NASHVILLE, Tennessee — Oscar Franklin Smith was pronounced dead at 10:47 a. m. Thursday at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, ending nearly 35 years of appeals and legal battles for a man convicted of one of the most brutal triple homicides in Nashville’s history.
He was 75 years old.
Smith’s final words, delivered in a quiet but firm voice from the gurney, were not an admission of guilt. Instead, he used his last moments on earth to condemn the justice system that put him there.
“Somebody needs to tell the governor the justice system doesn’t work,” Smith said, speaking for nearly three minutes before the lethal injection took hold. “He’s the last word, the last person to give justice where justice is needed. Too many innocent people are being killed.”
His tone hardened as he continued. “He needs to quit. Get a backbone.
Our justice system is broken, and he has the power to stop this.” He then looked toward the witnesses in the observation room and warned, “We have more men waiting to die at Riverbend. I won’t be the first, and I won’t be the last.”
The execution marked the culmination of a case that began with a terrified 13-year-old boy’s desperate 911 call on the night of October 1, 1989.
Just after 11:20 p. m. , dispatchers in Nashville received a call from a residence on Ludy Street in the quiet Woodbine neighborhood.
The voice on the line was young and panicked. “Help me!” cried the boy, later identified as Jason Bernett.
In the background, the voice of his older brother, Chad, screamed out in terror. “Frank, no! God, help me!”
Then silence. Jason managed to utter one last thing before the line went dead: “324 Ludy Street.”
Officers were dispatched immediately and arrived within five minutes. But the house appeared still from the outside. Lights were off.
Nothing looked out of place. They knocked, got no answer, and left, assuming the call had been a false alarm.
The horror inside would not be discovered until the following afternoon, when a neighbor’s concern brought officers back to the home. What they found inside would haunt investigators for decades.
Three bodies lay in the house: Judy Roberts Smith, 36, and her two sons, 16-year-old Chad Bernett and 13-year-old Jason Bernett. The kitchen was complete chaos, with furniture overturned and blood smeared across the floor and walls.
Chad’s body lay face up on the tile floor. The telephone had been ripped from the wall, explaining the abrupt end to the 911 call. Investigators found an awl nearby, a sharp metal tool typically used for punching holes in leather or wood.
The tool had been turned into a weapon. Chad had been shot three times, once in the shoulder, once in the chest, and once just above his left eye. The last two shots were fired at point-blank range and were the fatal wounds.
But the shooting was only part of the brutality. Chad’s body showed signs of a desperate struggle. He had been stabbed multiple times in the chest, back, and abdomen.
His neck had been slashed, and his hands were torn with defensive wounds.
In the front bedroom, Judy was found on her back with blood spattered across the wall. She had been shot in the arm and the neck. The second shot was fired from close range, just two feet away, and shattered her spine.
She was paralyzed instantly, and death came soon after. But the killer was not finished. Her neck had also been slashed, and she had been stabbed multiple times with both a knife and the same awl-like weapon.
Jason’s body was found near the foot of the bed. He had not been shot, but his injuries were equally brutal. Defensive cuts covered his hands.
His neck was slashed, and he had been stabbed in the chest and stomach.
Two of those wounds had pierced major veins. According to the medical examiner, Jason bled out slowly, and it took minutes for him to die. He was found with his hands on his small intestine, which was protruding from his abdomen.
There were no signs of forced entry, but the back door had been left open. A kitchen table leg had been snapped clean off. A .
22 caliber shell casing was found in the den, and bullet holes marked the walls of both the bedroom and the den.
Ballistic experts later confirmed that the bullets pulled from Judy and Chad came from the same gun. A trail of blood led from the den down the hallway into the kitchen.
But what caught investigators’ attention most was a bloody palm print on the bed sheet next to Judy’s body. The print was missing two fingers, a detail that pointed them in one direction.
Oscar Franklin Smith, Judy’s estranged husband, had lost those same two fingers years earlier in a work accident. The evidence was mounting, but the full picture of the case involved a history of abuse that had been escalating for months.
Frank, as he was known, was one of seven children born in Ohio to Oscar Earl and Florence Smith. The family moved south to Robertson County, just 30 miles north of Nashville, during his early years.
He found steady work with a maintenance company in La Vergne. That is where his life crossed paths with Judith Lynn Roberts, a waitress at a Waffle House with two sons from a previous marriage.
Frank had children of his own: Laura, 18, and Merl, 15, both living with his parents nearby in Pleasant View. Frank and Judy married in 1985, and a year later they welcomed twin boys together, Chris and Casey.
It looked like a fresh start for a blended family. But by June of 1989, the marriage had fallen apart. A divorce was in motion, and the fight over the twins had turned bitter.
Judy had been granted temporary custody while Frank saw the boys every other weekend. But behind the legal filings, something darker was brewing. Judy, Chad, and Jason had all confided in others that they were afraid of Frank.
That summer, the danger became real. During a visit to Frank’s trailer on his family’s land in Pleasant View, he bit Jason on the back and held a gun to his head. He then kicked Judy and the older boys out with a chilling threat.
“Don’t touch the car. Don’t take the twins. And don’t call the police,” he warned.
“Or he’d kill her.”
In August, when Judy came back to collect her belongings, Frank attacked again. He tied her up, raped her, held a knife to her throat, and told her she was going to die.
By the time of the murders, warrants for aggravated assault had already been filed. But the violence did not slow down. It escalated.
Frank began calling Judy constantly at home and at work. Her co-workers overheard the threats. One remembered clearly that Frank said he would shoot her and stab her.
He also said he would kill Chad and Jason too, because in his eyes, she treated them better than his own sons.
In the final weeks before the murders, the threats turned even colder. While picking up the twins, Frank looked Judy’s father in the eye and said, “You tell Judy, I’ve been playing with her with kid gloves, but now the gloves are coming off.”
He meant it. Another time, he made it even clearer: if she ever left him, he would kill her. Investigators also discovered that Frank had taken out life insurance policies on Judy and her two older sons.
At trial, it was the bloody palm print that prosecutors leaned on most. Crime scene investigators testified that it matched Frank’s hand exactly, especially since two fingers were missing, just like the print at the scene.
Years later, a fingerprint expert hired by Frank’s legal team challenged that analysis, calling it flawed and rushed. But the jury did not need long to reach a verdict.
On July 26, 1990, Oscar Franklin Smith was found guilty of capital murder. Two days later, the jury sentenced him to death. His first execution date was set for December 3, 1990, but appeals quickly put everything on hold.
For more than three decades, Smith remained on death row while his legal team filed motions, challenged evidence, and pleaded for more time. Every request was denied.
An execution date was set for April 21, 2022. Smith chose not to select a method of execution, and under Tennessee law, the state defaulted to lethal injection.
For what he believed would be his final meal, Smith requested a double bacon cheeseburger, deep dish apple pie, and vanilla bean ice cream. He reportedly enjoyed every bite.
But just hours before that execution, everything changed. Governor Bill Lee issued a last-minute reprieve, announcing that a critical error had been discovered in the lethal injection protocol.
The chemicals had not been properly tested for endotoxins, a step required to ensure they were safe to use. Smith’s execution was called off, along with every scheduled execution in Tennessee for the rest of that year.
For the next two years, the Department of Correction rebuilt its execution protocol, eventually settling on a single-drug method using pentobarbital. That change reopened the door for executions to resume.
For the fourth time in 35 years, Smith faced an execution date. This time it was set for May 22, 2025. Once again, he was allowed to choose a final meal.
This time, Smith requested hot dogs, tater tots, and apple pie with vanilla ice cream. Under the state’s updated protocol, the meal was delivered the night before the execution and had to be finished by midnight.
On Thursday morning, Smith lay strapped to the gurney, his hands still and eyes open. His spiritual adviser stood nearby, softly praying and singing the hymn “I’ll Fly Away.”
At 10:32 a. m. , the curtain separating the execution chamber from the witness room was drawn back.
In those final moments, Smith spoke quietly with the adviser. “I didn’t kill her,” he said.
Two IV lines had been placed in his right arm. When asked for his final words, he took his time, speaking for nearly three minutes before the pentobarbital began flowing through the IV lines.
Smith kept speaking as the drug entered his system, but his voice grew weaker. By 10:38 a. m.
, he was struggling to form words, then stopped speaking altogether. His stomach was rising and falling slowly, and he appeared to fall asleep.
At 10:47 a. m. , he was declared dead.
Oscar Franklin Smith, a man who spent nearly 35 years on death row, was gone, leaving behind a case that will be remembered as one of the darkest chapters in Nashville’s criminal history.
