Edgar Smith (born 1934) is an American convicted murderer, who was once on Death Row for the 1957 murder of fifteen-year-old honor student and cheer leader Victoria Ann Zielinski.

Vigorously contesting his conviction through the courts and in the media, Smith became a celebrity, and his case was argued in public most notably by William F. Buckley, Jr. He eventually succeeded in winning a retrial and negotiating a reduced sentence. Smith was released only to be incarcerated for a second time for the kidnapping and attempted murder of Lefteriya Ozbun in 1976.

Crime

In March 1957, 15-year old Victoria Ann Zielinski of Ramsey, New Jersey, disappeared on her way home from a friend's house. One of the girl's shoes, a black penny loafer, was discovered the following morning on the roadside by her parents, who had been driving around an approximate two mile radius from where their daughter had last been seen, searching for her.

They also noticed a blood-matted head scarf in the vicinity. While Mr. Zielinski, the girl's father, continued searching on foot, Mrs. Zielinski contacted the police. Mr. Zielinski, after observing a pair of gloves lying in the dirt of a sand pit located a few hundred yards from where the shoe was found, returned to his wife and together they waited for the police.

The police arrived a short time later and along with the Mahwah Police Department's Captain Ed Wickham, the search resumed, and Vickie’s body was discovered on the banks of the nearby sand pit. Her skull had been smashed by repeated blows with one or more large rocks.

Edgar Smith was at the time an unemployed mechanic. On the night of the murder, Smith borrowed a friend's car, and his later activities aroused suspicion, including Smith excusing himself from meeting the same friend in a bar early in the evening, and having to remove his trousers, claiming he had been sick on them.

When the murder was reported the following day on the radio, two of Smith's friends joked with him as the murderer's car was reported to be the same make as the one Smith had driven the previous evening. One of the friends later remarked that Smith had "a startled look on his face". A few days later drops of blood were found on the seats of the car, and Smith was brought in for questioning by the police.

During questioning, Smith repeatedly could not account for a half hour gap during the night of the murder. He was also unable to account for his missing clothing, which the police later located and which were identified by Smith's wife. Faced with this evidence, Smith reportedly blurted out that Vickie had hit him in the face. He informed the police that he had picked Vickie up in his car, then attempted to grab her when she left, her attempt to leave having angered him. Smith was arrested for the murder, and faced three psychiatric examinations before his trial.

Trial

The trial of Edgar Smith for first degree murder drew strong media attention, with Bergen County Prosecutor Guy W. Calissi describing the murder as the "most vicious, most brutal and the most sadistic I have ever seen."

Witnesses included Myrna Zielinski, Victoria's younger sister. Although Myrna was to meet Vickie at 8:45 on the night of the murder, she testified that she did not see her sister after about 7:40. At approximately 7:30 that evening, at Victoria's request Myrna had walked her sister part of the way to the home of Barbara Nixon, Victoria's best friend. The houses were situated approximately four-fifths of a mile apart on Wyckoff Avenue in Ramsey Borough and the Township of Mahwah, respectively. At 7:40, approximately two-thirds of a mile south of the Zielinski home in the direction of Mahwah, Myrna testified that she last saw her sister when Victoria had continued walking the route to the Nixon home by herself and Myrna had returned home. Victoria had planned only a short visit at Barbara Nixon's residence, and because the girl was uneasy about walking the dark road by herself, Myrna Zielinski agreed to walk back in the direction of the Nixon home in order to meet Victoria and walk part of the way back home with her. The two had pre-arranged to leave their starting points at 8:30 PM. When Myrna left her home a bit late, at about 8:40 PM, she walked the entire route to the Nixon house at an accelerated pace without encountering Victoria, who should logically have been walking in a northerly direction towards her on Wyckoff Avenue, virtually the only route between the two houses at the time. Myrna testified that she had arrived at the Nixon home and been told that her sister had left for home about ten minutes earlier.

In fact the Nixon home sat at the northwest corner of Wyckoff and Fardale avenues, Mahwah, approximately four-fifths of a mile from the Zielinski dwelling, also located on Wyckoff Avenue.

On the evening of March 4, 1957, Victoria's walk home was along the two-lane Wyckoff Avenue (see trial transcript testimony of Myrna Zielinski). This particular stretch of road in 1957 was residential, bordering on rural and heavily wooded on both sides in between sparsely placed homes. She had pre-arranged to meet her thirteen-year-old sister at a point about halfway between the Nixon and Zielinski homes, adjacent to West Crescent Avenue.

In 1957, West Crescent Avenue intersected Wyckoff at the border between Mahwah township and Ramsey borough. Incidentally, it was at this intersection that Wyckoff Avenue became lit with street lights and a sidewalk was provided for pedestrians. Up to that juncture, Victoria would have had to walk along a very dark road (and virtually in the road).

Myrna Zielinski's testimony indicated that by coincidence, both sisters had left their starting points ten minutes late, at approximately 8:40 pm. It would later seem inexplicable to investigators that Victoria would have willingly entered Smith's vehicle knowing that her sister was on her way to meet her (this was especially compelling because it had been Victoria who had requested that Myrna make the journey, and such behavior was not consistent with Vickie's known character).

It was also noted in the police report of the crime that Victoria's finger nails were "badly bitten". This was documented in the trial transcript (referred to as "ripped" by the Bergen County Coroner who performed an autopsy on the body) although its evidential value would prove elusive. However, there was an implication that Victoria did not habitually bite her fingernails and the fact that they were bitten signified that a period of angst had (immediately) preceded her murder, a factor that at least partially contradicts the logic behind Edgar Smith's eventual release from death row on appeal. In any case, they are mute evidence that Victoria Zielinski had realized that Smith's intent was at the very least malicious before he murdered her.

As stated elsewhere in this article, Smith eventually succeeded in overturning his conviction for first degree murder, accepting his conviction to the lesser charge of murder in the second degree. However, when all of the trial testimony and physical evidence is examined, all indicators show that the evidence at the murder scene is far too spread out in a physical sense to warrant a second degree murder conviction of the defendant. Premeditation is shown based on testimony corroborated by the physical evidence, that Smith had chased the girl several hundred yards, hit her with a baseball bat (obtained from the vehicle in a premeditated act), and then dragged her while she struggled, back to the murder scene, even pausing at one point to discard the bloody bat in a wooded area near the intersection of Chapel Road and Fardale Avenue. A logical conclusion of premeditation exists based on the significant time that elapsed (as suggested by the physical evidence at the scene) between the initial perpetration of an attack on Victoria and her actual murder.

On the witness stand, Myrna also identified several items of Victoria's clothing that she had been wearing when last seen. The trial transcript reveals that Myrna, who was thirteen when her sister was murdered, had a good memory for detail, recalling that Victoria had worn "boy's blue jeans", a coral cardigan sweater, a blue and gold campus jacket, penny loafers, a Wittenaur white gold wristwatch, and a silver heart locket on a long chain around her neck. Myrna remembered that Victoria had carried a natural leather purse, an accounting school book and a writing tablet. All of these items, with the possible exception of the wristwatch, were found in the vicinity of the crime and introduced into evidence at the Smith trial.

Vickie's parents were called next, and recounted how they, together with Captain Ed Wickham of the Mahwah Police Department, had found their daughter's body just after 9 AM on the morning of March 5, 1957, in the area of a sandpit located about two miles from the Zielinski's residence.

Sixteen year old Barbara Nixon, at whose home Victoria had been visiting just before she disappeared, also testified, being the last person before Edgar Smith to see Victoria Zielinski alive. She also identified an item of clothing (a head scarf or kerchief found the next morning on Fardale Avenue approximately 500 yards from the crime scene) that she had lent to Victoria.

Detectives who interviewed Smith also testified about the missing articles of his clothing and his initial reasons for it (his explanations to his wife and others about their absence). They also testified about Smith's continual claims that Don Hommell, a friend of his, was the real killer.

Smith testified that Vickie had waved him to pull over, and then entered his car for conversation. Smith claimed that he had, at Vickie's suggestion, pulled into a dirt driveway leading to a local sand pit off Chapel Road exactly where Chapel Road intersected Fardale Avenue in Mahwah; that Vickie had stated that his wife was having an affair with "the oil man" or words to that nature and that he had angrily told Vickie to leave. Smith claimed that after Victoria left the vehicle he was driving, a 1950 light blue Mercury convertible that belonged to a friend, he had been sitting in the car (inside the sandpit area) for a few moments before "hearing a commotion" coming from the vicinity of Chapel Road. Realizing, he testified, that in the darkness he could make out at least two people approaching his car, he had grabbed a baseball bat from the back seat for "protection", fearing that Victoria's father had somehow arrived on the scene and that Victoria was walking together with him in Smith's direction.

Testimony by members of the Mahwah and Ramsey police departments indicate that Smith's interrogation resulted in often contradictory replies. At one point, Smith said that he observed from his spot in the sandpit Donald Hommell of Ramsey's vehicle parked along Chapel Road. It was established, however, that this would have been impossible because of obstructions that made a clear view of Chapel Road from the sandpit impossible.

At the trial, on the witness stand, Smith stated that he soon realized that it was not Mr. Zielinski with Victoria; instead, he indicated that the male figure with Vickie was Donald Hommell, a friend of his, and that Vickie was bleeding from a cut on her head; he claimed that he asked Hommell what had happened and was told that Victoria had fallen on the roadway. Victoria, Smith said, pleaded with him not to leave her with Hommell and that he had acquiesced, helping the bleeding girl into the car where she sat with her head tilted back on the seat rest. Hommell, according to Smith, had not allowed him to take the cut and bleeding girl to a local hospital but had instead pulled her from the car and she had fallen out, spattering Smith's pants with blood in the process. He then testified that he had decided that since Victoria was "Hommell's girl" (a statement that was never verified to be in any way factual), he felt he should leave the scene and let Hommell take care of the situation; Hommell had, according to Smith, in fact encouraged him to leave. Smith stated that he drove away leaving the bleeding girl (even as she pled with him for succor) in the sand pit with Hommell; and that he did not come forward for fear that her death was his responsibility; that he originally believed that she had bled to death from the injury he had observed.

Hommell was questioned, and he told the court that he was in the area at the time, and had "casually" been involved with Vickie. However, the police testified that both Hommell's car and clothing had been checked, and nothing had been found. Furthermore, the vehicle Hommell had been driving that night belonged to his employer, and was not one that Smith would have recognized. Smith was found guilty by the jury after two and a half hours of deliberation.

Incarceration

Smith was sent to death row at New Jersey State Prison, where he spent 14 years. In 1962 his wife left him, and in 1964 he was forced to become his own lawyer because of his financial situation. He attacked Hommell's statement, and maintained that his own comments were inadmissible because he had not signed anything. He also examined the medical report, which had found estimating Vickie's time of death difficult.

Smith's appeals, however, were repeatedly dismissed, however his death sentence was postponed on several occasions. In 1962, Smith began correspondence with William F. Buckley, Jr., the founder of National Review, during which Buckley began to doubt Smith's guilt, later stating that the case was "inherently implausible".

An article by Buckley in November 1965, published in Esquire, drew national media attention:

"Smith said he told Hommell during their brief conversation ... on the night of the murder just where he had discarded his pants. The woman who occupies property across the road from which Smith claimed to have thrown the pants ... swore at the trial that she had seen Hommell rummaging there the day after the murder. The pants were later found [by the police] near a well-travelled road ... Did Hommell find them, and leave them in the other location, thinking to discredit Smith's story, and make sure they would turn up?"

This brought renewed media interest in Hommell, scrutiny which was increased still further with the publishing of Smith's book Brief Against Death in 1968.

Release and life after prison

In 1971, Smith was successful with his 19th appeal against the fair nature of his trial, claiming that his confession was obtained under duress. As the confession was obtained eight years prior to the introduction of Miranda rights, Smith's appeal carried some weight.

In 1971, Smith was able to have a repeat trial, and in June of that year Smith's confession was ruled to have been obtained unfairly, and Smith was offered parole if he accepted a charge of second degree murder under a deal approved by Judge Morris Pashman, an offer which he accepted. On December 6, 1971, he pleaded guilty to second degree murder, and he was released from prison at age 37.

Smith went on to lecture at a number of colleges and universities, as well as making several television and radio appearances. He published a third book, Getting Out, and argued for penal reform. However, as his celebrity status declined, Smith began drinking heavily and suffering from debt.

Second crime

In San Diego, California, during October 1976, Smith drove his car up to 33-year-old Lefteriya Lisa Ozbun, and kidnapped her at knifepoint. Ozbun continually resisted Smith while he attempted to drive her away. Smith stabbed Ozbun in her side, and she was ejected from the car as he lost control and drove off the road. Smith recovered and drove away; however, a nearby witness made a note of the vehicle's registration, and it was later traced to Smith's new wife, Paige. Smith immediately contacted Buckley, who turned him in to the FBI.

Second incarceration

Smith's second crime drove media attention to Buckley, Smith's defenders, and the psychiatrists who cleared his return to public life. Buckley, famous as a law-and-order conservative, wrote a 1979 article about how he had been won over by Smith's claims of innocence, to his later regret.

Ozbun survived her wound and testified in the trial. Smith claimed to be an emotionally disturbed sex offender in pursuit of a shorter sentence. He cited his actions during the Vickie Zielinski case in support of this claim; instead he was found guilty of kidnapping with intent to rob, attempted murder, and sentenced to life.

In 1979, Smith sued for divorce with his second wife, and in 1988 and 1990 he sought further legal action against his sentencing. Smith appealed at every opportunity, but each was turned down. In February 2004, Smith postponed his own appeal hearing, and in recent years his health has deteriorated, and he has suffered several heart attacks. He has been denied parole as late as April 2009.

Wikipedia.org

Smart Men; Stupid Choices: William F. Buckley, Jr.

By Laura Wilkerson - Salon.com

September 23, 2011

Sometimes smart men make stupid choices.

On March 4, 1957, Edgar Smith, a 23-year-old former Marine and itinerate mechanic, was fired from his job at the New Jersey automotive muffler and seat covering shop where he had been employed for a week.

The next day, Smith, the married father of a young daughter, borrowed a friend’s Ford Mercury and kidnapped 15-year-old cheerleader and honor student, Victoria Zielenski, took to a sand pit in Mahwah and beat her to death with a baseball bat.

Victoria had been visiting a friend up the road from the home where she lived in a semi-rural neighborhood in Ramsey, New Jersey. Victoria was supposed to meet her 13-year-old sister, Myra, partway up the road but Victoria never arrived. Myra walked to the friend’s house, about 8/10th of a mile away from the Zielinski home, only to be told that Victoria had left about twenty minutes before; about 8:30.

When Myra returned home she informed her mother but Mrs. Zielenski didn’t think much of it until after midnight when Victoria still hadn’t returned. Mrs. Zielenski woke her husband, Andrew, and the pair of them went in search of Victoria. They checked a couple of local “milk bars” and at 1:00 a.m. they flagged down a patrolman and alerted him that their daughter was missing.

The Zielenski’s searched for Victoria until 2:00 a.m. before returning home. At daybreak they began the search again. They took a photograph of Victoria and at about 9:00 a.m. Andrew Zielenski spotted one of his daughter’s shoes, a black loafer, lying in the middle of the street at an intersection. As Mr. Zielenski stopped his car to retrieve the shoe he spotted the headscarf his daughter had been wearing the night before laying about twenty feet up the road. Picking it up, he discovered it was bloodstained.

Mr. Zielinski sent Mrs. Zelinski to summon a police officer while he searched the underbrush on the other side of a low wall. Mr. Zelinski didn’t find anything else by the road so he walked over to the entrance of a near-by sand pit where he found his daughter’s red gloves. Mr. Zelinski went to take the gloves back to his car where he was met by Mrs. Zelinski and Captain Wickham of the Mahwah Police Department.

Captain Wickham and Andrew Zelinski returned to the sand pit where they found tire tracks, foot prints. Coming to a mound of dirt, Mr. Zelinski found Victoria’s silver locket, her other loafer and stones covered with blood. Mr. Zelinski then looked past the stones and saw, “brains scattered for seven or eight feet along the bank.” Looking over the mound he saw Victoria’s body, “in a jackknifed position.”

The autopsy would reveal that there had been, “a total crushing of the skull.” Victoria Zelinski’s brain was totally destroyed, as was her left eye. Her teeth were “hanging loosely” and her nose and jaw had, “sustained multiple fractures.” There was a hole knocked into the back of her head and most of her hair was missing. A tuft of it was later found, matted and blood-soaked, in the road not far from where her father first found her shoe. Although the Coroner ruled that, “there was no evidence of carnal assault,” Victoria’s sweater was pulled up and her brassiere was pulled down with such force that one of the straps snapped. Bite marks were found on her right breast. Her usually well-manicured nails had been chewed to the quick.

Edgar Smith was first suspected by his friends. Smith returned the car with a story about how he had thrown up on his pants. Next they noticed how pale Smithy got when they joked about how the police had fingerprints and were “looking for a Mercury,” after hearing about the murder. What really set the off was the discovery that a baseball bat was missing from the sporting equipment usually kept in the car and suspicious stains on the seat. They notified the police who arrested Edgar Smith who took them to where he had disposed of his blood stained shoes.

At trial, Smith told a fantastical tale about how he and Victoria had fought at the sand pit and he had struck her. Then, according to Smith, another friend of his came along unexpectedly and killed her. The Jury took only 2 ½ hours, including lunch, to find Edgar Smith guilty of the first degree murder of Victoria Zelinski. He was then sentenced to death in New Jersey’s electric chair.

In prison, Edgar Smith busied himself by taking college courses through the mail and reading such publications as the Peking Review and its sister publication, the National Review.

It was in 1962, when the prison’s chaplain was transferred and Smith could no longer get his hands on copies of the latter publication. The National Review’s editor, learned of the plight of the Death Row prisoner denied his weekly dose of politics and art, and sent Edgar Smith a year’s subscription to the magazine. The two started corresponding and a less-than-beautiful friendship was born.

Through the exchange of letters with Smith, Buckley became convinced of the convicted killer’s innocence. Buckley met with Smith’s mother and the private detective she had hired in an effort to prove her son’s innocence. He read the court transcripts and decided, ”the state’s narrative of the case was inherently implausible.” Buckley began encouraging Smith to write about his prison experience and when Smith did just that, producing a book called A Brief Against Death, published in 1968 by Knopf. William F. Buckley contributed the forward to the work.

The book was a bestseller and William F. Buckley continued to champion Smith’s case. He published an influential article arguing Smith’s innocence in Esquire magazine; donating his fee to Smith’s defense. That contribution, along with the money Smith had earned from the publication of A Brief Against Death and his subsequent book, A Reasonable Doubt, combined with the influential contacts he had made through Buckley, allowed Smith to hire the powerhouse Washington, D.C. firm of Edward Bennett Williams to represent him on appeal.

Smith next lucked out in catching the wave of judicial reform then being ridden by the United States Supreme Court who, in 1971, set aside his conviction on the grounds that statements he had made after his arrest in 1957 had been coerced. The New Jersey Prosecutor’s office believed that there was no way that they could prove pre-meditation without the statements. They did feel comfortable that they could go ahead and prove 2nd degree murder but by that time Smith had served far more time than a second degree murder conviction in New Jersey then carried - fourteen years. The Prosecutor worked out a deal where Smith would plead Guilty to 2nd Degree Murder and time served. Smith pled and in an instant he went from being on Death Row to being a free man.

After the hearing, William F. Buckley sent a limousine to pick up Smith from the Couthouse and whisked him to the studio where Smith appeared on Buckley’s television program, the Firing Line. Smith went on a lecture tour of college campuses, earning thousands of dollars in fees and publishing numerous articles in various newspapers and magazines. However, by the time he published his third book, Getting Out, published in 1973 by Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, the public had begun to tire of Mr. Smith and soon his 15-minutes of fame were over.

After his initial success waned, Edgar Smith married a 19-year-old and moved to San Diego, California where he found work as a security guard and as a public relations director for a small firm in Chula Vista before finding himself unemployed yet again.

On November 30, 1976, Smith approached the editor of the San Diego Union newspaper, an old friend of William F. Buckley’s, about a job only to be told there were no positions available. The next day Smith pulled into the parking lot of a Chula Vista garment factory where 33-year-old Greek immigrant, Lefteriya Lisa Ozbun, had just gotten off work. Ms. Ozbun was walking to meet her husband when Smith grabbed her from behind and put a knife to her throat, telling her, “Keep your mouth shut or I’m going to cut your throat right here.”

Smith forced Lefteriya into his car, hastily taped her hands together, and sped off.

Lefteriya screamed and asked him, “Where are you doing? What do you want with me? Where are taking me?” and Smith replied, “Shut up! I’m going to take your money and stick a knife in you.”

Lefteriya told him that she was the mother of three children and he could just have her money but Smith just told her, “Don’t be stupid,” and continued to drive.

At this point Lefteriya Ozbun sensed that if she didn’t do something she would never leave this situation alive.

“I could see it in his eyes,” she recalled, “I’d never seen eyes like that. They were so cold and filled with hate. I knew if I didn’t fight I would never see my kids again.”

As Smith headed down the Interstate the 5’1 inch, one hundred pound woman made her move. Lefteriya began kicking the windshield with her platform shoe. Managing to free her hands, she grabbed the steering wheel and honked the horn and at that point Smith stabbed her in the side with a six-inch long butcher knife. Lefteriya continued to fight as the car skidded onto an exit ramp and came to a stop at the bottom of an embankment.

As the car came to a halt, Lefteriya Osbun threw herself from the vehicle with the knife still sticking out of her side. A man selling flowers nearby came to her aid, taking down the license plate of Smith’s car as Smith made his escape. Lefteriya was left with a punctured diaphragm and lunch. Smith’s blade had missed her heart by inches.

Edgar Smith was on the lam for about two weeks. He borrowed money from relatives and stayed in cheap hotels until one night in Las Vegas he decided to telephone his old buddy, William F. Buckley. Buckley was out of town but Smith left his room and telephone number with Buckley’s secretary who passed the message along to Buckley who promptly notified the FBI. Edgar Smith had been a free man for four years and ten months.

Smith had always maintained his innocence of the murder of Victoria Zielinski; even after he had admitted it in Court as part of the plea agreement that freed him from prison but now he changed his tune. In California at the time, kidnapping in the course of a robbery was punishable by up to life in prison while kidnapping in the course of a sexual assault was punishable by a maximum of 25 years in prison. Smith tried to argue that he was a mentally disorganized sex offender and his intent when he kidnapped Ms. Osbun had been rape. He admitted to killing Victoria Zelinski and also to having molested an 11-year-old child when Smith was a teenager. He hoped not only to receive a lighter sentence but also to be placed in a mental health facility. The Jury and the Judge didn’t buy it and Smith was convicted of kidnapping during the course of a robbery and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

William F. Buckley, Jr. died in 2008. He was hailed by the right and by the media at large as a Conservative’s Consvervative. A true intellectual. A man of uncommon wit and brio.

As for Edgar Smith; his young wife divorced him after his conviction and he eventually remarried to the mother of one of his cellmates. Legislative changes erased the without parole possibility from his sentence. His last parole hearing was in April of 2009 where the 75-year-old Smith was denied and told he could not apply again for another fifteen years.

  

Edgar H. Smith

The victim

Victoria Ann Zielinski, 15.