Who Killed Gavin Smith? Inside the Night He Disappeared and Years-Long Search for His Murderer

Fox Executive Gavin Smith was missing for over two years before hikers found his body

It’s been over a decade since entertainment industry executive Gavin Smith went missing from his quiet California town.

In 2012, Smith was married with three children, living in Los Angeles. The 57-year-old father had been working for 20th Century Fox for the past 18 years and was looking forward to retirement when he could follow his dream of being an actor.

But behind the scenes, all was not well for Smith. A back injury had left him with a painkiller addiction and his marriage was struggling. After checking himself into rehab, he began an affair with a married woman he had met in the treatment center named Chandrika Cade. When his family found out about his affair, he said he would call things off — but his promise was only temporary.

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“I was the love of Gavin’s life,” his wife Lisa said on a 2017 episode of Dateline. “He adored me. Our family was exactly what he wanted to have. He just got lost.”

As the affair continued, things took a dangerous turn, as shown in Netflix's 2024 docuseries Homicide: Los Angeles. On the evening of his disappearance, Smith secretly met up with Cade. Her husband, convicted drug dealer John Creech, tracked them down and confronted Smith. It was just a matter of time before Creech killed Smith with his bare hands.

The following morning, Smith was reported missing but it would be over two years before authorities discovered where Creech had buried Smith’s body and several more years before he was charged with his murder.

“[My dad] just messed up,” Smith’s son Evan told PEOPLE in 2019. “He got a little lost, and I know if he was still here today that he would be so apologetic for how things finished up.”

So, what happened to Gavin Smith? Here are all the details about his murder.

Who was Gavin Smith?

Smith was born and raised in L.A. where he attended Van Nuys High School and became a star basketball player. He later enrolled at UCLA where he also found success with the university’s basketball team. In his sophomore year, they won the NCAA championship, but he eventually transferred to the University of Hawaii where he graduated in 1977, per The Hollywood Reporter.

After college, Smith pursued a career in the entertainment industry. He found work as a stuntman but soon hurt his back. He later appeared in small roles in films including Glitz and Cobb. As an aspiring actor, he also spent time working as a waiter, where he met his wife Lisa.

“I just thought he was charming and I was thrilled when he asked me for my number,” Lisa shared on Dateline in 2017. “He was a wonderful husband. He was a gentleman ... He made me feel like a princess."

Smith later began working behind the scenes in film, finding a job in 20th Century Fox’s distribution department. Smith helped distribute movies including Avatar and the original Star Wars trilogy, serving as a liaison between the studio and theaters. Before his death, he was a branch manager for theaters in Dallas and Oklahoma City, working out of Fox’s L.A. office.

Smith and his wife went on to welcome three sons: Evan, Austin and Dylan. While Smith worked in the film industry, Lisa was a homemaker, raising their children.

“My dad and I got along swimmingly,” Evan told PEOPLE in 2019. “He was one of my best friends. He taught me so much. I had a great childhood with him.”

Was Gavin Smith having an affair?

In the years before Smith’s murder, he began to experience marital problems with his wife. According to his friends, who spoke to The Daily Beast in 2012, the couple’s relationship had been on the rocks for four or five years before Smith’s disappearance.

The couple’s son Evan also admitted his parents were struggling, posting on X (formerly Twitter) less than a month before his father went missing that Smith had decided to leave the family. The post was later deleted and Evan issued a statement explaining that his parents were still together before Smith went missing.

“They were not separated. They were just going through normal stuff couples go through,” Evan told E! News in 2012.

While Lisa had allegedly turned to religion for comfort amid the turmoil in their marriage, Smith had turned to the company of Cade whom he met during a 2008 stay in rehab. While it’s unclear exactly when the affair began, Cade's husband, Creech, found out in 2010.

In response to the discovery, Evan and one of his brothers approached Creech to apologize. Looking back, Evan says they begged Creech not to retaliate against their father for the affair. At the time, according to prosecutors, Creech told the boys that they had “saved [their] father’s life by coming here.”

“I basically just told him that I was very apologetic for his behavior, and that I promise you that my dad would never talk to your wife ever again, and I’m so sorry that he’s hurt you and your family,” Evan told PEOPLE.

Afterward, the family had a meeting, during which Evan told his father that he had to “be better” if he wanted to continue to be a part of their family unit. Upon later learning that his father had continued the affair, Evan says he was “crushed.”

What happened on the day Gavin Smith went missing?

In the days before Smith’s 2012 disappearance, the Hollywood executive had attended a movie convention in Las Vegas, per ABC News. When he arrived back in L.A., Smith did not return to his family’s home. Instead, he opted to stay with a nearby family friend on the night of May 1. Smith and the friend had watched television together before she retired to bed, expecting him to do the same later in the evening.

“They had already gone to bed,” Lisa told ABC. “So, he was still downstairs watching TV when our friend went to bed. And he was going to be coming up to bed shortly.”

But, at around 10 p.m., he left the property in his black Mercedes-Benz. Smith, who was dressed in purple workout pants that belonged to his teenage son, left most of his belongings behind, including his cell phone charger and shaving kit. Based on his attire, his family later shared that they believed he didn’t intend to be gone long or go anywhere in public.

According to phone records acquired by police, Smith bounced around the surrounding area late into the night. Sgt. John O’Brien told The Daily Beast that Smith’s cell phone pinged in the early hours of the morning, “after bars close.” There were no signs of his credit card being used. According to his sister, Tara Smith Addeo, the last GPS signal they received placed Smith in Sylmar, Calif., at 4:30 a.m. on May 2, about 30 minutes from his home.

That morning, his family immediately knew something was wrong. Lisa had spoken to her husband the previous day, arranging for him to pick up one of their sons and take him to school. At the time, she was taking care of her ill mother. When Smith failed to make the pickup and then didn’t call into work, Lisa filed a missing person report.

“As soon as I heard that he had not picked up Austin from school, that’s when I said, ‘There has to be something wrong.’ What that is, I don’t know. I don’t know,” Tara told ABC at the time.

What happened during the investigation into Gavin Smith’s disappearance?

In the time that followed his disappearance, Smith’s family, friends and the police searched for the missing executive. His family launched online campaigns and made media appearances, begging for his return. They searched remote areas and ravines, looking for traces of Smith or his missing vehicle. Much of their efforts were unsuccessful.

During that time, police also began investigating Creech and Cade. According to the Los Angeles Times, in June 2012, authorities searched the couple’s home, seizing items like cell phones and computers.

In 2013, L.A. County Sheriff’s deputies finally got a break in the case. That February, Smith’s Mercedes-Benz was found in a Simi Valley, Calif., storage facility. Authorities had been led to the car after Creech's vehicle was found during a drug bust, per NBC News. After finding the Mercedes-Benz in the storage unit and inspecting the vehicle, law enforcement ruled that Smith had likely been murdered.

“The condition of the vehicle in conjunction with cooperating witness statements indicates he was killed,” Lt. Dave Dolson said in a press conference. “At this time, the evidence leads us to believe he was murdered.”

Lisa told the Los Angeles Times that the family’s worst suspicions had been confirmed, but they were also relieved to know that Smith had not purposely abandoned the family.

“My sons and I are devastated and this has been the hardest 10 and a half months of our life — being without him. We love him dearly. He’s the love of my life and the father of my children and he is gone. It’s a tragedy,” she said. “For the rest of the world to know that he didn’t leave us is huge. He would have never done that. We knew from the get-go that something horrible had happened because he just wouldn’t do this.”

At that time, police also officially named Creech as a person of interest in the case, who was then serving an eight-year sentence at the L.A. County Men’s Central Jail on drug charges. They did not publicly confirm Smith’s romantic connection to Creech’s wife but they did note that the storage facility had been rented by a friend of Creech.

Although Creech had not been interviewed before being named a person of interest, Cade had spoken to detectives on many occasions. Meanwhile, Creech had previously spoken to a reporter and claimed to have never met Smith.

When was Gavin Smith declared dead?

While the investigation continued, Smith was officially declared dead by law enforcement officials in May 2014, per Variety. A judge issued a death certificate for Smith, dating it May 1, 2012, the night he went missing.

“He died on the night of his disappearance,” Lt. Dolson said in a statement. “He was a striking individual, tall, fit and, I think the idea of a person that goes missing out of nowhere is intriguing and tragic.”

When was Gavin Smith’s body found?

On Oct. 26, 2014, Smith’s remains were discovered by a group of hikers.

The body was found in a shallow desert grave in the Angeles National Forest, approximately 70 miles away from the home where he disappeared.

How did John Creech kill Gavin Smith?

In January 2015, the district attorney officially filed murder charges against Creech and just a few months later, a grand jury indicted him. In the months that followed, hundreds of pages of court transcripts were made public, per the Los Angeles Times.

In testimony from Cade, she revealed that she had met up with Smith late in the night when he disappeared. Her husband later tracked her location and snuck up on the pair. Cade said he immediately began beating Smith and threatened to harm her as well.

After pleading for her husband to stop, she fled the scene and returned home in her own vehicle. Creech went on to beat Smith to death. The county coroner later shared that Smith’s skull had been crushed on both sides.

Creech quickly made efforts to conceal Smith’s body and car after the killing. He stored the Mercedes-Benz in a friend’s garage temporarily before moving it to the storage unit. Meanwhile, he traveled to the desert to bury Smith’s body. Creech and several accomplices went on to keep Smith’s death a secret for years while the investigation was underway.

What was John Creech's charge in the murder of Gavin Smith?

When the trial began in 2017, prosecutors described Smith's murder as “an act of almost stunning brutality — almost indescribable violence.” Meanwhile, Creech’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Irene Nuñez, called her client’s actions self-defense.

While speaking to the jury, Nuñez claimed that Creech had woken up in the middle of the night to find his wife missing. Alleging that he thought she had relapsed and was concerned about her safety, he went to find her. Nuñez alleged that when Creech found Cade in Smith’s car, Smith began to attack him. When he tried to leave, Smith allegedly chased him with a weapon — which was never found — and Creech began to fight back.

“What we have here is a case of self-defense,” Nuñez said. When Creech later took the stand, he admitted that he took “full accountability” for not contacting authorities to seek aid for Smith after the attack, per NBC News.

At the end of the trial, the jury was presented with several options including first- and second-degree murder. Instead, they found Creech guilty of voluntary manslaughter. He was later sentenced to 11 years in prison. His accomplices were not charged. Cade was also not charged.

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