In the autumn of 1999, brothers Kevin and Ricky Nettles were known as hardworking businessmen, running a car wash and a mechanic's shop in Los Angeles, California. Described by their older brother, Frank, as just "regular guys," they were dedicated to their work and their family. Ricky was a family man with a fiancée, Shonta Anderson, and two grown children, Dashan and Brandi. Kevin was a beloved brother and son.
Their lives, built on enterprise and family ties, were horrifically cut short in a crime that baffled their loved ones and took over a decade to solve.
On the evening of November 10, 1999, Kevin and his brother Ricky were at their car wash when they were approached by men posing as police officers. One of these men was later identified as former NFL defensive end Anthony Wayne Smith. An employee at the business witnessed the abduction, later testifying that Smith, dressed in a suit and tie with a badge on his belt, claimed he was taking Ricky "down for questioning." The brothers were forced into a car and taken from their business, leaving their family to wonder what had happened.
The following day, their bodies were discovered. They had been dumped about eight miles apart. The investigation revealed the horrifying nature of their final hours. Both brothers had been shot, and their heads were bound with duct tape. They had also been tortured, with U-shaped branding burns found on both of their cheeks. Ricky Nettles had endured additional brutality, with numerous burns across his abdomen and feet, some in the shape of a clothing iron. For years, their family had no answers, and the case went cold. "It's been rough, especially because the kids are involved," Ricky's fiancée Shonta said years later.
The break in the case came more than a decade later when investigators linked Anthony Wayne Smith, a former first-round draft pick for the Raiders, to the murders. Smith was already under investigation for other violent crimes. When police reopened the Nettles case, a search of Smith's storage unit uncovered law enforcement paraphernalia and books about how to commit murder, with titles like "Kill Without Joy!" This evidence, along with witness testimony, painted a grim picture of Smith's descent from a celebrated athlete to a serial killer.
In 2012, Smith was charged with the murders of Kevin and Ricky Nettles, as well as the 2001 murder of another man, Dennis Henderson. The family was shocked to learn of Smith's alleged involvement; he was a complete stranger to them. "They had never seen him before in their lives," Frank Nettles stated. The subsequent trial brought the painful details of the brothers' last moments to light. An eyewitness who had seen one of the brothers in a car with Smith on the night of the kidnapping and reported it to police, only for the report to go nowhere, finally had his testimony heard in court 13 years later.
On November 5, 2015, a Los Angeles County jury found Anthony Wayne Smith guilty of three counts of first-degree murder, with special circumstances of kidnapping and torture. He was sentenced in January 2016 to three consecutive life sentences in prison without the possibility of parole. While the jury could not reach a verdict on a fourth murder charge against Smith, the conviction for the Nettles and Henderson murders finally brought a measure of justice.
For the Nettles family, the legal conclusion was the end of a long and agonizing wait. Ricky's son, Dashan, who had served five years in the Navy and graduated from college, expressed his sorrow that his father never got to see his accomplishments. The conviction ensured that the man responsible for the brutal and senseless killings of Kevin and Ricky Nettles would spend the rest of his life behind bars, unable to harm anyone else. The family could finally begin to heal, though the memory of the two "regular guys" who were so violently taken would never fade.
