passenger seat. it looked like a body. it was just stiff, like a stick, you know, a long stick. and you said it was wrapped up? wrapped up in a blanket. reporter: eventually jorge got rid of gavin s cell phone, but that very night, said the prosecutor, creech called a friend from the powerhouse gym, stan mcquay. he asked if he can come over and if he can park his car in my garage. was the body still in it at that point? yes. reporter: mcquay allows creech to keep the body and the car at his house for five to six days. really? yes. reporter: and that s when creech turned to reina lim, the nurse who lived with them and took care of chandy s grandmother. creech got reina to rent a van. and then he uses the van to drive up to the angeles national forest, and he finds a secluded area to bury gavin smith s body. reporter: where buddy the dog later found it. but the mercedes-benz was still in stan s garage.
reporter: once chandy felt safe, she spilled it. all of it. how she and gavin met in secret at that secluded cul-de-sac, got close in gavin s car. and then all of a sudden the door opened, and johnny just goes and i just like pushed myself out this way. got out the driver s side. reporter: creech burst in like a machine, said chandy. started slugging, wouldn t quit. and i was like, stop it, you re going to kill him i was like screaming my head off. and then he comes out of the car and he s like, you re next. and then i drove off. reporter: she was terrified, she said. afraid he d kill her too or tell the cops she set the whole thing up. so did she? again and again the detectives listened to the undercover tape. i believe 100% that she did not know that was going to happen, and she did not set it up. reporter: but, they wondered, did she help cover it up?
can be is all i can say about that. reporter: but if gavin was dead, and certainly it looked that way, where was his body? how did his car wind up in the storage locker? and above all, who would have wanted him dead? reina lim certainly seemed an unlikely suspect. she told them she had rented the storage unit for someone else. meanwhile, detectives looked further into chandy s affair with gavin and discovered the two had met in rehab and in december 2010, less than two years before gavin disappeared. lisa found out about it. i was heartbroken. reporter: so she took an extreme step to save her family. she and two of her sons, then 14 and 20, went to the creech s house to speak to them, family to family. and i was really upset when we were driving there. so i stayed in the car, and i let my sons go in the house. reporter: but they didn t
all struggled with adridiction d serious financial problems. detectives were far from answers, but that would change when someone gave them a name that led to a crucial discovery. here s keith morrison with more. reporter: like it or not it s a fact, an element of human nature. some people have affairs. some of them just flings and others a lot. as they poked through his life. one name kept popping up. chandy. her full name, chandrika creech. she d already told the detectives that she and gavin had an affair years earlier. and that he called her right before he vanished. but now, nine months after gavin disappeared, the detectives got a tip.
learned, gavin had been unfaithful to his wife, had been seeing a woman named melanie, and now that gavin had disappeared without a trace we went to talk to her and to see if she had any information. did she? no. the relationship had ended, and she had not talked to him, and she had no idea where he was at. reporter: but though melanie was the reason gavin moved out of his house a month before he vanished, she was not his first affair. there had also been a woman named chandy. that relationship was years in the past, but phone records showed gavin called her on may 1st, the day before he disappeared. cops tracked her down, too. what did she tell you? she acknowledged the prior affair, and she said that she had not been in contact with him for some time, but then they started communicating via e-mail. and that would explain the fact that he called her on the phone? yes. reporter: but chandy said she didn t see him may 1st, hadn t heard from him since.