Imprisoned killer charged with murdering wife 28 years after she vanished in N.J.

The imprisoned former husband of a woman who vanished from West Windsor in September 1991 has been indicted on murder and a related charge accusing him of killing her, even though her body has never been found.

John Smith has long been suspected of killing Fran Gladden-Smith, especially after a jury in Wayne County, Ohio convicted him in 2001 of killing his first wife there in the 1970s.

The indictments, issued Wednesday in Mercer County, are the first-ever criminal charges in one of Mercer County’s most enduring mysteries, and a case that’s been featured in at least two books, countless crime shows and a television movie. Smith was indicted on first-degree murder and a count of fourth-degree tampering with evidence.

Smith, now 68, is currently in an Ohio prison serving a 15-year to life term for killing Janice Hartman, whose bones were found in a box along an Indiana highway in 1980, but not identified until 2000.

He’s up for parole next month.

Mercer County Prosecutor Angelo Onofri, in announcing the indictments Wednesday evening, said the case was always a priority for West Windsor police and investigators from his office, but it took a major step forward in the fall of 2017 when local investigators met with the FBI about the case.

Specifically, prosecutor’s detectives met with FBI Special Agent Robert Hilland, a top agent at the agency’s academy in Virginia, who has been involved in the case since he started his career as a patrol officer in West Windsor in the 1990s.

Onofri said Hilland and investigators moved the case to the point where his office could present it to a grand jury. He declined to elaborate on those specifics.

“We’re proud that we’re able to take the first step to bringing justice to Fran Gladden-Smith, and her family," Onofri said.

Onofri said that despite Gladden-Smith’s body never being located, a prosecution can move forward in New Jersey.

“[Under state law], the failure to produce the victim’s body does not preclude a finding that she is dead. Likewise, the successful concealment or destruction of the victim’s body does not preclude prosecution of her killer,” Onofri said in a statement.

Assistant prosecutors Kathleen Petrucci and Michael Grillo will petition to bring Smith to Mercer County for an arraignment on the indictment, although no date has been set, Onofri said.

John David Smith III and Fran Gladden-Smith moved to the Canal Pointe condos near Princeton earlier in 1991 from Florida. He was an engineer. She was also known as Betty Fran.

Smith, then 40, reported Gladden-Smith, then 49, missing to West Windsor police, on Oct. 4, 1991, authorities said. She was last seen alive about a week earlier, on Sept. 28.

A note, which Smith said his wife left, read: “Going away for a few days. Don’t forget to feed the fish."

Smith also told police his wife packed a suitcase too, and theorized she’d gone on a trip. But police found the suitcase, and investigators and Gladden-Smith’s family both grew to doubt everything John Smith told them, since she was recovering from hip surgery when she vanished.

The investigation went on for years and eventually was looked at as a homicide without a body, police said over the years. But without her body, proving a case against John Smith was tough. He later moved away from New Jersey.

In 1999 in Ohio, though, the case against John Smith heated up. His brother Michael Smith confessed to West Windsor police detectives that he’d seen a mummified body in a box in the family home in 1979, found by their father.

Michael Smith said he’d called John Smith back in 1979, and he came and took it away. It had been found on the side of the Indiana highway in 1980, and 20 years later Ohio authorities – thanks to New Jersey police sending letters to agencies across Ohio and Indiana due to Michael Smith’s tip – identified Janice Hartman as the body.

Hartman disappeared in 1974, just days after her divorce from John Smith.

Ohio prosecutors charged Smith with murder and found him living outside San Diego, where they arrested him in 2000. They also found he’d married a third time. (That wife later annulled their marriage and testified at his murder trial in Ohio.)

Despite their involvement, West Windsor police never got a break in their case. They’d flown to California to interrogate Smith, with federal agents, hoping for leads or clues in Gladden-Smith’s disappearance, but John Smith never budged.

Also instrumental in the case over the years were Gladden-Smith’s sister, Sherrie Davis, and one of Gladden-Smith’s daughter from a prior marriage, Deanna Weiss.

They never let the case fade from the minds of investigators, and tracked John Smith’s movements, sometimes hounding him to let him know they would never forget, they would say in interviews. After John Smith was convicted of killing his first wife, Davis wrote a book, “My Sister Is Missing: Bringing A Killer To Justice” in 2005.

In early 2002, Weiss won a wrongful death suit in Mercer County that found Smith civilly responsible for Fran Gladden-Smith’s death, and awarded her a $1 million penalty, which she said at the time she’d likely never collect.

In 2008, when one of the West Windsor detectives, Lt. Dave Mansue, was nearing retirement, he and the initial lead investigator, Detective Michael Dansbury (who had retired), appeared on another TV show about the case - with Davis.

All three hoped for justice someday, and said they would attend Smith’s 2010 parole hearing, and future ones as well. Davis doubted Smith would ever give her family closure, nor West Windsor police any cooperation.

Davis said then she would forever remain undeterred at seeing John Smith in court one day for her sister’s case, so she can say to him: “You are guilty of this.”

Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @kevintshea. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

Get the latest updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.com’s newsletters.