Woman on oxygen machine was strangled in 1994, FBI says. Kentucky man now arrested
Twenty-eight years after the “brutal slaying” of a 69-year-old widow, the FBI announced the arrest of a Kentucky man accused of her death.
Gloria Hansell, who lived alone in her Gary, Indiana, home, was found strangled on June 17, 1994, according to the FBI. She was in poor health and used an in-home oxygen machine, authorities said.
An arrest warrant obtained by the Madisonville Messenger said funeral home employees found “an electrical cord from a fan” wrapped around Hansell’s neck following the 1994 killing. Before then, it was believed Hansell died of natural causes.
The FBI said a witness reported seeing Gerald Lynn Smith go to Hansell’s home at least twice in the weeks before her killing. Smith, who was 32 years old at the time, asked Hansell if he could cut her grass for money, the FBI said.
After Hansell declined the offer, Smith later returned and “made her uncomfortable when he tried to kiss her neck,” authorities said in a news release.
Authorities did not have enough evidence to charge Smith until recently, when Indiana State Police helped FBI investigators reexamine the decades-old evidence.
“Smith was developed as a suspect from the analysis of male DNA found in the victim’s sexual assault kit collected at her autopsy,” according to the FBI.
Investigators also learned Smith was in the Indiana town before Hansell’s death and knew her.
Smith, who now lives in the Western Kentucky town of Madisonville, was charged with murder, rape, and murder while committing or attempting to commit rape, the FBI said.
Smith, 60, initially denied knowing Hansell, but later said he did despite purportedly not knowing where she lived, the Northwest Indiana Times reported. He was placed in the Lake County Jail in Indiana on Monday, Oct. 17, according to the publication.
This story was originally published October 19, 2022 at 11:15 AM with the headline "Woman on oxygen machine was strangled in 1994, FBI says. Kentucky man now arrested."