FORT MYERS, Fla. — Behind every face and every action, there's a name. The search for those names is where the journey begins.
Fox 4's Senior Reporter Kaitlin Knapp is on a mission to get to know the names we know, and perhaps find the ones we don't, along with the detectives working in the same communities you call home.
In Fox 4's series called "Sunshine Crimes," we are going across southwest Florida to tell the stories of people waiting for justice.
This case was solved, and now, it ends in the same place: behind bars.
Watch below to see how the case was solved 20 years later:
Back on June 12, 2004, Fort Myers Police say 20-year-old Corey Smith was shot and killed in front of his mother's house on Royal Palm Avenue.
Over the years, Fort Myers Cold Case Detective Michael Iarossi says they started building leads.
"Initially Rodney was on our radar on another matter," Iarossi said.
Rodney Davis — a friend of Smith's...or so he thought.
"Some type of dispute led to Rodney ambushing Corey," Iarossi said.
With not enough evidence, Smith's murder sat cold. Then in 2022, Davis was charged, but not for homicide.
"Basically he was communicating with those people to run his drug trafficking business while he was incarcerated," said Assistant State Attorney Kate Rumley, Chief of Narcotics.
Rumley said the amount of drugs was "top tier level." The drugs included phenethylamines, which could include MDMA and ecstasy.
His arrest was connected to NETFORCE (Narcotics Enforcement Task Force). It's a task force with several other agencies that targets drugs.
As they built their case, little did they know another case would come into the picture in 2024.
"He [Davis] admitted to being involved in a homicide," said Assistant State Attorney Dan Feinberg, with the office's Cold Case Unit.
After getting this information, he called investigators like Iarossi.
"Cold case investigators interviewed Rodney at length and at which time, he confessed to the killing of Corey Smith," Iarossi said.
The case is now closed after the detective made sure to connect Davis to the crime.
"If you can resolve a cold case and bring some level of closure to the family, that's satisfying for us and it's gratifying for them," Feinberg said.
However, it doesn't mean that day 20 years ago doesn't haunt the family, like Smith's niece, who spoke at Davis' sentencing on Tuesday.
"She remembers the screams, the gunshots, the blood of that day and 20 years later, she finally got a resolution to that," Feinberg said.
It's a resolution that was unexpected.
"You always hope that something like this will happen when we can have this coordinated approach," Rumley said.
Feinberg said a resolution like this is not common — a cold case homicide being solved stemming from an arrest during a task force operation.
"What we do with Net Force is now have another source for leads in cases," he said.
Leads to help detectives like Iarossi, who says technology is great and effective. But, in this case, it came back to "burning up the shoe."
"This case was your basic old fashioned leg work, talking to people and developing information," Iarossi said.
With Corey's case off the shelf, it's on to the next.
They want this to be a reminder: cold cases can be solved.
"Never give up hope," Iarossi said.
Davis pled no contest to the second-degree murder charge of Corey Smith. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison with 25 years being mandatory.
For the drug charges, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for two counts of conspiracy to traffic and trafficking more than 400 grams of phenethylamines.
