By Stephanie Bernaba 

Elaine Smith’s face holds a thousand secrets, but one would never know it at first glance. Sitting unassumingly on a couch next to her greatest cheerleader and husband, Tom, one would think she’s sailed smoothly into retirement after a relatively docile life. 

The Smiths took some time to discuss her life on an early May morning from their home in Carmel, Indiana, before heading to Chicago to consult on a movie based on her life and book, “A Gun in My Gucci.” The book chronicles her early career as one of the FBI’s first female agents and her relationship with the mobster with whom she ultimately took down organized crime in Chicago. 

Smith, one of the most prolific and accomplished women in FBI history, does not prefer the spotlight. She has been a most humble servant of the agency and does not take a single accolade she’s earned for granted.

From elementary school to the FBI

In 1979, Smith was an elementary school teacher. She followed Tom, an FBI agent, around the country, picking up teaching jobs each time he was reassigned. When the couple learned the FBI was recruiting female agents, her husband encouraged her to join.

“Tom said women are starting to come into the forces, and I think you would be really good,” Smith remembered. 

With the unwavering support of her partner and high school sweetheart, and after over a decade as a teacher, Smith applied to become an agent. 

According to Smith, the road to the position that would forever impact her life and country was decidedly tricky.

“When I joined the FBI,” Smith said, “there were so few women. In fact, in Chicago, there were six of us out of maybe 250 men, and they were not [our] friends. Most of them didn’t think that women would make very good agents.”

After earning her stripes at Quantico with only a handful of other women, Smith set out to take on organized crime.

The right kind of confidante 

Lacking confidence that she would be effective in her position, her supervisor assigned her an “old dog,” a cold case passed around from agent to agent but never solved. The subject of the case was Ken Eto, a Japanese-American card shark who ran gambling operations all over Chicago.

Smith had made his acquaintance three times, introducing herself and chatting with him as an exercise in “getting out there” to talk to potential informants. After a botched mob hit where Eto was shot in the head three times and survived, Smith was the only one to whom Eto would talk.

With nothing else to lose, Eto declared he was the property of the FBI and that he would spill everything he knew, but only to Smith. During that time, she came to know Eto, gathering binders full of information that demolished every level of organized crime in Chicago. 

During the True Crime Cases podcast with Lanie Hobbs on Aug. 3, 2020, Smith shared she was not afraid to take on such a dangerous position due to her experience as a schoolteacher in Chicago during the city’s infamous race riots.

She shared that nothing, unfortunately, could have been more disturbing than some of the things she saw in Chicago during such a tumultuous time. She even had her mobile 4th-grade classroom burned to the ground by rioters. 

Smith also explained that as a young lady living in Chicago, she narrowly escaped a kidnapping, which she said helped her begin to hone in on and commit details like license plate numbers and car makes and models to memory. 

Though she found that experience particularly jarring, it helped prepare her for such a unique and
demanding career.

However, she said that as an agent, she had been smart enough to avoid physical conflict.

“I hopefully always presented myself as friendly and approachable and not in an antagonistic way. And I think my husband taught me that,” she said. “I thought they would always know that you have the upper hand, you’re the one with the gun, you’re the FBI agent, you have backup. You have
no reason to be arrogant or act like a jerk.”

Her relationship with Eto, over time, also took on tender notes.

“I was like his daughter,” she said. “He treated me wonderfully. I felt very beholding to try to take care of him.”

Smith advocated for Eto to receive a benefit to help him survive after his ordeal with the mob, which he was later awarded.

“When he passed away, I was unable to attend his funeral, but I wrote a memorial for him telling his family that they will never really know what he did to provide justice.”

Being handed the previously unsolvable Eto case was fortuitous for Smith.

“When you solved an old dog,” Tom explained, “it’s really kind of a badge you wear. You solved the case.”

Solving that case propelled her to unprecedented success as a female in the agency, leading to multiple awards and eventually to her expert status in financial fraud and money laundering.

“They did recognize her quite a bit,” Tom explained. “She had a supervisor who completely backed her.”

“For some reason, I developed an ability to follow money,” Smith said. “I became qualified as an expert in money laundering. I had a real interest in banking and flow.”

“Then they wanted her to go to Boston when they were doing the Whitey Bulger investigation,” Tom added. “And she declined because she didn’t want to move around.”

The couple had one daughter, Kim, now 52, and vowed to provide stability for her, so they declined cases that would take them away from home. 

A pivotal role in the 9/11 investigation

Smith took on a significant role after Sept. 11, 2001. After the attacks on the Twin Towers, she was tasked with reconstructing the financial histories of the 9/11 terrorists.

She explained that she was supervising a team of 26 during the attacks. She told her team that no one was leaving — they would work night and day until the case was solved. She recalls this period as cooperative but highly stressful.

The case — and the event — took such an enormous emotional toll on her that she did not truly feel it until much later.

“I didn’t realize actually how traumatic it was for me until a year later,” Smith said. “I was giving a speech, and I was talking about it, and I burst out crying. I think probably the most traumatic experience I ever had was working on that case and trying to solve it.”

Smith shared that at that time there was no training on how to endure some of the more difficult aspects of being an FBI agent.

“Nobody trained us for 9/11,” she said. “Nobody trained you to see a dead body. Nobody trained you for when one of your informants is shot three times, rolled in a rug, thrown in an alley, and set on fire. No one can ever train you for that.”

She credits her husband and her social network for helping her through.

In 2022, after 22 years of service to the FBI, 15 of which served concurrently with her husband, Smith retired. Since then, she has been invited to various speaking engagements to discuss her life in the agency, what it was like to be a trailblazer in her field, and to encourage women never to give up on their dreams.

“Women should not be reticent about trying, becoming an FBI agent, or tackling different professional positions. You can always try to work it out if you have the right management,” Smith said.

A movie deal in the works

The Smiths have been working with movie producer Donna Gigliotti since 2015 on a movie based on “A Gun in My Gucci.” Gigliotti is known for her work on Silver Linings Playbook (2013), Hidden Figures (2016), 80 for Brady (2023), and Shakespeare in Love (1998), for which she earned an Academy Award, among others.

Smith will continue to provide consultation on the film and help groom actors for their roles. She is hopeful the movie, which will be released commercially, will come to fruition this year. 

“I’m very grateful to have the book come to life on the screen,” she said. 

When asked if she would make a cameo, Smith noted that she was too shy to appear in the film.

Gigliotti told Ann Marie Shambaugh of Current Publishing in January 2023, “Elaine’s story is amazing. I was struck by what a pioneer she was within the FBI ranks in the 1980s. Add to that her unlikely alliance with Ken Eto — that these two outsiders managed to bring down some of Chicago’s biggest mobsters — it’s a movie, for sure.”

After a storied career as one of the country’s first — and top — female FBI agents, Smith has shifted her focus to simpler things. She and her husband, both 79, enjoy spending time with their two granddaughters. The oldest is a senior at Indiana University, and the youngest is a freshman in high school. 

She shared that the most important lesson she’s learned on this journey was to remain grounded in what is important. 

“Your family and dear friends are the most important things in life,” she said. “All the rest of it you can deal with, but they should always be number one on your agenda.”

“A Gun in My Gucci” is available wherever books are sold. 

Win a copy of “A Gun in My Gucci”

You can win a signed copy of Smith’s book by registering here. Deadline to enter is Sept. 30.