[Marilyn] This was a brutal attack on Katrina Smith,
[narrator] A senseless murder of a bright young woman.
[Marilyn] The individual who attacked her.
I was going to make sure that she did not survive.
[narrator] As the investigation expands, the mystery deepens.
[Vince] She felt that she was being followed
or stalked by somebody.
[Marilyn] Katrina knew that her life was in danger.
[narrator] The truth will be revealed.
[Vince] How did you know about blood in the trump?
This is bigger than just one piece.
This is a whole, huge corner of that puzzle.
[narrator] Every day in North America, dozens of people are murdered.
The key to solving the toughest of these homicides lies in the final
24 hours of the victim's life.
To crack the case, detectives must reconstruct that critical timeline,
the minutes and hours containing evidence
that can help unlock the mystery and catch the killer.
[narrator] Machesney Park, Illinois, a quiet enclave 90 miles west of Chicago.
Machesney Park is kind of like a bedroom community.
It's a smaller community.
It's... it's more quiet.
It's very close, Nick.
You can leave your doors open and there's not a lot of crime.
[Vince] You have your vehicle burglaries.
You have, you know, your home burglaries
that happen, you know, crimes of opportunity.
Crimes of violence in the Chelsea Park.
That doesn't happen every day.
That's not Chicago.
It's more relaxed.
It's a safer city.
[narrator] But on the afternoon of October 23rd,
that peaceful tranquility, is brutally shattered.
[phone ringing]
We had a frantic, distraught, worried husband, Todd Smith.
He reports that his wife has disappeared.
He had seen her the night before.
Now all of a sudden, he's he's very concerned because,
she hasn't contacted him.
She hasn't answered the phone,
and he doesn't know what's happened to her.
[narrator] The Missing woman, is 30 year old, Katrina Smith.
From the information we gathered about Katrina,
she's a super friendly woman who would do anything for anybody.
[narrator] Katrina works in Human Resource, is at a local automotive plant.
She was at work every day at eight o'clock at Cameron Industries.
Excellent employee, always had a smile on her face, always cheery.
She attended church, in Rockford quite regularly.
She was very devoted to her family.
[narrator] Tasked with investigating the
disappearance of Katrina Smith,
our veteran Detective Vince Lindbergh,
and Criminal Bureau chief prosecutor,
Marilyn Hite Ross,
[Marilyn] The state's Terri's office,
is involved very early on on any crime investigation
that appears to be suspicious.
So once Katrina Smith was reported missing, we were involved immediately.
[narrator] Investigators meet with Katrina's husband, Todd Smith,
to gather more information about her disappearance.
The night before,
which would have been October 22.
Katrina had confirmed a job interview,
for the morning of October 23rd at 07:30,
and then she was to report to work after that.
[Vince] Before 7 AM Todd text,
Katrina wishing her well in her job interview,
You know you'll do well, knock it out of the park.
But she never appeared for the job interview,
and she did not report for work, on October 23.
[Vince] He had attempted to call her, attempted to contact her.
She had vanished. She had disappeared.
[narrator] Investigators get their first big break,
when Katrina is car is spotted only a few miles from her house.
The car was recovered right about 07:50 that night,
roughly two hours after Todd had made the report.
It was on Ventura, which is about three to four miles away from the family house.
It was parked like, near the edge of the river,
and it was just abandoned.
This is not a habitual place for anyone to leave their car.
So this in itself is strange.
[Marilyn] If it's someone who might have attacked her
and wanted her vehicle week suspect that the vehicle would have been moved
from the Winnebago County area, and it had not been moved.
So, we were suspicious than that.
She was probably not alive.
I mean, this is a girl who is by every definition,
just a fantastic, solid family woman who has a solid job,
a career that she's looking to improve.
So, what we're thinking now is something suspicious.
Something foul had happened to Katrina.
[narrator] To solve the mystery, investigators will need to piece together
the last 24 hours of her life.
It's a puzzle, and each piece you have to see where it fits,
to make a story, to make a case.
So timeline is everything.
[narrator] But with no sign of Katrina,
detectives have their work cut out for them.
[Vince] There's forensic evidence that you can obtain from your victim,
which will narrow your timeline.
Without a crime scene,
we just don't know.
We're still kind of shooting in the dark here.
[narrator] The community of Machesney Park bands together,
to help find Katrina Smith.
Hundreds of people literally, come out from the community searching everywhere.
They were instructed anything they,
thought was unusual or suspicious to right away,
call us and we would have our crime scene officers
come out and gather up that evidence.
[narrator] After hours of searching, authorities find
some unsettling items on the side of the road.
[Marilyn] We located her cellular phone, which was found in a bush
that was not far from the marital home,
and the area of the Rock River.
We also located her purse, which was found,
in that same area a short distance away.
This is not consistent with someone,
who just took the day off work and is playing hokey,
or someone who has decided to go missing or make themselves disappeared.
[narrator] The abandoned vehicle, along with the personal items,
are an ominous sign.
[Marilyn] What I'm thinking is that someone has probably killed Katrina,
and I don't think at this point it's someone who was a total stranger
because they left all of her valuables.
They didn't take her car.
They didn't take her purse.
[narrator] The first person investigators want to interview,
Is Katrina's husband, Todd.
[Vince] Todd, was strong.
He was so concerned about her, he loved her.
They had just taken an anniversary trip
and celebrated their seven year marriage.
The partners the first person that the investigators look at because,
that's the person that has the most
emotional investment into the victim.
Whether it's a boyfriend, girlfriend,
um, husband or wife, that's always the person
that seems to be the most connected.
[narrator] Todd is cooperative and willing to answer
any questions that come his way.
I'm asked him, does she have a gambling problem?
Todd tells me. No, she wouldn't do that.
Does she have a drug problem?
Nope. That's out of the question.
Does she have a problem with having a relationship
outside the family outside of him?
Absolutely not.
They both supposedly had been cheated on the past, so that would never come up.
That would never be a focus of any problems.
Todd explain that to us, that their marriage was excellent,
[narrator] But Katrina has been staying at a friend's condominium,
which raises questions for detectives.
[Vince] Why is she staying somewhere else,
and you're staying at the family home?
[Marilyn] He indicated that there were no issues in the marriage.
Katrina was house sitting for her friend,
at the condominium and that everything was fine.
[narrator] Detectives questioned Todd, about the last time he saw Katrina.
He tells us that Katrina had arrived home at about 6 PM,
he said that she arrived at the home to do laundry,
because he had a job interview in the next morning.
Todd had told us that she was very concerned
about her parents for the interview,
so she wanted to go out and grab a new outfit.
So she left the home at nine o'clock PM,
to do some shopping for her job interview.
[narrator] That night, Katrina was planning to sleep with the condo
and was hoping to catch the end of the Chicago football game.
She was a Bears fan.
She didn't want to miss the game,
and so she wanted to get back to her friend's condo.
He had sent her a message at about 11 PM,
that night, saying sweet dreams
and expected to hear back from her, he didn't.
He didn't so he figured she was probably
in bed with sleep because she was very focused
on this job interview for the next morning,
[narrator] Detectives searched the condo looking for clues,
about what may have happened to Katrina.
[Marilyn] There was no sign that Katrina,
had slept there, the night before or had been there at all.
We now know that she never made it back to the condominium.
And so the question is, what has happened in between that time period.
[narrator] Detectives have now determined Katrina was likely killed,
between, 07:30 AM and 09:00 PM, the night before, on October 22nd.
Armed with this information, they questioned Todd
about his whereabouts during this time period.
After Katrina left the family home that night, Todd told us
that he did do some e-mailing on his computer,
and then went to bed.
Now we know from Todd Cell Phone that,
he did text Katrina at about 11 PM
that night or shortly after 11 PM,
and said, you sweet dreams. Good night.
The next day, Todd had appointments to go out on,
but during the morning he worked from home and he did some emails.
Basically, the computer that he would have been working from home on
confirmed that he was at home.
[narrator] With Todd's alibi checking out,
detectives now shift their focus to other potential suspects.
We're looking for any speck of information that could give us a lead
that I may be able to help us determine what has happened to her,
Todd tells us, couple years prior,
they had a peeping Tom at their house.
Someone was peeping at their home, it was determined that it was
a young man from the neighborhood area.
Peeping Toms for years were dismissed
a sort of a nuisance crime, we now know better.
Peeping Toms are actually a very high risk category of voyeur.
These behaviors often escalate to actual attacks.
This could have been a person lurking around the home
to potentially attack her when she had left the home.
[Vince] In the investigation, we find out the young man's
actually connected to Katrina and Todd
through a church youth organization.
He lives in the neighborhood.
He has been to the house before,
We want to look into that. That's a potential lead.
I mean, if he's peeping two years ago,
has his behavior progressed to murder?
[narrator] Working, a theory that a peeping Tom who targeted Katrina Smith,
two years prior might have turned violent.
Detectives hunt him down.
[Vince] We go back through all the reports
of anything that has happened in that neighborhood.
That's suspicious.
And there was a second report of a peeper in that same neighborhood.
It was reported by a different woman,
who had a very similar resemblance to Katrina.
[narrator] Detectives canvas the neighborhood for information
about a potential stalker,
when they notice a video surveillance camera at a neighbor's home.
We asked the owner for the video,
and that video was not a great video.
It's dark outside, it's raining heavily,
but in that video, it discloses a figure
crossing his yard on the 22.
Late at night while it's raining.
[Marilyn] The person appeared to be walking,
in the direction of Katrina and Tez home at approximately 11:30 PM.
You could not tell, who the individual was,
but what you could tell is that it appeared to be a male.
It appeared to be someone of small stature.
[Vince] Then this figure goes across his yard and into a field.
Now who's going to be out in a rainstorm like that,
Cutting through a field,
It's... It's just something that really raises red flags.
[narrator] Identifying this person could be the break detectives need,
to unravel the mystery of Katrina's disappearance.
Is this the young man that was peeping two years ago?
We need to look at him and find out.
Is there any potential of him being a valid suspect,
in the disappearance of Katrina.
Is that my new possibility?
Maybe the key to open up the whole case.
[narrator] Detectives tracked down the peeping Tom,
who's now living several hours away.
This individual was in fact, in college, and was on the college campus
at the time that Katrina went missing.
[narrator] He tells detectives he never left campus that night.
They checked the school security logs and video,
which confirmed the young man story.
Law enforcement was able to substantiate
that he was nowhere, near Katrina,
the night she went missing or the marital home.
[narrator] With the peeping Tom theory proving to be a dead end,
detectives returned to the timeline,
hoping it will reveal something new
about Katrina Smith's final steps on the day she disappeared.
Katrina Smith worked is an HR representative.
She had worked in that field for approximately four to five years.
She was very well liked by her coworkers and her supervisors.
Christina, her supervisor, had last seen her on October 22nd,
that Monday, at approximately 05:00 PM.
When Katrina had left work.
[narrator] Talking with Katrina's supervisor,
detectives learn about an alarming incident,
that recently took place at Katrina's office.
Christina tells us, it was during a lunch hour,
at Cameron Industries were a vehicle had pulled through the parking lot
and disseminated about three hundred or so flyers.
The Flyer was very derogatory, and it was disparaging
the character of Katrina Smith.
Why would anybody disseminate flyer school parking lot,
of a business ridiculing and demeaning Katrina,
so this is very disturbing.
[Michael] This is someone whose anger justifies
and rationalizes what they do next.
It could be distributing flyers one day,
posting things on social media one day.
It could be something much worse another day,
[Marilyn] Initially was not reported to the police,
because everyone thought it was just an isolated incident.
But after she went missing, we were able to recover the video.
[Vince] The driver of that vehicle, he or she was disguised
with a wig, glasses and, unfortunately, the vehicle.
Although it was black, we had no license plate,
because the license plates we're not on the vehicle.
[narrator] From the video it's impossible to identify the car or the driver,
but detectives have gained a shocking new detail,
about Katrina is personal life.
The Flyer also indicated that she was having
an affair with someone and was cheating on her husband.
[Vince] So now we have a flyer that's being disseminated
by an unknown suspect that's referring to Katrina
having a relationship with somebody at work named, Guy.
[narrator] Guy Gabriel, is a recently divorced co-worker,
who has been seen spending time with Katrina.
[Vince] We're getting this information from Kristina, at work,
that there is rumors,
that Guy Gabriel and Katrina are having a relationship.
[Marilyn] Katrina had eventually started to confide, in Kristina,
that there were marital issues and that the marriage was not going well.
[Vince] This was something that was never mentioned,
by Todd Smith, in the initial interview.
We don't know that Todd Smith,
has any knowledge of their relationship,
and as a matter of fact, in his statement,
he swore that they had gone through some relationship problems in the past
and that they would never seek comfort outside the home.
[narrator] Detectives learn more about Katrina's relationship with Guy Gabriel.
[Vince] When our crime scene officers ended up diving into Katrina's phone,
we confirm that Guy Gabriel and Katrina,
were having a romantic relationship.
They went out a couple times for launch a few times and talked and,
and she shared problems with a guy.
But then, eventually that relationship became closer,
and he had come to the point where their conversations had been
about Katrina divorcing Todd Smith.
[narrator] Investigators bring Guy Gabriel into the station for questioning.
He was irritated a bit that that we wanted a formal interview.
[narrator] They asked him to recount the last time
he saw Katrina Sunday.
Sunday night, which was 21st,
Guy Gabriel and Katrina, had stayed together, at Kelly's condo.
On Monday morning, Guy Gabriel gets up.
This is the morning of the 22nd, uh, and he sees her off to work.
[narrator] The next time, Guy communicates with Katrina,
is when she returns to her home that night after work.
[Marilyn] The last communication that we believe Katrina made to guide Gabriel,
was at approximately 07:30 PM, when she indicated she wanted
to be with the condominium for Monday Night Football.
[narrator] Katrina may have only texted guy once that night,
but he was texting her nonstop.
[Vince] The night of October 22nd.
He's on edge, waiting to hear from Katrina,
on whether or not she was going to disclose to Todd,
that she wanted to divorce.
That night, there, text messages indicate,
that guy was very concerned about.
Have you told him yet?
How's things going?
He wants her to tell Todd, that the relationships over with.
Now that does send up red flags.
Because now you have,
somebody who is having a relationship with Katrina,
that appears to be very obsessed with her, leaving her husband.
This could very quickly escalate to become
very dangerous, volatile situation.
You introduced jealousy.
You introduce resentment.
And those could be powerful motivators for someone who lacks
basic impulse control, on who needs to be in control.
[Vince] We don't know that she's ready at that point for sure to tell Todd,
that she wants things done with.
Maybe she's changing her mind.
Maybe something else has happened.
Did Guy Gabriel then get upset?
And something happened between the hours of nine o'clock,
and the following morning.
At this point, we don't know exactly where he's texting her from.
Is he texting or from around the corner?
Is he watching the house?
Is it possible that after she leaves her home,
as Todd says, to go back and shop,
that her and Guy Gabriel meet up?
He is our primary focus.
He is our primary suspect.
Could this be the guy? We have to investigate.
[narrator] Detectives are zeroing in on a new person of interest
in the disappearance of Katrina Smith,
her secret boyfriend, Guy Gabriel.
So, did Guy Gabriel have any contact with her
that night, either near the home,
or did they meet up later that night,
and then, things went awry from there? That is a possibility.
[narrator] They look into Guy's movements in the critical window
during which Katrina went missing.
Guy Gabriel indicated that Sunday night,
he had stayed at the condominium with Katrina Smith.
Katrina went to work that morning,
and then, that evening he left to go to work
because he worked the graveyard shift.
[narrator] Guy's shift began at 8 pm on October 22nd,
and he said he was at work until 8 am the next morning.
There's always an opportunity to leave work, right?
So we went to Cameron Industries.
[narrator] Detectives check video surveillance and the security logs
at Guy Gabriel's workplace.
They show that he was in the building the whole night.
We were able to pull all the video footage of him being in and out
supervising other individuals who had interacted with him.
[Vince] If Guy Gabriel would have left Cameron Industries
that evening during work,
we would have seen it on that video.
So, we were able to eliminate Guy Gabriel.
[narrator] With Guy Gabriel now in the clear,
the investigation hits a roadblock.
[Vince] It's frustrating.
I try to take a personal approach to every case I work. I really do.
This case for me was about Katrina.
And once you learn about Katrina and what a wonderful person she was,
and what a wonderful family she has, you want to do the best job you can for them.
You want to solve this case and you want to do it right.
[narrator] Investigators turned to her family
for more information regarding Katrina's final movements.
[Marilyn] Bruce was Katrina stepfather.
He basically raised Katrina with her mom, Vikki.
[Vince] He was with us. He was so concerned about her.
[narrator] Detectives ask Bruce if he knows of anyone
who would want to harm Katrina.
[Vince] He tells us that Katrina feels that she's being followed
and stocked by somebody. She just didn't know by whom.
Katrina was so concerned that she has a conversation
with a Verizon employee
talking about is there any way somebody could bug or clone her phone
because she feels like somebody's keeping track of her and following her.
And then all of a sudden, on the 19th,
he gets this text from her asking about getting a gun for protection.
So, you know, the alarm bells were going off with him.
[narrator] Talk of getting a gun just days before she goes missing,
suggests Katrina was looking to defend herself.
[Vince] It is apparent that Katrina was in fear of something
and that she felt that she was being followed or stalked by somebody.
[Marilyn] Katrina knew,
that her life was in danger and in jeopardy.
[narrator] As detectives worked to uncover the identity
of who could be stocking Katrina,
they take note of something unusual.
[Marilyn] Every day people are searching for Katrina.
They're searching for evidence.
Todd is at the search party scenes but does not appear to be engaged.
Todd is conducting interviews with the local media.
There's crying with no tears.
It's been horrible. [crying]
I just want her to come home.
It's just like his emotions weren't genuine.
His crocodile tears, his sadness and everything.
[Marilyn] You know, there is emotion without emotion,
and we're seeing this play out before the cameras.
[Michael] For good investigators, gut instincts are honed.
This is where investigators need to pay particular attention to the nuances,
the micro-expressions, as we call them, of potential persons of interest.
[Vince] I'm a detective that watches behavior.
Todd's behavior was very inconsistent
with somebody that was
suffering from a missing wife, a missing loved one.
[narrator] Based on his suspicious behavior,
detectives take another look at Todd.
Now as a potential suspect.
[Vince] Todd had told us the marriage was excellent.
He maintained the whole time that they weren't going to get divorced.
[narrator] But when detectives talked to Katrina's friends, they get a different story.
October 13th, she went out for a girls' night with her girlfriends.
During that night, she told one of her girlfriends, Jill,
that she was not happy in the marriage,
and she had brought up the word "divorce" several times in the conversation.
The night of the 22nd, Jill's husband made a phone call that Todd.
Todd told him that Katrina was coming over to do laundry
and that she wanted to talk to him,
and Jill's husband said, "Well, that sounds good. Maybe that's good."
Todd says, "No, I think it's done.
I think she's done with me."
[narrator] This new information reveals that
Todd hasn't been truthful with police from the very beginning.
[Vince] The whole time Todd is telling us the marriage is great.
No problems in the marriage and everything is going well.
But Katrina is relaying to her friends,
her coworkers, that her marriage isn't good.
So, the statements that Todd gave us,
we are able to pick apart some of those statements as untruth.
[narrator] As detectives become more suspicious of Todd,
the forensic results from Katrina's car finally come in.
What the tests reveal shakes them to their core.
[Marilyn] It was pretty much neon lights
when luminol was sprayed into the trunk of the vehicle.
We were able to see the outline of a body
that had been placed in the trunk of her vehicle.
[Vince] How do you explain blood in a trunk?
It was apparent that someone had been placed in that trunk.
We believed that blood was Katrina's.
[narrator] Detectives have found Katrina Smith's blood all over the trunk of her car,
revealing that this may be more than just a missing person's case.
[Marilyn] Katrina had bled out significantly.
There was even blood on the bumper of vehicle,
so we know that when she was placed in the vehicle,
she was most likely substantially incapacitated.
[Michael] Sometimes you have some, even without a body, evidence of a crime.
You have some blood spatter.
You have what's called exsanguination.
Which is blood volume, which, in terms of no body homicides,
is as close to a smoking gun as you can get.
[Vince] Now we know we have a crime scene at the car,
whether it happened there or somewhere else.
And the car was just used as transportation
to hide/eliminate the body.
[narrator] With suspicion now building around Katrina's husband, Todd,
investigators dig into his background.
We know that Todd Smith had a business
where he was a financial advisor.
And this was his own business.
It was not as productive and successful as he had portrayed it to be.
He was facing a fraud lawsuit in federal court.
Katrina was actually the breadwinner in the family.
She was the one that paid for the mortgage on the home, that paid all of the bills.
[narrator] Todd's potential motive for murdering his wife
starts to become crystal clear.
We also learned that Todd was very possessive and jealous of Katrina.
And the fact that she might now want to move on
and get a divorce was very disturbing to Todd.
[narrator] As detectives look deeper into Todd's past,
they learn something even more alarming.
[Vince] In the investigation, I ended up speaking with a family member
of Todd Smith's,
and his name was Justin.
Justin was a half brother to Todd.
The story was that at 17 years old, Todd ended up
disconnecting a gas line from the stove
and ended up blowing up the home
in an attempt to kill Justin, his sister, the mom and the dad.
[narrator] At the time, Todd was sentenced to thirty months' probation
and he became permanently estranged from his family.
[Marilyn] It paints a picture of someone who appears to be a meek and mild individual.
But underneath there's a seething pot of anger and jealousy
that erupts in a violent manner
that could end in someone's death.
When we learned more about Todd's past,
that he's this troubled, violent, fire-starting teenager,
this Jekyll and Hyde character emerged
that then cast, I think, further doubt on, uh, all of his stories.
[narrator] As detectives uncovered Todd's criminal past,
they get a phone call that turns the case on its head.
[Vince] Todd is upset. Todd is very upset.
And he discusses how upset he is about Katrina's blood
being found in the trunk of the vehicle.
[narrator] For detectives, this is a red flag.
No one in the sheriff's department has released the information
about Katrina's blood being found in the car.
He tells us one of Katrina's family members told him about it.
So, we're talking to the family members.
None of them knew anything about it.
So how did Todd know about blood in the trunk?
[Marilyn] Only the killer would know that
there would be blood in the trunk that had not been released to the public.
It had not been disclosed to the family members.
[narrator] Now, believing Todd likely murdered Katrina,
investigators search for physical evidence to tie him to the crime.
We searched the computers and we were able to find
remnants of this disparaging flyer
that had been distributed at Katrina's workplace before she went missing.
[Vince] Now, how does that flyer
outlining a relationship, very rudely might I ask,
between Guy and Katrina--
How does that flyer end up on his computer?
Did Katrina put it there?
No.
Who's the only other person that could have authored that
on his laptop? Him?
The individual distributing the flyers in disguise,
in fact, ended up being Todd.
LORI ANN: Todd did everything he could
to try to erase everything.
But he doesn't realize that a computer keeps secrets
even when you try to delete them.
Todd, passing out with these types of flyers
and trying to degrade, humiliate Katrina
is horrible enough in itself.
This, in my mind, has violent motivation as well.
When investigators comb through Todd's computer,
it yields even more clues.
We also discover a tracking software,
which coincides with a small box
that one of our detectives located,
and right away identified
as some kind of housing for a tracker.
Before she disappeared, Katrina believes
she was being followed, and she was right.
Todd had been tracking her every move.
That tracking software that was on the computer
was forensically analyzed by one of our detectives.
He was able to show that the night Katrina disappeared,
the night of October 22nd,
that tracker was taken from the car,
then seen following a path through the woods,
which coincides with the resident
who has the videotape of that figure
going across that gentleman's front yard.
It then concludes its tracking
just a very short distance
from the Smith home.
What we believe Todd did was after he had dumped her car,
he removed the tracking device,
but he thought it was off, and it was not.
VINCE: This is that huge piece of puzzle.
This is bigger than just one piece.
This is a whole huge corner of that puzzle.
Katrina Smith's husband, Todd, has become the prime suspect
in her disappearance and presumed murder.
Detectives bring him in for questioning
and confront him about what they've discovered.
VINCE: I confronted him with the flyers.
I confronted him with the marriage.
I confronted with the track sticks.
I confronted him with everything.
VINCE: His response was to ignore those confrontations.
He didn't say a word.
He didn't respond to my accusations.
If you were being accused of murder
and didn't do it, wouldn't you come back at me?
He didn't do that. He just sat there.
And then at the very end, he said: "I didn't do it.
I want a lawyer."
And then he pointed up at the camera
and said: "I want a lawyer!" and he was screaming.
He was so upset.
Detectives have enough evidence
to tie Todd Smith to his wife's murder,
but they still don't arrest him.
They have nearly
all the circumstantial evidence they need,
but they hold out and stay focused,
looking for that final piece to close the circle.
Good evidence often can mean
the difference between making an arrest
and someone being acquitted at trial
and making an arrest and making sure
that person never gets out.
Then, on November 9th,
three weeks after Katrina Smith
went missing, investigators get the break
they've been waiting for.
An off-duty firefighter noticed what appeared to be
something in the water that shouldn't be there.
Unfortunately, through that investigation
and through that autopsy,
we were able to determine it was Katrina Smith.
Individuals always think that
when they toss the body in the river
that they get rid of evidence.
But they really do not.
I knew eventually Katrina would surface,
and her body would be able to tell me
how she died and how she spent the last minutes of her life.
Katrina's body is badly decomposed,
but the coroner declares
the cause of death
as blunt force trauma to the head.
She was probably most likely struck from behind,
and defensive wounds on her forearms
would have indicated an attempt to protect herself.
The type of weapon that would cause those types of injuries
is some kind of cylindrical object.
We were able to determine from the evidence
that that cylindrical object
was more than likely a pipe, or a bat.
This was a brutal attack on Katrina Smith.
The attack showed that the individual
who attacked her was very aggressive,
was very emotional,
and was going to make sure
that she did not survive the attack.
Detectives searched the Smith home
looking for the murder weapon.
The bat was found during the execution
of one of the search warrants,
in the garage, in a corner.
The testings of the bat show
that there was presence of human blood
in different areas of the bat.
It ended up being Katrina's blood.
Luminal is sprayed throughout the garage
where the murder weapon was found.
Crime scenes saw what they believed was a evidence
that a large amount of blood
had been cleaned up from the area.
We could see that the place
that she was killed was in the garage.
They finally have the physical evidence
proving Todd killed his wife.
We believe that Todd took his marriage vows literally,
"till death do us part."
And his motive in killing Katrina
was to maintain her as his wife forever.
Investigators are now able to complete the picture
of what they believe happened
to Katrina Smith in the final 24 hours of her life.
October 22nd,
she went to work at approximately 8 am.
She got off work at approximately 5 pm, 5:30 pm.
She got to the family residence at about 6 pm,
where she started her laundry for her job interview
the following morning at 7:30.
That night, Katrina tells Todd she wants a divorce.
Todd is pressuring her to stay in the marriage
and not to seek a divorce.
Investigators determined that Guy Gabriel
was trying to help Katrina.
We believe that she is looking for someone to support her
in her decision to end the marriage.
Guy is providing her that support
through their text messages that night.
We believe what happened next is when she got ready
to leave the home and go back to the condo,
Todd was very upset.
MARILYN: We believe that when she is leaving the home,
Todd struck Katrina
to the back of the head with a bat.
She then attempts to protect her head
by putting up her arms, which shows linear marks
that fit the shape of the bat,
as he continued to beat her repeatedly.
He then dragged her to the back of her vehicle
and placed her in the fetal position
in the trunk of that car where she died.
We believe that Todd drove
Katrina's body to the bridge
shortly after 11 pm, he dumped Katrina's body into the river.
VINCE: He then proceeded to drive the car
to Ventura and Obispo, where he ditched the car.
Then at 11:24, we have a text from Todd
to Katrina's phone that says "Sweet dreams.
Good night."
The last text message he sent to her
was a signal of: "You know what?
You will forever be my wife.
You will die my wife."
On November 21st, 2012,
Todd Smith is charged with first degree murder.
The timeline basically put this case together
and tied it in a bow.
It was rock solid.
We were able to pinpoint his movements.
We were able to pinpoint
Katrina's movements and when she went off the grid,
we knew that in order for her to be off the grid,
she was most likely dead.
In January 2017, four years after Katrina's murder,
Todd Smith finally stands trial.
The murder of Katrina Smith was just
a brutal, heinous crime.
She was a beautiful young woman
who wanted to live her life.
She just wanted to live it without Todd.
And instead of allowing her to do that,
he decided to take her life.
Todd believed that he could commit the perfect murder,
and I think his downfall was the arrogance
that he could get away with that.
VINCE: She wasn't wrong.
Her instincts were right there.
She was being stalked.
She just didn't know by whom.
It was her own husband stalking her.
For years.
The jury finds Todd Smith guilty of first degree murder.
He is sentenced to 59 years in prison.
I think about her all the time.
I have pictures of her during her beautiful life
that her family has shared with me.
And I keep those pictures close at hand,
as a reminder of why we do what we do.
More importantly, why I do what I do.
With every police officer with every detective,
with everybody in law enforcement,
there are those cases that attach themselves
to your soul, to your heart.
Katrina and her family...
...they have permanently
attached themselves to my heart.