Gavin Smith Headshot - P 2012
The family of Gavin Smith has resumed their efforts to find the 20th Century Fox executive, who went missing on May 1.
According to L.A.’s CBS2, Smith’s wife, children and friends canvassed the town of Sylmar, Calif., on Sunday, posting photos of Smith and the black Mercedes he was seen driving before his disappearance; they had received a tip from police investigators that the 57-year-old had last pinged his cell phone in the area.
“We’ve been working closely with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and our detectives,” said Smith’s wife, Lisa Smith, told CBS2.
“We wanted to find out what we could do hands-on. And obviously we can’t search for Gavin but they told us that we could put posters up. They directed us to a good area and this is it. And we’re gonna branch out. We’re gonna have a team and we’re gonna try and get some information,” she said.
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Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times cites Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department spokesman Steve Whitmore as saying that there’s “no new information” to report on Smith’s case and that Sylmar had “no significance” to the investigation.
Whitmore said investigators have remained in contact with the Smith family, giving “general directions, advice, information, things like that.”
Last month, news surfaced that Smith had a relationship with Chandrika Creech, owner of the West Hills, Calif., house on which a SWAT team and county homicide investigators descended in the early morning hours of June 8, retrieving boxes, a computer and a black Audi SUV.
According to E! News, Smith met Creech in therapy and the two had been having an on-and-off affair since 2008.
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At the time, Creech’s husband, John Creech, told the L.A. Times that he had never met Smith, and had this response to a question about why the home he shares with his wife was searched: “I would love to tell you, but I can’t.”
While authorities have said that their probe into Smith’s vanishing is a missing persons rather than homicide case, a sealed search warrant affidavit’s cover pages suggested that they had “probable cause” to believe a crime had been committed at the Creeches’ residence, the paper reported.
John Creech — who E! News said is separated from Chandrika Creech but remains under the same roof — is scheduled to be in court July 26 to be sentenced for selling and transporting cocaine, and could go to a state prison on a 10-year sentence.
In February 2010, he was arrested and later charged with six drug felonies, to which he pleaded no contest.
Also in June, a $20,000 reward was offered as officials appealed to the public for information that could help solve the Smith case.
Smith, a former UCLA basketball player who worked on distributing films such as Titanic and Avatar, left a friend’s home between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. on May 1 without telling anyone where he was going. He wore a pair of purple athletic pants belonging to one of his sons and left his cellphone charger, shaving kit and other items.
