21. Who Is Spoon
Previously On Ice Cold Case
Drug dealers, pack your bags and get out of Belmont County. I don’t care where you go, but get out of Belmont County.
Seven years after J.C. got shot, there’s still rumors and talk on the street that McCort orchestrated it.
You’ve closed on Daryl? It’s not him?
No, no, no. I still think it was Daryl there.
Um, but you still have to do your job
Hey look this is what you gotta do differently the next time around. We can’t do it now. We can’t change it now. We’re kind of stuck with it.
So it, it's an unfortunate that the, the police owe a duty to the community, but they don't necessarily owe legally a, a duty to any particular given person.
In video after video, investigators say it’s the men behind the badges committing crimes against the community they swore to serve and protect.
Part 0: A New Name
The murder map on my wall looks less like a web and more like a storm – chaotic, layered, unpredictable. It’s crowded with names, faces, and strings connecting everyone to each other in some instances several times over and back to my dad. Pictures of family members, childhood friends, drug dealers, alleged hitmen, even whispers that trace all the way to the Sinaloa Cartel.
I used to think the answer had to be in there somewhere – that if I stared long enough at the same names, something would reveal itself almost as if the answer was hiding in plain sight.
For the last year, I’ve spent most of my time circling the same few suspects. Ruling them out. Ruling them back in. Digging into people I’ve come to know better than some of my own lifelong friends. When you do this long enough, you start to believe the killer is already in your hands, possibly at one point sitting across the table from you – you just haven’t turned the puzzle the right way to see it.
So when a call comes in from a number I don’t recognize – and the person on the other end says a name that’s never been written in any police report, never been looked at twice, and only said to me once by arguably the most unreliable source in this case – it gets all of my attention. Because in a town this small, new names are rare.
When I started asking around about this mysterious suspect who truly fell into my lap, the reactions got strange fast. People said they didn’t know who I was talking about, flat-out denying ever hearing the name. Some people thought it sounded familiar but their own descriptions of who they were thinking of didn’t match. But something about it stuck with me.
I started to believe the person who killed my dad might not be one of the names on the wall.
Maybe they weren’t as connected to family, to this town, to my dad. Maybe they were strategically cautious not to get too close. Maybe they were the right amount of careful, disconnected, and quiet to get away with murder… until now.
Because now I have a new name, it’s a nickname really, but it’s on a bright post-it note in the middle of the murder map… and it might be the killer.
Part 1: Convenient Suspect
Daryl Smith wasn’t just a suspect – he was the suspect. The Belmont County Sheriff’s Department never seriously investigated anyone else. From the very beginning, they believed Daryl was the guy. The evidence against him? Testimony from Kim Smith, Omar Foston, and Pearl Foston. They picked his photo out of a lineup. They said they recognized his voice. That was enough to get him arrested, dragged in front of a Grand Jury, and publicly named as the man who probably killed my dad.
But it wasn’t enough to convict him or even take him to trial. The reasons why the charges were dropped change depending on who you ask. Some detectives say Omar’s testimony fell apart on the stand — that his story kept shifting, and the prosecutor didn’t trust him. Daryl says it was the polygraph. That he passed a lie detector test “with flying colors.” And Omar says… he never lied in the first place.
So who’s telling the truth? And more importantly – who decides what version of the truth gets written into the official record? Because I’ve read the case files. I’ve talked to the detectives. I’ve sat in the same room with Daryl Smith. And the fact is – there is no clear answer about why he walked free and maybe that’s the point. The muddier the waters get, the easier it is to chalk all of this up to “it’s too difficult and there’s just not enough here to solve it.” That makes for a pretty strong case to shut me up and get this all back to where I started… but I can’t go back now. The only way out is through.
Most people want to stay far away from this case. The police are dodging me at every turn – declining to give comments to news outlets, claiming their calls can’t get through to my cell phone, or that they don’t have my phone number at all… the same phone number I’ve had since 2006. My family avoids me any chance they get and some goes as far as to make their distaste for me everyone’s business. There was a moment where everyone was just trying to stay out of my way.
Daryl Smith wasn’t one of those people.
He reached out to me. He asked to talk. He made himself available and put himself directly in the line of fire when he agreed to sit across a table from me. Daryl Smith told me to my face – he didn’t do it. He said he didn’t know anything about it. With the calmest demeanor I’ve experienced since investigating this case, he was open, joking at some moments, completely human. Without admitting any knowledge of what happened, I was still able to get some names, theories, backstories from him about my dad and the greater Wheeling area back in the 90s and early 2000s. He didn’t act like someone hiding a secret. But Daryl didn’t just deny it. He redirected the blame, not about the murder, but about everything else – federal informant accusations, a shift in loyalty and morality. He was pointing his finger – straight at my cousin, Rico McGhee.
And if you’ve listened to this show before, you know Rico’s name is never too far from the center of this case. He was serving a life sentence in federal prison when my dad was killed – a sentence partially based on my dad’s testimony. Since then, he’s been released and there are a lot of rumors about how that happened. Some people say Rico cut a deal with the feds. That he became an informant. That’s how he got out.
Rico came home probably like 11 or 12. And I was wondering, how the fuck did you do that? When you have life and affairs, you never come home. There's not too much appeals and anything else and shit that's going to bring you home. You got life. So when I actually, they were tough and they had the rumors going around for years. Rico's coming home. Rico is coming home. He's going to be home. But when I talked to him and he was home, I'm like, hey. My mindset is evil. He's working with them real tough, and he's doing something with Mexicans or something like that. I don't know. Blew my mind. I was glad to see him home, but now he's not the same. He's not the same person.
But when I talked to Rico, from behind bars, since he’s back in prison now – he threw the word informant right back in Daryl’s direction.
So, you know, like, niggas be out there talking about this nigga snitching, that nigga snitching, this nigga snitching. They all snitching. They mamas and daddies is snitching. Everybody snitching. Everybody took the point of failure at somebody else because they don't want to be looked at as a snitch. Don't nobody want to be looked at as a snitch. So they gon be Pointing their fingers at everybody else, you know what I'm saying?
Duncan and Daryl’s been informants for years.
For a while, I let the Daryl theory cool. There just wasn’t anything new. No new evidence. No contradictions I hadn’t already explored. The story around Daryl had gone quiet, and in a case that’s this old, silence can start to feel like resolution, like I’ve sort of ruled someone out – even when it isn’t, even when I haven’t.
But recently, something happened that forced me to shift my focus back to him.
Daryl was arrested on federal drug trafficking charges — not local stuff, not minor possession. This was a large-scale operation moving meth and fentanyl across state lines. According to the Department of Justice, Daryl was responsible for coordinating and distributing drugs beyond Ohio County as far away as Las Vegas. Ultimately, shortly after I sat across the table from him, Daryl was sentenced to ten years in federal prison.
That alone would’ve gotten my attention. But what stood out even more was that he pleaded guilty. For someone who once told me he’d never take a deal, never fold – that was a sharp turn.
I don't snitch, I don't do. I've had all kinds of cases thrown at me. Police over here trying to set me up with dope and everything. I've been portrayed as a monster on record and on file. So that's why it's easy to demonize me and give me something like, oh, this fits his demeanor and character. But little did they know that I'm kind of a good dude. Like, and I really don't be don't have the sense you say, but by me having to zip live, like, okay, say what you want, you're making this shit up. We probably not making up everything, but I'm going to take you to trial. You're going to have to prove this.
And in this story, whenever someone goes against their own code, I start asking questions. What changed? Why now?
Then came the rumor. Someone inside the prison reached out to say that Daryl had been bragging. That he told other inmates he got away with murder – my dad’s murder.
And that cracked something open for me, not because I think Daryl’s incapable of saying something like that, but because of the specific timing. It seems amateur to brag about something like that given the attention this podcast has gotten, the pressure on people who were never supposed to be questioned, my fight to get the police to move on this. Could it have been all for show? A power play behind bars? Or was it the truth finally slipping out?
I didn’t know what to do with it. I still don’t. But it made something shift in me. There was a window of time where I was ready to let go of Daryl as a suspect – not forgive and forget, but move on from his potential involvement. And then I was wondering if that was premature, if I was too quick to trust someone just because they showed up to a library one afternoon to meet with me, just because they looked me in the eye.
But it’s also possible Daryl Smith wasn’t the killer, and was nothing more than a convenient suspect.
Part 2: Everyone’s a Snitch
Here’s where things start to twist. I was pretty convinced that no matter who killed my dad, it was out of spite, but Rico was confident that my dad wasn’t killed for being a snitch, because, in his words – everyone’s a snitch.
Your dad was an informant too. You feel what I'm saying? So, now you got a situation where you got a federal informant killed. You got motherfuckin federal informants motherfuckin robbing and shooting and killing federal informants. Like, that's a big ass stink for down there, you know what I'm saying? But that's what be going on, you know what I'm saying? Because niggas that's out there, you know what I'm saying, working, man. Like, they out there doing that shit. You feel me? Like, like I said, man, 97 percent of that town work for the federal government. You know what I'm saying? 97%.
There was the moment I realized this whole narrative – of street justice, retaliation, someone getting killed for testifying – might not actually hold up. If everybody in Belmont County’s drug scene was informing on each other, then killing someone for it doesn’t make much sense. It’s like mutually assured destruction. Nobody’s hands are clean.
Former FBI agent Paul Wiergartner once told me that becoming an informant is often about self-preservation – cutting a deal to save yourself, protecting your family, your freedom.
Uh, what, why someone becomes a confidential informant. The, I think primarily it, it is because, uh, they, they get in trouble themselves and, and they're looking for a way to help their own current situation. So if they, they get busted with, you know, the classic example, someone gets busted with drugs and hey, we wanna know who your supplier is. And, and, and that's how they become a confidential inform of, it's what, talk to the DA. We'll give you a break, we'll talk to the US attorney. Um, I think that's where, uh, a lot of them come from.
But in this world – where everyone’s informing, and no one’s admitting it – the truth is slippery. Because everyone is trying to get the attention off of them, which makes Daryl’s behavior even more strange – like making a neon sign with arrows pointing right at him.
If my dad wasn’t targeted for snitching, then the question isn’t just who pulled the trigger. The question is: Who benefitted from Daryl taking the fall? And what happens when the wrong person has been at the center of the story for 23 years?
Part 3: A 23-Year Secret
Every case has turning points – moments where the ground shifts just slightly, and you don’t know yet if it’s a crack or a collapse. This one started with a phone call. She didn’t call herself a witness. She didn’t say she had evidence. She just said she had to tell me something – something she had been trying to say for over twenty years.
Let me hurry up and get to this because this has been on my mind and it's been on my mind for a very long time.
I’m going to keep this person as anonymous as possible – for her own safety. I wasn’t sure what I was about to hear. I’ve heard a lot over the years and most of it was not as helpful as I had hoped. But she continued to say some of the most interesting connective tissue I’ve heard in a long time, stuff that still stuck with her after all this time because even she knew something wasn’t right.
She told me about someone she was close to, even used to live with, who she now believes may have been involved in my dad’s murder. The reasons, she explains, are oddly specific. She describes a situation that brought it all together for her and included a lot of details that were familiar to me from the case file.
But I'm gonna do my best to tell you what I think happened on that day. So I remember hearing something about, um, some red shoes, strings. I didn't know if you mentioned that on your podcast or anything, but I had, I think it was on the news about some red shoestrings, uh, accent and dirty fingernails. Yeah. Do you recall that? Yeah. Yep. Okay. So, so maybe like a couple, couple weeks later. No, no. I take that back The next day, had red shoestrings. He had dirty nails and he is Jamaican. Um, and only reason I believe that he had something to do with it is because we had gotten into an argument the next day, and uh, the first thing he did was grab a phone cord. Wrap it around my head and I was like, oh shit. You know what I mean? Like, and he caught himself and he stopped and then it hit me like, red shoestrings, fingernails, accent. And what's the odds that he's tying me up with a, a phone cord? Like it, it was like it was a natural thing. Like he automatically just grabbed the phone cord and wrapped it around my wrist. He went to jail after that. And then I just kept thinking about shit and thinking about it and thinking about, now I don't know how he came and played at this, but I remember he brought up Rico and I kept him, how do you know Rico? You're not from here. And Rico's in prison. But he would never tell me, you know? And, and, and I don't know, like, you know what I mean? I don't know what the relation is. All I know is he said he knew jc, he knew Rico and he tied my ass up with. With a, uh, telephone cord.
What she was describing wasn’t vague. It was visceral. When she said that, I felt my breath catch. Because those same details – the cord, the accent, the laces – had already been part of the crime scene narrative. Some of these things I’ve shared in this podcast, and some of these things I had never made public.
When the four men entered the Foston residence for the home invasion, both Pearl and Kim mentioned they were tied up with phone cords. It’s a unique way to try to restrain someone, and incredibly particular. When this tip came in, she mentioned that she herself was also tied up by phone cords not long after my dad’s murder by this man. She mentioned the thick red laces. In the police file, there’s a reference to witnesses – meaning Kim, Pearl, and Omar – identifying that one of these men were wearing red sneakers. Mixing up shoes and shoelaces isn’t uncommon – but both being red, is a constant that shouldn’t be ignored. The accent? Kim remembered hearing a man with an accent.
That voice still sticks in my head.
And suddenly, this wasn’t just a gut feeling. It was an alignment.
She told me the man had never been questioned and that no one had ever brought up his name in connection to my dad’s murder. She believed he slipped through the cracks – or maybe never even had to try to get away with it because no fingers were ever pointed at him.
His name is Spoon
She said his nickname, and it sent chills down my spine. Spoon. But that name was so shocking to me because I had heard it one other time… in a very casual conversation with Omar Foston.
Omar mentioned the name Spoon several years ago when I was pressing him for the names of the people who were there that day. But with his own testimony constantly changing and the details getting really muddled in the process, a name like Spoon felt made up… like it was a deflection. But now it’s starting to feel like there’s something more here.
The Wheeling area, though it spans across a state line, is still a small place. This is the kind of town where everyone knows everyone — or thinks they do. New names don’t happen here, not without history or without someone remembering something.
So when I started asking around about Spoon, I expected someone to at least recognize it. But instead… people swore they’d never heard of him. That – in a town this small – is suspicious. Because in Belmont County and Wheeling, West Virginia, people talk, especially about people who don’t belong.
A Jamaican with drug charges stands out. So either this man was a ghost or really good at keeping himself invisible. If what this woman is saying is true…if she really lived with this man, watched him go into a similar kind of rage, saw something in him that made her so scared in the pit of her stomach enough to think he could be a killer – then we’re not just talking about a new name, we’re talking about a new suspect.
But if he’s not in the files, or the reports, or in the lineup photos. If he’s been completely off the police’s radar. What else was missed? Because if I’m going to build a case for who killed my dad, I also have to face the possibility that I’ve spent the last five years chasing the wrong person.
Part 4: Where is Spoon?
I obviously had to start searching for any trace of Spoon. I’m still trying to find any public records, known address, social media presence, but it’s as if he disappeared into thin air.
My source mentioned that Spoon had been deported to Jamaica years ago, but the details were hazy.
He had, he did eight years in the prison and then they deported him, so he's been gone. He's been back in Jamaica for at least 15 years maybe. Madison. I'm telling you, I feel like, and I've always felt this way, but I didn't know, you know, I didn't know what to say. I, I didn't, I'm scared of Rico, you know what I mean? Like, I don't. I don't know. And I'm scared of spoon too, like, you know what I mean? He was a very violent person.
This revelation added a new layer of complexity. If Spoon is actually in Jamaica, bringing him back for questioning or potential charges would involve navigating international law. The United States and Jamaica have an extradition treaty in place, signed in 1983, which allows for the extradition of individuals accused of serious crimes, including murder. It was initially created to facilitate law enforcement cooperation, particularly in narcotics cases and there’s precedent for it being used – even in high-stakes, high-profile cases. In 2010, Jamaican drug lord Christopher “Dudus” Coke was captured after a months-long standoff with Jamaican authorities. He was wanted in the U.S. for running a massive drug and weapons operation through a group called the Shower Posse – moving cocaine and weed into the States and funneling guns back into Jamaica.
The Jamaican government resisted the extradition request at first, which triggered national protests, political backlash, and a deadly military raid in his neighborhood of Tivoli Gardens. Over 70 people died during that operation. But eventually, Coke was arrested, waived extradition, and was brought back to the U.S., where he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 23 years in federal prison.
That case proved that extradition from Jamaica is possible – but it takes time, political will, and a lot of pressure. All things I am very familiar with. It also shows that Jamaica isn’t always so eager to send people accused of crimes back to the States.
But if Spoon really is in Jamaica – and if there's enough to build a case – there’s a path and there’s precedent. It’s just not as simple as I’d like it to be, but none of this is.
But we don’t even really know if Spoon is still in Jamaica — it’s not unheard of for citizens of other countries to re-enter the US after deportation. While trying to find a lead on Spoon there were other stories of Jamaican nationals re-entering the US — in Ohio and West Virginia specifically. In 2016, a 41-year-old Jamaican national was federally indicted in Northern Ohio for re-entering the US, nearly 20 years after he was deported in 1997. The same thing happened in West Virginia to another Jamaican national in 2022. While none of these reports pertain to Spoon, it just illustrates how someone in similar circumstances can make their way back to the US. It means that Spoon could be literally anywhere.
I’ve since learned his real name, but I’m intentionally not sharing Spoon’s identity because my only interest right now is speaking with him. I’m not trying to get anyone caught up in an ICE war. I’m not interested in interfering with any of that. Right now, the first step is figuring out where he is. I need to hear what he has to say — was he there? Does he know who did it? As of today, when I’m recording this, I still can’t find him, but that won’t stop me.
Part 5: Everyone Left Behind
There’s a lot of people left on the outside of this case that I haven’t forgotten – alibis, witnesses, silent observers. And this source is tying them all together:
Let’s start with Duncan. This new source told me that Spoon and Duncan were friends. Not just in passing, but tight enough to be seen together around the time of the murder. She remembers them both having dreadlocks back then. They were part of the same scene.
And then Duncan had dreads back, back then. Spoon and Duncan was friends.
Duncan’s name has floated around the edges of this case for a long time. I recently reached out to him and he was defensive. His name was always redacted from police files and they haven’t looked closely at him again. I’m bringing him up, not because I think he did it, but I think he might know something. And here’s the most frustrating part: he still lives in the area. He’s not hard for the police to find and have a quick conversation with to see what he might know. He works a stable job. He’s turned his life around. Last I heard, he was working in public service.
If he knows something – and since only one person pulled the trigger – then Duncan might be the one person who’s still here, still reachable, who could help me figure out who that was because this is really about identifying the shooter.
Then there’s Jill. She gave Daryl an alibi. Said they were together the day my dad was killed. And Jill hates Daryl which, to me, makes her statement even more compelling. When someone who can’t stand you still defends you – that seems more legit, they have nothing to gain.
But what makes Jill’s story even stranger is what happened after my dad’s murder. She married Reggie — another family member whose name has been whispered in the background of this case. Reggie is Omar’s brother. The marriage came out of nowhere and didn’t last long. Jill says Reggie didn’t mention my dad, wasn’t closely connected to Daryl Smith, and didn’t bring her around my family during their 6-month marriage in 2012.
Some people think it was strategic – that the marriage was meant to keep Jill close, to keep her quiet.
What is Jill saying? Because I never liked Jill ever. I believe 'em because they were together that day. And Jill hates Daryl. And she ended up marrying Reggie, which was weird to me. feel like Reggie, they know something and they had to shut Jill up. Something ain't right that Jill married him that quick.
And then there’s Michelle and Richard. Names I’ve been hearing for years but never been able to pin down. Michelle used to be close to my dad. People say something changed in her – that she got distant. Started showing up in town, but when she did, Richard would make her leave before she could say too much.
Let me go back to Michelle, because me and Michelle were really close. Yeah. You know, and so was Richard. Like, you know, I used to hang with them all the time and stuff. Then all of a sudden Michelle would come into town, but I would talk to her and Richard would make her leave, but she would never tell me why. But now Michelle and Richard ain't together. And I know Michelle hates Richard, but I haven't talked to her in years. I believe Mick knew what happened.
Richard and Michelle are not together anymore, but the damage was already done. Now I can’t find her. She might be the only person who knows what was happening inside that house in the weeks before my dad was killed. And she’s flown under the radar.
And then… there’s the aunt, which could be any of my dad’s sisters. My source couldn’t remember her name, but she told me that this aunt called her mother and said – directly – that Reggie did it. Not that he might have known something. Not that he was nearby. That he did it.
All I know is Richard is, is is really weird acting and your aunt called and said Reggie did it. I remember she called was like, she talked to Reggie and, you know, they was setting Daryl up and all types of stuff.
That’s more than gossip. That’s a bomb, a bomb that landed quietly, because just like everything else in this case, people talk in whispers. They protect each other, or they protect themselves… or both.
That doesn’t mean Reggie did it. There’s so many fingers being pointed in so many different directions. But that does mean I have a new task – I have to find these people: Spoon, Reggie, Michelle, get back in touch with Jill, see if by some miracle Duncan will change his mind. It might seem messy to air this all out here, but it worked to get Daryl’s attention. Maybe it will work again.
Because I couldn't imagine, you know, having to figure out a wonder about who did this to my dad or whatever, and that's, that's fucked up. Excuse my language, but it's fucked up. Somebody knows who did it. I truly believe down in my heart that Spoon is the guy with the red shoestrings, the dirty fingernails, an the accent.
As I’ve mentioned before, silence is never neutral in a murder case. When someone finally does speak – like my source did – it forces me to look harder at the people who didn’t. The ones who were around and closely connected. The ones who had to have seen or heard something but never said a word. So I have to pay close attention to the names that suddenly start surfacing again. Because someone knows what happened. Someone’s always known. And for twenty-three years, they’ve chosen to say nothing.
Talking to all of these people feels like a good place for the police to start, since according to them, they are now actively investigating this case.
Next Time on Ice Cold Case
So what’s your take on this case – do you have – and I haven’t listened to your podcast but do you have a theory on this case or is there any avenues you would like us to pursue?
Certain shit I can't even talk about right now as far as, you know, especially on the cell phone because they listen to everything I'm saying on this phone right now. All this shit’s being recorded.
Credits
Thanks for listening to Ice Cold Case a Yes! Podcast
Recorded in Los Angeles at Spotify Studios
This episode was written, hosted, produced, and edited by Madison McGhee
Copy editing and additional research by Opheli Garcia Lawler
Recorded by EJ Cabasal
Sound engineering and sound design by Sian McMullen
Graphic design by AJ Christianson
Creative consulting by Shakinah Starks
All outside sources are linked in the show notes.
A video version of this episode is available on our YouTube Channel and a transcript is available at icecoldcase.com
To submit any tips or information please email us at icecoldcasepodcast.com
Additional Sources
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/01/christopher-dudus-coke-us-court
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndoh/pr/jamaican-man-charged-illegally-reentering-us
