One November night in 1996, Smiley Johnson alerted her neighbor that she had been attacked by an intruder. The 80 year old woman had been stabbed multiple times, so savagely her insides could be seen. Before she died, she managed to say she hadn’t seen her attacker’s face, but that he was a white, short man.
The investigation led to Michael Giles, her 15 year old grandson. When police interrogated him, he didn’t deny it. In fact, he gloated and openly discussed the details of the crime. He said he was interested in Satanism and wanted to see what it felt to have sex with a dead body. When police pointed out Smiley hadn’t been raped, Giles explained he had assaulted her in her wounds, not her genitals. All this while he claimed to love his grandmother.
Soon after Smiley’s murder, another woman in the neighborhood had been repeatedly stabbed by an intruder, although she survived. Giles claimed responsibility for this attack too, but the victim was convinced she’d been assaulted by a black man. So Giles was only charged for his grandmother’s death. He pled guilty and in 2000 was sentenced to 30 years behind bars.