Carlie Brucia’s Killer Dies In FL State Prison: State Attorney

RAIFORD, FL — Joseph Smith, who was on death row for the 2004 kidnapping, rape and murder of 11-year-old Carlie Brucia in Sarasota, died in custody of the Florida Department of Corrections Monday, according to a news release from State Attorney Ed Brodsky’s office.

The 55-year-old inmate was being held at the Union Correctional Institution in Raiford since 2006, according to FDC records. No cause of death was provided.

“While nothing can bring back Carlie, we are grateful that her family, her friends and the entire Sarasota community will finally have closure and will not have to endure any further court proceedings to bring Smith to justice,” Brodsky’s office said in the news release.

Carlie went missing Feb. 1, 2004 while walking home from a friend’s house. Video surveillance footage showed Smith grabbing the girl’s arm and pulling her away from Evie’s Car Wash on Bee Ridge Road, Fox 13 said. Her body was found days later behind Central Church of Christ on Proctor Road.

Smith, confessed to the Carlie’s murder, was convicted in November 2005 and sentenced to death in a 10-2 vote, reports said.

Not long after this, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that jury decisions to deliver a death sentence must be unanimous, which it said would be applied retroactively to all cases going back to 2002, according to reports. As a result, Smith was awaiting resentencing at the time of his death, though the state Supreme Court said it wouldn’t impact his conviction.

In November, 20 years after the death of a 25-year-old woman, Tara Reilly, whose naked body was found in a retention pond behind Walmart on Cortez Road in Bradenton in 2000, Smith was named as a suspect in that case, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported. Reilly's murder remains unsolved.