Kentucky Man Killed Ex-Partner Because He Was ‘Tired of Seeing Her,’ Jury Hears

A man from Kentucky was found guilty by a jury on April 1st after he murdered his estranged wife. After murdering his former wife, he told his daughter that he was "tired of looking at her." The incident occurred in January 2024.

A 49-year-old man from Kentucky, identified as Fairley Napier, was convicted of murdering his estranged wife by a jury on April 1st. Napier has been charged with several felonies, including murder, abuse of corpse, tampering with evidence and criminal mischief in connection with a murder he committed in January 2024.

The victim have been identified as a 45-year-old woman, named Joanie Campbell-Smith, who was his former wife. Campbell-Smith was reported missing on January 4th, 2024, and Napier was the last person to see her alive, according to the police. The former couple shared two children, including a daughter who told the Kentucky State Police troopers that her father told her he killed her mother because “he had gotten tired of seeing her lying in the log yard and looking at her.”

Campbell-Smith’s remains were discovered two days after the missing report was filed, burned inside a vehicle. The vehicle where her remains were found matched the description of the vehicle she was known to drive. The vehicle, which was found on the property, belonged to Napier, who had turned himself in to the police on January 7th, 2024.

According to the courtroom reports filed by The Jackson-Breathitt County Times Voice, Napier testified that he “grew up” with his former wife Campbell-Smith, and they were in an on-again, off-again relationship from 1994 till 2022. While testifying, Napier told the courtroom that he and Campbell-Smith met at Jiffy Mart to have a conversation before heading to another parking lot.

According to the testimony of Napier, Campbell-Smith purposely asked him to break a window in her vehicle so that she would have an excuse to drive a Chevy Tahoe, which she bought with her new husband. Napier testified that the last time he saw Campbell-Smit was at the Jiffy Mart.

However, the prosecutor had evidence that pointed towards a different story. The Commonwealth’s Attorney General, Miranda King, told the court that Napier shot Campbell-Smith at the second location, the parking lot. He bought a mattock, a sharp tool used to loosen up soil, to break into the vehicle window after the doors became locked.

Napier then, according to the prosecution, drove to the initial location where he mutilated and dismembered Campbell-Smith’s body, with the mattock inside the vehicle, before setting it on fire. Investigators said they found bodily tissues that belonged to Campbell-Smith around the scene.

King told the court that the motive of Napier behind killing Campbell-Smith was jealousy. Napier was not happy about the fact that Campbell-Smith remarried, even though Napier was also seeing someone new. Campbell-Smith kept her marriage a secret from Napier because there was a possibility he would react in this manner.