When Diane Beasley headed out on a first date with her future husband John Smith, she'd thought him the 'perfect' gentleman', and was saddened to hear about the tragic hand life had dealt him. Single mum Diana, who met Smith in 1998, was told that his first wife Janice Hartman had left him broken-hearted after leaving him in 1974, just four years after their teenage wedding. In 1990, engineer Smith supposedly found love again, this time with a lady named Betty 'Fran' Gladden-Smith.
Things moved quickly, with the couple marrying that same year - but once again the romance was short-lived. Smith even kept a portrait of Fran pride of place on the wall of his living room wall, telling Diane that she'd died from cancer. When Diana accepted the widower's marriage proposal after just three months of dating, she had no clue that there was a far darker side to the 'nice, polite' beau who'd portrayed himself as simply unlucky-in-love.
.. In truth, Fran had vanished in August 1991 less than a year into their failing marriage.
As the relationship soured over his 'odd' behaviour, she suffered a fall on wet tiles, breaking her hip and leaving her bedbound. "Now Fran is an invalid. She can’t even leave the house.
She’s in excruciating pain. She’s at John’s mercy," author Michael Fleeman said on Crime+Punishment doc, I Lived With A Killer. "John says he comes home one day, and Fran is gone, and that she’s left this bizarre note: 'Be back in a couple of days.
Feed the fish.'" Under p.