Lemuel Smith was born into the least likely of bedeviled households on July 23, 1941. He was part of a strictly religious black family living in Amsterdam, New York. His father was a minister, and both of his parents lived in the household. There were no known reasons why Lemuel would have such a compulsion to kill, which according to him started as early as when he was twelve years old when he nearly smothered a nine-year-old girl to death.
The Smith household tasted grief prior to Lemuel's birth, when their son John Jr. died of encephalitis in 1939. Lemuel was the youngest of four children born to the couple.
