Tearful mother testifies she thought daughter's suspected killer was good Samaritan

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Struggling through tears, the mother of an 8-year-old who was abducted from a Florida Walmart and later raped and killed said the man accused of the crime had convinced her he was a good Samaritan who was trying to help her family out.

Rayne Perrywinkle sat facing 61-year-old defendant Donald Smith in a Jacksonville courtroom and testified about the day her daughter, Cherish Perrywinkle, disappeared.

Smith is charged with first-degree murder, kidnapping and rape. If convicted, he faces a possible death sentence.

Rayne Perrywinkle said Smith had been hovering around she and her three daughters while they shopped at a discount store earlier in the day. She was looking for clothes for all three children and could not afford it.

Smith watched as Rayne tried work out how to pay for the clothes, she testified, and when she came outside he was waiting. She said he offered to take them to a nearby Walmart and make purchases with a gift card.

The mother testified that she was wary, but accepted because Smith assured her his wife would meet them at the Walmart.

"He looked into my face and told me I was safe," Rayne Perrywinkle said.

"Did you want to believe him?" prosecutor Mark Caliel asked.

"Very much so," Rayne replied.

The mother and her three daughters piled into Smith's white van. They went to a nearby Walmart and she began shopping with her girls, placing three small piles of clothing in a shopping cart.

It got late, after 10 p.m., and Smith's wife never appeared. Rayne said her daughters were getting restless because they had not had dinner.

Smith told Rayne he would go to a McDonald's inside the store and get them cheeseburgers. Cherish followed him and was never seen alive again.

Rayne Perrywinkle said some 20 minutes later, she realized the McDonald's inside the Walmart was closed and she began to panic. Her cellphone didn't work -- a daughter had dunked it water to try and clean it -- so she cried out for help realizing her daughter had been taken.

"I was yelling 'Call 911! My daughter's been taken,' and no one would help me right away," she said. About 40 minutes after her daughter disappeared, an employee gave her a cellphone and she called 911, prosecutors said.

Jurors heard Rayne's frantic 911 call, CBS affiliate WJAX's Jenna Bourne reported via Twitter.

"Why in the world would he take my little girl?" Rayne is heard saying in the call. 

Rayne reportedly had her head down as she listened to the call from the witness stand. She is heard telling a dispatcher, "I feel like a fool," and saying she couldn't remember what Smith was wearing or what his license plate was, Bourne tweeted.

Surveillance footage from the store caught the image of Smith and Cherish exiting, the girl skipping out behind him.

"No one noticed. It looked like a grandfather and a granddaughter," State Attorney Melissa Nelson told the jury during her opening statement. 

The state played about an hour of the surveillance footage in court. Bourne tweeted that the video appeared to show Smith and Cherish stop outside the closed McDonalds before leaving.

Cherish's mutilated body would later be found in a creek. When Smith was arrested, Nelson said he was wet from the waist down. Authorities said the little girl had been raped, smothered and had blunt force trauma to the back of her head. She was wearing an orange dress with a fruit pattern on it. 

Smith's defense attorney, Julie Schlax, suggested to the jury that Rayne Perrywinkle made poor decisions getting into the van.

She said she would cross-examine Rayne, but after the mother's testimony Smith told his attorneys not to cross examine her and they told the court they had changed their mind.