Delmer Smith’s crimes began as a teenager

SARASOTA — Decades before authorities say he killed, raped and beat women in Manatee and Sarasota counties, Delmer Smith III began a life of crime that has kept him behind bars for more than half his life, Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office detectives say.

When he was 14 in the mid-1980s, Smith committed a “significant” crime that landed him in juvenile detention as a ward of the state of Michigan, according to Sarasota Sheriff’s Detective Mike Dumer.

Dumer declined to specify Smith’s crime, citing confidentiality rules, but said it occurred in the Detroit area where Smith grew up.

“You don’t end up a ward of the state by stealing bubble gum,” he said. “It is a significant crime that was of interest to us.”

Smith, now 38, is back behind bars in the Sarasota County jail on murder, rape and home invasion robbery charges stemming from the bludgeoning of Kathleen Briles in her Terra Ceia home, and the beating of four women in their Sarasota homes during home invasion attacks last year.

Smith is familiar with prison life. After five years in juvenile detention, Smith did a short prison stint for burglary when he was 19. And when he was in his early 20s, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for taking part in a 1994 armed bank robbery. His DNA was taken in prison before his release, but it fell into a backlog of thousands of samples the FBI eventually enters into databases used by local law enforcement agencies.

In Sarasota, Smith is accused of attacking several women in their homes, binding them and, in two cases, raping his victims. Court documents outline brutal attacks in which the victims, mostly middle-aged or elderly women, endured severe mental and physical torture.

Detectives in Manatee have charged Smith with murder in Briles’ killing, saying he bludgeoned her with a cast iron sewing machine. Her body was discovered in August 2009 by her husband, Dr. James Briles, in the couple’s living room.

Sarasota officials had Smith’s DNA as early as February 2009 from one of the home invasion attacks, but did not get a hit in the federal system until more than six months later after he was identified as a possible suspect.

Smith is the youngest of 16 children whom his father, a truck driver and construction worker, had with several women, Dumer said. Smith’s siblings include a brother and two sisters who share the same mother. Smith’s parents both died while he was in prison, officials said.

Family members have been made aware of Smith’s arrest, but sheriff’s officials declined to release more details on his siblings.

“They are shocked and saddened by the news. But they say they never really knew him because he has spent so much of his life incarcerated,” Dumer said. “The memories of him are of a nice young boy who got lost.”

Authorities in Michigan also lost Smith while he served time in juvenile detention. He escaped from a Michigan juvenile facility, but it was so close to his scheduled release that officials in Detroit did not pursue him, Dumer said.