A missing woman’s ex-fiancé has been accused of killing her nearly 15 years after the pair appeared on reality TV the same day she vanished.
Dale Smith Jr. was arrested on a second-degree murder charge in Orlando, Florida, on Wednesday, October 14, in connection with the disappearance of Michelle Parker.
“While Michelle has not yet been located, all evidence leads to Dale Smith Jr. as the person responsible for Michelle’s murder,” the Orlando Police Department said in a news release.
Parker was a mother of three children, including twins she shared with Smith, 55, per NBC News.
She vanished on November 17, 2011, after dropping off the twins with Smith, according to Orlando Police Chief Eric D. Smith.
A pretaped episode of The People’s Court starring Parker and Dale reportedly aired on TV the same day she went missing.
The episode featured a legal dispute between the pair, as Dale sued Parker over an engagement ring he claimed she had tossed off a balcony.
During the episode, Parker detailed Dale’s alleged infidelity before they broke up.
“He’s cheated on me constantly and I’ve always tried to keep it together for the kids,” she said in court.
When commenting on the nature of their relationship, Parker described Dale as “pretty malicious and vindictive.”
“He said that he wanted his ring, so I took it off, and I threw it at him,” she continued.
Police initially named Smith as a suspect in Parker’s disappearance after her vehicle was found without her inside at an Orlando mall the day after she went missing, according to a 2012 report from the Palm Beach Post.
A few weeks later, her iPhone was found underwater near the Nela Bridge, located in Belle Isle, south of Orlando, per the newspaper.
Parker and Smith’s twins were 3 years old when she disappeared. Her older son started living with his father in another state after she went missing, according to the newspaper.
On Wednesday, Smith was apprehended by the Orlando Police Department’s Fugitive Unit and SWAT Team.
The department said his arrest came after “an expanded investigative team reexamined evidence and used advances in digital forensics to uncover and analyze additional evidence that moved this case forward.”
Smith’s defense attorney, Rajan Joshi, didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
In an interview with USA Today on Thursday, October 15, Joshi said he visited Smith in jail the previous night and claimed “he’s always maintained his innocence.”
“That’s the mother of his child,” Joshi told the outlet. “We want to see justice done for Michelle Parker and her family. We just don’t want the wrong guy convicted.”
