Drifter Sentenced to Life in Kidnap of Long Beach Boy

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Drifter David Roger Collins was sentenced to life imprisonment today for kidnaping a Long Beach, Calif., youngster in 1983 and molesting him during a 21-month cross-country trek.

Superior Court Judge John E. Orton III sentenced Collins, 56, to the maximum of two life terms on two first-degree sexual assault convictions and the maximum 20 years on the kidnaping conviction.

“He’s a threat to society. He’s a blight to society,” Orton said at the sentencing. “He’s a plague on all of our homes and he has no business being outside.”

Collins showed no emotion during the sentencing and later calmly addressed the courtroom, saying that Bobby Smith Jr., who was 11 when he disappeared from his Long Beach home, went with him voluntarily.

“Bobby stayed with me because he wanted to stay with me. The boy wanted a parent. I was a lonely old man who accepted that responsibility,” he said.

High-Profile Case

Collins said authorities wanted to make an example of him because he was one of the first people in the nation arrested after the first series of photographs of missing children were distributed by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

“I was the person who was found with a missing child, and I was going to be the example for the world,” he said.

Assistant Atty. Gen. Michael Stone requested the maximum sentence on all counts. Stone read a letter from the boy’s father, Robert Smith Sr., saying: “When Bobby left home, he was a boy. When he came back, he was a teen-ager. The scars of this ordeal will be there forever.”

Stone contended during the trial that Collins abducted the boy to fulfill his own sexual needs.

Collins’ lawyer, public defender Michael DiLauro, argued that Smith, who called Collins “Dad” during their time together, was with Collins by choice. DiLauro said the boy had ample opportunity to run away if he had wanted to.

Collins, a convicted check forger, was arrested in Providence on Jan. 7, 1985, after a 17-year-old boy was killed in a police chase while driving a car registered under one of Collins’ many aliases.