Hutzell: Pulled from the Inner Harbor after 11 years, a mystery man reveals his secrets

Franklin Roosevelt Daniels’ bail bondswoman wanted to find him.

Suzanne M. Smith put up $100,000 to guarantee Daniels would be in a Rockville courtroom on Dec. 14, 2014, for sentencing for misdemeanor sexual assault. When he didn’t show, a Montgomery County judge ordered his arrest.

Smith searched for four years. She tracked him in Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, New York and Nevada. Investigators followed his wife in Brooklyn, his mother in Temple Hills and a son in Las Vegas.

“Bounty hunters are diligently tracking him down,” she wrote in one of many requests for 90-day extensions, “and need more time.”

At risk, Smith wrote, was her future.

“The forfeiture would be a great hardship on me and my business and would make it hard for me to stay in business.”

Nobody looked at the bottom of the Inner Harbor.

That’s where Daniels’ skeletal remains were found last summer, moldering in a stolen van, 11 years after he left a Montgomery County courtroom.

How he got there remains a mystery. Why might be easier to understand.

My colleague Justin Fenton and I were curious about Daniels. Independently, we found pieces of his story in long-forgotten court documents across three jurisdictions.

The detective in Baltimore investigating the death declined to talk about the case.

Did Daniels kill himself? Was he put there by someone? Or was it an accident?

There are no definitive answers. Just clues.

Daniels was 36 when he died. Police and the medical examiner described his Members Property jacket, from a line of baggy street-inspired clothing popular a decade before his death, and size 13 Timberland boots.

The last public record of Daniels alive was at 2 p.m. Nov. 21, 2014. He was in a Rockville courtroom and in trouble.

The day after Valentine’s Day 2013, a woman with a developmental disability told Prince George’s County Police that Daniels sodomized her in his delivery van. He brought packages to her home, she said, and convinced her to go on a “date.”

They drove around, drinking and talking. Just before 11 p.m., the woman began to worry and had a panic attack.

Daniels pulled onto Game Preserve Road in Gaithersburg. She told police she thought he was going to reassure her. Instead, the woman said, he attacked her.

Detective Patrick McNerney, a senior Montgomery County homicide and sex crimes investigator, arrested Daniels on March 18 in Waldorf. Daniels waived his right to an attorney and talked with police.

He spent weeks in jail, held without bail. In April, Assistant Public Defender Alan Drew replaced his private lawyer. He applied for bail, writing that Daniels was married and owned a home in Waldorf.

He worked as a driver for a large delivery company and had no criminal record, except a misdemeanor sex assault charge in D.C. It was dropped.

The prosecutor wanted him kept in jail, saying the D.C. charge was assault with intent to rape. She called it a warning sign that Daniels used his job to pick victims.

A judge set bail at $100,000. Daniels’ wife put down a 10% deposit, and Smith’s Sureshot Bail Bonds posted a guarantee.

Daniels went through three lawyers, including one who defended him in D.C. The defense went after the victim, bringing in her school records and sexual history. Three judges oversaw the case.

Trial was set for February 2014, a year after the attack. Then the lawyers told the judge Daniels would plead guilty to second-degree assault and a fourth-degree sex offense.

The prosecutor agreed not to oppose a sentence without jail time or the possibility that Daniels could clear his record. The judge set sentencing for April.

Daniels, meanwhile, appeared to be coming apart.

Three years earlier, his mother lost the Prince George’s home where he grew up to foreclosure.

By the time of his final court appearance, Daniels was living with her in the same Temple Hills neighborhood. His wife was still at their Waldorf home.

He was no longer delivering packages, losing $55,000 in annual income. Instead, he was driving a cab.

And sentencing kept getting postponed, first to July, then August and then October. Daniels asked for the delays, and so did prosecutors. The judge had a scheduling conflict.

On Nov. 21, Daniels appeared in court one last time, according to the case file, to ask for one more delay. Sentencing was set again for Dec. 14, 2014.

When Daniels didn’t show, the judge ordered him arrested.

Waldorf Silver Cab was already looking for him.

Daniels was driving for the company. On Oct. 20, he checked out a 2002 Honda Odyssey and never came back.

A manager called him for weeks but didn’t report the taxi as missing to the Charles County Sheriff’s Office until Dec. 8.

“Daniels failed to return the cab at the end of his shift at 1900 hours,” Deputy Paul Gilbert wrote in his report.

No one saw the cab again.

Until July 25. Baltimore Police divers training off Pier 4, next to the National Aquarium, found the minivan 22 feet down and hoisted it out.

Eleven years is a long time.

People skip out on charges all the time, leaving outstanding warrants in their wake. Why would anyone remember Daniels?

Those involved have taken new jobs, retired or died. Daniels’ wife changed her name. The cab company didn’t want to talk.

Smith forfeited the bond. There’s a $100,000 canceled check stapled to the case file. Her company closed, but she opened another before retiring.

Daniels wasn’t looking at prison, but registering as a sex offender was inevitable. Losing his job and the shift to a public defender hint at money problems.

Appearing in court that November day, perhaps driving to Rockville in a stolen cab, is hard to explain.

Did Daniels drive to Baltimore to take his own life? Or did someone else put him in the water?

Only one thing is clear.

The Chesapeake Bay, even in downtown Baltimore, gives up its secrets reluctantly.