out of the two people, which would had the best training and the ability of doing explosive work? holley said that smitty had that experience from his time in the military. narrator: karl holley described how he carried out the hit with smitty. holley and smith went to jacksonville and met with another biker who provided the c-4. he brought out a three-foot stick of the explosive, they cut off a foot of it and they started a continuous drive to new orleans to conduct the hit. they went back to collins house that night. smith said, drop me off and pick me up in a few minutes, i ll take care of it. narrator: holley said smitty then shimmied under collins truck and wired explosives to the brake lights. they went to a motel and waited. around 7:30 that sunday morning when robert lee collins was backing out of his driveway in his pickup truck, he tapped the brakes.
announcer: after smitty was exonerated, prosecutors dropped all charges against his alleged accomplice, a still-missing yankee. but smitty was now a marked man. after being acquitted for the murders in ft. lauderdale, i had people with badges saying that they were going to get me off the street one way or the other. announcer: a few months later, police told smitty he could come to the station house to pick up his personal items from the investigation. well, i m in the office signing for the property. i look up and i ve got about ten cops coming up behind me. i said, you got to be [ bleep ] me. announcer: for the second time in less than a year, smitty would be charged with murder and once again face the death penalty. building a better bank starts with looking at something old, and saying, really? so capital one is building something completely new. capital one cafes.
and that woke me up out of a sleep. so i immediately grabbed a pistol. it was the side that i go in because i was a little smaller and a little bit more agile. just as i was kind of holding on, swinging my leg through, that s when this big man comes out with a .45 pointed at me. i was naked, just me and the gun. she looked at me and i looked at her. and i had two officers on either side of me, and they both had shotguns, and they were yelling at him, police officers, and they racked the shotguns. the sound of a shotgun racking is it kind of tunes you up a little bit. announcer: smitty backed into the bedroom and put his gun down. i was in the process of putting my pants on when i walked back out, i m facing a bunch of guns then. they said, put your hands up. i didn t have my pants all the way up, so they went down to my ankles and my hands went up in the air. and during this, then his girlfriend comes out, a girl
tampa, the federal jury, that he s been in prison for 12 years, thereby telling them, oh, this is a bad dude, he s done bad stuff. we asked the judge, we need to tell the jury that he s been acquitted and the judge said, no, because that s hearsay. how is it that the government can say he s been in prison for 12 years and we re not allowed to say, yeah, yeah, he was in prison for 12 years for a crime that we acquitted him of. i mean it just made no sense to me. narrator: the government also had a surprise witness, smitty s missing ex-wife, bridgett. she was sprung on us, and all of this stuff with bridgett was a big surprise to me and, frankly, to smitty. narrator: i was worried a little bit, but i knew for a fact that there was nothing she could say about me. narrator: but bridgett was about to reveal what she had seen in ft. lauderdale 14 years earlier and why she had fled. i took off because i didn t
you join any organization that would call themselves outlaws? i mean, does that mean you re a criminal? and he said outlaws is not a criminal organization. ever since i returned from vietnam, i have been an outlaw to society. i just felt i didn t fit into society anymore. this is something that he was testifying from the heart. and when he said that, you could really hear a pin drop in the courtroom. announcer: procedures couldn t shake smitty on the stand and failed to present a motive for why he would have committed the murders. after a week-long trial, the jury found smitty not guilt owe on all charges. smitty shook my hand. he went up, he shook the hand of the judge, thanked him for giving him a fair trial, and at the door of the courthouse other members of the outlaws had brought smitty s harley.