\u201cautism spectrum disorder\u201d <\/a>the \u201cprimary driver\u201d of a decade-long reign of terror \u2014 a claim Manhattan federal prosecutors called \u201cinflammatory nonsense\u201d as they described the chilling notes he kept to document his attacks.<\/p>\nSmith recorded one of his depraved assaults in April 2023, when he raped an incapacitated woman after drugging her with a laced drink, according to his guilty plea in January. <\/p>\n
He then shared the footage with other deviants on an encrypted platform.<\/p>\n
Harvard-educated Edward Gene Smith, 50, called his \u201cautism spectrum disorder\u201d the \u201cprimary driver\u201d of a decade-long reign of terror. Linkedin\/Edward Smith<\/p>\n
The ex-Wall Street hotshot was arrested in 2024 after working at several banks and rising through the ranks at Citigroup to become a managing director.<\/p>\n
He repeatedly drugged and raped a college student he convinced to move to New York City in 2019, according his sick admission. <\/p>\n
Smith separately kept a twisted trove in his Manhattan rental apartment of tens of thousands of images of children being sexually abused, and paid one of his victims thousands of dollars to sign a phony \u201cletter of support,\u201d according to Manhattan US Attorney Jay Clayton.<\/p>\n
The disgraced former bank bigwig kept extensive notes planning how he would torture and punish his victims, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEdward Gene Smith is a sexual predator and a serial rapist,\u201d Clayton said in a statement.\u00a0\u201cHe spent years hiding behind wealth, education, and status while he committed egregious sexual crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is now where he belongs, in prison,\u201d Clayton added.<\/p>\n
After pleading guilty, Smith brought up his purported \u201cautism spectrum disorder,\u201d or ASD, in a bid to convince Judge Paul Engelmayer to hand him a more lenient sentence.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Smith\u2019s ASD is the primary driver of his offense conduct. It is the reason that his interactions crossed the line from legal, if unorthodox, to criminal,\u201d defense lawyers Donna Newman and Clara Kalhaus wrote to the court earlier this month.<\/p>\n
The Ivy League graduate was \u201cdevastated to learn that his understanding of his relationships with the women he thought of as his girlfriends was wrong, and that they experienced their encounters with him as non-consensual sexual abuse and even rape,\u201d his attorneys added.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors shot back that Smith had made \u201can offensive smear to those in the autism community\u201d while shirking responsibility for the shocking crimes, which unfolded from as early as 2015 to his 2024 bust.<\/p>\n
Smith separately kept a twisted trove of tens of thousands of images of children being sexually abused in his Manhattan rental apartment. Google Maps<\/p>\n
Smith with his wife, Heather Rodgers, who he married in 2012, according to his lawyers. Facebook\/Edward Smith<\/p>\n
\u201cThere can be no mistake. The defendant knew exactly what he was doing when he drugged and sexually abused his victims. He knew exactly what he was doing when he sought out, downloaded, collected, and organized horrific images of the sexual abuse of children. And he knew exactly what he was doing when he paid a woman he raped to try to cover up his crimes,\u201d the Manhattan US Attorney\u2019s Office wrote.<\/p>\n
Smith has a wife, Heather Rodgers, who he married in 2012, according to his lawyers. Rodgers lives in South Carolina in a home the feds are attempting to seize in order to provide restitution to his victims, court papers show.<\/p>\n
Smith had reached out to the victims on online platforms where he pursued \u201csugar dating\u201d relationships, telling the women he would pay them to act out his sexual \u201cfantasies,\u201d his lawyers wrote.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven before he married Heather, Edward had begun looking for sexual partners who would engage in sexual activities he had viewed on the internet, including his \u2018drunk girl\u2019 fantasy, in which his partner would consume copious quantities of alcohol before intercourse,\u201d his attorneys said.<\/p>\n
A rep for Citi said Smith was fired as soon as the bank learned that he was being investigated by law enforcement.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe cooperated with law enforcement as they sought justice for the victims of these heinous crimes,\u201d a company spokesperson said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former Citigroup bigwig was sentenced to 30 years in prison Tuesday after admitting to drugging and raping…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308190,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[18351,57,9,24,55,54,56,5161,58,3417],"class_list":["post-308189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-citibank","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-sexual-assaults","tag-us-news","tag-wall-street"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}