why not visit the meme

Image via me_irl/Reddit

Why not visit this good new meme about animals?

'why not visit' meme will take you all over the planet..

Jay Hathaway

Internet Culture

Posted on Mar 9, 2017   Updated on May 24, 2021, 9:16 pm CDT

Meme aficionados have long found glee in giving animals more descriptive names: witness the raccoon’s transformation into the “ trash panda ,” or the fire ant becoming a “ spicy boy .” This week, they’re taking it to an unprecedented level, renaming animals and plants by the half-dozen. Why not visit the forest … of memes?

The “why not visit” meme template that’s popping off this week has a few crucial elements: first, pick a wildlife-rich biome. Next, make a grid of six animals (or plants) that live there. Give them absurd names that are either vividly descriptive or completely wrong. Bonus points if the animal in the bottom center square has a clergy-themed name, like “Brother Abernathy” or “Archbishop Frank.”

Let’s take a look at a few more:

The “Why not visit?” meme is obviously very popular, but where did it come from? One possible inspiration is this image, which dates back to at least October 2016. It spent Thursday morning at the top of Reddit’s me_irl, a major incubator of new meme trends:

This animal-renaming meme, which is at least a month old, is also doing well on me_irl:

The Daily Dot reached out to Redditor “welcometomymemepage,” who (unsurprisingly!) runs a meme page  and confirmed he kickstarted the “Why not visit?” posts.

“It came from a lot of different memes where people would list a category of things, like animals, fruits, or any collection of objects and give them silly names. The sort of meme has been around for a while. All I did was start grouping them by biome.”

Meanwhile, the “Why not visit?” meme has already started to merge with other popular memes, like January’s weird obsession with Italy :

And the images are becoming more distorted, although they’re not yet fully “ deep fried “—with their colors blown out and glowing eyes on every character.

Look for these memes to stick around, and to get way weirder once people run out of basic types of animal habitat to document. Further cross-pollinating with existing memes is a virtual certainty. This format is just as well suited to meme-ified pop cultural products like the Icelandic kids’ show  Lazy Town,  or the dank animated features  Shrek and  Bee Movie. 

Why not visit this meme before it gets stale and makes the jump to the Facebook mainstream?

Jay Hathaway is a former senior writer who specialized in internet memes and weird online culture. He previously served as the Daily Dot’s news editor, was a staff writer at Gawker, and edited the classic websites Urlesque and Download Squad. His work has also appeared on nymag.com, suicidegirls.com, and the Morning News.

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This Is Why Aliens Don’t Visit Us: 12 Hilarious Memes Explaining Our Cosmic Isolation

Decoding ‘This Is Why Aliens Don’t Visit Us’ Through Hilarious Memes

In a universe teeming with countless celestial wonders and galaxies, it’s a cosmic curiosity that Earth remains conspicuously devoid of interstellar visitors. For years, we’ve pondered the question: “Why don’t aliens come to visit us?” The answer, it seems, can be found in the realm of humor and satire. Thanks to the creative minds of internet meme-makers, we now have a collection of side-splitting and thought-provoking memes that humorously delve into the eccentricities and quirks of humanity, helping us grasp why “This Is Why Aliens Don’t Visit Us.”

These funny memes serve as a lighthearted exploration of the idiosyncrasies that define our species, presenting a satirical lens through which we can view our behavior. It’s as if these humorous creations remind us that even if extraterrestrial civilizations exist out there, they might be scratching their metaphorical alien heads, pondering why they should pay Earth a visit when they can enjoy the cosmic comedy from afar.

In a world that often takes itself too seriously, these funny memes allow us to embrace the lighter side of existence, ponder our cosmic isolation, and share a collective laugh about the peculiarities that define our species. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy the witty creations that illustrate, with a humorous touch, why “ This Is Why Aliens Don’t Visit Us. “

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Donna Kelce shared her Mother’s Day wish list – and we want everything

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Monica Lewinsky’s take on the Taylor Swift ‘asylum’ meme is making people gasp

Monica Lewinsky has brought down the house with her take on the latest Taylor Swift meme.

The activist nailed her entry in the meme that uses a lyric from one of Swift's newly released songs: "You wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me.” 

People have been posting the line — taken from the track “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” off Swift's new album, “The Tortured Poets Department” — with photos of places that represent memories from childhood or haunted times in their lives.

Lewinsky posted a photo of the White House on X with the Swift lyric, leaving commenters in awe.

"If tweeting was an Olympic sport, Monica Lewinsky won a gold medal with this gem," one person wrote on X .

"This is iconic," another person posted .

Lewinsky, 50, was an intern at the White House when she had a sexual relationship with then-President Bill Clinton that led to impeachment proceedings against him in 1998.

She was vilified in the wake of the affair, and she hid from public life for years. Lewinsky has since become an anti-bullying activist .

The cast of MTV's "Jersey Shore" also had a creative take on the meme.

A TikTok video showing the "asylum" that raised them depicted the beach house in Seaside Heights, New Jersey, where they became stars in the 2000s.

Scott Stump is a trending reporter and the writer of the daily newsletter This is TODAY (which you should subscribe to here! ) that brings the day's news, health tips, parenting stories, recipes and a daily delight right to your inbox. He has been a regular contributor for TODAY.com since 2011, producing features and news for pop culture, parents, politics, health, style, food and pretty much everything else. 

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Why Are We Gambling With America’s Future?

By David Brooks

Opinion Columnist

Over the past few decades, in a surge of bipartisan national self-confidence, the federal government has borrowed a lot of money, sometimes in response to national emergencies and sometimes to do the things people thought were worth doing. We gave ourselves permission to incur all this debt because interest rates were low and many people assumed that things would stay that way, so the costs of carrying that much debt wouldn’t be too onerous.

Unfortunately, that assumption turned out to be incorrect. Interest rates have risen. According to The Wall Street Journal , America is expected to spend $870 billion, or 3.1 percent of gross domestic product, this year on interest payments on the federal debt. According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget , the government will spend more on interest payments than on the entire defense budget. Within three years, if interest rates remain high, payments on the debt could become the federal government’s second-largest expenditure, behind Social Security.

When money is tight, as it is now, government borrowing competes with private borrowing, driving interest rates up for everybody. A 2019 Congressional Budget Office study found that every 10 percent increase in the debt-to-G.D.P. ratio results in an increase in interest rates of two-tenths to three-tenths of a percentage point. That makes voters miserable, as they are now, because it’s more expensive to, say, get a mortgage or some other kind of loan.

It makes government accountants miserable because the very act of borrowing money to pay off debt can drive interest rates higher and make the prospect of paying off debt even more expensive. You have to worry about the long-term nightmare possibility of a debt spiral, in which you have to borrow and borrow to service the debt while the act of borrowing itself makes paying off the debt more unaffordable.

Pretty soon, you’re staring at Ferguson’s Law. This is the principle enunciated by the historian Niall Ferguson that any nation that spends more on interest payments on the debt than on military spending will slip into decline. It happened to Hapsburg Spain, the Ottoman Empire, the British Empire and prerevolutionary France. Will it happen to us?

You don’t have to get to these nightmare scenarios to see all the problems that can be caused by excessive federal debt. All that fiscal stimulus can cause inflation, as it is doing now. Public sector borrowing can crowd out private sector borrowing, thus slowing the economic growth you need to pay off the debt.

The debt burden also constrains future administrations, which have to worry so much about paying off the debt they are less able to invest in programs that might increase growth, reduce child poverty, educate children, house people or respond to emergencies. Today’s high interest rate environment is already hammering, say, the housing construction industry and making housing even more unaffordable.

The United States continues to borrow all this money even though classical Keynesian theory tells us to borrow in times of recession but commit to debt reduction in times like these, when growth is good.

We continue to go deeper into debt even though the storm clouds are gathering around the world. The axis of resentment — China, Russia and Iran — is on the march, making the world a more dangerous place and possibly necessitating a surge in military spending and a rapid need to beef up our military manufacturing infrastructure.

We continue to go further into debt even though the baby boom generation is aging, making programs like Social Security and Medicare more and more costly. The federal government already spends $6 on senior citizens for every $1 on children, which is not exactly investing in the future.

Personally, I’m not bothered that we spent all that borrowed money during Covid. We clearly needed to, and we’ve emerged from the pandemic with a dynamic economy. My concern is that deficit reduction is not high on either party’s agenda right now. Donald Trump has proposed whopping tax cuts. The Biden administration has an ambitious second-term agenda that would involve everything from industrial policy to student debt forgiveness to growth through fiscal stimulus.

Even if a president proposed debt reduction (as Biden has to some degree), a polarized Congress probably couldn’t pass it. As the budget expert Maya MacGuineas has pointed out, these days Congress favors giveaways over budget choices. It is infinitely more difficult to get bipartisan majorities to cut spending or raise taxes on the bulk of Americans than it is to get it to spend with borrowed money.

Ultimately responsibility lies with the voters. In the 1990s, Americans saw how high government debt was raising their interest rates. Voters put tremendous pressure on politicians to get the fiscal house in order. Along came Ross Perot and deficit reduction plans under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Voters today have not yet made that connection. When they do, I suspect the political landscape will shift massively.

Maybe none of the problems I’m describing will get worse. Maybe interest rates will fall (though they have remained stubbornly high). Maybe economic growth will outpace interest rate increases, making the debt more affordable. Maybe the government will be able to pour massive stimulus into the economy without leading to continued inflation and high rates.

But this is a gigantic gamble. It’s a gamble that rosy scenarios about future inflation and interest rate declines will come to pass. It’s a gamble that nothing unexpectedly bad will happen in the world. It’s a gamble that our leadership class is so good at what it does that we can continue to walk along the cliff’s edge without any danger of falling over.

At some point all this self-confidence begins to look like hubris or a rationalization for: We want to spend the future’s money on ourselves. Prudence is a boring virtue, but the prudent course is to get the United States on a more sustainable course. As the meme artists on the internet might say (in slightly more colorful language), you mess around with debt, and sooner or later you’ll find out.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

David Brooks has been a columnist with The Times since 2003. He is the author, most recently,  of “How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen.” @ nytdavidbrooks

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Falcons GM Talking to Team's Owner After Drafting Michael Penix Jr. Leads to Jokes

Fans had too much fun with this viral video.

• Author: Andy Nesbitt

The Atlanta Falcons made a stunning move in the first round of the 2024 NFL draft when they used the eighth pick on Washington QB Michael Penix Jr. That selection, of course, comes after the team signed veteran QB Kirk Cousins to a huge deal in free agency .

While everyone in the football world was rightfully floored by the pick , footage from inside the Falcons' war room went viral on social media with fans making jokes about what GM Terry Fontenot might have been saying to Falcons owner Arthur Blank moments after the pick was made.

Here's how that scene played out:

This very much looks like Terry Fontenot trying to explain himself #Falcons #NFLDraft pic.twitter.com/1vl7CgIrfV — Cody Chaffins (@CodyChaffins) April 26, 2024

Fans had too much fun with that:

“You have 5 seconds to convince me why I shouldn’t fire you on the spot. Go.” https://t.co/qZujnU7tJn — Tope Imade (@iSpaceFace) April 26, 2024

Saints really installed this man as a sleeper agent to tear the Falcons down from the inside. Crazy to watch in real time https://t.co/Hkmb9CtzsM — Moneybagg Leaux ⚜️ (@LeauxLife504) April 26, 2024

Read the body language of everyone in that room... yikes. lol https://t.co/JDAj2S4oxA — Dan Karpuc (@DanielKarpuc) April 26, 2024

Pretty sure Bill Belichick would not have taken a quarterback there https://t.co/HpOEQJn8H6 — FitzyGFY 🍺 (brew checkmark) (@FitzyGFY) April 26, 2024

Terry tryna come into the facility tomorrow https://t.co/9ooJD3DlMp pic.twitter.com/q8ihtV731I — Coach Tez (@Scrappy25_) April 26, 2024

He’s about to get that HR email tomorrow morning https://t.co/azwEusoxvR — Maybe: Eric (@_diezeric) April 26, 2024

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The Taylor Swift Meme Making Me Run Screaming From Twitter

Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about in pop culture.

Kevin Fallon

Senior Editor, Obsessed

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty Images/X

• The world can’t wait for that Challengers kiss .
• The most annoying meme of the week.
• Stars are just faking relationships now.
• The most hilarious response to that Bluey episode .
• Spice up your life!

I’m Heading to the Asylum

The only thing worse than a meme that completely floods your social media timeline is not understanding what in God’s name the meme means. As a burgeoning Old Person, this has become a frustratingly common occurrence. So in between refilling my acid reflux prescription and icing my sore knees, I finally broke down and Googled the provenance of the meme that had been assaulting me all week, and now I’m more annoyed than I was when I was just blissfully elderly, clueless, and out of touch.

All week, I logged onto Twitter, or X, or Absolute Hell—whatever we want to call it these days—and there were endless posts of random images captioned, “You wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me.” At first, I thought it was poetic, a rare instance of social media earnestness. Then I noticed some of the photos—a picture of Seattle Grace Hospital from Grey’s Anatomy , the storefront of Aeropostale at a mall, the log-in page for Tumblr—and wondered if the line was some nostalgic reference to millennial childhoods that I had forgotten about.

Then Monica Lewinsky participated in the meme, posting a photo of the White House along with the standard caption, and mainstream media started to notice and report on it. That’s how I learned that this whole meme is a reference to a Taylor Swift lyric from The Tortured Poets Department . Seriously?!

Look, I’m not typically one to harsh anyone’s buzz. People should have fun when they can in this miserable time right now. And I can’t really articulate why this bothers so much, other than understanding that I’m more irritated than usual by this particular meme. But there’s something so dystopian about the inescapability: Beyond the discourse that has overtaken every other corner of the pop-culture water cooler in this last week, Taylor Swift’s new album has now staged a coup over my social media timeline too.

I’m a Taylor Swift agnostic. It’s a typically peaceful existence. I like her music well enough and have no strong opinion about her life and celebrity one way or another. I have curated my social media to avoid the absurd arguing over her and her music. So to have this meme be unavoidable where I have tried to avoid everyone’s Swift obsessions entirely, well that’s going to send me to the asylum.

Anyway, rant over. I’ll go back to watching my reruns of Matlock and warming up soup.

Hard Launching My Relationship

There was quite the scuttlebutt this week when Glen Powell revealed in a New York Times interview that the speculation that he and Anyone But You co-star Sydney Sweeney were having an off-set affair was intentional and orchestrated by the duo themselves.

“The two things that you have to sell a rom-com are fun and chemistry,” he said. “Sydney and I have a ton of fun together, and we have a ton of effortless chemistry. That’s people wanting what’s on the screen off the screen, and sometimes you just have to lean into it a bit—and it worked wonderfully. Sydney is very smart.”

Some people thought this was hilarious and applauded the pair for pulling off such a clearly successful marketing strategy. Others felt duped and betrayed by a celebrity romance (and scandal) that they had invested in. Is it kind of insidious to play the public and the press like that? If we can’t trust extremely hot and rich celebrities with an army of publicists hired to manipulate the media, then whom can we trust!?

As for me, I totally get it. I too have been lying about a romance, though my paramour and I have been operating with the opposite tactic to Glen and Sydney. Rather than pretend to be in love in public, Jonathan Bailey and I have been keeping our torrid, sex-heavy relationship a complete secret from everyone. If you ask him about it now, he’ll still deny it. He’s really into this ruse. What can I say? That’s my guy!

Everyone Wants in on Bluey

Last week, I wrote about how the special, supersized episode of Bluey , “The Sign,” made everyone—myself included—cry. In the episode, the Heeler family is so heartbroken about the idea of selling their home and moving out of their neighborhood that, in the end, they stay put. It was a poignant portrayal of the meaning of home, memories, and community, and the scary uncertainty of journeying into an unknown that won’t guarantee you more happiness than you already have.

Everyone seemed to love and agree with that message. Everyone except, it turns out, the people and companies whose bank accounts rely on families actually going through with selling homes and moving, unlike the Heelers.

Zillow has, hilariously and shrewdly, released a new commercial in response to Bluey , hoping to convince buyers and sellers that they should still embrace the idea of moving—emotional cartoon dogs, be damned.

“Despite how a certain children’s show made us all feel recently, moving into a new home might just be a good thing,” an appropriately Australian narrator says. At the end of the commercial, which lists the positives of moving, four real-life dogs are shown and, in another nod to Bluey , look forlorn while sitting next to a For Sale sign. “Don’t look at me like that,” the narrator says. “C’mon guys, you’re killing me here.”

I honestly love this. Good for Zillow. Watch the commercial here .

You Gotta Get With My Friends

It’s a miracle that this newsletter exists this week—or that any task was accomplished at all—because my brain has solely been preoccupied by one thing: the Spice Girls’ reunion performance of “Stop,” with the original choreography, at Victoria Beckham’s 50th birthday party.

Join me in watching it for the 479th time here .

What to watch this week:

The Big Door Prize : If there was justice in the world, this would have as much attention as Ted Lasso got. (Now on Apple TV+)

Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story : Spending several hours looking at Jon Bon Jovi is always a valuable use of one’s time. (Now on Hulu)

Challengers : At long last, my love of tennis is considered hot and sexy . (Now in theaters)

What to skip this week:

Unsung Hero : Even God can’t save this snoozy faith-based movie . (Now in theaters)

City Hunter : They have all the money in the world, yet Netflix can’t make a good anime adaptation. (Now on Netflix)

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast  here .

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Why not visit remastered

2 wives, 2 murder charges: Convicted killer’s case dropped after judge tosses evidence from slaying kept hidden for years

After Fran Smith vanished in 1991, her husband’s dark secrets began to unravel. 

In the three decades since, John Smith, 73, was convicted of killing his first wife in Ohio years earlier, in a murder authorities weren’t even aware of until they began investigating Fran’s disappearance . 

Fran’s body has never been found, but prosecutors in New Jersey charged her husband in her death five years ago. Then the case took an unusual turn: Those same prosecutors dropped the murder charge against Smith in exchange for information her family and the FBI agent who spent years investigating the cases said is unreliable and likely untrue.

For more on the case, tune in to "Chameleon" on "Dateline" at at 9 ET/8 CT tonight.

In this first interview about the deal, retired FBI special agent Robert Hilland called out prosecutors for the arrangement.

“This was a failure on the part of the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office,” Hilland told “Dateline.”

“They hung our family out to dry,” said Sherrie Davis, Fran’s sister.

The prosecutor’s office defended the decision to dismiss the charge, with a spokesperson saying in a statement that because a judge blocked prosecutors from introducing key evidence, what remained would have allowed them to “paint Smith as a bad husband but not a murderer.”

The spokesperson added that Fran’s family was informed of the likely dismissal and agreement before the charge was dropped on July 6, 2023.

“They acknowledged their understanding of how we were proceeding and, although disappointed in the outcome, did not express any criticism at that time,” the spokesperson said.

A spokesperson for the public defender’s office that negotiated the agreement for Smith would not comment.

‘Yes, I lied’

Fran, 49, disappeared on Sept. 28, 1991. The paralegal had recently moved from Florida to a condo in West Windsor, New Jersey, with her new husband, John Smith, and was recovering from a broken hip, her daughter, Deanna Childers, told “Dateline.” 

Smith, an engineer, told authorities that his wife abruptly left to visit relatives, according to a West Windsor detective who investigated the case, Mike Dansbury. Her family said they hadn’t heard from her, however, and while relatives tried to piece together what happened, a detective revealed something Fran’s family hadn’t previously known: Smith had been married before. 

Decades earlier, he’d eloped with Janice Elaine Hartman after high school, another detective, Dave Mansue, told “Dateline.” But the couple split in 1974, after only a few years.

After tracking down a relative of Hartman’s, the family learned an even more startling detail: Days after they divorced, Hartman disappeared and was never heard from again. Authorities in Ohio believed she was a runaway and didn’t pursue the case as a possible homicide, Mansue said.

Smith offered strangely similar accounts and details in the disappearances of both wives, the detectives found. In a missing person’s report, Smith said he believed Hartman had gone to Florida with a red suitcase, Dansbury said. In Fran’s disappearance, he said he believed she’d gone to Florida to visit family with a yellow suitcase, Dansbury recalled. 

When Fran disappeared, authorities discovered that Smith had a long-time girlfriend — an HR manager he’d met while applying for a job — living at a Connecticut beach house he owned. Frank Barre, a detective with the Milford Police Department who began assisting in the investigation, recalled that the girlfriend didn’t know that Smith had been married twice. Nor did she know that both women had disappeared.

“Her whole world was upside down,” Barre told “Dateline.”

The girlfriend agreed to call Smith and allow investigators to listen in and record the conversation.

She confronted him about his relationship with Fran, according to audio of the call, and asked if she was dead. Smith told her he didn’t think so but — because he didn’t know where she was — “they think I must have hurt her,” according to audio.

When she asked about Hartman, he said they’d divorced and he’d reported her missing. He said he’d only just learned that she’d never been found, according to the audio.

When she asked if he’d lied during a police polygraph test, he said: “I failed it.”

“Wait, John,” she said. “Did you lie during the test?”

“Yes, I lied during the test,” he said.

A long-held secret revealed

Investigators suspected that Smith was responsible for the disappearances of his wives, but didn’t have proof. It wasn’t until years later, after Hilland took over the investigations in 1998, that authorities got a break.

By then, Smith had moved to suburban San Diego, remarried and was working for a car maker. On May 5, 1999, Hilland organized an effort with FBI agents across the country to carry out a series of coordinated interviews with people linked to Smith — relatives, colleagues and exes — and with Smith himself.

During an hourslong interview with Smith, Hilland said he repeatedly confronted him about inconsistencies in his accounts of what happened to Fran and Hartman. When the agent confronted him about lying on the polygraph, Smith denied making the comment, Hilland said.

“I pulled out the tape recorder, hit play, and John could hear in his own voice all those things that he had said,” Hilland said about playing the taped conversation between Smith and his onetime girlfriend. Smith “turned beet red and shrugged his shoulders.”

At one point, Hilland said, Smith offered a hypothetical about two people having an argument and one of them being fatally struck by a bus. 

Smith asked, “Is the other person responsible for a murder?” Hilland said. “We said, ‘No, that’s an accident. That would not be a murder. Is that what happened to Fran?’ He said, ‘I don’t know what happened to Fran. I just know she isn’t dead. If she’s dead, she’s probably in heaven.”

Smith told investigators he was having a heart attack, and the interview ended, Hilland said. But days later, the former investigator said, Smith’s brother shared something with t he FBI that he hadn’t previously disclosed.

In exchange for an agreement that barred prosecutors from charging him, the sibling revealed that in November 1974 he’d seen Smith with a large plywood box in a garage next to his grandparents’ house in Ohio. 

Smith was crying, Hilland recalled the brother saying, and appeared to be placing clothes that he believed belonged to Hartman in the box.

The box, which had been nailed shut, remained in the garage for five years, until his grandfather pried it open, Smith’s brother told investigators. The brother said he saw what appeared to be Hartman’s remains inside the box, Hilland said. 

Her legs had been removed and her hair appeared to be rainbow-colored — a detail authorities later attributed to clothing dye bleeding onto her body, Hilland said.

The discovery haunted the sibling for years, Hilland recalled, but he hadn’t come forward because his grandfather had asked him to stay silent.

“The grandfather said, ‘If we call the sheriff, this is gonna cause your grandmother to die,’” Hilland recalled the sibling saying.

After the brother called Smith and told him he’d found the box, Smith arrived at the grandparents’ home, put the box in the passenger seat of his Corvette and drove off, Hilland said the brother told officials.

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After his revelation to the FBI, Smith’s brother agreed to confront his sibling. In the conversation, which was recorded, Smith described the box as a “joke” and said someone had dropped it off with a dead goat inside, according to a transcript of the call.

At one point, the brother said: “I had nightmares where Jan chased me down the road, beat me with her legs, John.” 

“OK,” Smith replied.

Nearly a year later, remains were exhumed from a rural Indiana cemetery and, in April 2000, positively identified as belonging to Hartman. 

Years earlier, it turned out, a road crew had found the box described by Smith’s sibling in a roadside drainage ditch, but the remains couldn’t be identified and the body was buried in what Hilland described as a Jane Doe grave.

Six months after the identification, Smith was charged with murder in Hartman’s killing. He pleaded not guilty and was convicted at trial. In 2001, Smith was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.

The case falls apart

After that conviction, Hilland continued searching for Fran. He said he organized multiple excavations at Smith’s workplace in New Jersey and the Connecticut beach home, and he worked with undercover informants at the prison where Smith was incarcerated to try and gather information. Neither efforts yielded evidence, he said.

Prosecutors from Mercer County later met with Hilland at the FBI Training Academy in Virginia, where he was working as an instructor. Although there was no new evidence, the prosecutor’s office said in its statement, after the meeting, they believed they had enough to charge Smith in Fran’s 1991 disappearance.

In November 2019, Smith was indicted on a charge of first-degree murder after prosecutors presented evidence to a grand jury about both Fran’s disappearance and Hartman’s killing.

“It was the state’s position that, in 1991, Smith believed he had a successful blueprint to get away with murder and followed his 1974 playbook but corrected the only mistake he made in the murder of Janice Hartman — keeping her body in a place where it would be accidentally discovered,” the prosecutor’s office said.

But in 2022, the statement said, a judge barred prosecutors from presenting evidence from Hartman’s murder, ruling that it would unfairly prejudice the jury. Faced with the impending dismissal of charges, the statement said, prosecutors entered into an agreement with Smith.

Because Fran’s body had never been found, the statement said, the likelihood of uncovering new evidence and pursuing a successful prosecution appeared “minimal.” To provide closure for the family, the statement said, prosecutors agreed to drop the murder charge if he revealed what he did with Fran’s remains.

The prosecutor’s office didn’t require corroborating evidence to back up the account — “recovery” would have been impossible given how long ago she disappeared, the statement said — nor did they require Smith to say how he killed her. 

“In negotiating the non-prosecution agreement, Smith would not admit to the murder but would agree to tell us what he did with her body,” the spokesperson said in an email.

Prosecutors shared what Smith said with Fran’s family but didn’t reveal the details publicly, according to the statement. Deanna Childers, Fran’s daughter, told “Dateline” that officials told the family that Smith confessed to wrapping her mother’s body in a blanket and leaving her in a dumpster at the factory where he worked in New Jersey.

Davis, Fran Smith’s sister, said the idea that the deal provided closure for her family was an insult. She didn’t believe Smith’s account, she said, adding that the information did “nothing” for her family.

Hilland, who retired from the FBI in 2022, was outraged that the deal didn’t require a full confession or corroborating evidence. He said it seemed highly unlikely that Smith would have left Fran’s body in a trash bin at a factory with many employees who easily could have noticed. 

To Hilland, there was so much circumstantial evidence implicating Smith in Fran’s alleged killing — including when he told his then-girlfriend in the recorded call that he lied to police while they were questioning him about Fran’s disappearance — that he believed prosecutors could have proven his guilt. 

“Shame on them for accepting” his account, Hilland said, “because now they’ve given him immunity based on that.”

Hilland added that when John Smith goes for his next parole hearing in 2029, he may have a better chance of getting out because he can say he cooperated with authorities.

Tim Stelloh is a breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital.