Dianna Brice walked out of a laundromat crying in March 2021. It was the last time anyone saw her alive.
She was 21 years old, already the mother of a child, and expecting her second, just 14 weeks along, when her boyfriend, Justin Smith, shot her and abandoned her body wrapped in garbage bags in a vacant lot. They found her six days later. Smith was not content with killing her: he set his own car on fire to destroy the evidence, and that same afternoon fled to Miami with an accomplice identified as Garnett.
Investigators did not give up. In the vehicle’s charred remains, they found a bullet casing that matched another one found in Dianna’s clothing. That piece completed the case, although Smith managed to disappear for four years. They finally caught him in March 2025, after a routine traffic stop in Atlanta, Georgia. A jury found him guilty of first-degree murder, the murder of a fetus, arson, and abuse of a corpse. Today, he is serving life without parole, plus an additional 40 to 80 years. Garnett has already served her sentence and is on parole.
