True Crime Campfire · Oct 9, 2026 · 54:00
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In last week’s episode, we met John Smith, a lying, manipulative weirdo who almost certainly had killed his missing second wife, Fran. Towards the end of that episode, we learned that John had been married before, to a young woman named Janice Hartman—and that Janice, just like Fran, had gone missing, never to be seen again. We started that episode with a grim discovery six years after Janice’s disappearance—the skeleton of a young woman in a plywood box beside a country road in western Indiana, her legs cut off below the knees. This week, it all comes together.
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Sources:
Michael Fleeman, The Stranger in My Bed
NBC's Dateline, S32E37, “Chameleon”
https://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/rod/docs/pdf/9/2002/2002-Ohio-4402.pdf
https://legalclarity.org/betty-fran-smith-case-from-disappearance-to-dropped-charges
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2004/oct/03/handler-hailed-for-her-search-dogs-sent-to-prison
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