what is your emergency? sam wells over at spanish towers. there has been an accident. i just walked in, you know the address? what is it. we need the ambulance in a hurry. what kind of an accident? i don t know, ma am. it looks like my little brother is laying here dead. i don t know what happened. what is your name? sam. samuel wells. walked in on that, still have a hard time with it today. there was just no sign of life whatsoever. got to take a time-out.
and sid wells informing them that he had gone home to his parents house and he would be back in a couple of days. what was interesting to the police was that there were a number of small spots of blood found underneath the note that thayne smika wrote. it appeared that the note from thayne to sid and sam and the envelope had been placed there after mr. wells was shot. somebody placed that envelope after the murder, after the murder. that puts thayne smika as suspect number one. the police drove to search the house of thayne smika s mother. shock. absolute complete mystification.
i had two younger brothers, sid and sam, and a great dad who loved the outdoors. i mean, colorado, it doesn t get any better than this. we came from very humble roots. i would say we were lower middle class but when it came to the richness of love in the family, i think we were at the upper scale. very, very close family. sid was fun, outgoing. could be obnoxious at times. kind of a joking comic, always kind of a funny attitude. sid, he s everybody s best friend. knows no stranger. very popular in high school band, good athlete. he was just an amazing guy. everybody loved him. he was studying journalism and going to the navy rotc program there at the university of colorado as well.
on august 1st of 1983, i received a phone call from my brother, sam. he told me sid was gone, that he was killed, and murdered, and that he walked in and found him. the first thing the police look for in any type of a homicide scene is sign of a forced entry through the door or window, or a sign of a struggle and they didn t see any sign that there had been an obvious burglary, robbery or assault in this apartment. that leads investigators to think that they should be looking from within, they should be looking at roommates or friends or relatives or people who had access to this apartment, people who had access to sid wells. in this case, the police started their investigation with sam wells. they proceeded to ask me all kinds of questions.
sid was had a girlfriend at the time named shauna redford. after a couple, two, three dates, he called me and said you won t believe this, i just found out i m dating robert redford s daughter. sid and shauna had been dating for almost three years. and they were just a fun couple to be around, very much in love. we had a condo in boulder, colorado called the spanish towers. it was great, because sid was going to school there so he could live there all through his college days. sam moved in the summer of 1983. he needed a roommate so i filled in for the summer. got to hang out and get to know