KIMBERLY SMITH Part 2 of 5: Dawn

0:00You may have heard of the sex cult NXIVM and the famous actress who went to prison for her involvement, Alison Mack. But she's never told her side of the story, until now. People assume that I'm like this pervert. My name is Natalie Robamed, and in my new podcast, I talk to Alison to try to understand how she went from TV actor to cult member, and what she thinks of it all now. How do you feel about having been involved in bringing sexual trauma to other people? I mean, I don't even know how to answer that question. Alison, after NXIVM from CBC's Uncover, is available now, wherever you get your podcasts.

0:3478-year-old Goldie Robinson was reported missing on August 22, 2010, but had been at least two months since her son Fred had spoken with her. South Daytona law enforcement was working hard to locate Goldie, but so far, the search only yielded more questions. Like, why was her caretaker's son living in her trailer with his wife and kids? Why were all of Goldie's possessions missing? And did her caretaker, Kimberly Smith, know the truth about Goldie's location? While detectives were searching Kim's trailer and speaking with her son and boyfriend, Kim Smith was sitting in the Orange County Jail in Orlando for a parole violation.

1:18I'm just worried about, like, the cops or something. If the cops come to the door, they're going to be looking for Goldie Robinson. You're going to say, Miss Robinson got married. On August 20th, Adam had a phone conversation with his mother, Kim. And this is part of that call. Remember, she was in jail, so all of her phone calls were being recorded. You can hear Adam scrambling to get his story straight about why in the world he was living in Goldie's trailer and what he should tell the police. You tell the landlord people that she left you there. Yes, you are going to buy the house, but not until all the work was done.

1:53But right now, Miss Goldie still owns it. She left you enough money for the rent until December. I'm not even telling that. Yeah, I'm fine. Look, she's on vacation. She won't be back. No, she's not really on vacation. She got married. She left me. Her husband. Oh, yeah, she married. She got married and went on a vacation with her new husband. They won't be back till December. They're snowbirds now.

2:10Two days after this phone call, on August 22nd, detectives found two elderly people living in Kim Smith's trailer, one of whom looked like the man Goldie supposedly married. So later that same day, Lieutenant Doug Cordier and Detective Rainey Hetznecker with the South Daytona Police Department visited Kim in jail. We have detailed notes from the police report outlining a troubling conversation between Kim and Investigator Hetznecker. Hetznecker asks Kim if she can provide them with any information as to where Goldie Robinson might be. Kim says she doesn't have an address or a phone number for Goldie, but she does know that Goldie married a man named Rusty and she was on her honeymoon.

2:59She says she thinks she's somewhere in Tennessee, but Goldie should be back in South Daytona sometime in December. Maybe Kim thought Hetznecker would file away this conversation. Goldie was an adult, after all. Going away on a honeymoon and not telling your children is not a crime. But Hetznecker knew better, of course. He informed Kim that he had been inside her trailer earlier that day and met a man named Russell Ryback, who looked exactly like Goldie's supposed husband, Rusty. Hetznecker looked at Kim and told her, I think you're lying. And then he asked her yet again, where is Goldie Robinson?

3:45Kim still insisted. Goldie was on her honeymoon. Nicole Luca was reporting on the unfolding story of Goldie Robinson's disappearance. She wanted to speak with Kim's son, Adam, or Kim's boyfriend, David Enos. But when she went to the Twin Oaks mobile home park, she couldn't find anyone associated with Kim Smith. You know, once the news broke, I think they fled that area, to be honest. And Kimberly Smith's boyfriend at the time, David Enos, he was living at her home. at Kim's house. But once police started sniffing around, he was gone. Neighbors say he never came back. So he was out of there.

4:34From Cast Media, this is The Opportunist. This is Season 8, Episode 2. Kimberly Smith, Dawn. I'm Hannah Smith.

4:55Since Goldie Robinson was estranged from her son Fred during the summer of 2010, it was difficult to know exactly when she was last seen or heard from. Detectives had pieced together that she'd been missing anywhere from one to two months. According to Detective McCracken and the police report, Kim Smith was a person of interest in the case almost immediately. Kim Smith was also the one that started telling everyone that Goldie had actually met a retired judge and had gotten married and had moved off to Tennessee or somewhere up in the mountains when nobody had seen her for a while. An initial look into Goldie's financial situation led detectives to think that something much bigger was going on.

5:47They started noticing right away some oddities in Goldie's, you know, finances. And they suspected that she had been getting taken advantage of for a long time. As detectives prepared to subpoena Goldie's bank for statements and ATM photos, they also decided to take two vehicles on Kim Smith's property into custody and test them for DNA evidence. Why? Because both of those vehicles were registered to Goldie Robinson. The tow truck arrived to the Twin Oaks Mobile Home Park on the evening of Wednesday, August 25th. It was dark out. And so the tow truck driver had its lights kind of just happened to be shining in that woods area right next to Kim Smith's home.

6:38And they notice like a trash can. and it just looked like the trash can shouldn't have been there. You know, it didn't look like it had been there for a long time. It looked like it had been almost freshly placed there. As the tow truck driver prepared to hook up the vehicles, his headlights shined into a wooded area next to Kim Smith's trailer. The lights illuminated a trash can, more like a small dumpster. The tow truck driver said something about that dumpster just didn't seem quite right. He informed investigators, and they decided to inspect it. Here's Detective McCracken again. One of the detectives was walking around, and he opened it, and obviously immediately could tell by the smell that there was something or someone in there.

7:31Detectives had gone to Kim's trailer that evening looking for DNA evidence in two vehicles. But what they found were human remains. The discovery was grisly. The human remains were incredibly decomposed. This might be a very obvious question, but when you find a body in a trash can, you do immediately assume that it's homicide? Well, we kind of, any suspicious death is treated as a homicide until proven otherwise. just because of evidence preservation, documentation, photographs. You know, I would rather assume it's a homicide and find out later we didn't need everything we collected rather than not and then find out you missed something you needed.

8:23The discovery of human remains meant that Kim's trailer and the surrounding property was now a crime scene. The area was taped off and a forensics team was called in. And just a few doors down, Goldie's son Fred, who was desperately searching for his mother, he watched it all happen. And the detectives was over there, and they went into this little overgrown place. It wasn't woods, it was just kind of overgrown. Nobody had cut anything down. Doug Cordier come out of the woods. Fred, he says, we found something. and it's not good. It's not good at all. Fred didn't know that they'd found a body, but when they asked him for a DNA sample, he got a pit in his stomach.

9:14This wasn't good. Investigators swabbed his cheek and told him the medical examiner would have a report back Monday morning. So over the weekend, Fred just had to wait, the whole time wondering, was that his mother? Had she died? And worse, was her body stuffed into a trash can? It was unimaginable. That's my mother right there. In a nutshell, that's my mother. I mean, you know, there's nobody else missing in Daytona. That's my mother. I had to wait. I had to wait. All the bad words I could think of wouldn't even touch on it, how I felt. I was turned inside out. If you could turn your body inside out, pull your rear end out through your mouth, that kind of gives you a little bit of a feeling.

10:09That's the only way I could describe it. My daughter was the same. Then Monday morning came. Fred and Stacia went to the South Daytona police station. They were prepared for the worst, that the remains were Goldie's. But what they found out was not at all what they expected. It wasn't what the police expected either. Here's Detective McCracken again. They just assumed it was Goldie in the trash can initially. It wasn't until the medical examiner started the exam that it was determined that it was a male and it wasn't even Goldie. So they told us it wasn't mom. And the world was lifted off of my shoulders.

10:51OK, now we got to find out where she's at. that's great that's absolutely great that's not mom but I kind of feel sorry for this guy now who is this guy he's not a missing person in Daytona who is he so yeah that was a little bit of a surprise to say the least now we had an additional person a body that was a male and we had no idea who he was at the time What had seemed like a bombshell discovery in Goldie's case only added more unknowns to the investigation. The body was not Goldie's. Instead, it belonged to a man, only there was no record of a missing person matching his description in Volusia County.

11:41This is reporter Nicole Luca again. And they announced that it was not the body of Goldie Robinson. And we were just blown away. and they said that it was a body of a male. It was just mind-blowing. It was really hard to process that information. The gruesome truth was that the body found on Kim Smith's property in a trash can was severely decomposed. Florida's hot and humid summer brought droves of insects. And the remains were in such a bad state that the medical examiner was not able to determine a cause of death or when he had died. Now the detectives had two problems to solve. Goldie Robinson was still missing.

12:27And who was this man found dead beside Kim's trailer? They decided to utilize the media. We had to put out a release trying to reach out to the public. Is there anybody missing that you know of? Have you not heard from anyone lately? Check on your loved ones, that kind of thing. Robin Ackner had not seen Nicole's news report or heard her plea for the public to come forward about the unidentified remains. But one day in late August of 2010, she walked out of a work meeting to a series of frantic phone calls from her mother. I'm in a meeting, and I come out of the meeting, and I've got like six voicemails from my mother.

13:10And she's like, it's him, it's him, it's him.

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13:47Robin doesn't live in South Daytona, and she'd never met Kim Smith. But a phone call from her mother in August of 2010 upended her life because her mother, Alice, claimed that she knew exactly whose body had been found beside Kim Smith's trailer. She said it was her ex-husband. And then they said it wasn't a woman's body, that they found it was a man's body. So that's, you know, my mother's freaking out and she's saying, it's him, it's him, it's him. Robin grew up in New Jersey and both her parents worked for a limousine company owned and operated by a man named Arthur Sheldon. When Robin was 14, her parents divorced.

14:29And then my mother and Arthur turned out that they had hooked up. When I asked Robin how she would describe Arthur as a person back then, she said he was a decently attractive man and a good businessman. But basically, he was a bully. He was mean to our employees. He would yell at our drivers. He would call them names. And I often wondered why nobody reached across his desk and punched his lights. And what do you think the attraction was for your mother? Money. We grew up poor. My father wasn't a go-getter to go out and make a lot of money or have a career. He jumped from job to job, insurance salesman, bartender.

15:14When they got divorced, he disappeared. But my mother, she never said anything to me, but I think that she was because of the money. It was security to her. She had a safe place. She knew she was never going to have to struggle. And that's why she was with him. I think that also he was a really nice guy in the beginning. Robin's mother, Alice, and Arthur Sheldon, or Art as she calls him, were married in 1979. And they went on to run the limo company together for the next 20 or so years. But Robin said that Art's niceties didn't last long. She lived in the same house as him as a teenager and quickly learned that Arthur was abusive.

15:58He was as much of a bully to me as he was to the drivers who worked for him. Plus, he also tried to put his hands on me. And after that, I never spent any time with him alone. Robin didn't feel safe around Arthur, and eventually she ran away. She moved into a group home where she lived until she left for college. And then things improved for her. She maintained a relationship with her mother, Alice, and she tolerated Arthur from a safe distance. But then Arthur retired and moved to Florida. For a time, Alice stayed in New Jersey running the limo company. And in 1999, their marriage ended. Alice divorced Art after finding out that he was unfaithful.

16:43My mother showed up one day unexpected and there was a bra stuffed in the couch. And it wasn't hers. They had a big fight and he had cheated on her numerous times before. I guess this was the icing on the cake. But it didn't take long. I think like maybe within a year they were living back together. Art needed somebody to take care of him and my mother needed somebody to take care of. It wasn't like they had a loving relationship. They kind of needed each other for weird reasons. Robin said that Arthur and her mother considered each other marital spouses, even though they never legally remarried.

17:24But they were in each other's lives for the next decade. Every once in a while, Arthur would up and leave, usually with the excuse that he had fallen for another woman. But he always came back. Until October of 2008. Robin remembers this date distinctly because she was wedding planning at the time. My mother came down to West Palm Beach to help me pick out a dress for my wedding. And she brought her dog with her. And she never brought her dog anywhere. And I asked her, I said, how come you didn't leave Buster with Art? And she said, Art's gone. He left and he met this woman and he said it was the woman he was going to spend the rest of his life with.

18:11Little did Hay know how right he was. Robin and her mother Alice knew nothing about this latest woman Arthur had fallen for, except for her name, Dawn. While Alice was heartbroken, she'd also been through this before, and she figured she would just wait it out, and Arthur would eventually come back, just like he always did. That was in October, and I had my wedding in December, and, you know, life was good. A few months into the new year, my mother started complaining that Art wasn't helping to pay any of the bills for the house. And she had to put all the money up for that. And I'm like, well, where is he?

18:51By now, it was early 2009, and things were getting more and more unusual. Not only had Alice not heard from Arthur, but she started getting notices that bills were going unpaid, even their mortgage. Arthur was not a great partner, but he was predictable and he never let bills go unpaid. Robin and Alice made multiple attempts to reach Arthur, but the only person who ever heard anything back from Arthur was his sister-in-law, Hattie. Hattie said they had been in contact via email and that Arthur was doing great. Great. And she said that Hattie was getting emails from him telling her how good life was, how happy he was.

19:41He was traveling all over the world, but none of it made any sense to me. He was sick. He had diabetes. He really couldn't travel. The emails that came talked as if he was a man who was really active. and like a go-getter and liked to go out and do things and be active and go places and, you know, walk. And that wasn't him. He liked to sit on the couch and watch TV. So, and I get that some people change when they meet people, but it just didn't sit good with me. The emails that Hattie received from Arthur did not include any specifics about where he was, when or if he'd be back, or how to reach him any other way than through email.

20:30Mostly the emails were about how much he loved his new life and his new love, this woman, Dawn. Robin was not Arthur's biggest fan, but she still wanted to find him. Her mother, Alice, wasn't good with money. She had an affinity for gambling. So years before Arthur left with Dawn, he'd transferred all of his and Alice's money into his name alone. Alice could not access it. But up until now, it'd never been a problem. He'd always made sure that she was provided for. Robin looked at the whole situation, the emails, the unpaid bills, that they could not get a hold of Arthur, and she thought, something is fishy.

21:15She hired a private investigator to see if they could help her find Arthur. They found nothing. They couldn't find anything on him at all. But they did find Kimberly. The private investigator's search for Arthur led them directly to Kim Smith. Or I should say, Kimberly Dawn Smith. This was the mysterious Dawn from Arthur's email. The woman he'd fallen head over heels for. And she lived in South Daytona. Her name was Kimberly Dawn Smith. And what did your mom think about all of this? you know, the information that the private investigator found. She said something about, I hope he's happy sowing his oath or something like, like a phrase like that.

21:57I don't know if she had thoughts that he might come back. You know, he came back every other time, so maybe she figured he would be coming back again. And he never came back.

22:13Meanwhile, Hattie was still receiving email updates from Arthur. He said he was happy and now he was traveling the world. So Alice waited for Arthur to get tired of his adventure and come home. And Robin got busy with her own life. A year passed, but Arthur never came back. And when Alice saw the news that human remains belonging to an unidentified male had been found on Kim Smith's property, she just knew it had to be Arthur. And that's when Alice called her daughter, Robin. So I came home and I pulled up the Daytona News Journal and I read the little bit of article that they had put out. They found a body.

22:57And so I called the Daytona, I think it was Port Orange Police or South Daytona. And I talked to this poor cop, probably thought I was batshit crazy. And I'm like, I know who the body is. And so he's like, calm down. Tell me more about it. So I told him briefly the story. He said, you need to talk to my supervisor. And I said, all right, I'm packing a bag. I'm going to be in Daytona. I'll be there in four hours.

23:41The police needed definitive evidence to determine if the remains found outside of Kim Smith's trailer were, in fact, Arthur Sheldon. Robin was not related to Arthur, so her DNA would be of no help in making this determination. But she did have something else that might do the trick. I had had my mother pull out every medical record that she could find of Art, and we gave that to the officer. and when he left, I walked outside with him and I said, is there a body? Do you want me to come identify a body? And he said, there is no body. It's just a skeleton. It turns out that Arthur Sheldon had two biological children, but he was estranged from both of them.

24:26When investigators tracked down his son, he said he hadn't spoken to his dad in over 10 years. Through DNA tests and Arthur's medical records provided by Robin, law enforcement confirmed the deceased was in fact Arthur Sheldon. It was actually after the body was discovered that somebody came forward and reported Mr. Sheldon missing, keeping in mind that nobody had even reported him missing until after we found his body. It was one of those situations where he had kind of separated himself away from the family, wasn't talking to him, almost started to show a distrust towards his family. In the search for the missing woman, Goldie Robinson, the police had found Arthur Sheldon.

25:22And even more shocking, Arthur was also connected to Kim Smith. What did this mean for the investigation? What did this mean for Goldie? The case had expanded far beyond one missing person. In the police report, there is a photo of Arthur Sheldon. He looks like he's in his late 50s or early 60s. He's got blue eyes, salt and pepper hair, and a round, full face. He's wearing a black button-up shirt and a gray suit jacket, sitting on the bow of a boat at sunset. It looks like a photocopy of a photograph that's at least 15 years old, but I'm pretty sure he's not actually on a boat. It's a photo backdrop taken in a studio.

26:12The result is that he looks like a businessman who cannot wait to get off work and go enjoy the beach. So what happened between the time that this photo was taken and his eventual demise? The state of Arthur's remains indicated that he'd been dead for quite a while. But for how long? The last time Alice spoke with him was in late 2008. His body was found a year and a half later, in August of 2010. He had never been reported as a missing person. But what about those emails he sent to his sister-in-law, Hattie? Well, detectives read those emails, and they suspected Arthur did not write them. There were certain tells in the way the emails were written.

27:02When Art would write on a computer, it would always be like one big long sentence. There were no commas, no periods, no paragraphs, none of that. It was just one ongoing long sentence. But the emails had periods and commas and paragraphs, and they all started with, art here. The connections between Arthur Sheldon and Goldie Robinson were hard to ignore. They were both elderly people in Kim Smith's care, and both people had become estranged from their family members. In fact, if it wasn't for Goldie's disappearance and her son Fred's determination to find her, Arthur Sheldon might still be missing.

27:52If I hadn't hired the investigator, we would never have known Kimberly's name. And, you know, if we didn't know Kimberly's name, we might not have ever known that that was our spot. While Arthur Sheldon had very few people he was in contact with, Goldie Robinson had an abundance of family and friends in her life. She'd become temporarily estranged from her son Fred, and yet it was Fred who'd driven to South Daytona looking for his mom. It was Fred who had called the police and convinced them to open a case to find her. And when human remains were discovered, Fred feared his mother was dead. But now he had hope again.