Cherish Perrywinkle: Will Her Killer Get A New Trial?
By: Christina Aliperti
Tags: Pedophilia, True Crime, Rape, Murder, Kidnappings

On the night of June 21, 2013 Rayne Perrywinkle and her 3 daughters Cherish 8, Destiny 5, and Nevaeh 3, were shopping inside of a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida. According to court testimony, They had already been to the Family Dollar where Rayne had bought some household items. Rayne’s boyfriend had given her $100 before she left to go to the store. The $100 was supposed to buy some things for the house and for the girls and Rayne needed to make sure there was enough left over to pay for a ride to the airport the next day. 8 year old Cherish was booked on a flight the next morning to California to visit her dad, Billy Jarreau.

While in the Dollar General, Rayne asked about the price of a dress that she wanted to purchase for Cherish. She didn’t buy the dress because she didn’t think she would have enough money for everything. As Rayne walked out of the store with her daughters, she was approached by an older male who introduced himself as Don. He began chatting with Rayne and told her that he wanted to purchase the dress for Cherish and some clothing for the 3 girls. He said his “wife” would be meeting him there shortly with a gift card and he would use it to buy the clothing. Rayne was struggling financially and her daughters really needed some new clothes, so she decided to wait with him for his wife to arrive.

After waiting for about 30 minutes, Don’s wife still hadn’t showed up, so he offered to take Rayne and the girls to the Walmart on Lem Turner Road and said his wife would meet them there. Although she would later say she had a strange feeling about Don, Rayne agreed and loaded her 3 little girls into Don’s white van, putting Nevaeh’s stroller into the space where some of the seats had been removed from the van.

When they got to Walmart they waited in the van, with Rayne apparently believing that Don’s wife was still on her way. After waiting for about 20 minutes, she still wasn’t there, so Don, Rayne and the girls entered Walmart. They shopped around the store and continued to chat, with Rayne telling Don, a man she met about an hour earlier, a lot of personal information about herself and her daughters. Rayne would later say that she noticed Don paying too much attention to Cherish and “maybe he was grooming her” but she allowed Don to take Cherish to the dressing room twice while Rayne looked at shoes. She said she hoped Cherish was okay, but she didn’t want Don to think she was overly protective of Cherish so she let him take her into the dressing room alone.

By this time, they had been in Walmart for almost 2 hours and Rayne and the girls hadn’t had dinner yet, so the girls started asking for food and getting cranky. Don volunteered to buy the kids burgers from the McDonald’s inside of the Walmart. He took Cherish with him and when they didn’t come back, Rayne went to see what was taking so long. That’s when she realized that the in store McDonald’s was closed and Don and Cherish were gone.

Surveillance footage would show the 2 walk out of the Walmart and then Don’s white van is seen leaving the parking area and driving past security officers. Rayne called 911 at 11:18pm from Walmart and the search for Cherish began. By 3:30am, Don was identified as Donald J. Smith, a registered sex offender with a long criminal history with numerous offenses against children, who had gotten out of prison just 3 weeks earlier. It was also determined that his mother was the owner of a white Dodge van. Law enforcement put out an Amber alert for Cherish and also held a press conference.

At around 8:30 in the morning a woman called the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office and told them that she saw a suspicious vehicle matching the one on TV at approximately 7am at the Highlands Baptist Church on Rutgers Rd but the vehicle was not there anymore. At 8:57am, a patrol officer was at the scene of a car accident and she happened to see the van drive by. She called it in and at 9:07am, Donald Smith was taken into custody but Cherish was not in the van with him. The K-9 team was sent to the Highlands Baptist Church where Smith’s van was seen earlier that morning and at 9:20am Cherish’s body was found. Cherish had been viciously raped and brutally beaten and murdered by a monster.

Shortly after, Cherish’s 2 other daughters, Destiny and Nevaeh were removed from her custody by child protective services and have since been adopted by an aunt in Australia. It also came out in the media that Rayne was born in Australia and her birth name was Kimberly. She had a daughter in Australia and abandoned her when she was just 5 years old. She came to America, changed her name and never looked back. In interviews, her family in Australia said that she was not a good mother and they always worried about her children.

Donald Smith’s trial was in February 2018 and when the autopsy photos of Cherish were shown, the medical examiner and several jurors cried in the courtroom. In May 2018, after just 14 minutes of deliberation by the jury, Smith was found guilty of first-degree murder and sexual battery and was sentenced to death.

On Monday, our friend Leigh Egan from CrimeOnline.com reported that the Florida Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments this week about whether Donald Smith should receive a new trial. His lawyers are arguing that his trial should not have been held in Duval County due to the case’s high publicity and media interest and that the autopsy photos which showed severe injuries to Cherish’s private parts and trachea should not have been shown in court.

Yesterday, the Florida Supreme Court heard the arguments from Smith’s attorneys and news4jax.com reported that the justices will consider the arguments made during the appeal and will rule at a later date.

There has always been a mixed bag of opinions on this case. Some blame Rayne Perrywinkle 100% for Cherish’s death and have nothing kind to say about her. There was even speculation online that she sold her daughter to Smith and that he was supposed to bring her back but the plan went awry. Others have more sympathy for her and see her as the victim of a predator who saw a mother in need and targeted her family.

My personal opinion is that yes, Donald Smith is a predator and a human monster but it was Rayne’s job to protect her children. Based off of her own words in the 911 call, which you can listen to here, Rayne Perrywinkle failed to protect her daughters, especially Cherish. Every decision she made that night was bad and irresponsible. Cherish’s abduction and murder were 100% preventable, but her mother failed her, essentially handing her to a pedophile on a silver platter.

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