A Jefferson County jury found Nicholas Smoot guilty of murder for beating his father to death on Dec. 19, 2019.
Smoot, 29, used a golf club to beat his father, Eric Smoot, a retired Hillsboro Fire Protection District captain who was 53 and in extremely frail health at the time, according to testimony at the trial.
Eric Smoot was beaten after he tried to intervene when his son was assaulting his girlfriend in a Hillsboro-area home where all three lived.
After the attack, Eric Smoot was transported to Mercy Hospital Jefferson Hospital in Crystal City and later to Mercy Hospital South in St. Louis County, but he died the same day, authorities reported.
After deliberating for about two and a half hours on Wednesday (Jan. 5), the jury of eight women and four men convicted Nicholas Smoot of second-degree murder, a class A felony punishable by 10 to 30 years or life in prison; second-degree domestic assault, a class D felony that carries a penalty of up to seven years in prison; and armed criminal action, an unclassified felony punishable of no less than three years in prison.
His sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 22.
Smoot is being held in the Jefferson County Jail until his sentencing.
“I just want to thank the jury for their service,” Jefferson County assistant prosecuting attorney Travis Partney said. “This was a tough case in that the victim was the father of the defendant, which made it a little more difficult for the jurors emotionally.”
Jefferson County Div. 4 Circuit Judge Brenda Stacey presided over the three-day trial – with the first day devoted entirely to jury selection – at the Jefferson County Courthouse in Hillsboro.
Partney called five witnesses to the stand, and his first was Hannah Pfeiffer, who was Nicholas Smoot’s girlfriend at the time of the attack.
Pfeiffer, 28 who now lives in Arnold, said prior to the assault, she and Smoot had lived with his father for about five months so they could help him since he was in poor health. She said Eric Smoot walked unsteadily, sometimes using a cane and sometimes the golf clubs he left around the house to help him get around.
Pfeiffer said she and Nicholas Smoot had another couple over to the house the previous night and during the gathering, they smoked marijuana and drank alcohol. She said the men, in particular, drank a lot of alcohol while playing a video game.
“They each had 10 beers,” she said.
Pfeiffer said that at some point after the visitors left, Nicholas Smoot began acting aggressively toward her. After leaving the bedroom she shared with him, Pfeiffer realized she had left her phone behind and when she returned to retrieve it, he “flew” at her and grabbed her.
She said she tried to leave, but he pulled her back into the room and began to physically abuse her, pinning her down and biting her nose, causing her to bleed.
“I begged him to stop,” Pfeiffer said. “I felt my arms were literally going to tear off.”
Her screams alerted Eric Smoot, who entered the bedroom and confronted his son. That’s when Nicholas Smoot began attacking his father, Pfeiffer said.
She said Nicholas Smoot struck his father with a golf club while she was fleeing to a bathroom for safety. Eventually, she ran bare-footed outside on that snowy, frigid early morning.
Partney played a recording of Pfeiffer’s 911 call during which she told the dispatcher, “My boyfriend’s going crazy,” adding that Eric Smoot was seriously hurt.
Partney asked Pfeiffer to identify Nicholas Smoot in the courtroom and at first she said she did not see him but later indicated she could see him there.
Defense attorney Tracy Brown seized on Pfeiffer’s initial failure to identify Nicholas Smoot and repeatedly pointed out inconsistencies between Pfeiffer’s testimony to authorities soon after the assault and during the trial.
Brown also brought up Pfeiffer’s mental health issues, which Pfeiffer acknowledged.
“I suffer from my mental diagnoses all the time,” she said.
Brown also questioned what Pfeiffer actually saw since she had spent time in the bathroom and had gone outside the house, and Pfeiffer said she did not see all of Nicholas Smoot’s actions that morning.
Partney asked Pfeiffer if there were portions of the assault she saw and portions she did not, and she responded, “Yes.”
Partney’s second witness, medical examiner Dr. Kamal Sabharawal, said there were lacerations on Eric Smoot’s body and head and bruising to his chest, neck, arms, legs and back, as well as rib fractures. In addition, his spleen had been severely damaged, his abdomen was extended and he suffered bleeding, losing 3 liters of blood, Sabharawal said.
He said Eric Smoot had suffered blunt force trauma after being struck with an object and the cause of death was “trauma to the chest and abdomen.”
Brown had Sabharawal go over Eric Smoot’s health issues, which included diabetes, cirrhosis and a heart condition. She had Sabharawal admit he could not tell if Eric Smoot’s injuries were specifically from being struck by a golf club.
Partney’s third witness, Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Zachary Reed, said he and his training officer were in a patrol car not far from the Hillsboro-area home when they were alerted to the assault and arrived a few minutes later. He said Pfeiffer was outside the home when they arrived.
Then, they found Nicholas Smoot kneeling over his father, who was lying on the floor. Nicholas Smoot was holding a beer bottle and looked like he was going to hit his father with it, Reed testified.
“We gave commands for him to drop the bottle, which he did,” Reed said.
At first, Nicholas Smoot was cooperative with the deputies, but once he was placed in a squad car, he kicked at the dashboard, Reed said.
Another of Partney’s witnesses was former Deputy Michael Berges, who was at the scene and said Nicholas Smoot “was combative” and banged his head on the windows of the patrol car.
Smoot did not testify and Brown called no witnesses.
During her closing argument, Brown focused on Pfeiffer’s inconsistencies and credibility, and said that while Nicholas Smoot assaulted Pfeiffer and recklessly wielded a golf club in his intoxicated state, he did not intend to harm his father.
“His intent was not to injure his father,” Brown said.
She said the father and son normally had a good relationship.
“It was completely out of character,” Brown said of her client’s actions.
In his closing, Partney told jurors that even if they doubted Pfeiffer’s credibility, evidence supplied by law enforcement officers corroborated her testimony.
Partney also said that even if Nicholas Smoot’s state of mind was altered by drinking and marijuana use, it should not absolve him of responsibility for his actions.
“He lost it that night,” Partney said. “The fact he was drunk didn’t matter. He knew how frail his dad was. He was trying to seriously hurt his dad.”
After the verdict, Partney said Nicholas Smoot was charged with second-degree murder and not first-degree murder because the attack was not premeditated.
“First-degree murder requires deliberation,” he said. “There was no deliberated event.”
Brown declined to comment about the conviction.