i've been given a new lease on life, so to speak. i want it to be good. i want it to matter. i still don't know exactly what it will be, but it's going to be it will be, but it's going to be okay. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com just 90 miles north of new york city, a female correctional officer was discovered missing from her post at the prison. there was no trace of her anywhere inside the prison. none of the inmates or guards knew where she went or reported seeing anything suspicious. how could a guard simply disappear in an overcrowded maximum security prison? ♪

green haven state correctional facility. one of the toughest maximum security prisons in the united states. a violent, overcrowded space that is home to 1,800 of new york state's most violent criminals. >> green haven i think at that time had to be considered our super max prison in the state. and everybody in there had long time. everybody in there was a vicious criminal. there were no newcomers. it was a pretty bad place as far as the population was concerned. >> more than 500 prisoners inside green haven were convicted murderers. 1981 was the first year female correctional officers worked in this all-male maximum security prison. there were 50 on staff. all new to the job. one of them was 31-year-old

donna payant. >> if i want to describe donna and her personality, i would describe her as a very strong-willed, independent, determined person and with a strong sense of justice. >> donna had three children. her husband was also a corrections officer but worked at another prison. although her family came to accept her job choice, some of the men working inside the prison establishment did not. while at the training academy, an instructor entered donna's room at night uninvited. donna responded by filing a sexual harassment lawsuit, but later thought better of it and dropped the suit. on may 15th, 1981, donna punched in just after noon for the 1:00 to 9:00 shift. about an hour later, donna was with two other officers when the phone rang. >> yes? hold on. donna, it's for you. >> it was a call for donna. >> donna payant received a phone

call in the early afternoon of that friday. and it was a strange call, and in the opinion of her co-officers who were working with her, her reaction after receiving the call was somewhat alarming. >> the other officers didn't know who placed the call. but they said that donna turned away from them to keep her conversation private. when she hung up, she left, not saying where she was going. >> i have something i have to take care of. >> donna payant was upset. not upset in a sense that she was nervous, but she was angered. her words were, i'm putting an end to this, it's going to end right here and now or something to that effect. and then she storms off. >> five hours later, at the regular evening roll call for officers, donna payant was absent. prison officials immediately

ordered an emergency lockdown. all prisoners were confined to their cells. officers combed the prison, going through all the cell blocks, offices and recreation areas. but there was no trace of donna payant. >> that's a maximum security prison, so they had pretty good control of who left and entered there. and there was no indication that she left. >> as dawn broke the next day, prison officials received some terrible news. in a nearby landfill, where all of the prison trash was taken each day, workers found the badly mutilated body of a blond woman in a prison guard uniform. the body had been wrapped in a garbage bag. [alarms blaring] ohhhhh... whoa whoa whoa!

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the day after donna payant disappeared, her family was called to green haven prison. >> there were officials there, and they met us.

and i knew then. they didn't say so, but i knew something was wrong. >> the body in the landfill was positively identified as donna payant. she became the first female corrections officer to die in the line of duty in u.s. history. she was found with ligatures around her wrists and neck. the cause of death was strangulation. there were also signs that she had been sexually assaulted. >> my father was very, very upset, and he never got over it. >> the body had gone through the trash compacter of a garbage truck. this told investigators that the body had been placed in a prison garbage can where it was emptied into the trash truck that serviced the prison and at the landfill, the body had been run over by a bulldozer which levels the garbage into a flat surface. every bone in her body had been

broken. >> she was covered with all sorts of debris and garbage and filth and wetness because it was a very, very wet dump, and any evidence that would have been available had to have been contaminated by all of this extraneous materials that covered her body. >> if donna payant's body had left green haven along with the prison's trash, the killer had to be someone inside the prison, with more access than prisoners customarily have. but who inside the prison would want her dead? in addition to access, an inmate would have needed privacy to commit the murder. since prison guards would have this kind of freedom of movement, they became the focus of the investigation. just three days before her

death, witnesses saw a male guard involved in a heated physical confrontation with donna payant. >> he was seen as she turned away from that heated discussion, he was seen poking her on her shoulder, on her back. he was very upset. >> and it was soon discovered that this guard was among many at green haven who had something to hide. >> people had motives to kill donna inside the prison. i believe that because of all the illegal activities that were going on in green haven at the time of her death, and long before that, that there were people there that not only did they have the motive, they had the capability to carry out such a crime. >> those activities had been revealed in an official report released just two weeks before

donna payant's murder. the green haven guards were suspected of having a "let's make a deal" attitude with the prisoners. guards were selling drugs and even providing prostitutes to inmates. a good old boy network had kept this secret for years. but some of the new female recruits like donna payant wanted no part of that network. and when donna payant had made the earlier charge of sexual harassment, she quickly became known as a whistle blower. during an autopsy on donna payant, the medical examiner discovered she was not only sexually assaulted with extreme savagery, he also found what appeared to be bite marks. one, a crescent-shaped wound on her chest, was particularly clear. >> a couple of the teeth marks obvious had sunk in much deeper than others. and you could tell that it was

the teeth as i remember them were not perhaps the best teeth in the world. they weren't perfectly shaped it seemed to me. >> the bite mark, ligature marks, strangulation, and the brutality of the sexual assault all indicated that this killer had murdered before. it was not his first crime. but who had this kind of homicidal history? and who at green haven was so angry with donna payant that they would not only want her dead, but would kill her in such a brutal way? ready for another reason to switch to t-mobile. get 2 lines of unlimited 4g lte data for just $100 bucks a month. it's america's best unlimited family plan. and it's only at t-mobile.

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the day after her death, donna payant's body was found here at the dump about 30 miles from the prison. >> news of donna payant's murder soon made its way throughout the state of new york. the bite mark impression on donna payant's body was photographed and sent to forensic odontologist dr. lowell lavigne. when dr. lavigne studied the impression was immediately convinced of two things. first, he was certain the mark was a bite impression. second, dr. lavigne knew he had seen this same bite impression before.

>> i said, wait a minute, i just saw this two or three days ago in a lecture that i had given on a case that i had seen four years ago in schenectady, new york. >> it was the case of a 30-year-old woman named mary lee wilson who had been strangled with a ligature, brutally sexually assaulted and bitten. dr. levine immediately asked the logical question, was mary lee wilson's killer an inmate at the prison where donna payant worked? the answer was -- yes. 39-year-old lemuel smith was in green haven correctional facility. he had confessed to the murders of mary lee wilson and another woman. both victims had been killed in the same way. both were signature killings. but in the four years in prison lemuel smith had been a model prisoner. he had found religion.

he was an altar boy and rose to be the assistant to the catholic chaplain. this new position granted smith enormous freedom inside the prison, freedom most of the inmates didn't have. >> no way in the world that i could have killed her. the woman was beaten. the woman was supposed to have been sodomized. right? but this is right in a busy quarters. it's impossible. it can't be done. >> but prison officials found evidence that smith had some prior contact with donna payant and that the two developed a friendship. >> donna payant had made some contact with lemuel smith concerning an item, i believe it was a jewelry box, that she was looking to have made. lemuel smith, while in prison, was doing some wood carvings on occasion. >> in lemuel smith's prison file investigators found a

report from dr. zvi clopot, a psychiatrist who evaluated smith four years earlier. >> after i interviewed him, he he said to me, listen, one thing i want you to do is i want you to make sure that i never get out because i'm going to do this again because i can't stop it. >> i never confessed to nothing. i made a statement. a statement while i was drugged up, right? that was supposed to be for the psychiatrist. >> dr. klopott diagnosed lemuel as a paranoid schizophrenic with a borderline personality. he warned officials that without psychiatric care smith was sure to kill again. that warning was ignored when smith was granted extra freedoms by virtue of his pastoral duties. >> so he had the entire -- several offices to himself with the telephones in that office, and he had -- he was the only person who really could use the office. >> when investigators searched

the chaplain's office, it seemed to be in perfect order. a closer examination revealed the room had just been cleaned. >> the floor had been washed down with not so clean water, but it was pretty obvious that it had been done and done recently. >> in an office closet, investigators found several blonde hairs. those were found to be microscopically consistent with donna payant's hair. the only other evidence was the bite impression found on donna's chest during the autopsy. because of the damage to donna's body by the garbage compactor and the bulldozer, some believed it wasn't a bite wound at all and as evidence it was essentially worthless. ♪ turn around ♪ every now and then i get a little bit hungry ♪ ♪ and there's nothing good around ♪ ♪ turn around, barry

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somewhere within the walls of green haven state correctional facility lurked the killer of prison guard donna payant. a number of inmates told officials that the male prison guard who was seen fighting with donna three days before her death was the one responsible. when the guard was questioned about donna's murder, he admitted he was selling cocaine

to prisoners. but he also said he had nothing to do with donna's murder. the other suspect was a prisoner named lemuel smith, whose prior killings closely resembled donna payant's murder. whoever killed donna had bitten her, leaving a highly distinctive bite impression on her chest. the bite wound was produced by someone's bottom teeth, by someone who was missing one of his four bottom incisors. lemuel smith was missing a bottom incisor. this space can be measured, as can the spaces between the other teeth. the picture on top is a bite mark found on mary lee wilson's body, the woman smith admitted killing. in the middle is lemuel smith's bite pattern imprinted on wax. and on the bottom is the bite

mark found on donna payant's body. when compared, the space between the lower right incisors is clearly visible. in all three cases, the measurements and angles of the teeth are exactly the same. but if lemuel smith killed donna payant, how did he do it and why? >> he was following exactly the same pattern as the previous murders. he had involved himself with her. he believed apparently that she was someone who was interested in him. he saw her as a close friend or someone who really cared about him. he made her a gift, so it follows the exact same pattern as before. >> the key, say psychiatrists, was the jewelry box lemuel smith had made as a gift for donna payant. police theorize that the phone call she received just before her death was from lemuel smith calling from the privacy of the chaplain's office. a personal call from an inmate

would have been an embarrassment for a rookie guard like donna payant. >> i can't talk to you. >> other guards said donna seemed upset after the call and left abruptly. once in the chaplain's office, the two may have argued. or donna may have rejected him or his gift. this set off the same homicidal fury that had left two other women dead. then he sexually assaulted her, strangled her, and at some point bit her. the chaplain was away that day, and smith would have had enough privacy to commit murder, wrap the body in trash bags, and then clean the room. the cleanup was well done, except for hairs that were inadvertently swept into the closet. smith also had enough prison

access to get the body to the trash dumpster without being noticed. in january of 1983, lemuel smith was convicted of donna payant's murder and now spends 23 hours a day in solitary confinement. lemuel smith continues to deny he was involved, insisting he was framed by prison guards. as for the bite mark, he claims it was an injury caused by the trash compactor and bulldozer at the landfill and that those involved in the alleged cover-up doctored it to make it look like his bite pattern. you can see that there's a match, you're just saying that the match is fabricated? >> i can see it. anybody can see it. but it's not a bite mark. here's a body that was put in a compactor and crashed. but the only thing clear and distinct on it is a bite mark. come on, it has to be distorted. unless it came afterwards.

>> that claim is backed up by donna payant's sister. she too is convinced that prison guards murdered her sister, then covered it up. >> i still do not believe that an inmate would, you know, pick out a c.o. to kill in a maximum security prison in the middle of the prison, in the middle of the day. i don't believe that, and it's not possible. it hasn't happened before, it hasn't happened since. >> for investigators, however, there is no question. lemuel smith had the means and o' the opportunity to kill donna payant, a fact they say is backed up by the bite mark on her body. >> he committed the same crime three different times on three different women. and he had to know in his own mind, i did it again. and that's what caught him. >> a memorial headstone now sits

in front of green haven prison, a reminder of donna payant's brutal murder. a murder experts say could and should have been prevented. this is the story of two crimes committed in different states, 500 miles apart. in each case a woman was assaulted late at night. investigators found the same signature elements in both claims. the calling card of this perpetrator was so unusual it eventually cost him his life.