Family of Businessman Murdered in San Juan Sues Police Department

Three family members of Christopher Ryan Smith, who was killed in June 2010 in a San Juan Capistrano office in what investigators say was a business deal gone bad, have filed a $30-million claim against the city of Laguna Beach for allegedly botching the investigation.

Smith, a Laguna Beach resident at the time of his killing, was a business partner in a San Juan Capistrano-based Internet advertising company, 800Xchange. His partner, Edward Younghoon Shin, an Irvine resident, was arrested for the crime last August after boarding a flight to Canada from LAX. Sheriff's deputies say Shin confessed to the murder, but also that he refused to reveal the location of Smith's body, which resulted in a large-scale combing of a remote section of San Diego County last week by 100 people who were looking for evidence.

A second suspect, Kenny Roy Kraft of Laguna Niguel, was also later arrested.

Now three of Smith's family members, Paul, Steven and Deborah, have filed suits of $10 million each against Laguna Beach, claiming that the city bungled the initial investigation of Christopher Smith's disappearance by failing to do their work properly and promptly. The claim also alleges that LBPD investigators were negligent and caused the family severe, undue emotional distress.

Smith's parents filed a missing persons claim with the city in March 2011. They last heard from him in 2010, and received emails from South Africa, purportedly written by Smith, which detailed an extended adventure he was having. Detectives believe those emails were faked by Shin, who hacked Smith's email account and sent the family the emails as a way to cover up the murder months before.

The family hired a private investigator, who compiled clues and eventually contacted Orange County Sheriff's Department investigators, who pinpointed the 800xchange offices where blood evidence turned up. Investigators think Smith was murdered there by either or both Shin and Kraft to avoid paying $1 million to Smith to buy out his interest in the company.