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Reindicted years later. in summer of 2009, dave hayes showed up on our doorstep, with boxes and boxes of the investigative file, into the murder of sid wells. in december of 2010, 27 years after sid wells was murdered, the d.a. signed off an arrest warrant accusing thayne smika of murder in the first degree. at that time, thayne is essentially out, living in society. shortly after that arrest warrant was issued, that s the last we heard of thayne smika. there is not a day that goes by that i don t think about it. i would love to see thayne smika arrested and charged. it would make me very happy. i would be probably the happiest ....
Thayne was due to pay sid $300 he was going to take to his mother. we didn t find anything in that envelope. what was interesting to the police was that there were a number of small spots of blood found underneath the note that thayne wrote. it appeared that the note from thayne to sid and sam in the envelope was placed there after mr. wells was shot. the note from thayne said he was going to go visit his family in akron, colorado. so the detectives drove the two hours to question him. mr. smika did not appear to be particularly nervous. didn t appear to be too surprised the detectives were there. certainly wasn t surprised to learn that his roommate had been killed. police returned with a warrant several days later and found a 20 gauge shotgun in the back of a closet. the same type of weapon that killed sid. i remember feeling at the ....
Time that we probably had our man. we heard thayne had been arrested, we were elated, we re going to get the rest of the story now and find out what happened to sid. i had a feeling of relief that we had had solved the case. but within the next few days, the d.a. s office, who had approved the arrest warrant for mr. smika, came back to us and said they felt there was not enough evidence. as a result, they wouldn t be filing the murder charges against mr. smika. and then within a few days he was released. shock. absolute, complete, mist fiction. grief turned into anger that day. it represented to me at the time an undermining of the system. that s not the way the system is supposed to work. we appreciated dave hayes so much. he has never given up on sid s case. it is so uncommon for a dedicated detective to never give up on a 30-year-old case and to get the main suspect ....
Thayne smika was a new person in our lives. so we didn t know him very well. sam wells and his little brother sid were sharing an apartment in boulder, colorado, in 1983. they needed a third roommate. so they thought that thayne might be a good fit. he took the main room downstairs and i had the bedroom upstairs. they found after he did move in that he was not very sociable and i think he was having trouble coming up with rent money. at about 12:26 in the afternoon, the boulder police communications center got a report of a man not breathing. emergency. yes, this is sam wells over at station towers. and it looks like my little brother is dead. ....