Hollywood star’s death reignites search for suspect in ’80s murder

The search for a murder suspect thought to have fled to California got impetus from the release last week of new images — and, before that, from the death of Robert Redford.

Thayne Alan Smika disappeared in 1986, after a grand jury in Colorado declined to charge him in the death of his roommate Sid Wells. The case had drawn wide attention because Wells was the boyfriend of Shauna Redford, and her famous father showed up at the funeral.

Robert Redford’s death last year renewed interest in the case and in the whereabouts of Smika, who is the subject of an arrest warrant backed by new evidence.

After he disappeared from Colorado, Smika’s car was found abandoned in October 1986 in Beverly Hills, and more than 10 years later investigators gave credence to a tip that he was living in Ventura or Oxnard. Now 67, he remains missing.

On Friday — a day before the anniversary of Wells’ 1983 slaying — the Federal Bureau of Investigation released drawings of what Smika is likely to look like now.  The FBI flyer said Smika “may be residing in California”; he also is thought to have spent time in Yelapa, a beach town in the Mexican state of Jalisco. Since last year, the FBI has offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to his arrest and conviction.

Wells was a 22-year-old journalism student at the University of Colorado when he was killed by a shotgun blast in the apartment he shared with his brother and Smika. Two months later, Smika was arrested — investigators said the motivation was a dispute over rent money. But the grand jury did not return an indictment, and the Boulder County district attorney declined to charge Smika.

It wasn’t until 1997, when Smika had long been absent from Colorado, that the case was revived by an FBI ammunition analysis that reportedly linked him to the crime.

The following year, Boulder police investigators went to Ventura County on a tip that Smika was working at a plumbing company in the area, the Los Angeles Times said. The police said he was thought to have been in Southern California since the mid-1980s.

Though the ammunition analysis was eventually called into question, in 2010 the Boulder County district attorney said investigators had turned up new evidence, and an arrest warrant for Smika was issued, the Boulder Daily Camera reported.