The heartbreaking story of Chris Smith being killed by Ed\nShin continues to intrigue our audience and keeps popping up on all the popular\nwhodunit sites, e.g., Dateline, the Oxygen Channel, People Magazine\nInvestigates, and now 20\/20. As the first private investigators on this case\nback in 2011, we filled thick binders with pages of notes to help aid in the\ninvestigation. After careful re-reading, there are still some holes that have\nyet to be filled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you’ve been following the blogs over the past year,\nyou’re all caught up with how the police, detectives, and district attorney’s\noffice put together the case that convicted Ed Shin of murdering Chris Smith, a\nbeloved son, brother, and friend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, if this is your first time visiting the PGI Premier\n360 Blog, start at our August 2019, post Blood Drops\nand Email Swaps<\/a> to get up to speed on the evidence that was given to the\njury that put away Shin for life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We know that Shin and Chris became friends in 2008 when they\nboth worked for the same company, LG Technologies in San Fernando, Chris as a\nconsultant and Shin as the president. They had similar interests that involved\nentrepreneurship and growing businesses, so they both left LG and teamed up to form\nthe 800 Exchange LLC, a sales lead-generating venture located in Orange County.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Throughout these past ten years, before he was finally\nconvicted in 2018, Shin has been the sole source of information on Chris’s\ndemise. Through our unfiltered lens, our point of view on how it all went down\ncouldn\u2019t be more different than the story Shin seems determined to cling to. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Below is a timeline of important events leading up to and\nafter Chris’s disappearance. Let’s see if you’re able to paint the same picture\nwe did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So now that you’ve got the gist of this, can you feel the\npressure Shin was under to come up with the humungous amount of money he needed\nto stay out of jail?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here’s what we presently know about the man Ed Shin:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Going back to the summer of 2010, after reading the many\nemails from “Chris,” it took his family members time to accept the\nfact that he sold his shares of this lucrative company to his business partner\nand abandoned all in the U.S. to travel and sail the seas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The family indicated it was highly unlikely that Chris would\nleave his place in Laguna Beach, a condo he just started renting in May of\n2010, without telling anybody, not his parents, brother, or even his longtime\ngirlfriend. They also knew Chris had another entrepreneurial adventure on the\nback burner he was excited about, so his quick exit was even more disturbing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The final email received by the family was just after\nChristmas on December 26, 2010. “Chris” stated he was going to travel\ninto Africa with someone he just met and try to sell more Krugerrands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your Nightmare Has Just Begun<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Up until that point, suspicions were becoming heightened and\nChris’s parents voiced them out loud in the email threads. In an August 2,\n2010, email, Steve asked Chris to name the lake they used to live on and what\ntype of boat he used to ski behind. “Chris” was only able to name the\nlake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n October through December of 2010, all the family members\nwere pleading for Chris to contact them. They asked him repeatedly to make a\nphone call so they could hear his voice. Debi, Chris’s mother, stated in one\nemail:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “\u2026we thought maybe you had\nbeen killed and Ed had covered it up\u2026posing as you in the emails\u2026”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n On December 8, 2010, in an email to “Chris,” Steve\n\u2013 Chris Smith\u2019s father \u2014 made the following foreboding warning:<\/p>\n\n\n\n If this is Ed Shin and if I find\nout you have hurt or injured either one of my sons, I am going to F*ck You Up.\nYour nightmare has just begun.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n No matter the age of our children, as parents we’ll always\nworry. It comes with the job. Debi and Steve reiterated in their email\nconversations with “Chris” their desire to hear from him, see him,\nvisit; anything. Steve’s final enraged message conveyed his feelings perfectly\nand that’s when the alarm bell was finally pulled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today, 15 months after Shin was convicted and sentenced to\nlife in prison for the murder of Chris Smith for financial gain, he continues\nto deny he knows where Chris\u2019s remains are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Any parent who has lost a child would understand the\ncomplete frustration with Shin’s unwillingness to divulge the truth. There are\nplenty of theories about why Shin continues to obstruct the search for Chris’s\nbody. In our office we have a few ideas as to why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shin was known to swing a golf club in his office and had a\nbaseball bat there, too. He admitted to the property management company that red\nwine was spilled all over the place when Chris allegedly vomited and urinated\non the day of the “fight.” At around the same time as Chris’s\ndisappearance, Shin had called the property manager asking, \u201cHow do you\nget blood out of carpet?\u201d<\/em><\/strong> Yeah, you read that correctly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shin is not a small man, standing 6 feet tall and 190 lbs.\nChris was an avid athlete, a wakeboarder and surfer, though smaller and leaner\nthan Shin. The theory is that Chris was taken by surprise and bludgeoned from\nbehind with either the golf club, bat, or bottle of wine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The janitor who saw the mess in the office reported seeing\nred markings on the carpet and halfway up the walls, to which Shin told the\njanitor he accidently cut his arm while cutting an apple. Again, you read that right. We just can’t\nmake this stuff up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Something that was not brought up in the 2018 trial was an\nemail dated June 8, 2010, just a few days after Shin killed Chris. Shin, impersonating\nChris (as we now know)<\/strong>, wrote the following email to Paul, John Gebert, cc\u2019ing\nhimself, Edward Shin, addressing a minor business change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before reading the original email below, keep in mind that our\neyes can easily overlook the little things and why we stress careful study of\nall evidence. Let’s see if you can spot the mistake. Look at the signature. Shin\napparently signed off with his own name when he was posing as “Chris.”\nIn Shin\u2019s haste, his muscle memory caused the glaring error.<\/p>\n\n\n\n