Verdict resolves murder case, questions linger

Discovery of a second body reveals link between the two cases.

The glinting gold teeth convinced Dave Elmendorf the pile of bones was human.

The body was so badly decomposed that Elmendorf, a lab technician at nearby Larron Laboratory, hadn't been sure. Despite the doubt, his first thought was of Margaret Smith.

That was chief evidence technician David Warren's first thought, too. Just as he had been at the time of Smith's disappearance seven months earlier, Warren was among the first at the crime scene when her body was discovered.

Her body was found on an embankment just 30 feet off Highway 177 four miles outside the Cape Girardeau city limits. Upon arrival, Warren thought about the dozen or so times police had driven past that very spot the previous summer in the widespread search for Smith. The incline and tall grass made it impossible to see from the roadside.

Investigators found Smith's rainbow striped purse not far from her body. Stuffed inside was a flowered blue nightgown. It was a patchwork of dirt and blood.

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Even today, Ken McManaman's mind travels back 25 years every time he drives by the quaint white house at 1526 Bertling St.

McManaman was a Navy prosecutor before he returned to Cape Girardeau in 1978. Two years later, he was appointed co-defense for Brian Andrew Abbott after the Cape Girardeau County public defender declared a conflict of interest because he was already representing someone involved in the case in another matter.

McManaman and co-counsel Al Spradling III spent the first few months afterward fighting their appointment, because the laws in place at that time required them to spend their own money on Abbott's defense.

Their refusal to defend the indigent youth eventually went before the Missouri Supreme Court, which ruled that they were obligated to represent him but not required to use their own funds to do so.

McManaman says the Abbott case was among a handful that eventually changed state legislation requiring private attorneys to spend their own money on public defense.

It was also one of the most sensational cases he would ever defend: a 17-year-old mentally challenged boy accused of sexually assaulting then murdering a 73-year-old retired college professor.

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At the same time Margaret Smith's remains were discovered on Highway 177 in early winter 1981, local law enforcement was dealing with another death on a different Cape Girardeau County highway.

Two months after Andy Abbott was arrested for Smith's death, the body of 18-year-old Randy Todd was found along old Highway 61, south of Highway 74.

Todd, who spent most of his time with Abbott during the six days Abbott had Smith's car, was among the original suspects in her homicide. He was taken into custody along with Abbott, but released after passing a lie detector test July 17, 1980.

At that time, Todd told police that Andy claimed the Cutlass Supreme belonged to a friend who was working on the Mississippi River. He also implicated Abbott in Smith's murder in an interview with police, saying, "I knew he was nuts, but I didn't know he'd go this far. ..."

Todd was found dead Sept. 20, 1980, near the Diversion Channel south of the city. His body had been dragged from the middle of the road to a ditch.

The autopsy report revealed massive trauma and noted fractures to his right femur, jaw bone, pelvis, ribs, lacerations of the liver, spleen, kidneys, esophagus, and abrasions on 25 percent of his skin.

At the time, then-Cape Girardeau County Sheriff Eugene Coombs speculated there was a connection between Todd's death and Smith's disappearance.

Hair, blood and skin from Todd's body was found on the undercarriage of a station wagon driven by 17-year-old Rodney Pease. Pease, the son of a local policeman, was arrested for the hit and run.

About the same time Smith's body was discovered and Abbott transferred back to Cape Girardeau County Jail from the State Training School in Boonville, Mo., a judge ordered Pease to stand trial on a manslaughter charge in the death of Todd.

It was later established that Todd was likely already dead when Pease ran over him. Later that summer, Pease pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of careless and imprudent driving and leaving the scene of an accident.

Cape Girardeau County Prosecuting Attorney Stephen N. Limbaugh Jr. declared the case closed, saying the autopsy report was consistent with being run over by a car. The exact details of Todd's death were never established however.

At the same time the outcome of Todd's case was being decided, the prosecution and defense in the Smith murder were gearing up for trial. Abbott's history of voyeurism and sexual perversion prompted a psychiatric evaluation at a Cape Girardeau mental health center in June 1981.

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Stephen N. Limbaugh Jr. was two years into his first and only term as prosecuting attorney when Margaret Smith disappeared. Like police, he was frustrated that charges could not be filed against Abbott without Smith's body.

When the call came in that a body had been found, Limbaugh went with the first group of investigators to the scene.

"We were unsure of the cause of death. It was pretty clear she had been murdered and then dumped, but there were no bullet wounds," said Limbaugh, now a Supreme Court judge.

There were also no slashes or tears in the nightgown police found inside Smith's purse, and the body had decomposed so much that it was impossible to determine potential wounds. Police could tie Abbott to the theft of Smith's car, but not to her death.

Then, in what Limbaugh calls a sickening twist, police placed Abbott in Smith's home by matching his blood type to a semen sample found on a sock in her bedroom.

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His visit to St. Francis Mental Health Care Center that summer was not the first for Abbott. As early as age 14, the youth was under psychiatric evaluation. In 1978, he was admitted to the Farmington Mental Hospital for two months. At that time, a psychiatrist recommended that he not return to his parents' home.

In 1980, he was referred to St. Francis for voyeurism and sexual perversion. An evaluation showed no psychotic or psychiatric illness, but he was deemed chronically depressed, distrustful of the world in general and unmotivated. The examiner suggested he enroll in a job training program rather than return to public school.

His next visit to St. Francis was to determine his competency to stand trial in Smith's death.

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More than two decades after he defended the youth, Ken McManaman's opinion about Abbott's guilt in the murder of Smith has not changed.

"There is no way Andy Abbott was the only person involved in the death of Margaret Smith," he said.

Abbott has always denied his involvement in her murder.

"I'm sorry I lied about the car. I did not kill no lady whatsoever É this whole town thinks I did, but I didn't do it," he wrote in a letter to a friend during his first few weeks in the Cape Girardeau Juvenile Center.

McManaman won't go that far, but he does believe the ransacked condition of the house and Abbott's history indicated at least two or more people were involved in the crime.

"Obviously there was some incriminating evidence. He was found driving her car, her blood was in the trunk," McManaman said. "But there were still 30 or 40 things we thought the state hadn't proved."

In the end, it wasn't so much the evidence but Abbott's own testimony at his trial that likely led to the guilty verdict.

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Due to the sensational nature of the case, Abbott's trial was moved to Dent County.

It was originally scheduled for October 1981, but was pushed back to the next spring due to several delays.

One of those delays was a second psychiatric evaluation of the defendant.

The first had diagnosed Abbott with attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity socialized aggressive disorder and borderline mental retardation. The examiner recommended long-term treatment in Fulton State Mental Hospital.

The second psychiatric evaluation was to rule out any mental disease of defect, because the first evaluation was inconclusive on that point.

Abbott was admitted to the Fulton facility in November of 1981. The results of his evaluation there were received the following March and were again deemed "inconclusive."

Psychiatrists determined that Abbott did have the ability to determine right from wrong. His trial was set for the next month, April 13 through 15, 1982.

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Judge William Seay ruled that entries in Margaret Smith's diaries that mentioned Abbott not be allowed into evidence. He also ruled that details of Randy Todd's death as well as the 1982 murder of 57-year-old Margie Call, whose death McManaman called similar to Smith's, were inadmissible.

The prosecution called in a Kansas City pathologist to testify that Smith was stabbed to death, though there were no wounds on the body nor weapon found to confirm that.

Because the exact cause of death could not be pinpointed, Limbaugh did not seek the death penalty. Instead, he asked for second-degree murder with a life sentence of 30 years.

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Abbott desperately wanted to testify.

McManaman was reluctant to allow the 18-year-old on the stand, but ultimately, it was the defendant's choice.

"It was a real risk to put him on the stand. He was a loose cannon," said McManaman.

McManaman's instincts proved correct. If he had it to do over, he would not allow Abbott to testify.

At trial, the prosecution called 15 witnesses over two days.

The defense called six, including Glenda Abbott, who testified that she tried to wait up for her son the night he was kicked out of the house and Smith disappeared.

The final testimony for the defense came from Abbott.

In his version of events, he left his house on the night of July 10, walked up West End Boulevard with a box of clothing under one arm hoping to sleep over at a friend's house. The friend wasn't home.

He spotted several cars in the First Christian Church parking lot on West End and decided to hot wire one. The first two he tried were locked. The third was a maroon and white Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. It was unlocked, and when he reached under the steering wheel to pop the hood, he found the keys.

He tossed his box of clothes in the trunk, hopped behind the wheel and took off, eventually driving to Scott City in hopes of staying at a girlfriend's house, but in the end sleeping in the car in her driveway for the night.

In his cross-examination of Abbott, Limbaugh questioned the youth on his drinking habits.

Abbott's response -- that he drank more than a couple of six packs per day -- was the damning testimony his attorneys had feared.

"We must have gone over his testimony 15 times. We never heard anything about excessive drinking. I don't know where that came from," said McManaman.

In his closing statement, Limbaugh called Abbott's version of finding the car a fictional story.

"If you want to let him go on this charge here is what you have to believe as true: You have to believe that somebody else killed her, some phantom, you've got to create some fictional person," he said.

McManaman argued that Abbott's story was just as believable as the prosecution's and called his client a "victim of circumstance."

He reminded the jury that the prosecution had no murder weapon, no motive and no positive cause of death. Of the 25 fingerprints found in Smith's home, none belonged to Abbott. The time of death was based around Abbott's known whereabouts. Even the semen found on the sock in Smith's bedroom could have come from 6-percent of the population, or 7,000 other men, in Cape Girardeau.

In the end, the jury deliberated 2 hours and 55 minutes before returning with guilty verdicts on charges of both felony theft and second-degree murder.

Abbott's own testimony about his drinking habits and his theft of the car were among the top reasons the jury listed for convicting him of murder.

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Twenty-five years later, Limbaugh still has no doubts about Abbott's guilt, though he admits the case was based around circumstantial evidence.

Had forensic technology allowed it back then, Limbaugh said, he believes DNA testing would have proved with certainty that Abbott was in Smith's house.

Even now, he said, the state allows those convicted of crimes that involved DNA before that technology was available to have the evidence retested.

"Prison inmates have a legal recourse," Limbaugh said. "To my knowledge, Abbott has not requested DNA testing that would have exonerated him."

The evidence is still around though, locked up in four green rubber totes in the dimly lit basement of the Cape Girardeau Police Department.

A now 41-year-old Abbott remains locked up as well, now in his 23rd year of a 37-year sentence at the Jefferson City Correctional Center.

cmiller@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 128