Special coverage: The Rhiannon Smith case

Mysteries surround girl’s disappearance

WINSTED — A mysterious note left behind Sept. 1, the day Rhiannon Smith disappeared from her home, raised several red flags, right from the beginning.

The letter, written on a computer and printed on white paper, begins, “Dear Dale and Brian.�

Rhiannon’s grandmother, Dale Smith, explains the salutation is “very unlike Rhiannon. She never called us that — ever — especially Brian. She always called him ‘Papa.’�

The letter continues to explain with emotion and fear that Rhiannon is leaving to run from a male she calls Kasey, who has also been identified as 20-year-old Florida man Joey Schneider, an employee at a gift shop at Disney World in Orlando, with whom Rhiannon had once had an online affair. They remained in contact online and by phone until recently, according to Schneider, who contacted Winsted police at the urging of another friend, Kelley McGuire.

Both Schneider and McGuire have had repeated contact with The Winsted Journal regarding Rhiannon’s case. McGuire, of Torrington, has started a Facebook page devoted to helping find her close friend.

The mysterious letter also states that Rhiannon had “dated� Schneider her entire freshman year in high school — though the relationship apparently only existed online — and he is “the reason I am this way now.�

The letter goes on to claim that “Kasey, or rather Joey, wants to kill me� and everyone she loves, including her grandparents. “I will never forgive myself for the pain my absence will inflict upon you both and nor do I enjoy this parting, but it is for your safety, he doesn’t know I have grandparents,� the letter says.

In e-mails discovered by The Winsted Journal between Schneider and Rhiannon, he writes to her he was bored and had looked up her exact address and the name and age of her sstep-grandfather.

The letter then mentions five other people — all of whom are believed to be real people — using nicknames. Max, Jake, Nick, Sanji and Ashely are mentioned. Max has been positively identified as 20-year-old Jeffrey Woods of Alabama.

The letter Rhiannon left claims “Max� was trying to run from Schneider and that Max ultimately committed suicide in Alabama — a false claim, according to Winchester Police Department Sgt. Kevin Kinahan, who has interviewed Jeffrey Woods.

The letter goes on to say that “Jake, Nick and Sanji are taking me to my girlfriend Ashely in MA then we are all going to PEI or Cannda [sic].�

That part of the letter raises several more red flags. Dale Smith said Rhiannon had mentioned Jake, Nick and Sanji, who are possibly people she met online, and that Jake and Nick were around Rhiannon’s age, but Sanji was known as Nick’s older male partner. They may live in a condo near Westfarms Mall.

However, Smith also knows that Jake, Nick and Sanji are not real names. Most of Rhiannon’s friends and acquaintances used nicknames for each other, with Rhiannon going by the name Wolf-e.

Dale Smith said she still thinks “Jake� may be the key to what happened to Rhiannon. Who exactly Jake is continues to be a mystery. Smith also said there were many spelling and grammatical errors in the letter, suggesting either that it was written under duress or that it wasn’t written by Rhiannon at all.

Whichever the case, it remains a mystery as to why and how Rhiannon vanished between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m. on Sept. 2.

Questions quickly built up following Rhiannon’s disappearance. Initially treating the case as a classic runaway, police noted that threats Rhiannon mentioned in her letter appeared to be false, linking names of her friends to fictional characters in a Japanese cartoon. But when additional information came to light regarding some psychological issues, the case was reclassified as “endangered runaway.�

Still unknown are the identities of Jake, Nick, Sanji and Ashely who are mentioned in Rhiannon’s supposed runaway letter.

Smith explained, “Rhiannon would always tell me about Jake, as she would talk to him online, apparently he dated a friend of hers. She told me Jake lived with his grandparents but then left to move in with Nick and Sanji, in their condominium near Westfarms Mall. She told me Jake just had gotten a job at the Walmart near the mall, but of course I don’t know how much of that is true, or if she just would tell it to me to cover up the truth of who these people are.�

Friends and family still believe identifying these mysterious contacts is crucial to finding Rhiannon. There has been some online chatter suggesting Jeffrey Woods may be “Jake,� but there are numerous profiles opened under code names, making the trail difficult to follow. Friends are hoping that a new online account will turn up, and that it will be Rhiannon’s.

Latest News

Angela Derrico Carabine

SHARON — Angela Derrick Carabine, 74, died May 16, 2025, at Vassar Hospital in Poughkeepsie, New York. She was the wife of Michael Carabine and mother of Caitlin Carabine McLean.

A funeral Mass will be celebrated on June 6 at 11:00 a.m. at Saint Katri (St Bernards Church) Church. Burial will follow at St. Bernards Cemetery. A complete obituary can be found on the website of the Kenny Funeral home kennyfuneralhomes.com.

Revisiting ‘The Killing Fields’ with Sam Waterston

Sam Waterston

Jennifer Almquist

On June 7 at 3 p.m., the Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington will host a benefit screening of “The Killing Fields,” Roland Joffé’s 1984 drama about the Khmer Rouge and the two journalists, Cambodian Dith Pran and New York Times correspondent Sydney Schanberg, whose story carried the weight of a nation’s tragedy.

The film, which earned three Academy Awards and seven nominations — including one for Best Actor for Sam Waterston — will be followed by a rare conversation between Waterston and his longtime collaborator and acclaimed television and theater director Matthew Penn.

Keep ReadingShow less
The art of place: maps by Scott Reinhard

Scott Reinhard, graphic designer, cartographer, former Graphics Editor at the New York Times, took time out from setting up his show “Here, Here, Here, Here- Maps as Art” to explain his process of working.Here he explains one of the “Heres”, the Hunt Library’s location on earth (the orange dot below his hand).

obin Roraback

Map lovers know that as well as providing the vital functions of location and guidance, maps can also be works of art.With an exhibition titled “Here, Here, Here, Here — Maps as Art,” Scott Reinhard, graphic designer and cartographer, shows this to be true. The exhibition opens on June 7 at the David M. Hunt Library at 63 Main St., Falls Village, and will be the first solo exhibition for Reinhard.

Reinhard explained how he came to be a mapmaker. “Mapping as a part of my career was somewhat unexpected.I took an introduction to geographic information systems (GIS), the technological side of mapmaking, when I was in graduate school for graphic design at North Carolina State.GIS opened up a whole new world, new tools, and data as a medium to play with.”

Keep ReadingShow less