Deacon of Death: Sam Smithers, the Serial Killer Next Door

When a devilish deacon’s secrets are discovered, it’s revealed that a man who was holier than thou was also guilty as sin

By day, Sam Smithers was the deacon of his Baptist church in Plant City, Florida. A respected neighbor to many and considered a true pillar of his community, Smithers was a devoted family man. But after the sun set, he became something else: a violent attacker of prostitutes—and a killer.
 
Smithers’s twisted double life came to light when a local woman who had hired him to take care of her property found him surrounded by a puddle of blood in her garage, cleaning an axe. Through exclusive interviews with Smithers’s wife, who described her spouse as nothing but a doting husband and father, author Fred Rosen learned why this man of God would be the last person anyone would suspect of committing these savage crimes.