If the murder case against John Smith goes to trial in Mercer County, the jury will not hear that he killed his first wife in Ohio, a judge ruled Wednesday.
The decision is a significant blow to the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office’s case against Smith, 71, who they believe killed his wife, Fran Gladden-Smith, in 1991, when they lived in West Windsor.
Her body has never been found, but a grand jury indicted Smith in 2019 after more than 25 years of investigations into her disappearance.
By then, Smith was nearly 20 years into an Ohio prison term for killing first wife Janice Hartman, who vanished in 1974.
Police and prosecutors have long drawn similarities to the cases: both women disappeared, and Smith was charged after years of investigation. Only Hartman’s body was found, though.
Despite any similarities, Mercer County Judge Peter Warshaw said a jury will not hear about the Hartman case, saying one spousal murder does not prove another and introducing it as evidence would prejudicially tilt a jury against Smith.
He announced the decision from the bench in Superior Court in Trenton, ruling against a motion by Assistant Prosecutor Kathleen Petrucci to raise the Hartman conviction at trial, a motion known as “prior bad acts.”
To do so, the evidence must pass a multi-prong test, and the Hartman murder does not, Warshaw found.
“Simply stated, that the defendant killed his first wife in 1974 does not prove he killed his second in 1991,” the judge said.
He also said he saw no way to introduce the Hartman conviction with jury instruction, or to “sanitize” it. Such a jury would “struggle” against the thoughts that Smith must have acted similarly with Gladden-Smith as he did with Hartman, Warshaw said.
The decision came after Warshaw gave a lengthy summary of the investigations of Smith, much of it provided by an FBI agent, who testified about the case for several hours in August.
Warshaw also pointed out what he said were “gaps” in the prosecution’s mainly circumstantial case, noting that while much is known about Hartman’s demise, which went to trial, not much is known about Gladden-Smith.
The Mercer prosecution has no body, thus no cause of death, and no eyewitnesses in the suspected murder, Warshaw said. To make such a link would be too strong for a jury to hear, he reiterated.
Following the hearing, Petrucci asked if the prosecution could mention basic facts, like that John Smith was married to a woman named Janice Hartman in Ohio. Warshaw initially said no.
“Right now, nothing about Janice Hartman,” he said.
He then said Petrucci would be given a chance to argue to introduce such basic facts as the case approached trial.
John Smith appears from the Mercer County Jail during a Superior Court of Mercer County hearing on Oct. 25, 2021.
The investigations of Smith have been the topic of several true crime television shows and books for over 20 years now.
The disappearance of the 49-year-old Gladden-Smith in West Windsor in September 1991 kicked of much of the events that landed Smith in prison.
Smith was 40 when the couple moved from Florida to the Canal Pointe condo neighborhood, just across the canal from Princeton, earlier in 1991. He’d taken a new job at a Carborundum facility in Keasbey, Woodbridge Township.
On Oct. 4, 1991, Smith reported his wife missing to West Windsor police, saying she was last seen alive about a week earlier and left a note: “Going away for a few days. Don’t forget to feed the fish.”
He said his wife had packed a suitcase and he theorized to police she’d gone on a trip. But police found the suitcase, and investigators and Gladden-Smith’s family grew increasingly suspicious of Smith’s version, since she was recovering from hip surgery at the time.
The investigation never yielded significant evidence against Smith, and he later moved from the Garden State.
In 1999, West Windsor police, now aided by the FBI, went to the Midwest following leads.
There, John Smith’s brother, Michael Smith, confessed to detectives that he’d seen a mummified body in a box in the family home in Ohio, in 1979, which their father had found. Michael Smith said he’d called his brother John about it, and he came and took the box away.
Indiana authorities had found the box in 1980, dumped along a highway there, and 20 years later authorities identified the body as Janice Hartman, Smith’s first wife.
She’d disappeared in 1974, just days after their divorce.
Wayne County, Ohio authorities charged Smith with murder and found him living outside San Diego, where they arrested him in 2000. They also found he’d married a third time and that woman later annulled their marriage and testified at his murder trial.
Smith is currently serving a 15-year to life sentence in Ohio for Hartman’s murder. His next parole eligibility there is in 2029.
After his indictment in Mercer County, authorities here moved Smith to the Mercer jail in early 2021 for trial proceedings. He remains there.
In the fall of 2021, Petrucci said in court the office had offered him a plea bargain for 20 years in prison, which would run consecutive to his Ohio term.
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Kevin Shea may be reached at [email protected].