On Jan. 21, 1958, the body of Dorothy Waterstreet was found beside a snowbank at the edge of the Acme supermarket parking lot in Amsterdam.
The 46-year-old mother of five had been beaten and stabbed. She was returning to her Division Street home from a church meeting when she was attacked crossing the street around 11 p.m.
An extensive search of the area was made for the long, sharp instrument believed to have been used in the attack. The weapon never turned up.
Police eventually focused on 16-year-old Lemuel Smith. The high school basketball star lived around the corner from Waterstreet.
Smith was questioned extensively by police and the district attorney about his whereabouts on the night of the murder.
After getting home from a date earlier in the evening, Smith said he went back out for an orange soda before returning home around 10:45 p.m. where he watched the news with his mother.
Smith claimed he never went near Division Street that night and had no knowledge of the murder. He was questioned several more times and put under surveillance by police.
The case dragged on for several months before Smith was subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury, but he was never called to testify after declining to sign a waiver of immunity.
The grand jury impaneled to investigate the murder was finally discharged without returning an indictment after 16 months in May 1959.
In the interim, Smith was indicted on burglary charges stemming from incidents at a confectionary store and coffee shop in December 1957.
After posting bail, Smith was visiting relatives in Baltimore when he was charged with assault and attempted robbery after bludgeoning a woman with an iron pipe in August 1958.
The 25-year-old woman was in critical condition after being discovered in the dry cleaning business where she worked in Baltimore.
Smith was picked up nine blocks away shirtless and with blood on his pants. He was ultimately convicted in that case and sentenced to 20 years in prison. But he was released in 1968.
Months later, Smith was charged with second-degree kidnapping for abducting a woman at knifepoint from her home in Schenectady and then assaulting her at an empty home in Saratoga in May 1969.
Again, Smith was convicted and imprisoned before being paroled in 1976. He was charged the following year with kidnapping and assaulting an 18-year-old girl from Schenectady.
He was already being investigated at that point for the stabbing deaths of Robert Hedderman and Margaret Byron at a religious store in Schenectady the night before Thanksgiving.
Smith was sentenced consecutive terms of 25 years to life after being convicted of those two murders, as well as other abductions and assaults.
Two additional murder charges against Smith were dismissed since he was already serving multiple life sentences.
While incarcerated at a maximum security prison, Smith murdered guard Donna Payant at Green Haven Correctional Facility in May 1981. He was convicted of her death at trial two years later.
Now 82, Smith remains incarcerated at Wende Correctional Facility in Erie County.
