The Bradenton Police Department once believed it had enough evidence to make arrests in the murder of Tara Reilly, a 25-year-old woman found face down, naked and dead in a pond behind a local Walmart in 2000.
In a document prepared for the Florida Supreme Court in 2001, Reilly’s parents alleged that BPD detectives had shown them probable cause affidavits and arrest warrants issued for Patrick Brinker, Reilly’s ex-boyfriend and father of their child, along with an unnamed accomplice, in the murder.
For unknown reasons those arrest warrants were never served.
Should those documents exist, and the BPD has indicated they do, the department is illegally concealing them, according to state statutes and legal experts, including law enforcement officials, First Amendment experts and civil libertarians.
“If you’ve got a cold case then you have to decide No. 1: How likely are we going to be able to resurrect this case and put it together and sustain prosecution?” said Bob Dekle, who successfully prosecuted Ted Bundy in 1980 and helped send him to death row. “And No. 2: How far along is this guy to being executed, and how sure are we he will be executed?”
That Smith, one of Florida’s most notorious killers, ultimately receives the same punishment as Bundy, one of America’s most notorious killers, is not a given; his death sentence in the Brucia murder case could still be reduced to life.