In the summer of 1985, a quiet community in Richland County, South Carolina, was shattered by the abduction of nine-year-old Debra May Helmick from the front yard of her family's mobile home on June 14th. Young Debra was playing with her three-year-old brother when a man lured her into his car and sped away, despite a neighbor's attempt to intervene.
This event unfolded just two weeks after the kidnapping and murder of 17-year-old Shari Faye Smith in the neighboring Lexington County, sparking fears of a serial predator in the area.
The investigation into Shari's disappearance had already been intense, with her killer taunting her family with a series of chilling phone calls. The connection between the two cases became terrifyingly clear when the same man, Larry Gene Bell, called the Smith family again, this time providing them with precise directions to locate Debra's body. Following his instructions, law enforcement discovered her remains in a wooded area in Lexington County on June 22, 1985. Evidence suggested she had been suffocated, similar to how Shari Smith was murdered.
A major breakthrough in the case came from a piece of evidence Shari Smith was forced to write before her death—a 'Last Will and Testament.' On the note paper, forensic investigators were able to find indentations of an incomplete phone number. This crucial clue led them to a couple who had hired Bell for work and had him housesit for them. On June 27, 1985, Larry Gene Bell was arrested. A search of his apartment uncovered hairs that were microscopically similar to Shari Smith's.
Bell was tried and convicted for the kidnapping and murder of both Shari Smith and Debra May Helmick. In March 1987, he was found guilty of the charges related to Debra's death and was sentenced to death. After years of appeals, Larry Gene Bell was executed on October 4, 1996, bringing a close to the legal chapter of a case that had terrorized two South Carolina communities. Bell was also a suspect in other disappearances, but the convictions for the murders of Shari Smith and Debra Helmick were what ultimately led to his execution.
