Betty Fran Smith Case: 1991 Disappearance, Indictment, and 2023 Deal

The Betty Fran Smith case is the unresolved 1991 disappearance of a 49-year-old New Jersey woman whose husband, John David Smith III, was indicted for her murder in 2019 but never tried, because a judge barred prosecutors from telling jurors that Smith was already serving a life sentence in Ohio for killing his first wife. Fran’s body has never been found. Smith remains in prison in Ohio, first eligible for parole in 2029.

What Happened in September 1991

Fran Gladden-Smith and John Smith had moved from Florida to a condominium in the Canal Pointe neighborhood of West Windsor, New Jersey, about four months before she vanished. Smith had taken a job at the Carborundum industrial facility in Keasbey, in Woodbridge Township.¹

Fran was last seen alive on September 28, 1991. That morning, around 8:30 a.m., she called her daughter Deanna and gave no sign that anything was wrong or that she planned to travel.² Smith did not report her missing to the West Windsor Police until October 4, and only after Deanna pressured him to do so.³

His account did not hold up. Smith told police Fran had left a note reading, “Going away for a few days. Don’t forget to feed the fish,” and said she had probably driven to Florida with a yellow suitcase. Detectives found the suitcase he described still inside the home. Fran was also recovering from hip surgery in 1990, with a pin holding the joint together, which made a sudden road trip implausible.⁴ Smith told relatives he had posted missing-person fliers around the neighborhood; police confirmed he never had.³ West Windsor police treated the file as a probable homicide from early on.¹

The First Wife and the Break in the Case

The investigation stalled until 1998, when former West Windsor officer turned FBI special agent Robert Hilland took it over and learned Smith had been married before. His first wife, Janice Elaine Hartman, had disappeared on November 17, 1974, shortly after the couple divorced in Wayne County, Ohio. Ohio authorities had treated her as a runaway.⁵

A road crew had found Hartman’s remains around 1980 in a nailed-shut plywood box in a roadside drainage ditch off a rural Indiana farm road, about 40 miles south of Hammond. Her lower legs had been sawed off after death. She could not be identified and was buried as a Jane Doe.⁶

On May 5, 1999, the FBI ran coordinated interviews with people close to Smith. His brother Michael told agents that in November 1974 he had seen John with a large, nailed-shut plywood box he believed held Hartman’s body. Investigators also confronted Smith with a recorded phone call in which he told a longtime girlfriend he had lied on a police polygraph about Fran.⁶ The Jane Doe remains were exhumed and, in April 2000, identified as Janice Hartman. A Wayne County grand jury indicted Smith for aggravated murder on August 30, 2000. At trial in July 2001, the jury acquitted him of aggravated murder but convicted him of murder. He received life in prison with no parole eligibility for 15 years.⁵

Hilland also excavated Smith’s New Jersey workplace and a beach property Smith owned in Connecticut. Neither search produced Fran’s remains. Undercover informants placed near Smith in prison never got him to disclose where he had put her.⁶

The 2019 New Jersey Indictment

In November 2019, a Mercer County grand jury indicted Smith for the first-degree murder of Fran Gladden-Smith.⁶ Prosecuting a homicide without a body is legally possible; the doctrine of corpus delicti requires proof that an unlawful death occurred, not the production of remains.⁷ The state, working through Assistant Prosecutor Kathleen Petrucci, built its theory around what it called Smith’s “1974 playbook,” arguing he had used the same methods on Fran but disposed of the body more carefully after the Hartman case. Central to that theory: he had told authorities both wives left for Florida with packed suitcases.

The Ruling That Sank the Prosecution

In October 2022, Mercer County Superior Court Judge Peter Warshaw barred prosecutors from presenting Smith’s Ohio murder conviction to the jury as evidence of prior bad acts.⁸

“Simply stated, that the defendant killed his first wife in 1974 does not prove he killed his second in 1991,” Warshaw wrote. He found that letting jurors hear about the Hartman conviction would inevitably lead them to assume Smith had acted the same way both times, and that the prejudice could not be cured with jury instructions. He also described the state’s case as “mainly circumstantial,” with no body, no cause of death, and no eyewitnesses, and concluded the evidence failed New Jersey’s multi-prong test for admission. The judge left open the possibility that limited facts about Smith’s marital history might come in later, but the prior murder itself was out.⁹

The 2023 Deal and Smith’s Admission

Without the Hartman conviction in front of a jury, the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office concluded the remaining evidence would only “paint Smith as a bad husband but not a murderer.”⁶ On July 6, 2023, prosecutors dismissed the first-degree murder charge under a non-prosecution agreement.

Under the agreement, Smith was not required to admit killing Fran or to produce anything corroborating his account. What he did tell prosecutors was that two days after his wife died, he wrapped her body in a dark blanket and placed it in an industrial dumpster at the Carborundum facility in Keasbey where he worked. He blamed his vagueness about how she died on a head injury he said he had suffered in prison. Fran’s sister, Sherrie Gladden-Davis, pointed out that the statute of limitations for disposing of a body had long since run, so the admission carried no additional legal consequence.¹

The deal drew sharp criticism from the investigator who had spent years on the case. Retired FBI agent Robert Hilland called the information Smith gave “unreliable and likely untrue,” and said the state already had enough circumstantial evidence to try him, including his own recorded admissions of lying on police polygraphs. Fran’s daughter Deanna Childers and sister Sherrie Davis called the agreement an insult and worried it could help Smith at his next parole hearing by letting him claim cooperation with authorities.⁶

Where the Case Stands Now

John David Smith III is incarcerated at the Marion Correctional Institution in Ohio, still serving his 15-years-to-life sentence for the murder of Janice Hartman. His parole eligibility date is December 1, 2029, with a hearing set for October of that year. An earlier parole review resulted in a continuance rather than release.¹⁰

Fran Gladden-Smith’s body has never been recovered. No new charges have been filed against Smith in connection with her death, and the non-prosecution agreement forecloses further prosecution on the same evidence.

1
NJ.com. Murder Case Dropped in 1991 Vanishing; Victim’s Family Says Husband Admitted Dumping Wife’s Body
2
Charley Project. Betty Fran Smith
3
The Trentonian. Convicted Wife Killer John David Smith Indicted for 1991 Murder of His Second Spouse in West Windsor
4
NJ.com. Killer From Ohio Moved to NJ Jail on Charges He Murdered Wife Here 30 Years Ago
5
GovInfo. USCOURTS-ohnd-5_04-cv-02353
6
NBC News. Fran Smith Husband Murder Charges Dark Secrets
7
FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin. No-Body Homicide Cases: A Practical Approach
8
NJ.com. Jury Will Not Hear That Man Accused of Killing 2nd Wife Is in Prison for Murdering His 1st
9
NJ1015.com. Judge: Jury in West Windsor NJ Wife Slaying Won’t Be Told About Earlier Conviction
10
Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. Offender Search – John David Smith