Original subtitles

This was a place of so many hopes and dreams and plans...

and now it's just death and destruction.

The mystery seems to be growing deeper in the murder

of a man in Marion County.

This crime scene was inside of a sex house.

That really is what they call a daddy den.

- We-- we need answers. - Who did this?

Could it have been somebody that I know?

Evidence points to a man that didn't want his wife

to find out he actually had sex with men.

He would randomly make these comments

about how easy it was to get away with murder.

The victim himself was wiped down with bleach.

Something's wrong.

Something's so wrong here.

This is just a classic "People" crime story in that there's

so much mystery.

This was a very happy couple, and next thing you know,

one is dead, and there aren't too many clues

as to how and why.

But it turns out that the secrets that a family keeps

could be fatal.

59-year-old Timothy Smith was born raised in the small town

of Ocala in central Florida.

Tim was a beautiful person.

He was just this bright energy entity that was intelligent.

And then he could be the goofiest person in the room

and just make you laugh 'til you cried.

Anybody who knew Tim knew that he just had this knack to know

when we needed to hear from him.

If you were his friend, he was going to make sure

you were OK.

Tim came from a very religious family,

and he struggled with his sexuality as a young man,

marrying a woman in his 20s

before eventually getting a divorce and coming out

to his friends and his family.

Tim really struggled trying to hide from that

because it wasn't accepted in his upbringing.

And Tim realized that he was just not being true to himself.

And he had a very powerful statement that

when you recognize and embrace who you are,

that is when you become happy.

And it really had a huge impact on who he became

as a social worker.

Tim worked in various nursing homes, care facilities,

and after 30 years in the industry,

eventually became the executive director

of a senior living community.

He loved and supported each person that crossed his path.

That was absolutely his superpower.

He made everyone feel special.

In 2007, Tim meets the love of his life, Herb Swilley.

Tim and Herb both come from a very religious background

and both had to be closeted, so I think once they met, um,

they both felt that connection within each other.

When I first met Tim and Herbie, we started all hanging out

and going to dinner and, uh, went to a couple bonfire parties

at their house.

I thought they were a breath of fresh air.

Herb ran a handyman business, and Herb liked to talk.

They would do a lot of things together,

even take weekend trips together.

They realized that they were each other's life partner.

We thought that that was amazing.

In 2015, Herb and Tim tied the knot in a lavish ceremony

in front of all of their friends and family.

Herbie has a daughter from a previous marriage.

Her name is Jordan. And Tim was incredible to her.

He planned birthday parties, he planned her graduation.

He called her his daughter, not his stepdaughter,

not his adoptive daughter, that is his daughter.

And he was happy.

♪ No longer alone ♪

♪ I'm part of a family ♪

♪ No longer alone ♪

Tim and Herb really did have such a beautiful marriage.

And in the spring of 2023, Jordan's 19 years old

and still living with both of her dads.

On the surface, their life is picture-perfect,

but everything's about to come crashing down.

On Saturday, March 25th, we received a call

from a concerned spouse.

He had not seen his husband since Thursday night.

The caller asked the police to do a welfare check

at their secondary residence,

a small apartment in Citrus Park.

He can see his husband's Jeep is there,

but he doesn't have a key to get in.

The deputy makes contact with the superintendedent,

is able to get the key, and at about 11 o'clock,

unlocked the door and then makes entry into the apartment.

Inside the apartment, nothing seems out of place,

in either the kitchen or the living room.

In fact, it's extremely clean.

The deputy then makes his way to the bedrooms.

The deputy entered the bedroom on the left...

and he's immediately looking at a freestanding swing for sex

with chains that hold the swing up.

Obviously, it's surprising.

And the deputy's completely taken aback,

but he starts looking around this bedroom.

There was a toolbox...

and the toolbox is open

and it contains various sex toys.

There was a masseuse table and whips on the wall.

It looked like it could be a sex house.

At that point, the deputy goes in the other room...

and then in between the bed and a closet on the floor,

the deputy finds a deceased male

laying on his back.

He was found wearing just his shoes and a shirt,

no pants, and with suspicious marks

on the neck of the body.

And the deputy had no idea what it was that happened.

The deputy calls the Marion County Sheriff's Office

to report the dead body, and Detective Daniel Pinder

is dispatched to the scene.

I pull up.

There's crime scene tape around the front of the location.

I can see a white Jeep that is parked

in front of the apartment.

There was no forced entry that I could observe.

The outside front entry area looked completely clean.

When I walk in the front door, I could smell a cleaning agent,

something similar to bleach.

When I entered the bedroom where the decedent was found,

the individual was laying next to the bed,

and I can see there's a ligature mark on his neck,

the deep discoloration.

I had seen suicides where people do hang themselves.

But with no signs of any rope, my first thought is going

to homicide-- someone did this to him.

But I don't see any signs of a struggle.

The bed is still in the center of the room.

The mattress is in place.

The dresser drawers aren't pulled out

to suggest some kind of robbery or an altercation in the room.

There are no defensive wounds, no blood or other bodily fluids

on or around the body, and there's no weapons

in the room.

Detective Pinder notes that there's also nothing

to identify the body.

I continue my investigation through the residence.

We end up searching a washing machine

that's inside of the home.

Looking in the washing machine, there's a bag.

The bag contains a wallet, and that wallet has

a driver's license for Tim Smith.

And from his driver's license picture,

were able to positively ID the decedent as Tim Smith.

According to the Sheriff's Office,

the bag that they discover with Tim's wallet

and driver's license also contains a cell phone.

I know that the phone is going to be key in figuring out

what Tim Smith was doing and who Tim Smith was with

before he passed away.

We're taking the phone into evidence,

and even though it takes several weeks

to get this information, we can have

a forensic digital technician pull the data off his phone

so that we can start looking through it

to figure out what happened.

Most homicides are crimes of passion,

so you start looking at the people

that are closest to somebody.

Oftentimes, that is a spouse.

Tim Smith's husband, Herbert Swilley,

is the reportee in this case.

He had contacted us when he saw Tim's Jeep,

and he's across the street here at the location,

which is not their primary residence.

So the deputy goes out.

It's explained to Herbert that Tim is deceased.

A short time later, I do an audio-recorded interview

with Herbert in my car in front of the apartment.

Herbert says he wakes up the next morning at 4:40

to start his day.

I asked him whenever he left for the gym,

comes back home from the gym,

if he recalls seeing his husband, Tim Smith,

in the house, in bed?

Uh-huh.

Herbert says that after he showers,

he comes out of the bathroom

and back into the master bedroom.

He doesn't see Tim Smith there, so he assumes that Tim

went to work.

According to Herb, the last time

he definitely saw Tim Smith was

at home when Herb

went to bed at 9:30 PM.

on Thursday, the 23rd of March.

So Tim could have died any time before Saturday morning

when his body was found.

Herbert says he goes to have lunch with his daughter,

Jordan Swilley, at a restaurant in downtown Ocala.

And then him and Jordan both come back to the house.

Mm-hmm.

Sometime while he's back at the house,

he gets a phone call

from an employee that works with Tim Smith, said,

"Hey, Tim didn't come into work today."

Mm-hmm.

When the deputy can't get into the apartment,

Herb calls the building's super, Jack, who agrees to let

a deputy in the next morning.

I wanna learn more about the dynamic of their marriage.

He says they don't have any conflicts,

they don't have any problems.

Herb opens up and tells, um, the detectives that they have

an open marriage.

Herb was very honest with law enforcement

about the activities going on at the apartment.

That really is what they call a daddy den,

a place that they could go and play with other men.

Herbert's being transparent.

He's being friendly.

He's allowing me access to his phone.

He's working with us so much, I'm thinking,

"OK, maybe this isn't our guy. This is something

that happened by someone else in that sex apartment."

While the sheriff's department does a full sweep of both

the apartment and Tim's Jeep, Herb heads home to share

the devastating news with their friends.

Herbie texts me, and he says, "They found him."

And I call right away. And I said, "Is he OK?"

And he said, "No, he's gone."

And I screamed and dropped to my knees.

It was devastating.

I was in shock and disbelief.

I had-- there's no way, there's no way Tim's dead.

How was that possible?

I was just...

just heartbroken.

I couldn't imagine who on earth would do that.

Back in Citrus Park, the sheriffs sweep

the entire apartment looking for clues.

It takes a lot of strength

and a lot of pressure to be able to strangle someone,

especially someone of Tim Smith's size,

who was a big, strong, healthy man.

Because of that,

it was thought that the killer may be a large male.

That's going to help us develop a suspect.

We swab the doorknobs, the dresser,

sexual lubricant bottles.

We swab the decedent himself, hoping that those DNA samples

give us a lead as to who Tim Smith was with that night.

We discovered that whoever killed Tim Smith decided

to clean the scene prior to leaving.

So anything that may have any possible DNA on it

probably was wiped clean.

Even Mr. Smith himself was wiped down with bleach.

Police still hope for the best with the DNA results.

Although they won't be in for weeks, the team discovers

a piece of physical evidence

on a bottle of sexual lubricant.

In the same room as where Tim Smith was discovered,

we ended up getting a fingerprint off of that bottle

that could be processed.

And I know that we can likely get a lead from that.

While I was interviewing Herbert Swilley

at the apartment, he indicated that

his 19-year-old daughter, Jordan Swilley,

was in the house that evening when Tim was last alive.

So a short time later,

I'm able to do an audio-recorded interview

in the front of my car

with Jordan at the primary residence.

Jordan's timeline and her statements are matching

her father's statements regarding everything

that happened on-- on Friday.

With Herb and Jordan's stories matching,

investigators searched the family home for signs

of what could have led Tim to the apartment that night.

I start getting pictures of the outside of the house.

I get pictures of Herb's truck...

a white Dodge pickup truck with a black tailgate.

Herb can't understand why anyone would want to harm

his husband, who only tried to help others, and he believes

Tim's death is a message.

Herbert Swilley suggested that because they are

a homosexual couple, uh, married here in Ocala,

that this could have been a hate crime.

Ocala is a very conservative town,

a lot of good old boys.

And I would say that's not, like, a common thing, per se,

to have a married gay couple in Ocala.

Aside from being a gay married couple in a small town,

Herbert Swilley indicated that some of the stuff

that Tim was into in particular

was definitely not traditional and would raise an eyebrow

or-- or draw attention from others.

Tim had a persona in the drag world,

and she was Augusta Wind.

Most of Tim's shows as Augusta were charitable,

so she would lip-sync songs, dance.

When he performed, he liked to sing "Harper Valley PTA,"

which is my go-to karaoke song, but he-- he did it better.

He definitely did it better.

♪ The Harper Valley PTA ♪

I learned that Tim is doing

drag shows in Ocala, and this could have been seen

by the wrong person.

So there's a possibility of Tim Smith being killed

in a hate crime.

And now I have to ask, is there somebody out there targeting

people in the gay community?

The sheriff's office immediately started looking

into a hate crime.

We interviewed Tim's family and friends,

but no one is suggesting that someone would be targeting him

as a hate crime.

We didn't find any social media posts

saying any kind of slurs against him to kill him.

There wasn't any reports that there was

some disgruntled person about his sexuality

that was after him.

Because of Tim's career and how much he did

for the community, I never felt like he was seen

in a bad light, and Tim never said

anything to me about feeling ostracized living in Ocala.

Detectives are sent to the assisted living facility

Tim works at, to speak with his coworkers.

Maybe they saw something, maybe they heard something that

would connect that hate crime possibility to his murder.

Everyone had great things to say about Tim Smith.

They said that they loved him, he was very caring.

He's well respected. Everyone there likes him.

But while speaking with the employees there,

it's learned that Tim had fired an employee named Pedro.

And we learned that the firing did not go well,

and that individual had maybe made a threat to hurt Tim.

You have to be the one to let somebody go and take away

their ability to earn money.

Um...

There's a good chance they're gonna hold that

against you personally.

While the hate crime theory is looking less and less likely,

detectives think this new information about Pedro

could be a solid lead.

But the assisted living facility where Tim worked

doesn't have a current address for Pedro,

and investigators have a difficult time finding him.

While they search for the disgruntled former employee,

news of Tim's murder hits the airwaves.

A news alert now.

The executive director of an assisted living facility

in Ocala is murdered.

59-year-old Timothy Smith was found dead inside a home

in Citrus Park.

Those who knew the victim are in shock.

Just heart-wrenching. It's really heartbreaking.

We need answers.

According to the sheriff's office,

while authorities are still waiting on forensic results

from the crime scene,

over the next several weeks, they release information

to the community, letting them know they're looking for any

tips that could lead to an arrest.

Some of the detectives are doing interviews.

Some are trying to figure out where we could get video

and then reviewing that video surveillance.

Detectives canvas along

the five-minute drive from the couple's home

to their private apartment,

hoping that someone's security cameras caught Tim's Jeep.

We're covering all of Citrus Park, knocking on the doors.

We're looking for cameras anywhere that the victim

may have driven past in order to get to the apartment,

coming from his residence.

While the team waits for that footage to come in,

a little over a month after Tim's murder,

investigators are able to locate Pedro,

the ex-employee who Tim fired.

We're able to figure out where he lives,

and I end up making contact with him and doing an interview with him.

I started learning more about the firing.

Pedro had kissed a patient at the facility,

and Tim had no choice but to fire him.

And Pedro said that he had no ill will against Tim.

Detective Pinder asked Pedro where he was the night

of March 23rd, 2023.

Pedro starts talking about how he's with his wife

and his family during the timeframe

that something happened to Tim.

We were able to alibi him out by making contact

with those people, and it didn't look like

there was any involvement of Pedro, um, in this homicide.

Five weeks into the investigation,

authorities were all out of leads.

It was a really difficult time.

Then they finally get a break in the case.

The fingerprint found on the lubricant

at the crime scene is matched to a man named James.

I end up learning that this individual's got a DUI,

has some other offenses, and an assault case.

So he has a criminal history, and his fingerprint is

inside of the house. I'm thinking this is it.

Authorities find out that James lives about 300 miles

outside of Ocala, but he has friends and family that live

inside the area.

When I get him on the phone and tell him that

I'm investigating the homicide of Tim Smith, I know that

his fingerprint is on a sexual lubricant bottle,

but he doesn't know that yet.

I'm not telling that to him over the phone.

And he says that he'll meet with me.

But when the appointment comes up to meet, he doesn't show.

Detective Pinder does get James back on the phone,

but he continues to give him the runaround,

always making an excuse for why he can't meet.

The fact that this man is giving me the runaround here,

I'm thinking that this is a little weird.

And at this point, we just pack up and say, "You know what?

"We're gonna drive all the way down to where

"his primary residence is in South Florida, because

there's absolutely something strange going on here."

When we arrive, he comes out of the house.

He doesn't wanna speak to us

in front of his significant other,

but he'll speak with us in our car.

OK.

He says at the time of the murder that he was

four to five hours away at his house, but my fears

aren't dispelled all the way.

He handed his phone over on the spot, and I plugged it

into a laptop there at the location

to get geolocation information off of his phone.

His alibi checked out.

He was four to five hours south the week of the homicide.

It's a murder mystery in Marion County.

I've posted on their-- the Sheriff's page

numerous times, like, "What about Tim?

What about Tim?"

Officials with the Marion County Sheriff's Office

are still looking for a bunch of answers.

Feeling like they are back at square one,

investigators catch a break when the data on Tim's phone

becomes available.

And they go through all of his messages, emails,

and his apps, looking for more suspects.

Some of the last communications on the phone

on March 23rd, which was Thursday evening,

were between people named Bruce and Nina confirming a meeting

that was at Friday morning at 9 AM.

I was able to make contact with Bruce and Nina,

and I learned that Tim Smith was looking at getting another

executive job in a different part of Florida.

Tim was acquiring a new job in another county and may have

intended to move there on his own without Herb

and without Jordan.

That was a big surprise to me.

It was something that wasn't introduced by-- by Herb.

In fact, he had indicated that everything was fine

in their relationship.

But talking to Tim's friends, I learned that this

wasn't the case.

I knew that Tim and Herbie had marital problems

like most married couples do.

Herb could have a temper, but I never heard Tim say,

"I am leaving Herb."

In late January, Tim shared with me

that he paid for everything in their relationship.

And Tim was tired of supporting him,

that he was done taking care of him.

But he didn't go into detail about any plans.

But after weeks without an answer to who killed Tim,

the couple's friends start to talk amongst themselves

and discuss how odd Herb's been acting since Tim's murder.

Not long after Tim was found, I had visited Jordan and Herbie

at their house.

I hug him. I hug her.

I said to him, "Did you get any sleep?"

He laughed, he said, "I slept like a baby."

I walk in the front door, the rug's missing.

I said, "Where's the coffee table?"

So I start looking around,

and I realize that they've taken all the family portraits

off the wall.

Jordan looks at me, and she says,

"I told him it was too early to throw the pictures away."

And I'm just like...

"What is going on?"

Herb spoke at Tim's celebration of life,

and it was like he was forcing himself to-- to choke up,

which I found odd.

And I spoke to one of our good friends,

and she goes, "Oh, my God, I thought it was only me."

Herb was giving all kinds of theories to their friends

about what had happened to Tim.

To one friend, he's telling him that Tim had a relationship

with a bisexual married guy and he probably killed him.

Herb told another friend that there was a killer on the loose

in Ocala killing gay men.

That's when we all kind of started going, "Yeah, wow,

could he-- could he have really done this?"

And the thing that kept coming back to me

was before Tim was killed,

Herb would randomly make these comments about how

easy it was to get away with murder and that all you had

to do was bleach the crime scene.

Um, so... that stuck with me.

We all started calling the detective's office.

My phone had voicemails on it every single day from people

calling to talk about Herb.

We end up getting a tip that one of Jordan Swilley's friends

had information in this case that was told to her by Jordan.

We sit down and we do an interview

with this individual.

To Detective Pinder, it sounds like Herb was telling

his daughter to ignore the weird noises she heard

and to pretend like nothing happened.

To authorities, Herb Swilley no longer looks like

the grieving widower.

And then, months into the investigation,

Detective Pinder gets Tim Smith's completed toxicology report.

We see a very, very high level of diphenhydramine is found

in Tim Smith's blood.

Diphenhydramine is the main ingredient in some sleep aids.

A normal dose may generate 66 nanograms per milliliter

in a blood-- his was 2,000...

which would make him excessively drowsy

to cause him to fall asleep and maybe not wake up.

That would explain why a man that was

in good health and that was strong...

was able to be killed the way that he was and not able

to fight back.

On July 17th, detectives discover that Tim

has a life insurance policy.

Tim's beneficiary is Herbert Swilley.

I find out that Herbert Swilley has been contacting

the insurance company and already started

that process, and it's a payout of over $300,000.

Now there is a monetary motive here,

and, um, it's-- it's all pointing to Herbert Swilley.

Herb Swilley is now their prime suspect.

But without any physical evidence,

an arrest is not possible.

Then police finally get back some surveillance footage

that could change everything.

The few businesses provided us footage from the time frame

of March 23rd at 9 PM

to the morning of March 24th at 5 AM.

While looking through that surveillance video,

Herb's distinct white Dodge truck with the black tailgate

and rims was seen driving from his house

from a camera nearby his home in the middle of the night.

The footage was from a recycling facility

at approximately 1:57 AM.

That doesn't fall in line with what he alleged,

that he was in bed asleep during that time frame.

From the gas station directly across the street

from the recycling facility, that same truck can be seen

as it turned north towards the apartment.

And then at a convenience store that was located closer

to the apartment, you can see Herbert Swilley's pickup truck

heading that way.

Later on in the same video, we can see that same truck

coming back towards the primary residence.

Just minutes later, you can observe

the victim's Jeep heading north

on the same route towards the apartment.

Seeing this video was really huge.

Just rolling everything together that we had learned

about that evening when Tim was last alive.

There was the use of drugs which would cause Tim to be

drowsy and susceptible to being strangled.

Knowing that Jordan told her friend that we interviewed

that she could hear loud noises outside of her door.

Learning that within a couple days there was a rug missing

from the living room area and then considering

the truck movement, it's all pointing

to Herbert Swilley murdering Tim Smith

in their house and moving the body to the apartment.

On November 3rd, of 2023, we meet with

the State Attorney's Office and present

all the facts of the case.

The detectives believe Herb decided to kill Tim when

he realized that either Tim could divorce him and he would

be broke, or Tim could die and he would collect

a $330,000 insurance payout.

What we believed happened is that

Tim Smith is taken

by Herbert Swilley to the apartment

in the white pickup truck.

Herbert took Tim's body into the apartment

and then made it look like a hookup gone bad.

Herbert Swilley decided to clean the scene and Tim Smith

with bleach prior to leaving.

Herbert Swilley then drove back home,

drops off the pickup truck,

picks up the Jeep, drives it over to the apartment,

and then makes his way back home

by a different route on foot.

After months and months in presenting all of my findings

of the investigation...

the decision is made to arrest Herbert Swilley at his house.

We tell him that he's under arrest for first-degree murder,

and, uh, his response is, "OK."

It felt really good to be able to put handcuffs on him

and arrest him

and let him know all the ways that he tried to trick us

and cover up of a really heinous murder had failed.

I will never forget seeing the video

of Tim's spouse's arrest.

The investigation found that Smith had been drugged

and choked to death.

I was physically ill.

Investigators believe Swilley staged a fake crime scene

and then tried to destroy evidence

with household cleaners.

I literally threw up.

It was just so horrible

that I could not believe that somebody

that claimed to love him, and I knew he loved

so much, could just be that horrible.

I think Tim was gonna leave, and Herbie decided

he wasn't gonna let his cow go.

He wasn't having that.

When authorities confront Herbert Swilley,

he tells them he's innocent.

"People Magazine Investigates" spoke to Herb Swilley

at the Marion County Jail.

Swilley hires local criminal defense attorney John Klein

to defend him against first-degree murder

and other serious charges.

I liked that the police initially cast a broad net,

but this to me is a case

of Tim's entourage directing blame towards Herb,

which led law enforcement to solely concentrate

their efforts on Herb.

So reasonable doubt, in my opinion...

is ample in this case.

Although Herb is facing first-degree murder charges,

his daughter Jordan has not been charged with any crimes

related to Tim's murder.

I wasn't able to get a follow-up interview

with Jordan because she'd requested legal counsel.

My opinion is that she wasn't talking to us 'cause she knew

that if she said something, she was gonna get

her dad in prison.

I'm sure, living in the same house,

she knew something,

found out something, but I don't think she was,

like, part of the plan.

Currently, Herb Swilley is awaiting trial

at the Marion County Jail.

His attorney believes that he'll be able to show that Herb

did not murder Tim.

The general synopsis imposed by the media is that it was

a toxic relationship, that Tim wanted out,

that Herb wanted money,

and he killed Tim for those reasons.

The reality is all of that is

completely out of character for Herb.

There were problems in the relationship,

as there are in any relationship,

that doesn't make Herb a cold-blooded killer.

I think he's a coward.

He's just a monster, in every sense of the word.

We used to always joke

that he was a sister from another mister,

because he just felt like family.

And we just understood each other.

There's a picture that I have in my kitchen that he gave me,

and, you know, every time I see that, I just remember

his encouragement and his always-positive nature

and how thoughtful he was.

Can't think of anybody just more special.

The house was like a large modular home,

and Tim wasn't here to make any payments,

so it was repossessed and picked up and taken away.

But I come here because...

this is the last place he was.

This is for my mermaid man, which is what I called Tim

because he loved mermaids like me.

But it got him the little waves with his name in it

and his little tail because he's free, you know, he's free.

And that's what I choose to believe.

♪ I'm part of a family ♪

♪ No longer alone ♪

You notice a body sitting in a chair

with his legs crossed.

I said "Where are the boys?"

Are they dead?

Is somebody holding them against their will?

They explained what a pedophile was.

Everybody was stunned.

I don't think this ending had to happen,

but for the fact that the devil was at the door.