No Bond For Sex Offender Charged In Girl's Death
JACKSONVILLE (CBSMiami/AP) – A sex offender charged in a missing 8-year old girl's death will stay locked up.
On Sunday, a judge denied bail for Donald James Smith of Jacksonville who was charged Saturday with murder and kidnapping in the death of Charish Perriwinkle.
Investigators said Smith befriended Charish and her mother while they shopped at a dollar store Friday night.
Smith took them to a Wal-Mart, where he offered to buy them clothes and hamburgers, according to the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office.
Instead of buying the snacks, Smith walked out of the store with Charish, the sheriff's office said. The girl's mother called 911 when she noticed they were missing.
A tip led investigators to Charish's body in the woods near a church Saturday morning. Police arrested Smith after stopping his van on Interstate 95.
Smith's public defender, Fred Gazaleh, said before the hearing that Smith didn't have a chance of getting bail, "not on this charge."
Smith's next court appearance is scheduled July 16.
Authorities have not disclosed how Charish died. Smith did not immediately cooperate with investigators after his arrest, Mike Williams, director of investigations at the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, said Saturday.
Smith has been a registered sex offender since a 1993 conviction in Duval County for attempted kidnapping and selling obscene materials. He has been arrested several times since then, most recently in 2009 on a charge of child abuse after making obscene phone calls to a 10-year-old girl, making verbal threats, and impersonating a social worker with the Florida Department of Children and Families who claimed to be investigating the girl's family.
Smith pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges in that case and was released from jail May 31. He had just met with police Friday morning to comply with a state law that requires sex offenders to verify their address once a year.
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