On the night of April 19, 1995, Nathaddeus Smith, 25, met a man at a bar in Mount Pleasant. The two then left the bar together. Soon after, residents along Kenyon Street could hear Smith’s cries as he was stabbed more than 50 times.
Residents jammed the phone lines calling the police for help, but by the time officers arrived, Smith was dead. His body was lying between two parked cars.
The silver Dodge he had borrowed from a friend was found nearby. Police said at the time that it was driven from the scene by the killer, who has never been found.
In 1995 D.C. homicide Detective Mike Farish told reporters that Smith’s killing was characteristic of so-called “pickup slayings” involving homosexual men.
Farish said the “overkill” was consistent with “a domestic, gay-related murder.” But, he said, those murders usually didn’t happen in public.
Police haven’t ruled out the possibility that Smith’s murder was a hate crime.
The murder led to outcry from those who lived nearby as well as the gay and lesbian community.
Smith grew up in the District, but had moved to Montgomery, Ala., about six months before his death. He had spent part of the night before his death at a friend’s house in Maryland, police said at the time.
Smith borrowed the silver Dodge from the friend so he could get around Washington while he visited for the weekend.
Anyone with information about Smith’s murder is asked to call the District of Columbia police at 202-727-9099. There is a $25,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of Smith’s killer, or killers.
