In the end, it was the killer’s own blood, found at the crime scene, that cried out and identified the murderer of a Sunset Beach resident.
An Orange County jury on Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2010 convicted a Long Beach resident in the 1988 murder of the defendant’s high school friend. DNA evidence placed the man at the scene of the crime.
Paul Gentile Smith, 50, was found guilty of one count of murder with special circumstances. The jury found that Smith had tortured the victim and used a deadly weapon during the crime. The jury did not accept the charge that Smith robbed the victim.
According to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, Smith could face life without parole.
The DA’s Office did not seek the death penalty in this case.
The murder conviction does not end Smith’s legal troubles. He is facing a separate jury trial on charges that he conspired with his girlfriend to have a lead homicide detective and a witness assaulted for $300.
Smith’s girlfriend, Tina Derae Smith, 47, pleaded guilty in that case on April 2. She was sentenced to five years of formal probation and 240 days in the county jail for one felony count of conspiracy to commit aggravated assault.
Chronology of a crime
On. Oct. 24, 1988, firefighters put down a fire in the Sunset Beach apartment of Robert Haugen.
They found a body inside the apartment.
An autopsy revealed the victim had been stabbed multiple times.
Haugen was nearly decapitated as a result, according to a recent DA’s Office statement.
At the time, the Harbour Sun reported that Haugen was a bricklayer who lost his job as a result of a workplace injury. More recently, the DA’s Office has identified Haugen as a marijuana dealer.
Orange County Sheriff’s Department investigators found blood at the crime scene. Some of that blood belonged to the victim and some of that blood belonged to someone else.
The case eventually went cold. DNA analysis did not exist in 1988. However, the evidence was kept in storage.
In 2009, Paul Smith was arrested in Nevada on a domestic violence charge. His DNA was eventually placed in a national database.
Smith’s DNA matched the DNA left at the Haugen crime scene.
It turned out that Smith was a friend of the victim.
In March 2009, Smith was extradited to California.
The murder trial began on Oct. 20, 2010, just four days shy of the 22nd anniversary of the murder.
Smith denied committing the murder. Smith testified that he visited the victim’s apartment the night before the murder to buy marijuana. He said he cut himself with a knife while cutting marijuana.
Smith admitted he had violent tendencies and had previously stabbed his girlfriend after she had reportedly stabbed herself—so she would have matching “his and hers” stab wounds.
Smith is scheduled to be sentenced on Monday, Nov. 29.
