Welcome back to the Pathway Chili. I'm Robin, I'm Jules, and I'm
Ashley. So before we dive into this week's case, I wanted to take
a second to share something super magical with our listeners. You guys are getting
another fun friend to hang out with on the Pathway Chili because I am expecting
a new baby coming October of this year. Yay yay, So I'm excited
we look for and having this little bundle of joy co host with us about
ten years from now. Hey man, Reagan already has to digest everything,
but this one. I'll be growing up listening to true crime too, So
everybody buckle up and get ready. May sixth, nineteen eighty eight, Burbank,
California. Crystal Spencer, a twenty eight year old aspiring actress working as
a topless dancer, phones her sister and mentions that she's feeling ill. No
one hears from Crystal after this, and one week later, her decomposing body
is discovered in a corner inside her apartment. She is nude from the waist
down, entangled in her telephone cord, and the coroner is unable to determine
her cause of death. However, neighbor's report having heard screams from Crystal's apartment,
and her boyfriend notices odd discrepancies in her autopsy report which make them suspect
that she was a victim of foul play. After that, the path what
a chili. So today we're going to explore a pretty strange case which was
featured on Unsolved Mysteries, the Unexplained nineteen eight death of Crystal Spencer. This
is the story of a small town girl who moved to Hollywood with aspirations of
becoming an actress, but wound up coming to a tragic end. However,
the exact circumstances what actually happened to her a big mystery. All anyone knows
is that Crystal was found dead inside her apartment one week after she was last
heard from. For her body was so decomposed by this point that no one
was able to determine how she died. It's possible that she simply succumbed to
an unknown illness, but there are enough bizarre elements in this story to suggest
that she may have actually been the victim of foul play. Cristel's biggest advocate
was her boyfriend Anton Kleine, who is quite a unique character himself, and
has pushed forward the theory that Cristel was murdered and that the potential perpetrator was
a former police officer who became a murder victim himself less than one year later.
But we'll delve into that in a little while as well. To try
to determine the most likely explain for Crystal Spencer is bizarre death. This one
is really bizarre because you had the phone call to her sister where she says,
I'm feeling ill and if that's all we had, and later she's found
decomposing in her apartment, you could almost wonder is it something where she was
truly sick? Is it something where she had ingested something earlier that evening?
But then when you start to talk about the way she was discovered, where
she's nude from the waist down, she's entangled in a telephone cord, and
there's screaming herd coming from her apartment. That's it's horrifying. You know that
something makes it to the effect that she's been a victim of foul play.
This couldn't have been an accident. It doesn't sound like something where she would
be going through a mental health crisis. We've seen those cases where mental health
actually ends up being the issue, but this one seems so bizarre that it's
where the coroner says there's an undetermined cause of death. It seems like there's
foul play clearly based on the way she's discovered. Yeah, it's definitely a
weird one because they couldn't find anything on the autopsy report to figure out how
she died, so if it was natural causes, it was likely an illness
that no one had ever heard of before. So it's definitely one of those
cases where there's no explanation that makes one hundred percent complete sense. Our story
begins in Burbank, California, in nineteen eighty eight. Our central figure is
twenty eight year old Crystal Spencer, who originally hails from the small northern California
town of Yukaiah. Like many young women, Crystal dreamed of becoming a famous
actress and left home to make a move to Los Angeles in nineteen eighty two.
Unfortunately, Crystal had little success finding much acting work, so in order
to pay the bills, she took a job as a topless dancer at the
Wild Goose a club located near Los Angeles International Airport. The job paid decent
money, and Crystal could take home hundreds of dollars in tips every night,
but as the years passed, her attempts at an acting career never went anywhere,
as the only job she was able to procure were two small roles in
television commercials. In May of nineteen eighty seven, Crystal became involved in a
relationship with Anton Klein, a PhD candidate in history who was attempting to find
success as a screenwriter. Even though Anton was nearly a decade older than Crystal
and they hailed from different backgrounds, the two of them hit it off.
According to Anton, he helped broaden crystal cultural horizons by introducing her to the
world of museums, art galleries, and classical music. However, Crystal would
not tell Anton about her job as a topless dancer, and he only found
out about it four months into their relationship as a friend of who has just
happened to see her on stage at the Wild Goose. Even though Anton was
not happy about Crystal's profession, he knew that it was helping her make ends
meet and reluctantly accepted it. I think anybody who cares about someone would be
concerned about this kind of career and this kind of lifestyle because of who Crystal
would have been exposed to and the way that you view her with respect and
love and care. And then you assume that the people who are frequenting her
bar are not doing the same. So I absolutely understand the concern and kind
of frustration that that's the way she has to be making money right now.
But it's interesting that Crystal's working hard. Her site is set. Yes,
she's at the topless bar, but she continues to go on. She's trying
to get these acting jobs and it just doesn't work when you have people in
these big cities and you have, you know, minimum wage jobs going on.
It's no wonder people turned to a career like this, and I don't
think they're always, Especially in the eighties, I don't think you were really
aware necessarily of all of the risk and all of the things you were going
to be exposed to, right that this wasn't just a job that you went
to and you got to go home. There were bigger risks associated with that.
Yeah, I think that Antin was particularly understanding because he was kind of
going through the same thing, like she wanted to break in as an actress
and he was hoping to break in as a screenwriter as well, So he
knew what the struggles were at trying to find work on Hollywood, and the
difference was Anton did have a full time job which paid the bills, but
he also understand stood that the options may have been a bit more limited for
Crystal. So he figured, well, I'm not particularly happy that she's working
in a place like this, but I'll let her do it because it helps
her Meatan's meet. The couple's relationship continued on for a year until Anton stopped
by Crystal's apartment in Burbank on May fourth, nineteen eighty eight. Crystal was
sick with the flu, but she had some important news. She was being
considered for a potential job opportunity in Japan. The three month gig would involve
working as a hostess girl at a Japanese nightclub, but even though Crystal was
nervous about the idea of living abroad, she was determined to go for it.
In fact, before she got the job, she had made an entry
in her journal which read quote, I feel stuck. I'm going to get
unstuck. God guide me, get me out of the wild goose by the
end of May end quote. After Anton left Cristel's apartment, they spoke on
the phone again the following night, and she told them she was feeling much
better. On May the sixth, Bristol had a telephone conversation with her sister
Julie, who lived in Torrance at the time. Their mother was renting temporary
quarters from a family in Los Angeles, and Cristel asked for her new phone
number. According to Julie, her mother had told her to only use it
in the event of an emergency, and since Chrystel had a tendency to talk
people's ear off on the phone, Julie pretended she did not have the number.
Cristel responded by saying she was really sick and could hardly make it to
the bathroom, but Julie figured she was just being over dramatic and refused to
give out the number. Their call soon ended, but this would turn out
to be the last time Crystal was confirmed to be alive. Oh poor Julie.
I feel really bad for her. She's doing what her mom asked like,
Hey, listen, your sister talks my ear off, don't give her
this number, and Julie's doing what her mom told her to, but to
be holding that, you know, my sister is now deceased. She didn't
feel good. She was wanting to reach out to my mom. That's heavy.
That's a lot of emotional baggage to carry, and a lot of guilt
to carry even though it's not needed. And then you also have from May
fourth to May six that Crystal is pretty sick. She obviously is telling Anton,
I have the flu. I feel really sick. By the time she's
talking to her sister, she said, I can barely make it to the
bathroom, and I feel really sick. It sounds like she was distressed too
about work at the time. Was there ever any testing to see if someone
at work could have been doing something like poisoning her or making her ill,
or even potentially did they know if work knew she was sick and therefore compromised
or weaker at the time where someone might see her as more of a victim.
It's kind of weird because there's going to be some ambiguity about when exactly
was the last time Crystal went to work, and I don't we might talk
about this on this episode or the next. But years later, her brother
would make a comment on a message board talking about all these rumors that he
had heard that Crystal may have been poisoned and this was the source of her
illness. But we don't really know when or where this poisoning would have taken
place. But if it is, what happens as we're going to talk about.
They obviously did not find any traces of poison in her autopsy. Yeah,
that's what I was wondering. If she was poisoned, she might have
been in a weaker state. But it's clear from what you see or what
you're hearing, it sounds like someone then came to her apartment to hurt her.
Because being nude from the waist down and having the cord wrapped all around
her, it seems would she have done that herself. That seems a little
bit bizarre. I've got a question for you, Robin. Okay, So
I don't know if either of you are very familiar with hostess culture in Japan,
but I remember I've listened to a couple episodes. I think God Rotten
Mango and Stephanie Sue went into the culture really deeply. There was a case
rather recently where a hostess murdered a host from another bar and she was like
thought to be too pretty to kill in the press and all this. And
then there's another case where a Korean man who was quite wealthy who was living
in Japan killed a British woman who was there working at a hostess club.
She goes really deeply into the culture there, and it's really really interesting.
But the Yukuza thought to be pretty involved in a lot of these clubs,
because organized crime is often involved in a lot of those types of clubs.
So I find it interesting that she was considered for a job opportunity at a
hostess club in Japan. I wonder how she would have procured this interview,
how she could have got this job opportunity. Do you know any of those
details? Unfortunately we don't really. I mean, she just said she was
being considered, she had never actually gotten hired. But aren't any specific details
about how this process worked, if she actually talked to someone from Japan or
auditioned at some sort, or if it would have gotten given her the opportunity
to cross paths with some shady characters. So probably know, it just could
be a thing where someone liked her looks and says, oh, you'd be
good over in Japan. But it's not clear to me if she still had
like more of an addition process before she got the job. I was just
wondering if maybe she was mixing with certain people that maybe knew somebody that was
like, hey, you know friend of mine, or you know a relative
or whomever runs this club back home, and you would be great for it,
because it's not like today, you know, back then it was obviously
there wasn't the Internet, so you couldn't just apply for a job online.
You would either have to see like some posting physically somewhere, or you would
likely have to know somebody or read something in the classified section of the newspaper.
Maybe yeah, And it isn't really even true whether she was getting this
job through the Wild Goose or if she actually read about it independently. I
mean, we're going to talk about a former cop that had a lot of
connections in Los Angeles, and it's very possible that Crystal could have gotten this
gig through him. But it's just a lot of details are murky because I
don't think Crystal shared too many details with their friends and family about how she
was looking to procure this job. Anton claimed that the next time he tried
to contact Crystal was on May eighth, but after calling her number multiple times,
he kept getting a busy signal. He contacted the operator, who told
him that Crystal's phone was off the hook, and this did not concern Anton
too much since Cristel was a very disorganized person who had a tendency to leave
her phone off the hook after she finished a call. Anton then spoke to
the door man at the Wild Goose to ask if anyone had seen Crystal,
and he was told that she hadn't worked there for a couple of days because
she left for Japan. Anton figured Cristel already left to start her new job
without saying goodbye, and even though he found that unusual, he believed she
would soon call him from Japan. Well. On May thirteenth, which incidentally
happened to be Friday the thirteenth, neighbors from Crystal's buildings started complaining about a
foul odour coming from her apartment, so the police were notified. When they
arrived and went inside, they discovered Cristel's body. She was resting in a
corner nude from the waist down and dressed only in a red shirt. Her
body was entangled in her telephone cord, and there were no records of any
calls from her apartment since she last talked to her sister on May sixth.
By this point, the body was in an advanced state of decomposition, which
seemed to indicate that Crystal had been dead for several days before she was found.
There were no signs of any forced entry, and while the apartment was
in a state of disarray with belongings scattered everywhere, Crystal was not an orderly
person and her place was often a mess, so this did not prove that
a struggle had taken place. An autopsy was performed, there were only slight
traces of alcohol and marijuana found in crystal system well. There was no indication
that she might have died by suicide. There was no signs of trauma or
assault on her body either. In the end, while the authorities were inclined
to think that Crystal died of natural causes or some unknown illness, the Los
Angeles County Coroner could not figure out what killed her and officially ruled her cause
of death to be undetermined. Okay, So for me, I'm overwhelmed when
you say there was no sign of any kind of struggle or foul play that
had taken place. It didn't kind of physical attack on her. I was
sure there'd be some kind of indication that she was strangled or something because of
the way her body was found. But then I'm thinking, Okay, if
she's let's say, dying of an illness, or she can't catch her breath
or she can't breathe and she's panicking, could she have gotten caught up in
the phone cord. Possibly, But it seems so bizarre to me that you
know, she's working at this club, she's complaining of being sick for several
days, which I mean would allude to there being some natural cause going on
leading up to her death. But she is in a high risk lifestyle.
She is engaged with people who likely do deal in criminal activity and violence.
And so the fact that Anton hadn't heard from her, the fact that no
one hears anything. And it's odd too that Anton says I didn't hear from
her and it wasn't concerning because I thought she'd call from Japan. It kind
of shows how Crystal lived. There was probably a very risky lifestyle there where
she's not checking in with people all the time. It's not abnormal for her
to go missing for a couple of days and not contact you. That signifies
a kind of high risk lifestyle too, So I'm shocked. I'm kind of
a speechless when you say nothing was found that could show someone put their hands
on her body. I was sure that was going to be what happened.
Yeah, when you hear the detail about the timeelephone chord, that really does
sound on the surface like there's a violent struggle. But I guess it's not
impossible that if she was having a violent seizure or something, or she was
having a bad reaction, that she could have attempted to call nine one one,
but before she dibbed the number, she kind of fell over something like
that entangled herself in the chord. Because that is the one piece of evidence
which points to foul play. Yet there's nothing else in the apartment that indicates
that someone else was there and could have murdered her. Did they do a
rape kit? That's actually never been clarified, and I am actually curious about
that. But I think if they had found any semen or any signs of
sexual assault, I think they would have recorded it. But then again,
because of the decomposition, I don't know if that can kind of skew the
results or something so that you can't really tell if someone has been sexually assaulted
after a certain period of time. I was also wondering, and that I
obviously not a forensic pathologist, so I don't know. But depending on how
many days somebody has been dead, is there any way that that decomposition could
mask some signs of physical assault. It is possible, Like I've studied other
cases like that, I don't know the exact timeline, like I've seen it
in cases where say someone has been murdered in an outdoor area in a rural
area, and they've been out in the elements for several days or a week
before their body is found, and then there's so much decomposition that they say,
we can't say with any certainty if this person was raped or sexual assaulted.
But I don't know if things would reach to that point if she's been
dead for about a week inside an apartment. So on several occasions, Crystal's
family requested a viewer body, but was told by the Coroner's office that it
was in no condition to be seen. In spite of this, her family
was given the impression that Crystal was the tragic victim of a fatal illness and
had no reason to believe that anything was amiss. Crystal's body would soon be
cremated, and her friends and family held a private memorial service in which her
ashes are scattered beneath the Hollywood Sign. However, Anton would soon uncover information
which led them to believe that Crystal may have been murdered. It turned out
that at around four am on the morning of May to seven, two of
Cristel's neighbors, who lived downstairs beneath her apartment, were awoken by what sounded
like a woman screaming. The neighbors were Jet Taylor and yes that is his
real name, and his Deionce Susan Aiken, who happened to be semi famous
since she was a former Miss Mississippi who won the Miss America pageant in nineteen
eighty six. The couple believed that the screams were coming from Crystal's apartment and
thought they also heard some gagging and choking sounds. At first, they thought
it might have been a sexual s and m thing, but the noises continued
on for a great deal of time, and begot the impression that they were
genuine screams of pain. Susan would describe it as sounding like someone being tortured
while being continuously burned with a cigarette putt. However, even though Susan wanted
to call the police, Jet did not want to get involved, figuring that
it might be a domestic dea, which wasn't their business, so he talked
her out of it. Later that day, Jet did tell the building's landlord
about the screams and advised him to check it out, but he did not
want to get involved either. After Jet and Susan learned about Crystal's death,
they finally shared their account of the screaming with the police, but claimed that
the officer they spoke to seemed disinterested and dismissive of the murder theory. In
fact, he seemed to imply that Cristal was a drug addict who died of
an overdose and told them quote, don't you believe she was just sick?
Well, I mean you can have both. You can have yes, that
she was sick and that she was also a victim and in fact, that's
often more probable than someone who's not sick being a victim. So that's a
really insensitive and frustrating comment to have an officer make. It seems just uneducated.
Right. The more sick someone is someone who's an addict, someone who's
homeless, someone who's in a high risk lifestyle, then they also have a
higher threat of being the victim of foul play. So anyway, that's an
ignorant comment. But when you go back and you hear these screams, they
don't sound like a sexual scream like you could even think about was she using
that chord to sexually exphyxiate herself? But then there's also no sign of strangulation
or anything. So that doesn't make any sense because let's say you were into
erotica where you were using a chord so powerfully that it would have you pass
out a little and come back and pass out and come back. Then you
would see marks, or you would have some kind of act of you know,
discolouration around her neck or something. But that's not how they found her.
They said, there's no sign of any kind of foul play, And
at first, a chord tightly around your neck or signs that you had something
tightly around your neck would indicate potential of foul play. So that doesn't seem
right. And the longevity of her screams like she's almost being tortured, is
really concerning, because again, if it's sexual and she alone in that apartment,
how often are you hearing screams? How long do you hear those screams.
The neighbors clearly picked up that there was a concern, and it's almost
like that concern was kind of shut out because there wasn't any evidence to point
to foul play, so they just said, let's chalk it up to her
being sick. Did they stop short of investigating the way they needed to to
get a clear answer of whether or not it was natural, accidental, or
homicide. Whenever I think of autoerotic asphyxiation, I think of the case of
David Carrodine where he was doing it and I think he was living in Thailand
at the time, and then he was found deceased, and it was like,
is there more to it or is it just that this was something that
he liked to engage in. Yeah, I remember that was kind of a
big controversy. I know that the consensus seems to be that it was just
an accident where he just kind of went too far and inadvertently caused his own
death. I mean, in Crystal's case, like, even though she was
wrapped in a phone cord, it didn't really look like autoerotic asphyxiation and didn't
look like she was strangling herself. But I do wonder though, like about
the illness explanation. If you're like violently ill and you feel like you're dying
or something, are you going to have the energy to scream for a prolonged
period of time. I mean, I know that that's what the police think,
is that she died of an illness, But is that typical to cause
reaction just to start screaming for a long time. I don't think so.
I feel like, if she had this strength to be sitting there like moaning
and screaming to a point that sounded next door like she's being tortured, why
not pick up the phone call nine one one. Why not walk to your
neighbor's house and be like, I'm so sorry, but I think I'm dying,
Like I'm scared. You would do something like that, wouldn't you?
If you had the energy to sit there and for hours be in so much
pain as to scream. I feel like you could find a way to get
assistance in the time that that took. I agree, it just seems unlikely
that you'd be screaming and wailing so loudly, and that does take a great
reservoir of energy to continue on with that. So unless you were restrained in
some capacity or unable to walk, maybe she'd suffered some kind of seizure or
something like that, and maybe he was unable to use her limbs properly.
I don't even know what would be an explanation for being able to be so
loud vocally but not being able to move your body physically. Anton also became
suspicious when he found Crystal's camera in her apartment and decided to develop the film,
which was inside. The last time they saw each other, Anton and
Crystal had taken eight photographs of themselves together, but there was a ninth photo
on the roll featuring a man with a mustache sitting at Crystal's table, whom
Anton did not recognize. He eventually figured out the identity of the man and
gave his name to the police, who interviewed him and dismissed him as a
suspect. Well, Anton does not believe this man was in in Cristel's death.
The fact that police did not even bother to check Crystal's camera themselves made
him question the thoroughness of their investigation. He continually asked for Crystal's autopsy report
and was refused on multiple occasions, but finally received a copy from the Los
Angeles County Coroner's office. It was here that he noticed some very odd discrepancies.
The report listed Crystal as five to seven and one hundred and forty pounds,
but this was not accurate at all. Only three weeks before her death,
Crystal had visited a clinic and their medical records listed her as five feet
tall and one hundred and five pounds. In addition, Crystal had metal pins
and plates in her right ankle from an accident that she'd suffered nine years earlier,
but the report made no mention of this, and stated that her body
was tested for foreign objects such as metal, but turned up nothing. This
made Anton wonder if the autopsy report was for the wrong body. In fact,
given that the advanced state of decomposition had made Crystal virtually unrecognizable when she
was found. Anton even pondered the possibility that the body in Crystal's apartment might
not have actually been her. However, investigators would maintain that the discrepancies in
the autopsy report were nothing more than clerical errors. They claimed that they ran
the body's fingerprints through both county and state files and positively identified her as Crystal.
Believe it or not. By the time they did this, the fingertips
were too deteriorated for normal printing, so they actually had to surgically remove her
fingertips from her body and send them to a lab to make a formal ID.
The official explanation for the height and weight discrepancies was that mismeasurements of height
can occur when a body is bent or toes or pointed, and the body
weights could be miscalculated by fifty pounds or more when workers failed to account for
the weight of movable gurneys the body is resting on. It should also be
noted that no X rays or dental records were used to officially identify Crystal,
and that the coroner's office failed to keep any tissue samples for further review before
her body was cremated. Okay, so, what did they do properly?
I mean, like, how do you know any of this was proper when
there's all of these discrepancies. It's frustrating. Like I said, it feels
like with the comment where they said, or she's just sick, Like did
you think about that? You know, it's almost as if that was their
conclusion from the get go. And we've talked about so often, Yes,
her body was incredibly decomposed. Yes there's not a clear sign that something happened.
But if they went in assuming this is a natural death or an accident,
did they fall short of putting the time and resources into it? And
when you get a report and you see that there's all these discrepancies, how
do you not think that they dropped the ball here? This is one of
those cases where, even if Crystal's death was natural causes, you can understand
Anton for being so angry about this and wanting to perform his own in independent
investigation because he believed she could have been murdered. And we always talk about
how with every death scene you should always treat it as a potential homicide at
the outset and only go towards natural causes or accidental death or suicide if the
evidence takes you in that direction. But it seems like here they just automatically
assumed it was some sort of illness or natural death and did not do a
proper investigation and seemingly made every clerical error imaginable when cataloging her body, so
that by the time Anton started checking into it, he was finding like all
these discrepancies which made him believe that a major screw up occurred here. So,
even though Crystal's body was no longer available, Anton had several medical experts
review Crystal's autopsy, and they all concluded that an additional investigation should be performed.
One of the experts he consulted was doctor William Eckert, a renowned forensic
pathologist who had worked on the post mortem of Robert F. Kennedy, and
he thought there was a possibility that the exact cause of Cristel's death was strangulation.
In spite of this, the Burbank Police Department continued to maintain that they
had already performed a full investigation and found no evidence of murder. They claimed
their inquiry revealed that Crystal had a history of alcohol and drug abuse and had
threatened suicide in the past. The official autopsy report even contained quotes from Crystal's
friends who claimed she was depressed about her situation and had developed a drinking problem,
and Cristel's own mother even described her as having a quote unquote unstable personality.
Even though Jet Tailor and Susan Aiken had reported hearing screaming from Cristel's apartment
during the early morning hours of May the seventh, another neighbor apparently told police
that they heard the sounds of someone who was violently ill, which started during
the day on May the sixth and gradually got worse as the night went on.
If these sounds were made by Crystal, then this will lend credence to
the idea that she was suffering from a fatal illness. While her exactly cause
of death was listed as undetermined, a coroner spokesman was quoted as saying that
out of the approximately eighteen thousand deaths investigated in Los Angeles each year, there
are about forty or fifty where it is just impossible to tell how the victim
died. However, there was some uncertainty about how sick Crystal actually was on
May to sixth, as she allegedly danced at the Wild Goose that night,
even though the club did not have a record of Crystal signing in for that
ship. A waitress friend of hers and the club's security officer recalled her having
worked there on Made the sixth and May the six Just to recall, that's
the night that she was talking to her sister. That's the last time she
had the phone call, Yes, exactly. So the way she was acting
on the phone with her sister does not seem like she would have been working
that same day. So there is a possibility that maybe these employees are just
mistaken about the night she was there. Yeah, Either that she's playing it
up for her sister, or and she's not really sick, which decreases the
likelihood that she's dying of natural causes. Or is she so desperate that she
needs that money or feels so desperate that she needs that money and goes is
there someone that night that poisoned her? Again, because you hear of people
who will say, yeah, you know, there'll be a case where there's
a poisoning death, but you go the wife tried to kill him on May
thirteenth, it didn't work. She just got really sick or he just got
really sick, and then tried again on April fourth, and then tried again
on May six, Like, is it possible she did go to work and
someone slips in the air drink and then broke into her apartment that night as
well? I mean it is possible because I remember Anton, when he last
saw Crystal, said that she was very sick. But then when he spoke
to her again on May the fifth, she told him that she was feeling
much better. And then all of a sudden on May the six when she
talks to her sister, she's very sick again, and so sick that she
says she can't make it to the bathroom. So if this was a poisoning,
I guess it is possible that someone attempted it the first time it did
not work, so they may poison her again sometimes between me the fifth and
the sixth, and this time it actually did work. And you see here
too that this renowned forensic pathologist says he thinks that it actually could have been
strangulation. If you think it could have been, how is everybody else so
clear that no, it's not. Her body was so decomposed to immediately say
we're confident that this is either this is natural causes, nothing happened, and
then you have a world renown forensic pathologist who comes in and says, hmm,
I actually believe that, you know, strangulation is a high probability.
To just rule that out seems wild to me. The fact that she was
an exotic dancer might have factored in, especially since they thought that she had
a problem with alcohol, that she had mental health issues, and the potentially
an issue with drugs as well was brought up. I just think that there
they may have lost their vigor to investigate, and we're just too quick to
go, oh, this was obviously just accidental. It was an illness.
It was not murder. Just like they were too quick to write her off
because she was like the less dead. Yep, she's a less valuable victim,
right, the invaluable victim. That seems wild. Anton continued to believe
that a cover up was being orchestrated for Crystal's death. He claimed that he
spoke on the phone with law enforcement officials who told him, quote, bad
things happened to bad girls. When Anton asked for clarification about what that statement
meant, the official replied, quote, you know, exactly what I mean
before abruptly hanging up. Crystal's mother filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles County
Coroner's Office over the mistakes with the autopsy report, while Anton filed suit against
Burbank PD on multiple occasions in order to garner access to their files about the
case. On each occasion, the courts ruled against Anton, but he made
sure to keep Crystal's story in the spotlight, as it was profiled on an
episode of Unsolved Mysteries in March of nineteen ninety one, and featured on such
TV shows as Hard Copy and A Current Affair. The Los Angeles Times published
an extensive article about the case in February of nineteen ninety two, and one
of the original detectives, Kevin Kraft, claimed that Anton had accused him of
being associated with Japanese organized crime. Well. A few weeks later, the
Times published a letter that Anton had written to the editor in which he denied
ever having said this. It was during this article that Anton named a potential
suspect in Crystal's death. Horace McKenna, a three hundred pound bodybuilder nicknamed Big
Mac. McKenna, was a former California Highway patrol officer who was fired and
spent time in prison after he was caught passing counterfeit money. After he was
released, McKenna became the owner of a bunch of talkless bars, one of
which was allegedly the Wild Goose. As a convicted felon, McKenna could not
legally get a permit to operate these bars, which is why he was not
listed on their financial reas and was considered to be a secret owner who took
home a bulk of the profits. McKenna was known for being a very eccentric
figure who lived on a forty acre estate which housed exotic animals like monkeys,
wildcats, and alligators. He also allegedly operated an illegal gambling casino out of
a warehouse in Inglewood, and, according to a waitress who worked at the
Wild Goose, Crystal often spent time at the casino. He was rumored the
McKenna often held parties for his friend's law enforcement and used some of the women
from his populace bars to entertain them. Well, whether or not he's a
murderer or not, this guy clearly is up to no good because he can't
even get a permit to operate a bar, he's a convicted felon, and
yet he lives this luxurious lifestyle. So you have to step back and say,
where did you get those funds? Like you're not even able to procure
certificates and permits and things you need to run a business establishment, So where
are you laundering your money from? How are you getting access to all of
these funds, and yet you can't legally operate an operation a legal operation.
So it's definitely a concerning friend and associate to be linked to. And it's
concerning that he has his law enforcement friends over at these almost you know,
near illegal parties where you don't know what's going on there. But that's not
surprising all the time. What does Anton think? Does he know that there
was trouble between the two when he throws his name out, because that's a
big accusation. Well, that's the thing is that, as we're going to
talk about, Torus, McKenna was already dead by the time Anton started publicly
accusing him. He is quite a shady character. You could probably do a
whole podcast episode on just McKenna himself because of all the stuff he was involved
in throughout his life. But the problem is is that we still aren't even
one hundred percent certain if he ever crossed paths with Crystal. I mean,
it's rumored that he was a secret owner of the Wild Goose, and we've
heard all the stories about these parties he was hold, but it's nothing more
than your saying gossip, because I don't think anyone has ever verified that,
Yes, Crystal often spent time hanging around McKenna and entertaining some of his friends.
So it could be just be a thing where this is like Anton's speculation,
where he's heard about this guy and he automatically assumes that because he was
involved in such shady stuff that he had to have a role in Crystal's death.
We know she was really depressed about her situation, that she'd had people
close to her that had said as much, and we don't know if she
knew Horace McKenna. But is it possible that she was really depressed about her
situation not just because she was working at the Wild Goose, but maybe because
something happened at one of these parties at Horace McKenna's, Because it seems like
there's a potential that there could be some powerful people there. We know that
there's friends in law enforcement, but we have to think maybe there's other people
who were higher up, and did she know too much? Did she see
too much? Was there some motivation to silence? Sure, it is certainly
possible, and there have been a lot of rumors like that that have spread
over the years, even though they've never been confirmed. And I can see
something where if Crystal had to attend one of these parties and she was sexually
assaulted by, say a law enforcement officer, I could see a remaining silent
about that and not telling Anton because she didn't initially even want to tell him
that she was working at a topless bar. So if she was getting involved
with in situations where other men were having sex with her or raping her,
I could see her not telling Anton and then being very depressed about it because
it doesn't seem like to both of you that I mean. Now, it's
a little bit different if you're going to move abroad and start a completely different
job, But it seems more extreme back in the nineteen eighties because you'd have
to get calling cards, you'd have to use payphones, less people spoke English,
you didn't have translation apps, you didn't have the internet, you didn't.
You couldn't call on your smartphone. These weren't options, and there was
no cell phones back then. There was no computers or there was no internet.
There was computers, but you just didn't have that option. So to
make this decision, especially when you already have a boyfriend, you have to
ask the question is what are the reasons that she's running away? Is she
running away because she isn't happy, is she trying to leave her problems,
or is there a specific incident that she's trying to flee from. Well,
that's the thing is that she apparently said that her gig in Japan was only
going to be about three months, so it would just be a temporary thing.
It wouldn't like pause her to uproot her life or anything. But it
is kind of frustrating that we have no more details about the Japan gig,
about who got it for Crystal and who she hooked up with, because if
it was something to do with Horace McKenna, then you can kind of see
that maybe there are aulterior motives here that if McKenna is connected to Japanese organized
crime, maybe he's sending her over there to entertain friends of his. But
we just don't know anyway. By the time Anton publicly expressed his suspicions about
McKenna, he had already become the victim of his own murder. On March
ninth, nineteen eighty nine, ten months after Crystal's death, a government fired
twenty rounds into McKenna while his limousine was parked outside his match in Brea,
California. The prime occurred only hours after court records were unsealed, which revealed
that a Los Angeles district attorney was investigating McKenna and his business partner, Michael
Woods for tax fraud. Anton would eventually learn that the FBI had been keeping
a file on Crystal, and although they turned it over to him, twenty
one pages of documents from the file were withheld. This made Anton suspect that
Crystal was working as an informant for the FBI as part of their investigation into
McKenna, which may have put her life in danger. Well. Even though
mckennon's murder was still unsolved at the time Anton pointed the finger at him,
there would finally be a resolution in two thousand. It turned out that mckennon's
death was a contract killing orchestrated by his partner Michael Woods and another business associate,
David Amos, who paid a gunman named John Patrick Sheridan twenty five thousand
dollars to shoot ni Kenna so that they could take control of his businesses.
In exchange for their testimony, Amos and Sheridan each received twenty year sentences from
manslaughter, while Woods was convicted at his trial and received a sentence of twenty
five years to life for hers degree murder. Throughout all this, no evidence
was ever found to connect Horas McKenna to Crystal Spencer or implicate him in her
debt. The investigation into Crystal's death was never reopened, so the actual circumstances
of how she died continued to remain unknown. So I guess you could say
the path went Chile. Okay, let's rewind to where Anton eventually learned that
the FBI was keeping a file on Crystal and they turn it over to him.
There's twenty one pages withheld. That's a big document that the FBI has
on her for what? Question mark for what? Because something bigger's going on
than her just being a topless dancer who might struggle with alcohol. Something bigger's
happening, So, yes, you withheld this information. Is it that she
was an informant? It doesn't have to be mckinna, but it could be
someone who finds out she's telling about the Topless Bar. A lot of human
trafficking and sex abuse goes on in these bars, a lot of undercover prostitution
happens, All kinds of things occur in these places, drug deals. So
if she was being in an informant, whether it's related to McKenna or not,
that is a high risk position to have her in as well. And
what in the world was the file started for in the first place. Yeah,
that is the most frustrating element of this case that we've never found out
what was in that file or what Crystal would have been doing for the FBI,
which just seems crazy that this topless dancer who wants to become a Hollywood
actress would become involved in something like this. Part of me is wondered if
maybe it has something to do with her so called Japan trip, like maybe
it was some sort of undercover assignment where she was going to be sent over
there to help the FBI with an investigation. But that's all just speculation.
We still don't know. And even though, like McKenna, was already dead
by the time Anton tried to inquire about this file, they still would not
give him this information about why exactly they were keeping her on the payroll.
See. To me, that's a major red flag and problem. I don't
think the FBI has a file on me, unless it's because of my Internet
searches. But the fact that there was even a file on her says that
there was something bigger going on in Crystal's life that clearly none of us are
aware of. So I think this would be a good time to bring an
end too Part one, but join us next week as we present part two
of our series about the unexplained death of Crystal Spencer.