body had been decaying for approximately two weeks. We could not recognize him at that point. There was no identification found around him or on him. At this time we had no idea who we had, just another John Doe. An autopsy was done and we found bludgeon marks on the back of the head indicating that this was the cause of death. Also, outside of the guard rail, where possibly the victim was thrown from, we found a sack with a bottle of wine in it. It was taken as evidence.”

The Twin Falls Sheriff’s Department had no idea who the body was until they heard about a truck that had been abandoned about 700 miles away in Denver. Corporal Tilson thought there might be a connection:

“Denver police had sent out a teletype indicating that they had a vehicle involved in an accident that possibly was involved in a homicide. So I called them and they gave me the name of a subject, Donald Smith.”

Fingerprints positively identified the dead man as Donald Smith. Police began to piece together the events that led up to Don’s murder.

On May 11, the day Smith left home, he ran into trouble with the trailer he was towing. Just outside Las Vegas, he arranged to leave it with a local man. One theory is that soon after Don left Las Vegas, he picked up a hitchhiker. At some point along the way, they started drinking. The day after he saw his daughter, Don turned up in Park City, Utah. He called his sister in Vancouver, asking her to wire him $200. When Don picked up the money, he was with someone who looked exactly like the man Brenda had seen with her father in the bar.

Police believe that the hitchhiker murdered Don for the money when he stopped to let his dogs out for a run. The murder weapon was probably the jack handle, grabbed from the rear of the truck. Brenda hopes someone will come forward with information:

“I want to know why he killed my father. I want to know why he took my father away from me and away from my children. My father was the only family I had.”

The composite of Don Smith’s mysterious companion was made from various eyewitness accounts. He is black, but with relatively light skin. He’s about six feet tall and weighs around 180 pounds. Today he would probably be in his fifties. He may use the name Larry Monroe and might have once lived in Blackfoot, Idaho.

Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season one with Robert Stack in season six with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

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28 Comments

  1. Yolapons

    I swear the daughter wants to know what happen to her father and all you people are so ignorant I swear I truly hope God helps her solve this case she needs answers closure have some respect geez

    Reply

  2. A

    That’s Gus Fring.

    Reply

  3. Jen

    I am wondering what happened to the dogs

    Reply

    • Louise Edwards

      Yeah same here they never mention the dogs. Presumably they ran out into the desert and either died or were eventually picked up by dog warden however it looked like quite a remote area. It’s frustrating not knowing isn’t it

      Reply

  4. janis

    I want to know what is Don Smiths full name, where was he born? What was his sisters name who wired him the 200?

    Reply

  5. arthur chavez

    Brenda if I showed you a picture. Would you remember the man who was with your father?

    Reply

  6. CR

    Brenda, I’ve heard about your father’s case twice this week on different podcasts with all information being obtained from Unsolved Mysteries. There really is no additional information online. Have you ever considered doing an interview for a podcast or for a blog to keep your case in the media?

    gradstudenttx@gmail.com

    Reply

  7. tim

    Google don lemon from CNN news. Same face, height body weight. The guy is named don I wonder if that’s don lemons real name. They should seriously look into don lemon from CNN. He was in that area at that same time to. He is untouchable tho because he is on tv.

    Reply

  8. Reply to Brenda

    Brenda- ignore the ignorant! They know nothing of your remorse or clearly what it’s like to need to “parent your parents “ I am curious if with today’s new technology, prints could be taken from the vehicle or the wine bottle ? What about the camper he left behind or the phone from when he called your boss? Was there any DNA left in the truck ? Is this case still open ?

    Reply

  9. Nancy Crawford

    I don’t understand how he went from seeing her 15 miles out of Twin Falls, to a day later being seen in Park City Utah, and then ending up dead near Twin Falls two weeks later, but yet his pickup ended up in Denver Colorado. How did they go from Twin Falls to Park City, to Twin Falls, and then to Denver.

    Reply

  10. thinkingoutloud

    It would be so sad if someone killed Don for $200… I wonder if Don know this person or not (hitchhiker or not) and they were travelling wherever. Maybe they were drinking and Don had too much and became belligerent like his daughter said, Don and the other man get into a bad fight, and the other man purposely or accidentally strikes Don with the car handle on the back of his head killing him and then tries to dispose the body over a guard rail…

    Reply

  11. tim

    Don lemon from cnn

    Reply

  12. Anonymous

    Very creepy case, one of the examples that you shouldn’t pick up hitchhikers. I hope they find whoever did it, I remember the daughter’s interview.

    Reply

  13. Anonymous

    Just saw this segment, I can’t find nothing online. Any updates?

    Reply

  14. LaFawndah

    I just watched this segment and thought the actor looked an awful lot like Obama too. It’s been far too long for justice. Someone has to know something.

    Reply

  15. KRISPYCREME MCDONALD

    I’d like to know what happened to the dogs. I’m going to pitch a TV show called unsolved dog mysteries.

    Reply

  16. Chanita jackson

    Well It’s Quite oblivious That Don Smith Was In The Wrong place At The Wrong Time Why Didn’t Don Smith’s Daughter Help Him? Instead Of Being Mean. To Her Own Father She Should Have Helped Him! And To The Man That Had Murdered Don Smith There’s No Sense In That! It’s Just So Crazy To See What’s On Another Person’s Mind! I Feel The Killer’s Pain I Mean Murdering That Man Come On How Stupid U Be?

    Reply

    • Dave

      He’s a grown man. She isn’t a psychic. She couldn’t forsee what was gonna happen. He was drunk acting like a fool that’s why she left.

      Get some common sense. You’re clearly lacking.

      Reply

      • Brenda

        Thank you Dave. I am not a Psychic. I will however, regret my actions or lack of action, for the rest of my life.
        Brenda Walker

        Reply

        • Sara

          Brenda, just saw your dad’s story again today. I hope you found some peace. I come from a family of alcoholics and if you dwell on mistakes you’ve made while they themselves were drunk, it will only drive you to your own trouble. From what I gathered about your dad, he wouldn’t want that and loved you very much. Many children of alcoholics can’t say that. Take care.

          Reply

  17. Donna Ahern

    This is a sad case. It should not matter the color of someone’s skin. A murdering thief is a murdering thief. Period.

    Reply

  18. Dawn Brandon

    I think they should work on cold case files

    Reply

  19. DA King

    Creepy….ew

    Reply

  20. Dustin_drowns@yahoo.com

    This guy looks like president obama whats crazy is i looked it up obama lived in idaho

    Reply

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