Billy Smolinski headed to Florida on a vacation in August of 2004. He went with his girlfriend of one year, Madeline Gleason.
But the vacation didn’t go as planned.
Madeline was acting weird and after returning home on August 22, Billy and Madeline broke up.
On August 23, Billy was back at work as a tow truck driver, a little down about the breakup, but co-workers said he was doing fine.
Later that day he ran into his prior long-term ex-girlfriend, Mary Ellen, and they made plans to get together the following weekend.
That would never happen.
On August 24, Billy asked his neighbor to watch to his dog, saying he was going out of town. When the neighbor went to go check on the dog the next day, he couldn’t find the hidden key to access the house. Worried about the dog, he contact Billy’s ex-girlfriend since she and Billy had owned the dog together originally.
The ex, Mary Ellen, said it was strange that he didn’t ask her to take the dog as he normally would have.
Soon, everyone realized that Billy couldn’t be found anywhere, although his truck and belongings were left behind.
Authorities refused to look for Billy, saying he was an adult and since he told someone he was going out of town, there wasn’t anything they could do. So the family looked on their own, finding no sign of Billy anywhere.
Where is Billy Paul Smolinski Jr.?
Billy Smolinski was born January 14, 1973, and grew up in the Waterbury, Connecticut area. He has a younger sister and was also very close to his parents, Janice and William Sr.
Billy was the kind of person who loved outdoor sports and activities. He was also known to be fun and spontaneous, and generally very likable. He enjoyed hunting and just being outside and was always a hard worker.
Billy was also working, usually multiple jobs.
At age 26, Billy bought his own home in Waterbury, Connecticut.
While dating his long-time girlfriend, Mary Ellen Noble, they would adopt a German Shepherd Dog named Harley.
Although Mary Ellen and Billy would break up, they stayed friends and stayed in touch, in part due to Harley and in part because while their relationship wasn’t working out, they were still able to be good friends.
In late 2003, Billy would start dating an older woman, Madeline Gleason. Madeline was 16 years old than Billy, but that didn’t seem to hinder their relationship. According to friends and families of Billy’s, he was very serious about the relationship and really thought they had a future together.
In August of 2004, after about a year of dating, Madeline and Billy took a vacation to Florida to visit a couple of Madeline’s kids.
While in Florida, the two were having problems. Madeline was being very secretive, was constantly on her phone, and wouldn’t let Billy anywhere near her phone.
Billy had allegedly accused Madeline of cheating on him, and it would later come out that she was.
When confronted about this, an argument between the two of them would lead to a breakup, and they returned home to Connecticut on August 22.
On August, 23, Billy was back at work at his tow truck job and while co-workers said he talked about the breakup, he didn’t seem too upset by it. While at a job later that afternoon, his ex, Mary Ellen, drove by. She stopped to chat with Billy for a few minutes and he asked her if she wanted to hang out the following weekend. Mary Ellen said she did and so they made plans.
Billy seemed to need a distraction from the breakup but otherwise was upbeat.
But those plans would never materialize and things would get very strange in the coming days.
THE DISAPPEARANCE.
In the early morning hours of August 24, it was said that Billy went to Madeline’s home, and went up to her window, knocking to get her attention. When Madeline came to the window, he allegedly was begging her to take him back. He would leave her home around 5:00 a.m. that morning, with Madeline supposedly telling him no.
I just want to mention, this story is related in most of his missing person files when it comes to looking at the timeline of events that would happen leading up to his disappearance, but I don’t know if this account was confirmed, or if it’s just told to authorities by Madeline.
Later that afternoon, it’s believed that Billy went to Burger King for food around 3:00 p.m. There was a time-stamped receipt to indicate this.
Then, according to a neighbor, Roy, Billy had gone over to his place around 5:00 p.m. to ask Roy if he could check on his dog for a few days as Billy was going to ‘head up north’ for a few days. Roy said sure, and Billy said he’d hide a key.
The next day, around 10:00 a.m., Roy went over to Billy’s house to check on Harley. But, Roy couldn’t find the hidden key anywhere. He was worried about the dog, so he called Mary Ellen to let her know what was going on since Harley was partly her dog too.
Mary Ellen went over to Billy’s place, also concerned. But not just about Harley- something didn’t seem right at all.
She said that Billy and Roy never really got along and that whenever Billy need help with Harley, he would ask her. Which makes sense, since Harley was also hers in a way.
Also, why ask a neighbor that you don’t particularly get along with? Especially if you have other options?
Mary Ellen had a sense of confusion heading over to Billy’s place, but not sure what was going on.
When she arrived, she noticed that Billy’s white pickup truck was parked at the bottom of his driveway, which also didn’t make sense. Why would he leave his truck there? Plus, this was his daily driving truck, if he left, what did he leave in?
Mary Ellen got in touch with Billy’s family, who immediately knew there was something wrong. They were close with Billy and spoke to him frequently. If he were going to spontaneously go out of town, they would have known about it.
They decided to contact the only friend of Billy’s they knew ‘up north’. Chad Hanson. Chad said he hadn’t heard from or seen Billy.
In a panic and filled with dread, his family went to the Waterbury Police Department to report Billy missing.
THE SEARCH.
Sadly, Waterbury Police said there was nothing they could do. Since Billy was an adult, and he had allegedly told someone he was going out of town for three days, they didn’t consider him missing. They told the family to come back after three days if he was still missing.
But the family wasn’t going to sit around and wait. They started the search for Billy themselves.
Billy was likable and had a bunch of friends and acquaintances. Billy also wasn’t into drugs or drinking, and this behavior didn’t make sense.
Madeline suggested that maybe he was so depressed over their breakup that he could have been suicidal. However, no one else’s accounts of Billy in those past couple of days said anything of the sort.
The family also learned that the day before, he had been laid off from one of his jobs. Now, we know he was a tow truck driver, but he had also been working for an HVAC company. It was the HVAC company that laid him off, but, the tow truck company had said they’d give him more hours. In addition to that, Billy also did snow plowing and mowed grass on the side. He was a hard worker, and the layoff wouldn’t really affect him financially.
Without the help of law enforcement, Billy’s parents started hanging up flyers all over town.
Soon they noticed that those flyers were either being vandalized or taken down altogether.
Video nearby one of these flyers, would show a woman and a young boy taking down the flyer. That woman was Madeline Gleason and the young boy was her son.
When confronted, she said the flyers were being hung near where she worked and she felt harassed. Police actually warned Billy’s family to stop putting up flyers there. They would for a while, but later they would actually put up another one, and Billy’s mom would be arrested.
It was Billy’s family that did all the investigating for the first year.
They were the ones that found the receipt for Burger King in the trash at Billy’s home. They went to Burger King to see if they could see surveillance, thinking maybe Billy wasn’t alone or maybe it wasn’t Billy at all, but that footage had already been cycled over.
They also accessed Billy’s bank records to find that no money had been taken out since he vanished, and his paycheck, while deposited, also wasn’t spent.
In 2006, two years after Billy had vanished, the family hired a Private Investigator. They learned that early on in the case, someone had called in a tip to Crimestoppers. This person said that Billy had been murdered by a hammer and buried.
When the investigator tracked back who made that call, it was traced back to Shawn Karpiuk. Shawn was Madeline’s son. Shawn also died of a heroin overdose in 2005, one year after Billy went missing and one year before it was learned that he was the tipster. So questioning Shawn any further was impossible.
After this, Chad Hanson came forward with a confession. He said that Shawn Karpuik had murdered Billy and buried him, and he had helped cover up the crime.
Now, remember, Chad was the friend from ‘up north’ that had originally said he hadn’t seen or heard from Billy.
In 2008, Chad said that Billy’s body was buried in Seymour, Connecticut. But searches turned up nothing. In 2010, he said the body was actually in Naugatuck State Forest. Again, searches revealed no signs of Billy. In October of 2011, he led police to another location in Oxford, Connecticut.
After that third search revealed no clues- and no Billy- Chad would be charged with impeding an investigation and would serve four years in prison, but nothing additional for Billy’s case.
Billy’s family does believe that Chad was telling the truth, but just can’t clearly remember where they buried the body.
Others believe that Chad was just trying to get a plea deal, which is exactly what he was doing. The question remains, was he telling half-truths? The full truth? Does he know for sure that Billy was murdered?
The family did continue to search for Billy in their own way. Searching through remote areas searching the river, and anywhere else they could.
In 2012, Madeline Gleason sued Billy’s family for harassment and won a $52,000 settlement.
In 2015, after an appeal by the Smolinski family, that was reversed.
It seems Shawn might have had the motive to harm Billy if he was intervening in his mother’s love life. But did Madeline know about it? Many think she knows more than she has said.
As the years went on, different investigators finally paid more attention to the case. But the damage had already been done. No early investigation was done when the clues would have been more prominent. No testing of the truck for evidence, the house, or additional questioning of any other people known to Billy.
This would also prompt Billy’s Law, which we’ll look more into shortly.
Before we do that, let’s take a look at the area in which this is all taking place.
WATERBURY, CONNECTICUT.
Waterbury is a pretty big city for the small state of Connecticut with a population of over 100,000 people.
The city sits on the Naugatuck River, just 30 miles south of the state capital of Hartford, Connecticut.
Waterbury is also not too far from New York City, which is about 77 miles southwest.
Waterbury has a large industrial component to it, once nicknamed the ‘brass city’ because of the all brassware that was made there.
The city also sits on the Naugatuck River. The river looks to vary greatly in depths and widths depending on where you are on the river.
At one point during the search an area of the river was focused on because a psychic had said they had seen him bleeding from the head on the side of the river.
The areas that Chad had pointed them to were also looked at extensively.
The first area he told investigators was in Seymour, Connecticut. Seymour is about 10 miles south of Waterbury.
Then, the story was his body was buried in the Naugatuck State Forest. This forest consists of over 4,000 acres and is a popular recreation area for hiking, camping, fishing, and hunting.
Billy’s home in Waterbury was only 6 miles south of the Naugatuck State Forest.
Interesting, you have to drive through the national forest to get to Seymour.
The last place that Hanson took them to was in Oxford, Connecticut. Oxford is just outside the forest as well.
All three of these areas are within 15–20 minutes of each other, yet no signs of Billy were found at any.
Chad did cause a scene in the courtroom when he realized his plea deal wasn’t as he thought it was going to be, so that does make me wonder- was he somehow believing he could get a deal?
BILLY’S LAW.
Billy’s family never gave up the search for answers. They do believe that their son was likely murdered, but they still want to find their son and bring him home. Answers would be nice also.
They also learned through their struggles, just how flawed the system is for helping missing person cases. It was this struggle and process that inspired them to push for legislative change.
The Smolinskis faced countless systemic challenges, most significantly federal databases about missing persons and unidentified remains that were incomplete and uncoordinated. These challenges brought on Billy’s Law.
Billy’s Law was introduced to address those challenges and help ensure that the tens of thousands of American families whose loved ones go missing each year do not experience the same hurdles faced by the Smolinskis.
Billy’s law is also known as the Now Help Find the Missing Act.
This new law- Billy’s Law- requires all of the information that law enforcement has about a missing person to be entered into one public-facing database that would also offer direct access to the families of the missing person.
This law was recently supported by the Gabby Petito Foundation which helped bring more attention to it.
On December 27, 2022, the bill was officially signed into law by the President.
What do you think happened to Billy Smolinski Jr.?
Billy Smolinski went missing in August of 2004. He was 31 years old then, and would today be 50 years old.
Billy is described as a caucasian male, 6 foot tall, with short brown hair and blue eyes. He weighed around 200 pounds at the time he was last seen.
Billy was likely wearing a small diamond earring, a gold chain rope-style necklace with a cross pendant, and possibly blue jeans, a blue denim shirt, and work boots. He has a tattoo of a blue cross outlined in orange on his left shoulder, and a tattoo of a cross with the name “Pruitt” inside on his right forearm.
Anyone with any information on the whereabouts of Billy Smolinski Jr., is asked to contact the Waterbury Police Department at 203–574–6941.
