Chapter Fifteen
While the murder of Susan Daniels Smith did not make national headlines, word of her death sent shock waves as far as Hollywood and New York. Tabloid TV shows such as A Current Affair and Inside Edition covered the incident. On both these shows Putnam was called a disgrace to the FBI and the former agent’s identity was concealed due to fear of “jailhouse justice.”
Kathy Putnam told Inside Edition that she was behind her husband one hundred percent, and she insisted that she still loved Mark.
“The way I see it, his mistake was with sleeping with her. That hurts. But when I got past the hurt, I realized there’s a lot more to what he means to me than sex or even friendship. It’s being a part of each other. That’s what love is all about,” Kathy told the TV reporter. “You don’t just throw it away, even though something terrible has happened. The biggest hurt is to be without the person.”
On Inside Edition Kathy Putnam said she could see trouble coming when Susan Smith started to call their home several times a day, but she didn’t find out about the affair or the pregnancy until just before Mark confessed.
“Now that I look back on it, he told me a thousand times in a dozen different ways, but I never heard. It wasn’t a love affair . . . it was out of a sense of responsibility for her. She could manipulate people, even though they knew they were being manipulated. She came on to him, like ‘I’ ve done everything for you, I’ve loved you for a year and a half, now do this for me.’ ”
It was on Inside Edition that Kathy Putnam said when she first heard about the killing, she was “denying it.” She said Mark told her “I’m going to go to prison for this,” and insisted to TV cameras, “my husband felt that he owed it to Susan to confess.” Kathy professed she was able to stand by Mark because “he was able to come forward and do what’s right.”
She told the Inside Edition reporter that Susan was asking for trouble, that she was threatening Mark, saying, “ ‘I’m going to your house and I’m going to put that baby in Danielle’s arms and I’m going to show her her little bastard brother, show her what her daddy did to me.’ ”
Mark Putnam also spoke to Inside Edition from the Minnesota prison where he now resides. It was his only public statement since his sentencing, and he spoke to a TV reporter over the phone, his person concealed, his voice emanating from a large white tower.
“I just snapped, pure and simple. I just snapped and grabbed hold of her, around her neck, and then I stopped. . . .” Putnam’s voice was steady. “I don’t know if it was two seconds or two minutes, and then she stopped hitting me. . . .” Putnam’s words ended.
Before the Inside Edition segment was over, Kathy Putnam had repeatedly insinuated that the death was an accident, that Susan Smith had brought it upon herself. She told the interviewer, “She really wanted to be me. She wanted to be married to Mark. She wanted me out of the picture. She wanted to be an FBI agent’s wife, she really did. . . .” A tear rolled down Kathy’s cheek as she spoke into the camera.
Shelby Ward also appeared on the two tabloid shows, lambasting the public authorities for letting Mark Putnam get off with a light jail sentence.
Shelby told A Current Affair reporters that Susan had had a hard life. When she tried to make sense of her sister’s death, all Shelby could say was, “Maybe he did love her at one time. I don’t know why he killed her.”
Apart from all the television hype, the weapons charge which had been brought against Shelby Ward had now become an issue in Pikeville. Her trial for trying to bring a concealed weapon into court had been set for August 8, 1990. The .38 caliber pistol she’d carried into court was Ike’s gun, and it was worth five hundred dollars. Shelby knew he’d be furious if he had to pay legal fees and fines for the offense, as well as run the risk of having his gun confiscated permanently.
She called Runyon not long after Putnam’s sentencing in an attempt to see how seriously he intended to press the charge. When Runyon made it clear that she would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, Shelby offered to soften her comments to the press regarding the way the Commonwealth Attorney’s office and the Kentucky State Police had conducted the investigation into her sister’s death. In so doing, she hoped such a course of action might influence the outcome of the gun charges.
After some further consultation with Runyon’s office the next day, Shelby Jean Ward, sister of the slain Susan Smith, issued statements to the press, calling her past criticism of the Pike County prosecutor and the state police unfair.
“John Paul Runyon has done the best he could do,” one newspaper account read. “I think John Paul Runyon is an honest man, in my heart. If it had not been for him and the Kentucky State Police, my sister would still be lying over on that hill.”
In Shelby’s public apologies, she praised the government agencies. “Now that I have had the opportunity to think about it and to consider everything that was done surrounding the death of my sister, there is no doubt that the best possible result was accomplished,” another newspaper account stated.
Some reporters noted that Ward had changed her mind about the plea agreement after she’d watched a television press conference held by the Commonwealth Attorney and Kentucky State Police Captain Gary Rose.
On August 9,1990, the day after Shelby appeared in court, local newspapers reported that the concealed weapons charge against Shelby Ward would be dropped in six months, provided she had no problem with the law during that period. In addition, all attendant fines were waived and the court agreed to allow the return of weapon in question.
Afterward, Shelby said, “I didn’t mean a word of [my apologies], praising the police and Runyon and all that.”
Shelby Ward and John Paul Runyon were far from seeing the last of each other. Amid the media hype and public accusations and apologies, there was the unfinished business of Susan Smith’s postmortem exam and burial. A few days after her public apology, Shelby Ward called John Paul Runyon to ask that Susan’s remains be sent back to Freeburn so there could be a funeral. This was a call Runyon may very well have been praying for – evidently he needed an excuse to get Susan Daniels Smith buried and forgotten – but Shelby’s call started a chain reaction which upset public officials all over Kentucky.
On Friday afternoon, just days after Putnam was sentenced, Commonwealth Assistant Attorney Rick Bartley called the state medical examiner’s office in Frankfort to tell Dr. David Wolfe that the family of Susan Smith wanted him to release the remains without completing the postmortem.
In response to this unusual request Dr. Wolfe called John Paul Runyon directly.
Wolfe said that usually in these kinds of cases, when the family wants the body back for a funeral, he explains to them that it takes weeks to go through the evidence to determine the cause of death. He tells people to hold a memorial service, but he makes them understand the importance of the postmortem procedure.
“I told Runyon I would be happy to talk to the family and explain the situation to them. I said I wasn’t trying to prevent them from having a funeral,” Wolfe explained. “I’ve been doing forensic work in Kentucky since 1977, and I belong to the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. I know people from agencies all around the country, but I can’t think of any case in which an autopsy or postmortem has been halted in the case of a homicide.”
Wolfe told the Commonwealth that he returned from Harmon’s Branch with eight twelve-gallon buckets of material, which had to be washed, screened, and dried before the postmortem could get underway. Soil had to be examined for trace evidence, bones had to be put back together to determine whether the fractures were perimortem or postmortem, fingernails, small bones, loose teeth — all had to be sorted through. Moreover, a fetal skeleton was yet to be identified.
Along with this material, Susan’s jawbone was found missing two teeth. Later, the forensic examination would suggest that these teeth could have been knocked out at the time of her death.
However, while Wolfe was at the University of Kentucky lab on Friday, June 16, 1990, a call came into his office from the Commonwealth Assistant Attorney Rick Bartley. Bartley allegedly told David Jones, the administrator of the medical examiner’s office, that he’d get a “court order” to release Smith’s remains if Wolfe did not do so immediately. According to Jones, Bartley threatened to have Wolfe thrown in jail for contempt of court unless the remains were returned to the family at once.
When he returned to his office in Frankfort that day, an enraged Dr. Wolfe got on the phone with John Paul Runyon.
“I’d like to see you try to put me in jail for doing my job,” Wolfe said.
“No, no, David Jones misunderstood,” Runyon said. “There’s no court order. The family just wants the body released.”
“Well, there’s no good reason to do this in a hurry, because undoubtedly there’s going to be a lawsuit, and these questions must be answered.”
“Putnam’s already pleaded guilty, so there’s no use in prolonging this thing,” Runyon told him.
“You can’t even prove what he’s pleaded guilty to actually happened. You don’t even know that he killed her at this point,” Wolfe argued.
But his protests were of no use. Runyon insisted the remains be returned. Rick Bartley called several times that day, telling Wolfe a judge in Pikeville had said there was no legal reason to continue the postmortem. He also claimed that the coroner’s office wanted the remains released to satisfy Smith’s family.
Confounded, Wolfe called the Chief Medical Examiner in Louisville and made him aware of what was going on. If the Pike County coroner no longer wanted a postmortem, Wolfe’s supervisor felt, “the remains might as well be released . . . the legal questions having been answered and Putnam being behind bars.”
But Wolfe believed Putnam was lying in his sworn statement, and he pulled out a copy and went over the testimony again and again, looking for inconsistencies.
He found that a number of statements Putnam had made didn’t jibe. On page three, Putnam stated that Susan was hitting him about the face, but Putnam had had no scratches or bruises on his face; eye witnesses attested to that. Wolfe wanted the chance to check Smith’s fingernails for remnants of facial tissue. And there was the matter of the cracked windshield. Wolfe did not believe Putnam’s contention that Smith could crack safety glass with her bare feet. If she had, there would be trauma to her bones, but now he wasn’t even being given a chance to check on that.
And there were other falsehoods in the sworn confession, Wolfe noted. The idea that Putnam “laid” Susan on her back was ludicrous, as was his claim that he’d kept Susan’s body in the car for over twelve hours.
“Putnam says he placed her on her back. There’s no way he could have placed her. I was at the site on Harmon’s Branch. The only way she could have gotten to the bottom of that hill was for him to pitch her over the hillside. The only reason she stopped where she did was she got hung up in a pile of old fencing there, otherwise she would have rolled all the way to the bottom,” Wolfe surmised.
Wolfe studied the video of Harmon’s Branch made on the day Susan Smith’s body was excavated. Putnam said he’d carried Susan down the hill gently, but Wolfe could find only one steep pathway, used by dirt bikes, that Putnam might possibly have traveled. Even this was too steep for anyone to walk down, let alone someone who was carrying a body.
“A dead person weighs a whole lot more than a live person. It’s like picking up a sack of lard,” Wolfe would later say. “Plus, after a period of time, about three hours, rigor mortis sets in, the body gets stiff. Once rigor sets in, it would take two or three people to lift a body, especially if it’s stuffed into the trunk of a car.”
Furthermore Wolfe was convinced that Putnam hadn’t driven around with Susan in the trunk. He was sure the former FBI agent was a far darker figure than the media or the FBI had made him out to be. Putnam was playing Mr. Nice Guy with the public, but his act wasn’t taking Wolfe in.
He said he kissed her on the cheek. Wolfe thought, this happened in June, and if he’d had the body in the trunk of the car, decomposition was well under way. I’ve seen too many bodies locked in trunks of cars in the summertime, and the odor would never let anyone get near.
Yet Runyon insisted that the postmortem be discontinued, claiming that it was for the sake of Susan Smith’s family, so the next day, Wolfe decided to release Susan Smith’s remains, albeit under protest, and after having been misled, he claims, by the Commonwealth Attorney.
The next day, editorials and newspaper reports appeared with the headlines: NO AUTOPSY FOR WOMAN SLAIN BY FORMER F.B.I. AGENT.
“In thirteen years of performing autopsies for the state, this is the first time in over 700 cases that I have been told not to fulfill my duty in determining the cause and manner of death,” Wolfe told reporters. He also noted that he operated under an annual budget of one and four-tenths million dollars and said the Kentucky medical examiner’s office performed twenty-two hundred autopsies in 1990.
“I don’t feel that anyone, including the pathologist, has the right to keep the remains just to satisfy scientific curiosity when the family wants the body back,” Runyon publicly retorted.
“My interpretation of what happened is this,” Wolfe later concluded, “in cases where the normal procedures aren’t followed, there’s usually a reason why they’re not followed. There’s usually something to hide. That’s been my experience.”
Even before the halting of the postmorten became an issue, David Wolfe had been thwarted by the FBI and state police in his attempts to get at the truth behind Susan Smith’s death. For instance, he’d asked to be taken to the site where Putnam supposedly killed Smith, Peter Creek Mountain, so he could look for trace evidence, but he was told there would be no point in it; the FBI would be coming in to do a thorough investigation. To Wolfe’s knowledge, the FBI never did. Wolfe also asked to see the rental vehicle Putnam had used, but was told FBI officials had already gone through it, and had found nothing in it.
In the meantime, once the Commonwealth got Wolfe to agree to release the remains, the Pike County coroner, Charles Morris, was asked by the Commonwealth to go to Frankfort immediately to pick up the remains, having been led to believe that the postmortem had already been completed.
“I was out of town when all this was going on,” Morris said, “and I get a call from the Commonwealth’s office when I was on the other side of the state. They were telling me to get to the medical examiner’s office and bring the remains back to Phelps, giving me the impression that all the work was finished, that they had finished the examination on Susan Smith.”
When Morris arrived in Frankfort it was already after five P.M. so the coroner had to get the security guard to let him into the medical examiner’s office. Morris signed a release form and brought Susan Smith’s remains straight to the Phelps Funeral Home, leaving the cardboard box with Alice Mullins, the proprietor.
It wasn’t until the next day that Charles Morris and David Wolfe spoke to each other and discovered that they both had been duped by the Commonwealth Attorney’s office. Wolfe told Morris that he hadn’t completed the exam, and Morris told Wolfe that he hadn’t requested that the exam be halted. Afterward, Charles Morris refused to sign the death certificate, and although he was being pressured by the Commonwealth, he did not give in.
Susan Smith’s remains were being readied for burial. John Paul Runyon had even driven to the Phelps Funeral Home to help Shelby pick out a coffin. The state was paying five hundred dollars for the funeral because the family was too poor to afford a proper burial. The coffin Runyon picked out was child sized, which wasn’t the original plan, Shelby claims, but Runyon told her that a full-sized coffin wasn’t necessary.
Then two days before the funeral was scheduled, Charles Morris got John Paul Runyon on the phone. He wanted the prosecutor to agree to set up a meeting with Shelby
“I can’t see why, if you’ve already plea-bargained this thing, you’d want the autopsy halted,” Morris told Runyon. “We’ve never stopped an autopsy for a family before. I’ve talked to other medical examiners in the state, and they’ve never heard of anything like this. How can you let a murder case go unanswered?”
Runyon agreed to the meeting, and Shelby Ward and Charles Morris sat down with him later that day. After a brief conversation, the three parties decided to hold off on the funeral to allow Dr. Wolfe to complete the postmortem. Shelby’s attorney, Larry Webster, had advised her that a postmortem could affect the results of the three-hundred-twenty-five-thousand-dollar claim the family had filed against the FBI on the grounds that the agency had been negligent by failing to protect Susan Smith from her killer. If the postmortem could show, for instance, that Susan had been beaten to death, the family might be able to collect an even larger amount.
It was agreed on Monday, June 18, that Susan Smith’s remains would be sent back to Frankfort. Morris had already seen the remains, and he had questions – about two missing teeth and about the cause of death.
At four P.M. that afternoon, the Pike County coroner received a call from Runyon and was informed that Susan Smith’s remains weren’t going to be taken back to Frankfort, after all, that the burial was to go on as scheduled.
“Runyon just said there wasn’t any point in it. Everything was over and done with,” Morris recalls. “I told him I couldn’t finish my paperwork without proof of the cause of death, but Runyon refused to listen.”
Shelby Ward got a call later that same afternoon from Commonwealth Assistant Attorney Rick Bartley. Bartley told her that the medical examiner’s office was refusing to take the remains back because the matter had become a civil one; it was no longer a state case. Bartley explained that the only way a postmortem could be done at this point was for the family to pay for the exam.
“Bartley told me that the autopsy would run into thousands of dollars. He knew I didn’t have that kind of money,” Shelby said. “I later found out that a private autopsy wouldn’t cost nearly as much as they led me to believe.”
Shelby continued to push for the completion of the postmortem, but the Commonwealth convinced her that the results wouldn’t affect her civil suit, that Susan’s death most likely happened the way Putnam said it had, and that Putnam had had no reason to lie about how he killed Susan. By the end of the conversation, the Commonwealth had Shelby convinced that a quick funeral was the best solution.
The next morning, funeral director Alice Mullins, a family friend of the Runyons, contacted Shelby and said, “How about a one-day service? You all come up tonight and have cake and coffee, and we bury tomorrow at one o’clock.” Shelby agreed to Alice’s plan, even though it seemed so rushed. Carla didn’t have time to fly in from Texas, and people didn’t have time to send flowers; everything was done in such a big hurry.
Susan Daniels Smith was laid to rest on June 20, 1990, on a small hillside behind her grandfather’s house, in the Eldridge family cemetery at Barrenshea Creek. Her brother, Billy Joe, paid a boy twenty-five dollars to clear a plot in this lonely spot where Susan would remain buried for the next few months. There was no tombstone for her, just a plastic copper-tone plaque which listed her name, date of birth, and date of death.
But the entanglement with the FBI was not yet over for Susan Daniels Smith and the members of her family, because not long after her burial, Shelby and Billy Joe were called and asked to talk to FBI agents as part of the ongoing FBI internal investigation of Mark Putnam. They were questioned for over two hours in the Pikeville FBI office in mid July, 1990.
“When Sarah Pickard of the FBI called me and asked if I would talk, I insisted on having my attorney with me, and when we got there, she was very nice. She had an FBI man from Nashville – Agent Raymond Eganey, Jr. – with her, and she introduced us. Huggins was there, and he said they knew I’d been through a lot, and they were apologizing, not for Mark but on their own behalf,” Shelby recalls.
Handled by the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility, the questioning centered on two agents – Terry Hulse, Putnam’s former supervisor, and Ron Poole, Putnam’s former partner.
The FBI team interrogated Shelby about Susan’s pregnancy, wanting to know how much Ron Poole knew about that and the affair. Shelby insisted that Ron had been fully aware of what was going on, and she said Terry Hulse was also aware of the problem. Shelby told the FBI team that according to Ron Poole, Hulse had walked into the Pikeville office at one point and, looking at Mark, had said, “I heard you’re going to be a daddy. I heard you’re going to have a little papoose.” But Mark and Ron had just laughed the remark off.
During the two hours of tape-recorded conversation Shelby had with the FBI agents, some of the talk also centered on Putnam’s alleged pilfering of cocaine from the FBI evidence safe. Shelby repeated what she had heard Susan say about that. She also told the FBI investigators all about the “party” Ron and Mark had the day Susan went over to their office with her friend Donna Charles, who allegedly lifted her blouse.
“Their eyes bugged out when I said that,” Shelby said, “and they were writing things down, looking at each other like they couldn’t believe it.”
While Shelby was in with Agents Pickard and Eganey, Billy Joe was being questioned in a separate room by Jim Huggins.
“Poole was bragging about how he cracked the case,” Billy Joe said. “He told me he’d like to come to Freeburn to express his sympathy to the family, but I told him it wouldn’t be a good idea.”
When the issue of witness protection came up, Huggins told Billy Joe that whatever Putnam had told Susan must have been a total misstatement. Apparently Putnam had had Susan believing that once someone goes under witness protection, no one in the world knows the whereabouts of that person, not even family members. But Huggins informed Billy Joe Daniels that the witness protection system didn’t work that way, that at least one family member is told where the person under protection is.
When Ron Poole’s name came up again, Billy Joe talked about the day he and Ron went out to Josie Thorpe’s and Helen Prater’s to check on the phone calls from a “Susan Smith.”
“Ron told me he was sick of Mark playing these little games,” Billy Joe told Huggins. “He was mad because Putnam was making him look awful bad.”
The results of the internal FBI probe have never been made public. There are newspaper reporters threatening to seek access under the Freedom of Information Act, for access to the report, but no action has been taken by any member of the press to date.