Robert Hedderman, 48, a white man, spent the afternoon of November 24, 1976, working inside the Hedderman Religious Shop at 50 Columbia Street in Albany, New York. Sometime around midafternoon, the ordinary rhythm of the store was shattered. When the violence was over, Hedderman and his secretary, Margaret Byron, were dead, each attacked with multiple stab wounds and then slashed across the throat—an intimate, relentless kind of killing that left no doubt the assailant had been close enough
to look them in the face.
The first leads came the way they often do, through frightened glimpses and fragments of memory. A witness told police he had seen a wild-eyed stranger, roughly six feet tall, inside the shop that day, standing near Byron’s body; later, after being shown a lineup photograph, he identified Lemuel Smith as the man he’d seen. Another witness reported seeing someone leaving the store at about the time of the slayings, and she too picked Smith from a photo array when investigators brought her in months later. For a time, though, the case did what so many brutal scenes do: it sprawled, resisted neat explanations, and then tightened again. Smith had been questioned early in the investigation and released, but the pressure returned as new evidence began to gather around him.
By September 1977, investigators found a piece of physical evidence that made the case feel less like rumor and more like a chain. During a lawful search of a building where Smith had been employed, an Albany police lieutenant located one of Smith’s sweaters in a closet. A hair recovered from that garment was sent to the FBI laboratory in Washington, D.C., and the resulting report indicated the hair matched the deceased Margaret Byron. At roughly the same time, Smith’s legal troubles elsewhere were deepening: a Schenectady County grand jury had indicted him for the kidnapping and attempted armed robbery of Marlene Maggio, and the record reflects he was arrested only hours after the abduction while still holding the victim. With multiple jurisdictions circling, his attorney met with district attorneys from Schenectady, Albany, and Saratoga Counties to explore a global plea arrangement that would have resolved the various allegations with concurrent sentences of 25 years to life, but prosecutors rejected the proposal.
In March 1978, after Smith signaled to his psychiatric team that he was willing to talk, his lawyer permitted a tightly controlled meeting with investigators and prosecutors—one wrapped in secrecy stipulations meant to prevent his statements from being used beyond their limited purpose. During that March 5 meeting, Smith gave a lengthy account of killings, including the Hedderman-Byron murders, and the next day his attorney notified the Albany County district attorney that damaging admissions had been made. Later, in October 1978, the Albany County district attorney’s office subpoenaed the transcript and tapes of that meeting, and an indictment for the double homicide followed.
At trial in Albany County, Smith’s defense again leaned on claims of mental disease or defect, but the jury rejected it. He was convicted of both murders and sentenced to consecutive terms of 25 years to life for each killing. The case then shifted into the colder, procedural light of appellate review, where arguments focused on the secrecy agreement and the effectiveness of counsel surrounding the March 5 statements—but the convictions and consecutive life terms remained in place.
