The Deacon of Death
There are crimes so brutal and intimate in their cruelty, that to remember them is to feel the ache of the world itself. The murders committed by Samuel Lee Smithers, once a church deacon and self-professed man of faith, belong in that category. They are not merely crimes…it is as if something demonic moved through him and left its stain upon the earth.
For nearly thirty years, the people of Florida have waited for justice. Now, as his execution approaches, the state prepares to close the book on one of its most haunting chapters. Many say it is time. And they are not wrong.
Samuel Lee Smithers: A Life Built on Lies
Smithers lived behind a mask of holiness. He was a church deacon…a man who led prayers, read scripture and helped mop the floors of his local Baptist church. His neighbors called him dependable. His friends enjoyed spending time with him. His wife thought she’d married a man of faith.
But that faith was a costume. Beneath the gentle voice and church clothes was a man consumed by lust, deceit and violence. The same hands that once folded in prayer would one day lift an ax.
When sheriff’s deputies arrived at a quiet property in east Hillsborough County on May 28, 1996, they found what no one should ever have to see…two lifeless female bodies submerged in a pond…with skin bearing the testimony of great violence.
Smithers had been seen in the garage, hosing down a bloodied ax, his face calm, his story already rehearsed. When a neighbor noticed the puddle of blood on the concrete, he smiled and said a squirrel must have died.
It was a lie spoken with the composure of a man who had already decided that the truth no longer mattered.
The Women He Killed
The victims were women the world too easily forgets.
Christy Cowan, 31, was once an honor student who dreamed of becoming a nurse. She’d fallen into addiction and a dangerous cycle of prostitution in Tampa. She had two children who will never see her again.
Denise Roach, 24, was called “New York” on the streets. Born in Jamaica, she was fighting her own war against drugs and poverty. She, too, was a mother of two.
They were human beings…flawed, struggling and precious…not statistics, not shadows. Smithers saw them not as people but as prey. He knew their vulnerabilities. He used their need to survive as an invitation to kill.
Samuel Lee Smithers: The Horror of What He Did
When the truth came out, it was almost too much to absorb. Smithers admitted that he struck Christy in the head with an ax during an argument about money. She fell. She gasped. She begged.
He dragged her by the feet across the ground, her blood leaving a trail that led to the pond. She was still alive when he threw her in. She drowned beneath the surface, fighting for air while the man who once called himself a servant of God washed his weapon and prepared his alibi.
Denise’s death came in another moment of rage and cruelty. He shoved her against a wall…her head struck wood and concrete. Whether she died instantly or later, we cannot know. What we do know is that Smithers left her where she fell…and returned the next day to finish the cover-up.
Smithers changed his story over and over. It’s possible that the details are even worse.
The bottom line is that his crimes were brutal beyond imagination. *This before you get to the arsons in Tennessee that he admitted to…and other murders he is suspected of.
This was not a crime of passion. It was the methodical, systematic destruction of life…deliberate, prolonged and godless.
Samuel Lee Smithers: Why the State Must Act
There are moments when words like “rehabilitation” and “mercy” feel obscene.
How do you speak of redemption in the face of such depravity?
How do you weigh an old man’s fragile breath against the screams that filled that pond?
Some say, “He’s old now. Let him die in prison.” But he already lived decades beyond his victims. He ate, slept and aged…luxuries Christy and Denise never had.
Surely, there are crimes that forfeit the right to walk this earth?
Perversely, Smithers baptized his violence in the language of God.
Surely, the state must rid the earth of this man forever?
Samuel Lee Smithers: The Mirror
And yet…
The gurney will gleam under the fluorescent lights. The straps will be fastened with quiet precision. The IV will slide into a vein. The witnesses will watch. Somewhere behind glass, a clock will mark the hour. The men and women who carry it out will not rage or sneer. They will be calm, professional and certain. And in that very calmness lies an identical terror.
Because this is what Smithers looked like too…calm, composed and convinced that what he was doing made sense.
He killed with justification of his own making. We kill with justification written on state letterhead. The rituals are different only in setting. Both exist to make the act feel necessary…even holy.
But both are executions…deliberate, sterile and final.
The Cycle We Refuse to Break
When we kill Samuel Lee Smithers, we will not have undone the murders of Christy Cowan and Denise Roach. We will only have performed them again…slowly, bureaucratically, in the name of order instead of chaos.
We will tell ourselves it’s different because it’s legal, because it’s clean, because it’s deserved.
But the heart of the act is identical…one human deciding another’s life is expendable.
That logic…that dark arithmetic…is the same that moved Smithers to raise his ax.
When the chemicals still his breath, the room will fall silent. Some will call it peace. But it will be the peace of a pond gone still after violence…the same false stillness that once covered the bodies of Christy and Denise. We will not have purified anything. We will have proven that killing still feels like control.
Only this time when we look into that quiet, polished glass of the death chamber, the reflection staring back will not be Samuel Lee Smithers.
It will be us.
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*If you would like to support the Execution Intervention Project (the organization that financially supports Dr. Hood’s work), click here.
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