about em. narrator: smitty s trial began in february 1985, and the main witnesses against smitty would be two fellow outlaw bikers from florida. these men had given the government information about the collins murder in exchange for reduced sentences in their other crimes. the main witnesses that the state relied upon were j.j. hall and karl holley. both were members of the outlaws motorcycle gang in florida. narrator: smitty felt hall and holley had it in for him because he demoted them after a clubhouse altercation. j.j. hall and karl holley made a deal with the feds to put the finger on smitty. i ll give you the boss, that was their thinking. narrator: on the stand, j.j. hall said he had been offered $12,000 to murder collins, and he chose karl holley and smitty to carry out the hit.
somebody who was just trying to attack the state s case. he was talking like somebody who was trying to figure out what happened, you know, who actually did it. announcer: at smitty s trial, prosecutor rick garfield called penny reed, the sole survivor of the murders, to the witness stand. i found her to be a very courageous person. she could have just maintained that she did not know who the person was that did these killings. announcer: penny testified that she met smitty a few weeks before the murders, and yet her description of the killer to police didn t match smitty s appearance. penny reed s initial description to the police was of a fairly thin or skinny individual, and she did not recall if he had a beard. if she couldn t tell, how good a look did she get at the man to make an identification?