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Widow confesses murder role after 21 years of silenceBy RACHEL L. SWARNSKnight-Rxidef NewspapersHIALEAH — The wedding was just six months gone. Dona and Curtis Blythe were expecting their first baby when the killer blun-dered into their lives.He caught Curtis under the hood of his wife’s broken-down Ford Falcon. He left him dead in the back seat, his body covered with carpet, his head bashed in five places, exactly 21 years ago today.Dona remade her life: She married again, raised five children and built a career as a real estate agent. Then Wednesday, one day before the anniversary of her husband’s murder, the 48-year-old woman turned herself in to the Hialeah Police Department to be arrested for arranging it.“I’ll tell the truth now,” she told homicide detectives. I knew someday at some point in my life someone was going to come asking about this. This time you’re going to hear the truth.”The truth: Dona Blythe, now Dona Smith, arranged her husband’s murder with the help of a boyfriend. The motive: Her husband physically abused her, she said.Smith was arrested on charges of first-degree murder. She was held without bail at the Dade County Jail Wednesday night.The news stunned co-workers at the Home Finders agency in Broward County, where she helped rent apartments for two years. The office manager described her as a “soft-spoken hard worker.” Even homicide detectives called her “a model citizen” when describing her conduct since the 1971 murder.But they always believed she was the killer, even back in 1971. They just couldn’t prove it.But time loosens tongues and eases fears. So it happened with the murder case of Curtis Blythe, a folder of police reports six inches thick, forgotten for years in the vault of the Hialeah Police Department.In February of this year, homicide detectives got some new information — they won't say what — that convinced them to dig out the old file. Relatives and neighbors who wouldn’t talk before talked freely this time, and a newpicture emerged of Dona Blythe.She wasn’t happily married: She was miserable. Her 34-year-old husband beat her, so she found a lover, a man called Juan Rivas. Four days before the murder, her husband named her the beneficiary of a$20,000 life insurance policy. Two days before the murder, he beat her again.Then she and her boyfriend set their plan in motion: On the night of Aug. 6, she told police, she ditched her white 1962 Ford Falcon at a Kwik Check store in Hialeah Rivas disabled the car so it wouldn’t start.Then she went home to her husband, a self-employed mason. She told him the car broke down when she went to buy bleach. She asked him to fix it.He was standing in the store parking lot, huddled over the Falcon’s engine, a screwdriver in his hand, when Rivas came from behind and beat him to death.Police say Rivas loaded the body in the car and towed it a few blocks away. Two days later, neighbors noticed a strange smell coming from the car. It was Blythe. His skull had been fractured five times.Homicide detectives suspected Dona Blythe immediately. First, there was the insurance policy. Second, the car had been so badly tampered with there was no way she could have driven it at all — not even to the convenience store.Twenty-one years later, homicide investigators came to the same conclusion. Hialeah homicide detective Edward Royal and Special Agent Humberto Rapado of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement reopened the case.Friends told Dona Smith the police were getting close. In July, she finally confessed to her boyfriend, Eugene Bradley.“It liked to have killed me,” Bradley said Wednesday. “I’d been with this woman for four years. I’ve given her plenty of reason to shoot me and she’s never done it.”On July 8, Dona Smith confessed to detectives. Last week, she was arrested on first degree murder charges. On Wednesday, she surrendered to police. Her frank, honest manner surprised even the detectives who hunted her.BLYTHE SMITH
Newspaper Details
Northwest Florida Daily News
Fort Walton Beach, Florida, US
Thu, Aug 06, 1992
Page 12
Full Page
Clipped by
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USA 10 Sep 2017
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