Background: A section of Furnace Alley in McKeesport, Pa. (Google Maps). Inset left: Karli Short (Robert A. Waters Funeral Home, Inc.). Inset right: Isaac Smith (Allegheny County Jail).
A Pennsylvania man has learned he will never see the outside of a prison after killing his pregnant lover, with whom he worried he had a child on the way.
Isaac Smith, 30, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for first-degree murder in the death of 26-year-old Karli Short, court records reviewed by Law&Crime show. The defendant was also found guilty of the first-degree murder of an unborn child, as authorities say Short was five months pregnant when she was killed.
Short was with her uncle on the morning of Sept. 13, 2021, at their home on Furnace Alley in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, a midsize city about 12 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. Short and Smith had been romantically involved, but according to him, only a few times.
But Short believed her baby belonged to Smith, and she had asked him for money and texted him about a gender-reveal party just two days before, per court documents obtained by local ABC affiliate WTAE. Smith, on the other hand, had a new girlfriend, and he apparently did not want her to find out he was likely to have a child with another woman.
On the morning in question, Short's uncle reportedly heard her talking to someone on the phone.
"Are you coming to the front or the back?" her uncle said he heard Short ask before his niece walked outside and he heard a gunshot. She had been shot in the head, and prosecutors asserted it was Smith who lured her to the yard and killed her.
Hours later, Smith showed up at the Allegheny County Police Department's headquarters and gave them a three-hour interview, saying he wanted to clear his name. In addition to acknowledging that he had been intimate with Short, he said he was willing to be in the child's life.
Detectives said they initially believed Smith, as Law&Crime previously reported. However, as the investigation continued, officers became skeptical. They learned Smith was dating a new woman, and she had met his parents just days before the shooting, according to Allegheny County Deputy District Attorney Ryan Kiray. The defendant thus had a "clear motive," "the walls were closing in," and he "did not want the double life he was living to be exposed."
As it turned out, Smith was not the father of Short's unborn child. Short's own father noted this point as he scathingly condemned the defendant during the sentencing hearing.
"My grandchild was not murdered by her father," Brandon Short said. "Her father did not kill her. A murdering coward did."
Short's aunt pointed out how excited her niece was to be having a child. "That was her joy; that was her moment," she said, per WTAE, before turning her attention to Smith. "Having to sit in the same room with him is devastating. It's unimaginable."
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