Trial to begin in intern's drugging, strangling

Jason Kyle Shephard was on a business trip Sept. 18, 2006, for the South Dakota sports scoreboard manufacturer where he worked as an intern. He checked in to a Chester County hotel, called his father, and told him he had plans to visit some of Philadelphia's tourist sites.

Later that night, Shephard sat talking about girls and drinking Gatorade in the Delaware County home of a coworker. The 23-year-old had no way of knowing his drink had been spiked with the date-rape drug GHB, that there was a sex den in the basement, and that a third man was in the home.

Shephard never lived to see the Philadelphia sites.

On Monday, the trial of William F. Smithson, 43, of Glen Mills, the man charged with strangling Shephard, will begin in Delaware County Court.

Jurors will hear conversations Smithson had with a former gay lover from Norfolk, Va.; learn the third man in the home was a former St. Joseph's University official who now stands accused of lying to police; and hear about the victim's small-town upbringing.

The trial has garnered so much attention that the judge imposed a gag order.

In Cavalier, N.D., a Norman Rockwell-type town of 1,500 about 20 miles from the Canadian border where Shephard grew up, the talk usually runs to corn prices and the high-school football team.

Shephard "was a great kid," said Douglas Heskin, the retired pastor of United Lutheran Church in Cavalier, where Shephard was confirmed. He described Shephard as someone who would talk with anybody but who was a little on the innocent side.

Shephard attended Northern State University in Aberdeen, S.D., and had taken a semester off to work as an intern with Daktronics. He loved to run and to hang out with friends at Taco Bell after midnight, and he had a winning smile, according to friends. His major was sports marketing and management.

About a month before his death, he stopped in to visit his college track coach.

"He was really excited about the internship," said the coach, Jim Fuller. "He was proud the job was going well and saw that as a career."

Shephard told Fuller about his planned trip east.

On Sept. 19, 2006, Shephard failed to show up for work. Smithson, the manager of the Edgmont office of Daktronics, filed a missing person report. He told police that he and Shephard had dinner together the night before and that he had dropped the intern back at the Holiday Inn in West Whiteland Township, Chester County.

Smithson also picked up Shephard's father, who had been notified of his son's disappearance, at the airport.

Daniel Hall, 31, of Virginia Beach, has told police Smithson called him that same day and asked him to come to his Tanguy Road home in Glen Mills. Hall has testified that when he arrived, Smithson was acting "weird" and said "something had happened." Hall found the body of a young man in one of the upstairs bedrooms. He left for Virginia immediately and later called Norfolk police.

Fen Bruce Covington, 58, of State College is charged with bringing drugs into Smithson's home the day Shephard was killed. Covington, a former director of development at St. Joseph's University, first denied being in the home that night but later told police he was asleep in the basement.

According to a February police criminal complaint in Montgomery County, where he is awaiting trial for drug possession in an unrelated case, Covington is also "a suspect in the drugging and participant in a sexual assault/rape of a 27-year-old male" who was hospitalized in Philadelphia.

Two days after Shephard was reported missing, police found Smithson by his grandmother's grave at a Marple Township cemetery.

"You're going to want to go into my basement," Smithson told police, according to court documents.

When police searched his home, they found Shephard's body wrapped in floral and pastel sheets and lying in the basement.