Eric Smith

Eric M. Smith (born January 22, 1980) is an American murderer who tortured and murdered a four-year-old child at the age of thirteen, Derrick Joseph Robie (October 2, 1988 – August 2, 1993), in Steuben County, New York, on August 2, 1993. Smith was convicted of second-degree murder in 1994 and sentenced to the maximum term then available for juvenile murderers: nine years to life in prison. Smith was granted parole in October 2021, after 27 years in prison. He was officially released in February 2022. Murder On August 2, 1993, when Smith was thirteen years old, he was riding his bike to summer camp in a local park day camp. Four-year-old Derrick Robie was walking alone to that same camp. Smith saw Robie and lured him into a nearby wooded area. There, Smith strangled him, dropped a large rock on his head, and sodomized him with a small stick. Smith took Kool-Aid from Robie's lunch box and poured it into Robie's open wounds. The cause of death was determined to be blunt trauma to the head with contributing asphyxia. At around 11:00 a.m., Robie's mother, Doreen, went to the park to pick up her son, only to find that Robie had never arrived. After four hours of investigation, Robie's body was found. The murder case made national headlines, largely due to the age of the killer (13) and of the victim (4). On August 8, 1993, Smith confessed to his mother that he killed Derrick. The Smith family informed law enforcement later that night.