Experts: Court orders inept

LOOGOOTEE, Ind. -- A woman who was killed with her two children and boyfriend in a weekend shooting rampage by her estranged husband had gone to court before her death to keep him away after their separation turned violent last fall.\nSuch court-issued protective orders, however, cannot deter someone bent on committing violence that can become as extreme as on Sunday that left five dead in a murder-suicide, authorities said.\nAlicia Smith sought the court order for Arthur Lee Smith, 36, to stay away from her in November after he smashed a car window at her trailer, said Police Chief Kelly Rayhill.\nThat confrontation happened about a month after friends say she left her husband, taking their 4-year-old daughter, Angelia, and 5-year-old son, Matthew. They soon moved in with Robert Carmickle, 38, at the Shaded Estates Trailer Park.\nInvestigators said Monday they were not certain what caused Lee Smith to go to the trailer and shoot his wife and Carmickle multiple times before also shooting the two children in the head. He was walking a few blocks away when he fatally shot himself as an officer approached a short time later, police said.\nNeighbor Tricia Padget said Lee Smith shouted at her after the hail of gunfire in the trailer to "make sure I told the police 'That's what you get for messing around with somebody's wife!'"\nSmith's father, William Smith, 57, of Loogootee, said that he had sold his son the gun used in the shootings. State police Sgt. Todd Ringle said a relative had given Lee Smith the gun, but the relative did not suspect he would use it in such a way.\nWilliam Smith and his wife, Thelma, spent part of Monday in Lee Smith's trailer going through some of his things. They said Lee and Alicia Smith had been married six or seven years and lived in the New Castle area before moving to the town about 50 miles northeast of Evansville last year.\nThey started having problems soon after they moved, Thelma Smith said.\n"He was very upset when she moved in with another guy," she said. "But he said she could come back any time she wants to."\nBoth said they had no reason to believe Lee Smith was thinking about harming anyone.\nDespite the court order, Smith often made harassing phone calls to his wife, said Angel Blackmon, a friend of Alicia Smith.\n"He would say, 'I can walk up behind (Carmickle) and take him out,'" Blackmon said.\nLee Smith had been taken to a Jasper hospital on Thursday after sweating profusely and feeling chest pains. He also told friends that he had tried to commit suicide by drinking two bottles of cold medicine.\nThe hospital concluded he had suffered an anxiety attack and he had appeared to recover by the weekend, friends and relatives said.\nThe Martin County court order gave police authority to arrest Lee Smith if he showed up at Alicia Smith's home for up to two years.\n"For the most part, that protective order is just a piece of paper, and there is no guarantee that protective order will protect the person," Ringle said. "A person who has a protective order out against somebody has to be very careful."\nWomen who are granted the orders are sometimes in the most danger, said Ann DeLaney, executive director of The Julian Center, a battered-women's shelter in Indianapolis.\n"A lot of people assume that if they've got a protective order and made a break (from a relationship), they're safe," she said. "I don't think they realize that's when they're the most vulnerable"