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I'm your host, Ali McLaughlin-Sulkowski.
And I'm your co-host, Eli Sulkowski.
And this is Cold and Missing, where we cover cold cases.
And missing person cases.
Hello everyone and welcome back.
Welcome back everyone.
I am Eli.
And I'm Ali.
And this is Cold and Missing.
I think this is episode 48.
It is episode 48.
You want to just take us right in?
Yeah, let's get into it.
Let's do it.
So today I have for you a cold case.
And just as a content warning at the top, this case does involve a young person.
Today we are going to be talking about the cold case of Chance Douglas Smith.
And this takes place in December of 2003 in Locust, North Carolina.
But first a little bit about Chance.
Chance is six years old in 2003.
He was born June 11th, 1997.
And he would be 26 years old today.
Chance was a kindergartner at Stanfield Elementary School where he was recently named student
of the week.
As a student of the week there was a bulletin board with his picture and his favorite things
listed.
These are Chance's favorite things.
The mountains.
Macaroni and cheese.
Rock music.
Hardee's.
Zebras.
The color orange.
And playing outside.
Chance's 17 year old cousin said quote, he was always happy.
He wasn't scared of nothing.
He played football, basketball.
He could shoot pool.
He could ride a four wheeler like crazy.
Everywhere I went he went.
End quote.
His family said that Chance was so good at pool he could easily beat people three times
his age even though he could barely just see over the table.
Chance loved the outdoors and by all accounts was a very happy child.
And now a timeline of events.
On Saturday, December 13th, 2003, Chance is spending the weekend with his grandparents
in Locust, North Carolina.
This is a rural community with a population of around 3,000 at this time.
It's about 20 minutes outside of Charlotte, North Carolina.
Chance is playing outside with a family dog while his grandfather, Randall, worked on
an engine.
At one point, Randall stepped inside to grab something for the engine he was working on.
At around 2:30 p.m., a neighbor reported that they saw Chance follow the family dog into
the woods.
Chance was a child that was comfortable in the woods but he usually had an adult with
him.
When Randall comes back outside, Chance is gone.
Randall says, quote, I hollered, Chance?
He didn't answer.
I took off down through the woods after him.
Four or five of my buddies started calling him too.
End quote.
Now near Chance's grandparents' house, there were neighbors close by.
So from this quote, I take it to mean that Randall did call some friends or neighbors
to help search for Chance right around that 2:30 mark when Chance goes missing.
After searching the woods, Randall's friends convinced him to go back to the house and
call police.
So at 3:44, the family reports him missing.
This is just over an hour after Chance was last seen walking into the woods.
Very quickly, police, firefighters, and over 100 volunteers from the community, some reports
even say it was around 150, they all spring into action to search for Chance.
They have volunteers with dogs, and they even talk about launching a helicopter for an aerial
search, but the weather doesn't allow for this.
More people start to show up to help search for Chance, but police organizers turn them
away.
Police tell them that they want to preserve the area as a possible crime scene, just in
case.
At this time, they have no evidence that a crime has occurred.
A member of Chance's family, his name is Joe Proctor, says, quote, you had a couple
hundred people standing around doing nothing.
Most of us grew up around here and we farmed on this land.
We know our way around.
We could have helped.
It's just frustrating.
What is more important, a six-year-old's life or preserving a crime scene that they
didn't know yet?
End quote.
At around 11:30 p.m., nine hours after Chance was last seen, a line of searchers find Chance
face down in a horse pasture.
The pasture where he is found is less than a mile from his grandparents' home.
He had what was described as a blow to the head.
When searchers found him, he did not have a pulse and he was not breathing, but he was
still rushed to a nearby hospital where doctors worked to try to revive him.
But on Sunday, December 14, 2003, at 3:08 in the morning, Chance is pronounced dead.
Randall, his grandfather, had been close to where Chance was found earlier that day.
He says, quote, if they hadn't called me back from where I was, I would have found him in
five minutes.
I was with the search party.
I was just about 75 feet from him when we found him.
End quote.
Police are calling Chance's death an unattended death and tell the media they are going to
wait for the autopsy results, but they are suspicious.
Locust police chief Mike Haigler says, quote, for a six-year-old, it would have been a lot
of work to traverse all that.
We've got a lot of questions right now.
End quote.
Randall believes it was an accident.
He says, quote, it was an accident.
I don't feel like it was anything more than an accident.
End quote.
Family and friends are confused as to why it took nearly eight hours to find him when
he was less than a mile from the home.
Rumors begin circulating that Chance died of hypothermia from getting lost and it taking
too long to find him.
Also because he was located in a horse pasture, there are also rumors that he died as a result
of getting kicked in the head by a horse.
On Monday, December 15th, Chance's autopsy is conducted and police publicly start to say
that the death is accidental, but behind the scenes, the police feel it is still a suspicious
death.
The Locust police start to put together a task force to be on standby in the event there
is foul play detected.
Again, police chief Haigler says, quote, there are too many questions out there.
If you write it off as accidental, you find out you have to backtrack later.
End quote.
The task force is made up of not only Locust police, but the Stanley County Sheriff and
the State Bureau of Investigation.
The next day, Tuesday, December 16th, police get the autopsy results back and the case
is officially ruled a homicide and police have no doubts about the results.
Police won't go into specifics, but they do say that Chance died due to traumatic injuries
to the head.
Lieutenant James InMan says, quote, the medical examiner had no questions about the
nature of death.
End quote.
While homicide is rare for Locust, North Carolina, Chance's murder will be the only one in recent
history.
Police do believe that it is an isolated incident.
Officer Steve Ridenhour says, quote, I don't think parents should have any fears of there's
just a killer on the loose running through the neighborhood.
End quote.
Police begin conducting interviews and following leads well past midnight, but they don't
have any theories or suspects at this point.
And on Wednesday, December 17th, Chance's funeral is held and he's laid to rest.
Around 200 people attend the service and Chance's principal brought cards that his classmates
had made.
They said things like, we had fun playing together.
I remember Chance and me building sand castles and throwing sand at each other.
Chance sat at my table.
I miss him so much.
And then after Chance's funeral, it appears that the case goes cold.
The media stops reporting on it and there isn't even the yearly updates that we tend
to see in these cold cases.
The next update that I could find comes from December 2008.
So this would be five years after Chance's murder.
The Stanley News and Press talk with the Locust police chief, Mike Haigler, who says that they
have had many leads and that they have a lot of information about the suspect, but they
don't go into specifics of who the suspect is.
Police Chief Hagler then says this about Randall, Chance's grandfather.
Quote, we know he knows who it is, but for what reason he is not willing to cooperate
with us.
End quote.
And it's also been revealed after the fact that through the investigation, they believe
that Chance was murdered in a different location than the horse pasture and then later placed
there.
But when they came to this conclusion and how is unclear, but this is information that
the North Carolina Bureau of Investigation has put out on Chance's poster for information
wanted.
And with that, if you know anything about the murder of Chance Smith in December of
2003, please call the Locust police at 704-888-4744.
And the sources for the timeline today come from the Charlotte Observer, Winston Salem
Journal, the News and Observer, News and Record, the Herald Sun, the Stanley News and Press,
medium.com and the North Carolina Bureau of Investigation.
So that is the case of Chance Smith.
Wow.
Always painful, you know, to hear about the loss of a child in any capacity.
But especially like this.
The first thing I heard in my head was to know the true existence of like the purity
in a miracle.
There is the existence of the purity and Ev- in evil.
That's what this like felt like to me and hearing it.
That's just pure.
It's just pure evil, loss, unfair, like everything that's wrong about it.
It's like turned all the way up to 100%.
There's like nothing you can, you know, within like moments, a handful of moments, like it's
for a second you walked in the house.
Yeah, that's one thing that I couldn't get over.
You know, a lot of times cases we cover, maybe there's some delay and usually it's the police's
reaction.
You know, they delay.
But here, you know, family, friends, neighbors, it seems like we're instantly in the woods
looking for him.
Which also makes me think that this makes me I just feel disgusted about this.
I'm like, was someone just watching him and like waiting?
You know, I mean, pretty much any forest I think you can go just a couple feet in and
disappear.
And that disgusts me because when you are an adult, like one trauma in your life is
like taught you to like be afraid and look out for yourself, you know, that's like you
you're taking advantage of like the innocence of someone like enjoying whatever, you know,
a six year old enjoying nature.
And again, the presence of like how truly evil that would be.
Yeah, you know, the family responded really quickly and we're in the woods relatively
quickly after chance was last seen, you know, the grandfather steps inside, he comes back,
hollers for him, goes in after him.
But then, you know, just a little bit over an hour later, they call the police, the police
respond in a way that we kind of always want them to respond.
They take it seriously.
You know, they they're there.
Firefighters are there.
The community shows up.
You know, they have volunteer dogs.
They talk about trying to get a helicopter up like that.
That's the kind of response that we want when anybody is missing.
But if a child goes missing, you know, it doesn't matter if you think they ran away.
Like I'm using air quotes right now, but it's like we need to find children that go missing.
Period.
End of story.
That's how I feel.
Yeah.
And researching this these types of cases quite a bit like you don't see a response
this big that often.
Like initially, you said like 3000 people.
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
You said like 200 people showed up.
That's a lot.
That's like even home bodies that were like, it's time.
I've seen him out my window or whatever.
You know, like those people like, no, no.
And you know, the police also kind of take it a step further in the beginning.
And they start turning people away just like, you know, there's too many people.
We we don't want to destroy a potential crime scene.
Can I ask your opinion on something?
Sure.
So I also had the thought maybe it was it was an accidental death, but did involve other
people.
Like if, say, he was inside the house and like somehow fell, maybe no one was even in
the room.
He fell.
And like, you know, kids, while they're resilient, they are also still very small.
If you fall from high enough up, say a flight of stairs hit the back of your head.
Yes, you can die on impact.
An adult boom, an adult walks in the room, sees it, thinks what exactly the response
is, you know, does like a very random thing in like, I mean, it wouldn't be my first response.
But we have seen things like this before, you know, where people just are like, I want
to take care of the mess.
I want to hide it.
So like something like that.
Or he was playing with other kids and like something happened or someone like hit him
and hit him way too hard.
Or yeah, you know, something like that.
I guess I was wondering, did you think that was a possibility?
Yeah, I do think that's a possibility.
So there are some rumors in this case that aren't printed in any reputable news sources.
So I didn't want to include them in the official timeline.
This is just like things I saw on social media, in the comment sections of stories, things
like that.
And, you know, a rumor that has persisted over the years is that Chance wasn't alone,
that he was playing with another kid.
The kid hit him too hard, hurt him.
And then, you know, he tried to cover it up and the family figured out what happened.
And so they tried to protect this nameless faceless, very much a rumor, very much not
substantiated by any reputable news source, but that they try that the family is trying
to protect this other kid.
Yeah, I mean, the cops say he knows.
That is a very confident statement for law enforcement to make publicly to say, I mean,
those people, I assume I didn't I couldn't remember if you said if they are still alive
or not.
But like, I assume not in prison, like, yeah, there's never been an arrest around chances
murder.
That's that's loud.
That like puts a very pressurized like target on that person.
You know?
Yeah.
And chances grandfather from everything I have learned has moved out of the area.
They bring him back in for questioning.
But it's also one of those things where like, yes, that's a very competent thing for police
to say.
But like, also, like the police are saying we have a lot of leads, and that they know
a lot about the suspect, but they don't have enough to like prove it beyond a reasonable
doubt.
So part of me just feels like they're kind of publicly saying it to put pressure on the
grandfather to come up with information that maybe he just doesn't have because he doesn't
know.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's just one of those things.
It's like, well, if you have all that information, and you have all these leads, and you know,
you know, all of this, then like, why does it matter if this person is not cooperating
or not?
You should be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt without them.
Well, thank you for sharing this case.
I'm looking forward to making those graphics that help like be help the people become more
visible.
And I just would love that for chance and the family and to get this case back out there.
Yeah, I wasn't able to find like any public pleas from the family asking for information.
But what I did seem to find a lot of was chances classmates asking for information, kids he
had gone to school with, you know, remember him from kindergarten and are still looking
for answers are still searching to find out what happened to them.
Yeah, I would imagine that a quite a bit of those kids turned into, you know, people similar
to us.
And some maybe not.
But yeah, that that makes sense.
So if you know anything about the murder of champ Smith in December of 2003, please call
the Locus police at 704-888-4744.
And we will be posting those beautiful graphics on our Instagram.
You can find us there if you just search cold and missing will pop right up and we'll have
some photos of chance that I was able to find during the course of my research.
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episodes up there, but we also have transcripts up there.
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So have a good week and stay safe, y'all.
Stay safe, y'all.