'The boys were brutalized': The triple murder case that sent Oscar Franklin Smith to death row

A Nashville police dispatcher answered a frantic 911 call from a boy on a late fall night in 1989.

"Help me!" 13-year-old Jason Burnett shouts in the 12-second recording from 11:22 p.m. on Oct. 1.

In the background, the garbled voice of his 16-year-old brother, Chad Burnett, screams, "Frank, no! God help me."

"What's the problem?" the dispatcher asks. The boy gives the address of the Lutie Court home he shared with his brother and their mother, Judith Robirds Smith. Shuffling and screaming is heard before in the background and the line goes dead.

Metro Nashville Police Department officers dispatched to the home found nothing unusual outside so they left. But inside the home nestled in the city's Woodbine community, one of Nashville's bloodiest triple murders was underway.

"The boys were brutalized," recalled retired MNPD Detective Pat Postiglione, who helped work the case. "True evil exists."

As the case progressed, a bloody handprint — missing two fingers —  was found on a bedsheet beside Robirds Smith's body.

On Nov. 6, 1989, police arrested her 40-year-old estranged husband, Oscar Franklin Smith, a machinist living in Robertson County who went by Frank, and had recently filed for divorce. 

Smith — who was missing two fingers — was engaged in a custody battle with Robirds Smith over their 3-year-old twin boys. Their 35-year-old mother had also filed multiple domestic violence charges against him in recent months — not only on her behalf, but also for her teen sons.

Ten months later, a jury convicted Smith of three counts of first-degree murder in the killings. On July 26, 1990, jurors sentenced him to death.

Now, after 32 years on death row, Smith is slated to die by lethal injection next week. At age 72, he continues to maintain his innocence.

Execution delayed: Tennessee delays execution of Oscar Franklin Smith over lethal injection issue

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Last month, the condemned asked Gov. Bill Lee to grant a temporary reprieve so he can exhaust his pending judicial matters. If Lee does not commute Smith's sentence, his scheduled April 21 death will mark the state's first execution since early 2020.

Slashed from ear to ear

Fifteen hours after the frantic 911 call, an 8-year-old relative found the family's bodies inside. Friends said Robirds Smith babysat the boy every Monday.

She and her sons' throats had been slashed from ear to ear.

The mother, found on an unmade bed clothed in blue jeans and a shirt, had also been shot in the left arm and neck and stabbed multiple times. There was blood splattered on the paneled wall next to the bed. The latter wound, caused by a gun fired from a range within two feet, had severed her spinal cord and produced instant paralysis, rapid unconsciousness and death.

In his mother's bedroom, hid brother Jason Burnett, an eighth grader at Wright Junior High School, was found gutted lying on his side at the foot of the bed on which his mother lay. A hair dryer next to him was still running

He was stabbed in his chest and abdomen.

"His hands were found on his intestines," recalled Tom Thurman, the former Davidson County deputy district attorney who visited the crime scene and later prosecuted Smith.

All of Jason Burnett's injuries occurred before death, a medical examiner testified, and the boy bled to death over a period of several minutes.

Chad Burnett, a Glencliff High School sophomore, was found lying in a pool of blood on his back in the kitchen beside an overturned table. He'd been shot through his left eye, in the upper chest and in the shoulder. He had also been stabbed several times in his chest, back and abdomen with a sharp, needle-like weapon and with a knife

The phone had been ripped out of the wall and large quantities of blood were on the floor. Pictures had been thrown off blood smeared walls and an awl, a leather working tool shaped like a pick, was found in the room.

Thurman said police never found two of the murder weapons — a .22 caliber pistol and a knife.

A pending divorce

One of seven children, Smith was born in Ohio to the late Oscar Earl Smith and Florence Smith.

His family later moved to Robertson County, about 30 miles north of Nashville, and he eventually took a job at Maintenance Service Corp. in La Vergne.

He met Judith Lynn Robirds who worked as a waitress at the Waffle House on Trinity Lane. She had two children from a previous marriage — Chad and Jason Burnett. Smith also had teenage children, a son and daughter, with his first wife.

The couple were married in 1985 and about a year later had twin boys of their own.

In June 1989 the couple separated and a dispute over custody of their twin sons began.

Teresa Zastrow told authorities her sister Robirds Smith feared for her life and Zastrow received a call from her sister the day she and Smith separated. Robirds Smith and her sons had walked about a mile from their house and were nervous to the point of hysteria, Zastrow said. She told police her sister said Smith and Jason Burnett became violent with each other and Smith had kicked, hit and bit the boy.

“She told me he told her to get out and put a gun to Jason‘s head," she said. "He shot into the air and told her not to get the car or the kids or he'd kill them."

Zastrow also told police that in August 1989, her sister went to Smith’s home to pick up clothes for her and her children. After the visit, she said, her sister returned with rope burns on her wrist and neck.

She told police her sister said she had been tied up and raped, and that Smith ran a knife across her throat and said he’d kill her if she left him for another man.

Two months later, the woman and her teenagers were dead.

'Cool and collected'

On Oct. 2, 1989, detectives visited Smith in Robertson County to question him about his estranged wife and her sons.

Before they informed him of the brutal killings, he talked about his wife in the past tense, Thurman said.

"When they told him, he showed no emotion," he recalled.

Detectives later served a search warrant at his home on Cooper-Nicholson Road near Pleasant View, about a 40 minute drive northeast of where the slayings took place.

Police confiscated several guns and knives.

On Nov. 26, 1989, Postiglione and the late Det. Terry McElroy, the case's lead detective, arrested Smith at work on murder charges.

"He didn't give a statement or confession," Postiglione recalled. "He was very cool and collected."

The evidence

Smith's co-workers told police he had threatened to kill Robirds Smith on at least 12 occasions between June and August 1989. One co-worker said Smith threatened to kill Chad and Jason Burnett because he thought their mother treated them better than the twins.

At trial, jurors learned Smith and his estranged wife spent the day together and seemed to get along well. The family even went to eat together that day.

"Why she went out to dinner with him that day, I don't know," Thurman said.

Smith even offered to take care of their twin boys the next day because he said he was off from work and he wanted his wife to go look for a used car. 

Smith's public defender Karl Dean said although Smith offered to look after the twins, he forgot he had a job to do in Morehead, Kentucky, the following day.

Dean said Smith left for Morehead before the slayings took place. Family members including his mother also testified he was with them at the time of the killings.

But Denny Abston, whose father-in-law lived a few houses away from Robirds Smith’s house, spotted Smith’s car between 10:30 and 11 p.m. during the time he had reportedly left for Kentucky. 

An expert told jurors the killer's handprint found at the scene was a match for Smith. 

Smith, who took the stand in his own defense, testified he had no idea how a bloody palm print of his right hand, missing two fingers, wound up on a bedsheet beside his wife's body.

"All I can tell you is I wasn't there and I don't know,'' he told jurors.

He went on to testify he knew a "black man in North Nashville" who had a similarly damaged left hand.

Few other fingerprints were found in the house. Thurman said the killer was wearing a glove that fell off during a struggle with one of the boys. Police found the brown, cotton, left-handed glove by a blood spattered wall in Jason Burnett's room.

Other factors linking Smith to the slayings were the weapons used. Robirds Smith and her sons were stabbed with a pick-like item.

When police searched Smith’s house, they found his leatherworking kit and the only necessary item it did not contain was an awl.

Smith was known to own a .22 caliber pistol, police said. Police found a holster missing a gun. Also missing was a buck knife Smith was known to wear on his belt.

A clinical psychologist for the defense who examined Smith said he suffered from paranoid personality disorder. She blamed his mental health issues on his father who was diagnosed with schizophrenia in the 1940s.

But a psychologist for the prosecution testified he believed Smith was "quite sane."

Petition for clemency

Smith has had two execution dates rescheduled since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. As of Monday, he was one of 47 people on death row in the state and among six people set to die by capital punishment in Tennessee this year.

State law allows inmates sentenced to death for a crime that took place before 1999 to choose between electrocution and the state's default execution method of lethal injection.

Last week, the Tennessee Department of Correction confirmed Smith chose not to select a method.

Smith is one of dozens of death row inmates who joined a lawsuit arguing lethal injection amounts to state-sanctioned torture by creating the sensations of drowning and burning alive.

In mid-March, Smith's attorneys at the law firm Baker Botts filed a clemency petition to Lee arguing that Smith's sentence should be commuted to life without parole.

And earlier this month, Smith filed a motion to reopen his case due to new DNA evidence found on the awl. 

"DNA evidence shows that an unknown assailant, not Mr. Smith, used the bloody murder weapon found at the crime scene to murder Mr. Smith's family," his federal public defender Amy Harwell said.

Appeals in the case are unlikely to wrap up before his execution date.

Thurman said the DNA could be from anyone including any of the victims, crime scene technicians or anyone else involved in the case.

"Look at all the evidence: He had the motive, he had the warrants out against him, the custody battle... he was the last person seen with the family," Thurman said. "The palm print, the 911 call, the leatherworking tool, the missing gun, the missing knife."

Thurman said last week that sometimes he wishes he would not have gone to the crime scene the day it was discovered.

But he did, and said he hopes next week justice is served.

Natalie Neysa Alund is based in Nashville at The Tennessean and covers breaking news across the South for the Paste BN Network. Reach her at nalund@tennessean.com and follow her on Twitter @nataliealund.