DATE: Thursday, July 17, 1997               TAG: 9707170493

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JUNE ARNEY, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  134 lines

2 YEARS AFTER FINDING FAMILY DEAD, SHE'S REBORN WOMAN REMARRIED AND WROTE A BOOK FOR HER CHILDREN.

Two years ago today, Kimberly Griffith drove home from work to her family's Greenbrier townhouse and found a scene that has visited her sleep with nightmares ever since.

The front door was locked, and the house was quiet - too quiet.

Inside, Griffith, whose last name was Smith at the time, saw her daughter Amy lying motionless on the kitchen floor. On the stairs leading up to the bedrooms, her husband sat slouched and covered with blood, a vintage, pearl-handled .38-caliber pistol in his hand, extra bullets in the other. Both of them were dead. Griffith was afraid to look further.

But she walked up the hall to her son Eric's room. Blood splatters covered the walls near where he lay, face down on the floor, drenched in blood, his comforter eerily tucked around him.

``I knew at that moment it was going to destroy me or I was going to have to overcome it,'' said Griffith, now 40, in a recent telephone interview from her home in Eclectic, Ala., near Montgomery.

Then came her panicked conversation with a neighbor and a horrifying 911 call: ``My family's dead. I've come home from work and they are all dead. They've been killed.''

It was some minutes before Griffith would figure out what had happened: Her husband, David Smith, a 40-year-old church-going man, was to blame.

Police have speculated that a mixture of prescription drugs Smith was taking may have played a role in the killings. They found 19 bottles of prescription painkillers in his car.

In the months that have stretched into two years, Griffith has tried to weave together a new life. She entered therapy, remarried and, with her therapist, wrote a book titled ``Unfair.'' The book is dedicated to the memory of her children.

``The reason why I spilled my guts in the book is that I don't want this to happen to anyone else,'' she said.

These days, Griffith, a full-time medical technologist, travels around, spreading her message in churches, prisons and Kiwanis clubs. She has appeared on Montgomery television stations and on Alabama radio.

She tells listeners about the dangers of prescription drugs, the grieving process and how to go on against the odds.

She is convinced that by identifying for others what may have been warning signs in her husband's damaged psyche, she can prevent anyone else from experiencing the pain she has suffered.

``Maybe someone might see a pattern or a similarity and say, `Maybe this is a big deal,' and intervene,'' she said. ``Your family is too precious to gamble with.''

She hopes that people who read her book will take it as a warning to get professional help if they see any of the same symptoms.

``Do whatever it takes to get your family member well because they might go off the deep end,'' she said. ``How do you know it won't happen? People think if a doctor prescribed a medication, it's safe. But if it's not taken according to the doctor's directions, it may not be safe.''

Before the murders and suicide, Griffith had not detected danger signs in her husband's behavior. Only later did the pieces of a dangerous and volatile puzzle take shape in her mind.

``He didn't have any bizarre behavior,'' Griffith said. ``He had subtle behavior changes over a long period of time. I can see it in retrospect.''

Sometime on the morning of the killings, Smith had phoned his wife at work to ask how she was doing. Around 11:15 a.m., he left the office where he worked as an insurance adjuster and drove home. Neighbors didn't see or hear anything amiss.

But Smith was seething with dark fears - mostly the products of his imagination. He thought he was about to be arrested for misuse of prescription painkillers. He was afraid that he was going to be fired for some imagined wrongdoing at work. He thought Griffith was about to leave him because he had found letters to her from a man who was merely her friend.

Griffith knew about some of this, but had no idea how much it weighed on her husband's mind.

Smith had obtained painkillers for legitimate medical ailments, but he may have abused them, Griffith now suspects. He also took a popular anti-depressant, which he told her was prescribed for weight loss.

An autopsy failed to show any drug beyond sinus medication, so the mystery of what he may have taken that day died with him. She doesn't know why his blood did not show evidence of other drugs.

Griffith has come to think that Smith's rampage was the result of a combination of circumstances that led him to the brink. She has settled on the theory that either he suffered a severe drug reaction that he couldn't control or he was so mentally dysfunctional that he didn't know what he was doing.

``I never in my wildest imagination thought that he would have done this,'' she said. ``I like to think that he just thought he was taking everyone to heaven.''

After finding her family dead, Griffith never returned to spend another night in the home in the 1100 block of Shoal Creek Trail. She kept a few sentimental items and auctioned off everything else. She couldn't stand to be surrounded by the possessions of her past life.

``I knew I couldn't handle it - all those memories hitting me in the face every day,'' she said.

Most of all, she missed her children.

``My whole life circled around being a wife and mother,'' she said.

Eric, 15, an honor student with a passion for poetry and guitar, planned to be an engineer. He is buried near his sister, Amy, 13, who volunteered at Vacation Bible School and wanted to be a veterinarian because she loved animals.

At first, Griffith felt like God had let her down. It was only after about a year that Griffith found peace with God and began healing.

``I was so angry and disappointed with God because I thought I was a Christian and things like this weren't supposed to happen,'' she said. ``But now I understand that God lets those things happen at the hands of others.''

Griffith married her current husband, a construction contractor named Charles Griffith, in February 1996. He was a divorced father of two children, whom he saw every other weekend, and was also trying to rebuild his life.

``I really feel like that was from God, too,'' Kimberly Griffith said. ``I was really lost. I felt like I had no direction. . . . We had the same feeling of, `Let's rebuild our life together.' ''

Although anniversaries like today's are difficult to face, Griffith said, her anxiety in the days leading to special days is worse. Last year, she spent July 17 at a quiet lake. This year, she will distract herself by packing for a trip to St. Louis.

On each of her children's birthdays, Griffith makes the two-hour drive to Birmingham to spend time at their gravesites. They lie next to their father in his family's burial plot.

In Griffith's lowest moments, she still relives the grisly details of exactly how her children looked when she found their bodies that steamy, July day two years ago. She wonders if the children hurt, if they were scared.

``I still dream that he killed the children and he's back to get me,'' she said. ``Forgiveness is where I want to be, but I'm not always there. . . . He didn't take me down that day, but if I succumb to all of this, it would be like he won.'' MEMO: The book by Griffith and her therapist, Dr. Terry Gunnells, is not

yet available in local bookstores. Anyone interested in getting a copy

of ``Unfair'' should write to Kimberly Griffith, 1844 Claud Road,

Eclectic, Ala. 36024. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Amy, left, volunteered at Vacation Bible School. Eric, center, was

an honor student. Their mother, Kimberly, right, is rebuilding her

life.

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