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Criminal Records - Most Wanted |
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Profile |
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Name: Fabian Desmond Smart
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Race: Black |
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Age Now: 31 |
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Hair (Color, Description, Facial Hair): Brown |
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Eyes (Color and Correction): Brown |
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Wanted for :
Murder, Lock Haven, PA;
Jan 22, 1999
Kidnapping, Lock Haven, PA;
Jan 22, 1999
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Location(s) |
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Last Seen : Unkown |
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Possible Location : Unkown |
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Last Known : Clyo, GA
Fabian Smart was arrested in his hometown of Clyo, just outside of Savannah. |
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Traits |
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Case Story |
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A Football Party Turns Deadly |
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In April of 1999, 21-year-old Jason McMann's badly bruised and decomposed body was discovered in a densely wooded area outside Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, a small town nestled in the Appalachian Mountains. He had been missing for three months.
Jason was last seen on January 22, 1999 at a party held at "The Football House," a place where members of the Lock Haven University football team live and hang out. According to eyewitnesses, Jason got involved in a fight at the party and was last seen being chased outside the house and across the street by an elite group of football players.
Family members say Jason had been involved in an ongoing feud with the star quarterback over drug money owed to Jason's cousin.
An autopsy concluded that Jason's death was a result of hypothermia and an overdose of the date rape drug GHB. Authorities were unsure whether Jason had taken the GHB voluntarily or whether someone has slipped into his drink at the party.
Members of the Lock Haven Football team were questioned but without any specific leads, little evidence or any eyewitnesses willing to come forward, the Pennsylvania State Police listed Jason's case as an "Unexplained Death." |
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But Was Jason Really Murdered? |
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Jason's parents, Paula and Tucker McMann, struggled to make sense of their son's death and blamed Lock Haven's small town paranoia from preventing the truth to come out.
There were rumors that Fabian Smart had murdered their son. "But everyone was so afraid they were going to get murdered if they told me what they knew," said Paula McMann, "everything stayed a secret. It was insane."
Frustrated with the Pennsylvania State Police investigation the McMann family turned to America's Most Wanted. AMW's newly formed Specials Unit brought in retired Miami Beach Detective Sgt. Joe Matthews to take a look at the case.
In his 30 years as an investigator, Det. Matthews has worked over 2,000 death investigations, but the chilly reception he received in Lock Haven was first for this veteran. Det. Matthews was confronted by the same code of silence -- even from the local law enforcement. It felt like no one really cared if Jason McMann's death was ever resolved.
Undaunted, Det. Matthews began his own investigation starting from scratch.
He located eyewitnesses in the neighborhood where Jason was last seen alive. They told Matthews they had seen Jason being chased into an apartment complex courtyard by four black males and later saw him being dragged away.
In an interview with the coroner, Det. Matthews learned that Jason not only died from an overdose of GHB -- there was enough of the designer drug in Jason's body to kill five people.
"That to me says murder," said Det. Matthews. |
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AMW Breaks The Case Wide Open |
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But how to prove Jason McMann had been murdered?
The first break in the case came when Det. Matthews finally convinced an ex-girlfriend of one of the football players to talk. She named Fabian Smart, the team quarterback, his out of town friend named "Diggy," and another football player, Jermaine Ballard, having been involved in Jason's murder.
Fabian Smart had long since left Lock Haven and was living in his hometown outside Savannah, Georgia. Det. Matthews was informed by Fabian's mother Loretta, that the Smart family was not interested in speaking with AMW.
But Jermaine Ballard was willing and his interview was the break that Det. Matthews had spent two years looking for. Ballard's nervousness during the interview made Det. Matthews suspect that he knew in detail what happened to Jason McMann.
Det. Matthews convinced Lock Haven and Pennsylvania State police they needed to evaluate Jermaine Ballard. Det. Matthews's suspicions were right. Ballard badly flunked a polygraph and not only told police what happened to Jason McMann he named all the players involved.
Ballard said Fabian Smart had been fighting with Jason that January night over a drug debt. He said Fabian and a group of football players chased Jason into the nearby apartment complex and beat him. Then Fabian directed Jermaine, Diggy Williams and another football player, Quincy Teal, to put Jason in the trunk of his car.
Quincy Teal backed up Ballard's story to police and when Diggy Williams was located he provided police with an eyewitness account to Jason McMann's murder.
Williams said after Jason was placed in the trunk of Fabian's car, Fabian drove to a wooded area 30 miles from town. Diggy went along for the ride. Fabian took Diggy's gun and tried to shoot Jason. But when the gun jammed Fabian lost his cool and began beating Jason with the gun. He finished Jason off by beating him with a tree branch he found in the woods.
Fabian Smart had warned all of his accomplices to keep quiet and they had for two years. But now in exchange for reduced sentences, Ballard, Williams and Teal all agreed to testify against Fabian Smart.
Clinton County's District Attorney Ted McKnight was willing to pursue charges against Fabian Smart but there was one problem, the autopsy report conflicted with the statements made by the three co-defendants.
Initially it was believed that Jason died of an overdose of GHB and exposure.
The District Attorney asked Dr. Wayne Ross a forensic pathologist to review the autopsy report and the crime scene photos. After careful examination Dr. Ross determined that Jason died from "blunt force trauma" and ruled his death a homicide.
Dr. Ross determined that the excess amount of GHB wasn't from a designer drug, but from natural decomposition. Jason's body had lain in the woods for three months before he was located.
Three years after Jason's murder, a warrant was issued for Fabian Smart, but it turned out Smart would not be so easy a take-down. |
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