The George Smith Disappearance

 Posted on March 28, 2017 in Personal Injury

In the summer of 2005, the recently married Jennifer Hagel Smith was informed her husband, George Smith, was missing. They were on their honeymoon trip,a Royal Caribbean cruise in the Aegean Sea. The night before, both Jennifer and George were enjoying themselves on the ship casino, drinking and gambling until it closed. The next morning, 16-year-old Emilie Rausch discovered a bloodstain on the lifeboat canopy. George was partying the night before with three other men, who later became suspects in the investigation.

Jennifer, too, was under suspicion for the disappearance of her husband,though she claimed to have no memory of the night before. She was found at 4:30 in the morning passed out in the hallway, a blackout that could explain her memory loss.

George’s parents brought in Ivey, Barnum & O'Mara, LLC’s Michael Jones to help them investigate the case and to see if he could provide more answers. He immediately got to work perusing the ship documents and interviewing the 4 men last seen with George. Two of them plead the 5^th, one had a foggy memory of the events, and the last was serving prison time in Florida for trafficking. The man in prison, Greg Rozenberg, was the most forthcoming out of any of the suspects. All of the men claimed to have ordered room service at the time of George’s disappearance,but the timeline of the events is still suspicious. They were the ones who supposedly put him to bed before going back to one of their rooms and ordering room service. However, neighbors of George heard a loud commotion in his cabin around that time, and the ship made no record of a large room service order by the 4 suspects.

Mr. Jones continually worked on the case, especially once he noticed theFBI were starting to regard it as a cold case. Nine years later, and the case was slowing down significantly. With further video evidence of the4 men callously joking about George’s death, Mr. Jones believed there was sufficient proof to indicate what happened. He eventually met with the FBI in New York to try and persuade them to take over the case.He hoped that with their size and resources, they would be better able to investigate the case. However, the case remained in the hands of the Connecticut office, who later decided to close its investigation in 2015 after coming to the conclusion that there was insufficient evidence of murder. George’s family has offered a $100,000 reward for information leading directly to and arrest and conviction in the case. However, there have been no new developments.

If you need an excellent Greenwich personal injury attorney, look no further than Ivey, Barnum & O'Mara, LLC. Our attorneys are extremely skilled and experienced practitioners of law who can help you get the compensation you deserve. Whether you were injured at work or your loved one was assaulted, we’ll do our best to fight for your rights. Contact us at203-661-6000​or fill out our online form to schedule a free consultation today.