• Publication: Athens Banner-Herald
• Author: Stephen Gurr
• Original Publication Date: Sunday, May 5, 2002

A lot of crooks have been locked up by Lt. W.J. Smith in his 26 years on the Athens and Athens-Clarke police forces. It’s a fair bet none will be sending their regards upon the occasion of his retirement this week.

The old-school veteran detective takes with him a wealth of investigative experience and an institutional memory that is near-irreplaceable. That, and a sometimes cantankerous, not-always politically correct style that endears him to his colleagues.

“It won’t be quite as colorful around here anymore,” lamented Smith’s friend and co-worker, Sgt. David Leedahl.

On Friday, over a going-away cake, Smith spent a casual last morning at headquarters regaling colleagues with tales of adventures and misadventures on the force.

“That’s the fun part about this job,” Smith said. “Sitting around and telling old war stories.”

The 55-year-old Madison County native has played major roles in some of the biggest criminal cases in Clarke County history. He’s put away serial rapists and murderers, and handled interrogations with an earthy ease that caught suspects with their guard down.

“He’ll sit there and shoot the breeze with them and get that rapport, then just break ’em down,” Leedahl said.

In a close-knit detective division rife with merciless ribbing, Smith’s co-workers kid him about his supposed “special skill:” a photographic memory so sharp he can make a fingerprint match by sight just by looking at your hands.

“If you see W.J. coming, you better stick your hands in your pockets right quick,” Assistant Police Chief Mark Wallace jokes.

The fingerprint myth stems from the 1987 case of Clinton Bankston, a deranged young man who murdered five people in two gruesome rampages three months apart.

Bankston had left “fingerprints all over the place” at the Sunset Drive home of retirees Glenn and Rachael Sutton, Smith said. The unsolved case was eating at the detective mightily.

“My wife thought I was losing my mind,” he said.

When Bankston was picked up for the murders of three women by similarly brutal methods a few months later, “I just knew it had to be him” in the Sutton killings, Smith said.

One look at Bankston’s finger tips confirmed his suspicions. Or so the story goes.

Ask him what cases he’s most proud of breaking, and Smith will tell you about the original Five Points Rapist, Phillip Allen Greek, who terrorized four young women in the mid-1980s. Smith and colleague Bobby Shepherd staked out the neighborhood for weeks without success.

Greek was finally caught on a peeping Tom charge, and served some time in prison before being released. When the attacks resumed, Smith helped make the connection with Greek and the earlier rapes.

“That’s when memory plays a big part,” Smith said.

One case that will continue to gnaw at Smith is the unsolved slaying of Jennifer Stone, a 22-year-old University of Georgia student found strangled in her downtown apartment in April 1992.

Smith poured countless hours into the case and ends his career with the regret of never seeing it solved. On Smith’s final day at work, he got the news that Stone’s father, Raymond, died without seeing his daughter’s killer brought to justice. He was 77.

The Stone case is “one that’s going hang around for me,” Smith said.

Smith said he didn’t learn detective work alone, and much of the learning was done on the job.

“Those major cases are where you learn so much so quick,” he said.

He credits former Chief Assistant District Attorney Gerald Brown with helping him build cases that would hold up in court.

“He was not only a good prosecutor, but also my friend,” Smith said.

The detective says he leaves the criminal investigation division in good hands with the likes of friends Leedahl, Mark Durham and Mike Tyndall.

He won’t miss the stress and frustration that comes with working tough cases where no answers are readily available.

For now the detective plans to leave behind the mug shot lineups and fingerprint cards for a motor home and trips with his wife to South Dakota and Colorado. He hasn’t ruled out a little private investigative work somewhere down the road.

“Right now we’re just going to see what happens,” he said.