The murder of Safiya Tehrani, better known to most as the Harris Report, was a crime of passion. The killer was enraged by much of her writing, and apparently the promise of an exposee was enough to spur our killer into action.
He slit her throat with a box cutter in the office. All of his murders except for the first, with Wayne Gallagher, were planned out. He often brought his own weapon, though he chose one that would not seem out of place at the scene. And really, the story begins and ends with Wayne Gallagher
No one was supposed to die. Blake Smythe was a low level crook with a rap sheet for b & e and mischief. Not the kind of guy that someone would tap for murder, not when there were so many people with stronger allegiances - either to the Southside or to the North - that people would make a big fuss about. Smythe was a bottom feeder with a lot of anger and rage and a sense that he was meant for something better. A greater purpose.
Unfortunately, his "greater purpose" at the time was using his status as an outsider to acquire illegal things for people. Drugs, car parts that couldn't be traced, small weapons, that kind of thing. It looked a lot worse than it really was, and that was when Wayne Gallagher crossed the scene.
Smythe was making a deal, and that's where it all went to hell. His buyer, some schmuck from the Northside, got cold feet and no longer wanted the product. So Smythe decided to rough him up a bit - and that's what Gallagher saw. A lowlife creep roughing up a guy, presumably over drugs. Smythe, on parole for the b & e charges may have been in a part of town that he was not supposed to be in. And it would have looked pretty bad to the parole officers, and Smythe was not looking to deal with the inside of a cell again. So he tried to warn Gallagher off - first with words, trying to joke it off. Then more firmly. And then things got physical. Gallagher scarpered, and Smythe tracked him down later that night to put an end to things.
Smythe will insist that it was an accident. There was a fight, and he cracked Gallagher over the head. It wasn't supposed to kill him, and that's when Smythe panicked. He dragged the body to his truck and laid low.
He tried to cover up what happened by strangling Gallagher post-mortem and then dumping the body. Feeding into the rumours that it was a turf war thing.
The next deaths were... necessary. They say that after the first kill, it gets easier. And for Smythe, it was true. After that first barrier it was just a matter of deciding to do the thing.
Smythe would kill to stop people asking questions. To stop people from sharing what he was sure Gallagher had told them. Because they were cops who were getting too close...
And he kind of liked the notoriety. He was someone to be feared. When he interacted with the public as the killer, he had all of the power.
It's a shame that he left his prints at the Tehrani scene.
The FBI arrested Smythe at 11:17pm on February 28, 2019. He is expected to make a full confession.