Earlier in the day that Robie died, Smith was overwhelmed by emotional torment and begged his father, Ted Smith, to help him control his emotions. “I want to hurt someone.” His father ignored his son’s obvious distress and gave him the flippant answer that as a child whenever he got angry, he “grabbed a bag in our barn and I’d just start beating on it until I was too tired to do anything else. I heard our door shut. I turned around and he was gone and as I got to the window he was coming back in the door and he was calm. And I looked down and I noticed his hands and his knuckles were kind of skinned up and bloody. And I asked him what happened and he said I hit the tree a couple of times. Seemed to be okay.”