Silliman's Papers

Cop who confessed to murder has history of failure
    His hard-luck life has lawyer asking for leniency in brutal slaying
By Daniel Silliman
Clayton News Daily, Aug. 31, 2007

A sworn police officer and a confessed murderer, Charles Alan Smith has a history of failures leading up to the moment he was charged with killing his girlfriend’s husband.

The 49-year-old saw himself as the “black sheep” of his family and was struggling to become “the good guy,” according to his attorney, who is arguing Smith is different from other murderers.

To prosecutors, however, he is simply a killer, who deserves “nothing less” than a life sentence in prison — his history is irrelevant.

Whether or not Smith’s past warrants a plea for leniency, it shows a police officer descending to murder, and a man desperate to overcome his failures the morning he -- according to his confession -- ambushed a man and shot him to death in a warehouse parking lot before the sun came up.

Born in North Dakota on Oct. 8, 1957, Smith grew up on the east side of Jonesboro. A neighbor still living in the area — someone Smith listed as a reference when applying for a job, but who asked not to be named in this article — described the Smith family as a “model family,” an “average family” and “good church-goers.”

“He would have been any kid in our neighborhood,” the neighbor said. “He was just your average young boy playing football.”

Smith joined the United States Army and finished his high school degree while stationed in Germany. He married a nurse while stationed in Denmark, according to documents obtained by the Clayton News Daily.

A Southern Baptist, Smith married a Catholic girl from Detroit, Therese Rose Dugan, on August 15, 1984. Four years later, with a newborn son, the two returned to the United States, and moved to Georgia, where they had a second son.

After eight years, though, Smith’s life unraveled, and documents show he has been grasping at the loose ends since 1996. Therese Smith became a Jehovah’s Witness, and following the tenets of her new-found faith, stopped celebrating holidays, didn’t accept gifts and didn’t allow the two boys to accept gifts. According to Clayton County Superior Court documents, she criticized her husband’s language, accused him of being an absentee father and pushed him to join the Witnesses.

He said she was a fanatic, and that she had “changed considerably” since their marriage, 12 years earlier. Therese Smith wasn’t working, at the time, and Smith was making $7.75 an hour as a “control specialist” at a freight company.

Disagreeing with his wife over religion and their children, and stressed about finances, Smith left his wife and family in March of 1996. He moved into an extended-stay motel, and filed for divorce, documents show.

Smith’s attorney, Joe Roberto, said the failed marriage devastated Smith’s self worth. Living alone, he spent the next five years losing a series of jobs, and arguing about child support and visitation rights. In 1998, he got a job servicing fire alarms. He worked his way up to $18 an hour, but then the company was sold and he lost his job.

He took another job servicing fire alarms, in 2001, but was fired after one month. He took a another job, that year, installing fire alarms, and was fired after four months.

Late that summer, Smith went to work for Waffle House, cooking food for $6.80 an hour. He worked there for the rest of the year, earning a 20-cent raise. In January 2002, he applied to the Jonesboro Police Department, citing his military experience and a desire to help people. He got the job, and worked as a patrol officer for two and a half years.

According to Jonesboro records, he worked without distinction until he made an inappropriate comment to a female co-worker. In May 2004, Smith made a crude joke, according to the department’s internal investigation, and was reprimanded for visiting a female officer’s apartment while the two were on duty. In June, he made a comment while talking to another female officer, and the woman reported him, saying she felt offended and disrespected.

While being interviewed by then-Chief Robert Thomas, Smith asked if he could keep the incident out of his personnel file by resigning. Thomas told him the investigation would end, and Smith typed out a resignation, effective immediately.

When he applied for a position at the Atlanta State Farmer’s Market, one month later, he listed his reason for leaving as “personal.” He was hired at the farmers’ market and started working for Police Chief Freeman Poole, a former member of the Jonesboro force.

Poole later described Smith as one of his best officers and as someone who was always willing to help. But Smith’s police department file shows a different story.

In the Spring of 2007, he was reprimanded twice for misconduct. He was regularly late to work, according to a written reprimand, showing up late more often than he showed up on time. He left work to run personal errands, while on duty.

His supervisor called him unreliable and disruptive to normal operations. Smith had a supervisory position taken away, and his superior officer “made it very clear that he did not want Charles Smith working on his shift any longer,” according to an internal memo.

At the time, Smith was in the middle of a romantic relationship with a married woman. It was the first relationship he’d had since his divorce. He had met 50-year-old Allene Skinner in a Forest Park truck stop, according to Clayton County Police, and the two were reportedly married in an unofficial ceremony.

Roberto said Skinner, who was legally married to Donald Ray Skinner, a truck driver, “twisted him all around” and made him act like a love-sick 14-year-old. The two had an off-and-on relationship, and Smith wrote Skinner letters, Roberto said, promising he would make their relationship work and dreaming about buying a house with her.

Clayton County detective, Scott Eskew, said the two applied for a home loan, but were denied.

On June 9, Donald Ray Skinner was found dead in the freight company parking lot. His tractor trailer was still running, nothing had been taken and he appeared to have been ambushed, chased and shot four times. He was shot in the eye with a bullet Eskew identified as the type of round — a high quality .40-caliber bullet — used by police.

Seventeen days later, Smith and Skinner were arrested on charges of conspiring to murder and murdering the 49-year-old trucker. Skinner was allegedly motivated by her husband’s $90,000 life insurance policy. Smith was allegedly motivated by love.

Skinner’s attorney, Malcolm Wells, did not return repeated calls, but said in court that his client didn’t conspire to murder her husband of 17 years; that Smith acted alone.

Smith confessed to the crime, telling detectives he had waited in the woods near the truck depot and had shot Donald Ray Skinner four times, listening to him say “Why?” as he lay on the concrete and died.

Eskew described the arrested police officer as “a fool in love.” Roberto agreed with the description, saying “this was love gone woefully awry. I don’t mean to diminish what he did, the taking of life is a crime and a horrible thing, but I want to distinguish him from many of the murders we see in Clayton County,” Roberto said.

Smith is a murderer, according to his lawyer, but he isn’t cold blooded, isn’t a drug dealer and doesn’t have a “nefarious background.” Roberto said he is begging the District Attorney’s office to allow his client to plead guilty to manslaughter.

Donald Ray Skinner’s family asked the district attorney to pursue the death penalty, but they were told the case does not meet the legally required aggravating circumstances.

Executive assistant district attorney, John Turner, said there’s no way, however, that someone who pulled the trigger can be charged with anything less than murder.

“To me, murder is murder,” Turner said. “There’s no defense and there’s no excuse ... To me, it’s worse when a cop does something like that. They know better than that. There’s no excuse.”

Turner is reviewing the case this week, preparing to bring the charges to a grand jury for indictment.