DEATH DID THEM PART
Pregnant bride slain on eve of her wedding
A PREGNANT Brooklyn woman was found stabbed to death in her apartment one day before her wedding — and cops were grilling her groom-to-be.
Vindalee Smith, 38, just two weeks away from giving birth, was discovered Saturday on the floor of her blood-spattered East Flatbush home with a gaping knife wound to her neck, sources said.
Her unborn baby boy did not survive.
There was no sign of forced entry, and no weapon was discovered in the E. 94th St. basement where the mother of four lived alone, sources said.
Investigators were questioning Smith’s fiancé at the 67th Precinct stationhouse Saturday night. He had not been named as a suspect.
“I can’t even begin to imagine who would want to do that,” said Smith’s friend, Sybil Samuel, 58. “It would be the devil to kill a woman with a child in her stomach. They killed two people.”
The grisly murder was discovered by Smith’s worried landlord on what should have been the happiest of weekends — with plans for a baby shower followed by a small wedding at a storefront church.
One of Smith’s friends was going to host the Saturday night shower at an Eastern Parkway apartment, friends said.
The organizers sent blue and white invitations that pictured a baby footprint and a teddy bear shaking a rattle.
“She was very faithful and strong,” Samuel said. “We were looking forward to that baby.”
The next morning, Smith was supposed to exchange vows with her beau at New Dimension Seventh-Day Church on Winthrop St.
Pastor Ferron Francis said Smith didn’t seem overly excited about her upcoming nuptials. “It seemed more like she saw it as an accomplishment,” said Francis, who had never met her fiancé.
Francis said the Jamaicanborn woman was unemployed and struggled financially, often relying on church members for a place to live. Her four children — two boys and two girls in their late teens and early 20s — stayed with friends. Their father lived in England.
But Smith was looking forward to gathering her kids under one roof following the wedding. “She had a very positive outlook on life in spite of the many financial struggles she was having,” Francis said.
The pastor said Smith had been locked in a simmering feud with a former neighbor, who accused her of letting his dog out of the building. “A man accused her of being irresponsible and threatened to kill her and her family . . . but that was months ago,” Francis said.
Police had not named a suspect.
Some 50 members of Smith’s church — many dressed in colorful hats and dresses — prayed outside her home for hours. Several started to wail when her body was carried out of the apartment and loaded into the medical examiner’s van about 6:30 p.m.
A church elder said the killer must have been possessed to harm such a loving woman. “I think the person who did this is demon-driven,” said the man, declining to give his name. “They might not know that, but that’s what it is.”
Fellow churchgoers said they suspected something was wrong when Smith did not show up for Saturday’s 7 a.m. service.
“She was always on time — always the first person at church,” said church member Tyler Harrigan, 51. “When the news came to the church, the whole church broke down. We started to bawl. All the children were crying.”
It was not clear how long Smith had been dead in the apartment before she was found at 9:30 a.m. An autopsy is scheduled for Sunday.
Police urge anyone with information to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers hotline at (800) 577-TIPS. With Shayna Jacobs,
Kerry Wills and Denis Slattery