The Cheaters, The Family Affair and the Fallen Star

and podcast host Connor Powell. Connor is a journalist and podcast host whose latest podcast is Lords of Soccer, How FIFA Stole the Beautiful Game and the Largest corruption scandal in the World. He's also host of Katie Studio's upcoming podcast, Death Island. You can follow Connor on Twitter at Connor M. Powell. Episode forty four, The Case of the Cheaters, The Family Affair, and the Fallen Star. At six ft seven, Gavin Smith was a strikingly handsome man with blonde hair and a

killer smile. When he walked into a room, all eyes were on him. Women wanted to be with him and men wanted to be him. But despite the attention, Gavin remained humble. He was a generous and kind man who would give you the shirt off his back. In January, at twenty three years old, he was working as a waiter at an upscale restaurant in Los Angeles. That's when he met Lisa. Lisa, like Gavin, had blonde hair and

tan skin. They looked like kenn and Barbie. Gavin was immediately attracted to Lisa and flirted with her as he served dinner. By the time the check came, he got her number and her heart. The couple had a fast romance, getting engaged as five months later and were married in November the same year. Lisa owned her own accounting firm and was the breadwinner for the couple, while John served as golf caddy and acted in bit parts in movies. Lisa worked full time and gave birth to three sons.

By the time baby number three came, Gavin was thirty nine, and Lisa demanded that her husband get a real nine to five jobs so that he could help support their growing family. Gavin obliged, and, working a connection from the Ritzy golf course he caddied at, got an entry level position at twentieth Century Fox, making forty dollars a year, but his affability helped him rise in the ranks. Quickly, and he soon was a high powered, well respected film distributor.

Lisa was able to sell her business and become a stay at home mom. Despite all the new responsibilities, Gavin still made time for his family. His boys, who were every bit as handsome and athletic as their dad, were the center of his universe. Living in a beautiful mansion in a Los Angeles suburb, Gavin Smith almost had it all. Here's Jeff. His job at Fox wasn't the first time

Gavin had success. In college, she played basketball under the iconic coach John Wooden, and he was on the championship team, and you know, for anyone who knows basketball like this was a big deal. And it's no surprise that Gavin dreamt of playing in the NBA. But when he wasn't drafted after college, he was crushed and he ended up running off to the mountains for five or six days to cool off, and during this time no one knew where he was. But when he got back, he was

flying back to his old self. So he really just needed that time to kind of decompress. And back in present day, it seemed that Gavin and Lisa really weren't doing as well as outside appearances may have led you to believe despite earning a hundred and eighty thousand dollars a year, the couple had bought their home at the height of the housing market, and the two thousand and eight financial really hurt them. They were living beyond their means.

The market value of their home plunge to less than the balance ode on the mortgage, which meant they were completely underwater financially. So it's not a surprise that Gavin and Lisa were in the midst of trying to sell their house, Yeah, Connor, And to make matters worse, Gavin also wanted to retire from his cushy job at Fox

and pursue acting again. His wife Lisa, though, was concerned that they literally couldn't afford to do that, and not surprisingly, the financial issues were causing a rift in the once idyllic relationship. Gavin and Lisa were in a bit of a dark place in their marriage and constantly getting into fights,

and Gavin had even talked about being depressed. So Connor, in your podcast Lords of Soccer, you explore kind of the underbelly of soccer and how crime and corruption kind of has fallen into this world and in thinking about Gavin and his mediorc rise in college basketball and not being able to be draft it, what can you tell us about athletes frame of mind and their psyche after you know, being kind of celebrities in the college world and then falling into nothing after not getting drafted and

going back to the start. Yeah, I mean, it's not a guess as surprise that Gavin, you know, serve entered a dark period of his life after not getting drafted. He had played at u c. L A, which I mean in the nineteen seventies that was the epitome of sports, not only college sports, but just really sports in America, playing for John Wooden and not to get drafted. I mean, that would have been the end of his entire career.

He had probably been playing basketball since he was a kid, practicing year round, being recruited by the top schools in the country, plane on a championship team, and then literally in the blink of an eye, you know, snap of the finger, it's over. There's no place to play if

you don't get drafted out of college. So I'm not surprised he went dark and probably tried to have to, you know, reevaluate his life, and you know, he sounds like he stumbled into acting is something that he wanted to pursue, probably to try to grab onto that sort of rush of celebrity and fame and being held up on a pedestal. To make matters worse, Gavin had been dealing with a long standing back injury from his basketball days.

Plagued with chronic discomfort, he was prescribed painkillers, which he soon got addicted to. While Gavin still managed to get to work every day, his addiction became out of control and Lesa begged him to go to rehab. Wanting to save his marriage, Gavin obliged and had its treatment in two thousand seven. Like most things in his life, Gavin succeeded and was able to kick the habit. Here's connor. However, when he was in rehab, he picked up a new addiction,

a thirty three year old woman named Shandrica Creech. Fifty seven year old Gavin had become a group leader at the rehab facility in Shandrica enrolled there for her alcohol problem. Always wanting to help others, Gavin took a liking to the assualt re Burnette, and by two thousand and eight, their rehab relationship was getting hot and heavy. When Gavin got out of rehab, he continued seeing Shandraka behind Lisa's back. However, in July of two thousand and nine, Lisa became aware

of the relationship and confronted her husband Gavin. The couple decided to go to counseling, and Lisa truly believed the affair was over. However, despite all of that, things really just weren't working in the marriage, and Gavin moved out of the family home. While Lisa was holding firm with Gavin, she was telling friends behind his back that she felt like they would ultimately get through their issues and for her, this move out was more of a scare tactic to

put Davin back on the right track. Despite all that, the eldest son in the family was distraught, tweeting publicly quote thoughts and prayers out to my amazing mom and bros. Please my dad decided to leave the family last night. Real family sticks together end quote. And there was another problem, a big problem. Schandrica was also married to a man named John Creech. Now John was a former dealer turned steroid taking bodybuilder. It's not really the type of guy

you want to mess with. John found out about the affair after seeing his wife's cell phone bill and was less forgiving. John got physical, roughing up Shandraka, shoving her and pushing her. It was bad enough that she had to end things with Gavin, and aside from being a wife beater, John was also not faithful to his wife. At the time Schandrico was with Gavin, forty two year old John was dating an eighteen year old Tye school senior.

He was basically obsessed with this girl and would send her love sick texts like I don't want to come off with that guy to other people, you know, the older perv or something. Even though my slash our intentions are genuine, a lot of people won't see it that way. I like you because of you, not your age. I'm not giving up, I mean to me, Connor, this sounds like grooming at its finest. What do you make of kind of this weird sick love square because it's involving

four people instead of three. I mean, John sounds like exactly the type of person you don't want to mess with. Right and and he's been a drug dealer, he's on steroids, he's grooming a young girl for a relationship that she probably isn't ready for, and he shouldn't be in not only because of his age, but also more importantly because he's married. So this is just not the type of situation that, if you are Gavin, that you want to

get tangled up with. But it doesn't appear that he was willing to give up Shandrica, even despite all the baggage that she brought to the relationship, right, I mean, I guess it's like they met and rehab, which maybe is a time when they were feeling especially vulnerable, and so they kind of lashed onto each other as kind of trauma survivors of we gave up this addiction and now we found each other, and that kind of seems like their new vice. Yeah, it was definitely a vice.

And you know, I think anyone listen knows this isn't going to end well for anyone. And do you know anything, Honnor about steroids. I mean, having worked on a true crime podcast called Lords of Soccer about people in the sports world, I imagine you know, steroids come up and I've heard that it changes your personality. Can you tell us anything about what taking stories might do to someone's

psyche or the way they handle rage. Yeah, steroids, Um, you know impact your body physically, presumably in a better way to make you stronger, fitter, faster, but they also mess with your chemical in your mind as well. And people who tell steroids are prone to anger, prone to fits of instability. And if you add that on to somebody who already has a criminal background, you know you're talking about a personality that is really not a stable

personality and probably tends towards violence. On May second, Gavin was supposed to pick up his son and drive him to school, but he never showed up. Despite all the drama Gavin and Lisa had been through, he was always a present father. Bailing was just not like him. The boy had to get to school, so he called a friend and got a ride. By the end of the school day, Gavin was still not answering, so as son told Lisa, Lisa called Gavin's office, who told her he

hadn't been at work. Now officially concerned, Lisa filed a missing person's report To understand what was happening with Gavin's disappearance. We should go back a couple of years. In December of two thousand and ten, Lisa and Gavin were trying to deal with his infidelity. Lisa had thought he had broken things off with his mistress, Sandrica, but Gavin broke the news to her that that was not in fact the case. He had recently rekindled things with the young woman,

but it got worse. Shandrica's husband, John, also knew about the affair, and to say it was unhappy, it's probably a mild statement. Gavin showed Lisa some of the emails he had received from John. One of them read, I'm gonna get you, Gavin, your wife is getting a copy of all these emails. Your fuck You'll prick. Gavin was pissed. Gavin told Lisa that John was a dangerous drug dealer who had threatened him. Gavin agreed to change his phone

number and his email addresses. So let's just get this because there's a lot of different names and a lot of different players. Gavin and Lisa are married for a long time and have children together. Gavin goes to rehab and meets Sandrica and they start having an affair. It turns out Shandrica is married to a man named John who is this kind of would be criminal and Gavin tells his wife Lisa about the affair. She attempts to

forgive him. John finds out about his wife Shandrica's affair and is pissed and starts texting Gavin the other man all these threatening things, and so at this time, Gavin then has to tell his wife Lisa about his affair

and this threatening husband. I almost feel bad for Lisa's not only she finding out about the affair, which is bad enough and crushing, She's also finding out that the husband of the woman who her own husband is having an affair with seems to be a psychopath and is not stable and is threatening her husband John Yeah Connor. And it seems that she was maybe not thinking straight because what she did next is a little debatable. Lisa told her three sons about their father's infidelity and the

situation with John. So what happened next was Lisa, her nineteen year old son, and her fourteen year old son decided to confront the situation and talk to John face to face. They were thinking that perhaps if they showed him that they too were hurt by this whole thing, that John would come down and leave the family alone. Who could be angry with two teenage boys. I mean,

this is the definition of not thinking clearly. Lisa tells your sons about the affair, which is understandable, but then she brings them to meet with John to try to stop him. This is the guy who's a drug dealing, steroid using and presumably very violent guy. This seems like a horrible choice in a series of bad decisions by

several people. Lisa and her two teenage sons drove to John's house, and as Lisa waited in the car, the two boys knocked on his door, and according to these two teenagers, when they first introduced themselves to John, he was very angry. John told them he was furious with Gavin for sleeping with his wife Andrika. The two boys both cried, and the fourteen year old begged John not to hurt his dad. He allegedly told him, I'm in

eighth grade. I'm too young to lose my dad. He went on to apologize for his dad's behavior at least a hundred times and pled for John not to hurt his family. John allegedly told the boys that he had been following Gavin and he knew where the kids went to school, but Towards the end of the conversation, John began to calm down a little bit, and he told the boys that by coming over and having this conversation, they had saved their father's life. We're going to take

a break. We'll be back in just a moment. Back in two thousand twelve, Gavin was missing. His family was hopeful that his disappearance was similar to when he went off the grid after not making the NBA, but things felt different this time. Aavn was now a father of three and had a good job. He wouldn't abandon his responsibilities. Lisa informed the detectives about his affair with Chandraca. They

soon went to speak with her. When detectives arrived at her house, Sandrico wouldn't let them inside, but would speak to them on the porch. She admitted to the affair, but told them she had no idea where Gavin was. Detectives had a feeling that Shandrico wasn't being completely upfront with them, so they had an undercover informant bade her into telling the full story. It turns out Chandrika really wasn't honest with the police. During their first meeting, she

told the informant a completely different story. According to her, on the last night Gavin was seen alive, on May first, two thousand and twelve, they had decided to meet up around eleven pm in a remote area of town to fool around. She got into Gavin's black Mercedes and sat on his lap on the passenger side of the car. Now, according to her, what happened next was that suddenly John showed up and pulled the door open. He had tracked

her using the map function on their phones Family plan. Now, according to Chandrika, she jumped off of Gavin and the two men began yelling at each other. Before she knew it, John was on top of Gavin in the car, punching him repeatedly in the face, too many times to count, she said. As the beating continued, she could hear Gavin moaning,

but he wasn't really moving. She allegedly yelled at John to stop and that he was going to kill Gavin, but he didn't, and so at this point, Schandrika was very scared, and she ran towards John's car and drove off. As she sped off, John allegedly yelled towards the car, you're next so Sandraca then went home, and later John showed up. He was covered in blood, his knuckles were all scratched up. John apparently told Schandrika they needed to

go back to get Gavin and drive him to the hospital. Terrified, Chandrika listened, but when they arrived back at the scene, Gavin was dead. The couple drove back to their house and John started calling friends who thought would help them

clean up the murder. Shandraca told the informant that somehow blood had gotten on her clothes, so she burned them in the fireplace along with John's and John ended up finding a friend who would let them part the car in his garage while Gavin's body was still inside it. So five days go by and John and Schondrica knew that they needed a better long term plan for the car and Gavin's body, so they ended up recruiting Shandrica's grandmother's home care aid to rent a storage unit and

a U haul truck for them. The aid, for some reason, decided to go along with this and got them the storage unit and the truck, and John took Gavin's body about an hour and a half outside of Los Angeles to bury it. He then told the Mercedes with his

truck to the storage unit and locked it up. So police had all this information from their undercover informant, but they needed the physical evidence before making any arrest, so they sat on the story, meaning that while they were investigating Gavin's family was still hoping he might be found alive, they were out searching form hanging up missing posters, pleading

with a public for information. Almost a year went by and the police ended up getting a tip from Shandrica's grandmother's aid, the one who had rented the storage facility and the U haul. She told the cops about the storage facility and the bloody car inside of it. Perhaps she felt guilty about helping cover something up, but she also ended up getting full immunity before the information, so that probably helps offten the blow. Honnor, what do you

make of the informants information? I mean, how much in your experience can police trust what an informant tells them about a possible criminal So, as I learned doing the Lords of Soccer podcasts about FIFA's corruption, um, you know, informants played a huge role in bringing this massive criminal corruption case against the guys who run global soccer, And it literally started with a guy named Chuck Blazer who

didn't pay his US taxes. And when the prosecutors and the FBI went to Chuck Blazer and basically said, we know you're not paying taxes. We want you to flip on everybody and uh FIFA and basically tell us how they're all doing things dodgy. He was the key to that case. And in most cases, some type of informant or somebody flipping somebody who knows what's going on and

gets a deal from a prosecutor. You know, that's really what ends up making a lot of these big cases and their key because you've got to have somebody who literally knows where the bodies are buried, and an informant like the grandmother's homemade you know, that's probably more valuable

to the police in this situation than anything else. I guess with informants, it's kind of like the ends justify the means, and so if they can give a criminal some leeway and he or she provides the information, then the police can get an even bigger criminal who's committed to even worth crime. In March two thousand thirteen, police located the storage facility, and when they opened it, they found Gavin's blood soaked Mercedes. The car was a gruesome

crime scene. Detectives found Gavin's skins stuck to the car's leather seat. They also identified bloodstains inside the Mercedes and on the rear bumper that matched Gavin's DNA. Despite the heartbreaking ending, Gavin's family could finally declare him dead. When Lisa found out, she was inconsolable, crying for ninety minutes straight. Even though their marriage had been crumbling, she still had

love for him. Police still hadn't located Gavin's remains, which for them was the last piece of the puzzle they needed to charge John with murder. On October, two and a half years after disappearing, a hiker stumbled upon the skeletal remains of Gavin Smith. The medical examiner determined that the former movie executive had been badly beaten. The damage to his skull was equivalent to falling from a second

story building face first. Finally, in January of two thousand and fifteen, John Creech was charged with first degree murder. Cops had an easy time finding them because he was already incarcerated for dealing drugs. Despite the damning evidence against him, John pleaded not guilty. All of his cohorts, including Shandrica, had made deals with the district attorney in exchange for

their testimonies against John, they would receive full immunity. When Shandraka took the stand, she recounted the moment she watched her husband beat her lover Gavin to death. How many times did the definist strike John? Honestly too many times to count, doesn't She was asked why she didn't come forward with the information earlier. This was her answer, why didn't you go and tell anybody about it? Because I thought I'd get in trouble for telling them later instead

of immediately. So, Connor, I mean, do you buy the fact that she says she was afraid. What's your take on her testimony. I don't doubt that she was afraid. It seems like she may have been more of a willing participant than she said on the stand. You know, she did help cover up the murderer. She did help

hide it. She also appears to have basically worked with him over a long period of time to make sure, you know that the body stayed covered up, you know, and hidden and that the vehicle stayed hidden and they cleaned up. She burned her own clothes and burned John's clothes, So she was a much more active participant than she likes to say. But I don't doubt that she was also scared for her life. What is the line between being scared for your life and helping cover something up willingly?

Only she would know that. But it does seem like she was way more participant of this murder than, you know, than she wants to admit to herself, right, I mean, even if we believe this story that she told the informat fully, she got in a vehicle and was by herself and willingly went home to wait for John. I mean, she could have gone straight to a police station, she could have called the police, but instead she decided to

just kind of go along with it willingly. Yeah. I think that's really the thing is in that first seconds, if you cared about Gavin, he would think somebody like Shandrico would call an ambulance, go to the police immediately. But she went home where that's the most obvious place that John's gonna look for her. Right, So it doesn't seem like she was doing anything out of concern or care for Gavin. It was simply I'm gonna go home

and deal with the problem that they're now facing. So John also took the stand to try to defend himself. Here he is, have a listen. It was a quick sequence, like he pulled stuck up right there and he's just penning my head against it. Even he's got a long reach and he just penning my head up against the ceiling. And at that point is when I pressed off. I was just like, you know, I just went in to you know, fight or flight mode. And at that point when he especially when he bit down to my thumb,

I really tripped out. But the prosecution countered with a witness who saw John after the murder. The witness said that John's hand was swollen roughly twice the size of its normal hand size, and he had no other injuries on his face, which would imply he had been the one doing all of the hitting. Other witnesses also spoke about how Gavin was a peaceful man who wouldn't hurt anyone. Having covered a fair amount of true crime over your career, what do you make of someone just throwing out the

self defense defense. Well, there's probably some truth to self defense in a lot of cases, but it seems as if John was sort of hunting Gavin, hunting his family. He obviously followed Shandrika to her meet up with Gavin, and it doesn't appear that he suffered any bodily harm in the altercation with Gavin. So it's hard to say that that's self defenses. I think most people would recognize

and understand self defense. It sounds like he was essentially stalking him, he had made threats against him, and then he essentially beat him to death. Let's stop here for another break. As both the prosecution and defense rested, the jury was faced with a choice of first degree murder, second degree murder, or voluntary manslaughter. After less than one hour of deliberating, nine women and three men acquitted John on the first two charges. John was convicted of voluntary manslaughter.

For Gavin's family, it was a devastating blow. Voluntary manslaughter meant that the jury believed that the murder was not premeditated, but rather a crime of passion. It only carried a maximum sentence of eleven years. At the sentencing hearing, Lisa made an impassioned speech, this man chats wife with my husband being dead in a car, leaving had car for days and someone else's stands like the body man and

the queen's house, traces him into a van. Please about to a desert, complains on the stand about his four biceps and having to dray right less than twenty five yards and being into death and then he couldn't get down in there because he hadn't dug it deep enough. Because my bodies that my husband's body was in bad condition of day sex. He killed him. I would have been a worse in the world. But no, he hadn't

take him high him. He wanted us to never ever find And I hope that he his life for the drug conviction, felloy, federal file and jet file, and I hope he said the rest of his life and pritty. He shouldn't be a moss, needs to be at walls like an animal that he is. The judge handed John the maximum eleven year sentence. He will be eligible for parole in January. Connor, thanks for coming on the podcast. Tell us again about your podcast Lords of Soccer and

where we can find it. Yeah, if you like true crime stories, this is the mother of all true crime and corruption stories. It's a global corruption scandal that started decades ago with essentially a few people who ran global soccer again. It's called The Lords of Soccer, How FIFA Stole the Beautiful Game, And it's available everywhere you listen to podcasts. Connor, you are also hosting Katie Studios upcoming podcast Death Island. Can you tell us a little bit

about that? Yeah? And this is another just sort of incredible story. It's all about an island in Thailand called koto which, on the surface seems like a beautiful diving paradise, crystal clear waters, you know, perfect beaches. But over the course of the last twenty years, there have been just a string of deadly, grizzly death. Some of them are very clearly murder, some of them could be accidents. Some

of them we don't know. And the problem and the reason we don't know, and the reason we're looking into Kotao and the people who run this island is it's run by mafia like figures, a small group of people who basically want to keep the party going and the money flowing. And so anytime somebody dies there, whether it's clearly a murder or an accident, it just all gets brushed the side and blamed on somebody who isn't going to prevent the good times the money from flowing onto

this island. And it's basically a mafia run island that has this horrible string of deaths and it's a really fascinating story and it's coming out this fall. Shameless plug. If you're enjoying Crazy and Love, leave us a review and listen to season three of our hit series, The Piked and Massacre. Episodes there every Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts, and don't forget to follow us on Instagram

at Katie Underscore Studios. Crazy in Love is produced by Stephanie Lydecker, Jeff Shane, Chris Graeves and me Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound design by Jeff Ta. Crazy in Love is a production of I Heart Radio and Katie Studios. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Stay safe, lovers,