LOSS OF REPORTER STILL PAINFUL

TALLAHASSEE - A decade after reporter Todd C. Smith was killed in Peru, an
FBI investigation into his death remains open.

The North Florida air is crisp, the nights are cold and most of the trees
are bare, their leaves on the ground, marking the season when friends and
relatives return home from near and far to gather and give thanks.

For Robert and Cecelia Smith, the dropping of the temperature stirs a
deeply buried sense of loss: The anniversary of their eldest child's death
at the hands of Peruvian rebels and drug traffickers is here, once again.

It has been a decade since Todd Carper Smith, 28, an energetic and
determined journalist who worked for The Tampa Tribune, was killed in
Peru's Upper Huallaga Valley while investigating the South American
country's ties to Colombian drug cartels.

"The 21st of November we don't celebrate, but we remember it very deeply,"
Robert Smith says of the day his son's unrecognizable body was discovered
in a Uchiza playground.

Peru is one of the world's leading suppliers of coca leaves, the base
ingredient in cocaine. Smith, a Florida native and graduate of Washington
and Lee University, his father's alma mater, went there on his vacation to
interview farmers, Maoist Shining Path guerrillas and drug dealers.

He wanted to tell through his writing of the farmers' financial dependence
on the drug lords who bought the coca leaves they grew.

He had spent several days reporting on the drug trade and Peruvian politics
and was waiting to board an airplane at a small Uchiza airport when he was
abducted by gunmen. He was tortured for three days, then strangled and left
in a park. Authorities say it appears he was killed Nov. 20, 1989, even
though his body wasn't discovered until the following day.

According to a 1994 report by a Peruvian human-rights group, Smith was
killed by drug traffickers working with communist Shining Path guerrillas,
a communist rebel group that follows some of the teachings of both Mao
Tse-tung and Karl Marx.

Apparently, they thought Smith was a U.S. drug agent who had obtained too
much information on their operations and ties to Peru's military.

Seven people were involved in his death, the report states, yet only one,
Luis Manrique Vega, was tried and convicted. Vega, known as Spartacus, was
sentenced to 30 years in prison in 1993.

An FBI spokesman says the agency's investigation into the slaying is
continuing, even though no one has been arrested in six years. Federal
agents are assisting Peruvian authorities, as needed.

A lot has changed in 10 years, yet so much remains the same.

Smith's parents, now married 40 years, still live in the Tallahassee house
he called home as a teenager. But both of his sisters, C.C. and Carolyn,
are now married.

C.C. Smith Schoenwalder, of Tallahassee, has three children. She named her
oldest child, now 7, after her brother.

"Todd is a very bright, good-humored, optimistic little boy, and he reminds
us very much in that way of our son," says Robert Smith, 67, a lawyer.
"He's exuberant, with a great imagination."

Every Jan. 20, the family exchanges presents in remembrance of Smith's
birthday. He would have turned 39 in two months.

"We just want to try to be cheery," says sister Caroline Smith, 33, of
Tucson, Ariz. "We adore that guy," she says, still speaking of her late
brother in the present tense.

As much as the family misses Todd, Robert Smith says it's reassuring to
know that his son was trying to help others through his work.

"Todd's life and memory have a lot of meaning," he says. "There's a lot of
satisfaction in knowing the kind of public life he was living. From my
perspective, it's a great gift we have that memory."

Tribune Managing Editor Donna Reed recalls Smith as a highly promising and
diligent young reporter.

"He is certainly remembered in the newsroom as a very, very smart,
energetic young reporter who had just unlimited potential," she says.

"He was very inquisitive, as many young reporters are, but he was
inquisitive in a very mature way, which, I think, motivated him to seek
that story in Peru," she says. "It was really, truly a passion for him."

Within a couple years of Smith's murder, a fellowship was established in
the aspiring foreign correspondent's name at Washington and Lee in
Lexington, Va. Each year, one or two journalism students are chosen to go
abroad on assignment.

Through the fellowship, students learn that the only boundaries on the
scope of their work are self-imposed, said Hampden H. Smith III, the
university's head journalism professor.

"I think it gives them the sense there are no limits," he says.

In 1991, Alisann McGloin Fatemi, the first fellowship recipient, traveled
to what was then the Soviet Union, and spent six weeks in the Moscow area
researching interviewing women and others about the country's use of
abortion as a means of birth control.

"It really helped me get a taste of what it's like to be a foreign
correspondent, which I know was Todd Smith's dream," says Fatemi, of
Washington, D.C.

Maureen Levey Chase says the fellowship inspired her to "look outside my
small world." She traveled to Kenya in 1993 to report on the AIDS epidemic
she had read so much about. She was astounded to learn the high rate
reported by authorities was bogus.

In 1995, Peter Weissman spent two months researching how religious
minorities, Muslims and Jews, were living in contemporary Spain. Both
ethnic groups had played an important role in that country's history.

"International reporting isn't something that most people can afford to try
out," says Weissman, now a speech writer for U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

For Todd Smith's parents, the fellowship is a lasting, meaningful tribute
to their son, and the letters they get each year from the students who
receive the fellowship help keep their son's memory alive.

"He's still very much on our minds," says Robert Smith.

Janet Leiser can be reached at (813) 259-7920 or jleiser@tampatrib.com