What happened to the girl who survived the Pine Hill massacre?

Every year about this time, Miriam Smith scours the Internet for one name. She's looking for "anything new" about Louis Giambi, and is relieved when she finds that he's where he's supposed to be — locked up in New Jersey State Prison.

Giambi was convicted of murdering her parents and little sister more than three decades ago in a notorious mistaken-identity hit.

» UPDATE: She survived the Pine Hill Massacre when she was only 5. Now, the man who killed her family has died.

For a year after the April 17, 1982, killings of William and Catherine Stuart and their 2-year-old daughter, Sandra, in their Pine Hill home, the crime went unsolved, leaving the Camden County suburb on edge. Authorities eventually linked it to Giambi, a meth gang member who was hired to kill a witness in a criminal case, but went to the wrong address.

At trial, Miriam was 7 years old, a tiny figure on the stand. She couldn't identify the killer but told what happened that awful night when she was the only one in her family to survive.

Dennis Wixted, the prosecuting attorney, recalls her as "quiet, subdued as a witness, who did not try to amplify anything."

Whatever happened to that little girl? Now 39, she says it took her decades to recover from the calamity.

The mother of four tells the tale in the same matter-of-fact way she addressed the jury as a child — except for when it comes to Giambi.

"I hope he rots in there," she says. Only the death penalty would have been sweeter.

The murders, she said, threw her into a tailspin of drugs, prostitution, and street life, and tore apart family ties. But the tragedy also made her more resilient and caring, she said, and she hopes her story will inspire others not to give up hope.

"It took me many, many years being lost in my addiction, countless lonely and cold nights, to finally realize I wanted something different," she said in one of several recent conversations. "I want people to know it is never too late to change and turn your life around into something positive."

She'd been a street child in the port city of Callao, Peru, the youngest of nine children and scavenging in trash bins, when she was adopted by the Stuarts. William Stuart, 33, was an insurance broker, Catherine, 34 — Cass to her family — a typing and stenography teacher.

They were in Peru to adopt 7-week-old Sandra when 21/2-year-old Miriam was brought to their attention.

"She was kind of thrown into the deal," said Betty Ali, Catherine's sister and a former nun.

In South Jersey, Miriam found the loving embrace of new cousins, aunts, uncles, and two sets of grandparents. She remembers an idyllic life: a backyard swing, Christmases with family, watching Captain Kangaroo with Mom.

Very early on, Ali said, Miriam showed traits she likely picked up on the streets of Peru — both insecurity and resourcefulness. Ali recalled the time Miriam wore several dresses all at once, fearing someone would take away those she didn't wear.

Giambi was in jail on drug charges when suspicion fell on him for the murders. He would explain his creed to a cellmate: "When you go in to do something like this, you don't leave any eyewitnesses, big, little, or small."

That rainy night, however, Giambi was sloppy.

He smashed into the Stuarts' house through a rear door, herded the adults into an upstairs bathroom, and shot each in the face with a silenced .22-caliber handgun. Then he shot 2-year-old Sandra, who couldn't stop wailing.

Miriam, 5, sat petrified in the dark in a nearby bedroom. She doesn't know if Giambi was even aware she was there.

With the crime unsolved, Miriam was spirited away for her safety to South Carolina to be with the family of William's brother John.

Then authorities caught a couple of breaks.

Giambi was picked up by federal agents in a meth sweep. He made bail. One who didn't turned informant. Then Patrick Borror, a jailhouse lawyer, told authorities Giambi had shared with him the story of the mistaken hit.

Giambi was indicted in December 1983 and convicted six months later. He insisted he was innocent.

The move to South Carolina left Miriam feeling unsettled and unloved.

"I was very angry that my parents died," she said. "I blamed everybody; I even blamed myself, especially for my sister." She was seized with guilt.

She had nightmares and woke up screaming, Ali said. She was more than John and Pam Stuart, who had young children of their own, could handle, Ali said. Miriam was sent back to South Jersey to be with her paternal grandparents in Cherry Hill.

"As she grew up, she was a tough child," Ali said. "She was no angel in school, either." Evidently, that was what the older Stuarts also concluded, for one day, according to Ali, they dropped her off at the home of her maternal grandparents, the Hewitts.

Before long, her presence proved to be a strain even on them; Ali said it broke up their marriage.

The Hewitts have died. John Stuart did not respond to requests for an interview.

By middle school, Miriam said, she was smoking pot and snorting cocaine. At 15, she had her first child, with a boyfriend who was a fellow addict. "He showed me love; what I wanted was attention," she says. A broken marriage to another man followed. Then came jail and years of living on the streets of Philadelphia.

The word that comes to Wixted's mind when he thinks of Miriam is "headstrong," and he offers this anecdote:

When she came of age and gained access to an inheritance, she wanted a car. Wixted sent her to a Nissan dealer. Soon she had a minor accident and went back to trade it in for another new one. Neither Wixted nor the dealer could change her mind.

She "blew through" more than $500,000 in insurance money, Ali said.

"The tragedy of it was that she was a young child without the guidance of her parents, despite having a loving extended family," said Wixted, now a defense lawyer in Camden.

The way Miriam's life spiraled is familiar to Mary Onama, therapist and executive director of Victim Services Center of Montgomery County. The sense of bereavement compounds the trauma of homicide, Onama said, and risky behavior can follow.

For Miriam, prostitution nearly was fatal. An irate client ran over her with his car, fracturing her pelvis, collarbone, and nose, and puncturing her lung. She could not walk for almost two months.

One wound hasn't healed — her estrangement from the Stuarts in South Carolina. Her last contact with them was by email in 2010, nearly a year after she had emerged from drug rehab.

She had written to John Stuart expressing a desire to "reunite."

"Not only did I always want a relationship, but I would like to know more about my dad and any stories that you remember," she wrote.

"I know I was a very rebellious child and always acting out, but I was lonely, scared, and very confused," she added.

John Stuart wrote back:

"Yes, you were young, but you were out of control and there was nothing we could do about it.

"Please be assured there was never any blame or resentment toward you about what happened in Pine Hill. NONE!!"

He wrote movingly of his slain brother:

"Besides family, his greatest love was music. … Before marriage he studied piano with one of the greatest classical pianists around at the time. … Once married, he was not able to devote the time necessary to maintain his skills so he gave up his music dream and started working real world type jobs."

But, he added, "I am afraid things will never be what they could have been under different circumstances."

His tone of finality still rankles her.

A chance meeting in a Philadelphia Dunkin' Donuts in March 2009 would prove to be a turning point in her life.

"It was crowded, but I noticed Miriam there," recalled Eric Smith, 47, a former pastor who trains staff for a restaurant company.

She had a warm smile. A first date followed, at a Rib Ranch that used to be at Aramingo and Castor. He would become Miriam's "rock," as Ali puts it.

He was the one Miriam turned to when she was arrested that October and charged with dealing drugs. She feared a long sentence, but got rehab.

The arrest woke her up, Miriam says. She has been sober since. She's graduated from Community College of Philadelphia and works at two addiction-treatment agencies.

Three years ago, she and Eric married. He marvels at her survival skills and generous nature. About her history with drugs, he said: "You care for who you care for; you love who you love."

She marvels that every time she walks through the door, "smiles and little arms smother me."

The couple live in a Tacony rowhouse that bustles with children — their 2-year-old daughter, Peyton, and children and grandchildren from prior relationships.

The man whose cruelty caused her so much pain declined to be interviewed. Miriam's fear that he may one day emerge from prison likely is misplaced. Giambi, 79, is serving three consecutive life terms. His parole eligibility date: 2064.

2017 editor’s note: In 2016, Miriam Smith spoke of the decades it had taken her to overcome the childhood trauma of seeing her adoptive family wiped out by a hit man who mistook their Pine Hill, N.J., house for his intended target. Years of trouble followed: broken family ties, street life, drugs, prostitution, jail.

Then she found the resolve to get back on her feet, and she found the man — her husband now — who is the love of her life and the father of their youngest child, Peyton.

In the year since her story appeared in the Inquirer, Peyton has turned 3 — “and going on 10” — and Smith 40. She continues to work at two addiction-treatment facilities.

Thoughts of the parents and baby sister she lost are never far. “It hurts to know my kids miss out on knowing them and how wonderful they were,” Smith says.

What is new is a desire to locate members of her birth family in Peru. “A co-worker of mine is adopted and she was discussing that she did an Ancestry.com DNA and it had me thinking I may be able to find out more about my roots so that I can pass it down to my children,” Smith said.