Midlands killer taunted victim's family in phone calls. This TV show tells the story
An episode of a true crime TV show airing Thursday will feature the 1985 abduction and murder of a Lexington High School student, whose killer made a series of taunting phone calls to her family in the days after her disappearance.
Larry Gene Bell kidnapped 17-year-old Shari Faye Smith in broad daylight from outside her family's Red Bank home in May 1985. Less than two weeks later, on June 14, he snatched a 9-year-old girl from outside her family's mobile home in Richland County and later killed her.
In the days after Smith's disappearance, Bell tormented her family members with phone calls, at times offering false hope that she was still alive, and then revealing how he killed her and where they could find her body.
"Murder Calls," a show on Investigation Discovery, tells true stories about horrific crimes, the investigations into them and the impact on the victims' loved ones, according to executive producer Liz Massie. And the show does it using powerful recorded phone calls about the crimes.
"In this special episode of 'Murder Calls,' the recorded calls are from the killer himself," Massie told The State. "After abducting each young woman, he repeatedly made taunting calls to the Smith family. Family members had to endure speaking to him, trying to draw out information on what happened to the victims and who he was, attempting to help investigators track him down."
Helmick's family did not have a telephone, according to news reports at the time. Bell's phone calls to Smith's family continued even after her funeral.
The slayings terrorized the Midlands until Bell was apprehended on June 27, 1985. He was convicted and sentenced to death in separate trials in 1986 and 1987, with the trials held in other counties because of concerns about finding impartial juries in the Midlands.
Bell was executed in October 1996, choosing to die by electric chair instead of lethal injection. He also was suspected, but never charged, in the 1984 disappearance of a Charlotte woman.
Massie said "Murder Calls" focuses on one case in each hour-long episode, telling the story through on-camera interviews with the victims' family members, police investigators and journalists, all coupled with dramatic reenactments of the events in the story.
Appearing in Thursday's episode will be Smith's sister, Dawn Jordan; Debra May's mother, Debra Johnson; former 11th Circuit Solicitor Donnie Myers, who secured death sentences for Bell in both cases; a forensic photographer and forensic investigators.
"Murder Calls" airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. on Investigation Discovery.
This story was originally published May 24, 2018 at 2:55 PM with the headline "Midlands killer taunted victim's family in phone calls. This TV show tells the story."