Obscure Occurrences : The Disappearance of George Allen Smith IV

 Born on the 3rd of October 1978, George Allen Smith IV was 26 years old when he went missing in the summer of 2005. He had been celebrating his honeymoon on a cruise ship during the time of his disappearance.

(Source: CBS News)

Background

 On the 25th of June, 2005, George married a twenty-five-year-old named Jennifer Hagel at a cliffside wedding in Newport, Rhode Island, which his sister described as a book ceremony. George was set to take over his father's liquor store business upon his return to the United States. His new wife, Jennifer, had recently completed a master's degree in education at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island and was going to start a new job.

(Source: CBS News)

 On June 29th, four days after their wedding, the couple boarded the Royal Caribbean cruise ship, MS Brilliance of the Seas, ready for their two-week honeymoon which would take them around several Mediterranean countries. The pair boarded the international cruiser from Barcelona, Spain. Several days into the cruise, the couple made new friends, most of whom were other couples. One of the couple’s new companions was a twenty-year-old man named Josh, who was attending the trip with his family. Josh met Jennifer and George while the group visited Florence, Italy.

Disappearance

 On the night of July 5th, things on the cruise ship would take an unanticipated turn. CCTV showed Jennifer and George entering the third-floor casino at around midnight. Previously, the couple had spent the day in Greece and had had dinner together, toasting to their future together. While in the casino, George drank Absinthe, which had reportedly been snuck on board by Josh and three young Russian-American men whom he had met on the ship. 

 Meanwhile, Jennifer was allegedly getting close to one of the crew members. The pair flirted back and forth which upset George, causing him to enter into an argument with his wife before it resulted in Jennifer kicking her new husband in the crotch. At around 2:30 am, Jennifer was seen storming out of the room.

(Source: CBS News)

 According to Josh, the men partied late into the night. When they decided to eventually return to their cabins, they realized that George could barely walk, causing them to accompany him back to his room. However, as George realized that his wife wasn't there, they all went looking for Jennifer together. When the group couldn't locate her, they returned George to his room once again. According to Josh's story, the other men had taken off George's shoes and put him to bed when he had gone to use the bathroom. From here, the four men claimed that they stayed a short while in the room before returning to their own cabin, where they ordered a large amount of food, so much food that they took pictures of it and of themselves with their meals.

 However, according to a Californian Deputy Police Sheriff, Hyman, who was staying next door, this was not the case. He called to complain about the noise levels in George's room and claimed that this was not the first time he had done so. Hyman watched out of his peephole and saw three men leave George's room and walk down the hallway. He heard George ushering people out of the room beforehand. Unfortunately, it's unknown who exactly Hyman saw that night. 

 Shortly after this, he heard a “horrific thud”, which sounded like someone had fallen onto the balcony. The sound had caused vibrations in his room. Meanwhile, Jennifer was found passed out in the hallway of the ship by some of the crew and she had very little memory of what happened after leaving the casino.

 The following morning, passengers of the cruise discovered a huge blood stain on one of the awnings of the ship and alerted the crew members. Jennifer assumed her husband was sleeping elsewhere and left for an appointment she had made for the two of them at the onboard spa. The newly-wed woman was later alerted by the ship's crew and it was realised that George must have gone overboard, somewhere between Greece and Turkey.

(Source: CBS News)

 Jennifer, after being questioned by Turkish authorities, chose not to remain on the cruise and instead flew back home. She has been heavily criticized by the Smith family for her behaviour following George's disappearance. She had reportedly accepted one million dollars in compensation from the cruise line and publicly stated that she believed George died in an accident, resulting from his levels of intoxication. 

Investigation

 Early on in the investigation into the disappearance of George Smith, the captain waved the incident off as an accident but small traces of blood were soon found in George's cabin, causing the investigators to treat it as a homicide. 

 On July 29th, the FBI announced their involvement with the case. The bizarre tale received much media coverage, who made the suggestion that it was a robbery gone wrong. The case even inspired a movie called Deadly Honeymoon. In 2012, the New York Post reported that the case had been handed over to the mafia division of the FBI, but the reason behind the transfer is unknown. In the same year, Mike Jones, the Smith family lawyer, accrued documents from the cruise company, which raised doubts about the accounts given by the four men who accompanied George back to his cabin.

 According to the men's group, they had ordered a massive amount of food on the night of George’s disappearance, but the cabin had no record of this supposed order. Furthermore, Josh, the twenty-year-old Californian who had befriended George on the cruise, failed an FBI polygraph test, and while being questioned by the Smith family lawyer, he invoked his fifth amendment right. While one of the three Russian-American men’s polygraph tests with the FBI came back as inconclusive, the other two men's results are unknown.

 That being said, Josh's lawyer Keith Greer maintains that his client was with the other men in the cabin across the ship when George disappeared. And that Josh had passed a polygraph which had been administered earlier on in the investigation. He also claims that the FBI is in possession of the photos which showed the men with their food in the early hours of July 5th. The timestamps on those images allegedly suggest that the men were in their cabin when George went missing.

 Seven years after the incident, Jones learned of a videotape made by some of the men just hours after the disappearance. The three Russian-American men are seen and heard making callous jokes about George's death stating; 

 “We gave that guy a paragliding lesson without a parachute.”

 Although the family only learned of the tape in 2012, the FBI had known about it since 2005. Adding further fuel to the fire, the three Russian-American men and their families had reportedly been kicked off the cruise just three days after the disappearance, after a twenty-year-old woman came forward and claimed she had been raped by the men. Josh had allegedly been present for part of it and the assault had been filmed on one of their cameras.

Conclusion 

 George’s body has never been recovered and no charges have ever been brought in his case. Despite all the suspicious circumstances, the FBI dropped their criminal investigation into the case in 2015, further narrowing the possibility of uncovering the mystery surrounding George’s final moments.

References

• "George Allen Smith IV" International Cruise Victims
• "Timeline: The disappearance of George Smith" CBS News
• "The strange case of George Smith IV [True Crime]" Just Thought Lounge
• "Grand Jury Reviews Report of Rape on Cruise Ship" The New York Times