The case against Samantha S. Smith was built not only on toxicology findings, but on months of injuries documented before the final emergency.
HAYWARD, Wis. — The prison sentence imposed on Samantha S. Smith this year rests on a single fatal act prosecutors say killed 4-year-old Zoey Chafer, but the record that led to that sentence stretches across nearly a year of fractures, bruises, swelling and unanswered alarms.
Smith was sentenced to 15 years in prison and five years of supervised release after resolving charges tied to Zoey’s 2021 death. She pleaded guilty to chronic neglect of a child and no contest to repeated physical abuse causing great bodily harm. The dismissed homicide count remained part of the sentencing record. Read through the filings chronologically, and the case takes shape less as one isolated event than as an accumulation: injury after injury, medical note after medical note, ending in a blood test that forced investigators to reopen the death itself.
Zoey was born with severe cerebral palsy. She could not speak, walk or move on her own, according to medical records described by investigators. She used a specialized wheelchair and depended on a feeding tube for nutrition and hydration. Those facts matter because they narrowed the number of people who could have caused certain injuries and, later, could have introduced alcohol into her body. Falkner moved into Smith’s residence in August 2020 and later became an approved paid caregiver through county human services. That same month, Zoey’s father reported facial bruising on Zoey and bruising on Zoey’s sibling after the children returned from Smith’s home, according to the complaint.
The medical record then turned into a calendar of repeated harm. During two visits in October 2020, Zoey was diagnosed with fractures, bruising and swelling. A November follow-up revealed another fracture. On Dec. 15, 2020, a skeletal survey showed multiple new healing fractures. In January 2021, X-rays taken at another facility showed new fractures again after swelling was reported in her limbs. School staff noted bruising in April 2021 and photographed it. Hospital records from April confirmed facial bruising. In May, more fractures were found. In June, when Zoey was taken to Mayo for neck pain, medical personnel found multiple new fractures. On July 12, 2021, she returned for facial swelling, and staff documented facial and cranial bruising. Investigators said genetic testing found no inherited explanation for the broken bones.
The final entry came 16 days later. On July 28, emergency responders were called to an apartment on West 2nd Street in Hayward because Zoey could not be awakened. She was later pronounced dead. At first, no autopsy was ordered, a decision that could have left the death without a clear answer. But the coroner drew blood, and testing at the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene showed an alcohol concentration of .572 g/100 mL. Authorities exhumed the body. The Midwest Medical Examiner’s Office determined Zoey died of acute ethanol toxicity and ruled the manner of death a homicide. The examiner also noted ethanol in a non-ambulatory child was consistent with intentional administration by another and said the child’s abrasions, contusions and healing fractures raised concern for non-accidental trauma.
Investigators then connected the toxicology result to daily caregiving. Smith allegedly told detectives she was usually the person who administered medication. Smith and Falkner both said they were the only adults in the home during the window before Zoey died and the only people who handled her feeding tube while she was in their care. That evidence gave prosecutors a direct route from the medical record to the criminal counts. Falkner initially faced a first-degree intentional homicide charge along with abuse and neglect allegations. Smith faced abuse and neglect charges, and her plea deal later folded the homicide allegation into sentencing as a read-in. Falkner resolved his own case in 2025 and is scheduled to be sentenced May 1.
What makes the timeline linger is not only its end, but its repetition. Zoey kept reappearing in clinics and hospitals, and each appearance added another mark to the same picture. Doctors who reviewed her file, along with an independent child-abuse expert, concluded the injuries were consistent with abuse. Her father later said he felt misled by explanations that blamed a brittle-bone condition and said he was thankful the coroner drew blood because the truth about alcohol otherwise might never have come out. In Madison, lawmakers later invoked Zoey’s case in support of legislation that would have required more abuse referrals to police. The bill passed the Legislature but was vetoed in March, leaving the record itself to stand as the sharpest account of what happened.
The timeline now has two future dates attached to it: the sentence Smith has begun serving and Falkner’s May 1 hearing, where the court will decide the next penalty in a case whose facts were written long before in medical charts.
Author note: Last updated April 6, 2026.