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Eric Smith was just 13 years old when he murdered Derrick Robie, 4, in Savona, New York. Smith's case garnered widespread media attention as, in 1994, a jury unanimously found him guilty of second-degree murder.
Trigger Warning: Mentions of child s*xual abuse.
Smith lured Robie into the Steuben County woods, where he strangled him, beat him with rocks, and sodomized him with a stick. The teen confessed and later tried as an adult.
Smith was handed nine years to life in prison and released from the Woodbourne Correctional Facility in Sullivan County on February 1, 2022, at the age of 42. He originally became eligible for parole in 2002, but the Board of Parole had previously turned him down 10 times before releasing him.
Reports state that Eric Smith now lives in Queens, New York, as a free man.
An upcoming episode of CBS 48 Hours, titled Eric Smith: Gambling on a Killer, chronicles the spectacular case this Saturday, May 6, at 9:00 pm ET.
The synopsis states:
"Twenty-eight years after a 13-year-old was incarcerated for the murder of a 4-year-old boy, he is released on parole; interview with the victim's parents."
Eric Smith's recent release came after he served 28 years behind bars for killing a kid when he was only a teenager
According to CBS, Eric Smith, who was released from prison in February last year after being denied parole 10 times previously, spent 28 years behind bars for the 1993 murder of a 4-year-old boy named Derrick Robie.
On August 2, 1993, Smith, a local 13-year-old from a small town named Savona in New York, murdered Robie, who lived across town. The teen spotted the child walking alone to a summer camp at the park in the morning hours and lured him into a wooded area where he strangled the kid and beat him to death with rocks. Robie's body was found hours later after a missing report was filed.
In the days that followed, a family friend of the Smiths, Marlene Heskell, grew concerned about the 13-year-old's behavior. She claimed the teen asked her "what would happen if it [the killer] turned out to be a kid." She also recalled that he visited the same park close to the crime scene, which then led her to believe that "he might really know something or have seen something."
CBS reports that Heskell then expressed her concerns to Smith's mother and both women took him to the police where he initially denied seeing four-year-old Robbie, but eventually confessed to the murder.
In August 1994, Eric Smith, 14, was tried as an adult and sentenced to nine years to life in prison. Smith was held in a juvenile detention center and was transferred to a facility for adults after he turned 21. Almost nine years after his crime, he had his first parole hearing. His parole was denied, a process which continued for nearly two decades until October 2021 when the board finally to release him.
According to sources, Smith's release was delayed for several months until he found a suitable place to live. The 42-year-old was released from the Woodbourne Correctional Facility in Sullivan County on February 1, 2022, after spending 28 years in prison.
Learn more about the decades-old case against Eric Smith in an upcoming CBS 48 Hours episode this Saturday.
