11:18 p.m.: Dispatch received a call from Cherish's mother that her daughter was abducted
11:28 p.m.: First two officers arrive on scene
12:05 a.m.: Homicide investigators notified and asked to respond to the scene by dispatch. Homicide sergeant makes contact with patrol supervisor and is advised that the surveillance footage has been reviewed and verified that the victim had left with the suspect in a white van
In the minutes before and after midnight, police issued BOLOs to Clay, Nassau and Baker counties.
At 12:27 a.m., police sent an emergency assistance and response services broadcast, known as an EARS, to the news media.
At 2:40 a.m., Cherish's information is entered into the National Crime Information Center and Florida Crime Information Center as an endangered missing juvenile.
Police identified the suspect as Donald J. Smith, a registered sex offender at 3:30 a.m. Police also learned the suspect's mother owns a white Dodge 1998 van.
Ten minutes later, police showed Smith's picture to Cherish's mother. She identified him as the suspect.
At 3:45 a.m., FDLE reviews the Amber Alert script with a JSO homicide sergeant. The script is updated with new information on the suspect and the vehicle.
Five minutes later, police respond to Smith's home to search for the victim. Shortly after, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children contacts JSO dispatch to get information on the incident.
At 4:05 a.m., the final script for the Amber Alert is reviewed.
The Amber Alert is received via NCIC/FCIC at 4:21 a.m.
At 8:34, police received a call from a woman who said she saw a suspicious van at the Highlands Baptist Church at around 7 a.m.
Twenty minutes later, a police officer saw the van on Interstate 95 near the Interstate 10 split.
At 9:05 a.m., police stopped the van on the interstate. Police arrested Smith. Cherish is nowhere to be found.
At 9:20 a.m., police and K-9 officers find Cherish's body behind a church.
Published: 6/27 10:38 pm - Updated 6/28 10:59 am
Reported by Amanda Warford
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Nearly 2,000 people attended a viewing for Cherish Perrywinkle on Thursday at Paxon Revival Center Church on Jacksonville's Westside.
...hopes Cherish's story could save the life of another child.
"I just want them to understand that just because someone is nice to you doesn't mean they have good intentions."
Smith's arrest record. A membership is required to read the article, but not to view the graphical timeline of his arrests.
http://members.jacksonville.com/new...inkle-slaying-grew-childhood-bully-feared-sex
Also a slideshow summarizing his arrest reports:
http://jacksonville.com/slideshow/2013-06-29/donald-james-smith-history-arrests#slide-1
Hasty lives in Blountstown, but came face to face with Donald Smith, a few years ago. It was a run-in, he says, that he'll never forget.
Hasty and Smith both have children with the same woman. Hasty took his daughter to Smith's mother's home in Jacksonville, to let her visit with Smith's son, which is the girl's half-brother.
Smith was gone during Hasty's first two visits, but on the third, the two men met for the first time.
Their encounter lasted only a few hours, Hasty says he was immediately uncomfortable with the idea of leaving his daughter alone with Smith.
"Every time I caught him in some vicinity of my daughter he was looking at her, and she was only 2 and a half or 3 years old at the time. It bothered me. When you look at somebody you would normally act like 'hey, how's it going,' but when you're constantly staring at something when someone's trying to talk to you, you can see their mind is set on something," Hasty said.
Hasty, never took his daughter back for another visit. It wasn't until months later that he learned Smith was convicted sexual offender.
The Florida Times Union (http://bit.ly/18qLHui) says accounts from the Smith's childhood and adult acquaintances, neighbors and hundreds of pages of court records paint a picture of the career criminal as a young bully and a sexual deviant from at least his early 20s, as well as a lifelong charmer.
Authorities rejected a plea of insanity in one of his early criminal cases after a psychiatric exam.
Smith spent 1999 to 2002 under involuntary civil commitment after meeting the criteria of a violent sexual predator as part of the state's Jimmy Ryce Act.
Read more: http://www.abcactionnews.com/dpp/ne...ing-eight-year-old-florida-girl#ixzz2XqzL8fNn
https://www.floridabar.org/__85256AA9005B9F25.nsf/0/B6BEC601AC0A6FC6852579CD00455EB5?OpenDocumentThe Florida Legislature passed the Jimmy Ryce Involuntary Civil Commitment for Sexually Violent Predators Treatment And Care Act. (Jimmy Ryce Act) on May 1, 1998. The Act directs the Secretary of Children and Family Services to create a multidisciplinary team that will determine whether an inmate is a sexually violent predator.
The only statutory guideline for the teams composition is that it must include two licensed psychiatrists or psychologists, or one licensed psychiatrist and one licensed psychologist. One hundred and eighty days prior to releasing an inmate convicted of a sexually violent crime, the agency controlling the inmate must notify both the multidisciplinary team and the relevant state attorney of the inmates impending release. The team then determines whether the inmate is a sexually violent predator.
A sexually violent predator is defined as any person who:
- (a) Has been convicted of a sexually violent offense; and
[*](b) Suffers from a mental abnormality or personality disorder that makes the person likely to engage in acts of sexual violence if not confined in a secure facility for long-term control, care, and treatment.
The Jimmy Ryce Involuntary Civil Commitment for Sexually Violent Predators' Treatment and Care Act, provides a civil commitment procedure for the long term treatment of sexually violent predators. The Act was created so that a person classified as a sexually violent predator may be involuntarily committed to the Department of Children and Families (DCF) for treatment until the person's mental abnormality or personality disorder has changed and the person is safe to be at large.
"He hid her so well, no one would have ever found her," Perrywinkle told First Coast News. When asked if Cherish was buried, Perrywinkle responded, "Yes."
JSO will not comment on how the body was discovered or confirm if it was, indeed, buried out in the woods behind the church on Broward Road. A tipster originally led police to that scene. Someone called and said a suspicious van had been parked there earlier that Saturday morning.
Donald Smith, the man accused of abducting and killing 8-year-old Cherish Perrywinkle last month, was indicted Tuesday on charges of first-degree murder, kidnapping and capital sexual battery.
In announcing the indictment, State Attorney Angela Corey and Assistant State Attorney Mark Caliel said the cause of Cherish's death was strangulation. They said she was raped before being killed.
Prosecutors said they have decided to pursue the death penalty in this case. Smith will be arraigned July 16.
another quote from that article:"We received a three-count indictment for murder in the first degree, kidnapping a child under the age of 13, and sexual battery under the age of 12," said prosecutor, Mark Caliel.
We found out premeditation is applicable in Smith's case, but there's still one key piece of evidence investigators still haven't found. Cherish's mother Rayne says her stroller was in Smith's van while they were inside the Walmart, but not when he was arrested.
"It could lead us to add evidence that would be important in this case. There may be a secondary crime scene that we need to investigate," said Caliel.
The stroller is a blue, tandem, Graco model with plaid print. It can been seen being pushed by a woman in a grainy picture that police say is a still shot taken from surveillance video inside the Dollar General store where Cherish Perrywinkle's mother, Rayne, first met Smith Friday evening. A friend of the family confirms to Action News that it is in fact Rayne Perrywinkle in the picture.
At the end of May, Smith had just finished serving a 14-month sentence on a misdemeanor charge of attempted kidnapping of another child. While serving that sentence, Smith apparently conned his fellow inmates into thinking he was someone he wasn't.
http://www.news4jax.com/news/man-sh...ller/-/475880/20856652/-/wpfx0jz/-/index.htmlThe former inmate serving time from grand theft says Smith told the other prisoners he was in for drug charges, but because he didn't want them knowing what he was really convicted of. Child sex abusers are sometimes dealt with harshly in jail.
The Florida Department of Children and Families has removed the two younger daughters of Rayne Perrywinkle from her home, Channel 4 has learned.
"We emphasize that our first concern is ensuring the safety of the children," DCF spokesman John Harrell said in a statement. "In these types of cases, it's not about punishing the parent. It's about helping the parent and making sure the children are safe. In cases like these, we would work to get the parent and the children reunited when it is safe to do so. The services we provide will hopefully help in this regard."
http://www.actionnewsjax.com/conten...mother-of-Cherish/IRJpEQfbW0KIPQqlHsqO_w.cspxAction News reached out to a source close to the family who tells us the girls are staying with a family friend.
http://www.wokv.com/news/news/state-takes-children-away-cherish-perrywinkles-mom/nYmNJ/Our newspartner Action news is reporting Cherish's mother and her fiance have been granted supervised visits with the children.
http://jacksonville.com/news/crime/...errywinkle-removed-mothers-home#ixzz2Yhi2jeIoThe younger sisters’ father is Aharon Pearson, who was living with Perrywinkle at least until the Wednesday after Cherish died. He was not at the viewing or the funeral.
In the report, Perrywinkle had told Wood that she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
“I’m damn sorry I turned out to be right,” he said. “I’m damn sorry about it. But it wasn’t a lucky guess.”
Wednesday afternoon, someone drove Perrywinkle to her home, she quickly walked inside, grabbed something and returned to the car before a Florida Times-Union reporter could ask for comment.
Neighbors said they hadn’t seen Destiny or Nevaeh since the weekend. Normally, the two girls are running around the front yard, playing with kittens. If not, they were in a stroller that Perrywinkle would push.
“She always had those children with her,” Jeannette Arnold said. “I don’t know that lady that well. But she is a good mother.”
Leona Nelson, who lives directly across the street from the Perrywinkles, brought over chicken, potato salad, cake, sodas and sweet tea during the weekend. She said she saw the girls then, but hadn’t seen them since.
http://www.actionnewsjax.com/conten...Law-reaches-1-200/bEHRj7ihJ0adwbFMhcnLpg.cspxAn online petition urging lawmakers to pass Cherish's Law now has 1,200 signatures.
They are asking leaders to reform repeat sex offender laws, to keep better tabs on offenders after they serve time.
http://www.actionnewsjax.com/conten...-sister-reacts-to/rg2f0Lyqa0S7AKmzE6yB3g.cspxNow 26 years old, Lindsay Hoy hasn't seen her mother Rayne Perrywinkle, since she was 5. She hasn't spoken to her in more than a decade, when Rayne, then Kimberly, left her home in Australia for the U.S., then changed her name.
She says her family in Australia plans to seek permanent custody.
Both the father and the grandfather of Cherish Perrywinkles two sisters are vowing to win custody of the girls who were taken weeks after Cherishs abduction and death.
The father, Aharon Pearson, 37, said 5-year-old Destiny and 4-year-old Nevaeh Perrywinkle were taken by the Department of Children and Families this week, mostly because of the disrepair of the Northside house he was renting. He and Rayne Perrywinkle, Cherishs mother, separated in the week after Cherishs death.
His custody case plan from the Department of Children and Families calls for him to attend parenting classes twice a week, keep a steady job, rent a two-bedroom apartment, receive grief counseling and pass a psychological evaluation.
His father and the girls grandfather, 65-year-old Tom Pearson, said he feels well-equipped to take care of the girls financially and emotionally.
I am trying to get custody of my grandbabies, he said.
Read more at Jacksonville.com: http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/...r-cherishs-sisters-want-custody#ixzz2YwW25FbW
When the state releases sex offenders like the man charged with kidnapping and killing Cherish Perrywinkle last month, theyre typically mandated to get therapy while on probation or parole.
State law says the offender is responsible to pay for his or her own treatment, but employment for a registered sex offender is difficult to come by. Participation while serving time is also not a given, according to those who work with Florida sex offenders.
This worries some advocates, who feel therapy in prison or after gives the newly released offenders a better chance at staying out of prison and not making a victim of anyone else.
Its impossible to know what treatment, if any, that 56-year-old Donald James Smith arrested June 22 in 8-year-old Cherishs death may have received in state prison.
Florida Department of Corrections spokeswoman Ann Howard said Smiths probation file has been destroyed due to their retention policy to keep records for three to five years. Most of the prison file is also gone, she said, but even if it were available, information about his mental health treatment would be protected by federal health privacy laws.