Unsolved Boulder Murder Haunts Robert Redford’s Family as Suspect Remains At Large

A Boulder, Colo., murder from 1983 remains unsolved and the principal suspect, Thayne Smika, is still on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, authorities say the case is active and new evidence continues to surface. The killing of Sid Wells rattled a college-town community and shadowed the life of entertainer Robert Redford for years, because Wells was dating Redford’s daughter, Shauna Redford, at the time. Wells’s death occurred in the fifth-floor Spanish Towers condo where he lived with his brother Sam, a fact that has been central to the investigation since the crime scene was discovered on a Sunday morning in August 1983. The case file has persisted in part because the relationship between Wells and Shauna Redford placed a high-profile public lens on the search for a suspect who could never be definitively tied to a conviction.

The case’s public memory is inseparable from Redford’s involvement. When Shauna called from Colorado to tell her father that her boyfriend had been shot to death, Redford halted production on The Natural and rushed to be with his daughter. He was in Buffalo, New York, at the time, filming the baseball-themed drama, and the actor reportedly flew back to Colorado after receiving the news. Shauna attended Wells’s funeral in Longmont, and the family press narrative from that period emphasized the devastation of a life cut short and the shock of a crime that appeared to shake a quiet corner of Boulder County.

Investigators say Wells, 22, had been shot execution-style in his own living room, with Sam Wells discovering his brother’s body after returning from a weekend camping trip. An affidavit filed years after the killing suggested that Smika, then Wells’s roommate, was implicated in the crime. In the months after the shooting, authorities recovered shotgun pellets at the scene that matched pellets from a shotgun owned by Smika’s mother, and hair recovered from the scene was consistent with hair from Smika’s cleaning kit. Smika, then 24, was arrested, but Boulder County District Attorney Alex Hunter concluded there was insufficient evidence to convict at the time, and the case went unsolved.

In 1997, new District Attorney Stan Garnett reopened the case and issued a warrant for Smika’s arrest, but he had vanished. Investigators traced Smika’s abandoned car to Beverly Hills, and theories emerged that he had fled to Mexico. The FBI later issued a $10,000 reward for Smika’s capture in 2012 after multiple witnesses reported seeing him in California and police recovered his car, fueling speculation that he may have left the United States. The rumors of sightings persisted for years, including reports of Smika in Orange County and a Home Depot in Sacramento. Yet no definitive evidence tied him to the murder, and Smika has remained at large for decades.

The case file itself has drawn renewed attention as newer investigators take stock of old evidence. Boulder police spokeswoman Dionne Waugh said the file remains active and that detectives continue to receive leads, though she cautioned that case details cannot always be discussed openly. “This case file is still very much active,” Waugh told Daily Mail, emphasizing that the department has not given up hope that Smika will be found and that new detectives, unfamiliar with the old case, may bring fresh perspectives to the inquiry. Retired Boulder County deputy police chief David Hayes also holds to the belief that Smika is alive, noting that local sightings and the lack of confirmed death records have kept the mystery alive for decades.

“All these years later, there have been reports and tip-offs that keep surfacing,” Hayes said. “There were no death records on file. Even if he died in a motel somewhere on his own, without identification, the coroner would have taken fingerprints and been able to match them with the prints on file in Colorado. We also continued to get reports of Smika being spotted.” Hayes, who worked in the area during the early stages of the investigation, said new detectives are approaching the case with “fresh eyes” and a readiness to pursue leads that older investigators may not have fully exploited.

The Wells family’s story is intertwined with Shauna Redford’s life. In the years following her boyfriend’s death, she moved forward, later marrying Eric Schlosser, the author of Fast Food Nation, in 1985. The couple had two children. Shauna Redford, now in her 60s, has spoken little in public about the case, but those close to the family say Wells’s death left a lasting impact on her and on her father, who remained deeply protective of his daughter in the years afterward.

Wells’s brother Sam described a quiet tragedy in which a young man’s life was cut short on a day when a roommate’s rent was due, a detail that has remained a recurring thread in the case. Wells, a journalism student at the University of Colorado, Boulder and a member of ROTC, had been living in a building whose high-end condo setting contrasted starkly with the violence of the crime. The day of the murder, Wells had reportedly accused Smika of stealing cocaine, an assertion that figures into the affidavit recovered by investigators after years of inquiry.

Despite the persistent scrutiny, the case has never reached a courtroom verdict. The unresolved nature of the Wells killing has left a lingering sense of incomplete justice for those who knew Wells and for a national audience that followed the Redford family’s ties to the case. The FBI’s continued interest — including the reward announced in 2012 — underscores the seriousness with which authorities treat Smika’s disappearance and the potential relevance of any new physical evidence, witness testimony, or links to Smika’s later movements.

In Boulder and beyond, the Wells case remains a cautionary tale about the fragility of closure in violent crime and the ways in which a famous name can shape public memory. The local police department has stressed that even decades later, new investigative paths can emerge when fresh eyes apply modern forensics, new data analytics, or previously overlooked corroborating details. As long as Smika remains unaccounted for, the case is likely to be revisited by investigators and revisited in public conversations about how law enforcement pursues long-term investigations when a suspect disappears.

The broader context of the Wells case also reflects the enduring tension between celebrity connections and real-world crime. Redford’s high-profile status, combined with a local tragedy in a quiet Colorado city, created a narrative that lingered in the public imagination for years. While the actor himself did not become a suspect and remained a witness to the sorrow of a daughter’s loss, his involvement helped keep the case in the public eye long after the initial investigation stalled. Today, as the case heads into its fourth decade, law enforcement officials say the pursuit of Smika continues not as a sensational sideshow but as a serious, ongoing effort to bring accountability to a violent crime that shattered a family and a community.