A San Fernando Valley man charged with murdering his estranged wife’s married lover after interrupting them in a romantic rendezvous testified Tuesday that he takes “full accountability” for failing to seek help for the 20th Century Fox distribution executive after the deadly fight.
In his second day of testimony before a Los Angeles Superior Court jury, John Creech acknowledged that he did not call 911 or seek medical care for 57-year-old Gavin Smith, with whom he was involved in a fight after using a GPS cell phone app to find his wife inside Smith’s Mercedes-Benz in May 2012.
“At that point, did you think that Gavin was dead or that he needed to go to the hospital?” Deputy District Attorney Bobby Grace asked the 44-year-old defendant.
“Both things were going through my head. I wasn’t sure,” Creech responded.
He said he tried to see if Smith was breathing or had a pulse, and got “no response” when he tried to shake Smith after returning to the location.
“But you had done that before? What was the difference between the first time and the second time that caused you to believe he was dead?” the prosecutor asked.
Creech said it was the amount of time that had lapsed and that Smith was in the same position in which he had last seen him.
“How do you know that he just wasn’t unconscious, that if you got him to a hospital at that point that he might have been in a coma, that they could have revived him? Are you a doctor?” Grace asked.
“No,” the defendant responded.
“So you just took it upon yourself to pronounce him dead?” the prosecutor asked.
“At that time, Gavin was dead. If there’s any chance of him being alive, I would have taken him to the hospital,” Creech testified.
“You never called 911 to get an official determination as to whether he was dead or not, right?” Grace asked.
“I take full accountability for everything after the fact. If I could change it, I would,” Creech said.
Smith’s body was discovered about 2 1/2 years later in a shallow grave in the Angeles National Forest in the Antelope Valley.
The defendant testified that he spoke with several attorneys after Smith’s death and did not speak to police “on advice of counsel.”
“Did your attorneys tell you to bury the body in the Angeles National Forest?” the prosecutor asked.
“No, sir,” Creech responded.
In testimony Monday, the defendant said that Smith threw the first punch, choked him and tried to gouge out his eye as the two men struggled inside Smith’s Mercedes.
Creech testified that the two men fought inside the sedan and that Smith later got out of the car and came after him with a piece of metal that he referred to as a “multipurpose weapon.”
“I tripped his feet up and I went for the weapon … he was hitting me with that weapon,” the defendant told jurors.
Creech testified that he went to the scene without a weapon and never used Smith’s weapon against him.
He said that he continued punching Smith until he dropped the piece of metal and that Smith then retreated to the driver’s seat of his Mercedes while Creech walked home. He testified that he returned to the scene intending to use a spare key to retrieve the car that his estranged wife, Chandrika Cade, had left at the scene, and found Smith with “his eyes and mouth wide open” in the driver’s seat of the still-running Mercedes.
Under questioning by his own attorney, Creech said he was “extremely” panicked when he couldn’t detect a pulse from Smith, and described his own heart afterward as “racing.”
Creech — who acknowledged he had been convicted in 2010 of possession for sale of cocaine — testified that he was an ex-convict “out on bail” at the time and that the “last thing I’m going to do is call the police.”
Both sides rested their portions of the case shortly after Creech wrapped up his testimony.
The eight-woman, four-man panel is set to hear closing arguments Wednesday before being handed the case against Creech.
In his opening statement, Grace told jurors that Creech made good on a threat he had made to Smith’s two sons about 17 months earlier when they came to his house to discuss their father’s off-and-on affair with Creech’s estranged wife, from whom Creech is now divorced. The two young men testified that they pleaded for their father’s life, and that Creech told the two that they had saved their father’s life by coming to talk with him.
Creech’s attorney, Irene Nunez, has argued that her client killed Smith in self-defense and then made “errors in judgment” by trying to conceal the body of the former UCLA basketball player, who was on the 1975 NCAA-winning basketball team under Coach John Wooden and had worked for 20th Century Fox for 18 years.
Creech could face life in prison without the possibility of parole if he is convicted of first-degree murder and if jurors find true the special circumstance allegation of murder while lying in wait.
— City News Service