MEDINA, Ohio — The man accused of brutally murdering a Northeast Ohio mother faced a parole board this week, but a decision won’t be handed down for a few weeks.
The victim’s family tells 3News that even after almost 45 years, the process is still painful.
At just 2 years old, Jaime Smith-Hernandez was put down for a nap. When she woke up, her mother was gone.
"Our lives are not what they were supposed to be,” she says. “They took a completely different direction."
It was a warm night on June 13, 1978, when Jaime's mother, Carol Smith, was kidnapped at knifepoint. It happened right in front of Jaime's 5-year-old brother, Michael.
“We went from having a loving, happy family to everything changing completely,” Smith-Hernandez says.
Smith was found dead in a field on Pearl Road in Medina Township. She had been stabbed more than 20 times.
The suspect, identified as Thomas Yanasak, was a local drifter who was identified by multiple witnesses, one of them Smith’s own son.
Yanasak pleaded no contest and could have been sentenced to death, but the death penalty in Ohio was ruled unconstitutional just two hours before his final sentence.
A judge accepted the sentence of 25 years to life with parole hearings along the way.
Smith-Hernandez and her brother are still fighting to keep their mom’s killer behind bars. They started an online petition and are on some social media pages. They are battling Yanasak’s possible release, and still can’t believe he was ever given scheduled parole hearings for such a horrific crime.
They live in fear of his potential release.
“I don’t see any possible good,” she says.
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Editor's note: Video in the player above was originally published in an unrelated article on July 13, 2022.