A Devil Named Lemuel

2/29/2024

By M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
Lemuel Smith was born into the least likely of bedeviled households on July 23, 1941. He was part of a strictly religious black family living in Amsterdam, New York. His father was a minister, and both of his parents lived in the household. There were no known reasons why Lemuel would have such a compulsion to kill, which according to him started as early as when he was twelve years old when he nearly smothered a nine-year-old girl to death.

Lemuel Smith in handcuffs

The Smith household tasted grief prior to Lemuel's birth, when their son John Jr. died of encephalitis in 1939. Lemuel was the youngest of four children born to the couple.

By the time Lemuel was 10 years old he had already suffered at least three head injuries, and during those years of his adolescence he stalked, kissed, touched and manually penetrated girls. When he was 12 years old he refused to attend church with his family.

As an adult he was given an EEG, which showed that there was no lasting brain damage from his childhood injuries.

Dorothy Waterstreet was murdered in 1958, the main suspect was Lemuel Smith

On January 21, 1958, Dorothy Waterstreet was robbed and beaten to death, as she crossed a supermarket parking lot near Lemuel Smith's neighborhood in Amsterdam. Dorothy, 46, mother of five, was the wife of an undertaker and was walking home from church. Her body was discovered about 11:30 at night by Rev. Derwood L. Smith, pastor of the First Baptist Church, whose home adjoined the Acme parking lot at the east side. Montgomery County Coroner Fred F. Pipito was called, and pronounced the woman dead. He said Mrs. Waterstreet died instantly due to the brutality of her injuries. Her head and face were battered almost beyond recognition, and identification was difficult even for her husband.

Evidence pointed towards the 16-year-old Smith and within two days he was brought in for questioning, but the case fell apart when Lemuel would agree to questioning only if he received immunity, which was not agreed to.

Lemuel Smith bound and beat Edna Johnson almost to death in 1959

Only a month before, he was indicted for the burglary of Strech’s Coffee Shop and Richel’s Confectionary store in the same neighborhood. He was free after posting a $1000 bond.

During the following summer, he moved to Schenectady with his sister Edith, then to Baltimore with other relatives. In August he took a 25-year-old woman prisoner in a robbery attempt. He beat Edna Johnson with a 15-inch pipe, after tying her hands and feet with a rope and belt. She was unconscious for 13 days. This time, a witness interrupted the crime and the woman was saved.

Lemuel was very recognizable since he already measured 6'4" in height, though being only seventeen years old.

In early 1959, he went to trial for the crime and received the maximum sentence which was twenty years. He served his sentence at Baltimore Penitentiary where he spent much of his time in solitary confinement. He was denied parole twice, and it was during this time that he converted to Catholicism over the stringent opposition of his family, and he was made the chaplain's assistant. Two years after becoming the chaplain's assistant and ten years into his sentence, he was granted parole based on the chaplain's plea to the parole board. He moved back to the Capital district.

In July 1977 Marilee Wilson, 30, was abducted from downtown Schenectady. Smith confessed this crime in 1978 to state police when he was in custody for the Albany murders.

It did not take long for Lemuel Smith to stalk other victims. In May 1969, he kidnapped and sexually assaulted a woman who managed to escape. Later that same day, he kidnapped and raped a 46-year-old friend of his mother's. She convinced him to let her go. After the arrest for this crime he was sentenced to 4 to 15 years to be served in Attica prison. He was denied parole twice during these years.

In October 1976, a law passed by the New York legislature gave Lemuel Smith his freedom, which he took full and immediate advantage of. He had served only 4 years of his sentence.

John F. Hedderman and Sons Church Goods Store, was situated on Columbia Street in a run-down section of Albany. The store provided articles needed for church services for several decades. On Thanksgiving Eve, 1976, Robert Hedderman, 50, the father of five, had his throat slit. Margaret Byron, 56, a clerk who had worked there for 10 years was stabbed 15 times, including twice in the heart. Hedderman's elderly father, Robert, was asleep in a back room of the store when the crime was committed, and he discovered the bodies.

Human feces was found on evidence nearby which later proved valuable, as well as a trail of blood droplets that left the store. Lemuel Smith was free and employed nearby, and hair and blood evidence made him a main suspect.

On December 23, while Albany police were investigating the double-murder, Joan Richburg, 24, was found in her car at Colonie Center mall in Colonie. She was taken to a deserted area of the parking lot where after being raped, her throat was slit and her body was savagely mutilated. The pattern of brutality and more hair evidence made Smith the prime suspect in that murder as well, but he remained free pending investigation.

Barely two weeks later, on January 10, 1977 a large black man tried to lure a 22-year-old woman named Denise out of a gift shop in Albany. When she resisted, he took her 60-year-old grandmother Beulah Southwell hostage, and threatened to kill her. When help arrived, he threw the woman down knocking her unconscious and deliberately stepped on her hand, breaking it. Only years later would the grandmother see a picture of Smith in the newspaper, and identify him as her attacker.

On July 22, 1977, Maralie Wilson, 30, a legal secretary, was found naked under some brush close to railroad tracks. She had been strangled and mutilated. The horrendous post-mortem mutilation was worse than some veteran investigators had ever seen in the region. Wilson's autopsy revealed she had died from asphyxiation caused by a crushed chest. This was because after attacking her, he stomped the young woman to death. He said he flung her body into trees and rammed sticks into her mouth, as well as other parts of her body causing massive internal injuries. He burned her with cigarettes and bit her on the nose and face. Smith also bit the victim's nipples. During an interview with investigators, he later told police that Ms. Wilson was evil, and that she was laughing at him. But the bites on Ms. Wilson's body left definitive impressions, which were of evidentiary value.

Initially the M.E. could not determine if she had been raped, because of massive internal bleeding. Smith was known to frequent the area, and witnesses recalled Wilson being accosted by a large black man. Schenectady police made Smith the prime suspect in her murder.

On August 18, Marianne Maggio, 18, who worked in the same area as Maralie Wilson, was kidnapped and raped by Lemuel Smith.When he forced her to drive towards Albany afterwards, police stopped the car and arrested Smith without incident.

Wilson's remains were exhumed in order to match the bite marks found on her neck, breasts and nose to Lemuel's dental plate. They were a match.

Around the same time, in late October 1977, Smith was transported to Bleecker Stadium in Albany. He and four other men were randomly placed behind five screens at one end of the stadium. At the other end of the stadium, a police dog was given the scent of the feces-stained clothing from the Hedderman store murders eleven months prior.

The dog crossed the entire stadium directly to Lemuel Smith. Out of sight of the dog, the five men were randomly rearranged and the experiment was repeated with the same result. It was successful a third time as well.

In May 1978, with the pressure from the dog experiment and the bite mark match, Smith confessed to five murders, including the murder of Dorothy Waterstreet nearly twenty years earlier.

Lemuel Smith was tried and convicted to several murders some of them 20 years old

Along with his confessions, Smith revealed disturbing secrets about life-long mental problems including a claim that he suffered from multiple personality disorder. He attested to being controlled by the spirit of his deceased brother, John Jr., who had died before he was born.

Smith was examined by Dr. Zvi Klopott, a court appointed psychiatrist who found that Smith believed John, his dead brother, was a messenger from the devil, and whenever Smith committed a rape or murder, he thought John would protect him from punishment. Smith's rage seemed to be generated from Smith's upbringing and a strong resentment to his mother. A prosecution psychiatrist later testified that Smith was a manipulator, and played the court system well. He said Smith fabricated mental illness because he knew he would get a lighter sentence.

When it was decided to go ahead with the initial rape and kidnapping trials, two doctors testified to his delusions, but stopped short of saying he was criminally insane. Smith was found guilty of rape in Saratoga County, and on March 1978 was sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison.

Four months later, a four-day bench trial in Schenectady ended with Smith found guilty of kidnapping, and he was sentenced to another twenty-five years-to-life. Soon after, Lemuel Smith unsuccessfully attempted suicide.

In Albany, Smith was indicted for the Hedderman store double-murder. He was found guilty on February, 1979 and sentenced to another fifty years-to-life.

When the bite mark evidence was presented in the Maralie Wilson murder case, Smith was indicted for her murder. He was also indicted for the murder of Joan Richburg after confessing. Since there was already no chance of him ever leaving prison, the indictments were dismissed.

Donna Payant was murdered by Lemuel Smith in 1981

In 1981, Lemuel Smith was serving his sentence at Green Haven Correctional Facility. Donna Payant a Corrections Officer at the facility was married and had three children. In May of that year, Payant was on duty when she received a phone call, and she told her co-worker she needed to take care of a problem. When she missed roll-call, hundreds of corrections officers combed the entire prison grounds throughout the night, and into the following morning.

Smith had strangled Donna Payant in the chaplain's office, stuffed her body into a garbage bag, and took it to one of the dumpsters.

Trash dumpsters were emptied into a truck, which police escorted to a dumpsite twenty miles away. When the garbage was spread out, officers finally found Payant's mutilated body.

It was the first time in the United States that a female corrections officer had ever been killed inside a prison. More than five thousand officers attended Payant's funeral, and New York governor Hugh Carey officially vowed "a swift response".

The same examiner that observed bite marks on Maralie Wilson was coincidentally called to examine bite marks on Payant's body. He quickly recognized the bite marks, and Lemuel Smith was charged with Payant's murder in June 1981. The charge carried a mandatory death sentence.

The high-profile nature of Donna Payant's murder brought high-profile lawyers William Kunstler, and C. Vernon Mason (Mason was later a main player in the alleged Tawana Brawley hoax). The team alleged everything from promiscuity by Payant, to guards dealing drugs inside and outside the prison. They were unable to evade the bite mark evidence however, and even their own expert witness agreed that the bite marks on Payant matched those on Maralie Wilson.

The capital murder trial finally began on January 20, 1983, more than eighteen months after Smith's arrest. The defense questioned testimony of inmates and other corrections officers and proposed conspiracy theories, but with no answer to the bite mark evidence, Smith was found guilty three months later at the conclusion of the trial.

Considered the only deterrent for prisoners already serving life sentences, a New York law at the time mandated that Smith automatically be sentenced to death. He was sentenced in June. On July 2, 1984, an appeal by Smith called that law's constitutionality into question, and was successful in commuting his death sentence to another term of life.

Throughout the years that Lemuel Smith was in prison he was examined by several doctors, and found not to have been physically, mentally or sexually abused by his parents. He was heterosexual, but participated in homosexual relations while he was in prison. He abused drugs and alcohol, and was diagnosed with schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder,

Serial killer, Lemuel Smith is incarcerated at Five Points Correctional Facility in Seneca County. As of 2024 he is 82 years old and wheel-chair bound.

Source - Murderpedia