Oscar Franklin Smith

This is one of those cases in which you have to wonder if someone looked a little deeper, or got there a little faster if lives would not have been saved. A 911 call was made while the murders of a mother and her two teenage boys were happening, by one of the victims. When officers arrived at the scene just five minutes later and did not get an answer when they knocked on the door they determined that it was a “false call” and left the area. Now, either Oscar Franklin Smith was still inside or he had already left, leaving the back door to the home open. This means when the officers arrived they could have possibly caught a killer or at the very least found the back door open which should have caused further investigating.

In August of 1985 Oscar “Frank” Smith married Judy Robirds Burnett. Judy had two sons, Chad and Jason from a previous marriage. Frank also had two children from his first marriage who were now living with his parents. The couple settled down in Nashville Tennessee. In December of 1986 Judy gave birth to twins but within a few years the marriage was souring. It seems likely that the separation would occur after Frank and thirteen year old Jason Burnett got into an argument in which Frank bit Jason and at some point a gun was brought out. Both this incident as well as the couple's separation occurred in June of 1989. Divorce proceedings began and it appears that both Frank and Judy were filing for custody of their twins.

Throughout the summer Frank repeatedly called Judy at work and her co-workers heard him make threats on her life. In August of 1989 Judy had gone to get some of her things from the home they were sharing near Frank's parents. While there Frank had tied her up, raped her and threatened to kill her. Both the incident with Jason in June and the incident in August were being “investigated” it seems but no action had been taken. It was said that warrants “were pending” for those incidents. Then came the night of October 1^st.

Frank would have the twins that night. Reports indicate that Judy had to be at work early the next morning so it was expected that Frank's parents would watch them. While things did not seem very specific it appears that Frank worked somehow in the construction business and he the following day, a Monday, he was to be working in Kentucky. Now, let me point out that while that may sound like a long distance, it really is not depending on where he needed to go. I live on the Indiana/Kentucky border and I can be in Nashville in just over two hours. In fact, it takes me less time to get there than it does Indianapolis.

At 11:20 that night the 911 call would come in. It was Jason Burnett. On the call Jason is heard saying “Help me!” while his brother, fifteen year old Chad could be heard saying “Frank, no, God help me!” The call ended abruptly after Jason gave the dispatcher his address. As I stated earlier officers arrived at the scene within five minutes of the call. It was said that they knocked on the door but there was not an answer and the officers determined that things “appeared quiet” so they believed the call to be a prank call and they left the scene.

The following day around three the bodies of thirty-five year old Judy Smith and her two teenage sons would be found in the home. The victims had all suffered from multiple stab wounds and Chad and Judy had been shot as well. Chad was found face up on the kitchen floor. It looked as if he was attempting to get away. He had been shot three times, once in the shoulder, once in the upper chest and once near his left eyebrow. He had also been stabbed multiple times. Both Judy and Jason would be found in a bedroom. Jason was found on the floor at the foot of the bed. His neck had been completely slashed. He had also been stabbed repeatedly in his chest and abdomen area. His official cause of death was due to a loss of blood. Judy was found on the bed of the same room. She had been shot twice, once in the arm and once in the neck to the point that it had severed her spinal cord which would have rendered her immediately paralyzed. Like her sons she had also been stabbed multiple times.

On the bed sheet next to Judy was a hand print in blood. It was a very distinctive hand print and would play prominently in a later trial. An examination showed that a .22 caliber weapon had been used. Considering there were no signs of forced entry, the pending warrants against Frank Smith, and the 911 call that had been made the previous night it is no surprise that he was number one on their suspect list.

Oscar Franklin Smith would be found just where he should have been later that day, in Kentucky. He would claim that he had taken the twins to his mother's home the evening before and had left the area around 10:30 to head to Kentucky to be at work the next morning. Investigators found it suspicious when he began talking about Judy in the past tense before they had even informed him of what had occurred. In addition to this they would later say that not only did he appear to have no emotional reaction to the murders, he had asked them no questions as to what happened.

Despite any kind of evidence or even suspicions they may have had almost immediately, it would be just over a month before they would arrest Frank Smith. It is not clear just when Oscar Franklin Smith went to trial, or how long it lasted. What I can tell you is that he was convicted on three counts of first degree murder and on July 26, 1990 he was sentenced to death.

Normally in a case such as this, one so brutal that the death penalty was sought, you would likely hear me question the time in which it took to convict and sentence Frank Smith. Now, it is quite possible that his sentencing took place just after his trial and did not have the customary few months in between conviction and sentencing. But I have to say eight months from arrest, to sentence is generally very fast, even for 1990. We have seen what fast trials in the early to mid 1900's and prior have shown us, they do not always get it right. I am one that if you are going to take the life of someone then we better get it right. In the same respect, I do admit that there are clear cut cases that often seem to take forever to see the inside of a courtroom. That being said, I have no real complaints as far as this case goes as far as the timing. In fact, I am unsure why this case was even taken to trial in the first place. It seems unlikely that the prosecutors would have forced a capital murder case to court. In most cases the defendants are given the right to plead in order to have the death penalty removed from the equation. Now, of course this was an especially heinous crime that involved the deaths of children so it is entirely possible that the prosecutors would have never taken death off the table, but that is an unusual act.

Aside from the 911 call made by Jason in which his brother could be heard calling the defendant by name, there was a lot of other evidence against Frank Smith. Of course there is always what I call the low circumstantial things such as the fact that Frank Smith was known to carry a large knife with him nearly at all times and he owned a .22 caliber pistol, that could have been used in the murders. There was a neighbor that testified that they saw Frank Smith's vehicle in front of Judy's home around eleven that night or just after. That took, while damning could be questioned. A good defense attorney could attempt to put doubt in a juror's mind as to whether the neighbor had the right time, or even the right day. There was also evidence that beginning in the summer of 1988 Frank Smith had obtained several insurance policies on the three victims. To be fair, they all occurred before the couple separated but they amounted to over eighty thousand dollars. They of course had all of the prior issues that were on record between the couple including the incidences in June and August. Even still in my opinion, there were only two things that mattered and proved that Oscar Franklin Smith viciously murdered three people.

First, there is the 911 call. You have two young men begging for their lives. That of course would not necessarily prove that Frank Smith was the perpetrator if it had not been for Chad who literally screamed his name in the background of the call. But, it was the second piece of evidence that I think also proves his guilt but all but proves that he committed the act alone, leaving out the possibility of placing the blame elsewhere. That evidence was the bloody hand print found on the sheet next to Judy's body. This was not any ordinary hand print. This hand print was unique in the fact that this left hand print was missing two middle fingers... two fingers that Frank Smith also had missing on his left hand. I believe with this evidence the prosecution knew they had a slam dunk case. What of course they could not know for certain was that a jury would return a sentence of death. They could have wished for it and hoped that the jury they picked felt the way they did, but they could not have known for certain.

While it did not take long for the State of Tennessee to solve this crime and close it on the books, it has taken them a very long time to see it come to a full conclusion. Oscar Franklin Smith remains on death row in Tennessee. He may see his time ending soon however. Until August of 2018 Tennessee had not performed an execution since December of 2009. It appears that the execution went off without a hitch and at last check there were two more execution scheduled for 2018.

Although I compose these blogs based on the notes I made throughout my research it is not unusual for me to conduct additional searches to clarify particular issues. In this case I was attempting to determine exactly what Oscar Franklin Smith did for a living and I came across another interesting issue.

Frank Smith has a younger brother named Millard Earl Smith who has an extensive criminal history himself. There is also apparently at least one sister who has spoken to the media about Millard but only under the condition that her name not be made public. Throughout the 1970's and 1980's Millard spent time in and out of prison for rapes and assaults on women. Later those assaults were directed towards teenage children. A young girl named Tabitha Tuders went missing in 2003 and a few months later Millard was arrested for assaulting a young boy that went to her school. While Tabitha's disappearance apparently has never been solved it has been said that Millard Smith at least at one time was a prime suspect. Millard was convicted it seems for the assault on the young boy as well a rape and assault against another woman. Like his brother he is currently a guest of the State of Tennessee prison system. There was one article that stated he was in a federal prison but that does not seem to be true. The Department of Corrections in Tennessee show his entry date as being in December of 2003 but no projected release date. It is unclear what his sentence may have been. A search for general information on him is difficult for a few reasons. One of course is the popularity of his surname but secondly, when you search Millard you get a lot of information about the Tabitha Tuders case and few specifics about the crimes proven to be committed by him.