Naman Shrestha
In early December 2018, the entire community of Aberdeen, Maryland, was shocked to its core when the 54-year-old engineer and mother named Jacquelyn Smith met her untimely demise. Her husband, Keith Smith, claimed that they were returning home from his daughter Valeria Smith’s birthday dinner when a panhandler stabbed her to death. However, it later turned out that he was responsible for the gruesome crime and had his daughter cover up the crime. All the intricate details of the case are explored in NBC’s ‘Dateline: Deadly Intersection,’ which also features in-depth interviews with Jacquelyn’s family and friends.
Keith Smith Was the Sole Beneficiary of Jacquelyn Smith’s Insurance Policy
Born in May 1966, Keith Smith got into trouble with law enforcement in 2000 when he committed multiple robberies at the First Union Bank in Timonium, Maryland, in the span of nine months. During one of the robberies, on August 28, 2000, he reportedly ordered the bank employees and customers to lie on the floor at gunpoint. In 2001, he pleaded guilty to committing the robberies and was sentenced to 12 years in prison for robbery with a deadly weapon and fleeing from the police. After serving six of his 12-year imprisonment sentence, he was released on February 9, 2007. Six years later, at a friend’s birthday party in 2013, he first met Jacquelyn Smith, an engineer and a single mother of two adult sons at the time. He was also a doting father to his young daughter, Valeria Smith, who allegedly battled with drug-related problems.
After dating for several months, Keith married Jacquelyn in 2014, and it is alleged that Valeria believed the relationship was still in the early stages. According to investigative reports, Jacquelyn convinced Keith to put his house up for sale, which led Valeria to look for another house. In the next four years, the Smith family invested in a yacht and multiple luxury cars, most of which were reportedly financed by the engineer. She had also listed Keith as the sole beneficiary of her $804,000 life insurance policy. As per reports, around 12:30 am on December 1, 2018, Keith, Jacquelyn, and Valeria were driving near North Valley and East Chase streets when Keith stabbed his wife multiple times and staged it as a botched robbery.
Keith Smith Tried to Shift the Blame to Panhandlers For Jacquelyn’s Homicide
During the 911 call, he told the dispatchers that his wife had been stabbed by panhandlers while he and Valeria were in the vehicle, after returning from celebrating Valeria’s birthday. Keith told the police that Jacquelyn wanted to offer some money to a homeless woman with a baby in her arms. As per his account, after he pulled the window down, another man walked up to his wife and stabbed her multiple times, stealing her necklace and wallet. He added, “…the girl snatched the little pocketbook from the seat, and they both ran. I jumped out the car to run, but I heard my wife screaming, so I came back to the car.” After the tragedy, Keith gave a tearful plea publicly, stating, “The last thing I thought they were going to take my wife’s life, and so now I got to live with that, I got to live with that every day.”
A couple of months later, on Valentine’s Day 2019, the police received an anonymous tip informing them that Jacquelyn Smith had been thinking about divorcing Keith Smith, as their marriage was reportedly deteriorating. More evidence suggested that his story of panhandlers attacking his wife was false after the police reviewed surveillance footage and cell phone records of Keith and Valeria. On March 3, 2019, right when the father-daughter duo was trying to leave the country and cross the border to Mexico, the authorities arrested them in Harlingen, Texas. He was charged with first-degree murder of Jacquelyn, while Valeria was charged with conspiracy to commit murder.
Related
Keith Smith is Currently Incarcerated at a Maryland Prison
Not long after the arrest of Keith and Valeria Smith, the latter made a deal with the authorities and agreed to testify against him in court in exchange for lesser charges against her. In December 2021, during Keith Smith’s trial, the prosecution told the jury that the defendant stabbed Jacquelyn Smith to death for insurance money in front of his daughter, Valeria, who helped him get rid of the evidence. At some point, Valeria took the stand as the prosecution’s star witness and testified that Keith made up a story about a panhandler stabbing his wife and ordered her to play along.
According to her, after celebrating her birthday, her father took a detour and drove them to Druid Hill Park, where he committed the killing. She added that Keith was calm after the stabbing and disposed of the knife in the woods, and told her to stick to his story of a panhandler killing his wife. She also testified that he went to collect the paperwork for the life insurance money a couple of days after the homicide. The defense tried to paint Valeria as an opportunist who was testifying to avoid prison.
Ultimately, on December 9, 2021, the jury found Keith Smith guilty of first-degree murder and use of a deadly weapon in connection with Jacquelyn Smith’s stabbing death. Meanwhile, Valeria pleaded guilty to being an accessory to the crime and received a 5-year prison sentence and 3 years of probation. More than two months later, on February 28, 2022, Keith was sentenced to life in prison for the murder conviction and an additional three years for the weapons charge. As of today, the 60-year-old killer is serving his sentence at Western Correctional Institution in Allegany County, Maryland.
You must be logged in to post a comment.