Keith Smith, 55, was sentenced to life in prison for first-degree murder on Monday
A Baltimore man who tried to cover up his wife’s 2018 stabbing death with a story blaming a panhandler has been sentenced to life in prison.
Keith Smith, 55, was convicted in December of first-degree murder in the death of his wife, Jacquelyn Smith, a 54-year-old electrical engineer at the US Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground.
On Monday he was sentenced to life in prison for murder, plus three years to be served concurrently for the use of a deadly weapon.
Appearing by video from jail, Smith apologized to Jacquelyn’s family but continued to insist on his innocence, even after his tearjerker story fell to shambles in the face of overwhelming evidence.
His attorney, Natalie Finegar, asked the judge for a sentence less than the maximum, focusing on his faith and involvement in his church before his arrest.
But Circuit Judge Jennifer Schiffer said she had never seen facts that ‘showed more premeditation, willfulness and intent.’
Keith told police and the media that Jacquelyn had been stabbed by a panhandler who she had been trying to give money to. The pair are pictured here on their wedding day
Smith’s version of his wife’s slaying drew national attention, as he and his daughter, Valeria, gave tearful interviews (above) claiming panhandlers killed her after she gave them $10
‘The crime for which the defendant was convicted was the reason the maximum sentence for murder was created,’ Schiffer added.
‘The victim had no way of knowing her husband would stab her over and over again. The victim was the definition of defenseless and vulnerable. She was asleep. He blamed vulnerable people: panhandlers,’ the judge said.
Jacquelyn Smith’s family issued a statement praising the tough sentence, saying: ‘This didn’t bring her back, but we are elated and we feel that definitely justice was served.’
Initially, Keith Smith told police his wife was knifed by a man after she handed $10 to a female panhandler who appeared to be holding a baby.
Smith’s version of his wife’s slaying drew national attention, as he and his daughter, Valeria, gave tearful interviews.
Oprah Winfrey, once a newscaster in Baltimore, tweeted that the case would make her reconsider handing out cash to panhandlers.
But the story fell apart when detectives failed to find evidence of the panhandlers, and surveillance video and cellphone data didn’t show Smith’s car along the route he claimed to take.
Court documents stated that police believe Jacquelyn (pictured with Keith) had been about to divorce Keith and that he had once asked his brother to kill Jacquelyn
Police later said that Keith’s story about the panhandler was untrue and suspected that Keith (pictured with Jacquelyn) had been responsible for the death of his wife of four years
Keith Smith and his daughter were arrested in March 2019 in Texas during what police said was an attempt to flee to Mexico.
Valeria Smith, who pleaded guilty in 2019 to acting as an accessory after her stepmother’s slaying, admitted ditching her stepmother’s purse at a bus stop to support the panhandler story.
She testified that her father drove them into a park as his wife dozed, then stabbed her. Afterward, Keith Smith coached his daughter on what they would tell police.
‘The story was supposed to be it was a homeless person, or two homeless people, that had a baby, and Mrs. Jacquelyn was supposed to feel sorry for them,’ Valeria Smith told the jury. ‘When she gave them the money, they stabbed her.’
Keith Smith’s attorney told the jury that inconsistencies in her client’s story don´t prove he killed his wife.
Keith and his daughter, Valeria (pictured), were arrested in Texas in March 2019 after they allegedly went on the run in an effort to escape to Mexico as police closed in on them
Valeria was originally hit with a first-degree murder charge, but was then indicted on one charge of accessory after the crime. She is shown at left in her mugshot and at right in an undated image
Valeria pleaded guilty to the accessory charge in September 2019, 10 days before her father’s murder trial was originally expected to begin
Valeria Smith was sentenced in December to five years in prison under a plea deal, in which she agreed to testify against her father.
In the wake of Keith Smith’s arrest, Jacquelyn’s mother, Anna Trisvane, said that the panhandler story didn’t add up from the beginning because Jacquelyn was a cautious woman who would not have given money to a person in the street in the way her husband had claimed.
‘It was all phony. I knew it was not real. I suspected that he had something to do with it,’ she told WBALTV in March 2019.
‘She was too cautious. She doesn’t like things like that. She would have said to herself, “No that’s phony,”‘ Trisvane added.
Keith Smith was previously arrested for robbing a bank three times in 1999 and 2000.
