Weeks before her death, Morrisville murder victim went from ‘happy’ to meek, tired, scared, father says

The last time that Ronald Smith laid eyes on his daughter, in the predawn hours of Feb. 1, after a desperate ride north from his home in Maryland, through a barely cracked front door in a basement apartment, she seemed like an entirely different person from the one he knew.

Meek. Tired. Scared. The complete opposite of the vibrant young woman he talked to almost daily. But in the final weeks of her life, Naa’Irah Smith withdrew from her father and so many others around her — including her fiance — except for sending a few terse text messages.

Messages that said she needed to make “herself right before going through the pearly gates,” Smith said. About how the world would end before February turned to March.

On Monday, Naa’Irah Smith, 25, was found dead alongside four other members of her family in the Morrisville apartment her father had visited weeks earlier.

“She was a great child, a happy person,” Smith said Thursday, taking a break from making funeral arrangements for his daughter.

Bucks County prosecutors have charged Naa’Irah Smith’s mother, Shana S. Decree, 45, with killing her daughter; her son Damon, 13; her sister Jamillah Campbell, 42; and Campbell’s twin 9-year-old daughters, Imani and Erika Allen. Smith’s half-sister Dominique Decree, 19, is also charged with homicide and conspiracy in connection with the deaths.

The mother-daughter duo survived what they told police was a murder-suicide pact, saying everyone in their cramped unit in the Robert Morris Apartments “wanted to die” and had discussed suicide. The women gave slightly divergent accounts of what happened in the apartment, but both confessed to fatally choking some of their relatives.

Beyond that, details are scarce, as investigators work to piece together what preceded the grisly discovery of the five bodies, found during an unannounced visit by a caseworker from Bucks County Children and Youth. The social services agency had been contacted by the Morrisville School District and asked to check on the family after Decree’s teenage son was absent from school for nearly 10 days earlier in the month.

The victims’ relatives told the Inquirer that Decree, Smith, and Campbell had retreated from the world in the two weeks before their deaths. Decree and Campbell pulled their kids out of school, and Smith told her aunt that she was afraid to leave the house because of the “demons” they saw all around them.

Ronald Smith observed the same sudden shift in behavior in his daughter.

“It was like a switch was flipped,” he said. “I talked to Naa’Irah all throughout the month of January, and then nothing.”

He began to worry on Jan. 31, when he received a frantic call from Timothy Cason, his daughter’s fiance. He said Naa’Irah wasn’t coming home at night, spending more and more time with her mother. Cason hadn’t heard from her since Jan. 28, he said.

At the same time, Cason’s mother, Tiffany Owens, expressed similar concern.

In the days since Naa’Irah Smith suddenly moved out of the house she shared with Cason in Morrisville, she turned unnaturally quiet, letting the phone ring and barely responding to text messages, Owens said Thursday.

After sending dozens of concerned text messages to Smith, Owens said, Smith explained that she needed some time alone and was “trying to become one with God.”

When Cason called Ronald Smith late on Jan. 31, he could tell from the tone of his voice that something was terribly wrong. Smith drove nonstop to Decree’s front door. He got there at 3 a.m. They wouldn’t let him in.

He called Morrisville police, and with the help of an officer, Smith finally coaxed his daughter into opening the front door.

Owens, Cason, and some other members of their family joined Smith. Owens recalled that Naa’Irah was crying when they arrived, and had a long blanket draped over her shoulders, although she assured everyone that all was well.

“She didn’t look the same, she couldn’t look me in the eyes," Smith said of his daughter. “It looked like she was programmed not to come outside. It was so strange.”

There wasn’t much more he could do, he said. His subsequent attempts to call her went straight to voicemail, as if she had blocked his number. He later learned that his daughter had requested a leave of absence from cosmetology school, one month before her expected graduation.

Smith is convinced that Decree was manipulating their daughter, and speculated that she may have been drugged. Decree suffered from lupus, and police found prescription medicine in the apartment, investigators said.

“She trusted her mother so much, she’d do anything for her,” Smith said. “She loves her mom, that’s how she got caught up.”

Funeral arrangements for his daughter, as well as the four other victims, were pending Thursday — the bodies were expected to be released by the county medical examiner early Friday, Smith said. The results of autopsies likely won’t be available for several weeks.