Never before seen video of the moments in June 2013 when police captured child killer Donald Smith. Driver, step out of the vehicle. Face away from us. Keep your hands in the air. Stop. All new, the News4Jax I-TEAM has obtained an extraordinary recording of Smith admitting in detail to the kidnapping, rape, and murder of 8-year-old Cherish Perrywinkle.
Smith now sits on death row in Raiford awaiting execution. I-TEAM investigator Lindsey Gardner has been painstakingly going through this chilling recording of Smith. We want to warn you what you’re about to hear is disturbing. Lindsey. Rain Perrywinkle’s time on the stand was spent outlining her daughter’s last day alive.
She described how what appeared to be a kind gesture from a stranger allegedly led to her daughter’s murder. Now, Perrywinkle testified she walked with Cherish and her two other daughters, then 4 and 5 years old, to a Dollar General. She said a man Ma’am, when your daughter followed after this defendant towards McDonald’s was that the last time you ever saw your daughter alive? Yes.
I don’t know how others see it, but cases like this make me question the whole idea of releasing dangerous criminals back into society. Because what happens when they come out and destroy another life again? This case made me think about that deeply. How many times does a man have to hurt a child before the system decides he is done? The man at the center of this story had convictions across four separate decades. Judges had seen him.
Juries had convicted him. And on June 1st, 2013, the Florida Department of Corrections opened a door and let him walk out. Three weeks later, he walked into a Dollar General in Jacksonville, Florida and heard a mother tell a store employee she couldn’t afford her daughter’s dress. That was all he needed.
One detail before we go further. A white Dodge van, dark curtains on the rear windows. Hold it. It comes back and when it does, it carries everything. There was no restraining order against Donald James Smith in the spring of 2013, no ankle monitor, no GPS, no weekly check-in, no active surveillance of any kind for a man the state of Florida had formally classified as its most dangerous category of sex offender, tier three, the highest level.
It means this person carries the greatest possible risk of reoffending. That designation was in his file. The documented history was in his file. All of it sitting in a system that upon his release required exactly one thing from him, register your address. That was the barrier, an address on a form between Donald Smith and a city full of children.
No red flags reported in the weeks following his release. No tip line follow-ups, no welfare checks. Nothing moved, he was free. Fully, legally, administratively free. Now let me tell you what was found at the bank of a tidal creek behind a church off Lem Turner Road, Jacksonville, 9:00 a.m. June 22nd, 2013, the body of an 8-year-old girl.
Partially concealed beneath a fallen tree trunk. Medical examiner Dr. Valerie Rao, who had testified in hundreds of cases, would stop mid-sentence on the witness stand. She asked the judge for 5 minutes. He called a 10-minute recess for the entire courtroom. That stop. That pause in a career built on composure.
That is the distance between the silence of the system and the sound of what actually happened. Walk it with me. Cherish Lily Periwinkle was born September 24th, 2004 in Jacksonville, Florida. She was 8 years old. She had recently learned to ride a bicycle and announced it to anyone who would stand still long enough to listen.
She drew animals, not scribbles, detailed ones. She was funny on purpose. She timed her jokes. She understood she was making people laugh and she loved that power, the way children do cleanly, without any of the self-awareness that eventually ruins it. On the evening of June 21st, 2013, Cherish had one thing on her mind.
The next morning she was boarding a flight to California to visit her biological father, Billy Periwinkle. That trip had been years in the making, tangled in a custody dispute, delayed, postponed, finally confirmed. The seat was booked. She had never been on a plane. Her mother, Rain Periwinkle, was a single mother of three daughters under nine.
That evening she drove all three, Cherish eight, Destiny six, Nevaeh five, to a Dollar General near their home on Jacksonville’s Northside. She needed a dress, something Cherish could feel good in on the plane. The dress cost almost nothing. That was the problem. Rain looked at the store employee and said what exhausted mothers say when anxiety gets bigger than the ability to contain it out loud, openly, with no performance of composure.
“I don’t have enough. I just need something for her trip tomorrow. I don’t have enough.” Cherish stood a few feet away. She heard it. She was eight years old, not oblivious. She understood her mother was stressed. She had eight hours left. Donald James Smith was 56 years old in June 2013, gray-haired, calm. The kind of calm that people who encountered him later described as reassuring, not nervous, not eager, just steady.
He went by Don. His criminal record opened in 1977 and never really closed. In 1992, he was convicted of attempting to kidnap two teenage girls. He used a van. He drove it to where they were, approached them, and tried to take them. A jury convicted him. He served time and was released. In 2009, convicted again, lewd and lascivious behavior involving a child, served, released June 1st, 2013.
Florida Department of Corrections processes his paperwork, confirms his tier three sex offender registration, and returns him to the public. His file was not complicated to read. There was no ambiguity buried in the language. The 1992 conviction alone, attempted kidnapping teenage girls using a van, laid out his method with clarity.
This was a man who positioned himself near vulnerability, listened for the right opening, and moved when conditions aligned. He was not impulsive. He was practiced. And he had been free for exactly 21 days when he walked into that Dollar General and heard Rain Periwinkle say she didn’t have enough money.
He introduced himself. He smiled. He said he had children of his own. Then he made his offer. Rain studied him. She did not immediately say yes. She looked at this man standing in a Dollar General offering to help a stranger’s family gift card, a ride to Walmart, his wife waiting inside with more.
She looked at him the way a single mother looks at anything that seems too convenient. Smith held her gaze and said, “I know how it is. I’ve got little ones myself. You look like you’ve got your hands full. You’re safe. I promise you you’re safe.” She hesitated. Then she said yes. She put all three of her daughters into his van, a white Dodge van.
Dark curtains on the rear windows. Remember I told you it was coming back. The family arrived at the Walmart on Lem Turner Road at approximately 8:00 00 p.m. Smith said his wife was inside with the gift card. They’d find her. They’d shop. It would all work out. The Walmart surveillance system began recording.
Over the next two hours, Smith placed one item in a cart. One item, a bundle of rope, Rain saw it. She noticed the rope, noticed it sitting there in a cart belonging to a man who was supposed to be shopping for her children, and she didn’t say anything. She told investigators later she couldn’t fully process it in the moment.
There was too much around her, three girls, a store closing, a wife who hadn’t appeared, the noise of an evening that had already stretched too long. She filed it somewhere in the back of her mind. Under, don’t think about that right now. Smith, meanwhile, wasn’t shopping. The footage showed him maintaining distance from Rain, positioning himself steadily near Cherish.
At one point he pulled Rain aside and pointed at a pair of women’s platform heels. Those would look cute on her for the trip. Rain looked at the shoes, then at him. She’s eight, Rain said. No, Smith nodded. Moved on, kept watching. By 10:00 p.m. the children hadn’t eat. The wife had never materialized. Rain was tired and frustrated and ready to leave.
Smith gestured toward the McDonald’s near the front entrance. Let me take Cherish to get something. You stay with the little ones. I’ll bring her right back. What Rain didn’t know, that McDonald’s had closed hours earlier. Cherish looked at her mother. Can I, Mama? I’m hungry. Rain looked at Smith, then at her daughter. Go ahead.
Stay with him. Cherish followed Smith willingly. She wanted a cheeseburger. She was 8 years old and she was hungry and a man her mother had spent 2 hours with was offering her food. She had no reason not to go. Minutes passed. Rain moved toward the front of the store, no Cherish, no Smith. The PA system announced closing time, and something Rain had been suppressing all evening came up all at once.
Her word later was crystallized. Like a feeling that had been liquid suddenly went solid. She ran. Her phone was malfunctioning. She couldn’t dial out. For nearly 40 minutes, she moved through the closing time crowds, grabbing arms, stopping strangers. My daughter, a man took my daughter. Please, somebody call my daughter. At 10:40 p.m.
, a store employee pointed her to a landline. She called 911. That recording was played in open court. Rains’ voice on it. I had a bad feeling. I thought, “This is too good to be true. He was giving my 8-year-old too much attention.” He wanted to buy her these tall shoes, women’s shoes, and I told him no. I don’t want him to kill her.
I should have told him no from the beginning. Please, please find my daughter. She said that on the call, in real time. At 10:40 p.m. on June 21st, 2013, officers arrived at the Walmart within 10 minutes. Stop here for 1 second. A mother stood in a store for 2 hours with a rope in a stranger’s cart. A gut telling her something was wrong, and she overrode it.
Not because she was reckless. Because he looked safe. Because he said safe directly to her face, and she needed it to be true. I want you to answer me honestly in the comments. Have you ever talked yourself out of a gut feeling because someone was being kind, and you didn’t want to seem ungrateful? Tell me where you’re watching from tonight. We’re not done.
The Walmart footage confirmed it. At approximately 10:00 p.m., Smith guided Cherish through a side exit toward the white Dodge van. They drove out of the parking lot. At 4:00 a.m. on June 22nd, 6 hours later, law enforcement issued an Amber Alert. 6 hours, because Rains’ call had been classified as a missing person report, rather than an abduction.
Despite her explicitly describing a stranger who had engineered a deliberate separation from her child. The alert worked. At At a.m., a Jacksonville resident watching local news recognized the van, called it in. By the time officers reached the location, it was gone. At 9:00 a.m., troopers located the van on Interstate 95.
They boxed it, drew weapons, ordered the driver out. Donald Smith stepped out of the van. He was soaking wet from the waist down. K9 officer Charlie Wilkie looked at Smith’s clothing and said, “Oh my god, she’s in the water.” Smith said nothing. Officers testified that a look crossed his face, cold, involuntary, that confirmed what they already feared.
K9 units tracked from the wooded area to a tidal creek behind a church. Beneath a fallen tree trunk, partially concealed, they found Cherish Periwinkle. Dr. Valerie Rao’s autopsy documented blunt force trauma to the head, sexual assault, gagging, strangulation severe enough to cause hemorrhaging in both eyes. At trial, while describing the dissection of Cherish’s throat, Dr.
Rao stopped speaking. She asked the judge for 5 minutes. He gave the courtroom 10. Cherish Periwinkle was 8 years old. Smith’s motive is not complicated. Documented pattern, consistent method. The forensic evidence fits without deviation, but that is not the why that should follow you out of tonight. A tier three offender with a 1992 conviction for attempted kidnapping of teenage girls using a van walked out of a Florida prison in 2013 with a registered address and nothing else.
No GPS, no check-in requirement, no structured post-release supervision. The state’s framework at the time did not require it as standard, regardless of classification level or prior offense pattern. That is confirmed record, not allegation. 10 days before June 21st, a Crime Stoppers tip placed Smith at a Walmart in The Villages.
A caller describing him as fidgety, watching. That tip was received, nothing was done with it. Billy Periwinkle said it after sentencing, plainly and without flinching. It’s not justice. I don’t think there’s a way to have justice in something like this. He was right. There is no justice here. There is only accountability, and accountability has to extend past the man who committed the act into the system that confirmed his address, filed his paperwork, and called it done.
Florida legislators pushed for monitoring reforms after Cherish’s death. Because the failure here was not a missing law. It was a decision not to apply what the system already knew about this man to the conditions of his release. Donald James Smith was convicted February 14th, 2018, Valentine’s Day, of first-degree premeditated murder, kidnapping, and sexual battery of a child under 12.
The jury deliberated 19 minutes. He was sentenced to death. He remains on death row at Union Correctional Institution, Raiford, Florida. The Florida Supreme Court rejected his appeals unanimously in April 2021. The US Supreme Court declined to hear his case in January 2022. As of December 2025, a pending appeal argues inadequate penalty phase representation.
That decision is still outstanding. He keeps filing. He keeps using the system. Cherish Periwinkle would be 20 years old this year. She would have been on that plane to California the morning of June 22nd. She would have met her father. She would have worn a dress her mother found for her. She never wore it. She never wore it.
Her sisters, Destiny and Nevaeh, were removed from Rains’ care in July 2013. That family did not survive what one evening cost them. The system had everything it needed to make a different decision about Donald Smith. His name, his tier, his method, his pattern, a tip from 10 days prior, all of it documented, filed, accessible.
It just didn’t act, and Cherish paid for that with everything she had. If tonight moved you, share it. These stories deserve to be heard, and these lives deserve to be remembered. Drop a comment. Tell me what you’re carrying. I’ll see you next time. Blackout Crime Files.
