{"id":1181,"date":"2019-09-17T10:42:05","date_gmt":"2019-09-17T17:42:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pgiexecutives.com\/?p=1181"},"modified":"2019-09-19T16:49:21","modified_gmt":"2019-09-19T23:49:21","slug":"a-single-drop-of-blood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pgiexecutives.com\/blog\/a-single-drop-of-blood\/","title":{"rendered":"A Single Drop of Blood"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Justice for Chris Smith and the Conviction of Edward Shin – Part Two<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So\nlet’s go back a bit in time, prior to our visit to the office of 800xchange. As\nyou already know, the building’s property manager asked us to track down the\nformer owners of 800xchange, Chris Smith and Edward Shin, so they could be\nserved with a complaint for skipping out on a $40,000 lease balance. Seems 800xchange\nhad closed its business doors, and these two men were nowhere to be found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With\nthe investigation under way, locating Chris Smith, just to speak with him, was\nbecoming a difficult task. Smith, a popular surname, you can imagine how many\nSmiths there were in Southern California. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When\nmy partner and I were reviewing some paperwork, we came across the name and phone\nnumber of who we thought was Chris’s brother, Paul Smith, who also worked at\n800xchange. Close enough, right? I decided to call him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Revelations\nfrom the Little Brother<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paul\nwas cordial on the phone, though wary of getting a call from a private\ninvestigator. Apparently, we weren\u2019t the only ones who wanted to get some\nanswers from Chris Smith. During our conversation Paul gave a few tidbits of\ninformation to chew on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\nconfided that Chris had inexplicably “forgot”<\/em> to pick he and\nhis family up at at the airport, as previously planned. Paul learned that Chris\nhad dumped his long-time girlfriend, and without telling anyone but his\nbusiness partner, Shin, jetted off to South America with a former playboy\nmodel, named Tiffany Taylor. Huh? What? This case was getting interesting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\nbelieve this is a good time to put a bit more meat on the bones of this case. Unbeknownst\nto us, Chris Smith was already declared a missing person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Case\nOpened\u2026 and Closed<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chris’s\nfather, Steve Smith, suspicious of the bizarre actions of his son and having\nbeen in receipt of a slew of odd emails claiming to be from Chris, opened a missing\npersons case with the Laguna Beach Police Department. Steve traveled down from\nBend, Oregon, to Southern California to file the case. The LBPD opened (and soon\nclosed) the missing person’s case, indicating Chris was an adult male who chose<\/em><\/strong>\nto leave his responsibilities, family, and business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Skip\nTrace Leads Back to the Space<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Returning\nto the mundane investigative part of this process, skip traces for back payment\nof rent were generally unglamorous affairs. It involved a good deal of phone\ncalls, knocking on doors and chair surfing on the Internet looking for any\ninformation that could help us track down those who flee from paying their debts.\nNot the most exciting of jobs, but a service we offer our clients. This was a\nnormal task performed by a private investigator and we were doing our due\ndiligence for our client.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Behind\nthe Office Door<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So,\ngoing back to that afternoon when my partner, Chris Heuberger, and I entered\nthe former offices of 800xchange for the first time, I didn’t know it was going\nto be an extraordinary day. I never imagined it would morph into giving eight\nyears of my life towards this investigation which would then lead to a murder\ntrial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trusting\nyour gut is what you might call an investigator\u2019s superpower. Even though there\nwas no reason to suspect foul play, as we walked through the door at 800xchange,\nI couldn\u2019t shake the fact that the space felt “off<\/em>” somehow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking\nback, it’s funny how something as simple as flipping on a light switch could start\nthe series of events that transpired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nmy former career as a detective, I had witnessed plenty of bloody scenes. It’s\nnormal in police work, but not at all normal for the average person to see. I\nknow what blood looks like when it\u2019s fresh, when it\u2019s dry, and all states in\nbetween. I didn\u2019t need a forensic team to tell me the brown-colored smudge on\nthe light switch was blood. Superpowers, remember? And blood drops are like\nrats. Where there\u2019s one, there\u2019s always more hiding just out of plain sight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyone\nwho\u2019s watched a television crime show (I guess the bad guys don\u2019t), know it\u2019s\nnearly impossible to clean up a crime scene without leaving trace evidence\nbehind. Technology is so advanced now you\u2019d have to be the smartest guy alive\nto beat the system. Notice I said, \u201cbe.\u201d<\/em> Criminals, in general, just\nthink they are. I guess they wouldn\u2019t commit crimes if they thought they were\ngoing to be caught, would they?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nNarcissistic Sociopath<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Narcissism\nis not an uncommon trait among murderers. A true narcissist believes he\/she is\nsmarter than the rest of us, and in truth, some are. But there’s always an\neventual slip up. Coming up with legitimate reasons for why they walked into\nWalmart at midnight and purchased duct tape, a roll of heavy-duty plastic and a\nshovel begins a cat-and-mouse game that\u2019s difficult for most to play. Once the\nlies begin, though, it\u2019s hard for them to keep track of exactly what they said.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A\nlittle insider tip: Police interrogations last long for just this reason. Detectives\nknow time is on their side. Truth is easy to recount. Lies, on the other hand, are\nonly as good as the bad guy\u2019s memory. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But\nI\u2019m getting ahead of myself. Back to the offices of 800xchange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blood\nEvidence Everywhere<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once\nChis and I discovered the blood on the light switch, it wasn\u2019t that difficult\nto find more. Just like rats. We found it on the baseboard, the ceiling and the\ndoor casing, and that was just with the naked eye. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My\nintuition that something bad had happened here became more plausible with each new\ndiscovery. Blood doesn\u2019t end up on the ceiling from a paper cut or a bloody\nnose. Science tells us that. Something much more sinister occurred and we were\njust starting to realize what we were walking into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Up\nto now, all we knew was a couple of guys had a once successful business here; one\nguy bought the other out; and they both skipped out on the rent, blood or no\nblood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Armed\nwith this newly discovered evidence, we strongly believed there was enough reason\nto suspect foul play. First step, though, was to reopen the missing person’s\ncase. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When\nFriends Come in Handy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nBlue Line is a family, and if you’ve been a police officer for any amount of\ntime, you’ve made lifelong friends with others in surrounding county and city\ndepartments. Since the offices of 800xchange were located in San Juan\nCapistrano, if you add to that the suspicious disappearance of Chris Smith and\nnow blood evidence, this was a whole new ballgame. Jurisdiction was outside the\nLBPD lines and it landed with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since this case had already been opened and closed by the LBPD, who, by the way, never investigated the offices of 800Xchange, I reached out to my childhood friend, Investigator Don Voght of the OC Sheriff\u2019s Department Homicide Division. Voght and his partner, Ray Wert, listened as we recounted all the real and circumstantial evidence we found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In hindsight upon review of this case, some might say the detectives with the Laguna Beach Police Department handled the case incompetently. It’s easy to Monday Morning Quarterback and critique someones work, or lack of. However, I am sure they had reasons of their own to do or not do what they felt was important at that time during their investigation. Or, it could have been something simply overlooked. No matter how you look at it, police officers are not infallible, and I am sure they would have loved to put this murderer away themselves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You have to understand the life of a police detective. Overworked and buried in mountains of tedious paperwork, they are required to handle multiple cases simultaneously and often do with little to no sleep. But one thing’s for certain and should not go unmentioned. There are many other good things those particular LPBD detectives have done, investigated and solved, brought closures to other victims and families, as well as sent many, many very bad people away to prison. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a retired police officer, who’s now doing private investigations, I know my strengths and weaknesses. That is why I surround myself by a lot of talented people, with a strong work ethic, good moral compass, and many years of experience, who still want to help people, love to do the work, and see if they can bring closure to someone, or provide answers to their current situation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But now, a few doors down from our office, the vacant office space at 29222 Rancho Viejo Road, Suite 123, in San Juan Capistrano, California, was a bona fide crime scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For business updates and to follow along as we continue this series of Justice for Chris Smith and the Conviction of Edward Shin, sign up for our email newsletter<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know what blood looks like when it\u2019s fresh, when it\u2019s dry, and all states in between. I didn\u2019t need a forensic team to tell me the brown-colored smudge on the light switch was blood. Superpowers, remember? And blood drops are like rats. Where there\u2019s one, there\u2019s always more hiding just out of plain sight. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":1205,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[187,155,182,174,189,175,183,173,191,181,176,185,186,177,190,179,178,184],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pgiexecutives.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pgiexecutives.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pgiexecutives.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pgiexecutives.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pgiexecutives.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pgiexecutives.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pgiexecutives.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pgiexecutives.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pgiexecutives.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pgiexecutives.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}