Killer Set to Be Sentenced in Shooting of Actress, 22

Nine years ago, Marie Thorne of Sun Valley, who was out on the town celebrating her 22nd birthday, was shot to death when the attractive man she met in a Sunset Strip nightclub was attacked over a drug deal after they left the club.

Today, Gregory Smith is scheduled to be sentenced by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza for Thorne’s murder and could be given a maximum sentence of life in prison. He was convicted in September of Thorne’s murder.

Smith, 40, who has a criminal record that began in his teens, was convicted on an illegal drug charge in Riverside County two years ago. It was while serving a four-year prison sentence for that crime that Smith, also known as Gregory Augborne, was connected to the April 25, 1989, shooting of Thorne and her companion, Shanon Thames.

Thorne, who had dated Thames before, ran into him at Carlos n’ Charlie’s, a popular nightclub, while celebrating her birthday.

Sometime during the evening Smith approached the couple and demanded $40,000 from Thames, Thames testified.

“He just asked me did I drop some money off,” Thames testified at Smith’s trial. “We . . . got into each other’s face.”

Eventually, Smith backed off and at 2 a.m. Thorne and Thames headed home in his car. When they stopped at a nearby gas station, Greg Smith drove up in his car. Smith got out, walked over to the couple’s car and knelt next to the passenger window, Thames testified.

“I didn’t even see the gun,” Thames testified. “Shots started ringing out . . . I remember opening up the door and falling into the street.”

Thorne was shot five times in the chest. One bullet pierced her wrist--a defensive wound, according to the coroner’s autopsy report.

Thames was hit four times.

Bleeding profusely and fading in and out of consciousness, Thames made what he thought was a death-bed statement saying, “Greg Smith shot me,” according to court papers.

LAPD Det. Dennis Kilcoyne picked up the murder case when he was a homicide investigator at the Hollywood LAPD Station and carried it with him when he transferred to the downtown robbery-homicide unit.

But he could not find Smith. “It’s been something that I wondered about from time to time,” Kilcoyne said. “Frankly, I thought he was dead.”

Kilcoyne said in an interview that Smith shot Thames over a bad drug deal and executed Thorne so there would be no witnesses. Over the next year, Thames would sustain six additional bullet wounds in two more shootings.

“He’s got nine lives,” Kilcoyne said. “But if he rolls up his sleeve or pulls up his shirt, his body is an absolute disaster.”

Kilcoyne said that the shooting had its roots in the late 1980s, when Thames worked for Smith, who ran a crack house and was then one of the most prosperous and ruthless drug dealers around. But their relationship eventually soured, Kilcoyne said.

Thames, who ran a rental car service, provided Smith with a white stretch limousine to conduct a Northern California drug deal. While driving on the Golden State Freeway, a truck driver saw someone in the limousine holding a gun and hailed the California Highway Patrol on his citizens band radio, Kilcoyne said.

Officers stopped the limousine nine miles south of Los Banos, arrested the four occupants, confiscated several weapons and two satchels--one filled with $2.2 million worth of cocaine, the other with $160,000 in cash.

Smith blamed Thames for the bust and on the night of April 25, 1989, he decided to collect on his debt, Kilcoyne said.

In 1996, Riverside County sheriff’s deputies, acting on an anonymous tip, caught Gregory Smith and another man exchanging briefcases of drugs and money, Kilcoyne said.

Smith told deputies his name was Johnson, but two days later his fingerprints were matched with his true name. Donna Thorne, the dead woman’s mother, moved her family to Los Angeles in the early 1970s to be in movies, she said. Her tattered photo albums hold pictures of her standing next to stars like Martin Sheen and Morgan Freeman. She had a modicum of success, landing bit parts on network television and producing shows for cable access channels.

Daughter Marie Thorne won small parts, like a speaking role in the 1985 television movie, “The Atlanta Child Murders.”

Eventually Marie started bringing home new boyfriends and expensive gifts, Donna Thorne said. She started running with drug dealers and gangsters--the ruthless circle of friends that would eventually be her downfall.

Thinking back on her daughter’s end, Donna Thorne shakes her head: “Isn’t that a price to pay to be somebody?”

In a statement to the court Donna Thorne said she had “forgiveness in my heart” for Smith but nevertheless urged the judge to lock him up for life. The murder, she said, “has destroyed the goals and dreams of my family . . .I don’t want any other mother to go through what I’ve gone through.”