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    Convicted drug dealer charged with murder of movie executive

    By SHOOTUpdated:No Comments865 Views
    This file photo released by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department shows missing 20th Century Fox executive Gavin Smith who was last seen May 1, 2012. (AP Photo/Los Angeles County Sheriffís Department, File)
    LOS ANGELES (AP) --

    A convicted drug dealer was charged Thursday with the murder of a 20th Century Fox executive, who mysteriously disappeared more than two years ago and whose remains were found in a northern Los Angeles County desert area in October.

    John Lenzie Creech, 42, was charged Thursday with 57-year-old Gavin Smith's death, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney's office.

    Smith was last seen leaving a female friend's home in Ventura County's Oak Park neighborhood on May 1, 2012. Hikers discovered the remains about 70 miles away, near Palmdale in the Antelope Valley, on Oct. 26, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said.

    Smith was with Fox's movie distribution department for nearly 18 years and was a branch manager for several theaters. He was also a former UCLA basketball player and had three children.

    Authorities said earlier they had found Smith's Mercedes-Benz at a Simi Valley storage facility nine months after his disappearance. Its condition along with witness statements led them to believe Smith was killed. Investigators found Smith's blood and body tissue, including skin stuck to the car's seat.

    Creech has been a longtime person of interest in the Sheriff's Department investigation.

    The storage facility where Smith's car was found was linked to Creech, who is serving an eight-year jail sentence after pleading no contest to one count of transportation for sale of a controlled substance in September 2012.

    A law enforcement official previously told the AP that Smith was believed to have had a romantic relationship with Creech's wife, Chandrika, after meeting her in drug rehabilitation several years earlier.

    Creech is scheduled to be arraigned on the new felony charge Monday. If convicted, he faces 25 years to life in state prison.

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    Tags:20th Century FoxGavin Smith



    Amazon scraps partnership with surveillance company after Super Bowl ad backlash

    Friday, February 13, 2026
    A person pushes the doorbell on their Ring doorbell camera, July 16, 2019, in Wolcott, Conn. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill, File)

    Amazon's smart doorbell maker Ring has terminated a partnership with police surveillance tech company Flock Safety.

    The announcement follows a backlash that erupted after 30-second Ring ad that aired during the Super Bowl featuring a lost dog that is found through a network of cameras, sparking fears of a dystopian surveillance society.

    But that feature, called Search Party, was not related to Flock. And Ring's announcement doesn't cite the ad as a reason for the "joint decision" for the cancellation.

    Ring and Flock said last year they were planning on working together to give Ring camera owners the option to share their video footage in response to law enforcement requests made through a Ring feature known as Community Requests.

    "Following a comprehensive review, we determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated," Ring's statement said.

    "The integration never launched, so no Ring customer videos were ever sent to Flock Safety."

    Flock reiterated that it never received Ring customer videos — and that ending the planned integration was a mutual decision that allows both companies to "best serve their respective customers." In a statement, Flock added that it "remains dedicated to supporting law enforcement agencies with tools that are fully configurable to local laws and policies."

    Flock is one of the nation's biggest operators of automated license-plate reading systems. Its cameras are mounted in thousands of communities across the U.S., capturing and billions of photos of license plates each month. The company has faced public outcry amid the Trump administration's aggressive immigration enforcement crackdown. But Flock maintains that it does... Read More

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