18-years-old back then, asked us not to use her last name not after she found herself in the middle of a homicide investigation when police came across her while doing surveillance on john creech. lauren used to work in the pro shop of the powerhouse gym in chatsworth, california and that s where she first met creech he was beautiful. he was tall and he was muscular. and a lot of women especially wanted to date him, a lot of men wanted to be him reporter: lauren fell for him. he told her he was separated from his wife chandy, but that didn t stop chandy from calling lauren she texted and called me and was very belligerent and rude. reporter: angry, perhaps, that her husband, then 39, was dating a high school girl. in fact, sheer coincidence, lauren went to high school with gavin smith s sons
hills sheriff station to report gavin missing. and waited and waited. days later, gavin s family went on nbc4 in los angeles to plead for help i m not going to stop until i find him so please help me find him. if you guys want to each pick up one of these streets. now i m in panic mode, we ve got to do something. what did that feel like being in that spot oh, it was surreal. reporter: the smith family put together a $20,000 reward for any information leading to gavin s whereabouts. nothing turned up. and i would think with every hour that went by, it would be more and more dire and darker for you, right it s very dark. it s very, very dark reporter: it wasn t just the family having dark thoughts. they don t normally call a couple of seasoned homicide detectives to look into a missing person s case. they do when there are some suspicious circumstances reporter: and in this case, they called in sheriff
he clearly stopped using. he was feeling healthier than he felt in years. reporter: but when detectives john o brien and ty labbe learned about gavin s addiction, they had to consider a raft of new possibilities. he disappeared. maybe he overdosed we didn t exactly have any of those answers. driving all over the valley, we would have moments in the car of where we looked at each other and said, i think this is a suicide. and then an hour later, we d interview somebody and something would happen and we d go, i think this is a murder. and our feelings and our gut instincts are going different ways very early on very fast. yeah. it s got to be pretty unusual though it was very confusing reporter: confusing for lisa too. because here was another secret, the smiths were underwater on their mortgage on the verge of losing their home we were in a horrible position financially reporter: lisa discovered
they re no longer living. and you must have a reason for knowing that that s what i would assume. reporter: it turned out lisa did know something just not what tara suspected there were secrets, which lisa and gavin kept hidden. i was the love of gavin s life he adored me our family was exactly what he wanted to have he just got lost reporter: lost. it all started in the early 80 s, even before she met gavin, when he was a stuntman on the tv series remington steele. he played a shooting victim, falling from a second story window the stunt went wrong and he broke his back he would get pain pills for his back so usually percocet, something like that for pain when that didn t work anymore, he was prescribed oxycontin. and he was addicted to it. reporter: he went to a drug rehab center called the matrix institute here in the san fernando valley.
gavin met chandy on that secluded road. did the two of you become romantic yes did that include kissing? yes and while you were kissing gavin, did something happen that caught your attention? yeah. what happened just something like popped up, like appeared. was that something the defendant, john creech yes, yes. reporter: gavin didn t have a chance, she said he repeatedly punched him in the face reporter: so then she ran back to her car, terrified i wanted to get away. i was scared reporter: but before she drove away, she looked back. john had gavin pinned down. reporter: later, she said, creech wanted her to drive him back to the crime scene. help him take gavin to the hospital a block and a half away, she refused to go closer and dropped creech off