Shock update Stephen Smith case as expert on second autopsy Heather Walsh-Haney sued for 'keeping human remains at lab'

A LAWSUIT against an expert who worked on Stephen Smith's second autopsy has resurfaced, which alleges that she and her colleagues kept part of another murder victim's remains for over 30 years.

Investigators initially believed that Smith, 19, was killed in a hit-and-run when his body was found strewn across a road in South Carolina in July 2015.

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But Smith’s mom Sandy has claimed that her son was murdered and raised funds for a new autopsy.

Smith's body was exhumed and reexamined at the beginning of April 2023.

Kenneth Kinsey, of the Orangeburg County Sheriff’s Department, told NewsNation in early April that pathologists seemed to be positive after the body was exhumed.

He said: “I do know it is a success. They said they did collect evidence.

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“It was very good documentation, and everybody was upbeat about the information that was collected.

“That’s not always the situation when you exhume someone after so many years.”

However, another mystery has been reopened after it was revealed that Heather Walsh-Haney, a forensic anthropologist and Florida Gulf Coast University professor who took part in Smith's second autopsy, had a pending lawsuit against her and her colleagues.

The lawsuit, which individually named three medical examiners and Walsh-Haney, as well as Florida's District 4 medical examiner's office, claimed that the anthropologist had bones of a murdered Florida teen in her possession for a decade without permission from the girl's family.

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These remains belonged to Tina Lovett, 17, who was murdered in April 1984.

The Lovetts never got any answers as to who Tina's killer was as the charges filed against the only suspect in the case were dismissed because of little evidence.

Tina's family filed the lawsuit in March 2019, which alleged: "the medical examiner, University of Florida, Florida Gulf Coast University, as well as their employees retained Ms. Lovett’s skull and upper body for 33 years."

The suit claimed that Walsh-Haney as well as former and current Medical Examiners Bonafacio Floro, Margarita Arruza, and Valerie Rao unlawfully kept Lovett's remains for personal, educational, and research use without providing notice or seeking permission.

From 1992 until May 2000, Tina's remains were in the C.A. Pound Laboratory at the University of Florida.

Walsh-Haney, who worked for the university at the time, was the one who released the bones back to the Medical Examiner's Office in Jacksonville, The Florida Times-Union reported.

However, in August 2005, Walsh-Haney was handed back the remains, now as an employee at Florida Gulf Coast University.

In 2017, Walsh-Haney told The Florida Times-Union that Arruza asked her as an anthropology consultant to take physical possession of Tina's remains on behalf of the Medical Examiner's Office.

This was part of a larger effort to inventory skeletal remains, according to Walsh-Haney.

The bones were stored at the Medical Examiner's Office in Naples, Walsh-Haney said.

"My understanding was that Ms. Lovett's remains may have been retained by the medical examiner because of their evidentiary value because the perpetrator of this crime has not been prosecuted," according to Walsh-Haney.

Walsh-Haney then sent the remains to Jacksonville in July 2016.

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When the lawsuit was filed, Walsh-Haney told Action News Jax: “I have sympathy for Lovett’s family, the claims regarding my role as a consultant for the ME’s office are baseless, my actions for possessing her remains were in compliance with the medical examiners legal jurisdiction over her remains.”​

Sandy Smith's attorney Eric Bland said he didn't know about the pending lawsuit.

“Dr. Haney came highly recommended," he told South Carolina news outlet The State.

He added: "There are not many in her field of expertise that are pathology anthropologists who do autopsies. I did not know of her name or reputation prior to the Stephen Smith matter.”

Rao also spoke out against the lawsuit.

In 2017, she said the medical examiner's office's other facilities had Tina's remains for so many years because the teen's case was still open and the office only had so much space to keep people's remains.

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She added that it's important to preserve what could be considered evidence.

It's unclear if or when Tina's case closed.