that before he disappeared, gavin had been taking money from his retirement account and recklessly blowing through his six-figure salary. and there were other signs of strain in the family in april 2012, a month before gavin disappeared, his son evan wrote this message on twitter. thoughts and prayers out to my amazing mom and brothers please. my dad decided to leave the family last night. real family sticks together. sister tara spoke with gavin at the time he was struggling with losing what he had come to know and love for so many years, and that was his family unit. mm-hm and he didn t want to hurt those boys and that s what he kept saying i don t want to be without them. reporter: but as much as he loved his boys, detectives learned gavin had been unfaithful to his wife
would you get rid of this weapon that gavin smith had used to attack you with? why would you get rid of it? well, i didn t get rid of it. i threw it behind my house where i knew it would be all right why would you do that, sir? why wouldn t you just leave it where it was well, i can play armchair quarterback all day about things, but at the time it seemed like the right decision reporter: creech admitted he made some wrong decisions too. like asking friends to help him dispose of gavin s phone and car and body i take full accountability for everything after fact. if i could change it, i would. sir, actually you never took full accountability because you never came forward to the police, did you? not on advice of counsel, no, and i still take accountability for that reporter: lisa smith was in the courtroom to hear creech s testimony. she knew that the soft-spoken man on the stand was a known criminal, a convicted drug dealer my skin was just crawling it was really har
cell phone from the night gavin vanished john creech was on the phone, a lot. he was calling multiple people very intensely. so like three or four or five calls to the same person over and over exactly reporter: some of those calls were to creech s buddies from the powerhouse gym we did a multi-location search warrant and we hit everybody that we believed might have helped on that evening. we hit all those houses all at once reporter: one by one, those buddies turned they told detectives how a frantic creech showed up late that night how he persuaded one friend to get rid of gavin s cell phone. got another friend to hide gavin s car, and body, in his garage and yet another told detectives she saw chandy and john creech burning their own clothes in the fireplace after gavin was killed this was a strange case reporter: prosecutor bobby grace. you don t normally find a body two years later after somebody is killed
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 one hundred percent 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 it s a serious business, covering for a crime that awful. but chandy had a card to play. she agreed to testify. members and alternate members of the jury. reporter: and in june 2017, john creech went on trial.
and what were you saying to the defendant? i was just begging for him not to harm my family. reporter: but they said, creech told them that they did the right thing. he ended up saying that we saved his life by coming that day. reporter: but there were rules. that s what chandrika, now divorced from john creech, said when she finally took the witness stand. as long as their father stayed away from me and had no communication whatsoever, their father, would be fine. did he say what would happen if he did? that he would kill gavin smith. reporter: the affair ended. but, chandy said, the threat remained he did not want me to see gavin ever reporter: still, attraction is a powerful thing, isn t it? early in 2012, john and chandy were separated, but still living together and gavin and lisa were separated, too and that old magnetic force,