True Crime Documentary - Tragic Murder of 11-Year-Old Carlie Brucia

True Crime Documentary - Tragic Murder of 11-Year-Old Carlie Brucia

Speaker 1: Here it is, January 4th, 97, and Carly just got here.

Speaker 2: Hi, Carly. Hi, Papa.

Speaker 3: Hello there.

Speaker 4: This is a picture of Carly. She is missing one

of her front teeth.

Speaker 5: And she just looks adorable.

Speaker 4: Carly was more like a little sister to me than

my niece. We were only eight years apart, so it

was like having a little sister around.

Speaker 6: Go ahead, pedal, push.

Speaker 4: Here we have a video of my brother teaching Carly

how to ride her new bike outside. There's a lot

of snow on the ground because it was March. She's

calling out for me. Her calling out for me, you know,

it was the love went both ways.

Speaker 7: Everybody loved her.

Speaker 2: She loved people. When she walked into a room, her energy,

you just felt it. She would have been something special.

I know that because she was.

Speaker 6: She was special.

Speaker 3: 911, what's the location of the emergency? My daughter is missing. Okay,

what's her name, ma'am?

Speaker 1: Carly. A child was reported missing Sunday evening during the

Super Bowl.

Speaker 8: Carly was an 11-year-old girl. Everybody in the community was

very concerned.

Speaker 4: I turned on the news, and there's my brother being

interviewed about Carly's disappearance.

Speaker 6: I'd like to say to the man who abducted her,

you've done a considerable amount of damage.

Speaker 5: Please stop.

Speaker 9: Release my daughter.

Speaker 4: Reality sets in very quickly that this is really happening,

and it's terrifying.

Speaker 1: The second that video came into our possession, this case

took a whole new turn.

Speaker 8: When you see the video, you know in your pit

of your stomach that it's probably not going to end well.

Speaker 7: This is a broad daylight interaction.

Speaker 10: Carly was in the wrong place at the wrong time,

and that's everybody's worst nightmare, especially a parent.

Speaker 1: We had this great piece of evidence that showed this

crime having occurred, but we were stumped. We simply had

no suspects to work with.

Speaker 4: Watching my brother navigate through grief and loss, it's excruciating.

Speaker 5: It changes you forever.

Speaker 4: This bright future that we had for Carly, all those

hopes and dreams, you realize they're never.

Speaker 5: Going to happen.

Speaker 4: It's just gone in a second. He took that away

from us. This has to be my most favorite picture

of Carly. I love that it was taken here in

my backyard. We all have so many memories of pushing

each other on the swing, and she just looks so happy.

When my sister and I found out that we were

going to have a niece, we couldn't wait for her

to be born. I was eight years old at the time.

My sister was around 11. We were just beyond excited.

Carly was born on March 16th, 1992. She arrived several

weeks early. She was perfectly healthy. It was just so

exciting to be able to hold her. Carly was the cutest.

She had these big electric blue eyes, this beautiful blonde hair,

and she was always smiling.

Speaker 3: You'll have a good one, my gentlemen.

Speaker 4: My brother Joe was just the greatest dad. He was

so excited to have a baby girl and to share

her with our family. What do you have?

Speaker 5: Hmm?

Speaker 3: What do you have?

Speaker 4: Yeah, this must have been the video right before she

left for Florida. She was probably leaving the next day.

Speaker 8: Well, you know, Collie's going to Florida.

Speaker 2: She's taking a big, big trip.

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 5: You're going to Florida with Mommy?

Speaker 10: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 8: You're going to miss your daddy?

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 5: I'm going to miss my daddy.

Speaker 4: Yes.

Speaker 8: And we're all going to miss our little Carly.

Speaker 4: Carly was about two when I found out. My brother

Joe and his wife, Carly's mom, were separating, and she

was going to be moving to Florida.

Speaker 5: We were devastated. I remember my parents telling us.

Speaker 4: That we would see Carly over the summer, and we

would see her again over the Christmas break. My sister

and I were very upset about the fact that we

would only see her twice a year.

Speaker 5: We were so used to having her in our everyday life.

Speaker 4: But my brother and Carly, they just had a wonderful relationship,

and even though she was living in Florida, they were

in contact all the time, so they maintained a close connection.

Speaker 2: My daughter's name is Mandy, and her and Mandy were

just like two peas in a pod. Carly was in kindergarten,

and her and my daughter were in the same class.

When they first met, they didn't like each other. They

used to fight. and they ended up being best friends.

Sarasota's changed a lot, but back then, it was much

smaller and very laid back. It was like a quaint

kind of a town. You could play outside till dark

and not worry. You could ride your bicycle around town

and not worry. Carly was just a typical five-year-old. She

was always at my house. We'd have dinner at her house.

She'd have dinner at our house, and we'd go grocery

shopping together. We were more like family than we were friends.

She loved going to visit her father, and she loved

her aunt.

Speaker 4: Carly's last visit to New York, she was 11 years old,

and she was really changing and turning more into a

teenager than a little girl.

Speaker 2: She was growing up and she was starting to find

her own way. I think she would have done well

in life, I really do, if she would have had

the chance.

Speaker 4: Our last conversation that we had, I remember being in

her room at my brother's house.

Speaker 5: We were always upset when we had to leave each other.

Speaker 4: We talked about big plans of her coming back to

New York when she was 16, finishing up.

Speaker 5: High school in New York.

Speaker 4: I look back on that conversation so thankful that I

have that memory and that moment with her because that

was our goodbye.

Speaker 3: 911, what's the location of the emergency? My daughter is missing.

We've been driving around and now... It was February 1st, 2004,

Super Bowl Sunday.

Speaker 1: Detectives responded out to her house and took the report

from the mother.

Speaker 8: Even though she's a child, she was still 11, and

she was a responsible kid by all accounts that everybody

I spoke to.

Speaker 1: Carly's mom was living a pretty good life. She was

a blue-collar worker, was a good mother to Carly.

Speaker 10: Carly left her friend's house around 6.15. She was walking

along a.

Speaker 7: Relatively busy road.

Speaker 10: There were fast food restaurants, coffee shops, but there aren't

a lot of people out.

Speaker 2: We were sitting at the dinner table and the news

came on. It was like a news break thing that

she was missing. And my daughter Mandy screamed, Carly! And

we turned the TV up. None of us could believe it.

I mean, it was shocking.

Speaker 4: The only thing that I was told was that Carly's missing.

That's all that I knew. I was 19 at the time.

My family may have known more information that they were

shielding me from. The gravity and the seriousness wasn't something

that entered my mind right away. I was like, OK, well,

we're going to find her.

Speaker 5: It's just we have to find her.

Speaker 4: But it was shortly thereafter that the panic did set in.

Speaker 5: I got on the phone.

Speaker 2: I called her mom, Sue. And she was in tears.

Everybody went out looking. It was just surreal. It didn't

seem real.

Speaker 5: It was like a nightmare.

Speaker 1: Detectives got a list of Carly's friends. They got a

list of other places that she could possibly be. And

they searched throughout the night into the early morning hours

but could not find Carly.

Speaker 4: My brother, Joe, flew down to Florida right away to

help with the efforts to find her.

Speaker 8: In my job, you're kind of Jaded in many respects,

you see horrible, horrible things. You relate to it. You

empathize with the parents who are missing their child and

you don't know where that child is. And I had kids,

so it's really hard to just turn off being a

father or a citizen.

Speaker 1: It is not a common thing for children of that

age to be missing overnight. And so when she didn't

come back home that evening, we recognized that this is

an unusual case. We contacted the Sarasota County Canine Rescue,

which is a group of volunteers who have bloodhound tracking dogs.

In this case, Carly had spent the night at a

friend's on Bee Ridge Road, and so we started a

track from her friend's house.

Speaker 8: The police took Bloodhounds from the friend's house, and they

tracked her four or five blocks away. It makes sense

that she would walk on Bee Ridge Road. It's a

main road, but the path of the Bloodhounds showed that

she went behind the car wash facility, and then the

Bloodhounds sent stops.

Speaker 1: The owner of the business came out and questioned what

was going on. The detectives told them that we had

a missing girl in the area and that we had

done this track to the middle of the car wash.

The owner said, well, I have just installed a video

camera system and he would go check to see if

he saw anything. And that's kind of where this story.

Speaker 3: Took a turn.

Speaker 1: It is immediately shocking.

Speaker 8: You see Carly walking in the back of the car wash,

and you see a man walking right up to her.

You see him say something, and you see him grab

her above the wrist, and then they walk together out

of the video's view. It's a tough video to watch.

Speaker 4: When I watched their surveillance video, I could tell by

her body language that she was kind of taken aback,

and she looked kind of frozen and like she didn't

know what to do.

Speaker 5: I mean, she was only 11 years.

Speaker 4: Old, and then he pulled her away, and he pulled

her off the screen and never saw her again.

Speaker 2: She was smart, and I was shocked that, you know,

it's like, why is she going with him? Did he

have a weapon?

Speaker 7: It's like, uh-uh.

Speaker 2: And also thinking, she's gonna be terrified. I can't even

imagine what that poor child went through.

Speaker 8: There was still hope by law enforcement in our office

that we would find her, but it's a scary video.

Speaker 4: The feeling that you get when you watch that video,

you know, you just want to yell at your TV,

don't go, don't go with him. I wish that last

time Carly and I saw each other that we had

talked about stranger safety, but it's not something that you

typically talk about with your friends or your little sister

or your niece, but I wish that I did.

Speaker 8: Law enforcement couldn't identify the man at that point. They

didn't know who he was. He wasn't related to the

family when they checked with the family members.

Speaker 1: The video revealed that we were looking for a white male,

somewhere between the ages of 25 and 40.

Speaker 8: He was wearing a darker blue mechanics uniform. He had

a name tag there, but we couldn't make that out

from the video. He walks with a distinctive gait.

Speaker 1: You could tell by the way he walked up to

Carly that he wasn't very tall. He had short, cropped

black hair, what appeared to be tattoos, and was wearing

some work shoes.

Speaker 10: Police are immediately trying to do everything they can, especially

in a case where it seems like a child is

abducted by somebody who is a stranger. But at the

same time, they're also very aware that they don't want

to do something that is going to spook that offender

and make them cover their tracks by harming that child.

Speaker 7: So there's a fine line that police walk.

Speaker 1: We weren't close to finding who this person was. And

so that night, in time for the 11 o'clock news,

we released the video to the newspapers and the TV stations.

Speaker 5: An Amber Alert is in effect for Carly Bruscia.

Speaker 1: She was seen on this surveillance tape being approached by

a man and then led away.

Speaker 4: My mom told us, don't listen to the radio, don't

listen to anything, because she's afraid that we would hear

something that we shouldn't hear over the radio.

Speaker 1: We were immediately inundated with information and tips. And the

problem with it is everyone who saw that film believed

that they knew that person. Everyone thought their kind of

creepy neighbor was that person. hey, my mechanic is that person.

And so these tips just started pouring in.

Speaker 8: One person called in and said, based on his gait,

the way he looked, his haircut, the uniform, that looks

like Joseph Smith.

Speaker 10: Smith at the time of this event was 37 years old.

He had a few run-ins with the law already. He

had served time. He was on probation for drug offenses.

This was a man who wasn't exactly an upstanding citizen.

Speaker 1: When we looked into Joseph Smith, we found out that

he was employed as a mechanic at that time. His

employer identified him by his walk, by his haircut, by

his tattoos and just his general appearance.

Speaker 10: The former co-worker of Joseph Smith said to police that

the way he grabbed the girl actually looked like the

way that Joseph Smith would grab tools. Police wanted to

talk to Joseph Smith immediately.

Speaker 1: I responded to this residence, and we were there for

quite a while, banging on the door. After about 30

minutes or so, Joseph Smith came to the door and

we sat down on his front porch and we talked

about Super Bowl Sunday and what he had been doing.

He said that he was watching the Super Bowl at

the house, that he had basically been with.

Speaker 8: People and I could check his alibi.

Speaker 1: In front of this house was a vehicle that Joe

identified as his own. At that point, the probation parole

officer arrived and searched the vehicle. Drug paraphernalia was found

and Joseph Smith was arrested for violation of probation and

taken to jail. While that is occurring, a white female

pulls up driving a yellow station wagon. She identifies herself

as Joseph's roommate and that she and her husband lived

there together with Joe I took the roommate aside, and

I asked about Joe's whereabouts on Super Bowl Sunday. The

roommate told me that Joe was home the whole day,

that she actually saw him in the house, and that

they had watched pretty much the whole Super Bowl. At

that point, I eliminated Joseph Smith as being a suspect

in this case. We're at a loss as to what

to do.

Speaker 4: I would go to bed at night just worried about her, thinking,

where could she be?

Speaker 5: Is she alone? Is she uncomfortable? Is someone hurting her?

Speaker 4: I definitely played scenarios in my head that she could

still be with us. Could just be someone took her

somewhere and they're holding her for ransom. Anything but to

think that she's no longer with us.

Speaker 8: The entire community stepped up to try to find this

11-year-old girl. There was people in my own family that

were out searching dumpsters and looking for her. There was

a lot of prayers trying to find her alive. But

the first 24 hours after somebody goes missing, the longer

it takes, the harder it is to find the person

as a survivor.

Speaker 1: Later on that evening, the front desk officer at the

sheriff's office contacted me and said that a man was

at the front desk and that they were dropping off

a car because the car was involved in the Carly

Bruscia abduction. and the front desk officer told me that

it was the husband and wife, roommates of Joseph Smith.

The husband stated that his wife had simply lied. When

I interviewed the wife again, she had no explanation for

why she ever had said that Joseph Smith was at

the house during the Super Bowl. According to them both now,

Joseph Smith had stolen their yellow station wagon the previous

Saturday and had been missing the entire weekend. Joseph Smith's

alibi completely fell apart. Not only was it not substantiated,

it was a false alibi.

Speaker 8: At that point, the car is seized as potential evidence

in the case. A search warrant is conducted. You have

a forensic unit scouring the car for trace evidence, fibers, dirt, blood,

anything that would connect Carly to the car. Ultimately, they

did find little threads of pinkish-reddish caught in the back

seat of the station wagon, consistent with the shirt that

Carly had on. Which let everybody know that she was

basically in that back portion of that vehicle at some point.

Speaker 1: You and I had some things to talk about, okay?

Because some of the things at the house, we got

to get straight. That's the most important thing.

Speaker 4: Okay.

Speaker 7: And this room.

Speaker 5: Is about the truth.

Speaker 1: When it's time to re-interview him, Joseph Smith refused answering.

Speaker 4: I was already advised to talk to a lawyer.

Speaker 1: And he requested his rights to remain silent. That means

you and I can't talk. I think I should talk

to a lawyer. But with his identification, and with the

presence of this vehicle, and with now the roommate's help,

we're able to start building the case against Joseph Smith.

The first thing we do is we go back to

the videotape, and we discover other cameras at the car

wash showed views of the parking lot, showed views of

the car wash bays, and showed views of the westbound

traffic on Bee Ridge Road.

Speaker 8: It turns out that vehicle is seen in the videos

in the front of the car wash right before Carly

is abducted. You see the station wagon that was lent

to Joseph Smith that Sunday driving in the parking lot,

doing a loop, circling back out onto Bee Ridge Road,

the main road. Then you see it on Bee Ridge

Road heading west, And ultimately, we know, based on connecting

the dots, he came in on the west, parked on

the west side of the car wash, abducts Carly, and

takes her into the car. And that's why the bloodhound

sent to end right there at that property line.

Speaker 1: It definitively put Joseph Smith in the Bee Ridge area,

driving that yellow vehicle in the area of the car wash.

I knew that we had caught Carly's abductor, that Joseph

Smith had committed this crime, but Carly's been gone 72 hours,

and she's not with the guy that she's on the

film with. We need to find Carly.

Speaker 4: Carly, being a Florida girl, loved the beach and the ocean.

When Carly would visit in the summer, we would typically

have a couple days of vacation planned where we went

to the beach.

Speaker 5: We built fires on the beach, we.

Speaker 4: Went out to dinner, and it was just one of

those special vacations that you never forget. There's definitely a

feeling of dread when Someone that you love has been

missing for days and you know that someone.

Speaker 5: Purposely took her. There's a feeling of helplessness.

Speaker 4: You're just sitting around waiting to find out what has

happened to your loved one.

Speaker 10: Joseph Smith asked police if he could talk with his

brother This was something that.

Speaker 7: The police were a little hesitant to allow. So they

said that only if it would be approved by his lawyer.

Speaker 10: Interestingly, Joseph Smith's public defender approved the meeting. And a

few days after the conversation that John and Joseph had,

and this is after Carly had been missing for several days,

John alerts the police that there may be information.

Speaker 7: That he has.

Speaker 1: But can you tell us about what, you know, what

led to your call and what you saw or what

you observed or what?

Speaker 9: It's not that I observed anything. It's just the picture is,

I mean, amazingly close.

Speaker 4: I mean, you.

Speaker 9: Know, it looks just like my brother.

Speaker 7: John was sort of, I would say, torn on whether

to go to the police.

Speaker 3: When you seen the video, what were your first impressions?

Speaker 9: I got chills.

Speaker 8: I mean, I was like, oh, man.

Speaker 10: It wasn't until he kind of thought it over and

then decided, okay, I have to share this information with

law enforcement.

Speaker 1: How about the way that the individual in the video,

the way that he walked?

Speaker 9: That's the key right there. He had surgery on his back,

which he has a few discs in there, a few vertebrae,

so he's got metal plates, so he does walk funny.

Speaker 7: Which is ultimately what he did.

Speaker 8: He was also missing Sunday.

Speaker 9: I don't know if you guys have ever heard that already.

He was missing Sunday.

Speaker 2: What do you know about that, or what is it?

Speaker 9: He was missing between, I think, 3 and 7.30 or

3 and 8. He told his wife that he was

working on someone's car. Then he told my mom that

he was sitting in Marina Jacks looking at the water.

And then to see that on TV, you know, Monday,

I mean, that looks damn close like him. I hope

it's not him, but I feel bad for the family.

Speaker 2: What's your gut tell you?

Speaker 9: Like 80-20 him. The more I look at that video,

the more I look at him.

Speaker 2: Well, that's true.

Speaker 9: Incredible resemblance, if it's not him.

Speaker 1: Joseph Smith's brother stated that he could get Joe to

tell us where Carly was.

Speaker 8: Law enforcement assisted having Joseph Smith meet with his brother,

John Smith, and his mother to talk about things privately.

Speaker 7: They told his brother. Oh, I thought she was older.

Speaker 10: I thought she was 16 or 17. He wanted to

see if that helped to minimize his culpability and made

him look less bad.

Speaker 7: He said it was an accident.

Speaker 10: To me, every single thing that Joseph said to his

mother and to his brother was like pilot testing what

he was ultimately going to tell police and jurors. And

he wanted to see if they were willing to believe it.

If his family didn't believe it, Why would a stranger

who's on a jury?

Speaker 4: My biggest fears were that they, you know, were going

to find her body somewhere, but I still had some

hope that maybe she was just being held somewhere. All

those hopes were distinguished pretty quickly.

Speaker 1: Joseph's brother and mother contacted the sheriff's office and said

Joseph had confessed to killing Carly and had described to

his brother where Carly's body was. We were going to

put Joseph on a phone and Joseph was going to

describe where he had taken Carly and where he had

dumped her. Myself and two other agents went to the

brother's house.

Speaker 8: We picked him up.

Speaker 1: The brother sat next to me in the passenger seat

and a phone was provided to Joseph.

Speaker 4: In the jail.

Speaker 1: Joseph stated that he had dumped her body at the

first church on Proctor Road and that Carly's body would

be found along a fence line. We pull into the

parking lot and I can see that there is a

fence line along the backside of this church. I knew

at that point that we were in the right area.

I knew that Carly's body was out there. But I

also knew that evidence-wise, I wanted the first person to

see that body to be a forensic tech, because that

was going to enable us to collect the best evidence possible.

Speaker 6: The body of a beautiful 11-year-old girl, Carly Boucher, has

been found. Joseph Smith is under arrest for the abduction

and murder of Carly.

Speaker 10: When police found Carly's body, she was naked from the

waist down.

Speaker 7: It was pretty clear that she was sexually assaulted.

Speaker 10: And she had very obvious ligature marks on her neck,

meaning it was very clear this little girl was strangled

to death.

Speaker 5: It was tough.

Speaker 8: It was a somber day in our community. I knew

tons of friends and family that were out searching for her.

I mean, an 11-year-old girl was brutally murdered for no

reason whatsoever. I wanted to bring him to justice, and

it was just a sad day.

Speaker 4: I walked in the front door and I can see,

you know, my extended family being in the house, my aunts, uncles,

my parents.

Speaker 5: And, you know, it was just like a blur.

Speaker 4: But I just remember my mom hugging us and telling

us that they found her. And she was no longer

with us. Our lives were never going to be the same.

Speaker 2: I went to Sue's house. every day to help because

she was just really having a hard time. The night

that the sheriff came by, I had this feeling. When

I went home, I just knew, I just, something told

me that they had found her. Just as I pulled

up in front of the house, the sheriff knocked on

the door and he told her. She dropped to her

knees and she let out this this bellow. I've never

heard in my life. When he told her that she

was dead, it was horrible.

Speaker 4: When we found out who had committed this crime, it

was a bit shocking to know that it was a

father of three daughters.

Speaker 5: Words can't describe.

Speaker 4: The anger that someone has towards someone who abducts, assaults,

and murders a young girl.

Speaker 10: A lot of people mistakenly assume that because somebody is

a child abductor, rapist, and murderer, that they are just

horrible and evil throughout every single aspect of their entire life,

that they are a terrible parent, that they are terrible

at their jobs.

Speaker 7: That's not often the case.

Speaker 10: In fact, usually the people that are really vile and

commit such despicable acts tend to live relatively normal lives.

They blend in. They have children of their own. They

have a family. They have a job.

Speaker 4: We were lucky enough to have our own funeral service

here in New York for Carly.

Speaker 5: It was definitely a difficult day.

Speaker 4: We had it in a local church and our neighbor

is a deacon and he knew Carly. So he talked

about memories of seeing Carly swinging on the tree swing

and just having a great time in the yard. The

church was packed, friends and family, friends I haven't seen

in years.

Speaker 5: Everyone just wanted to come out to support.

Speaker 8: Us that day. Once you find a little girl's body,

want to bring him to justice. You know, frankly, you

want to give him the death penalty right then. That's

the human side of it. But there's a process, and

you have to build the case properly. As a parent,

you feel for the family, you feel for the community.

But for him, you want to bring him to justice

as swiftly as possible. Joseph Smith was charged with first-degree murder,

with kidnapping of a child under 12, and then sexual

battery on a child under 12.

Speaker 1: The videotape was an amazing piece of evidence. You have

a picture of at least the beginnings of that crime.

Speaker 8: John Smith, he had to testify against his brother in

a case where we're seeking the death penalty, and he

did the right thing.

Speaker 4: Watching my brother navigate through grief and loss, then I

have to go and sit through a trial where they

go through every single step of what happened to your

loved one.

Speaker 5: It's excruciating.

Speaker 4: In a way, focusing on making sure that justice was

served was a distraction from the grief and the loss

that we had all experienced.

Speaker 1: We know what's about to happen to Carly. That's what

makes that video so shocking and you just want to

reach through there and you want to stop her, you

want to stop him.

Speaker 5: You want Carly to scream, you want.

Speaker 1: Her to shout. A bad guy has grabbed her and

you can't fathom the trouble she's in and you can't

stop it.

Speaker 8: The forensic lab ultimately testified in trial that those pinkish

reddish cotton fibers found in the car were consistent with

the pink shirt that Carly had on when she was found.

Speaker 4: As the trial went on, evidence showed that she put

up quite a big fight, but, you know, how can

an 11-year-old overpower a 38-year-old man?

Speaker 5: The fear that she must have felt, she was all alone.

Speaker 4: Just such a horrible thought to have, to think about

an 11-year-old girl being all by herself when this was

happening to her.

Speaker 5: Really no words can describe the.

Speaker 4: Feeling that I get when I think about her last

few moments.

Speaker 5: She must have been so scared.

Speaker 8: The evidence was strong. There was no doubt the jury

was going to find him guilty.

Speaker 4: What we were all worried about was his sentencing. Our

minds went right to the next thing.

Speaker 5: Let's get him the death penalty. That was our focus.

Carly didn't get to live, why should he get the

chance to live?

Speaker 1: We went into a penalty phase, which talked about the

atrociousness of these crimes, about the cruelty of the crimes,

and about the heinousness of the crimes. And then, the

state asks the same jurors to pass a sentence of

death on Joseph Smith. And he, by a 10 to

2 margin, was found guilty and was sentenced to death.

Speaker 4: That was another sigh of relief from me and my family.

We were all happy for this very small victory.

Speaker 5: What we didn't know was that it wasn't over yet.

Speaker 8: There was a case that came out of the U.S.

Supreme Court on the death penalty. And unfortunately, the Florida

Supreme Court looks at that case, interprets that anything that

was not unanimous was being reversed for sentencing, a new sentencing.

He would still have life in prison. There was no

question he would have life in prison. The question is,

do we get the death penalty? In my eyes, my

boss's eyes, law enforcement's eyes, and the victim's family's eyes, eyes,

you can't do what he did to an 11-year-old girl

and not receive the death penalty. So we were gearing

up to do a resentencing, which means you have to

bring everybody back in, the medical examiner, present all the

evidence to a new jury to seek the death penalty again.

Speaker 4: While we were waiting for that to happen, I got

a phone call from my mom to let me know

that Joseph.

Speaker 5: Smith was dead.

Speaker 8: Joseph Smith died in prison of liver cancer. And I

was happy. And I think most people, when I told

them the news, felt the same.

Speaker 4: It was surprisingly very emotional. I broke down and started crying.

It was finally over. It was just a moment of

like a sigh of relief that this is really over now.

This battle has ended.

Speaker 8: Carly's mom was a devoted mom and, you know, wanted

justice for her daughter. Unfortunately, she died before Joseph Smith died,

and she didn't actually get to learn he had passed

away in prison.

Speaker 10: Carly's mother died of a drug overdose. It seemed like

this was just her only hope. coping mechanism. It didn't matter.

Speaker 7: That Joseph Smith received a death sentence or probably even

that he died.

Speaker 10: There's nothing that was going to fill the void that

Carly's loss caused, and the family was just never going

to be the same again.

Speaker 2: Life wasn't the same when she lost Carly. He destroyed

that family. The whole family just, it destroyed them.

Speaker 4: I did go to Florida probably within a year after

Carly's death. It felt special to go and visit Carly's

school where she spent so much time and made friends.

Speaker 2: The church where they found her body, they made a

garden there for Carly. I'd go down in the garden,

I'd go on her birthdays, the holidays or whatever. I'd

talk to her. Just tell her what's going on and

tell her we miss her and tell her we love her,

that we won't forget her.

Speaker 4: Not only did this horrible tragedy affect my immediate family,

but it affected my extended family as well. I have

a cousin, Matt. When Matt found out about Carly, he

had the same reaction. feeling of helplessness that we all

did and it really impacted him and he just wanted.

Speaker 5: To do something to help.

Speaker 11: Nothing was going to bring Carly back, but I wanted

to make sure that it never happened to anyone else's family.

And that inspired me to create the Rose Brucia Educational Foundation.

Carly is our image. of our foundation, and we do

everything in memory of Carly. But the motivation for naming

it after my grandmother was so that I would never

exploit Carly's name. I just wanted to go to my

local elementary school and talk to the kids in my

neighborhood and tell them, these are the things that you

need to do to stay safe.

Speaker 5: The program is.

Speaker 11: In 92 countries across the globe. I'll always do this

because of Carly's memory and in honor of Carly. So

for me, it's the rest of my life.

Speaker 4: I think about Carly every day. She wanted to be

the life of the party. She loved being around other kids,

being involved in what everyone else was doing.

Speaker 5: She just wanted to be part of it.

Speaker 2: She would have been somebody special. You could see it.

She was somebody special. I think she should be remembered

like sunshine.

Speaker 4: Butterflies kind of became the symbol of her still being

with us. My brother often sees butterflies and thinks of her.

He has a garden on his deck in his backyard,

and a lot of the plants that he has kind

of draw in the butterflies, and it's just something that

reminds us of her.

Speaker 10: Thank you.

Speaker 2: Thank you.