This article is interesting about the struggle in the back seat and the window scuffs!
Carlie
Suspect's borrowed car showed signs of a struggle
When the man accused of killing Carlie Brucia returned the car, "you could see something happened" inside it, a business partner says.
By LEANORA MINAI, Times Staff Writer
Published February 8, 2004
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[Times photo: Michael Rondou]
Stephanie Thayer prays for Carlie Brucia as she leaves flowers outside her home.
SARASOTA - The yellow station wagon Joseph P. Smith borrowed at the time Carlie Brucia went missing was returned a day late with about 300 extra miles on the odometer and the back of a front seat scuffed by an apparent struggle, a close friend of Smith's said Saturday.
Ed Dinyes, 44, said Smith borrowed the 1992 Buick Century last Sunday from a friend he had been living with and returned it with smudge marks on the back windows. Smith was only supposed to take the car for an hour, but he didn't return it until the following day, Dinyes said.
Dinyes said the owner, Jeffrey Pincus, asked Smith what happened inside the car when he finally brought it back.
"He really didn't have an answer," Dinyes said.
Carlie, 11, was abducted last Sunday and her body was found Friday beneath a pile of brush at a Sarasota church.
A surveillance camera aimed at the parking lot of a carwash captured a stream of digital images of a man in a mechanic's shirt confronting Carlie, grabbing her arm, then leading her away.
On Saturday, while mourners left flowers, notes and teddy bears at Carlie's home, lawyers for Smith briefly appeared in a Manatee County courtroom. Smith, who has been arrested at least 13 times in Florida since 1993, including in two attacks on women, is being held without bail. His next court appearance is March 12.
Carlie's slaying has prompted Florida's attorney general to investigate stiffening penalties for offenders who violate the terms of their release. Smith is a drug felon who had been free despite violating probation.
"You can't help but think that some of the statutes are too permissive," Attorney General Charlie Crist told the Associated Press. "It's important we review putting more teeth in our statutes. ... It's got to be ratcheted up very quickly."
Sheriff's investigators continued to ask the public for help in finding Carlie's pink backpack and tracking the car's whereabouts during the time Smith is alleged to have been driving it.
Dinyes, who opened Saurus auto repair with Smith last year in Sarasota, provided a more detailed account of Smith's movements last week.
Three days before Carlie's abduction, the transmission on Smith's car broke, Dinyes said. Dinyes, who sports a tattoo of motorcycle pistons on his right arm that Smith inked himself, offered up a van that had been in the shop. He thought it would be perfect for Smith and his three young daughters.
Dinyes wanted to help out because he knew Smith's wife wanted a divorce and had kicked him out of their house for using drugs. After all, the two men met five years ago when Smith stopped to help Dinyes when his motorcycle ran out of gas.
Smith was in the shop Friday, working on the van, Dinyes said. He replaced the fuel pump.
On Sunday, the day Carlie disappeared, Smith borrowed the car from Pincus, his roommate, Dinyes said.
The station wagon was soon captured in the surveillance video, three minutes before Carlie's abduction from Evie's Car Wash. Bloodhounds had followed Carlie's scent to the carwash, but it abruptly disappeared. The owners reviewed their video and discovered the chilling scene of Carlie being led away.
When Pincus got the station wagon back, it was Monday, 16 hours after Smith borrowed it.
"When it came back, the back part of it was destroyed," Dinyes said Pincus told him. "He basically said you could see something happened."
Pincus' wife, Naomi, would not comment Saturday.
Dinyes was off on Monday, celebrating his wife's birthday, but heard from others at the shop that when Smith came into work he was teary-eyed and upset. Smith told co-workers he had high blood pressure and couldn't work, and a friend gave him a ride home.
Clinton Van Zandt, a retired FBI agent who worked in the agency's Behavioral Science Unit, said Saturday the condition of the station wagon suggests Carlie struggled to get away.
She may have been restrained, he said.
"It sounds like she fought right up to the end," Van Zandt said. "It suggests either she was fighting to get out of the car, and/or he assaulted her, and she was fighting him at the time."
The New York Post on Saturday quoted an unnamed source close to the investigation saying, "The initial review of the body indicates she put up a real struggle before she died. She fought desperately."
Investigators have released no details of the circumstances surrounding Carlie's murder, saying only that she died of "homicidal violence."
Van Zandt said the roughly 300 miles Dinyes said were logged on the station wagon may explain why investigators are still asking for the public's help in tracking the vehicle.
"The question is, did he burn those miles up looking for a victim like a shark, looking for someone," Van Zandt said, "or did he find this victim and take her to a distant location and bring her back?"
Van Zandt said investigators may still be looking for the spot where she was murdered. He said that's why finding the backpack is such a priority.
"The backpack is going to link everything together," he said. "If they can't establish whatever assault or murder took place in the car, than perhaps there is another location."
- Times staff writer Carrie Johnson contributed to this report. Leanora Minai can be reached at
minai@sptimes.com or 727 893-8406.
I belong but haven't read there in a while. I'll have to go look today. Thanks for the tip. I just feel so horribly sad for her family. They are still trudging through search after search to find their girl. She was so special to them.