Gavin Smith (film studio executive)

Gavin Smith (December 10, 1954 – May 2012) was an American college basketball star, actor, stuntman, and film studio executive, formerly a regional manager of distribution for 20th Century Fox. Prior to his eighteen years in that position he played basketball at UCLA, where he was part of the 1975 team that won that year's NCAA championship, the last for coach John Wooden. He later played at Hawaii, where he set the school's still-standing single-season scoring record of 23.4 points per game. He had a small role as a bartender in Cobb, the 1994 biopic of baseball player Ty Cobb.

On the night of May 1, 2012, Smith left a friend's house in Oak Park, where he had been staying due to reported marital difficulties. It does not appear he planned to be away long. When he failed to pick up one of his sons for school the next morning, his family reported him missing. Two years later, with Smith still missing and no evidence of his presence anywhere past the night of his disappearance, he was retroactively declared legally dead. Several months later, on October 26, 2014, hikers chanced upon Smith's remains near Palmdale in the Antelope Valley.

In January 2015, John Lenzie Creech, a convicted drug dealer who had begun an eight-year prison sentence on that charge shortly after Smith disappeared, was arrested again and charged with the murder. His wife, Chandrika Cade-Creech, had reportedly been romantically involved with Smith. Creech's attorney said the death was a "tragic accident". According to testimony before the grand jury that indicted Creech on the murder charge, he allegedly beat Smith to death after catching him and his wife together. Creech was convicted of voluntary manslaughter on July 3, 2017.