If you are listening to this episode that means you are subscribed to Patreon at the $5

and above tier levels, and this episode is a thank you for your generous support.

In this month's regular Patreon bonus, our story took place in South Orange County, California.

So for this episode, I wanted to bring you a different kind of story from the same general

area.

We're going from a deadly obsession to a case about two ambitious young men who saw a chance

to take advantage of an opportunity to make a lot of money along the affluent coast of

Southern California.

This is the tale of business and betrayal, the vanishing of Chris Smith.

You may or may not have listened to the other episodes that I uploaded on Patreon for this

month, the tale of when he wore his psychoshirt.

But the woman at the center of that story lived in Laguna Beach, California.

And when I read that detail, Chris Smith's story automatically popped into my mind because

that's where he lived, too.

I wanted to do this story several years back, but things were still unfolding.

Now, for the most part, the case has just about reached its conclusion with the exception

of one thing, and we'll get to that.

Chris Smith has such a generic name.

It was really hard to do any actual searching about him, but if you find articles specifically

about this case, then you can mostly fill in the blanks about who this young man was.

He did live in Laguna Beach, and he very much enjoyed water sports of all kinds, especially

surfing, water skiing, and wakeboarding.

...