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The magazine salesman who rang Lauren Smith’s doorbell off Hyde Park Road at 7:30 p.m. late last month claimed to live with his mother around the corner. He said he was trying to sell enough magazine subscriptions to pay for a trip to London, and his deadline was that night. James Combs showed Smith a list of magazines but she protested they cost too much. She said she’d prefer to give him the money directly and offered to write a check for $40. Combs demurred. He said he would have to give her check to someone else — he mentioned a local hospital — and argued she would be better off buying the magazine subscription. She declined. All during the conversation, he kept saying, “Don’t hate me,” Smith recalled recently. She said the nervous but “likable-looking” young man “didn’t look threatening at all.” He even told her his mother had suggested he offer to do slave labor for neighbors and gave her an address and telephone number — which turned out to be false. The next day, Combs and a few other door-to-door magazine salesmen associated with a company called World Wide Circulation were charged with the murder of a - more available