The Stranger in My Bed: The True Story of Marriage, Murder, and the Body in the Box

He Found New Brides To Love Him. All Diane Bertalan really knew of her new husband, John, was that he was a widower, he lavished her with gifts, and he preferred to keep his past a secret. What she didn't know was that the FBI had been watching him for years. In the Fall of 2000, she found out why—it was a crime that had been haunting authorities for decades. They called it the mystery of the Lady in the Box.



Fifteen Years Later, Police Found The Remains . . . A decaying body that had been left along an Indiana roadside ditch in 1980 had finally been identified as Janice Hartman. In 1974, the Ohio woman had been reported missing by her estranged husband . . . John David Smith. The gruesome discovery was only the beginning of Diane Smith's brutal awakening—for Hartman was only the first of Smith's wives to have vanished off the face of the earth.



The Stranger in My Bed is the chilling true story of one woman who escaped the deadly hold of the killer she loved and married; and of the grieving families of his victims who banded together after nearly thirty years to prove that justice never forgets. Or forgives.