Constance Christine "Connie" Smith (born July 11, 1942) was a young girl who disappeared after running away from a summer camp she was attending.
Background[]
Connie lived in Wyoming, where her grandfather was a Wyoming state governor. She was described as well-traveled, getting along with adults, other children, and loving animals, specifically horses.
Case[]
Connie spent a part of her summer at Camp Sloane in Salisbury, Connecticut. On the morning of her disappearance, she'd received a bloody nose after an altercation with several other female campers. That same morning, Connie told her tent mates that she was skipping breakfast to return an ice pack to the camp dispensary, which she had used the previous night after hurting her lip when she fell out of her tent.
Instead, Connie left the ice pack in her tent and ditched Camp Sloane, not taking any money or extra clothes with her. After abandoning Camp Sloane, she walked down Indian Mountain Road. Several people saw her along the roadside, where she was picking daisies and asking passersby how to get to Lakeville, Connecticut, as she was supposedly homesick and didn't want to stay for the final week of camp. However, when Connie's mother visited her at camp two days before her disappearance, she was in a good mood and requested to stay at Camp Sloane longer, although she wasn't upset when her mother declined.
The last time Connie was seen was later that day by a husband and wife. They saw her attempting to hitchhike near the intersection of U.S. Route 44 and Belgo Road. Camp counselors reported her missing three hours after she left Camp Sloane.
Connie was previously ruled out as the identity of Little Miss X, but this is being reexamined.
Suspect[]
William Henry Redmond, a former carnie, is suspected of involvement in Connie's disappearance. William had been charged with murdering an eight-year-old Jane Marie Althoff one year before Connie's disappearance. He was sent back to his home state of Nebraska after he was determined mentally unfit to stand trial for the murder.
In the 1980s, he confessed to another prison inmate that he'd killed four people throughout his life. William is also a suspect in the 1951 disappearance of Beverly Potts from Ohio. Authorities are unable to determine whether William was in the Connecticut area when Connie went missing, and he passed a polygraph test about her disappearance. He died in 1992.
Characteristics[]
- Dark-blond, shoulder-length hair.
- Blue eyes.
- Long arms.
- Flat feet.
- Faint scar below right nostril.
- Nearsighted and wore glasses.
Clothing and accessories[]
- Red windbreaker.
- Navy-blue shorts with plaid cuffs.
- Tan leather shoes.
- Red ribbon in hair.
- Possible black zip-up purse containing small pictures of friends.
Exclusions[]
- Atlantic County Jane Doe (1971)
Gallery[]
Sources[]
- Connie Smith at the Charley Project
- Connie Smith at the Doe Network
- Connie Smith at NamUs
- Connie Smith at NCMEC
- Register Citizen
- Press Reader