Details of Disappearance
Smith was spending part of the summer of 1952 at Camp Sloane in Salisbury, Connecticut. She had an altercation with a group of female campers during the morning of July 16, 1952 and her nose was bloodied from the incident. Smith told her tent mates that she was skipping breakfast that morning and was walking to the camp dispensary, where she planned to drop off an ice pack she used the previous evening when she fell out of her tent. Smith never went to the dispensary; instead, she walked away from the camp and down Indian Mountain Road.
Smith was seen picking daisies along the roadside and asked several people how she could get to Lakeville, Connecticut. She was apparently homesick and with only one week left of her stay at Camp Sloane, she decided to leave the premises. Smith was last seen walking on US Route 44 in Salisbury later in the day. She had her thumb out and was apparently attempting to hitchhike, perhaps to Lakeville. Smith was wearing a red windbreaker and blue shorts with plaid trim. She also had a red ribbon in her hair. Smith was never seen again.
Camp counselors discovered Smith was missing in the afternoon hours when they found the ice pack she said she planned to return to the dispensary still inside her tent. An extensive search did not produce any clues as to her whereabouts. There have been many suspects in Smith's disappearance throughout the years, but no one has been charged in her case.
One of the possible suspects is William Redmond, a former carnival worker who was charged with murdering a young girl in 1951, one year prior to Smith's disappearance. Redmond allegedly told another prison inmate in the 1980's that he killed four people during his lifetime, but only one of the homicides had been uncovered. Redmond was eventually sent back to his home state of Nebraska when it was determined that he was too ill to stand trial for the 1951 murder. Authorities have been unable to determine if Redmond was in the Connecticut area in 1952 at the time of Smith's disappearance and he passed a polygraph test concerning Smith's disappearance.
Smith's case remains unsolved.