Gavin Smith

Gavin Smith (December 10, 1954 – May 2012) was an American college basketball star, actor, stuntman, and film studio executive, formerly a regional manager of distribution for 20th Century Fox for 18 years. He disappeared under suspicious circumstances in 2012, and was later declared dead before his remains were found in 2014 and a suspect identified and convicted in 2017 for Smith's murder.

Prior to his film industry career, Smith played basketball at UCLA, where he was part of the 1975 team that won that year's NCAA championship, the last for coach John Wooden. Smith later played at Hawaii, where he set the school's single-season scoring record of 23.4 points per game which remained undefeated as of 2012. He also worked as a film stuntman and occasional actor, prominently with a small role as a bartender in Cobb, the 1994 biopic of baseball player Ty Cobb.

On the night of May 1, 2012, Smith left a friend's house in Oak Park, where he had been staying due to reported marital difficulties. When he failed to pick up one of his sons for school the next morning, Smith's family reported him missing. Two years later, with Smith still missing and no evidence of his presence anywhere past the night of his disappearance, he was retroactively declared legally dead. Several months later, on October 26, 2014, hikers chanced upon Smith's remains near Palmdale in the Antelope Valley.

In January 2015, John Lenzie Creech was arrested and charged with Smith's murder. Creech was a convicted drug dealer who had begun an eight-year prison sentence on that charge shortly after Smith disappeared. Smith had reportedly been romantically involved with Creech's wife Chandrika Cade-Creech. Creech's attorney said the death was a "tragic accident". According to testimony before the grand jury that indicted Creech on the murder charge, he allegedly beat Smith to death after catching him and his wife together. Creech was convicted of voluntary manslaughter on July 3, 2017.

Early life Smith was from the San Fernando Valley. He was a star player on the Van Nuys High School boys' basketball team in the early 1970s. He was named a second-team All-American by Parade magazine as a senior in 1973. Smith went on to attend the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and play there for coach John Wooden. In his sophomore year he was a forward on the 1975 team which won that year's NCAA championship, Wooden's tenth and last.

Smith did not play in UCLA's 92–85 title-game defeat of Kentucky. The next season was his best at UCLA, as he appeared in all but two games, averaging 5.9 points per game (ppg). In the 1976 Final Four, he appeared twice. Against Indiana, the eventual champs, he scored six points, adding eight points and four rebounds in the third-place game victory over Rutgers. After the season, he transferred to University of Hawaii for a season and finished his playing career with the Rainbow Warriors basketball team.

By 2012 he was Fox's regional branch manager for theaters in the Dallas and Oklahoma City areas, working out of the company's Calabasas offices. According to friends, he had talked about returning to acting when he retired from Fox as he expected to within a few years.

Personal life He had settled in the West Hills area of the Valley with his wife, Lisa, and their three sons. One of his sons, Evan, played basketball for University of Southern California, and was later featured on the reality show Temptation Island.

In the meantime, his success was offset by marital, financial and substance abuse difficulties. He spent time in drug rehab. Regarding the Smiths' financial problems, they had bought their house when the market was booming and prices were high. As a result of the Panic of 2008, the market value of his home dropped sharply and he was "upside down" or having negative equity on the mortgage. Smith was thus under significant pressure and attempting to sell the house. in nearby Oak Park. The Smith family says the overnight stay at Gavin's friend's home was planned. Recent marital problems had led Smith's son, Evan, to criticize his father for "leaving the family" in a since-deleted tweet two weeks earlier. He reportedly stopped speaking to his father as well. The family had put up a blog dedicated to the search and was offering a $20,000 reward. Evan Smith had been using his Twitter feed to spread the word on the search as well.

On June 8, police, accompanied by a SWAT team, executed a search warrant at a Canoga Park home belonging to a couple identified as John and Chandrika Creech in connection with the case. After five hours, they emerged with several boxes and a computer and towed away a black Audi sport-utility vehicle. Although searches like this are unusual in a missing-persons case and homicide detectives were reportedly among the investigators present, the LACSD emphasized that it was still a missing-persons case and no evidence of foul play had yet been discovered. A lawyer for the Creeches who spoke with reporters at the scene said it was the second search of their house in the past month but refused to comment further. Later, it was reported that more than 20 search warrants had been issued so far and police had seized cellphones and other files from the Creech house.

Two weeks later, more details about why the Creeches' house may have been searched were reported. Los Angeles County Sheriff's Lt. Dave Dolson said Smith met Chandrika Creech while they were both in drug rehab and that they were in a romantic relationship. After the affair had begun in 2008, she had broken it off at the request of her husband John Creech, a convicted drug dealer who was facing new charges at the time of the search and had reportedly had no contact with Smith other than an email exchange in 2008.

Since the search of the Creeches, the LACSD had not made any more public moves related to the case. John Creech pleaded guilty to the drug charges and was sentenced to eight years in prison in September 2012. America's Most Wanted did a segment on the case in October.

Confronted by his wife, Smith initially broke off the affair with Creech. In 2010 however, Smith and Creech resumed their relationship and had begun exchanging romantic messages. Smith's wife discovered them and in an impulsive decision, drove her two sons to Creech's home where they told John Creech of the affair. He initially indicated his intent to kill their father but later relented, telling the sons, "... you just saved your father's life by coming here today." In 2012, when the romance rekindled yet again, Creech allegedly made good on his threat, stalking Chandrika Creech using a cell phone GPS tracking application to follow her to the point of the rendezvous. Creech then allegedly pummeled Smith to his death, temporarily ditched his car and body at an accomplice's garage near Porter Ranch after the killing and returned later to retrieve the body and tow Smith's car to a secluded, clandestine location.

In August, Fox cleaned out Smith's office and sent anything the police did not need for their investigation to the Smiths' home.

Smith's sister Tara Addeo and John Creech's lawyer, Daniel Teola, told The Hollywood Reporter that the LACSD's search of the Creech residence had not yielded anything of use. She had nevertheless come to believe that he had become the victim of a crime. "I know that Gavin would not hurt himself and I have a hard time believing that Gavin would ever walk away from his sons," she said. "The only other alternative is that there would have been foul play."

On January 23, 2013, a vehicle seized at an unrelated Granada Hills drug bust turned out to belong to Creech. It led investigators to Smith's missing Mercedes, found a month later at a Simi Valley storage facility, also connected with Creech, whom police continued to describe as a person of interest. Blood and body tissue, including skin stuck to the car seat, was found inside, later identified as belonging to Smith.

In March 2013, a sheriff's statement said detectives were now investigating the case as a homicide, although Smith's body had not been found. Officials also revealed that they believed they had identified the motive in the alleged crime. However, citing the ongoing investigation, they declined to elaborate on the possible motive or any other details of the case.

Discovery of remains On October 26, 2014, Smith's remains were found in Palmdale, California. A hiker's dog found a shallow grave containing a skull, some bones and clothing in a rural area between Palmdale and Acton just outside the Angeles National Forest. Authorities announced the body's discovery 11 days later, after it had been positively identified as Smith.

The cause of his death was not initially known as the county coroner's office was working to establish it. Investigators said it might take some time to do so if indeed they could. "It could be months, if ever, worst-case scenario," said a spokesman for the coroner. Nevertheless, the Los Angeles Times quoted anonymous sources as saying that investigators believe that Smith was killed at the direction of one person by others with experience in violent crime.

At a press conference held the day the body's discovery was announced, investigators shared more information. Their theory was that Smith was killed in his car shortly after he disappeared. Based on that evidence, they had "confidently labeled Smith's death a homicide" after finding the car in 2013. They believed the death would prove to be the result of blunt force trauma and although they could not yet rule out gunshot wounds, they didn't believe there would be any.

Trial and conviction John Creech was accused by prosecutors of first-degree murder. They said he tracked his wife Chandrika and Smith with hidden GPS and made good on his earlier threat to kill Smith if the affair continued.

Creech testified in his own defense, saying he had been attacked by Smith and fought to save himself. He admitted that he should have called 911 to administer to Smith afterward.

Faced with a choice of first-degree murder, second-degree murder or voluntary manslaughter, the jury took only one hour to acquit Creech on the first two charges and to convict him on voluntary manslaughter.

Two months after the July 2017 verdict, the judge sentenced Creech to the maximum sentence allowed by law: 11 years incarcerated.

All the others involved in helping Creech dispose of the evidence were given plea deals by the prosecution in exchange for their testimony against Creech but none served jail time.