In a Lonely Place

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Speaker 17 Oh, watch your step.

Speaker 19 Wow, your attic is so dark.

Speaker 20 Dark.

Speaker 21 I know, right?

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Speaker 24 What movie is that?

Speaker 25 I haven't pressed play yet.

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Speaker 35 My brother, he always had a vision. I could feel

Speaker 35 just his energy, his passion for life.

Speaker 35 I could tell something was wrong. My suspicions were there.
All of a sudden, in one second, everything makes sense.

Speaker 36 It didn't seem weird that Chris would just up and leave because he was single and he loved to travel.

Speaker 37 They talked about going to Galapagos Islands.

Speaker 35 He would go from one place to another. I'm in Austria.
I'm in India.

Speaker 38 Month after month, you were getting these emails.

Speaker 40 No phone calls.

Speaker 10 No.

Speaker 37 Whoever was emailing us, I felt like this wasn't my son. Who is this?

Speaker 41 To torture his family like this.

Speaker 43 It's awful.

Speaker 44 There's blood on the ceiling, blood on the carpet, there's blood on the walls. This case was about greed at its most diabolical.

Speaker 45 It was tough.

Speaker 35 You know, it hits you right in the gut.

Speaker 35 It's as if we were working with the devil himself.

Speaker 46 Again and again, he rode them, as if they were his waves, and this his own private ocean. As if the sea could wash away the trouble that threatened to sink him.

Speaker 10 Why him of all people?

Speaker 46 He was the dude, the charismatic, carefree, creative one whose talent would surely make him rich.

Speaker 35 He's one of those people that thought anything was possible.

Speaker 37 He was very independent. He always wanted to figure out a way to do it on his own.

Speaker 47 He was, what would you call it? A beautiful dreamer.

Speaker 3 Out here on his own, going his own way, like always.

Speaker 48 No idea what was waiting for him.

Speaker 52 Chris Smith grew up on California's central coast in a town called Watsonville.

Speaker 54 A very close family of deeply committed Christians.

Speaker 15 Parents, Steve and Debbie.

Speaker 34 Brother Paul.

Speaker 3 Steve was a cop and then a firefighter.

Speaker 56 Debbie, a teacher.

Speaker 57 Home was a kind of boys' eaten.

Speaker 35 We lived on a private ski lake called Kelly Lake.

Speaker 35 Not bad. Yeah, we were very fortunate.
Good for kids.

Speaker 34 Oh, my God.

Speaker 35 Yeah, it was a great place to grow up. We had jet skis for a period of time before we got in trouble with them and he told them.

Speaker 35 We had a boat.

Speaker 48 But just minutes away, like a magnet, irresistible, were Pacific beaches, Manrisa and La Selva.

Speaker 5 Back and forth they went, Chris and Paul, lake to ocean and back again.

Speaker 35 We'd go waveboarding and then, you know, take a shower and go surf a half hour later.

Speaker 48 Chris, a little quirky, talented and intense, part surfer dude, part do-gooder.

Speaker 15 Even as a teenager, always eager to help those in need.

Speaker 37 He'd get a new coat for Christmas and then I'd think, well, where did it go? Well, this other guy needed it. He gave his bike to a girl that was just needing it.
He saw down in Santa Cruz.

Speaker 37 So it was just part of who he was.

Speaker 39 He tried out professional wakeboarding, but discovered also he had a knack for making money as he went to community college and partied a bit and went surfing a lot.

Speaker 34 Paul went to university and met Leah.

Speaker 37 I would say that I didn't understand Paul until I met Chris. And then it was like two puzzle pieces coming together.

Speaker 7 And Chris was a natural entrepreneur.

Speaker 6 He got into the tech world, advertising, moved to LA, and began investing in gold, too, in Kruger Rands.

Speaker 35 He was able to get a nice plush condo in Malibu on the beach and got a BMW.

Speaker 34 That ain't bad. No.

Speaker 37 That was nice.

Speaker 35 Yeah, he was excited. I remember being with him and in his BMW listening to Madonna with the top down going through Wilshire Boulevard and he was proud of himself of where he was in life.

Speaker 70 And he was generous.

Speaker 55 Took Paul off on an exotic adventure and picked up the tab.

Speaker 35 I think he was making $40,000 to $75,000 a month at the time.

Speaker 74 Holy cow, I'm going to say.

Speaker 35 He's like, where do you want to go? You know, you pick. What do you want to do? And so he said, let's go for a surf trip.
Let's go to Tahiti. And so he booked a 23-day vacation.

Speaker 35 We hopped around all these different islands in Tahiti. And it was definitely one of the best times of my life.

Speaker 8 In 2009, Chris moved a little more than an hour south from L.A.

Speaker 76 to Laguna Beach.

Speaker 77 He had teamed up with another young go-getter named Ed Shin.

Speaker 36 Ed was actually very professional. Very calm, very poised, very professional, professional, dressed very well.

Speaker 78 And Christina Grice would know.

Speaker 79 She worked the front desk at the new advertising company Chris and Ed started.

Speaker 81 The 800 Exchange, they called it.

Speaker 75 Two more different men would be hard to find, said Christina.

Speaker 15 Outwardly, anyway.

Speaker 3 Chris was single.

Speaker 51 Ed was married with kids.

Speaker 6 Chris was a surfer.

Speaker 4 Ed was a sports memorabilia collector.

Speaker 2 And Chris?

Speaker 36 He was very casual, dressed in board shorts very often, sweatshirts, would not be the uber-professional person that Ed actually seemed to be very often.

Speaker 3 Chris, with his free-spirited creativity, was the yin to Ed's number-crunching yang.

Speaker 65 And yet, there were shared passions too.

Speaker 4 Their Christian faith, for one thing, Ed seemed especially devout.

Speaker 54 Both liked the finer things and both wanted to make money.

Speaker 39 And they did.

Speaker 6 They worked a profitable little corner of the advertising game.

Speaker 8 They made and placed ads for debt consolidation, that sort of thing.

Speaker 11 The idea was to get viewers who saw the ads on TV interested enough to call an 800 number.

Speaker 85 And when they did, their information would be farmed out to companies around the country.

Speaker 52 Each call was a lead.

Speaker 36 We were getting leads for people that were calling in that had either credit card debt or student loan debt and putting them towards companies that would be able to consolidate their debts.

Speaker 87 Right away, the new business took off.

Speaker 36 I would tell everybody, yeah, the company I work for is doing amazing. We're doing great.
And I was super excited to work there because I thought it's a lot of opportunity for me to grow.

Speaker 88 Chris even brought his brother Paul on board.

Speaker 34 By then, Paul and Leah were married with two little girls and there they were, two brothers living in Southern California.

Speaker 35 My brother would come over from time to time and we'd go surf Salt Creek together. It was life couldn't have been better.

Speaker 89 And Uncle Chris always made time for his nieces.

Speaker 37 He would like have water balloon fights.

Speaker 88 Yeah, I heard about this water balloon.

Speaker 72 Tell me about, what was that all about?

Speaker 37 Our daughter were probably three and one.

Speaker 90 Anyone else water balloon launchers?

Speaker 37 Our oldest wanted to have a water balloon fight, and so they just went at it, and she nailed him.

Speaker 37 I mean, for a grown man to be willing to get so soaking wet, I was surprised.

Speaker 34 At work, in the office?

Speaker 36 He was playful. He would buy remote control toys and fly them around the office when I remember.
And we like to play pranks on our neighbors that were nearby in the office suite.

Speaker 79 Mind you, Chris had a serious side, too, certainly when it came to making money.

Speaker 3 But also, in early 2010, he was serious about someone.

Speaker 36 I remember her being very striking, very beautiful, really sweet.

Speaker 72 Chris's girlfriend was a dancer and a Pilates instructor, and he was in love.

Speaker 65 He introduced her to his parents.

Speaker 93 That night was pretty special, because I remember Chris talking about her.

Speaker 93 You know, I mean, Dad, isn't she beautiful? And then every once in a while I go, Dad, I think she may be the one.

Speaker 10 She may be the one.

Speaker 60 But meanwhile, pulling always, there was the surf, the ocean, always calling, even when it meant his days were a little upside down.

Speaker 36 Chris, I was told, would work long hours in the evening or sometimes from home. Just because I was told he liked to go surfing during the day.
He loved the idea of being out on the water.

Speaker 36 And I remember him making a joke how he said he was gonna try to get our office to be on a boat so we could be outside.

Speaker 96 And yet, by June of 2010, Paul could see his brother was becoming distracted, growing restless.

Speaker 35 Him and I sat in the hot tub before one of the last times we were together, and he was very stressed.

Speaker 92 Oh, they'd find out eventually what was bothering him.

Speaker 78 It would wind up haunting them all.

Speaker 29 I thought he finally did it.

Speaker 8 Christmas life takes a sudden turn.

Speaker 48 Word of a globetrotting adventure with a glamorous new companion.

Speaker 37 A Playboy Playmate, he didn't ever talk about those kinds of girls. I mean, why would he ever do that?

Speaker 3 It would be the first question of many in this mysterious case.

Speaker 10 Maybe you could explain.

Speaker 98 There are just some secrets that a man is willing to give up his life for.

Speaker 16 Chris Smith used to scorn what he called the moo, the masses of people who plod through life like cattle, following the crowd, bowing to the man.

Speaker 35 I heard him say the moo cow.

Speaker 35 So the moo cow?

Speaker 84 The moo cow.

Speaker 2 Chris's brother, Paul.

Speaker 35 He'd refer to the U.S. as the Mukau, just getting milked and

Speaker 35 everybody working such long hours.

Speaker 101 Not living.

Speaker 35 Yeah, not living. A job where you're just like sitting with your butt in the seat, you know, on a computer all day.
That's one thing he never wanted to do.

Speaker 35 He thought that was just something that just took your life. Took the life out of you.

Speaker 48 And by June of 2010, it seemed maybe that very thing had happened to Chris.

Speaker 68 The man who loved the wide open sea was feeling penned in.

Speaker 83 Paul knew because he worked alongside Chris at 800 Exchange.

Speaker 35 He was definitely very stressed out.

Speaker 6 Still, Paul was shocked at the way Chris just left.

Speaker 83 Paul, Leah, and their kids had just come back to California from a vacation in Oregon, and Chris had agreed to pick them up at the airport.

Speaker 35 No one ever showed up.

Speaker 14 Didn't call?

Speaker 91 Nothing. Nothing.

Speaker 37 I was irritated. The long flight with kids and then nothing.
So we just got a taxi and went home.

Speaker 35 I was, you know, a little bit frustrated, but it's your brother, and there had to been a good explanation. So.

Speaker 85 Oh, there was an explanation, all right.

Speaker 70 The next day, Paul talked to Ed, who said Chris had sold his share of the business.

Speaker 35 To not tell his brother that he was talking about a buyout and going through with a

Speaker 35 deal like that, it hurt.

Speaker 74 You know, it hurt for a while.

Speaker 16 But where was Chris?

Speaker 83 His family soon found out.

Speaker 40 He sent his parents, Steve and Debbie, an email.

Speaker 6 I'm going on vacation, probably a three-week trip to Galapagos Islands in Costa Rica.

Speaker 65 I'll let you know for sure by Friday.

Speaker 37 And then I said, good for you. Take pics if you can.
You will see amazing things. Yes, breathe.
See only Chris. Love you, Mom.

Speaker 62 It was all so sudden.

Speaker 83 But given that this was Chris, the free-spirit surfer dude to the family, the decision made sense too.

Speaker 37 I thought he finally did it. He really did it.

Speaker 35 I just said, okay, you know, do what you got to do.

Speaker 97 Got out of the situation.

Speaker 35 I wanted the best for him, whatever decision he was going to make.

Speaker 37 There were times where he sat in the kitchen and said, I'm just so over it. I'm going to be done with it all and just go be a bartender on the beach.

Speaker 85 Debbie knew it wasn't unlike her driven son to suddenly take a sharp 90-degree turn in life.

Speaker 37 Well, I don't know exactly what happened, but he talked about going to Galapagos Islands.

Speaker 67 It sounds like you're talking about somebody who is really ambitious, interested in something new, but if the stress got too much, he might just go off and do something else instead.

Speaker 37 Well, just take a break.

Speaker 43 Take a break, yeah. Yeah, right.

Speaker 62 But then they learned that Chris's break wasn't only from all the moos of the world, it was from his girlfriend, too.

Speaker 104 He dumped her by text.

Speaker 55 So much for the chill surfer dude.

Speaker 37 his mom, yes, I was shocked.

Speaker 62 And I thought.

Speaker 71 What kind of treatment of a woman was that?

Speaker 37 I think the hard part as a parent and a mom, you know, you know, your kids is thinking,

Speaker 37 this is weird.

Speaker 1 And getting weirder.

Speaker 55 Paul finally got an email from Chris, and it featured a picture of his brother's new traveling companion.

Speaker 65 Her name was Tiffany Taylor, a Playboy Playmate.

Speaker 37 I mean, why would he ever do that? And this isn't, I remember, I remember telling Steve, I mean, this is just as wacky. A Playboy Playmate, he didn't ever talk about those kinds of girls.

Speaker 65 Over the following weeks, Chris sent more emails to his family about his travels with Tiffany. Amazing sailing for the past two weeks.

Speaker 3 We're on the 45-foot sailing yacht, so there's no internet or phones, just us and the sea.

Speaker 104 By July, Chris's three-week holiday had turned into a month.

Speaker 83 He was supposed to come home after visiting the Galapagos, and now he was extending his voyage.

Speaker 35 The emails continued to come in, and he would go from one place to another. Oh, I'm going here now, I'm going to the tip of Chile.

Speaker 7 And then on to Argentina.

Speaker 53 But here's what bothered them most.

Speaker 50 Chris hadn't called home, not even once.

Speaker 83 In an email dated July 13th, he explained why.

Speaker 80 Bluntly, no phone, didn't bring one, didn't want to talk to anybody for a bit.

Speaker 59 Why no phone calls?

Speaker 13 What did he say about that in his emails?

Speaker 35 He threw his phone away. He said he didn't need it.
He was just, Tree was traveling, and so he was just going to be operating.

Speaker 67 I guess when he was at sea, he wouldn't be able to send them.

Speaker 74 Right.

Speaker 35 So you were just operating by email.

Speaker 86 By August, his father, Steve, was more than just annoyed.

Speaker 93 Probably the second month into, I got a little suspicious on it too, and I started asking him questions that nobody really know.

Speaker 39 Maybe it was the former cop at Steve.

Speaker 57 He thought the email sounded like Chris in word, but not behavior.

Speaker 8 Like he wasn't acting like himself.

Speaker 3 That's what Steve decided, to set a trap.

Speaker 59 What was really happening with Chris?

Speaker 5 A surprise clue surfaces in Las Vegas.

Speaker 35 I didn't recognize her at first.

Speaker 76 Tiffany Taylor, the Playboy Playmate?

Speaker 35 I was so excited to talk to her and figure out, you know, where have you been with my brother? I mean, where's my brother?

Speaker 35 She just looked at me like I was crazy.

Speaker 17 Oh, watch your step.

Speaker 19 Wow, your attic is so dark.

Speaker 20 Dark.

Speaker 21 I know, right?

Speaker 22 It's the perfect place to stream horror movies.

Speaker 24 What movie is that?

Speaker 25 I haven't pressed play yet.

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Speaker 7 Chris Smith's family was trying to be patient.

Speaker 86 In June of 2010, he abruptly cashed out of his business, dumped his girlfriend, set sail sail for a three-week tour of South America with a Playboy playmate.

Speaker 48 Oh dear.

Speaker 113 I wanted to be happy.

Speaker 35 So if he needed to check out and he was offered a deal and he took it, so be it. You know, I'd support him any way I could.

Speaker 37 It was like he needed space and we were going to give him some space.

Speaker 43 Yep.

Speaker 103 That couldn't have been easy to do.

Speaker 39 But then Chris's three-week trip turned into a month and then two,

Speaker 70 and he still hadn't called home, emails only.

Speaker 48 That just wasn't like Chris, thought his dad.

Speaker 6 So in August, Steve typed out a strange brief email to this Chris.

Speaker 93 What lake we used to live on? What type of boat do we used to drive, stuff like that?

Speaker 65 Questions only his son would know the answers to.

Speaker 62 Well, then there was a reply from Chris.

Speaker 75 Kelly Lake was the place their family once lived.

Speaker 39 What was your feeling then when you saw that?

Speaker 93 That's confirming it was Chris. I mean, who would be diabolical enough to research that information to be able to come back and give the answers to it?

Speaker 55 Steve was comforted.

Speaker 8 His son Chris was all right.

Speaker 88 The family tried to refocus on their own lives.

Speaker 96 Paul was still working at 800 Exchange, Chris's old business.

Speaker 35 The company was doing well.

Speaker 104 By October 2010, four months after Chris left, Ed had a plan to make the business more profitable.

Speaker 120 It involved a trip to Vegas.

Speaker 35 We were there meeting an investor that wanted to invest in the company. So he took us all there and big lavish trip, big lavish trip.

Speaker 12 And everyone from the office was invited, even Christina.

Speaker 36 You know, here I am, just the assistant, so why would I go? But because we were such a small office, Ed actually said, no, everyone can go. And I was very excited.
And I had this great room.

Speaker 36 I remember thinking, wow, I didn't realize that we were this big time.

Speaker 120 Dinners were sumptuous affairs at fancy restaurants.

Speaker 73 Ed hired a local fixer to help, a man who went by the name Johnny Vegas.

Speaker 53 His specialty?

Speaker 6 Hiring guests for events.

Speaker 58 Invited girls?

Speaker 35 Yeah, he would hire

Speaker 35 his playmates to join these dinners that we would have with investors and our clients.

Speaker 54 One particular dinner turned very strange when Paul noticed just who had joined the party.

Speaker 35 I didn't recognize her at first when she entered the room.

Speaker 16 But then it clicked.

Speaker 94 This had to be her.

Speaker 51 He was looking straight at Tiffany, the woman who had taken off with his brother four months earlier.

Speaker 35 And I sat right next to her because I was so excited to talk to her and figure out, you know, where have you been with my brother?

Speaker 53 Paul asked, Are you Tiffany Taylor?

Speaker 46 She said she was.

Speaker 92 Now he was gushing with questions.

Speaker 35 Where's my brother? How was it? How was the Galapagos Islands? And I asked her that, and she just looked at me like I was crazy. It was a weird feeling.

Speaker 3 Like you were crazy.

Speaker 35 Yeah, like, what are you talking about? I have no idea what you're talking about. And she looked at her, the other friend that she had with her, and they both just...

Speaker 120 Like you were crazy.

Speaker 84 Like I was crazy, yeah.

Speaker 35 Like, what is this guy talking about?

Speaker 120 He was totally baffled.

Speaker 104 And then he caught someone else's eye.

Speaker 35 And I looked up at Ed, and he looked at me and just shook his head. Like, that wasn't the girl.
It was a different Tiffany Taylor. But I was sure it was the same girl.

Speaker 103 A different Tiffany Taylor?

Speaker 35 That's what he told me. But it was the same girl that was in that picture on the email.

Speaker 13 What did you think after that?

Speaker 35 Something's rotten in Denmark. You know, something doesn't make sense.

Speaker 98 But yet...

Speaker 35 You know, I didn't know where to take the thoughts. I mean, what was the alternative?

Speaker 47 It was possible, certainly, that Paul had got it all wrong about Tiffany. But then he couldn't really dwell on it either.

Speaker 80 Not when the next series of emails arrived.

Speaker 79 Chris had long since left South America for Europe and then India and then Africa.

Speaker 89 His emails reflected a man not on vacation, but in turmoil, angry at everyone.

Speaker 93 All of a sudden, he gets into talking about this has been the worst year of my life. I've gone through a lot of stresses in my life.
I've contemplated suicide, drug abuse.

Speaker 37 It sounded like he was unraveling or something.

Speaker 51 It did, but also

Speaker 13 he contemplated suicide.

Speaker 97 He seemed to be blaming you guys for

Speaker 93 something in his childhood.

Speaker 93 It's trying to turn the search, switching around to us.

Speaker 68 What is that like, though, when you get an email like that?

Speaker 93 You feel sick at your stomach.

Speaker 93 What is he? I thought it provided a really good childhood for them. Something like that.
Just what was he angry about?

Speaker 89 All through the fall of 2010, Chris seemed to be on edge.

Speaker 6 But then, in December, six months into his unpredictable voyage, he'd pulled himself out of his funk.

Speaker 65 He emailed Paul that he wanted to start a new software business a little closer to home.

Speaker 72 Meet me there in February so we can surf and talk about everything.

Speaker 81 I have some insane ideas about the platform I came up with.

Speaker 83 There were a couple of ideas.

Speaker 120 One was you were to go and meet him in Costa Rica or something.

Speaker 74 Right.

Speaker 70 Start a business there.

Speaker 75 Make lots of money.

Speaker 74 Right.

Speaker 35 Yeah, and it was at a location that only only him and I had talked about.

Speaker 35 So, yeah, wanted me to bring my family down to Costa Rica. So, I, you know, I had this image that he's just out, you know,

Speaker 35 living life.

Speaker 61 Of course, there was a catch.

Speaker 80 Chris was still in Africa.

Speaker 81 And he told them that before he left, he needed to travel deep into the continent for what sounded like a very shady business deal and a dangerous trip.

Speaker 7 Now, his family was really worried.

Speaker 37 My gut instinct told me something was really, really wrong.

Speaker 93 I contacted a U.S. Department of State.

Speaker 39 A father sets out on a journey of his own to learn the truth.

Speaker 7 Chris Smith told his family he had one more thing to do in Africa.

Speaker 95 A dicey plan in potentially dangerous places.

Speaker 48 He was going to sell his Kruger Rands, that gold he invested in, to help finance his next business venture. And on December 26, 2010, Chris sent this email to his brother Paul.

Speaker 86 I'm headed back up through the Congo.

Speaker 82 I found a dealer in Rwanda that will pay 30% markup on Krugs.

Speaker 95 Only out here is this like real currency.

Speaker 35 He was going to head back up into Rwanda and exchange some gold cougarans that he was carrying in his pocket for cash.

Speaker 107 That sounds like a pretty foolhardy thing to do.

Speaker 35 Yeah, at that point I was like, okay, he's lost his marbles, and you know, the possibility of it being

Speaker 35 something that you hope it's not starts to

Speaker 35 come to the door of your mind and it's you don't want to let it in.

Speaker 43 No, why?

Speaker 35 because it's it's an abyss and you don't know where the emotional roller coaster will take you

Speaker 37 by that time the whole family started feeling the same way a foreboding sense of dread all along chris's mom had been sending him emails urging her son be careful We still love you and don't do anything, you know, and we just kept saying how much we all miss him, but my gut instinct told me something was really, really wrong.

Speaker 37 So, and then they ended there.

Speaker 104 Ended.

Speaker 52 The emails stopped.

Speaker 12 After six months, Chris went totally silent.

Speaker 35 When we stopped getting emails, you know, we thought he had been mugged. He'd been killed.
You know,

Speaker 35 it's what happens commonly probably down there. You're walking around with gold in your pocket.
You know, he probably got mugged and killed.

Speaker 69 Chris's mom scoured the internet, hoping a satellite might have caught a glimpse of her globe-trotting son.

Speaker 37 I I would go down on Google Earth to every kind of video that they had that might have been around to see if there's a glimpse of him walking around. You know, you're just desperate.

Speaker 85 By March 2011, it had been nine months since anyone had seen Chris.

Speaker 52 And Chris's father, Steve, the ex-police officer, decided it was time to start his own investigation.

Speaker 93 I contacted the U.S. Department of State missing persons overseas.

Speaker 93 And I submitted all our emails to them showing his tracking, going around South America, back up, crossing over to India and back down Africa and starting the way back up to the Congo.

Speaker 48 Steve was hoping the State Department would be able to track Chris down by seeing where he had last used his passport.

Speaker 34 A few weeks later, a government official called back with some disturbing findings.

Speaker 93 He felt that, in his opinion, in the State Department's, that Chris had never left the United States.

Speaker 4 Never left the United States?

Speaker 72 It just didn't make sense.

Speaker 46 Steve's next move was to take his own trip.

Speaker 40 He traveled from his home in Bend, Oregon, to Laguna Beach, California, where Chris lived.

Speaker 4 He was hoping people like Chris's ex-business partner, Ed Shin, might have some valuable information.

Speaker 93 During that period of time, he gave all types of information out.

Speaker 93 But the main part I was looking for is trying to find my son. And he related to me that Chris had gotten a false passport.

Speaker 55 He used a false passport.

Speaker 45 Correct.

Speaker 35 That's what Ed said.

Speaker 35 Chris got a fake passport, left the country.

Speaker 86 No contact with his son, a passport that never left the country, and now a fake passport.

Speaker 81 Desperate for help, Steve went to the Laguna Beach Police Department to file a missing person report.

Speaker 93 They refused to take it.

Speaker 102 Why?

Speaker 93 They said I needed to report to my own city of Bend, but eventually they did take the report.

Speaker 93 when I submitted it.

Speaker 3 After getting the runaround, it seemed to Steve, finally, that someone was truly going to investigate chris's disappearance take on the case surely the laguna beach police would get some answers

Speaker 125 my wife somebody didn't get

Speaker 9 police turned to chris's business partner ed

Speaker 5 could he help solve this mystery

Speaker 125 i don't know where he is i mean all it's yes he's the other side of the world

Speaker 77 It was the spring of 2011, almost a year since Chris Smith had left his family and the woman he was in love with, and his old life way behind.

Speaker 3 Chris's dad, Steve, had filed a missing person report with the Laguna Beach Police Department.

Speaker 122 Maybe Laguna detectives could figure out where Chris was.

Speaker 127 I'm hoping you can give me the details as to how this all started.

Speaker 53 This was early June.

Speaker 76 Laguna cops had looked up Chris's business partner, Ed Shin.

Speaker 10 Maybe he knew where Chris went.

Speaker 38 Ed told them how they'd gone into business together.

Speaker 125 And it worked. It worked great.
I mean, we made a lot of money.

Speaker 127 A lot of money out of curiosity.

Speaker 125 Well, like the, you know, first five months we were in business, we made like a million dollars in revenue and then the third year we did like five to eight million.

Speaker 40 But by the summer of 2010 Ed said Chris wanted out.

Speaker 125 He was always talking about like you know making a bunch of money and picking off with it so he wanted to go to like Costa Rica permanently.

Speaker 7 And Ed wanted to help his friend and partner so he made him that offer which was frankly tough to refuse.

Speaker 125 I'll buy you out of your partnership. You know we'll talk whatever million dollars and you go do whatever you want to do.
Go travel the world.

Speaker 6 Ed said he'd pay Chris $250,000 in gold coins and he'd wire him another $250,000 in monthly installments.

Speaker 40 And if they ever sold the company, Ed would wire Chris another $500,000, truly a million-dollar payout.

Speaker 53 And why did Chris suddenly leave?

Speaker 10 Ed had a theory.

Speaker 125 He was really big into,

Speaker 125 you know, the economic collapse of the United States and

Speaker 125 the need to be out of here. And he was really into conspiracy theories where only a few people control everything.

Speaker 125 Yeah, and we're all just puppets kind of deal.

Speaker 11 And, Ed said, Chris had a darker side.

Speaker 125 You know, he drank pretty much almost every night.

Speaker 4 Ed told them Chris drank and worked late into the night, writing the company's radio ads and TV ads, and he added in sleeping pills and even harder drugs to inspire creativity, apparently.

Speaker 125 His big joke was that I wrote this script while I was on the Nesta and I did a bump and I get a bump and like a bump of cocaine.

Speaker 92 Ed said Chris would sometimes go on bender-like shifts.

Speaker 125 He would go on these workbinges for like four or five days and he'd crash.

Speaker 6 In early June 2010, Chris was planning his trip, still working at the office, and according to Ed, coming a part of the seams.

Speaker 76 And Ed said he came into the office early on Friday morning, June 4th, and discovered a mess.

Speaker 125 The place smelled like piss and vomit. I said, what were you doing? He's like, well, I was writing scripts all night.
I was like, do you know you, I mean, do you know you trashed the office?

Speaker 91 And he was like, what do you mean?

Speaker 125 And so he has completely blocked out.

Speaker 125 And he had broken bottles, like he broke a couple of bottles of wine.

Speaker 36 It smells horrible.

Speaker 34 The carpets are wet.

Speaker 3 Christina Grice saw the place when she came back to work.

Speaker 103 It was cleaned up by then, except for the stain outside of Chris's office.

Speaker 36 We thought maybe Chris got too crazy one night and vomited on the carpet right by his office.

Speaker 7 The man was a mess.

Speaker 76 So Ed said he took Chris off to Vegas for the weekend to decompress and so they could give themselves some time to finalize their deal and say goodbye.

Speaker 125 We just said we would go to Vegas to the party and kind of just like loosen it out like or loosen up and kind of work it out.

Speaker 127 And then you guys were back in the office.

Speaker 125 We drove back, yeah.

Speaker 4 Later that Monday, June 7th, Ed said he went over to Chris's apartment, separation agreement in hand.

Speaker 125 And then I went by there in the afternoon and signed it.

Speaker 125 Yeah. And

Speaker 125 I took it back. I left him his copy and you know we shook hands, hugs, and I said, what are you going to do? He's like, I'm going to take off.

Speaker 7 Laguna Beach Police already heard Chris hadn't used his passport and about using a fake passport, but they wanted to know why.

Speaker 127 Can you explain to me why this guy decides to, I'm going to leave the country, but I'm not going to use my own passport.

Speaker 73 Ed told the detectives Chris just didn't want to be found.

Speaker 125 When we were in Vegas, he met with a guy, well, it was like a mutual guy that I knew.

Speaker 127 The Johnny Vegas guy?

Speaker 125 Yes. Okay.

Speaker 127 Do we know who Johnny Vegas is?

Speaker 65 Johnny Vegas, that fixer Ed Shin used in Las Vegas to grease the wheels on his trips to the casinos.

Speaker 9 Ed said Chris was now the one asking Johnny for some favors.

Speaker 125 He'd asked him stuff like, how could I get a passport and all that stuff, and give him the number.

Speaker 127 Were you with him when he picked up the passport? Yes.

Speaker 37 And that happened where?

Speaker 125 In L.A.

Speaker 62 In Los Angeles, just before Chris took off, gold in hand for parts unknown.

Speaker 4 Over the next few months, Ed said he heard from Chris, always by email, and he regularly wired Chris's money.

Speaker 125 I wired some money to India.

Speaker 16 He'd saved all the records.

Speaker 127 There's wire transfers that basically would document the fact that you made these payments to him.

Speaker 3 Ed told the detectives he'd get them copies of everything.

Speaker 86 Emails, wire transfers, that agreement letter.

Speaker 4 But in the end, he wasn't able to shed very much light on the case.

Speaker 125 I don't know where he is. I mean, honestly, I think he's the other side of the world.

Speaker 127 I just want to be able to tell his dad as like he's out of the gun, he left the country. There's nothing I can do about that.
But I can't fly the volley.

Speaker 37 This is going to be an open case until we hear from him.

Speaker 3 The Laguna Beach Police just couldn't seem to find Chris.

Speaker 53 But what is it they say?

Speaker 120 The best detective is luck

Speaker 128 Basically, we kind of stumbled across this case.

Speaker 48 Enter a private detective with some questions of his own.

Speaker 83 Did something seem fishy about all those emails?

Speaker 128 And you're starting to think, who is this person?

Speaker 17 Oh, watch your step.

Speaker 18 Wow, your attic is so dark.

Speaker 20 Dark.

Speaker 21 I know, right?

Speaker 22 It's the perfect place to stream horror movies.

Speaker 23 Play me.

Speaker 24 What movie is that?

Speaker 25 I haven't pressed play yet.

Speaker 26 AT ⁇ T Fiber with Al-Fi covers your whole house.

Speaker 29 Even your really, really creepy attic turned home theater.

Speaker 31 Jimmy, what have I told you about scaring our guests?

Speaker 26 Get AT ⁇ T Fiber with Al-Fi and live like a gagillionaire.

Speaker 33 Limited availability coverage may require extenders at additional charge.

Speaker 109 You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday.

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Speaker 45 Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites.

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Speaker 109 Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast, indeed.com slash podcast.

Speaker 99 Terms and conditions apply.

Speaker 74 Hiring, Indeed is all you need.

Speaker 30 Good morning. Welcome to Today.

Speaker 90 From Back to School to Tackling Your To-Do List, the Today Show is your best start to the day.

Speaker 118 It's a new season, and every morning we're here to help you take it all off as the forecast calls for football all across the country.

Speaker 90 Blockbuster stars, live concerts, and so much more. Wake up to where it's all happening.

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Speaker 90 Watch the Today Show, weekday mornings at 7 a.m.

Speaker 107 on NBC.

Speaker 39 It's one of the curious things about life, the way a mere coincidence can change things.

Speaker 128 Basically, we kind of stumbled across this case.

Speaker 6 Somebody called you up and said, look into those people down the hall.

Speaker 43 Yeah.

Speaker 79 Joe DeLue is a private investigator and former detective.

Speaker 4 In April 2011, Joe and his partner had just opened an office in this complex south of Laguna Beach.

Speaker 50 A client walked in a couple of weeks later.

Speaker 128 A property manager came into our office. They realized we're an investigative company and asked us if we do skip tracing work, locating people.
We said, sure.

Speaker 52 It turned out the 800 Exchange office was, or at least had been, practically next door to DeLue's office.

Speaker 83 A couple of months before, the whole company left for parts unknown and left behind a bundle of unpaid rent.

Speaker 44 So the landlord is kind of upset?

Speaker 8 The landlord hired the PIs to find 800 Exchange and see if they could find that rent money.

Speaker 45 So presumably we got to find out about these people.

Speaker 45 What?

Speaker 128 What do you do? So we start off with database searches, running their name, finding last-known addresses, finding out any assets they may have.

Speaker 16 The company wasn't hard to find.

Speaker 68 It was a few miles up the freeway in another office park.

Speaker 40 By July, DeLou and his partner were boning up on the company, looking for the assets, trying to find that rent money, when the property manager walked back into their office and said Laguna Beach police detectives had been looking for 800 Exchange too.

Speaker 128 We asked why. He says, well, Chris Smith is missing.

Speaker 128 Then we learned that Chris was bought out of his share of the company, took his... you know, earnings and just sailed around the world.

Speaker 105 He wanted to know more about Chris's disappearing act, so he contacted Chris's father, Steve.

Speaker 85 Steve filled him in about his son's escape from the rat race.

Speaker 128 And he told me, he goes, look, after this buyout from EdChin, Chris was emailing us. He was just, he couldn't take the stress and he just wanted a break.

Speaker 3 It had been a year since Chris had disappeared.

Speaker 81 DeLou found out about the missing persons report Chris's family had filed.

Speaker 88 So by the time you got into the case, they were already worried, concerned.

Speaker 93 Yes.

Speaker 128 But I think there was a sense of hope.

Speaker 128 They were curious.

Speaker 5 But Chris's dad, Steve, told DeLou.

Speaker 128 He was at least communicating with us. And I asked him how, and he said, by email.

Speaker 128 And I said, well, do you know it's him?

Speaker 128 He said, there's just things in the email that would, that would,

Speaker 13 no one else would know.

Speaker 128 So I asked him if I could take a look at those emails.

Speaker 83 He started poring over all of Chris's communications from his globe trotting voyage.

Speaker 43 It's kind of like a travelogue, right?

Speaker 126 Islands we've sailed around are amazing.

Speaker 128 Yes. Just stopping in Port of Argentina.

Speaker 47 The emails were like picture postcards in prose from all around the world.

Speaker 48 But DeLou thought something didn't smell right.

Speaker 65 What intrigued you about them?

Speaker 128 I remember, and one of the things that struck me odd

Speaker 63 was

Speaker 128 that the writer was trying too hard to make the receiver believe that this is me, this is Chris.

Speaker 80 Take this email from October 2010.

Speaker 68 Chris wrote to his dad, I can't call you from Mumbai, but do you think we can meet in your hometown in Austria sometime in January?

Speaker 128 It was almost like, well, his dad knows where he grew up. His dad knows where he sits.

Speaker 131 You wouldn't say it to your hometown.

Speaker 128 Yeah, I think the normal thing that somebody would say would be, hey, let's, I want to go back to where you, where you grew up.

Speaker 72 And remember how Chris's dad, feeling a bit worried, set those test questions to his son?

Speaker 85 What lake did you used to live on?

Speaker 7 And what type of boat did you ski behind?

Speaker 128 There's some doubt about who he was talking to. There's only a few people that would know that, obviously, his family and Chris.

Speaker 38 Which is why Steve was relieved when Chris responded they lived on Kelly Lake.

Speaker 92 Except, Steve had asked his son two questions, the name of their their lake and the kind of boat they had.

Speaker 12 And DeLou noticed his cop sense was tingling.

Speaker 128 And I thought, wait, he answered the lake question, but he never answered the type of boat. And that bothered me.

Speaker 5 And then DeLou read this email that Chris sent to his brother, Paul, after his dad had asked him those questions.

Speaker 7 And the penny dropped.

Speaker 34 What was the model of our boat that we grew up riding on?

Speaker 128 And Paul replied back. And then I thought, this is it.
He didn't know the answer.

Speaker 7 DeLou now knew it was not Chris Smith writing those emails.

Speaker 128 It does get a little creepy at that point because then you're starting to think, who is this person? If this isn't Chris, then

Speaker 128 who is it?

Speaker 58 Oh, boy.

Speaker 134 A disturbing discovery in Chris's office.

Speaker 128 I looked at the light switch and there was what I thought was blood.

Speaker 130 It was red, dark red.

Speaker 124 What was the first thing that occurred to you?

Speaker 128 It wasn't just a missing persons. Something seriously happened to Chris.

Speaker 83 Private Eye Joe DeLue was so intrigued by the mystery of what happened to Chris Smith that he went to work on it pro bono.

Speaker 83 He knew the Laguna Beach Police had opened the missing person case, but they hadn't checked out Chris's old office.

Speaker 6 So he went to the building's property manager.

Speaker 128 So we asked if the office was still vacant, and they said yes, and kind of looked at my partner and said, well, can we go in there and look? They said, sure.

Speaker 132 They opened it up.

Speaker 128 Yeah. Everything was empty.

Speaker 62 This is the old 800 exchange space.

Speaker 128 Chris's desk was here.

Speaker 43 Okay.

Speaker 128 There was a credenza behind him.

Speaker 8 Soon enough, DeLou started to notice things.

Speaker 65 A stain by Chris's old office.

Speaker 128 There was a white powdery substance coming from

Speaker 128 the ground and seeping through the carpet, which my partner identified as like a sulfur.

Speaker 89 Yeah, it makes sort of like a salt stain on the carpet.

Speaker 76 DeLou took a picture of it.

Speaker 61 and thought some sort of heavy chemical cleaner had been used on the spot.

Speaker 80 But of course, Ed Shin said Chris threw up on the carpet after a drunken binge at the office, so that made some sense.

Speaker 42 But DeLou was an observant type, all eyes.

Speaker 1 And what do you know?

Speaker 128 When I stepped in, I looked at the light switch, and it was white,

Speaker 128 and there was a blood smear, what I thought was blood. It was red, dark red.

Speaker 41 What appeared to be blood on the light switch?

Speaker 97 Yes. And then on the doorframe.

Speaker 124 When you saw that, what's the first thing that occurred to you?

Speaker 128 That it wasn't just a missing person something seriously happened to chris

Speaker 105 deleu called the sheriff's office so you found out from joe deleu about some weird thing going on yeah i did he said he saw what he thought might be blood on the door jamb inside inside the office so that'll get your attention it got my attention where don vode and ray worked then sergeants with the orange county sheriff's department the first thing to do was to send some techs over to take a good close look around the old 800 exchange office.

Speaker 51 that's when they started finding more suspicious spots on some ceiling tiles behind some molding they pulled up carpet and found dark colored stains on the concrete underneath

Speaker 65 the spots tested positive for human blood of course

Speaker 33 could have been anybody's blood even another tenant okay we got blood in the office um we don't know whose it is so he hasn't been around for over a year correct of course, since Chris wasn't around, there wasn't a blood sample to compare it to.

Speaker 89 But maybe Chris's family could help with that with a DNA sample.

Speaker 93 I had already taken a swab test. They did both swabs on Paul and my wife, Debbie.

Speaker 62 Meanwhile, P.I.

Speaker 15 DeLou remained deeply invested in finding out what happened to Chris.

Speaker 4 After that blood, someone's blood, was found in the office, He felt it was time to have a heart-to-heart talk with Chris's dad, Steve.

Speaker 128 I said, listen, I think now is the time to understand that maybe Chris

Speaker 128 is not going to come back.

Speaker 128 And Steve is just quiet and he came back and he said, well, we have to wait. We have to wait.
I provided DNA. Let's just wait.
I said, I understand.

Speaker 126 We'll wait.

Speaker 128 Maybe Chris is still alive.

Speaker 97 It's a very tough thing for a parent.

Speaker 128 I can't imagine. I really can't.

Speaker 48 But then the results came in.

Speaker 135 We confirmed that all the blood in the crime scene was, in fact, Chris Smith's.

Speaker 42 All of it.

Speaker 65 All of it. Nobody else was bleeding in there at all.

Speaker 132 In the end, it was all from one person, and it was one person's DNA.

Speaker 54 And even though they didn't have a body, Ray Wirt and Don Vogt came to a sobering conclusion.

Speaker 60 Chris had to be dead.

Speaker 15 Still, the Smith family was just not ready, not yet, to accept that Chris might be gone.

Speaker 62 Did you keep hope alive until then?

Speaker 93 Oh, yeah, you've always got to have hope.

Speaker 35 I was holding out for hope a little bit, but in my heart, I felt that Chris had passed and gone to be with the Lord. But back of your mind,

Speaker 35 you're still hoping that you'll see your brother again.

Speaker 48 Back at the Orange County Sheriff's Office, a missing person case turned into a homicide investigation.

Speaker 5 It was up to these investigators to figure out what happened to Chris Smith

Speaker 94 and why.

Speaker 63 Detectives talked to everyone.

Speaker 72 Chris's girlfriend.

Speaker 132 Her heart had been broken.

Speaker 87 His business partner.

Speaker 132 He was very agreeable to help.

Speaker 4 A new employee.

Speaker 103 Didn't he actually move into a Christmas apartment?

Speaker 108 He did.

Speaker 78 What would they uncover?

Speaker 17 Oh, watch your step.

Speaker 19 Wow, your attic is so dark.

Speaker 20 Dark.

Speaker 21 I know, right?

Speaker 22 It's the perfect place to stream horror movies.

Speaker 24 What movie is that?

Speaker 25 I haven't pressed play yet.

Speaker 26 AT ⁇ T Fiber with Al-Fi covers your whole house.

Speaker 29 Even your really, really creepy attic turned home theater.

Speaker 31 Jimmy, what have I told you about scaring our guests?

Speaker 26 Get AT ⁇ T Fiber with Al-Fi and live like a gagillionaire.

Speaker 33 Limited availability coverage may require extenders at additional charge.

Speaker 109 You just realized your business needed to hire someone

Speaker 74 Easy.

Speaker 16 Just use Indeed.

Speaker 111 When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need.

Speaker 45 Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites.

Speaker 113 Indeed, sponsored jobs help you stand out and hire fast.

Speaker 112 With sponsored jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates, so you can reach the people you want faster.

Speaker 108 According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs.

Speaker 64 There's no need to wait any longer.

Speaker 99 Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed.

Speaker 108 And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com/slash podcast.

Speaker 109 Just go to Indeed.com/slash podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast.

Speaker 102 Indeed.com/slash podcast.

Speaker 99 Terms and conditions apply.

Speaker 74 Hiring, Indeed is all you need.

Speaker 134 Dateline is hitting the road for a first-of-its-kind event, and you're invited.

Speaker 136 Join us in Nashville, Tennessee, on Sunday, September 28th, for Dateline Live. The whole team will be there, along with our hosts, Annette O'Toole, Michael McKeon, and Holly Robinson Pete.

Speaker 134 Plus, expert demonstrations of VIP reception and more.

Speaker 72 Just three weeks left to buy your tickets at datelinenbc.com/slash event.

Speaker 91 Dateline Live.

Speaker 8 It would be a crime to miss it.

Speaker 106 Forensic testing is a little bit like turning on a light in a darkened room.

Speaker 39 The empty place that was once the headquarters of 800 Exchange told an enlightening story.

Speaker 34 Chris's blood was all over the place.

Speaker 39 His office, the break room, doorway, hallway.

Speaker 34 But what did all that mean?

Speaker 54 What exactly went on in there?

Speaker 132 Chris's brother worked in that very office, so he was able to provide us with very intimate details about who's in what office, how the furniture was set up back then.

Speaker 54 Armed with what they had seen, investigators called around, talked to Chris's colleagues, the rest of his family, his friends.

Speaker 13 Did you talk to Chris's girlfriend?

Speaker 132 We both did, yes.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 65 She must have been a pretty unhappy woman.

Speaker 132 She was. Her heart had been broken and she was dumped by a text.

Speaker 80 They didn't tell her about the blood in the office at first.

Speaker 82 They wanted her unvarnished reaction to her former boyfriend, the man who dumped her and ran off with another woman.

Speaker 132 They were pretty serious from everything we had learned. And yeah, she was, you say, scorned?

Speaker 128 Absolutely.

Speaker 103 Did she say negative things about Chris?

Speaker 105 She did. She did.

Speaker 132 She talked about some times where he would be upset.

Speaker 40 That's perhaps an understatement.

Speaker 53 In fact, the police interview was an opportunity for Chris's girlfriend to unload on her ex, and did she ever?

Speaker 92 She said he could be paranoid, volatile, and at times erratic.

Speaker 132 We tore the bandage off

Speaker 132 an old wound.

Speaker 85 And the investigators decided they wanted to talk to a guy named Kenny Kraft.

Speaker 52 Christina remembers he showed up at the office after Chris disappeared.

Speaker 36 Kenny just kind of needed a job at the time, and so he was a friend, I believe, of one of the other coworkers there. And Ed gave him a job and put him to work doing random errands.

Speaker 104 But here's what intrigued investigators: While Kenny didn't know Chris, he seemed to be trying on his life.

Speaker 103 Didn't he actually move into a Christmas apartment?

Speaker 108 He did.

Speaker 103 Did you search that apartment?

Speaker 132 He did.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 132 But there was nothing in there.

Speaker 132 All the property had been moved out of there to Chris's.

Speaker 131 Of course, Chris's ex-business partner, Ed Shin, drew a lot of attention, too.

Speaker 9 The investigators learned that Ed was an interesting guy, ambitious, outgoing businessman.

Speaker 40 He sailed through the University of California at San Diego, and after graduation, got married, had four kids, was a faithful churchgoer.

Speaker 137 I felt that the Lord had put Ed in my path. Somebody who I could help as like a brother.

Speaker 58 Joseph Gray met Ed at a local church.

Speaker 137 Decided to invite myself, Ed, and another gentleman into a weekly, like

Speaker 137 small men's Bible study, I guess I'd call it. We did get close over the course of a number of months, sharing our struggles.

Speaker 79 It was 2008, and the financial meltdown was certainly impacting people like Ed, who had started his own sports memorabilia business.

Speaker 6 Seeing someone in need, Joseph said he loaned him money, helped him get a house, even counseled him about his marriage.

Speaker 137 I saw as Ed's life was falling apart, and I was starting this new division of our company, and I thought I would give him a lifeline and invite him to come on board.

Speaker 40 It was at his new job that Ed met Chris.

Speaker 38 Eventually, Ed and Chris made such a good team, they spun off, started their own company, 800 Exchange.

Speaker 48 And Ed was now a boss and made quite an impression on Christina.

Speaker 36 Just a normal young guy who was smart and had a great idea and was going to take this business somewhere.

Speaker 94 Christina also thought Ed was a great dad.

Speaker 36 He brought his kids by the office often, and so to see them made me seem that, you know, he made family a priority.

Speaker 46 So well-spoken, so easy, that when Ed Chen first presented himself to the Laguna Beach Police Department a year after Chris disappeared, investigators seemed to have sympathy for him.

Speaker 16 After all, it was Chris who left 800 Exchange.

Speaker 127 For a grown man to decide to just kind of

Speaker 127 walk away, because he could, but really in essence, it's like he's kind of left you holding the bag.

Speaker 44 I could have used it, Mark.

Speaker 42 The Orange County investigators took a close look at that interview.

Speaker 132 Ed was questioned. He had answers of the questions he couldn't answer.
He was very agreeable to help in any way he could. He expressed that.

Speaker 125 I would have to go back on my emails and see what emails I had on the floor, and I'd be happy to give you whatever you need.

Speaker 132 He even agreed to do some homework that was given to him to get some more materials that Laguna Beach Police Department had asked him to. He was being very cooperative.

Speaker 109 Can I email you all that?

Speaker 91 Absolutely.

Speaker 76 But Ed Chin, the man who made such a good impression, presented a good case, had a secret,

Speaker 52 lots of secrets.

Speaker 132 They saw thousands, tens of thousands, being gambled.

Speaker 60 High stakes and risky business.

Speaker 75 Ed Shin was a man with a past.

Speaker 36 I remember thinking,

Speaker 36 he's not who I thought he was.

Speaker 85 What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

Speaker 126 Isn't that what they say?

Speaker 79 But it didn't take long for investigators to find out about Ed Shin's Vegas.

Speaker 16 Full of string and the things you hear.

Speaker 100 My my.

Speaker 6 Ed Shin loved going to Vegas.

Speaker 60 But he didn't just play the slots or spend an hour or two at the $5 tables.

Speaker 75 Oh, no, not Ed Chin.

Speaker 103 You said he traveled on a private plane?

Speaker 132 There were times he did, yes.

Speaker 105 Christina, the 800 exchange receptionist, told investigators about one of the times the staff went on a business trip to Vegas with Ed.

Speaker 36 Rolls-Royce Phantom takes me to a beautiful hotel, and I remember seeing Ed's room that he was staying in, just the most extravagant room.

Speaker 36 Two stories, a 24-hour butler, a massage room, pool room, multiple bedrooms, an elevator.

Speaker 36 It was beyond what I had ever seen.

Speaker 83 The investigators learned Ed not only liked stunning hotel rooms, he also liked to keep company with beautiful women.

Speaker 36 There's a group of women that come down, and they're around my age, maybe a little older, maybe a little younger, and very scantily dressed. And I remember thinking, oh, you know, it's Vegas.

Speaker 36 They're just walking by us. And then I see them get in the car with Ed.

Speaker 85 Ed told Christina he hired the women to bring attention and potential new clients clients to the company.

Speaker 38 When it came to Ed spending money, it seemed like it was coming out of a fire hose.

Speaker 132 We had co-workers tell us that he would sit at a table for 10 hours and they saw thousands, tens of thousands, being gambled.

Speaker 36 It was after Vegas that I remember walking away from it thinking,

Speaker 36 he's not who I thought he was.

Speaker 65 That was something Joseph Gray found out, too.

Speaker 81 Remember, he met Ed at church, took him under his wing, got him a job at his company, LG Technologies, and then Ed betrayed him.

Speaker 4 Gray discovered Ed repaid his friendship and generosity by secretly manipulating LG's bank information.

Speaker 137 It's like electronic systems. You put your bank account in, the funds get transferred.
Ed went in and changed that information to his own personal bank account.

Speaker 48 In other words, he stole it, then left the company before LG discovered the theft.

Speaker 137 So a young man that I had helped out ended up absconding with between the leads that we assume were stolen and the physical funds that were taken just shy of $2.5 million.

Speaker 4 Ed pleaded guilty to embezzlement, and he worked out a deal to pay partial restitution.

Speaker 1 That was 2010, when he and Chris were already at 800 Exchange.

Speaker 62 The deal?

Speaker 81 As long as Ed repaid $700,000, he'd avoid a prison sentence.

Speaker 6 So one by one, you'd encounter these people who had a different view of Ed Shin than the one he would like them to have.

Speaker 121 We did.

Speaker 43 People who

Speaker 135 that knew him and other people we did talk to said, yeah,

Speaker 135 there's a different side to Ed Shin.

Speaker 46 The more digging they did, the more investigators could see that Ed was living in a house of cards, falling down from the weight of his own money problems.

Speaker 65 That's something Christina saw just before she quit working for 800 Exchange.

Speaker 36 A lot of phone calls from vendors saying they didn't receive payment that we owed them money. And it wasn't, you know, not small amounts.

Speaker 36 I'm talking like $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 that we owed these people.

Speaker 132 Ed Shin's desperate. He's got a large debt that he's paying off because of a criminal case.
And he's got a wife and four kids.

Speaker 135 And a gambling problem.

Speaker 132 And a gambling problem. And the biggest thing is one of the the expenses, if he doesn't pay off, he's going to prison.

Speaker 3 Investigators had Ed Shin on their radar.

Speaker 131 Did he have some idea that you were after him?

Speaker 135 I don't think so at that point. No, he had no clue that we were looking into him.

Speaker 64 Then the sheriff's office got an urgent call about Ed from the feds.

Speaker 135 We had flagged his passport in case he

Speaker 135 would flee the country for some reason. And sure enough, we were notified that he was boarding a plane in LA and headed for Canada.

Speaker 133 Ed, in fact, had already boarded, and the flight was literally minutes from taking off.

Speaker 74 They made a call.

Speaker 114 Ed was pulled from the plane.

Speaker 80 He was still on probation for the embezzlement case, so the investigators could pull him in for an interrogation.

Speaker 6 But they weren't really interested in talking about that case.

Speaker 138 There's blood in Chris's office, okay?

Speaker 138 We know that, and we know it's Chris's blood.

Speaker 81 Ed told the investigators over and over he he had nothing to do with the disappearance of Chris Smith.

Speaker 109 I didn't kill him.

Speaker 138 Did you fight him in the office?

Speaker 35 Not physically.

Speaker 98 I mean, we've had shouting matches.

Speaker 138 You have never physically touched him in a fit of anger?

Speaker 109 No. Ever.
No.

Speaker 135 I don't know what you're talking about.

Speaker 128 He's gone.

Speaker 135 I don't know nothing. And then Ray told him, well, guess what? You're under arrest for murder.

Speaker 128 of Chris Smith.

Speaker 16 Then they left the room for a bit, let him think.

Speaker 83 And when they came back, Ed Shin had a whole new story.

Speaker 132 He said, Well, if I tell you what really happened, am I still going to jail?

Speaker 53 What had happened to Chris?

Speaker 19 It's a heart drive.

Speaker 74 Fell to my knees.

Speaker 35 I hit you right in the gut.

Speaker 44 This case was about greed at its most diabolical.

Speaker 43 It's awful.

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Speaker 70 Good Good morning. Welcome to Today.

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Speaker 65 Ed Shin was under arrest for the murder of Chris Smith, but Ed was insisting he had nothing to do with it.

Speaker 51 So investigators left him alone to reflect.

Speaker 132 Walked out of the room and within a very short period of time, less than 10 minutes, he told another detective, hey, can I talk to them again now he wants to talk first words out of his mouth were

Speaker 132 i don't know what you guys think but it's not first-degree murder he said well if i tell you what really happened am i still going to jail

Speaker 121 i don't know ed what do you have to say i i haven't heard what you have to say his story

Speaker 5 it was self-defense The paranoid, erratic Chris Smith, he said, had finally come unglued and attacked him.

Speaker 98 He'd grabbed me, and then before I knew it, we were throwing blows.

Speaker 51 Finally, said Ed, Chris hit his head on his desk and collapsed on the floor, dead.

Speaker 59 Or at least dying.

Speaker 120 How did you think he was probably dead? The amount of blood?

Speaker 98 There was so much blood.

Speaker 7 He insisted it wasn't like he meant to kill Chris.

Speaker 51 But it certainly confirmed that Chris was dead, and the family had to be told.

Speaker 51 It's a hard night.

Speaker 37 Then we told Paul and it was a rough thing for you.

Speaker 37 I mean he fell down into the street just crying, you know, it's like just awful.

Speaker 91 I fell to my knees.

Speaker 35 Dad showed up and mom and

Speaker 35 just cried it out in the parking lot for

Speaker 91 quite a while.

Speaker 35 I just had never felt that before.

Speaker 34 It was a really horrible feeling.

Speaker 35 You know, it hit you right in the gut.

Speaker 72 But where was Chris's body?

Speaker 4 If investigators could find that, they would know exactly how Chris died.

Speaker 138 I want to find Chris's body.

Speaker 138 His family wants to find his body.

Speaker 138 We need that information.

Speaker 109 I wouldn't know.

Speaker 109 There's no way.

Speaker 34 I wouldn't know that.

Speaker 52 Didn't know, he said, because somebody else got rid of the body.

Speaker 48 But then the investigators got Ed's phone records.

Speaker 94 And,

Speaker 94 well, well.

Speaker 16 Where was Ed's phone days after whatever happened back in the office?

Speaker 135 Those same phone records showed him going all the way out to Boulevard, California, and Ocatillo, California, which is in the middle of the desert near the Mexican border.

Speaker 91 Here it is.

Speaker 92 Vast, empty.

Speaker 65 Among the loneliest places in America, the California desert just north of the Mexican border.

Speaker 57 There are holes out there somewhere.

Speaker 54 Every lawman around knows it.

Speaker 8 Places where the bones of terrible crimes lie under the sand, undiscovered, their tales untold.

Speaker 75 In fact, Ed's phone pinged out here two different times in the week after Chris disappeared.

Speaker 42 Two trips. Two trips.

Speaker 132 And one of the trips was one, two in the morning.

Speaker 13 Did you bring in cadaver dogs?

Speaker 3 We did.

Speaker 132 Cadaver dogs, well over 100 searchers, horseback, motorcycle, DC.

Speaker 10 Our cameras were there, as searchers found nothing.

Speaker 39 And over the following years, the family would beg for information from Ed Chin and hear, again,

Speaker 94 nothing.

Speaker 3 So when Ed finally went on trial in November 2018 at the Orange County Superior Court, seven years after he was arrested for murder, then prosecutor Matt Murphy was loaded for bear.

Speaker 86 And for Murphy, this case was a perfect fit.

Speaker 83 He's a surfer too, knows Chris's world.

Speaker 4 Maybe even caught a glimpse of him out there.

Speaker 43 So what was it all about, this case?

Speaker 44 This case was about greed at its most diabolical and base form. He killed a really nice guy over money so that he could go gambling in Vegas.

Speaker 44 But to then assume his identity online and torture his family like this, it's awful. The evidence is going to show that Ed Shin owed a lot of people a lot of money.

Speaker 44 The evidence is going to show that in trying to legally protect his own financial interests, Chris Smith became an obstacle for Ed Shin.

Speaker 75 The prosecutor told the jury that Chris suspected his partner was stealing from their company, wanted new rules to stop him.

Speaker 88 But Ed was starved for cash and desperate to get it, desperate enough to kill.

Speaker 79 It was that blood that was never fully cleaned up, said the prosecutor, that proved the attack was sudden and violent.

Speaker 44 There's blood on the ceiling, there's blood on the carpet, there's blood on the walls, there's blood on the furniture. The evidence is going to show that man there

Speaker 44 beat or stabbed Chris Smith brutally. to death in that office.

Speaker 83 And then the prosecutor told the court, Ed got busy.

Speaker 39 It was the beginning of a brazen cover-up.

Speaker 85 Ed got into his dead partner's email accounts, masqueraded as Chris, and his very first email sent minutes after the killing was to a company lawyer.

Speaker 44 At 6.01 that night, did you receive an email concerning what appeared to be a change in heart or change in direction from Mr. Smith concerning the future of these companies?

Speaker 108 Yes.

Speaker 44 Okay, give us the gist of that.

Speaker 39 He sent an email saying that they had reached a resolution and he was going to be bought out.

Speaker 1 Ed had faked a buyout.

Speaker 115 And with that email, he severed Chris Smith's ties to the company, which allowed Ed to steal everything.

Speaker 107 Hundreds of thousands, maybe more.

Speaker 57 And then he started getting rid of the awful evidence before the staff could get wise.

Speaker 36 Ed had told us via email, I believe, to work from home. I'm having the office redone a little bit.
Everything's going to be repainted.

Speaker 36 So be aware that there might be tarps on the floor just because of the painters.

Speaker 4 And Ed, posing as Chris Online, turned his attention to Chris's family, spinning fabulous tales of world travels for months on end.

Speaker 44 Look, I've never seen anything like those emails.

Speaker 131 But Ed mingled fact and fiction in those emails.

Speaker 3 It was Ed acting as Chris who dunked Chris's girlfriend.

Speaker 75 Ed who said Chris had taken off with Tiffany Taylor.

Speaker 87 And Paul was right.

Speaker 75 He did see Tiffany in Vegas.

Speaker 40 Of course, she had nothing to do with the whole mess.

Speaker 7 No wonder she looked at him blankly.

Speaker 125 Raider Right, Dave.

Speaker 11 The prosecutor called Kenny Kraft to the stand and hired him to get rid of Chris's stuff, his car, his clothes, his surfboard.

Speaker 44 So you took the surfboards down and gave them to your friend, is that correct? Now, did you sell them or you gave them to him? Gave them to him?

Speaker 46 That was a big tell.

Speaker 51 Any surfer, and most especially a surfing DA,

Speaker 39 knows you don't head out on a surfing trip and leave your boards behind.

Speaker 44 There's a whole laundry list that anybody that's ever done a surf trip knows, and Ed Shin didn't.

Speaker 94 How would the defense counter all that?

Speaker 75 Oh, Ed Shin had a plan.

Speaker 44 His stock and trade is manipulating people and lying, and all they need is one.

Speaker 39 All I need to do is get on the stand. I can persuade those people that I'm honorable.

Speaker 44 Right, and just one. All he needs is one.
And he avoids a conviction. That's a siren song to a con man like Ed Shin.

Speaker 46 Would he take the stand?

Speaker 52 How could he resist?

Speaker 89 Ed Shin tells his story.

Speaker 98 That's when he grabbed me.

Speaker 44 How did he grab you?

Speaker 98 He made a move towards my throat.

Speaker 107 What really happened in that office?

Speaker 102 Defense Attorney Ed Welborne opened his case with one big idea: that Chris Smith was the architect of his own death.

Speaker 7 And Ed Shin was a thief, maybe.

Speaker 75 Dishonest, sure,

Speaker 54 but not a killer.

Speaker 14 It was more or less the same story Ed had been telling since he was arrested: that Chris attacked him before hitting his head on the desk, causing his own death.

Speaker 7 That Chris was an angry, volatile alcoholic.

Speaker 39 Why should the jury believe that?

Speaker 40 Here was the defense strategy.

Speaker 123 Call the girlfriend who talked to the police seven years ago when she still thought Chris dumped her for another woman.

Speaker 62 His girlfriend was a reluctant witness, and her testimony was not recorded.

Speaker 7 On the stand, she was forced to confirm the story she told police, the negative things she said about Chris in anger, things Things she now regrets saying, like.

Speaker 44 He broke things, threw things, punched holes in the wall at his own home. He had a new phone every month because he would throw it against the wall and break it.
This is stuff that she witnessed.

Speaker 8 And then Ed Shin himself appeared.

Speaker 107 To tell the truth, he promised he would.

Speaker 98 The whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you, God.

Speaker 51 I do.

Speaker 60 The true story?

Speaker 34 said Ed.

Speaker 65 Chris was unstable, dishonest.

Speaker 4 He claimed that Chris helped him with the embezzlement scheme that he, Ed, was convicted of.

Speaker 3 And on that day, June 4th, 2010, the day Chris died, Ed threatened to rat Chris out.

Speaker 34 And that, said Ed, is when Chris blew.

Speaker 98 I think that's when he grabbed me.

Speaker 44 How did he grab you?

Speaker 98 He made a move towards my throat.

Speaker 44 Did he place his hands on you?

Speaker 5 Yes. Where?

Speaker 4 What followed, Ed told the court, was a monumental brawl, with Ed portraying himself as a reluctant fighter up against a violent, remorseless Chris.

Speaker 4 There was grappling and wrestling, even a kind of mid-air collision, like a ballet gone bad.

Speaker 98 As he was making a move to jump, I think I kind of went up too to try to just catch him mid-air. And it was almost like a mid-air collision.

Speaker 65 And blood, Ed testified.

Speaker 10 Blood everywhere.

Speaker 77 And then finally, the end.

Speaker 68 Chris lunging at Ed.

Speaker 98 I just sidestepped and I grabbed him. And I remember just turning around and swinging him into his office as hard as I could.

Speaker 44 And were you able to throw him into his office?

Speaker 43 Yes.

Speaker 44 And what happened

Speaker 44 when he went into his office?

Speaker 115 I think...

Speaker 98 I think he took a couple steps and that's when he fell and he hit the desk really hard.

Speaker 86 Ed said he didn't know what to do.

Speaker 86 But because of that embezzlement scheme, he didn't think the cops would believe a thing he said.

Speaker 34 So he didn't call 911.

Speaker 44 What were you scared of?

Speaker 98 I guess getting rearrested, losing my family.

Speaker 85 He had to get rid of the body, he said, so he called his old fixer, Johnny Vegas, the operator who'd once lined up girls and parties in Las Vegas.

Speaker 44 What was your understanding from that phone call?

Speaker 98 I was going to reach out to somebody, see if that could help.

Speaker 44 And what were you supposed to do?

Speaker 128 I was supposed to have some cash.

Speaker 98 I believe it was $10,000, could have been $15,000.

Speaker 98 And I was also supposed to

Speaker 98 just be ready to take a phone call.

Speaker 53 And sure enough, he said, somebody called.

Speaker 65 Guy with an Eastern European accent.

Speaker 44 So you got some instructions from this person? Yes. What were the instructions?

Speaker 98 Just meet this guy at some gas station up in Long Beach.

Speaker 98 Give him the money and the directions.

Speaker 98 Leave the office unlocked.

Speaker 53 The guy was tall and blonde, said Ed.

Speaker 48 Leather jacket, probably Russian.

Speaker 11 And over the weekend, Ed testified, the body was removed.

Speaker 6 The cleanup followed.

Speaker 34 But then Ed told the court the whole thing became too much for him, and he decided to flee to Mexico.

Speaker 71 Almost made it to the border.

Speaker 98 And I couldn't do it. I couldn't get myself to leave my family and just run away.
So I turned around, went back.

Speaker 11 And he got back to his emails.

Speaker 65 Emails that would torture the Smith family for months to come.

Speaker 44 Mr. Shin, looking back at this situation, do you regret the things that you did after the fight?

Speaker 98 Everything.

Speaker 50 Why?

Speaker 98 Because it was wrong

Speaker 98 on every level not to call the police, not to trust that

Speaker 98 everything would have sorted itself out,

Speaker 98 to completely

Speaker 98 deceive a family.

Speaker 116 But of course, Ed's story was not about to go unchallenged, was it?

Speaker 87 Not a chance.

Speaker 8 Prosecutor Matt Murphy came prepared because, in his words, he had a con man on the witness stand to outwit.

Speaker 7 Where does he rank in the realm of con artists?

Speaker 42 Oh, boy.

Speaker 44 He is a horrible, lamentable, disgraceful human being.

Speaker 123 It was curious, said the prosecutor.

Speaker 80 When Ed told investigators about fighting Chris, he never once mentioned anything about being grabbed by the neck until now.

Speaker 44 That's got to be a very significant moment in your life, right? I mean, this is when your partner grabs you by the throat.

Speaker 43 Okay, right?

Speaker 44 Yes. Okay.
Did you ever say anything to Detective Vogue about him grabbing you by the throat?

Speaker 98 I do not remember if I did.

Speaker 98 Well, I don't think I did.

Speaker 3 If the fight was as violent as he claimed in his interview with investigators, wasn't it strange, asked the prosecutor, that only Chris's blood was spattered around the office?

Speaker 54 That Ed somehow emerged apparently unscathed.

Speaker 44 Can you explain that for us?

Speaker 98 I cannot.

Speaker 95 As Chris lay dying, Ed elected not to call 911.

Speaker 53 Instead, he testified he got out of the office and drove around for a while.

Speaker 5 The truth is, Johnny completed.

Speaker 56 But Ed's next move, according to Prosecutor Murphy, was proof that he planned to kill Chris.

Speaker 52 Ed hit send on that carefully composed email to a lawyer, which claimed that Chris agreed to sell Ed his share of the company.

Speaker 13 Which he'd written beforehand.

Speaker 122 Had to have.

Speaker 121 Had to have.

Speaker 44 Absolutely. Had to have.
There isn't a typo in that thing. You know, I mean, that's calm, cool, collected, cold-blooded, and ruthless.

Speaker 60 Near the end of his cross-examination, Murphy tried a little sarcasm.

Speaker 44 Are you tearing up a little bit right now?

Speaker 98 I'm okay, sir.

Speaker 124 Okay.

Speaker 44 Were you tearing up when you wrote that email

Speaker 44 to Debbie Smith saying that her son was committing suicide or suggesting that he was going to do that? Were you tearing up when you did that?

Speaker 130 Yes. Okay.

Speaker 44 You were actually at the computer tearing up as you were going to break a mother's heart by essentially blaming her for the death of her son.

Speaker 44 That was making you feel sad.

Speaker 98 It was one of the many emotions I felt, yes.

Speaker 8 In his closing, the prosecutor assured the jury that Chris Smith was not the person the defense portrayed, not even close.

Speaker 6 That in fact, Chris was not violent, was not a fighter, not a drunk, but was a happy, friendly, creative guy who didn't deserve to die.

Speaker 131 What does it do to your heart and your stomach as you're

Speaker 131 wrapping things up?

Speaker 6 The jury's going to get the case, and now you have no control whatsoever over how these strangers are going to decide.

Speaker 37 It's kind of like when you hold your breath and you get to that point where you like just can't hold your breath anymore.

Speaker 126 You just want it to be done.

Speaker 37 It's like it's hard.

Speaker 75 Soon a verdict and perhaps finally a chance to exhale.

Speaker 129 A powerful confrontation.

Speaker 67 I don't give a sweet flying f ⁇ about that.

Speaker 102 I don't.

Speaker 103 I kind of care that the family has a chance to get some closure.

Speaker 62 Will Ed Shin reveal his final secret?

Speaker 44 The defendant is present.

Speaker 125 The jurors are present on behalf of the people.

Speaker 86 After eight painful years and an emotional month-long trial, the family of Chris Smith would would spend one more day in an Orange County courtroom.

Speaker 82 The jurors got the case mid-morning and less than an hour later, they had a verdict.

Speaker 98 We, the jury, in the above entitled Action, find the defendant, Edward Young-hoon-shin,

Speaker 44 guilty, guilty

Speaker 3 of first-degree murder for financial gain.

Speaker 131 Ed Shin was done.

Speaker 131 What's it like to hear them say what you've been waiting so many years for them to say?

Speaker 29 It was wonderful.

Speaker 37 I just felt like waves and waves of just like,

Speaker 37 it was like the grief that I have always been holding it, but also that now I'm going to be able to breathe a full breath.

Speaker 5 That breath, it's bittersweet.

Speaker 81 Because through the hours of interviews and testimony, Ed Chin has not provided one piece of the story that would bring Chris home.

Speaker 35 His body is somewhere out there down on the desert in Southern California.

Speaker 47 Would you want to know?

Speaker 93 Would you want to find it?

Speaker 35 I think so, yeah.

Speaker 35 We didn't have any of his possessions. We have nothing.

Speaker 92 After all, the Smith family endured.

Speaker 9 Perhaps it was time for answers.

Speaker 89 Good morning.

Speaker 85 We made an arrangement to talk to Ed Shin in jail.

Speaker 59 Now a convicted killer.

Speaker 13 What you did, you confess, is terribly cruel.

Speaker 97 Allowing them to think that he was alive all that time when he was dead, when you'd already killed him.

Speaker 128 I mean, that's terrible.

Speaker 98 I know. You know, I definitely know that those things that I did were terrible and beyond wrong.
And, you know, and I know that ultimately that there's a price to be paid for all that.

Speaker 5 He will pay the price, life in prison.

Speaker 61 He was sentenced a few weeks before we met.

Speaker 44 To serve the rest of his natural life in the state penitentiary.

Speaker 126 This concludes this sentencing.

Speaker 58 Whether Ed Shin panicked like he claims or is in fact a cold-blooded killer, the fact that Chris's body has never been found is

Speaker 121 troubling.

Speaker 54 Investigators, of course, believe that Ed, Ed himself, buried Chris's body out in that vast California desert.

Speaker 16 That day.

Speaker 75 You had to get rid of the body.

Speaker 97 You had to get it somewhere.

Speaker 65 So if you didn't do it, then who did?

Speaker 98 That's something I can't talk about.

Speaker 98 That's the big issue.

Speaker 97 So you're going to take the fall for this guy?

Speaker 124 Absolutely.

Speaker 58 Take the fall for who?

Speaker 48 Remember, Ed claims some Russian brought in by Johnny Vegas got rid of the body.

Speaker 7 We actually found Johnny Vegas and asked him about that.

Speaker 139 It's funny, though, because that's the first time I've ever heard of this.

Speaker 85 His real name is John Kaponin.

Speaker 139 Right there, I can tell you that whatever that guy is telling you guys, it's a lie.

Speaker 55 And that Russian cleaner, the body disposer?

Speaker 139 I don't know any Russian people

Speaker 65 that don't know Russian cleaner.

Speaker 139 What's a Russian cleaner?

Speaker 126 You kept throwing out these names like Johnny Vegas and people who supposedly helped you.

Speaker 57 The Russian.

Speaker 107 And it was all fantasy. It was all untrue.
But you wouldn't reveal

Speaker 65 either where you put the body personally.

Speaker 16 when you drove that rental truck down to wherever you drove it to.

Speaker 107 You won't reveal that.

Speaker 98 I can't.

Speaker 107 I don't have that.

Speaker 98 And it's not something that I can do, unfortunately. I mean, you're absolutely right.

Speaker 97 A name. It's all I need.

Speaker 98 A name. No, that's not.

Speaker 131 A place. That's impossible.

Speaker 98 You know, I understand that that's what everybody wants. And if

Speaker 98 it's blatantly obvious, right? Then it's so easy, right? It's easy to just sit here and say, well, it all comes down to this.

Speaker 43 Well, it does, kind of.

Speaker 98 Right. So then if it was that easy for me, then don't you think it would have happened already?

Speaker 67 It it's not.

Speaker 97 Then maybe you could explain

Speaker 97 why it's impossible for you to give us the answer.

Speaker 107 I mean, it's one or the other.

Speaker 97 Either I can answer the question or I can tell you why I can't.

Speaker 98 There are just some secrets that a man is willing to give up his life for.

Speaker 97 All right. So then I think we're kind of at an understanding, which is

Speaker 97 that you know

Speaker 98 it's just somewhere that I can't go.

Speaker 43 It's

Speaker 43 not going to be a good thing.

Speaker 98 sorry, you know, I know as a journalist, that's, you know, everybody wants,

Speaker 98 that would be a coup de grace for you to unearth somebody.

Speaker 67 I don't give a sweet flying f about that.

Speaker 102 I don't.

Speaker 103 I don't care. I kind of care.

Speaker 65 Well, you do care.

Speaker 97 That the family has a chance to get some closure.

Speaker 43 That they have. They're plaguing you for.

Speaker 91 They don't have closure.

Speaker 21 They don't know where their child is.

Speaker 78 You're a parent?

Speaker 97 I am.

Speaker 43 Right.

Speaker 89 So let's get to this.

Speaker 97 We're at a point where you're saying you can't provide the information.

Speaker 45 So,

Speaker 43 second best.

Speaker 97 Why can't you provide the information?

Speaker 97 You get all mysterious when I ask that question. Just tell me that.

Speaker 97 Are there bad guys waiting to pounce on your family and harm your children or something?

Speaker 18 No.

Speaker 35 But, like I said, it's...

Speaker 97 It's the way Shin did it himself, didn't it?

Speaker 98 No, absolutely not. I did not.

Speaker 135 But that is exactly what don vogt now retired still believes we felt then and we feel now that ed knows where the body is we feel he buried the body

Speaker 100 and he refuses to give up that location they say because he knows that chris's body would reveal the truth about how ed killed him

Speaker 65 but ed chin insists it's really just about that one thing

Speaker 98 it's about protecting and that's it and there's nothing else so you know protecting who

Speaker 124 I told you already. From

Speaker 124 absolutely. From what?

Speaker 75 I'm not going to talk about it.

Speaker 98 The more we go down that road, you know,

Speaker 98 it becomes

Speaker 98 this useless cycle.

Speaker 34 Over and over.

Speaker 34 Ultimately.

Speaker 107 He wouldn't explain.

Speaker 98 This is where we're always ending up.

Speaker 82 And so a family's frustration and grief will remain without a final resting place.

Speaker 60 Surfers are a tight crew.

Speaker 92 When one dies, they gather for what's called a paddle-out ceremony.

Speaker 42 And this was Chris's crew.

Speaker 55 Friends from high school, work, family, gathered at the beach on the central coast where Chris and Paul grew up.

Speaker 120 There were flowers and memories, laughter, tears.

Speaker 70 Chris Smith may be buried somewhere in the great big Big Desert, but this is where his spirit lives on, in the crashing surf he loved.