Chasing Evil: Shocking Crimes, Supernatural Forces, and an FBI Agent's Search for Hope and Justice

The cases the memoir chooses to focus on frequently involve enclosed spaces: boxes, cylinders, recesses, etc. This motif of containers obscuring horrific truths becomes a way of suggesting the process of Coaxing Truth from Deception Through Psychological Insight, evoking the secrecy and repression that characterizes the psyche of figures like John Smith: Each sealed space represents a lie that requires breaching, whether through crowbar, jackhammer, or interrogation.

Indeed, Smith consistently chooses such receptacles to dispose of his victims and alleged victims: One of the sex workers he is hypothesized to have killed was found in a dumpster, and John Edward has a psychic vision of Fran “encapsulated” in “cylinders” near industrial pipes—possibly Carborundum, where massive kilns and storm drains offered similar possibilities. Most notably, Smith places Janice’s body in a plywood box initially stored in his parents’ garage: When Michael Smith describes opening the plywood box in 1979 and discovering Janice’s preserved remains, the container transforms from storage to coffin, from mundane object to crime scene in a way that mirrors the exposure of Smith’s compartmentalized life.

This pattern of hiding crimes in plain sight repeats across jurisdictions and decades, evoking the way those who commit crimes themselves escape scrutiny.