VA VA - Erica Smith, 14, Ashburn, 29 July 2002

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I saw a post about this on FB, so I decided to post about it. This case really saddened me:

In the summer of 2002, 14-year-old Erica Heather Smith had just completed the eighth grade in Ashburn, Va., a suburb of Washington D.C. She was enjoying her summer vacation, and all of the freedom that came along with it.

On July 29, 2002, Erica was at home babysitting her 10-year-old brother, Billy, while their parents were at work. Around lunchtime, Erica told her brother she was heading out to meet a friend, and that she'd be back in a little while.

Cops say two hikers were walking through the woods when they stumbled upon a shallow grave. Buried beneath the dirt were the remains of a teenage girl.

On August 19, 2002, Erica was laid to rest, only days before she was supposed to start her freshman year of high school.

http://www.amw.com/fugitives/case.cfm?id=46879
 
From the AMW article, it appears that Erica was a troubled young lady, arranging meetings with older men and keeping a diary of her various trysts. According to friends, she was excited in the days before her disappearance about the return of one of her older 'friends' from a family vacation in Europe. On the morning of her disappearance, according to another of her boyfriends, the friend whom she had been anxiously awaiting had returned and had promised to take her on a shopping spree to a local mall.

Authorities have yet to identify this person.

One of the primary clues that police have is a small sticker found near Erica's body, believed to be a manufacturer's tag. Police have been unable to identify the tag as of yet, but believe it to be of European origin.
 

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Upon doing some online research, I've found that others have attempted to identify the tag as well. For the most part, it appears that the tag is believed to read "30 E FQC".
However, I personally don't believe the character following the "30" is the letter "E", but is in fact a symbol of some sort, most likely European in origin... Possibly the British pound symbol ( £ ) or the symbol for the Swiss franc. (Interestingly, "FQC" is an acronym for "FIFA Quality Concepts", or a program of the International Federation of Football to standardize quality in soccer products. FIFA is based in Zurich, Switzerland; Erica played soccer, and as I discovered via an internet search soccer appears to be very popular in the area in which she lived).
 
It looks to me to be a sticker/tag that you find on shoes, to tell you the size. In the U.K they are usually found on the bottom of shoe but sometimes can be found inside the shoe. If it is to tell the size, then it would most likely be Europe.

It doesn't look like the pound symbol to me if you take in the bit which has slightly been faded at the top left of the 'E'
 
"One of Erica's other boyfriends told cops that the morning she disappeared, she had called him, bragging that the older guy was back from Europe and was taking her on a shopping spree at a local mall that afternoon.

Just a short time after that phone call, Erica walked out of her house, never to return again. She was found wearing the same clothes she left the house in that day, leading cops to believe the person who came to pick her up is possibly the guy who'd just returned from Europe.

Cops say they haven't pinpointed who this person is -- but they believe several people who knew Erica at the time of her murder do."

I'm really surprised that they weren't able to find a suspect through phone records.
 
Erica's missing persons case and subsequent murder was featured on TV One's 'Find Our Missing' recently:

Find Our Missing: Shawndell McLeod; Erica Smith

Also:

The Season Finale of “Find Our Missing” airs tonight on TV One. This episode features the cases of Shawndell McLeod and Erica Heather Smith. 31-year-old Shawndell McLeod disappeared in 2011 from Lithonia, GA. She was a head cook looking for a new start after ending a bad relationship. Shawndell was last seen in October 2011. 14-year-old Erica Smith disappeared in Ashburn, VA while on her way to a friend’s house.

http://www.blackandmissinginc.com/wordpress/2013/03/the-season-finale-of-find-our-missing-airs-on-tv-one-tonight-89-c/
 
:bump: for Erica. :heartbeat:

mzYOgsf.jpg


Unsolved Child Murder: Erica Heather Smith
 
An update-hopefully that can make an arrest:

Ten years after the murder Loudoun County formed a cold-case detective team that has been reviewing the evidence, statements to police and the timeline, with some success, though no specifics have been released.

Hairs collected at the time Erica’s body was found were tested in 2002, and were re-submitted for testing and DNA analysis in 2012, but no results have been made public at this time. A sticker that could be a label or tag possibly from a European manufacturer was found near Erica’s body, but investigators have not been able to identify it.

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/blog/article/unsolved-child-murder-erica-heather-smith/index.html
 
:bump: for Erica . . . and an article from last year that I didn't see posted:

’10 Years Is Too Long’: Sheriff’s Office, Family Revive Efforts To Solve Erica Smith Homicide
Posted: Monday, August 6, 2012 9:38 am
Updated: 11:52 am, Tue Aug 28, 2012


Snipped:

“It has been 10 long years and it has not been easy,” Pam Smith, Erica’s mother, said during Friday night’s ceremony. Her voice broke as she talked about learning of Erica’s disappearance and, later, the discovery of her body. The pain, the hurt and the anger still linger, she said.

“I still see her smiling at me. I still see joking with me. I still hear her saying, ‘Mom, I love you,’” Pam Smith told the gathering of more than 50 people.

The rest of the article -- along with five pictures -- can be found here:

http://www.leesburgtoday.com/news/years-is-too-long-sheriff-s-office-family-revive-efforts/article_fb95772c-dfcb-11e1-ac20-0019bb2963f4.html?mode=story
 
:bump: for Erica . . . and an article from last year that I didn't see posted:

’10 Years Is Too Long’: Sheriff’s Office, Family Revive Efforts To Solve Erica Smith Homicide
Posted: Monday, August 6, 2012 9:38 am
Updated: 11:52 am, Tue Aug 28, 2012


Snipped:



The rest of the article -- along with five pictures -- can be found here:

http://www.leesburgtoday.com/news/years-is-too-long-sheriff-s-office-family-revive-efforts/article_fb95772c-dfcb-11e1-ac20-0019bb2963f4.html?mode=story

I really hope they are able to make an arrest. This case has really touched me since I have a teenage daughter also.
 
It's heartbreaking, no family should have to live through this, I can"t even imagine how they've suffered...I hope they find the criminal who destroyed this family.
 
This young girl was the \much loved daughter of a co-worker and friend of my husbands. Each year that passes, we hope someone will come forward and provide the information that is needed to solve this case. Someone knows what happened to Erica, they may have just been a teenager when it happened. They need to be brave and come forward now, these parents needs answer and Erica needs justice.

This is not the first murdered teenager that has touched my family. Tayor Behl (VCU student) was my husbands good friends daughter. My only hope Erica's murder finds the same fate.Her murderer was found, tried and sent to prison. I on
 
I'm wondering if the tag symbol that's been debated is actually the symbol for Euro- the standardized currency in the European Union?
 
I am wondering if Erica Heather Smith met Men from instant messenger chat rooms such as AOL or Yahoo that were very popular among young teenagers in 2002. AOL and Yahoo was a tool that many Child predators would use to lure children into conversations about sex and eventually meeting up with them. The security problem was not as known and as widespread back in 2002 as it is today. Shows like to Catch a Predator basically brought national attention to the problem. And as such Yahoo and many major chat forum companies started to monitor the types of chats were going on and engaged with Law Enforcement on a national level got involved to help catch the pedophiles.




Did the Virginia Law Enforcement ever conduct a forensic search on any computer that was in the Smith household at the time? There could be critical evidence that was overlooked.
It is my strong belief that Erica Heather Smith killer was a man she met through internet chat. Random Pedophile who lured her, I do not think the site where her body was found was the place she was killed.
 
Fox5 News did an interview with the family. LE told them that the man who murdered her was 18 at the time and he killed himself 2 yrs ago, at the 10yr anniversary mark... same time frame when they announced the reopening of the case. jmo
 
http://www.myfoxdc.com/story/261167...-linked-to-2002-murder-of-loudoun-county-girl

“For 12 years we didn't have a face, and now we have a face to go with this vicious crime,” said Pamela Smith, the victim’s mother.

Police are not publicly releasing the suspect's name because he committed suicide. So they can't formally charge him with the murder of Erica Smith...

Investigators did reveal the suspect's identity to the victim's family. The Smiths say they feel cheated that the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office isn't going public with the information.
 
I stumbled upon something reminding me of Erica's case this evening and just emerged from a several hour sleuthing session regarding the deceased suspect. After messing around with dozens of different search parameters on virginia-obits.com and coming up with only two semi-potential individuals, I resorted back to a simple google search containing the town, the year, and the manner of death. And bingo! I thought I'd found a good possibility, and a quick search including his name and her name supported my suspicion, but only via social media. But then I took out the last name and I found the following MSM source which quotes her father at length:
www.loudountimes.com/news/article/justice_for_erica

William Smith, frustrated by how his daughter's case ended, revealed details of her alleged killer during the interview.

His first name was Justin, he was in his 20s at the time of the murder and killed himself almost a year ago. The father said on the day his daughter went missing, the family scoured through her journals, finding names of friends to contact who may have known her whereabouts. Justin's name was among that list. Although Erica's family said they didn't personally know Justin, her father spoke to him on that day when he called to ask about his daughter.

Justin told William Smith that he had just returned from a European vacation and had not seen Erica. The day Erica went missing, her father said his daughter was babysitting their 10-year-old son. A 1 p.m. phone call from a male “lured” Erica out of the home with the promise of buying her clothes for her birthday, which was two weeks prior to her disappearance, William Smith said.
 
I came here after bringing myself up to speed with the Alexis Murphy case. So sad that Eric was taken at such a young age. This "other life" she had is also disturbing. As a young teen myself back in the day the very rare times I knew of promiscuous girls of that age only messed with similar aged boys. Looking at this from an adult, For her to seek out older men screams at me some sort of childhood sexual trauma that opened up this door. Folks have no idea what it does to a child's brain when they are abused this way.
 

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