“At that point it was just-- this isn't making any sense. This guy -- he's lost his mind,” Paul Smith told “20/20.” “We started to have suspicions. But didn't want to entertain that train of thought too much because of where it would lead to. I think it was so emotionally… hard to even think about.”
“I miss you too, but I have so much to see and do,” said an email dated Oct. 20, 2010. “No credit cards or bank accounts, bro. I'm off the grid forever.”Chris Smith is seen here in this undated family photo.But something still seemed off and Smith’s parents said they began to suspect Ed Shin, Chris’s business partner, might know something.
“I felt, based on the relationship that we developed, things I had done for him personally, I felt that there would be some measure of loyalty. That Ed might be one of the last people that would take advantage of my generosity and kindness,” Shin’s boss at LG Technologies, Joe Gray, said. “But it all boiled down to one salient point in my mind. Ed was living beyond his means.”
“He wanted to make sure that the money that belonged to him was secure,” Aldover explained. Paul Smith, who also worked for 800XChange at the time, said Chris Smith didn’t have access to the business’s accounts and was worried that Ed might steal from him as well.Chris Smith disappeared in June 2010 and his family went looking for answers.On June 4, 2010, Aldover said Shin and Chris Smith were supposed to meet to finalize the agreement.
“I went into the office when I wasn't supposed to that week. I needed to grab some stuff -- and it smelled really bad. Like, a rotten stench,” Paul Smith said. “There's fans on. It was very damp. Like, all our carpets were wet. The walls had been painted. And, I looked down and I saw a big stain outside of Chris' office on the floor.”
“I said, ‘If this is Ed Shin, if you hurt any one of my sons, I'm gonna --- you up, and this is the start of your nightmare.’ But then I got a reaction to it,” Smith remembered. “Eventually Paul calls the hotel that they're actually supposed to go to, and he learns from the hotel that there's no reservation in the name of his brother,” Murphy said. “That really was probably the nail in the coffin... the family needed to get some help.”
The Orange County Sheriff’s Department went to 800XChange's former offices, and found traces of blood.Months later, a DNA test confirmed the blood belonged to Chris Smith.
This is awful! What a pos for not telling his family where their sons body is. Too bad he didn’t get death.
This is such an awful story. The man who killed Chris is just plain evil; pretending to be Chris for a year and still sitting in prison acting like there is some cosmic plot he can’t talk about. Sick.
Dateline already did the story
This is old . Please stop with repeats acting like it is a new show.
Project veritas uncovers scheme by abcsucks to cover-up Epstein pedophilia.
That's a really weird business plan.