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HONEYMOON OVER George and Jennifer Smith’S Royal Caribbean Honeymoon Cruise Ended Prematurely Last July, the Night George Vanished

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HONEYMOON OVER George and Jennifer Smith’S Royal Caribbean Honeymoon Cruise Ended Prematurely Last July, the Night George Vanished APRs IN 2/23/06 Text Revise notes: Art Director Color Revise I N V E S T I G AT I O N HONEYMOON OVER George and Jennifer Smith’s Royal Caribbean honeymoon cruise ended prematurely last July, the night George vanished. Did he fall or was he pushed? Where was Jennifer? Who were the young Russians in their cabin? The F.B.I. remains silent, but almost everyone else is talking BY BRYAN BURROUGH n Monday evening, July 4, 2005, a mammoth, multi- tiered cruise ship, Brilliance of the Seas, weighed anchor and eased out of the harbor at the Greek Oisland of Mykonos, in the Aegean Sea. It was the sixth night of the ship’s 12-day circling of the Mediterranean, a voyage begun in Barcelona the previous Wednes- day. Captain Michael Lachtaridis of the Royal Caribbean line, which owns the ship, ordered a course DANGER AT SEA north by northeast. The ship was Brilliance of the Seas, with scheduled to reach the Turkish Stateroom 9062 circled, port of Kusadasi around dawn. departing Miami, February E L 3, 2006; inset, George R Aboard that night were 2,300 E B and Jennifer poolside on E guests, most of them Americans. graders upon their re- D One was a handsome, muscular their honeymoon. turn, had a stateroom terward, they headed to the casino and then D O T 26-year-old Connecticut honey- with a balcony on to the discotheque, where they were seen Y B mooner named George Allen Smith IV, Deck Nine. After a day among the white- drinking with a circle of shipboard acquain- H P A whose family owns a popular liquor store in washed villas of Mykonos—the highlight of tances late into the night. R G O the upper-crust Connecticut town of Cos which was an unlikely encounter with the It should have been another fun, frolic- T O H Cob, near Greenwich. Smith and his at- actress Tara Reid, who was filming her now some evening, the first night of the rest of P E tractive blonde bride of 10 days, Jennifer, canceled show, Taradise—the Smiths re- their lives. But what started out as a story G R A who was to begin a new job teaching third- turned to the ship for a romantic dinner. Af- suited for Jimmy Buffett turned out to be L 1 7 2 V A N I T Y F A I R www.vanityfair.com A P R I L 2 0 0 6 0406VF CL-166 CYAN MAGENTA YELLOW BLACK APRs IN 2/23/06 Text Revise notes: Art Director Color Revise I N V E S T I G AT I O N one for Agatha Christie. Sometime in the months. “Now that the Holloway case is George IV and his older sister, Bree, now hours before dawn George Smith van- going nowhere, everyone is looking for the a lawyer in Hong Kong, grew up. ished, presumably fallen overboard into next big thing,” a cable booker told me in His family remembers George IV as a the dark Aegean. All that was found the January. “I guess this is it.” fun-loving, free-spirited boy who grew up next day was a single ugly bloodstain on The Smith coverage, however, has been doing the things American boys do. He a life-raft canopy beneath his balcony— oddly circumspect, in part because the played driveway basketball, rode his bicycle just the first macabre detail in an extraor- F.B.I. has asked witnesses to refrain from for miles, and was on the football team at dinary set of clues, quasi-witnesses, possible discussing what happened that night. But Greenwich High before being sidelined by suspects, and grieving relatives that have if you talk to the bookers and reporters a bout of mononucleosis. The family joker, become fodder for the nonfiction soap op- who have followed the case since the be- George was a devotee of the British sit- eras that unscroll on the cable-television ginning, it becomes clear that everyone com The Office. In the family, and later at “justice” shows. Was it an accident? Or knows who the “persons of interest” are. Babson College, in Wellesley, Massachu- murder? Or something else? Strangely, their names have been setts, where he studied kept out of the press for months HIGH SPIRITS computer science and ight after night, Greta Van Susteren and are only now trickling into A 2003 photo received a business de- on Fox News, Joe Scarborough and view. In the vacuum, cable hosts of George Smith III, gree, he was known as NRita Cosby on left, with George Smith a whiz with anything MSNBC, and Larry IV at their Cos Cob electronic. “He was the King and Nancy Grace Liquor store, in Cos Cob, go-to person for all that on CNN have repeat- Connecticut. kind of stuff,” says Bree. ed the tantalizing par- “Still, when something ticulars: The blood- goes wrong, I think I’ll ask stain. The “misplaced” George, and it just hits me. You wife. The flirtatious can’t ask George anymore.” casino boss. The ugly At Babson, where he pledged scene in the disco. The the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraterni- troublesome “Russian ty, George was known as a friend- boys.” The bottle of ab- ly, quiet student who suffered sinthe. The suspicious through an extended breakup with noises inside the Smiths’ a longtime girlfriend. “A sweet stateroom. The cop lis- guy, not too chatty, he wasn’t the tening through the wall. center of attention at a bar, but he The “thud.” was well liked by everybody,” re- Just about everyone members a wom- on television appears to believe George an who knew him Smith was the victim of foul play, though there. “Like every the F.B.I., which is investigating, hasn’t said “I THINK THERE ARE ARRESTS college student, he a word. The longer the case remains un- COMING DOWN,“ SAYS MAUREEN SMITH. “MY partied pretty hard, solved, the darker its undertones grow. Al- but we all did.” legations of a Royal Caribbean “cover-up” SON WAS MURDERED ON THIS CRUISE SHIP.” After gradua- have been tossed about while journalists[ tion, George took and congressmen murmur about the dan- have been left to examine side issues: a job with a computer firm in Stamford, gers lurking aboard cruise ships. whether Royal Caribbean “contaminated” Connecticut, doing research on Internet The case was actually slow to attract the “crime scene”; whether its officials search engines. He later moved on to a firm national attention, in large part because “abandoned” Jennifer Hagel-Smith in Tur- in suburban Boston, where his boss, a Smith’s family remained silent during the key following her husband’s disappearance; Ph.D. named Amanda Watlington, remem- early stages of the F.B.I.’s investigation, but whether cruise ships are safe. All three ideas bers him as a favorite employee, a hard in November, frustrated by what they char- are being pushed by plaintiff’s attorneys, worker who took vacation time at Christ- acterized as a lack of information from who smell big money in filing lawsuits mas to help his father at Cos Cob Liquor. Royal Caribbean, Smith’s wife and parents against Royal Caribbean. Valid or not, this “I cannot remember him ever having an hired attorneys. A month later they went kind of marginalia has tended to obscure unkind word for anyone,” says Watlington. public, granting interviews to King and the central question: What really happened “He was a big, gentle man.” Scarborough, and making statements be- to George Smith? In 2003, George surprised his family by fore a congressional hearing investigating quitting his job and coming home to work cruise-ship security. he Smiths have been a fixture in the at the family store. “It was the pull of fam- In short order Smith became the first Greenwich area for decades. The first ily—absolutely the pull of family,” says Wat- white male prominently featured in the five- T George Allen Smith, a major-league lington. year boomlet of Missing White Women pitcher in the 1910s and early 1920s, taught “At his job, you know, he worked at a media sagas that began with the murder of high-school math there for years. His son, desk from eight to six every day, and he Washington intern Chandra Levy in 2001 George Allen Smith II, was a dentist and said he couldn’t sit in front of a computer and have endured through the coverage of prominent horse breeder. George Smith anymore,” says Maureen. N A Laci Peterson and others. The Smith case III, the missing George’s father, is an ac- “He needed more social interaction,” V I L L quickly elbowed out the dwindling updates countant who purchased the Greenwich adds Bree. U S surrounding the disappearance of Alaba- area’s oldest liquor store, Cos Cob Liquor, George moved into an apartment in By- W E R ma teenager Natalee Holloway in Aru- in 1982. He and his British-born wife, Mau- ram, close to Cos Cob, and set to work up- D N ba, of which there has been little news in reen, live in neighboring Glenville, where dating the store’s computer systems and A 1 7 4 V A N I T Y F A I R www.vanityfair.com A P R I L 2 0 0 6 0406VF CL-168 CYAN MAGENTA YELLOW BLACK APRs IN 2/23/06 Text Revise notes: Art Director Color Revise I N V E S T I G AT I O N building its Web site.
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