[dramatic music]
* *
- Cyprus is in Orange County,
located on the LA County border.
- It's best described as kind of like a Mayberry.
There's not much in the way of crime happening.
- It's a very affluent place.
It's very diverse.
And it's a place that you can reinvent yourself
and be a completely new person.
- My mother and Marvin moved to Cyprus in 1995.
It was a pricey neighborhood.
The home is 4,800 square feet, five bedrooms,
and it was the largest of eight homes in the cul-de-sac.
- In fact, you'd probably move there
because you'd think this is a safe little cul-de-sac
where nothing bad's gonna ever happen.
[sirens wailing]
- Patrol officers discovered her brutally beaten to death.
Her left toes had been set on fire.
- In the peaceful enclave of Cyprus,
a churchgoing businesswoman is savagely murdered
during the most wonderful time of the year.
- Her hands are tied behind her back with a coat hanger.
- The violence is kind of telling you something.
There's some rage going on here.
- I just thought, "This poor woman."
Christmastime, you know?
- The mystery: why would anyone want
this well-loved millionairess dead?
- Minnie and Marvin were sitting
on quite a big nest egg of about $5 million.
- In the trunk, they find the stolen jewelry,
including pieces with a Cadillac emblem
and a big gold M.
[camera shutter clicking]
- There's people out there that are going to want
what they don't have,
and they will take it from them.
* *
[intense music]
* *
[tense music]
* *
- My name is Jeff Swift.
In 2005, I was a detective
with the Cypress Police Department,
Orange County, California.
December 15, 2005, happened to be the day
of the Cyprus Police Department Christmas party.
About 6:30 at night...
[phone ringing]
We got a call of a possible burglary.
[sirens wailing]
When patrol responded to the scene,
Marvin Smith, the reporting party, was out front.
He was shaken.
He was under the impression that Minnie Smith, his wife,
was not home, and that there were intruders in his home.
- My name is John Schaefer.
I'm a 24-year veteran
of the Cypress Police Department.
Marvin tells the officers, "I got home at 6:30,
"parked at the curb, walked up to the door,
saw the shade down."
Mr. Smith tells officers that on this home,
there's an automatic shade retractor
that makes the shade go up and down.
And the fact that it is down
usually means his wife's not home.
So he went in.
- At that point, he heard voices upstairs,
and thinking that there were intruders in the home,
he exited the home and called the police.
- As the sense of fear shatters the quiet calm
of this peaceful December evening,
police draw their guns, ready to face
any danger lurking inside.
- When they enter the home, there's a Christmas tree,
garland up, decorations.
Nothing looked out of place.
And then they went upstairs, into the master bedroom.
And hearing voices, they thought
maybe there were intruders in the home.
But the sound of the voices that Marvin heard,
it was a television that was on.
- My name is Heather Brown, and I was
a deputy district attorney in Orange County for 24 years.
Detectives noted that some of the dresser drawers
had been rummaged through as if someone was in a hurry.
- The carpet's been pulled back,
and they can see that the floor safe is empty.
- What the officers see next shocks them to the core.
- They discovered a woman deceased
between the master bed and the window.
There was blood spatter present.
It appeared to be Marvin's wife, Minnie Smith.
- My name is Susan Kang.
And in 2005, I was at the Orange County
District Attorney's Office.
It was horrible the way that she died.
She had suffered some blunt trauma to her head.
- She'd been clearly brutally beaten to death.
Her nightgown had been pulled up around her waist.
- The fact that she was naked from the waist down
would seem like perhaps the motive of the intruder
was some type of sexual assault.
- There are some other kind of unusual things in this scene.
- Her hands are bound behind her
using coat wire hanger.
- And there was some matches
that were found next to her body also,
in addition to her legs being bound with duct tape.
- It appeared that whoever had done this
put some kind of material between her toes
and set them on fire.
Our first thoughts are, was she tortured to find out
where the safe in the house was,
where the money in the house was?
I've been a part of a lot of brutal crime scenes,
but when I saw Minnie next to the bed was sadness.
I just thought, "This poor woman."
Christmastime, you know?
- As detectives carefully survey the room,
the murder weapon is nowhere in sight.
- Your first thought when you see an injury like that is,
this is obviously probably a heavy object.
- But there's not a baseball bat
lying next to her
or a beer bottle or something like that.
- Before the CSI team begins to gather evidence,
investigators head outside with the somber task
of giving Marvin Smith the gut-wrenching news.
- They have to tell her husband, Mr. Smith,
"Your wife is dead."
You don't really know his role in this thing.
Any cop worth his salt is thinking
he could be the suspect.
- But Marvin appeared to be very distraught,
shocked as to why this had occurred.
He was wondering, "Who could have done this?
Why my wife? Why me?"
- Investigators learn that Marvin is
Minnie's second husband,
and the two had been married for 28 years.
- So we asked, "Is there anybody
that doesn't like your wife or has a beef with your wife?"
- Marvin told us that she was very kindhearted,
and she had no enemies.
- Detectives tell Marvin that the safe in his bedroom
is empty and ask him what it had inside.
- Marvin had stated that the empty safe had
over $30,000 in cash and about $200,000 in jewelry,
specifically a very large, flashy, diamond-encrusted
Cadillac medallion and an M medallion.
- Crime scene investigators descend on the house,
looking for evidence as to who could have committed
such a violent crime.
- Near the fireplace is a heavy metal log roller
that is out of place.
- The forensics team found blood residue
on the log roller.
It could have been the murder weapon.
- The other thing that was quite odd is that
on the bar was a cup with an alcoholic beverage inside.
And next to it was an open bottle of cognac.
You wonder, did the killer take a belt of that
to calm his nerves before the homicide?
In my experience, it would not be unusual
for somebody to do that.
- Outside the house, Cyprus investigators
discover signs of entry.
- There was a screen that had been removed
from a kitchen window
and a toolbox left outside
that was a potential entry point
as if maybe the suspect had used it as a stool.
- As investigators continue combing the crime scene,
Marvin breaks the horrific news to the family.
- My name is Bennie Thomas,
and Minnie Smith was my mother.
December 15th, Thursday, I received a phone call
from my stepfather, Marvin.
And he told me, "There's been an accident."
So I just jumped in my truck and drove out there.
[somber music]
Marvin was outside of the house.
He told me my mother had been murdered,
and I just broke down on my knees and cried.
Just from that time, it was just disbelief.
What was going through my head was not,
"Who could have done this?"
"How could someone have done this?"
My mother was a good woman.
- My name is Mildred Patterson,
and I have known Minnie for about 45 years.
When I first met her, she was working as a waitress.
Minnie Smith was what I call a classy young girl.
Minnie was always independent.
She always worked.
- Minnie married at a young age
to her first husband, Bennie.
And in 1966, they had a son, Bennie Jr.
- My mama, she was devoted.
She was thoughtful.
A lot of people looked up to her within the family.
She was a Christian.
She attended church constantly.
She was definitely a role model.
She worked in the aerospace industry.
She started with Rockwell and then Hughes Aircraft.
My mom and my father got divorced in 1968,
when I was really young.
- After she divorced, she didn't date for a while.
And one day, Minnie saw Marvin,
and that was love at first sight.
Marvin was good-looking, well-spoken, real friendly,
and he seemed to be taken with Minnie.
- Minnie and Marvin were married in 1976
and eventually moved to Northwest Orange County.
- They did well for themselves.
Marvin and my mother owned a liquor store
and six different rental properties.
And they were able to build their fortune.
- Marvin and Minnie had four luxury cars.
- They had a beautiful six-bedroom home
in an upscale community in Cypress,
and they were sitting on quite a big nest egg
of about $5 million.
- Investigators wonder
if someone could have murdered Minnie
because they were after her money.
- But how would someone know that they had
a safe in the floorboard of their home
that had $30,000 and some very expensive jewelry?
Greed is definitely a motive to kill her.
It was definitely possible that it could be someone
within Minnie's inner circle that cared more about money
than they did about Minnie.
- What we found in the apartment complex
was trash cans full of receipts, love notes.
- Also, if you are going to get revenge,
you might steal from him.
You might rob. You might murder.
- Could this be the kind of person
[dramatic music]
* *
- Minnie Smith was a self-made millionairess
living a well-earned life of luxury in Orange County
until someone cut it short.
Now investigators think they might have a motive.
- Any time you have someone
who comes from humble beginnings
and can bring themselves up by the bootstraps
and become successful, there's people out there
that are going to be jealous and want what they don't have.
And they will take it from you.
What detectives were desperate to figure out
was who outside of the inner circle
would know about the safe and be so coldhearted
as to torture and murder a woman
that everyone loved so dearly.
- But as investigators continue to search the house
the day after the murder,
they notice big-ticket items in the garage
that throw the robbery theory into question.
- One of the things they come across in the garage
is Mrs. Smith's car,
and next to it are some firearms.
- Firearms are very, very valuable on the black market,
and most thieves will go for those items first,
not only to arm themselves but to sell them on the street.
- Was it possible this wasn't a robbery after all?
Investigators consider this
as Minnie's body is taken to the morgue.
- They didn't remove her body until the next morning.
When I saw her in that bag, it was a trying time for me.
It was a very trying time for me.
And I have to give--
not have to, but I will give God all the credit
for even getting me to this point
by placing good people around me.
- At the morgue, the coroner inspects Minnie's wounds
but is unable to establish a tight timeline
for her time of death.
- He said she could have died any time between
5:30 in the morning and 5:30 at night.
That's a 12-hour window.
- The coroner would determine that she suffered
multiple blunt force injuries.
One of those was above her left eye,
and the last one was to the back of the skull.
- Minnie was also found with a defensive wound
on the back of her arm, which would indicate
she was attempting to block a blow.
So perhaps she was awakened by the first blow
and then tried to prevent being struck again.
- The coroner said by the way the wound is inflicted,
that it was inflicted by somebody who was right-handed,
and so swinging an object with their right hand.
- The cause of death was not very surprising,
but the autopsy did turn up some other things
that caught the detectives off guard.
There was no evidence of any sexual assault.
And there was actually no DNA whatsoever
that was recovered from her body.
This was surprising because of the way
her nightgown was pulled up
and that she was naked from the waist down.
- Another odd thing is, Minnie's hands were bound
behind her back, and it appeared
that that occurred postmortem.
- That would, to me, be kind of a red flag
because I would think, "Okay, this is weird.
Why would you tie this woman up after she was dead?"
* *
- Tying Minnie's hands after killing her
is not the only sign of the killer's
extremely deliberate actions.
- There's no prints or DNA either on the screen
that was removed or the wire hanger
that was used to tie Minnie's hands behind her back.
But what really stood out the most
were the results from the testing
on the cup and the cognac.
- It was determined by the crime lab
that the cognac bottle and the cup
that were present on the bar did not contain any DNA.
- Whoever's put it there has cleaned it, sanitized it,
but is intending to try to mislead us
as to what happened there.
- With the firearms and Minnie's car untouched,
the autopsy revealing that Minnie wasn't
sexually assaulted, and the lack of DNA
on the body or the cup,
investigators begin to hone in on a new theory.
- Detectives have to wonder if Minnie's murder was
staged to look like a home invasion robbery
by someone who wanted Minnie dead.
- Burglars are people who are here for property.
They want their money.
They're not into going to prison
for abusing or murdering somebody.
That's a rarity. That's rare.
The violence of it, too, is kind of telling you something.
There's some rage going on here.
- While detectives find more meaning
in what the forensics report doesn't contain,
it does confirm one devastating detail.
- My name is Tricia Takasugi.
I'm a former TV reporter who covered
Orange County crime in the late 1990s
and early 2000s.
The forensic report reveals that the blood residue
that was on that log roller is a match for Minnie's blood.
And it was most likely the weapon used to kill Minnie.
- But there's another DNA profile
on the log roller too.
- They also find DNA from Marvin Smith.
- Handling his own fireplace tool
doesn't mean Marvin's guilty, but with all the evidence
pointing towards this being staged,
detectives now turn their attention to Marvin Smith.
- Typically, people who are murdered
are murdered by somebody who knows them
or is close to them.
So we ask, what's the relationship
of the husband with his wife?
Is that a relationship such that he might have a motive
to commit a murder like this?
[dramatic music]
* *
- One day after the murder of 66-year-old Minnie Smith,
investigators in Orange County, California,
have just found some unexpected DNA
on the likely murder weapon--
her husband, Marvin's.
- So at this point in the investigation,
we have nothing that would make us think
that Marvin was capable of this kind of a crime.
So you try to build a profile
of what this person is capable of,
and you want to talk to other family.
- When detectives track down those closest to the couple
and pump them for information,
a surprising detail about Marvin's history emerges.
- And a couple of stories come up about, you know,
Marvin getting in an argument with somebody over rent
and situations where his anger explodes
and he does some violent things.
- In 1992, he was involved in an altercation
out of one of his liquor stores where he was reportedly
pistol-whipping another person.
And then in 2003, it was reported
that Marvin had struck one of his tenants
at one of his rentals.
- With Marvin, if you did anything
that he didn't appreciate,
he was gonna let you know about it,
and it wouldn't always be pleasant.
- When you hear something like that,
it doesn't establish guilt or murder.
But it raises an eyebrow.
- Because now you're seeing,
if you will, a pattern of violence.
You want to take a close look at Marvin.
- Having established Marvin's potential capacity
for violence,
detectives now need to look at his alibi.
- At this point, investigators know
it's vitally important to track down
Marvin's whereabouts on the day of Minnie's murder
and pinpoint exactly where he was
between 5:30 in the morning and 5:30 at night.
- Detectives ask Marvin to come down to the station,
where they quiz him on his whereabouts
the day that Minnie was killed.
- And we say, "Hey, what was your day like?"
And it seems like he's got
a pretty tight alibi for his day.
- Marvin told police
he went to a gas station in the morning.
He then reports to work at the job site.
In the middle of the day,
he goes to a physical therapist's appointment
because he had a shoulder injury
that occurred six weeks before.
- After physical therapy, Marvin went back to work
and then arrived home about 6:30 when he heard voices
inside his home that were not supposed to be there
and called the police.
- And the detectives began to track
each part of his alibi.
There was a receipt from a gas station
where it appeared as though Marvin had gotten gas
at 7:18 in the morning.
- Investigators' next step
is to visit the construction site that Marvin was running.
- Because of eyewitnesses, we know that he went to work
and later visited a job site.
- And of course, police talked to neighbors
in the cul-de-sac, and no one reports
seeing Marvin coming back during the day.
And then the physical therapist office confirmed
that not only had Marvin been at physical therapy
the afternoon of the 15th,
but as a result of his surgery,
he was told he could not push or pull anything
or lift his arms above his shoulder height.
- What they learn from the physical therapist
seems to cast doubt on Marvin's ability
to even commit this crime.
- The autopsy results stated
that the perpetrator was right-handed,
and the surgery and the physical therapy
that Marvin was undergoing was on his right shoulder,
making it very unlikely that he could hold a heavy object
with that torn shoulder.
- Marvin's alibi is starting to look
pretty solid, except for one detail
that nags at investigators.
- There was a window of time between the hours
of 5:30 in the morning and 7:18 in the morning
in which Marvin could have committed this murder.
- Given this gap of time,
detectives keep Marvin on their radar.
At the same time, they appeal to the news media,
hoping someone will come forward with information
about Minnie's murder.
- As soon as I learned about this case,
I felt this connection with Minnie Smith,
and I couldn't get out of my mind how she died.
And that's the reason why I made sure
her story was brought to the media.
- So this story got quite a bit of media coverage
because a lovely woman has been murdered
in an upscale area in this beautiful cul-de-sac.
- Investigators are flooded with tips,
and one in particular catches their attention.
- There was a man who was delivering packages
on the day of the murder, and he reported that he had,
in fact, seen Minnie driving her Lexus
into the driveway around 1:30 on the day of the murder.
- If she was seen going into the house,
she was in the home up until, obviously,
the time of the murder.
- And to me, that's very strong evidence
that closes off the possibility of Marvin killing her
before he left for work in the morning that day.
- Three days after this vicious murder,
investigators are running out of leads.
- It's like a puzzle.
I have the pieces, but I don't know
what the real picture is that they make,
and I don't know how all the pieces fit together.
- If Marvin didn't do this, then we need to start
exploring other avenues.
Who did, and why?
[dramatic music]
* *
- Three days after the murder of Orange County businesswoman
Minnie Smith, clearing her husband, Marvin,
puts investigators back at square one.
- Marvin had a solid alibi for the day of the murder.
- So where else do I look?
What are other options to look to?
- We were looking for all the jewelry
that Marvin had reported missing
from the scene of the homicide.
- Because, obviously, that's gonna be
a critical component
to tying our suspect to the crime.
- But the search for the stolen jewelry
doesn't yield any results,
and investigators remain desperate
to find Minnie's killer.
Meanwhile, her family and friends can't see
beyond their enormous grief.
- Minnie and I, we didn't have a lot of friends.
But we had each other.
Even though Minnie and I didn't visit a lot,
but we talked to each other at least five times a week
for 30 minutes at a time.
I was shocked when somebody killed her.
I didn't sleep much.
- To be honest with you, I wasn't in the frame of mind
to try to figure out
who did this or who could have done this.
I was in the frame of mind, I wanted to see my mother.
I wanted to see her.
So that's the only thing I really cared about.
It was tough.
My mother was looking forward to Christmas.
She already had decorated the home,
and she had already started buying Christmas gifts
for her grandkids.
My oldest son, Trevor, was ten years old
when this happened.
My youngest son, Tristan, was five.
[somber music]
My neighbor across the street, he told me,
"Your kids gonna look at you, how you handle this."
[crying]
He said, "They're gonna look at you, how you handle this."
So I had to handle it.
* *
- As Minnie's family navigates a holiday without her,
investigators grapple with a stalled investigation.
[tense music]
- We were thinking, we need to come up with something.
Something's got to present itself.
- Four days after the murder,
detectives get a call from Samuel Matthews.
He is a former employee of Minnie and Marvin's.
He used to work at the liquor store,
and he knows a lot about the Smiths.
- Samuel Matthews contacted the police on his own
because he felt compelled because he thought
Minnie Smith was a good woman,
and she did not deserve to die that way.
- Sam Matthews tells us
that Marvin has significant anger issues
and overheard him saying, "I want out of this marriage."
- Samuel Matthews says, "Hey, when I worked with Marvin,
"he would talk about how he didn't like
this relationship he had with Minnie."
* *
But it was gonna cost him if he was gonna get a divorce.
Marvin would say, you know, "I didn't work for all this
"for the sake of having Minnie remarry somebody else
"who was gonna get half of everything
we've accumulated."
The only way he said you can get
out of a relationship like that is when someone dies.
The other thing that Sam Matthews
lets the detectives know
is that Marvin is quite the ladies' man
and has a number of relationships
going on with other women.
That is hugely significant because now it brings
all kinds of other possibilities.
Could it be some other woman?
Could it be that Marvin wants out of the relationship?
Could it be some other woman that he's involved with
would kill Minnie?
* *
- But detectives can't just take Matthews' word for it.
They need proof to back up what he's telling them.
- In a case like this, you sort of have
to tread lightly with the information
because we don't know if this guy is just
out to get Marvin for some reason
and giving us bad info.
- Investigators confront Marvin with Sam's accusations,
but Marvin counters with an equally damning claim.
- Samuel has some things in his background
that could make him a less reliable witness.
He claims that he quit working at the liquor store.
But Marvin claims that he was fired
because he had been stealing
thousands of dollars from the business.
- Detectives don't know who to believe,
Marvin or Sam.
But with no other leads, they circle back
to the robbery theory.
If Sam allegedly stole from Marvin once,
he might have decided to do it again.
- Hearing that Marvin fired Sam and that he was allegedly
a thief also raises concern about Sam.
Did he take the jewelry and the money?
Did he perpetrate this crime?
So he becomes a person of interest immediately.
- Investigators focus their attention on Matthews.
What they learn makes him even more suspicious.
- Police discover that Samuel was the only employee
who knew where the Smiths lived.
- As a former employee
and a friend of Marvin at one point,
he would know how to get into the house,
maybe where the safe is.
- Could this be the kind of person
that was seeking retaliation from the Smiths
after being fired?
Could he even have staged this murder to frame Marvin?
[dramatic music]
* *
- Orange County detectives investigating the murder
of 66-year-old Minnie Smith are closing in
on a new suspect, Sam Matthews.
- Samuel Matthews was a disgruntled employee,
that he had an axe to grind with Marvin for firing him.
Matthews knew where Marvin lived.
He knew that he had a lot of money.
- Any time you get a piece of information that raises
an eyebrow toward somebody, you start to wonder
if they're your suspect, so of course he was
a person of interest.
- Detectives quickly locate Matthews
to nail down his story.
* *
- Just like we did for Marvin, we'll go back and say,
"Hey, well, what's your alibi for the day?"
- But ultimately, Samuel Matthews had
an airtight alibi.
- Sam Matthews is working in the yard,
and he had neighbors who could substantiate that.
- Also, if you are going to get revenge,
you might steal from Marvin, you might rob him,
you might murder him to get his money that's on his person,
but I don't think murdering someone's wife is the way
that they're gonna do it.
- So in the long run, Sam was eliminated
as a person of interest.
- With Sam out of the picture, investigators turn back
to something he told them about Marvin.
- Sam Matthews told us that Marvin had several affairs
with other women.
- Police learned that Marvin Smith had this love nest
where he would take various lovers.
- That was significant in that it gave us
more people of interest in the case.
Maybe it was one of the girlfriends.
- Detectives reach out to Minnie's family to see
if they've heard the rumor.
Much to their surprise, it seems
that Sam's claims were true.
- In speaking with family
and friends of the Smith family,
it appeared that Minnie was aware of the girlfriends
and the affairs.
- My friend was not the jealous type.
Even though she knew Marvin was doing little tricks,
she didn't get upset and cry about it.
Once she let him know that she knew what he had done,
it was all right with her.
- My mom, she didn't care.
Only thing she cared about was her family and her grandkids.
She was living in her dream home
and living the life she wanted to live.
- Minnie might not have cared
about her husband's philandering,
but detectives know that not all women
are willing to share.
- In my career, I've seen jealous, unstable girlfriends
commit several crimes.
So we just have to find out who they are
and speak with them.
On December 20, 2005, we got a search warrant
for Marvin's phone and financial records.
- So when we look at those phone records,
we can see that over the past couple weeks,
that Marvin's made maybe seven, ten calls to his wife,
but over 100 calls to another woman.
- The associated name on the phone records is Beverly.
They call her number
and ask, "Is this Beverly?"
She says, "Yes."
They ask, "Well, what is your relationship to Marvin?"
And she says, "Well, Marvin is my brother,"
and then she hangs up the phone.
- But we established
there was no actual family ties between them.
Then we talked to another one of Marvin's girlfriends
who actually called Marvin "Big Daddy."
And she claims that she, at one point,
caught Beverly and Marvin together
in one of his apartment buildings
having relations.
- So Beverly's credibility is highly suspect,
and it's clear she's trying to conceal something.
- And then in reviewing Marvin's financial statements,
we discover he had a bank account in the amount
of $230,000 with Beverly.
- Obviously, this would get your attention.
Why would you have $230,000
in the account with this woman?
- Knowing that Marvin uses his rental properties
as a love nest, detectives come up with a plan
to see if they can learn more about the couple.
- At this point in the investigation,
we determined that we needed to write some search warrants
to check out his apartment complexes in Los Angeles.
We were just trying to cover all our bases
and search all his property,
anything that might establish a suspect.
- While investigators wait for the warrants to come through,
they conduct follow-up interviews
with various people connected to the case.
That's when one witness makes a surprising about-face
on his statement.
- A delivery man that was working in the area
of Beach Circle on the day of the murder
who stated that he saw Minnie Smith's car
go into her garage around 1:30 p.m.
the day of the murder
changed his story significantly.
- He originally reported that he had seen Minnie
actually driving the Lexus, but then he backtracked a bit.
- He said, "Well, I never saw her directly."
So it's unclear as to what he saw or didn't see.
It could have been he remembered seeing Minnie
on a different day driving into her house.
- So it changes the whole timeline
on when Minnie was home.
- The uncertainty of the witness
opens up the possibility that Minnie was, indeed,
already dead when Marvin left the house
on the morning of the murder.
- So it would seem that Marvin's alibi
could be unraveling.
- A week after the murder,
the search warrant comes through
for one of Marvin's LA properties
that police suspect might be the location
for some of his extramarital activities.
- On the 23rd of December,
officers serve a search warrant.
- What we found in the apartment complex
was trash cans full of receipts,
love notes to his girlfriends...
- And here's the bombshell.
In the trunk of Marvin's car,
they find the stolen jewelry,
including pieces with a Cadillac emblem
and a big gold M.
So this is a piece of evidence in his car
miles away from the crime scene
that says this guy is connected to this crime.
- During the search of the vehicle,
Marvin Smith drove up.
- So then we asked, "Hey, you told me,
"when we first talked to you, these things were stolen.
"You told me that these items were stolen
"from that floor safe.
Why in the world are they in the trunk of your car?"
[dramatic music]
* *
- Orange County detectives have just discovered
missing items from the scene of Minnie Smith's murder
in the trunk of her husband's car.
- Marvin basically said, "Oh, yeah, I forgot
"that I put those in there for safekeeping.
That's kind of what I do sometimes."
Detectives knew he was clearly lying.
- Detectives take a closer look at Marvin's alibi
and find more holes in his story.
- Police dig a little further into Marvin's shoulder injury
and the fact that his doctor said
he could not lift his arms above his shoulder height.
When police talked to Marvin's employees
at the construction site, they tell police
that on December 15th, the day of the murder,
they actually saw Marvin pick up a sledgehammer
and swing it a couple of times.
- And there's DNA evidence on the tape
that puts Marvin's DNA with that jewelry
that he said was stolen.
And I think this is that physical piece of evidence
that ties Marvin to the crime.
- So on December 23rd,
detectives arrested Marvin Smith
for the murder of Minnie Smith
right in front of his love nest.
[somber music]
- Two days before Christmas, I learned
that they arrested Marvin.
And to be honest with you, I don't recall where I was,
but I was furious.
- When Bennie Jr. realized that Marvin was
the person who killed his mother,
he was so out of control.
- I went straight over to the Cyprus Police Department,
and I will never forget.
Marvin was in the back of the police car,
and the police walked right up to me
right away, holding me back, and said, "Go home."
But I wasn't in my right mind.
I was furious.
- In December 2007, Marvin Smith goes on trial
for his wife, Minnie's, death.
- I would always watch his expressions
while the different people were testifying,
but his facial expression never changed.
You wouldn't think he was a murderer.
He just sat there and listened.
- The prosecutor paints a picture
of a cold-blooded killer with a well thought-out plan.
- Marvin Smith bludgeoned his wife to death
with a log roller...
[dramatic music]
* *
Bound her hands behind her back
with a coat hanger
and her legs with duct tape.
He then lit her feet on fire
in order to somehow make it look like possibly torture
to locate the floor safe.
And then he staged the house
to make it look like a burglary.
To murder her with such force and repeated strikes
to her head and leave her in a pool of blood
is particularly cruel.
I mean, this is your wife of 28 years.
- The DA pointed out that Marvin had been
siphoning off money from the couple's accounts
and putting it into this private, secret account
that he shared with Beverly to the tune of $230,000.
- Investigators are never able to connect Beverly
to any criminal wrongdoing, but during court testimony,
they get her to admit that, unbeknownst to his wife,
Marvin set up their joint bank account
and secretly deposited over $200,000
into the account over time.
According to prosecutors,
Marvin's motive is all too clear.
- At the core of this case is greed.
Marvin Smith did not want to split his money
with his wife in the event that they parted ways.
- All the jurors, once they heard
the type of person my mother was,
they all were in tears.
They couldn't believe that this could happen to my mother.
- The evidence is powerful.
The jury doesn't need to deliberate for long.
- On December 17, 2007,
Marvin V. Smith was convicted of first-degree murder
for killing his wife, Minnie Smith.
He receives a sentence of life in prison.
[somber music]
- I'm still furious about what he did to my mother.
But I'm working on myself
so I can see my mother again in heaven.
I feel what's making my mother proud
is family, my wife, my two boys,
and now I have grandkids.
So that's my celebration to my mother,
is to keep my family together and keep her memory alive.