the trail in the apartment went into thayne smika s bedroom and it went into the bathroom. in the downstairs bathroom, we noticed that there was a red ring in that toilet. an inference that the police had was that perhaps the shotgun used to murder sid wells had been cleaned in that toilet bowl. interestingly enough, the bathroom on the first floor was thayne smika s bathroom. what was most interesting to us was on the coffee table next to where sid s body was found, we found a note and an envelope. the envelope had the numbers $300 written on it. august 1st was rent day. thayne smika was due to pay sid $300 that he was going to take to his mother. we didn t find anything in that envelope. the note was a note from thayne smika, and it was to sam and sid wells informing them that he had gone home to his
despite what we heard from thayne smika, no money was found on sidney wells person, nor was any money or cocaine found in the apartment. several days after the murder of sid wells, the police drove back to akron, colorado to search the house of thayne smika s mother. thayne smika was not at his mother s house at the time of the search. thayne smika s mother talked about some not very complimentary character traits. mrs. smika thought that her son may be a psychopath and may very well have been involved in the murder of sidney wells. it was pretty significant coming from a parent, and especially a mother. we had a search warrant for the house. one of the first areas that we searched was the bedroom closet.
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. questions like, you know, why would you kill your brother, why would you do something like that, and they decided it was time to give me what they call a paraffin test to find out
i started in the boulder district attorney s office in 2009. i started under the new administration with d.a. stan garnett, and sure enough, in the summer of 2009, dave hayes showed up on our doorstep with boxes upon boxes upon boxes of the investigative file into the murder of sid wells. in december of 2010, 27 years after sid wells was murdered, the d.a. signed off on an arrest warrant accusing thayne smika of murder in the first degree. after getting the warrant, we put together a coordinated search which included sending detectives to every place where there was members of the smika family or close friends of the smika family. unfortunately, the family without exception told us they did not know where thayne was and did not know how to locate him. i think mistakes were made. i think this family has suffered what my family did, incompetence, bad judgment, mistakes, and that precluded the real bad guy, the guy that killed sid, from facing justice. well, sid s been gone for 30
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