LOS ANGELES _ A convicted drug dealer was sentenced Tuesday to 11 years in prison for his role in the 2012 slaying of a 20th Century Fox executive whose decomposed body was found in the desert more than two years after he disappeared.
Before handing down the sentence, L.A. County Superior Court Judge Stephen A. Marcus spoke directly to John Lenzie Creech, the defendant, saying his actions had been "egregious, heartless, callous."
"Frankly," the judge said, "you're a cold and cruel person."
A downtown Los Angeles jury rejected prosecution arguments that Creech murdered Gavin Smith after catching him in a romantic tryst with Creech's wife, but the panel in July convicted him instead of voluntary manslaughter.
After Smith disappeared on May 1, 2012, authorities searched for clues at the spots he'd last been spotted, and the Fox executive's family offered a $20,000 reward. By the next spring _ as speculation started to shape into painful reality _ sheriff's investigators confirmed that Smith had likely been murdered and named a person of interest: Creech. They'd found Smith's missing Mercedes-Benz stained with dried blood and parked inside a Simi Valley storage locker tied to Creech. But still, no body.
A few days before Halloween in 2014, a man hiking in the desert near Palmdale stumbled upon a shallow grave. The bones and skull _ still covered with a clump of hair _ belonged to Smith, the coroner confirmed.
At Creech's trial this summer, Deputy District Attorney Bobby Grace argued that the drug dealer had killed Smith after catching him in the passenger seat of his car with Creech's wife, Chandrika Cade. Smith and Cade met at a drug rehab facility in 2008, the prosecutor said, and began an on-and-off affair that year.
The night of the killing, Grace said, Creech used an iPhone app to pinpoint Cade's location in West Hills, where she'd met up with Smith at a secret spot. Creech then sneaked up on them and committed "an act of almost stunning brutality," the prosecutor told jurors. The defendant, Grace said, beat Smith to death with his bare fists. Cade _ who was granted immunity from an accessory-after-the-fact charge by prosecutors in exchange for her testimony _ fled the scene.
At trial, Deputy Public Defender Irene Nunez told jurors that although her client had a previous conviction for selling drugs, he hadn't given up his right to defend himself. Creech, she said, had acted in self-defense after Smith choked him, gouged at his eyes and threatened him with a tool resembling a hammer and an ice pick. Creech testified that Smith had punched him in the face.
"I defended myself," Creech told jurors, adding that he'd left the scene but returned soon afterward to find Smith slumped backward in the car. Creech said he frantically checked Smith's neck for a pulse and it dawned on him that he was likely dead.
"How did you know he wasn't just unconscious?" the prosecutor asked. "Are you a doctor?"
"No," Creech responded.
The prosecutor shot back: "So you just took it upon yourself to pronounce him dead?"
"If there was any chance of him being alive," Creech said, "I would've taken him to the hospital."
Creech later testified that he'd said a little prayer for Smith while burying his body in the desert.
In finding Creech guilty of voluntary manslaughter, jurors found him not guilty of first- and second-degree murder _ more serious charges that could've earned Creech a life-behind-bars sentence.
