In a Lonely Place

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My brother, he always had a vision.

I could feel

just his energy, his passion for life.

I could tell something was wrong.

My suspicions were there.

All of a sudden, in one second, everything makes sense.

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

They talked about going to Galapagos Islands.

He would go from one place to another.

I'm in Austria.

I'm in India.

Month after month, you were getting these emails.

No phone calls.

No.

Whoever was emailing us, I felt like this wasn't my son.

Who is this?

To torture his family like this.

It's awful.

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.

It was tough.

You know, it hits you right in the gut.

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

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.

Why him of all people?

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

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

He was very independent.

He always wanted to figure out a way to do it on his own.

He was, what would you call it?

A beautiful dreamer.

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

No idea what was waiting for him.

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

A very close family of deeply committed Christians.

Parents, Steve and Debbie.

Brother Paul.

Steve was a cop and then a firefighter.

Debbie, a teacher.

Home was a kind of boys' eaten.

We lived on a private ski lake called Kelly Lake.

Not bad.

Yeah, we were very fortunate.

Good for kids.

Oh, my God.

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.

We had a boat.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

So it was just part of who he was.

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.

Paul went to university and met Leah.

I would say that I didn't understand Paul until I met Chris.

And then it was like two puzzle pieces coming together.

And Chris was a natural entrepreneur.

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

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

That ain't bad.

No.

That was nice.

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.

And he was generous.

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

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

Holy cow, I'm going to say.

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.

We hopped around all these different islands in Tahiti.

And it was definitely one of the best times of my life.

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

to Laguna Beach.

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

Ed was actually very professional.

Very calm, very poised, very professional, professional, dressed very well.

And Christina Grice would know.

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

The 800 Exchange, they called it.

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

Outwardly, anyway.

Chris was single.

Ed was married with kids.

Chris was a surfer.

Ed was a sports memorabilia collector.

And Chris?

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.

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

And yet, there were shared passions too.

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

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

And they did.

They worked a profitable little corner of the advertising game.

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

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

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

Each call was a lead.

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.

Right away, the new business took off.

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.

Chris even brought his brother Paul on board.

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

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.

And Uncle Chris always made time for his nieces.

He would like have water balloon fights.

Yeah, I heard about this water balloon.

Tell me about, what was that all about?

Our daughter were probably three and one.

Anyone else water balloon launchers?

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

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

At work, in the office?

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.

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

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

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

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

He introduced her to his parents.

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

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.

She may be the one.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

It would wind up haunting them all.

I thought he finally did it.

Christmas life takes a sudden turn.

Word of a globetrotting adventure with a glamorous new companion.

A Playboy Playmate, he didn't ever talk about those kinds of girls.

I mean, why would he ever do that?

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

Maybe you could explain.

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

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.

I heard him say the moo cow.

So the moo cow?

The moo cow.

Chris's brother, Paul.

He'd refer to the U.S.

as the Mukau, just getting milked and

everybody working such long hours.

Not living.

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.

He thought that was just something that just took your life.

Took the life out of you.

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

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

Paul knew because he worked alongside Chris at 800 Exchange.

He was definitely very stressed out.

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

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.

No one ever showed up.

Didn't call?

Nothing.

Nothing.

I was irritated.

The long flight with kids and then nothing.

So we just got a taxi and went home.

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

So.

Oh, there was an explanation, all right.

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

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

deal like that, it hurt.

You know, it hurt for a while.

But where was Chris?

His family soon found out.

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

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

I'll let you know for sure by Friday.

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.

It was all so sudden.

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

I thought he finally did it.

He really did it.

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

Got out of the situation.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Well, just take a break.

Take a break, yeah.

Yeah, right.

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

He dumped her by text.

So much for the chill surfer dude.

his mom, yes, I was shocked.

And I thought.

What kind of treatment of a woman was that?

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

this is weird.

And getting weirder.

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

Her name was Tiffany Taylor, a Playboy Playmate.

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.

Over the following weeks, Chris sent more emails to his family about his travels with Tiffany.

Amazing sailing for the past two weeks.

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

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

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

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.

And then on to Argentina.

But here's what bothered them most.

Chris hadn't called home, not even once.

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

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

Why no phone calls?

What did he say about that in his emails?

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.

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

Right.

So you were just operating by email.

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

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

Maybe it was the former cop at Steve.

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

Like he wasn't acting like himself.

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

What was really happening with Chris?

A surprise clue surfaces in Las Vegas.

I didn't recognize her at first.

Tiffany Taylor, the Playboy Playmate?

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?

She just looked at me like I was crazy.

Oh, watch your step.

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Dark.

I know, right?

It's the perfect place to stream horror movies.

What movie is that?

I haven't pressed play yet.

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Good morning.

Welcome to you today.

From back to school to tackling your to-do list, the today's show is your best start to the day.

It's a new season and every morning.

We're here to help you take it all off.

This week, we go inside the game with the Buffalo Bills, how a new tradition has fans taking the celebration off the field and into the water.

Plus, HODA's back in Studio 1A with an inspiring story.

Then NBA superstar Steph Curry's here live.

And Steven Spielberg on 50 Years of Jaws.

Watch the Today Show this week on NBC.

Chris Smith's family was trying to be patient.

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.

Oh dear.

I wanted to be happy.

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.

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

Yep.

That couldn't have been easy to do.

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

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

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

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

What lake we used to live on?

What type of boat do we used to drive, stuff like that?

Questions only his son would know the answers to.

Well, then there was a reply from Chris.

Kelly Lake was the place their family once lived.

What was your feeling then when you saw that?

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?

Steve was comforted.

His son Chris was all right.

The family tried to refocus on their own lives.

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

The company was doing well.

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

It involved a trip to Vegas.

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.

And everyone from the office was invited, even Christina.

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.

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

Dinners were sumptuous affairs at fancy restaurants.

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

His specialty?

Hiring guests for events.

Invited girls?

Yeah, he would hire

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

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

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

But then it clicked.

This had to be her.

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

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?

Paul asked, Are you Tiffany Taylor?

She said she was.

Now he was gushing with questions.

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.

Like you were crazy.

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...

Like you were crazy.

Like I was crazy, yeah.

Like, what is this guy talking about?

He was totally baffled.

And then he caught someone else's eye.

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.

A different Tiffany Taylor?

That's what he told me.

But it was the same girl that was in that picture on the email.

What did you think after that?

Something's rotten in Denmark.

You know, something doesn't make sense.

But yet...

You know, I didn't know where to take the thoughts.

I mean, what was the alternative?

It was possible, certainly, that Paul had got it all wrong about Tiffany.

But then he couldn't really dwell on it either.

Not when the next series of emails arrived.

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

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

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.

It sounded like he was unraveling or something.

It did, but also

he contemplated suicide.

He seemed to be blaming you guys for

something in his childhood.

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

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

You feel sick at your stomach.

What is he?

I thought it provided a really good childhood for them.

Something like that.

Just what was he angry about?

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

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

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

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

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

There were a couple of ideas.

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

Right.

Start a business there.

Make lots of money.

Right.

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

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,

living life.

Of course, there was a catch.

Chris was still in Africa.

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.

Now, his family was really worried.

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

I contacted a U.S.

Department of State.

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

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

A dicey plan in potentially dangerous places.

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.

I'm headed back up through the Congo.

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

Only out here is this like real currency.

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

That sounds like a pretty foolhardy thing to do.

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

something that you hope it's not starts to

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

No, why?

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

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.

So, and then they ended there.

Ended.

The emails stopped.

After six months, Chris went totally silent.

When we stopped getting emails, you know, we thought he had been mugged.

He'd been killed.

You know,

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.

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

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.

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

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

I contacted the U.S.

Department of State missing persons overseas.

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.

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

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

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

Never left the United States?

It just didn't make sense.

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

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

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

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

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.

He used a false passport.

Correct.

That's what Ed said.

Chris got a fake passport, left the country.

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

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

They refused to take it.

Why?

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

when I submitted it.

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

my wife somebody didn't get

police turned to chris's business partner ed

could he help solve this mystery

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

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.

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

Maybe Laguna detectives could figure out where Chris was.

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

This was early June.

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

Maybe he knew where Chris went.

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

And it worked.

It worked great.

I mean, we made a lot of money.

A lot of money out of curiosity.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

And why did Chris suddenly leave?

Ed had a theory.

He was really big into,

you know, the economic collapse of the United States and

the need to be out of here.

And he was really into conspiracy theories where only a few people control everything.

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

And, Ed said, Chris had a darker side.

You know, he drank pretty much almost every night.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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?

And he was like, what do you mean?

And so he has completely blocked out.

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

It smells horrible.

The carpets are wet.

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

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

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

The man was a mess.

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.

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.

And then you guys were back in the office.

We drove back, yeah.

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

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

Yeah.

And

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.

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

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.

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

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

The Johnny Vegas guy?

Yes.

Okay.

Do we know who Johnny Vegas is?

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

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

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

Were you with him when he picked up the passport?

Yes.

And that happened where?

In L.A.

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

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

I wired some money to India.

He'd saved all the records.

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

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

Emails, wire transfers, that agreement letter.

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

I don't know where he is.

I mean, honestly, I think he's the other side of the world.

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.

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

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

But what is it they say?

The best detective is luck

Basically, we kind of stumbled across this case.

Enter a private detective with some questions of his own.

Did something seem fishy about all those emails?

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

Oh, watch your step.

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Dark.

I know, right?

It's the perfect place to stream horror movies.

Play me.

What movie is that?

I haven't pressed play yet.

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

Basically, we kind of stumbled across this case.

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

Yeah.

Joe DeLue is a private investigator and former detective.

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

A client walked in a couple of weeks later.

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.

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

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

So the landlord is kind of upset?

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

So presumably we got to find out about these people.

What?

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.

The company wasn't hard to find.

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

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.

We asked why.

He says, well, Chris Smith is missing.

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.

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

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

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.

It had been a year since Chris had disappeared.

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

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

Yes.

But I think there was a sense of hope.

They were curious.

But Chris's dad, Steve, told DeLou.

He was at least communicating with us.

And I asked him how, and he said, by email.

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

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

no one else would know.

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

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

It's kind of like a travelogue, right?

Islands we've sailed around are amazing.

Yes.

Just stopping in Port of Argentina.

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

But DeLou thought something didn't smell right.

What intrigued you about them?

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

was

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

Take this email from October 2010.

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?

It was almost like, well, his dad knows where he grew up.

His dad knows where he sits.

You wouldn't say it to your hometown.

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.

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

What lake did you used to live on?

And what type of boat did you ski behind?

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.

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

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

And DeLou noticed his cop sense was tingling.

And I thought, wait, he answered the lake question, but he never answered the type of boat.

And that bothered me.

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

And the penny dropped.

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

And Paul replied back.

And then I thought, this is it.

He didn't know the answer.

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

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

who is it?

Oh, boy.

A disturbing discovery in Chris's office.

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

It was red, dark red.

What was the first thing that occurred to you?

It wasn't just a missing persons.

Something seriously happened to Chris.

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.

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

So he went to the building's property manager.

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.

They opened it up.

Yeah.

Everything was empty.

This is the old 800 exchange space.

Chris's desk was here.

Okay.

There was a credenza behind him.

Soon enough, DeLou started to notice things.

A stain by Chris's old office.

There was a white powdery substance coming from

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

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

DeLou took a picture of it.

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

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

But DeLou was an observant type, all eyes.

And what do you know?

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

and there was a blood smear, what I thought was blood.

It was red, dark red.

What appeared to be blood on the light switch?

Yes.

And then on the doorframe.

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

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

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.

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

the spots tested positive for human blood of course

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.

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

I had already taken a swab test.

They did both swabs on Paul and my wife, Debbie.

Meanwhile, P.I.

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

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.

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

is not going to come back.

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.

We'll wait.

Maybe Chris is still alive.

It's a very tough thing for a parent.

I can't imagine.

I really can't.

But then the results came in.

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

All of it.

All of it.

Nobody else was bleeding in there at all.

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

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

Chris had to be dead.

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

Did you keep hope alive until then?

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

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,

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

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

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

and why.

Detectives talked to everyone.

Chris's girlfriend.

Her heart had been broken.

His business partner.

He was very agreeable to help.

A new employee.

Didn't he actually move into a Christmas apartment?

He did.

What would they uncover?

Oh, watch your step.

Wow, your attic is so dark.

Dark.

I know, right?

It's the perfect place to stream horror movies.

What movie is that?

I haven't pressed play yet.

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It would be a crime to miss it.

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

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

Chris's blood was all over the place.

His office, the break room, doorway, hallway.

But what did all that mean?

What exactly went on in there?

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.

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

Did you talk to Chris's girlfriend?

We both did, yes.

Yeah.

She must have been a pretty unhappy woman.

She was.

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

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

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

They were pretty serious from everything we had learned.

And yeah, she was, you say, scorned?

Absolutely.

Did she say negative things about Chris?

She did.

She did.

She talked about some times where he would be upset.

That's perhaps an understatement.

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

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

We tore the bandage off

an old wound.

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

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

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.

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

Didn't he actually move into a Christmas apartment?

He did.

Did you search that apartment?

He did.

Yes.

But there was nothing in there.

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

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

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

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

I felt that the Lord had put Ed in my path.

Somebody who I could help as like a brother.

Joseph Gray met Ed at a local church.

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

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.

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

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

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.

It was at his new job that Ed met Chris.

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

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

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

Christina also thought Ed was a great dad.

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

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.

After all, it was Chris who left 800 Exchange.

For a grown man to decide to just kind of

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

I could have used it, Mark.

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

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.

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.

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.

Can I email you all that?

Absolutely.

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

lots of secrets.

They saw thousands, tens of thousands, being gambled.

High stakes and risky business.

Ed Shin was a man with a past.

I remember thinking,

he's not who I thought he was.

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

Isn't that what they say?

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

Full of string and the things you hear.

My my.

Ed Shin loved going to Vegas.

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

Oh, no, not Ed Chin.

You said he traveled on a private plane?

There were times he did, yes.

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

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.

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

It was beyond what I had ever seen.

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

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.

They're just walking by us.

And then I see them get in the car with Ed.

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

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

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.

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

he's not who I thought he was.

That was something Joseph Gray found out, too.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

The deal?

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

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.

We did.

People who

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

there's a different side to Ed Shin.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

And a gambling problem.

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.

Investigators had Ed Shin on their radar.

Did he have some idea that you were after him?

I don't think so at that point.

No, he had no clue that we were looking into him.

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

We had flagged his passport in case he

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.

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

They made a call.

Ed was pulled from the plane.

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

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

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

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

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

I didn't kill him.

Did you fight him in the office?

Not physically.

I mean, we've had shouting matches.

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

No.

Ever.

No.

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

He's gone.

I don't know nothing.

And then Ray told him, well, guess what?

You're under arrest for murder.

of Chris Smith.

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

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

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

What had happened to Chris?

It's a heart drive.

Fell to my knees.

I hit you right in the gut.

This case was about greed at its most diabolical.

It's awful.

Oh, watch your step.

Wow, your attic is so dark.

Dark.

I know, right?

It's the perfect place to stream horror movies.

What movie is that?

I haven't pressed play yet.

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Watch the Today Show this week on NBC.

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

So investigators left him alone to reflect.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or at least dying.

How did you think he was probably dead?

The amount of blood?

There was so much blood.

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

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

It's a hard night.

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

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

I fell to my knees.

Dad showed up and mom and

just cried it out in the parking lot for

quite a while.

I just had never felt that before.

It was a really horrible feeling.

You know, it hit you right in the gut.

But where was Chris's body?

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

I want to find Chris's body.

His family wants to find his body.

We need that information.

I wouldn't know.

There's no way.

I wouldn't know that.

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

But then the investigators got Ed's phone records.

And,

well, well.

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

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.

Here it is.

Vast, empty.

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

There are holes out there somewhere.

Every lawman around knows it.

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

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

Two trips.

Two trips.

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

Did you bring in cadaver dogs?

We did.

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

Our cameras were there, as searchers found nothing.

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

nothing.

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.

And for Murphy, this case was a perfect fit.

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

Maybe even caught a glimpse of him out there.

So what was it all about, this case?

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

beat or stabbed Chris Smith brutally.

to death in that office.

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

It was the beginning of a brazen cover-up.

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.

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?

Yes.

Okay, give us the gist of that.

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

Ed had faked a buyout.

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

Hundreds of thousands, maybe more.

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

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.

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

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

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

But Ed mingled fact and fiction in those emails.

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

Ed who said Chris had taken off with Tiffany Taylor.

And Paul was right.

He did see Tiffany in Vegas.

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

No wonder she looked at him blankly.

Raider Right, Dave.

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

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?

That was a big tell.

Any surfer, and most especially a surfing DA,

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

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

How would the defense counter all that?

Oh, Ed Shin had a plan.

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

All I need to do is get on the stand.

I can persuade those people that I'm honorable.

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.

Would he take the stand?

How could he resist?

Ed Shin tells his story.

That's when he grabbed me.

How did he grab you?

He made a move towards my throat.

What really happened in that office?

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

And Ed Shin was a thief, maybe.

Dishonest, sure,

but not a killer.

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.

That Chris was an angry, volatile alcoholic.

Why should the jury believe that?

Here was the defense strategy.

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

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

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.

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.

And then Ed Shin himself appeared.

To tell the truth, he promised he would.

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

I do.

The true story?

said Ed.

Chris was unstable, dishonest.

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

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

And that, said Ed, is when Chris blew.

I think that's when he grabbed me.

How did he grab you?

He made a move towards my throat.

Did he place his hands on you?

Yes.

Where?

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

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

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.

And blood, Ed testified.

Blood everywhere.

And then finally, the end.

Chris lunging at Ed.

I just sidestepped and I grabbed him.

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

And were you able to throw him into his office?

Yes.

And what happened

when he went into his office?

I think...

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

Ed said he didn't know what to do.

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

So he didn't call 911.

What were you scared of?

I guess getting rearrested, losing my family.

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.

What was your understanding from that phone call?

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

And what were you supposed to do?

I was supposed to have some cash.

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

And I was also supposed to

just be ready to take a phone call.

And sure enough, he said, somebody called.

Guy with an Eastern European accent.

So you got some instructions from this person?

Yes.

What were the instructions?

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

Give him the money and the directions.

Leave the office unlocked.

The guy was tall and blonde, said Ed.

Leather jacket, probably Russian.

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

The cleanup followed.

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

Almost made it to the border.

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.

And he got back to his emails.

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

Mr.

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

Everything.

Why?

Because it was wrong

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

everything would have sorted itself out,

to completely

deceive a family.

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

Not a chance.

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

Where does he rank in the realm of con artists?

Oh, boy.

He is a horrible, lamentable, disgraceful human being.

It was curious, said the prosecutor.

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

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.

Okay, right?

Yes.

Okay.

Did you ever say anything to Detective Vogue about him grabbing you by the throat?

I do not remember if I did.

Well, I don't think I did.

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?

That Ed somehow emerged apparently unscathed.

Can you explain that for us?

I cannot.

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

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

The truth is, Johnny completed.

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

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

Which he'd written beforehand.

Had to have.

Had to have.

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.

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

Are you tearing up a little bit right now?

I'm okay, sir.

Okay.

Were you tearing up when you wrote that email

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?

Yes.

Okay.

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.

That was making you feel sad.

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

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

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.

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

wrapping things up?

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

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.

You just want it to be done.

It's like it's hard.

Soon a verdict and perhaps finally a chance to exhale.

A powerful confrontation.

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

I don't.

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

Will Ed Shin reveal his final secret?

The defendant is present.

The jurors are present on behalf of the people.

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.

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

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

guilty, guilty

of first-degree murder for financial gain.

Ed Shin was done.

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

It was wonderful.

I just felt like waves and waves of just like,

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.

That breath, it's bittersweet.

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

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

Would you want to know?

Would you want to find it?

I think so, yeah.

We didn't have any of his possessions.

We have nothing.

After all, the Smith family endured.

Perhaps it was time for answers.

Good morning.

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

Now a convicted killer.

What you did, you confess, is terribly cruel.

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

I mean, that's terrible.

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.

He will pay the price, life in prison.

He was sentenced a few weeks before we met.

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

This concludes this sentencing.

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

troubling.

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

That day.

You had to get rid of the body.

You had to get it somewhere.

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

That's something I can't talk about.

That's the big issue.

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

Absolutely.

Take the fall for who?

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

We actually found Johnny Vegas and asked him about that.

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

His real name is John Kaponin.

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

And that Russian cleaner, the body disposer?

I don't know any Russian people

that don't know Russian cleaner.

What's a Russian cleaner?

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

The Russian.

And it was all fantasy.

It was all untrue.

But you wouldn't reveal

either where you put the body personally.

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

You won't reveal that.

I can't.

I don't have that.

And it's not something that I can do, unfortunately.

I mean, you're absolutely right.

A name.

It's all I need.

A name.

No, that's not.

A place.

That's impossible.

You know, I understand that that's what everybody wants.

And if

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.

Well, it does, kind of.

Right.

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

It it's not.

Then maybe you could explain

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

I mean, it's one or the other.

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

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

All right.

So then I think we're kind of at an understanding, which is

that you know

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

It's

not going to be a good thing.

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

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

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

I don't.

I don't care.

I kind of care.

Well, you do care.

That the family has a chance to get some closure.

That they have.

They're plaguing you for.

They don't have closure.

They don't know where their child is.

You're a parent?

I am.

Right.

So let's get to this.

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

So,

second best.

Why can't you provide the information?

You get all mysterious when I ask that question.

Just tell me that.

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

No.

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

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

No, absolutely not.

I did not.

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

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

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

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

I told you already.

From

absolutely.

From what?

I'm not going to talk about it.

The more we go down that road, you know,

it becomes

this useless cycle.

Over and over.

Ultimately.

He wouldn't explain.

This is where we're always ending up.

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

Surfers are a tight crew.

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

And this was Chris's crew.

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

There were flowers and memories, laughter, tears.

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.