Fraud Week: Unraveling the Mystery of Ed Shin's True Identity, and Chris Smith's Disappearance, with Matt Murphy

Orkin
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Matt Murphy
Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show live on SiriusXM Channel 111 every weekday at.

Orkin
Noon east.

Matt Murphy
Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show and fraud week. It was the vacation of a lifetime. Chris Smith was leaving his successful yet stressful business career behind for the open sea and a chartered yacht. He emailed his family to tell them the news. He would keep them updated for a while, but then nothing.

The emails stopped the calls? No and no. Chris our guest, Matt Murphy, has an in depth knowledge of this particular case. He spent 17 years as a senior deputy district attorney in the Orange county homicide unit and successfully prosecuted dozens of cases, including this one back in 2018.

His forthcoming book is called the Book of Murder, a prosecutor's journey through love and death, and it's out in September and available for preorder right now. That's my kind of book. I'm definitely ordering and reading that. I recommend you do the same.

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Matt, welcome to the show.

Orkin
Happy to be here.

Matt Murphy
Yeah, happy to have you. And tip of the hat to you for a life spent in putting bad guys in jail. I love prosecutors. I mean, not all, not universally, but as a rule, the good ones are the best and we need them desperately. So thank you for all that you've done.

Okay, so let's go back. Where were you prosecuting attorney during the relevant time?

Orkin
So I was in Orange County, California.

And Orange county is a little bit different the way they handle their homicides than almost every other DA's office in the United States. It's called a vertical prosecution concept. And what that means is when you come into sexual assault, where I spent four years before I got to homicide, or the homicide unit or certain other specialized units, you get assigned a patch of the county. So I had Laguna Beach, Newport Beach, Coast Mesa and Irvine, and any murders that happen, you get the call in the middle of the night. You roll out your investigator. You're there at three in the morning signing warrants. So you get in at the very, very beginning, and then it's called vertical because you follow it all the way up through the system. So on certain cases, you're there as the crime lab is processing the dead body, and in others you're there like in a missing person capacity, trying to help police solve the mystery. So it's kind of a unique way of doing it. I think every Daz office in America should do it that way. You get to know the detectives, you get to know all the witnesses, you get a real feel for the case long before you ever stand up in front of a jury and try the thing. So that's where I was.

Matt Murphy
So at the time you're doing that. There's a guy named Ed Shin in the jurisdiction, and he's been leading an interesting life, a very bright guy, an only child.

But he, before he came into your life, had definitely had a couple of questionable pieces of behavior, including with respect to his own parents.

Orkin
Yeah. So Ed Shin, as you can see in the photo, he went to UC San Diego. He's a handsome guy, and on the surface he was kind of an all american dude.

He had a very beautiful wife. He had three kids at the time. He's going to Disneyland. He was engaging in weekly bible study, and he had parents who are very much devoted to him. But he, he had some sketchy stuff in his past. He got in a big bitter lawsuit. He tried to buy a magazine, like a collectibles magazine for sports memorabilia, and that went belly up and resulted in a bunch of lawsuits and accusations.

He, there was a really bizarre incident where he may have faked his own kidnapping, trying to get money out of his dad, but that didn't go anywhere criminally because it was all sort of inter family wise. But by the time he met Chris, Ed was working in what's called the advertising lead business. So those commercials that you see at like three in the morning, like consolidate your debts or new hair loss treatment or whatever it is, you know, you're old enough that you're probably not rolling home. I'm old enough. I'm older than you. But those things that when you're young, you come home from a night of partying and you turn on the tv and it's like those commercials, those are advertising leads. And the way that works is like mesothelioma or whatever, these companies will actually put those ads out. And people who call aren't calling the law firm or the hair restoration guys or the debt consolidation guys.

They're calling the advertising company, who then contracts with people that actually provide the services. And it's this really weird niche where they base it on the amount of time, how many calls or clicks they get. And it was largely unregulated by the FCC at the beginning. So it was the wild west, and it was an area where you could make a tremendous amount of money if you knew how to do it. And so Chris Smith goes, hes in this business working for a totally legitimate company, grows up in Santa Cruz, moves down to Temecula, California, and he meets Ed Shen, who works for another company. Theyre both like late twenties handsome guys. Chris is living in nice place in Temecula, but they hit it off. And there's a lot of junkets and boondoggles, and these guys go to Vegas a lot. And Chris was pretty straight.

He was more the artistic side. He would do the actual ads. Ed was all business. And with this degree from UC San Diego, he was in a fraternity again, kind of the all american kid.

They became friends and they decided that they were going to start their own business. So at like, I think they were 31 at the time. They were the same age. They started a business in Orange county called 800 Exchange, where they would set up these advertising campaigns and contract with various providers of this service. These guys made over $12 million in their first year with almost zero overhead. Right.

It was an insane amount of money, and they knew how to do it. They're good at it, and they have this very successful business. So Chris moves to Laguna beach, and when I went to law school in San Diego, I lived in Laguna for my first four years as a DA. So you got a picture of one of the most beautiful places. I don't know if you've ever been there or not, but it's got these little mountains that overlook the ocean. You know, it's where Timothy Leary went to. Yeah, it's gorgeous, right? So it's a bunch of artists there. And anyway, he moves. There he is. He's a fanatical surfer, um, like I've been for most of my life. And he actually lived not far away from where my apartment was. And he's got a, um, he's living the dream, really. He's got this, uh, this ridiculously successful business. He moves his brother down, who he loved, to death. He's very close to his family, moves his brother and his bride and, and their, their two kids down from Santa Cruz. And, um, life was going great, um, until it wasn't.

Matt Murphy
So 12 million in the first year on this business that Chris dreamed up. And then Ed and he formed this partnership, and it seems like a partnership made in heaven because Ed's more straight laced and can handle the business aspects, and Chris is the dreamer, excuse me, who can handle the creative aspects. And they're each kind of doing what they want. Though it must be said, chris always had 1ft in the ocean. I mean, he, he was succeeding at business, but I think it's fair to say his communications with his family made pretty clear. He was always dreaming of doing something else, maybe bartending on a beach someplace.

Orkin
Right? So pretty much any hardcore surfer that you meet has that dream of, you know, sailing off into the sunset, right? I mean, you've, I'm sure you've known surfers.

I don't know where you're from originally, but.

Matt Murphy
Well, I'm from upstate New York, but I have a brother in law in California, so I do. I do know some.

Orkin
Yeah. So it's like they all have that.

Everybody has that dream of, you know, literally sailing off into the sunset with a surfboard under one arm with a beautiful woman, and finding a beach someplace where you can sort of unplug and go surfing. And Chris would go to Indonesia every year and do these boat charters, which is something that I've done for the last probably 25 years. I got a group of buddies, and you take these trips to Indonesia, and every one of them, you want to stay a little bit longer because it's living in the ocean, eating great food, surfing all day, every day. It really is the dream of every surfer. And he talked openly about this to friends and family.

He was going to be a professional wakeboarder.

He was always water oriented. Grew up surfing Santa Cruz area.

And so now he's living in Laguna. Living. He's driving a Range Rover that's paid for by the company. He was about to propose to his fiance, who was, you know, this kid. A lot of people think of California, you know, the dream of California.

Most of California is farmlands and mountains, but for that tiny little sliver of coastline, pretty much from Santa Cruz down to the mexican border, there are people that really have this idyllic lifestyle. And that was Chris. And he would talk openly about, I can't wait to leave the rat race and sail off into the sunset. And he told a lot of people about his dream of doing that.

Matt Murphy
Another thing the two guys had in common, as I understand it, was faith. They were both men of faith.

Orkin
Well, Ed was very. Ed Shin was very into church, like I said, bible study. And he presented, he's got this beautiful young wife, he's got these kids. He's going to Disneyland a lot, social media wise. He's posting a bunch of photos about how devoted he was. And in fact, the job that he got in Temecula, the company was called Leadpoint. He met the owner of that company in a Bible study. So this guy meets Ed Shin and was so impressed with him and his devotion to religion, Christianity, he decided to give him this very almost outsized responsibility in his company. And Ed was doing very well there. And that's really where he learned the lead business and where he met Chris. So Chris also had some religious leanings, although I don't think he was as devout as Ed was.

But Chris was just. Chris was. He's just this really good.

He's a good guy. You know, he loved his family. His parents are still together, um, devoted to his brother. Um, just very, uh, loved his girlfriend.

Matt Murphy
I'm sorry, I think the brother's Paul. Is that Paul?

Orkin
Yeah. Yeah. Who's also just a great guy. So you. This kind of, like, quintessential California kid was Chris Smith.

Matt Murphy
So what happened before Ed Shin formed the partnership, because, as I understand it, he came to the partnership in debt. He owed some money.

Orkin
Well, so, great question. So nothing, actually, or at least they didn't know any, anything had happened before they formed a partnership. But almost right after the ink is dry and they. And they both leave their companies, there was what appeared originally to be an accounting irregularity, which I think is how it's first put an accounting irregularity with Leadpoint. And what that turned into is the owner got into the books and realized that there was not only a whole bunch of clients that went with Ed, and that's a common thing, and that sparks more than one dispute out there. But there was also a bunch of missing money. And, in fact, the money, the closer they looked, the more money they found was missing, and it wound up totaling about $700,000. So right after Chris essentially attaches himself to Ed, there are these financial problems that started arising in Riverside county. So they get in there, and 100,000 turned into 200,000 turned into three. Pretty soon, this is a substantial amount of money, enough that it attracted the attention of the district attorney's office in Riverside county. There's a criminal investigation, and, as you can imagine, a whole slew of lawsuits over this missing money. Meanwhile, Chris is almost learning about this in real time, because he worked for a different company when he met Ed, and he signed on for this, hes totally unaware of it. Now, all of a sudden, theres lawsuits where, as partner, hes being named as a co defendant. And this idyllic, kind of awesome surfer lifestyle suddenly has this huge injection of stress, and hes not sure how much of this is going to drag him down, how much his company is liable for it now.

And remember, all this money, and his brother has moved down. He's invested in the future, bringing his family down. So Chris decides he wants to protect his interests. And essentially what that arrangement was. Chris was the creative guy. So he would work. He'd surf in the mornings, and then he'd work late into the night doing the creative end of these advertising campaigns. Ed was the business guy. So Ed actually owned 55% of business, and Chris trusted him. So it was like, hey, you handle the books, you handle the business side. Ill do all the campaigns together. Well combine our talents well make money for ourselves and study these other companies. That was the idea. So now Chris has no access to the books, and hes concerned that this is going to drag him down.

Hes worried about his reputation. Hes worried about all kinds of the professional implications of this. But then the criminal case progresses to a point that Ed Shin actually pleads guilty to embezzlement. And he's ordered by a superior court judge in Riverside county to pay back $700,000. And he's given five months to do it, okay. Which is unusual. And he's allowed to do some custody time on weekends, but he's essentially allowed to remain free so that he can operate his business.

But there is.

There's a sentence hanging over his head of 16 months in state prison. So he's going to do what that means in California, depending on our crazy legislature, you're going to do at least 50% of that time. And depending on the way it's charged, up to 80%. So he's looking at at least eight months actual prison time if he does not make good on this restitution order. So there's this big, gigantic axe hanging over Ed's head. And Chris knows about this, and he's, you know, the nightmares are.

All. The lawsuits are a nightmare for him. And then he's worried that to come up with this money, and Ed should have plenty of money, because Ed is also controlling the accounts.

But Chris starts to worry that maybe he's going to, you know, he doesn't want to. He doesn't want any of his money to go to pay Ed's debt, right? So he hires a lawyer named Ernesto Aldobar, really, really good guy who specializes in business disputes, and they start negotiating his ability to look at the books and to have more control over the money. And he wants to co sign checks and things like that. And so this goes on and on for a few months as they're negotiating this, and all of a sudden, Ernesto gets an email from Chris saying.

Matt Murphy
Friday, June 4.

Orkin
That's right, 2010, right at. I think it's 610 in the evening. Um, he gets this, this email saying, I've decided to let Ed buy me out of the company, and essentially begins this, uh, you know, telling friends and family, everybody starts getting these emails saying, hey, I've decided that I'm going to. I'm going to live my dream. Been talking about it for years. I'm sailing off into this sunset. I met a woman in Las Vegas named Tiffany Taylor, and I've decided to sail to the Galapagos Islands with Tiffany Taylor. And, yeah, that's when I became involved, pretty soon after that, which is also.

Matt Murphy
Kind of interesting, which is a total head snap moment, because everyone thought he was in love and even engaged or close to engaged to another woman. He wasn't. From what his parents said, the kind of guy who was like, yeah, hot playboy babe. He wasn't that kind of guy.

Orkin
Right, right. So Ed was really. Ed loved Las Vegas. They would do a lot of business junkets for their company out there.

Chris was not into the flash. And we actually had a woman that worked for the company named Jennifer Matthews, who, when she testified about Chris, and she just described Chris, she said that he was. When they do these business junkets in Vegas, Chris would go back to his room and go to sleep, and Ed would be up until two and three in the morning doing the Vegas thing, which I'll get into in a bit, I guess. But, yeah, this was a head snap moment because he loved his. He loved his soon to be fiance. They'd been dating for a while, and, you know, he flew his brother down. He's supposed to pick up his brother at the airport. His brother's flying back into town, and Chris didn't show up. And all of a sudden, he gets this email that, hey, man, I've sailed off into the sunset with this beautiful playboy centerfold, and I'll catch you on the flip side, basically.

Matt Murphy
Wow. And the fiance, too, or about to be fiance, got dumped via email.

Orkin
Right?

Right. And dumped in the most brutal, harsh way. It was. It was. It was done via email, and it was from an email that was apparently associated with Chris. And it was basically, I don't love you anymore. I've met somebody else, and I'm, you know, we're done. And. Which was, at the end, looking back, it was diabolically clever to do that, because now she was.

First she was devastated, and then she was very angry, as you can sort of imagine. So, plus, she. She had a million conversations with him about his dream of sailing off into the sunset. She just always figured it would be with her.

Matt Murphy
Right.

Was it? At this point, I would think, like, in my own life, I would think at this point, if somebody near and dear to me sent these emails, even knowing that he had a penchant to wander and, you know, he just had wanderlust, I think. I'd say.

I don't know. I'm not sure.

Hindsight's 2020, but did anybody in the family right away say, something's off?

Orkin
So I think right away, everybody was shocked.

They were shocked that he would do this. But then when it settled in, they all knew about him. They knew about his dream of surfing the world, and they knew about his trips to Indonesia. And at first, everybody was shocked and disappointed that he would do that. But the first couple of weeks, it was consistent in a way, not him leaving everybody in the lurch. They were completely flabbergasted at the way he broke up with Erica, his girlfriend. But it kind of made sense. Now, what happened was Paul said, hey, after a couple of. And these emails, they're voluminous. They went back and forth. There were emails to his brother, there were emails to his mother, emails to his father separately.

So these things, they were ongoing. And the I'm sailing off into the sunset thing turned into, hey, galapagos were awesome. Now I'm heading down to Tierra del Fuego, and I'm going to check out these islands off Argentina. And this was an ongoing narrative. And Paul, at one point, literally, I think it was, I think it was. I think he started with dude. Like, dude, at least show me a photo of you and this new woman, Tiffany Taylor. So he gets a picture of Tiffany Taylor getting out of a swimming pool and Tiffany Taylor, it is a, you know, what Paul is looking for is Paul is looking for a photo of the two of them together, like on the boat or, you know, and what he gets is he gets what looks like a modeling photo of Tiffany Taylor, who's gorgeous, getting out of a swimming pool in a bikini. So that, you know, he asked for a photo and he got a photo, but it wasn't really what he was looking for. And so one month turns into two, turns into three. Now his mother is starting to worry, and the emails are getting darker and darker. So it starts out with, hey, I'm sailing off in the sunset with a super hot chick. And that turns into, I've been having a lot of thoughts about my childhood.

I've got a lot to work through.

And then the description turns into, as the trip continues, it turns into, hey, I'm going to Africa. And I met a guy here in Bombay that he's got a sailboat, just met him, but I'm going to get on a sailboat and go up to Algeria. And then he starts talking about going into the Congo to buy a conflict diamond for his brother, which is like, it starts out the most awesome trip ever. I'm sailing off to go pursue my dream of surfing.

And that turns into, I'm having a lot of feelings about my childhood. And I've had really dark thoughts. I've thought about the worst thing, and there's these suggestions of suicide. And then it turns into the trip from hell, where he's like a mother's worst nightmare, where the mother is receiving text messages about getting on a boat with a random dude in Bombay or Mumbai and heading to North Africa on his way to the Congo because he's heard of a place where you can sell gold coins because he had, he had collected krugerrands, which is an international gold coin that you can sell.

And hes talking about he had those. The family knew about that. And hes talking about going to the Congo by himself with a pocket full of gold coins looking about a conflict time and what could possibly go wrong?

What could possibly go wrong? So his mother reached a point where shes so distraught. And this is a really nice family, you know, it's a really nice family. So this is your all american mom who loves her son to death, who's getting emails like that, and she's literally on Google earth, like, zooming in on the satellite photos in random villages in the Congo, trying to find a glimpse of her son.

And so the dad starts, then the.

Matt Murphy
Dad, then the dad sends an email trying to check, you know, think about it. If you wanted to make sure this person was really your family member, there are definitely questions we could all think of that only that family member would know, you know, something from deep in the childhood, something specific.

And so the dad, the dad, did he have a background in law enforcement? Cause he, I guess he thought up this idea.

Orkin
He did. So I don't know if you're aware of the rivalry between firemen and police officers. I don't know if you're aware of that. They're always making jokes about each other. Anyway, he started as a police officer and then he decided he wanted to be a firemen, which is a betrayal to all police officers.

But he did. He had a background in law enforcement and he essentially, he started getting more and more suspicious. And there's a couple of things going on here. I think that this went on for almost a year where these emails are coming into the family and a lot of people think, how could somebody believe that?

But when you have somebody that you love dearly and you're getting these emails that at least demonstrates that they're still alive, the alternative is almost too brutal to think about. So a mother's wish for her son to still be alive, it's going to get her past a lot of red flags, I think, if that makes sense.

The dad, however, he starts asking questions and they're almost quizzes. And it was what lake did you grow up water skiing on? Was one of the questions. And what was the name of our boat? And the response was, dad, it was Kelly Lake.

Chill out. I'm fine. That was essentially the response, but he doesn't answer what kind of boat it was, which was actually wound up being very significant. So the dad decides he's going to come down to Orange county, and he comes down, and he meets with Ed Shin. And Ed was one of the last people to see him, to see Chris. So he.

You know, Ed sits down with the dad, and Ed is. He's calm and he's smooth, and he explains, look, we had this ongoing business dispute.

It's not a problem.

He decided that he wanted to take this trip around the world that everybody in Chris's life had heard about. And he's like, so I decided to buy him out. He insisted that he wanted the money wired to the Caymans. I can get you all the banking information. That's not a problem.

And then he says, but essentially, you should be aware that I was also with him when he got a fake passport, because he wanted to go off the grid. Okay. So he provides all this information to Steve Smith. He's completely hanged up. It doesn't make sense. But then it's almost reassuring to talk to Ed, because he's so convincing, and he's so smooth, and he's so nonplussed by the whole thing. And so.

Yeah, so he.

Matt Murphy
But that's the question, right? Like, why would he need a fake passport? He's not under criminal indictment. He's not being investigated. Why wouldn't he just be traveling under his own real passport?

Orkin
Right? So then we. And the answer to that really, is, of course you're right. But Russ was one of those guys. That part of his dream was like, I want to unplug from the rat race. I want to completely distance myself from society. I want to go someplace and just completely check out for a while.

So, yes, you're right. If you were, I take a trip like this. I mean, I go to Indonesia every year. I use my own passport.

But for him, it almost made sense.

It was, you know, he had talked about, you know, Chris talked about his concern about, you know, hey, what if the monetary system collapses? That was one of the things that he'd kind of talked about. He was a rational guy, but he, you know, this is part of his, you know, his sort of fantasy of leaving. And so when he heard fake passport, it struck him as being very odd, but it wasn't 100% unbelievable, if that makes sense.

Matt Murphy
Eventually, the landlord, right, of the facility in which Chris and Ed Shin ran their business gets involved because they're overdue on rent. They've moved out. Like, Ed Shin pulled the business and relocated it. But he's in arrears on his old rent, which is irritating to that landlord, which is also another pivotal moment here.

Orkin
Right? So he. They basically skipped out. So they. They, um.

They've got a year lease. And he, you know, nine months later, soon after Chris left for this trip, supposedly he had packed up the business and moved to a different location and stiffed the landlord for many months rent. So the landlord, actually, one of the other tenants is a private investigator named Joe Delew, who's a former officer at Laguna beach police. And he makes his living as a PI. So the landlord is essentially complaining to him one day about this tenant, and he's got this big empty office space and doesn't know where the guy is. And would Joe be willing to help track him down? And Joe, of course, was happy to do it. And he starts poking around, and he went. And one of the first things he did is he went and he talked to the dad, and he got these emails between him and Chris, and he looked at the question about the boat and the lake, and he saw the answer that he just answered with the lake. And that struck him as being very odd. So he decided to actually go in and ask for permission to enter the business. And it's been abandoned. Okay. So there's no reasonable expectation of privacy.

If you rent a business from somebody or you rent a home and you abandon it, the landlord has a right to go back inside. So Joe Delew walks in, and very soon after making entry, he sees what appears to be blood on a light switch. And he realizes that that's something that he doesn't want to mess around. So he backs out and calls the sheriff's department. Now, meanwhile, what has happened is I've got my jurisdiction covered. Laguna beach. The family had filed a missing persons report with Laguna, and they brought Ed in. And this thing is on video, Megan. And I'm telling you, I was a DA for 26 years. You see this interview.

It is fascinating because Ed Shen is so convincing. And these two detectives sit down, and they're like, hey, family is trying to find their son. What's the deal? And he is almost perfect. He is calm.

He doesn't break a sweat. He describes how Chris was always talking about this around the world trip, and he's sitting on a beach someplace. And about halfway through the interview, I'll leave the names of the detectives out.

You can just see they relax and they buy it. They believe him. And it becomes sort of a. That was kind of the end, right? I taught a class at the sheriff's academy for young detectives. And right about the same time I finished a class, I'm walking out to the parking lot, and I almost get tackled by this very young detective from Laguna beach named Julia Bowman, who says, you know, I really want to talk to you about this. Um, I'm going to get in trouble if my. My boss finds out that I've cornered you. But there's. There's something that's all wrong here, and this makes no sense. And I've looked into it, and they believe them, and I don't. And I wound up. I actually got sunburned. And like you, I'm. I'm irish, right? I think irish background for you. So you know what that means.

Matt Murphy
You can't be outside unprotected.

Orkin
Oh, my God. So she corners me next to my car, and I went up talking to her for about 45 minutes, and I got the worst sunburn because it was so compelling.

And this is my patch, this is my jurisdiction. And that was my job, to try to help police figure this out. But Laguna officially hadn't come to me with an issue. So I've got this junior detective putting this on my radar, and I started looking into it, and I find out right about the same time, San Juan Capistrano is where the business was. So Joe Delou has just gone in. That was my colleague had that section. So I sit down with him, and we have a meeting with Laguna. And the sheriff's department. Goona has almost no murders, but the sheriffs are one of the most. Orange county sheriffs are one of the most professional homicide investigative groups in the country. They deal with enough of them. They're real pros. So we all sit down and we decide, I'm going to prosecute or I'm going to help in the investigation. If there's anything ever filed, they are going to handle the investigative part. And we start putting the pieces together. And one of the first things we learn is there was another junket out to Vegas. And Paul, who is now really worried about his brother, he's still working for the company. And they go out, and they are in this casino they were staying at. Almost everything was at the Wynn or the encore. So two of the nicest hotels in Las Vegas, and that's where they would do these business junkets. And there's a world known as atmosphere modeling, and I'm not sure if you're familiar with that.

There's a great episode in the show Silicon Valley I think it's either the first or the second episode where they encounter, they go to a toga party that's thrown by this billionaire, this, like, tech billionaire, and they encounter atmosphere models. And basically what it is is it is you can hire beautiful women to come to your party and talk to all the guys that are socially awkward, that you want to have invest or whatever, and they can make your company look super vision and awesome and all that.

And Paul looks over and they've got atmosphere models, and they're across the room. At the business junket for 1800 exchange is Tiffany Taylor. And he makes a beeline for her. And he's like, hey, aren't you supposed to be traveling the world with my brother? And she looks at him and says, I'm really sorry, but I have no idea what you're talking about. And that's when the bottom fell out for Paul Smith and also for the family, because he knows at that point, meanwhile, Ed is going, no, no, no, dude. It's a different Tiffany Taylor. And he's going, this is the woman in the photo that I got from my brother. And she is, you know, her real name is not Tiffany Taylor. Her real name is Summer Hansen. She was at Playboy Centerfold, and she wound up being kind of a hero in this case in a lot of ways. And she is. She's stunning.

And Paul is in this casino. His brother's gone. And at that moment, he knew that something horrible had happened. So let me just jump back.

Matt Murphy
So we pulled some sound bites from some of the, I've listened to the 2020 and the Dateline. A bunch of stories on this, too, just over the years, but this is a piece from NBC Dateline for the moment that the cops went over to that old office.

And at the same time, just about that, Paul was finding out there's no Tiffany Taylor. They were finding disturbing things inside the office along the lines of what you described. Here it is in Satu, sergeants don't.

Orkin
Vote and Ray Wert, Orange County Sheriff's Department.

First thing to do, send some texts over to take a good close look around the old 800 exchange office.

That's when they started finding more suspicious spots on some ceiling tiles behind some molding.

They pulled up carpet and found dark colored stains on the concrete underneath.

The spots tested positive for human blood.

We confirmed that all the blood in the crime scene was, in fact, Chris Smith. All of it? All of it. Nobody else was bleeding in there at all. In the end, it was all from one person, and it was one person's DNA.

Matt Murphy
And my understanding is they used luminol on the carpet, and it lit up like a Christmas tree, which detects the presence of blood.

Orkin
Right. So now, all of a sudden, we've gone from a missing person and kind of a mystery to we've clearly got evidence of a homicide. And that little clip that you just showed, that tiny little droplet on the strip, that's called cast off. So, in the world of forensic science, when you have blood drops on a ceiling, it means that somebody has either been stabbed multiple times or beaten with a blunt object. And when they fling it back, whether it's a knife or a bat, it tends to fling viscous blood. And there was blood on the. On the strips, on the ceiling. So this was.

This was helter skelter. And at that point, we knew. And right about the same time, we're also learning that Ed's, you know, mister Bible study guy, he was spending hours at the tables in. In Vegas. And we start interviewing employees that are telling us that Ed would gamble all night long with purple chips, which are $500 chips.

And then we find out that he's spending so much money that he's getting comped. The presidential suite at the Encore hotel, which is a. Just to give you an idea, is a two story hotel suite with an elevator on the inside and 24 hours butler service. It's maybe one of the nicest physical spaces in the entire world. And they're flying him out from Orange county on the encore jet to go to Vegas.

Matt Murphy
Oh, this is not a good sign.

Orkin
No.

So, when we get back with Ernesto Aldovar, the attorney, it became pretty clear that the pressure that Chris was putting on Ed created a huge financial motive here, because they're not. They have Ed's married Chris about to get engaged. They're not dating each other's girlfriends or wives.

They're not neighbors with a dispute over offense. They have literally no beef with each other other than money. And if Ed does not come up with $700,000 within five months, he literally goes to state prison, and he doesn't get a huge.

Matt Murphy
How can he do that if they've made $12 million in their first year and Ed owns it, 55% his Viva Las Vegas.

Orkin
Because when you are a degenerate gambler, he literally blew probably $10 million on the tables of the encore and Wynn hotels in Las Vegas. That's how you get a presidential suite comp to you. That's how you get the casino jet, because you are a high roller. I'm sure you've seen casino. It's one of my favorite movies. You know, they talk about a whale, and they have that scene where they want to get him back into the casino to go lose his money at the tables. That basically was Ed Shen, and he was gambling Chris's money. And as soon as he opens up the books, he knows that Chris is going to bring some sort of court order so that Ed. His accounts are frozen, and he's going to go to state prison.

Matt Murphy
That makes sense. Honestly, there was a. I don't do a lot of gambling, but I know some people who do. And one of them was telling me, you know what they call people with a gambling problem? Losers.

The ones who go out there and just win because they go out there so infrequently, they don't have a problem. It's the people who go there all the time, and they lose invariably because that odds are against them. Those are the people who have a gambling problem.

Orkin
Right. Yeah. Vegas and all the glitz. I mean, every. I'm sure most of you viewers have been there. I mean, that was not built on winning nights by amateur gamblers. So that's from people losing money. And I can't imagine that.

Matt Murphy
Matt, if my husband ever said to me, the encore hotel is going to fly us out there on their private jet, and we're staying in the presidential suite because of what happened the last time I was there. I demand a forensic accounting of every account we have.

It would be horrifying.

Orkin
Oh, well, and it gets worse than that, too, because then we get into. We interview.

Ed basically hired a gopher, like, a personal assistant who. He moved into Chris's apartment that was being paid for by the company. And they. Don and I mean, watching that clip, I got to tell you, I left the office five years ago. I love those guys. Don and Ray.

I miss them almost every day. You know, they're such good. Such good detectives. You just see that steely eyed. You know, with all the crap that the police get today, the vast majority of police officers, in my experience, are really hardworking, honest guys. And Ray and Don, putting this together with them, it's like.

It was amazing watching those guys work. They go to Chris's apartment, and they find this dude, Kenny Kraft, living there, who is Ed's personal assistant. And they get.

He's driving around in Chris's Range Rover, and they. And for me, the moment as this is all coming together, I think this was even before we got the blood. I can't remember the exact sequence, but for me, the absolute alarm bell went off when they got into Chris's apartment. And he's. He had two surfboards that were there, two custom made surfboards. And any surfer knows that if you're taking a surf trip anywhere, you're not leaving your boards behind. So then they did a forensic workup of the Range Rover, and they found blood in the back of the Range Rover, so that was clearly used to transport. So we then get into.

We get into Ed's phones, and we find out that a couple of nights after Chris went missing, Ed's phone is pinging at this place called Desert Hot Springs, which is a tiny little dot on a map just north of the mexican border on the way to Calexico and Mexicali. This is like east County San Diego, middle of nowhere, right? And as a general rule, when you work homicides in southern California, if you get a human body out into the Pacific Ocean or you get a human body out into the desert, that body will not be found. If you throw a body in a lake, it's popping up. But if you throw a body in the ocean or you get somebody out into the desert, it's gone. And so we have one cell phone tower, and it's got, like, I think it's 120 miles radius of desert land. And Ed pinged off that at three in the morning after renting a truck at, like, U Haul or something. And he drives off into the desert in the middle of the night in a pickup truck. And so we know where Chris's body.

Matt Murphy
Is, but at this point, you decide, let's arrest him. But he wasn't going to make it that easy.

It was a bit of a challenge.

Orkin
Well, right. So what happens is, I don't know if you used to watch get smart, the old show get smart, there's a gag that he'd do over and over again, right when he gets caught, Maxwell smart say, would you believe, like, okay, I know I said this, but would you believe?

And that's what Ed does. Ed was getting on a plane to go to Canada, which was a violation of his probation in Riverside. And also, we're getting pretty close here. And so I made the decision that we needed to step up the investigation and basically take him off the plane before he flew out of the country. So we communicated with this probation officer to determine whether or not he had a probation hold or whether he could leave the country without permission, and he could not. So Ray and Don arrested him at LAx, and they drive him down, and they have an interview with Ed, and they kind of let him talk for a while, and he tells the same story that he told the detectives at Laguna beach, and then he told Steve Smith, the dad, and he basically tells the same tale. And then they confront him with all the information they have. They confront him with the forensics and everything else that had just been put together, and he essentially changes the story to, okay, okay, here's what really happened. Would you believe we got in a big argument over money, and he attacked me, and we got in this fight, and I pushed him down, and he hit his head on the corner of the desk, and I didn't know what to do, and I panicked. So I got this guy who's a fixer for me in Vegas, who's, like a Vegas host that I use, and he hooked me up with this russian guy who came and took the body. I have no idea where the body is. So that became his new story. And what's interesting is that in addition to Ed gambling, all that money, when we interviewed Kenny Kraft, Ed was also.

We had information that he was sleeping with hookers two at a time in Vegas and really high dollar sex workers to the tune of about $5,000 a pop. So he's having sex, spending $10,000 with two of these sex workers at a time, which kind of gives you an idea in the presidential suite, like, the lifestyle that'll do it. Living, that'll do it. Right. You can go through that.

Matt Murphy
But this is why. This is why we have an advertiser. Cozy Earth. And their latest pitch has been, take our sheets with you when you travel. Don't like, yes, yes.

That's.

Take them.

Orkin
Ed Shin is a freaking walking commercial for that. I mean, like, yeah, two at a time in Vegas and the nicest suite probably in Vegas. And, yeah, there's probably some guy like Ed in there with two prostitutes.

Matt Murphy
Let me show you. So he does eventually. And I want to go back to where you are in the story, but just to show the audience, eventually, you prosecuted Ed. Shiny, and you got him on the stand, and it was on Cam, which is great. And there's a little bit about with of him. This is from 2020, trying to tell this nonsense story. Here it is.

Orkin
Sot three lunged at me again.

And I think at that point, I felt I had to fight back.

I don't know if I threw him or if I shoved him, but somehow I pushed him into this area, and that's when he fell, and he hit the desk really hard.

Matt Murphy
Okay. And just because the audience is gonna enjoy this, here's a little bit of our guest, Matt Murphy, the prosecutor in the case, grilling Ed Shin on this story and some inconsistencies in it. Watch. Top four.

Orkin
So how is it, mister Shin? You didn't have a bruise or you didn't bleed somewhere? Can you explain that for us?

I cannot.

Okay, there you are. He's on the floor of the office. He's just sustained a significant physical injury, and you can dial 911 and they can come save him. So if you didn't want him to die, why didn't you dial 911, Mister Shin? Cause I was in shock. You didn't dial 911 because you knew that if he died, you got his money. Isn't that true? No.

Matt Murphy
Wow. Okay, so keep going.

Orkin
Okay, so first of all, that suit that he's wearing is like Giorgio Armani. It's worth more than my entire closet put together here and in my place in New York. So his luggage that he had off the plane was like.

It was, I think it was Louis Vuitton. Louis Vuitton luggage. And I remember they were, they were trying to get it out. I mean, everything, his. His watches, his jewelry, it just. The guy oozed money. So that I look at that, I'm licking at his suit as I'm watching that clip. But so we.

Yeah, we.

No body cases are really interesting. Okay. So we never recovered Chris's romance, which is brutal for the family. But there's two ways you can do a murder case where you have a missing body. One, since I've got Ed describing how he fell down and hit his head, I can prove that Chris Smith is dead if I play Ed's ridiculous B's.

Can I swear on this? No.

Matt Murphy
Yeah, you can. Go for it.

Orkin
Okay. All right, so I can say this is the first time publicly I've been able to say this, but it's just, it's such bullshit. He describes this scene where this guy falls down and hits his head, right?

And then he lets him die. And this is the same night, according to him, that we've got this. We've got an attorney saying that everything was coming to a head. And if he can pay the money, he stays out of prison and gets to keep going to Vegas. But if he can't, he's going to. He's going to frickin prison. And like, the most fortunate, you know, accidental head wound in history, and he's not calling the police because he's in shock. And then he actually says he drove him around for a while. And then, Megan, what he does is he describes. We get into it. Like, who was the guy that, that came and got the body? And he's like, well, he's a russian guy and he had a flat top and he had blonde hair and he's wearing a leather jacket. And he describes Dolph Lundgren from Rocky three.

Matt Murphy
Oh, wow.

Orkin
It's like, he describes Draco. It is like, literally, I'm sitting there listening to it going, I know this guy. This is freaking, this is a villain in a rocky movie. Literally down to the detail. He's channeling that in his head as he's testifying. And I'm taking notes of this. I'm going, this is, this is insane.

Matt Murphy
I'm Megyn Kelly, host of the Megyn Kelly show on Sirius XM. It's your home for open, honest and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal and cultural figures. Today you can catch the Megyn Kelly show on Triumph, a SiriusXM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love great people like Doctor Laura, Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey and yours truly, Megyn Kelly. You can stream the Megyn Kelly show on SiriusXM at home or anywhere you are. No car required. I do it all the time. I love the SiriusXM app. It has ad free music coverage of every major sport, comedy, talk, podcast and more. Subscribe now, get your first three months for free.

Orkin
Go to siriusxm.com mkshow to subscribe and get three months free. That's siriusxm.com mkshow and get three months free offer details apply.

So I've done five no body murders. Okay? I did the Hawks case out of Newport. The couple that got tied to the anchor and thrown overboard did a case called Judy Barat that nobody's ever heard of.

And, you know, when you first start out as a prosecutor, do you think that you don't know how jury's going to react to that?

And when you do a few of them, you realize that there can be certain advantages if you don't find the body. And one of them is if you have to prove the death. Normally, you just have the death of a human being is the element. So if you have a dead body, that element is satisfied. But if you have the ethical and burden of proof, obligation to prove that somebody is dead, the way you do that is you put their mom on the stand or their best friend or somebody that tells you how much they love their dog or the grandma who said he'd never miss Christmas. And what you're able to do as a prosecutor is the jury will be able to get a sense of who the person was as a human being. And I had a mentor in homicide. His name is Lou Rosenbalum. He basically brought me into the unit. And he's one of the. I know you've had mentors over the course of your career. I love this man. And he took me under his wing and taught me how to do murders. And he had a quote, I will never forget about nobodies. He said, the jury can always see the soul of your victim reflected in the eyes of those who love them so. And that's one that always stuck with me. So I don't want to put Ed's B's self serving story on to prove that Chris Smith is dead. I want to be able to prove it other ways. And with all of the emails with the Galapagos, the easiest way for me to do that would be to call Tiffany Taylor, right, and just have her come in with her passport and say, I've never been to the Galapagos Islands.

But we couldn't find her. And we had Vegas Metro going out there. We could not track her down. And I don't know if that's because if she's moved and she's. She's an atmosphere model, which is weird by itself, right, but it's a legitimate business. It's basically your live model. And I don't know if she's. I don't know what her involvement is in Vegas. I don't know any of this stuff. Like, all I know is I need her in order to do the no body prosecution. And I'd given up. And the case was actually going to be pretty difficult the way we had it. And especially given that he told all his friends and family about this round the world trip. And.

And I get a phone call in my office, and it was summer Hansen crying, saying, I just found out you guys have been looking for me. I've been in Virginia with my parents. I am so sorry. What can I do to help? And she flew in, and I was able to put her on the stand with her passport. So that's what forced Ed to testify. If I hadn't been able to do that, Ed Shen could have relied on his bullshit self serving interview with, uh, with Don and Ray, where he came up this cockamamie, absurd story. Um, and why?

Matt Murphy
Why? How did she disprove the cockamamie story? Just that it showed you, you could establish that Ed Shin was the one sending those emails. And why would he tell such a lie? Like, how. How did how was she the clincher?

Orkin
She was the clincher because I could prove that Chris Smith never left the United States because she supposedly went to the galapagos islands, which means she would have had an entry in her passport because there was all the stuff, activity. Taylor, that was stop one photo of her was that. Yeah, stop one.

Matt Murphy
That was stop one. Okay. Yeah, I see it.

Orkin
Right. So by her saying I never went, it means Chris never went, which means the emails were all fake and we were able to. The IP address, my expert on that wasn't my favorite. I'll leave his name out of it. But he basically said that the text messages came, that the IP address was from North America. So that still leaves a lot of wiggle room for defense. So basically, I wanted to do this as a no body and I needed her to do it. And she stepped up. And I've actually kept in touch with her over the years. I was so grateful for the way she handled that because she wasn't under subpoena. She came in voluntarily because we couldn't.

Matt Murphy
Play boy mom with a heart of gold. I like that. I like that story.

Orkin
And I'm telling you, I've never asked her, you know, how much the seedy Vegas underbelly she saw. But yeah, she stepped in a huge way. That's what forced Ed to testify. And there was a point in there where he starts talking about the emails that he sent, and on direct examination, he starts tearing up and so he actually starts shedding some.

Matt Murphy
Okay, I had to tear it up. He teared up and you were not having it. Here's a bit of Matt Murphy's cross examination on that five.

Orkin
Teared up a little bit right now. I'm okay. Sir, were you tearing up when you wrote that email to Debbie Smith saying their son was committing suicide or suggesting that he was going to do that? Were you tearing up when you did that? Yes. Okay. You were actually at the computer tearing up as you were going to break a mother's heart by essentially blaming her for the death of her son.

That was making you feel sad.

It was one of the many emotions I felt, yes.

Matt Murphy
Oh, my gosh. So well done, Matt.

Orkin
No, thank you. As a prosecutor, that's what you want. You want the bad guy on the stand. And if every trial kind of has a moment where you can point to it, and it's like a turning point, that was the turning point of that trial and his direct, by the way. I mean, this is the thing about the fraudsters, Megan, and I know you've probably encountered this before, when you got a guy who makes his living by fooling people, right?

They tend to be really good at that. And all you need is one juror.

And his mom.

His mom was sitting right behind me in the front row in the gallery. And the jury, we had to have her testify because we got to do it as a no body because of summer Hanson. And so there, you know, he's on the stand, and he gave me that gem. And you almost never know exactly what's going to happen when they hit the stand, but that was. That was when it's like, wait a minute, dude, you're. You're crying. You're trying to show emotion, and you sent a year's worth of emails. You broke up with his soon to be fiance by saying, I don't love you anymore. Like, one of the most ruthless, heartless, freaking psycho things I saw in 26 years. And there. There he was on the standard in an armani scene.

Matt Murphy
I mean, there are a lot of prosecutors who have a script for their cross, and that's the script that's going to be delivered, and they're not going to deviate. But to your credit, you were nimble. You saw him try to engender sympathy for him.

It was so hard for me, and you stuffed it down his craw. It's like you were leading this poor mom to believe her son was about to kill himself because of the kind of parent she was. Where were your tears then? That is just perfectly done. That had to be a good night for you when you went home.

Orkin
Thank you. No, the fundamentals of every good cross examination that you'll hear from any real trial lawyer is you can prepare. I mean, I prepared that cross for years. And you have to be prepared to. I think the journalism term is kill your puppies. Like, you have to be prepared to abandon the story that you're in love with if the truth leads you someplace else. You have to do the same thing with. With cross examination. You have to be able to. To put aside every note you've made, all your careful preparation. When you get a moment like that, you have to, because that's how you win trials. I think.

Matt Murphy
I think it's just from Hemingway. Kill your little darlings and no one's killing.

Orkin
Oh, is that what it was?

Matt Murphy
It's a Christy noem thing. You confused us.

She likes to kill the puppies. We don't kill the puppies.

Orkin
Yeah, the last moment in that.

I gave him one last chance.

I got a. I got a. Like a topographical. Topographical map. And I put it up, and I had a marker for him. And we had a search and rescue team out staged during his cross examination in the desert.

Matt Murphy
Wow.

Orkin
And I don't know if you have that photo that was actually. I don't think I put it on. I should have sent this to you. There's one where they were there out there for two days, and they were sitting in the cold, and they were.

They're waiting. And what I love about it is the cadaver dog that we had was named Karma.

And they're all waiting. And it's like, okay, Ed, here you go. Here's his family. Here's a Sharpie. Here's the map. Do the right thing so this family, the family of your foreign partner, do the right thing so they can bury their son. Tell us where the body is. And he almost. Almost looked like he thought about it for a second, and he said, I have no idea where the body is, sir. I have no idea. We had them out there. And this is kind of. This is sort of funny behind the scenes, but I'm like, I asked to take a photo of the stadium crew, and it was like, about a dozen people and the two Orange county detectives kind of do the short strata sit out in the desert in the one in a hundred chance that Ed chin would actually do the right thing. And they just looked. I asked them to take a photo, and they looked. It was like one of those high school football team photos. They're all grim, you know, they're all lined up.

Matt Murphy
Yeah.

Orkin
I'm like, you know, can you. I'm like, they just look so to Donna or Ray, I'm like, guys, they just looked. They look too mean. Can they take another one? And these guys snapped a photo, Megan. I wish I had it. Where they're literally jumping up in the air with big smiles on their faces, holding fix axes and shovels like, you want us to look happy. Here we are freezing our butts off out here in the middle of nowhere.

Matt Murphy
Gallows humor there.

Orkin
Oh, my gosh. But, um. Yeah. So the jury goes back, and that judge that you saw there is. His name is Greg Prickett. He's retired now. He's one of the finest bench officers I've ever tried a case in front of. And again, with all the heat that the judicial system, especially the way it's under stress lately, where I think a lot of people are losing confidence in it in a lot of ways for reasons that I'm sure you're aware of, that I won't go into. But that's a really good, fair judge. And his staff was really professional. And the bailiff, this guy Zane, who I loved, done a million murder trials in front of him.

He goes back, and I'm kind of arguing with one of the defense lawyers in it. Not a bad way.

His defense team were excellent attorneys. But this guy, Al Stockey, who's been around a long time in Orange county, and we're arguing about some way that the evidence is going to go back. So what happens is the jury gets instructed. They go into the deliberation room, bailiff goes in and gets them all settled and comes out. And then the evidence goes in. Right. And Al is arguing about what, you know, something that he thought should go in, in an envelope or something stupid. Not stupid by him. Something unimportant. And so Al and I are kind of mixing it up a tad. And Zane comes out after the jury. Been back about 30 minutes, just getting settled, and he kind of comes out. He's got this really funny look on his face, and he goes, al, he goes, I don't think it matters, buddy. It's like they don't even want to see the exhibits. They're asking for verdict forms already. So.

Matt Murphy
Yeah, you knew. That was.

Orkin
That was.

That's. Yeah, that's a great sign. And, look, as a da, my plan was I was going to do this for, like, three years, learn how to trike cases, and then go make money in some civil firm someplace.

And the longer you remain at da, the. The more interesting it gets. And then pretty soon, you're doing the serious stuff, and then you're doing felonies, and then you get your own investigator, and then, you know, for me, I was 34 years old, and I'm doing murder cases, and I'm walking through murder scenes. And what becomes really addictive for you as a prosecutor, if your career and you're dedicated to it, is you get families like the Smiths. And Paul came to me after the verdict, and I will never forget the sensation of this. His wife was lovely. He had such a nice family. And this is a really good guy who loved his brother. And imagine how wronged, you know, a person is. I mean, death of somebody we love is the worst thing that we can ever experience, right? Death because of murder is the worst of the worst. But truly, I think the darkest thing we can experience as human beings is if you have somebody you love dearly and they're killed so somebody else can get money and that person gets away with it, it's about as bad as it gets, and he, as a da, especially from moms like Debbie Smith or brothers like Paul, it becomes kind of an addiction. And when, you know, when you go through those dark moments of trial and you're not sure and the issues in doubt. Paul came up to me crying right after the verdict, and he gave me a hug, and I can still feel, like, the stubble on his face.

And he cried and cried and cried.

It's an incredibly gratifying thing. And, like, it was for good cops like, like Ray and Don, and, you know, we got a really good judge. That's that case was one keeps you.

Matt Murphy
Doing it because it's a dark profession, as you alluded to. I mean, it's. You're on the toughest of cases. You see awful things. It's your job to make sure this person who's dangerous doesn't get returned to society. So the stakes could not be higher.

This is why most do get in and get out. They can't make a whole career out of it. It's just an enormously stressful way to make a living.

Orkin
It is. But it is more so than the stress. You're absolutely right. 100% right.

But it's more gratifying than it is stressful. Believe it or not, for moments like that, you kind of.

I tried 52 murders or 52 cases while I was in the homicide unit, and every one of those, there's a mom or somebody loved every one of those victims. And, you know, especially on the hard ones, on the cold cases, where you reach back in time, where they effectively got away with it, until you come in with a new team and dust off the boxes.

Most people can't understand how important that is to a family member, unless, God forbid, you experience it yourself.

It is holding the person accountable for a lot of them. It becomes the center of their entire life. And it's, as a prosecutor, you become a very important.

Matt Murphy
That's the one last thing you can do for your loved one. The one last thing. And ideally provide them with some sort of a proper burial, which is why you were pressing him and he did not give up the location of the body.

And then Kamo, my old colleague over at NBC News, went to the jail and interviewed Ed Shin and gave it his best shot in. I mean, it's very rare to see Keith Morrison fired up. This is about as close as you're going to get. He was clearly frustrated with this guy who even once he's in jail for the rest of his life, won't give it up. Here's a bit of it in sat seven.

Orkin
It wouldn't reveal either where you put the body personally, when you drove that rental truck down to wherever you drove it to.

You won't reveal that. I can't.

I don't have that. That's.

And it's not something that I can do, unfortunately. There are just some secrets that a man is willing to give up his life for.

All right, so then I think we're kind of at an understanding, which is that, you know, this is somewhere that I can't go. It's that, you know, and I know as a journalist, that's, you know, everybody wants. That would be a coup de grace to unearth. And I don't give a sweet flying, but that. I don't. I don't care.

I kind of care. Well, you do care that the family has a chance to get some closure that they have out there. They're leaving you for. They don't have closure. They don't know where their. They don't know where their child is.

Matt Murphy
And he didn't give it up to him either, and he's never given it up. Why?

Orkin
Well, I think that one of the reasons why. And this is something that I hit him up with on the stand, it's like, dude, you're. If he hit his head against the desk, there will be a forensic record of that. There will be one.

One skull fracture.

And if the body is found, I've always believed he bludgeoned him to death.

There was a member. There was a bat, a baseball bat. We didn't actually put this in evidence, but there was, you know, he's a sports memorabilia collector, and there was one that he used to have in his office that I don't think was ever located. And it was, like, a year later by the time it was searched. But if you hit him in the head ten times to kill him, then there will be. If the body is found, it will reflect that there will be multiple skull fractures inconsistent with him just falling and hitting the desk. And I think that's why.

Matt Murphy
Why would he care if he's serving life in prison? What was the ultimate sentence?

Orkin
It was life without possibility of parole. But.

Matt Murphy
So if you get that, what does it matter? If it turns out now we can prove that your story's b's? Already the jury has said it was.

Orkin
Right, because in the state of California, our legislature does something crazy just about every week on behalf, essentially, of homicide defendants or people serving life sentences. They've been after the death penalty for years, but they've openly said that Lwop is next. That's life without possibility of parole. They're trying to undo that sentence. And I think that he sees it as being into his legal advantage not to cough it up and because maybe someone down the line will go, hey, look, it's possible that he hit his head. You see some crazy stuff in the appellate process in California, most of the appellate justices are fine judges, but with the legislature, there's such an ideological bent to a lot of the things that they're doing that a lot of really bad guys like Ed Shen, you know, the California legislature is kind of their, it's their best hope that they're going to do something that benefits them. And in California, unfortunately, we see that all the time these days. We have a very activist group of people that have been elected and they have some ideas about crime and punishment that in my view, it's just, it's madness. And it's, they're dangerous. Like Ed shenanigans. Yeah, it's dangerous. It is absolutely dangerous.

Matt Murphy
With our condolences to the entire family. It's just terrible. And I mean, they were lovely in all the specials. I heard them into, they sounded so reasonable, so kind and so thoughtful.

But you eventually did leave the DA's office.

And then what are you, what are you doing now for a living? Writing. Right. We're coming out with a new book. That's exciting. You're welcome to come back on when it hits to promote it, but happy.

Orkin
Oh, I would love to come back.

Matt Murphy
On some of these other times.

Orkin
So I've got a law practice here in California where I'm largely defending police officers.

I've got a case right now against, where George Gascon is prosecuting one of my clients who is innocent.

And I've got a contract with ABC News. I'm doing a bunch of those two thousand twenty s. And by the way, I know Keith, Keith, of course, Keith Morrison works for NBC. So my, my overlords at ABC will probably be mad at me for saying this, but for those of you who have never met the man, he really is one of the nicest people on the planet. And I love seeing him get fired up in that interview with Ed Shin because Keith Morrison is a force for good. And those guys sat me down. I was so exhausted when the verdict came in and they wanted to interview me that night. I did my dateline interview that night with him and Josh Mankiewicz, but Keith.

Matt Murphy
Morrison swans total and honestly, the real thing about NBC. Easily.

Orkin
Yeah. Well, yes, right, right. Those guys, they're good guys on like all the politics, NBC, which I know you know a little bit about, but the, yeah. So I'm defending police officers. I've got a, that's, that's a large part of my practice. I'm splitting time between LA and New York City. I got a place in, in New York where I wrote the book. And I'm doing a bunch of stuff with Bunch of live tv with people that have moved over to news nation, learning how to do that a little bit. And.

Matt Murphy
Oh, is that my friend Dan Abrams you're doing that kind of that show that he does?

Orkin
Dan has not had me on his show yet, but Elizabeth Vargas, Ashley Banfield and Chris Cuomo have all been kind of rotating me in and like various topics of the day.

Matt Murphy
And when you do, Dan has revived live PD in another forum where he gets, you know, mostly cops on to talk about the arrest. But, but that's something I'm sure he'd love to have you on. I love that you've found another way to use your many skills. But maybe now you can have a nicer hotel room and you should still travel with the cozy earth sheets because one never knows. But I know it's odd to say to a prosecutor, but I feel the need to say thank you for your service. I really admire what you do and what you've done.

Orkin
Thank you. Thank you very much.

Matt Murphy
I have a feeling you're going to be seeing Matt again soon on this show. I certainly hope so. Coming up the rest of the week, the fraudster at the center of the hit Netflix show Bitcond is here. And later, two people who escaped a cult, a very well known cult, how they got defrauded. And then my very own fraud week story. See you tomorrow.

Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly show, no BS, no agenda, and no fear.

Fraud Week: Unraveling the Mystery of Ed Shin's True Identity, and Chris Smith's Disappearance, with Matt Murphy | Ep. 815

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1: Introduction to the Case

2: Deep Dive into Investigation

3: Courtroom Drama

4: Aftermath and Reflections

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