In 1974, an unknown assailant killed a 22-year-old girl named Beverly Lynn Smith in her home. The brutal murder case was the subject of the Prime Video documentary series The Unsolved Murder of Beverly Lynn Smith. The series went on to uncover a lot of details about the case and showed how the authorities managed to capture the alleged culprit, Alan Dale Smith. The four-part docuseries is currently available for streaming on the aforementioned streaming platform.
According to the documentary, the assailant shot and killed Beverly at her family home in the North Oshawa region of Raglan. It also revealed that the assailant shot the girl in her head and made it look like a cold-blooded execution. The documentary states that Beverly’s husband, Douglas Smith, called his neighbors after she failed to answer his calls. The neighbor then went to their house and found Beverly’s body. Fortunately, the neighbor found Beverly’s daughter unharmed and sleeping in her cot.
After the authorities arrived at the crime scene, they didn’t find any weapon. On the other hand, the investigators didn’t think it was a robbery case because nothing was stolen from the house. Given the complexity of the case, it ultimately ran cold.
More than three decades later, authorities arrested a man named Alan Dale Smith for the murder of Beverly in March 2008, as per CBC News. However, five months later, the case against Alan was withdrawn. Almost a year later, the police apprehended Alan once again and took him into custody. He spent more than four years in prison before getting acquitted in 2014. According to the documentary, Alan moved to Oshawa, Ontario, after the acquittal.
Beverly Lynn Smith’s case explored
As mentioned above, Beverly Lynn Smith died on December 9, 1974, after getting fatally shot in the back of her head. In 2008, the police arrested Alan Dale Smith for the murder of Beverly. Eventually, the charges were dropped. However, in 2009, the authorities decided to run an undercover operation to find a confession from Alan Dale Smith.
According to the documentary, Alan Dale Smith didn’t have friends, and after his arrest, he became reclusive. He only liked fishing and spent a lot of time doing that. In 2009, Alan befriended a man named Danny, who also loved fishing. Over time, Alan and Danny became good friends and went for fishing. However, Danny started including Alan in his illegal activities and introduced him to a man named Jack, who used to run an illegal organization that dealt with the smuggling of drugs.
As the time passed, Jack gave Danny and Alan a lot of work. The duo went on to supply drugs to a lot of people and received money in return. The documentary noted that Alan always said yes to everyone’s work given by Jack because he wanted to be a part of the group and wanted to have friends.
However, things got weird when, one day, Jack called them to an unknown location and told them that he had allegedly killed a man. He asked Alan and Danny to dispose of the body and not use the phone for 20 minutes after they had disposed of it. The documentary also stated that the entire situation scared Alan, and he didn’t want to talk about it. He also told Danny that he will leave the group once he receives his money.
Police initiated a sting operation for Alan’s confession
After disposing of the body, the three men met each other and discussed what happened the other night. Jack asked Danny and Alan Dale Smith to confess a secret of their own because they now know that Jack killed someone. As a result, Alan admitted (in the documentary) to being involved in Beverly Lynn Smith’s murder. A few weeks later, Jack met Danny and Alex once again and gave them their respective envelopes. Both of them thought those envelopes had money, but those envelopes had nothing but a piece of paper.
The police arrived at the scene and arrested both of them. During the interrogation, Alan got to know everything about the police’s operation. Danny and Jack were actually undercover police officers who planned everything to get a confession out of Alan Dale Smith. Jack didn’t murder anyone, and the drugs sold by them were also fake. They taped Alan’s confession to Jack and put him behind the bars. Alan confessed to Danny that he admitted his involvement in the murder because he was scared. In 2014, the court acquitted Alan because the court found Smith’s confession “was riddled with holes and coerced,” as per CBC News. After the acquittal, Toronto Star stated that Alan sued the police officers involved in the sting operation.
As mentioned above, Alan Dale Smith is currently out and moved to Oshawa, Ontario. His current whereabouts are unknown.