Body found in home of woman who lied about Bataan Death March
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TOPEKA, Kansas (AP) -- Days after an elderly social service worker admitted concocting a story about surviving the Bataan Death March, the decomposed body of a woman was found in her home.
Police said Tuesday that Juanita Smith was present when the corpse was found, and she was taken to a local hospital.
Authorities said they had not identified the body.
Voter-registration records showed another woman, Shannon N. Smith, 39, had the same address as Juanita Smith, 83. A neighbor said the elder Smith told people she lived with her daughter.
A police investigation suggested the woman may have died in March, Maj. John Sidwell said. An autopsy was being performed Tuesday.
Juanita Smith lost her job as director of the Topeka YWCA's teen pregnancy prevention program last week after she admitted her lie about serving as a Navy nurse during World War II.
The lies were exposed after Smith was profiled May 2 in The Topeka Capital-Journal and the newspaper received e-mails questioning the Bataan tale.
Thousands of Americans and Filipinos surrendered to the Japanese on the Philippines' Bataan peninsula in 1942, only to be marched more than 60 miles to a prisoner-of-war camp. About 16,000 of the 70,000 soldiers didn't survive the march.
Smith told the Capital-Journal last week she had made up the death-march story in the early 1990s to make an impression during a job interview.
A newspaper managing editor resigned the same day Smith confessed, and the next day Smith resigned the YWCA position.
Smith was being treated for a medical condition, but police did not provide details. They said her condition did not appear life-threatening.
Neighbor Crystal Funk said Smith told people she lived with her daughter and kept mostly to herself in the tight-knit neighborhood.
"Everybody knows everybody else, but nobody really knew her," Funk said.
Smith recently began telling neighbors her daughter had moved. "She told different people different places," Funk said. "It's hard to make sense of this."
Copyright 2004 The
Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
