WEBVTT

1
00:00:29.839 --> 00:00:33.759
Welcome back to the Path Went Chile
for part two of our series about the

2
00:00:33.840 --> 00:00:38.000
unexplained death of Crystal Spencer. Robin, do you want to catch everyone up

3
00:00:38.200 --> 00:00:42.039
what we talked about in our previous
episode? Well, Crystal Spencer was an

4
00:00:42.240 --> 00:00:46.159
aspiring actress who had spent several years
living in Burbank, California. She was

5
00:00:46.159 --> 00:00:49.799
twenty eight at the time. She
hadn't had much luck find the acting job,

6
00:00:49.880 --> 00:00:53.240
so she was making her living as
an exotic dancer at a club.

7
00:00:53.920 --> 00:00:57.759
She got involved with an older man
named Anton Klein, who was an aspiring

8
00:00:57.799 --> 00:01:00.159
screenwriter, and for years she didn't
want to tell him that she worked as

9
00:01:00.200 --> 00:01:03.879
an exotic dancer, but he eventually
accepted it and knew that it was a

10
00:01:03.879 --> 00:01:07.799
way to pay the bills. Crystal
had told Anton that she was being considered

11
00:01:07.799 --> 00:01:11.120
for a job as a hostess at
a club in Japan, and she seemed

12
00:01:11.159 --> 00:01:15.200
excited about it, but the last
time she spoke she sounded awfully sick,

13
00:01:15.319 --> 00:01:19.719
and her sister would say the same
thing as well. And then another week

14
00:01:19.799 --> 00:01:22.760
went by and no one heard from
Crystal, and when they finally checked her

15
00:01:22.799 --> 00:01:26.200
apartment, they found her decomposing body
in the corner and she was wrapped in

16
00:01:26.280 --> 00:01:30.760
a telephone chord, but there was
no obvious signs of forced entry or foul

17
00:01:30.760 --> 00:01:34.599
play, and since the police could
not figure out how she died, they

18
00:01:34.640 --> 00:01:38.719
listed her cause of death to be
undetermined, but it seemed obvious they believed

19
00:01:38.760 --> 00:01:42.439
that there was no foul play and
that she had succumbed to some sort of

20
00:01:42.480 --> 00:01:47.760
mysterious illness. But there were a
lot of weird discrepancies with the investigation,

21
00:01:48.079 --> 00:01:49.840
and I know that a bunch of
neighbors of Crystal said that they heard some

22
00:01:49.920 --> 00:01:56.120
weird screaming from her apartment around the
approximate time period she died. And there

23
00:01:56.159 --> 00:02:00.560
was some suspicion about a guy named
Horace McKenna, a corrupt apparently owned a

24
00:02:00.959 --> 00:02:06.120
share of the club Crystal was dancing, and he was involved in a whole

25
00:02:06.120 --> 00:02:09.319
bunch of shady stuff. And Anton
would later find out that the FBI had

26
00:02:09.360 --> 00:02:14.199
a file on Crystal to suggest she
might have been working as an informant,

27
00:02:14.280 --> 00:02:16.680
but a lot of the pages have
been removed, so he had no idea

28
00:02:16.800 --> 00:02:21.639
about what she was actually doing for
them, and he began to suspect that

29
00:02:21.719 --> 00:02:25.080
perhaps Horace McKenna had something to do
with Crystal's death and killed her, but

30
00:02:25.520 --> 00:02:30.639
he died a short time after Crystal
did, so they never had any evidence

31
00:02:30.680 --> 00:02:32.639
that they knew each other, let
alone that he might have been connected in

32
00:02:32.680 --> 00:02:38.319
her death. So after all these
years, it still officially listed as undetermined

33
00:02:38.719 --> 00:02:42.759
and no one has any idea how
Crystal died. So you can definitely draw

34
00:02:42.800 --> 00:02:46.840
some parallels between this story and a
case we covered on this podcast last year,

35
00:02:46.120 --> 00:02:50.800
and that's the nineteen sixty three death
of Karen cups in it. In

36
00:02:50.840 --> 00:02:53.280
both cases, the victim was a
young woman who was attempting to launch an

37
00:02:53.280 --> 00:02:59.000
acting career in Hollywood and seemed to
be struggling with their own personal demons before

38
00:02:59.039 --> 00:03:02.280
they were discovered dead inside their apartment, and no one could conclusively determine if

39
00:03:02.280 --> 00:03:07.120
they were the victim of foul play. I guess the biggest difference is that,

40
00:03:07.240 --> 00:03:10.680
unlike Karen Cupsonant, no one ever
attempted to link Crystal Spencer's death to

41
00:03:10.759 --> 00:03:15.599
John F. Kennedy's assassination, though
her autopsy report was examined by someone who

42
00:03:15.639 --> 00:03:20.599
worked on the post mortem for Robert
F. Kennedy after he was assassinated.

43
00:03:20.919 --> 00:03:25.560
So I guess everything did come full
circle Crystal's case is a particularly difficult one

44
00:03:25.639 --> 00:03:30.360
to get a handle on, since
there is compelling evidence to suggest her death

45
00:03:30.400 --> 00:03:35.520
being the result of natural causes and
the possibility of foul play. However,

46
00:03:35.599 --> 00:03:39.520
Crystal's biggest advocate is her boyfriend Anton
Klein, and if you read online discussions

47
00:03:39.560 --> 00:03:44.080
about this case, there are a
number of people who think there's something off

48
00:03:44.159 --> 00:03:47.199
about the guy. He does come
across as a bit strange in his interviews

49
00:03:47.319 --> 00:03:53.280
and seems rather snobbish when he describes
himself as this cultured individual who took a

50
00:03:53.280 --> 00:03:57.159
topless dancer under his wing and introduced
her to the finer things in life.

51
00:03:58.000 --> 00:04:00.680
There are also a few things about
his story which raised some red flegs.

52
00:04:01.319 --> 00:04:04.800
I think the one part I just
can't get a grasp on is the fact

53
00:04:04.840 --> 00:04:10.400
that Anton never even attempted to visit
Crystal's apartment during the time period he couldn't

54
00:04:10.400 --> 00:04:13.840
get a hold of her. As
you recall, he attempted to call her

55
00:04:13.879 --> 00:04:17.000
on Nyvy eighth and kept getting a
busy signal and the operator told him that

56
00:04:17.040 --> 00:04:20.399
her phone was off the hook.
That seems like something that should raise some

57
00:04:20.480 --> 00:04:26.439
major concerns, but according to Anton, Crystal was such a disorderly person that

58
00:04:26.560 --> 00:04:30.040
she had a habit of inadvertently leaving
her phone off the hook after she used

59
00:04:30.079 --> 00:04:33.839
it. But then another five days
passed before Crystal's body was discovered, and

60
00:04:33.920 --> 00:04:39.519
Anton only learned about it after the
police called him. He claims he tried

61
00:04:39.560 --> 00:04:42.439
to reach her at the Wild Goose
and was told by the dorman she had

62
00:04:42.519 --> 00:04:45.959
left for Japan, which is why
he never attempted to visit her apartment.

63
00:04:46.839 --> 00:04:50.120
Even so, it's strange that Anton
wouldn't have gone to her apartment first before

64
00:04:50.160 --> 00:04:55.399
trying to find her at the club. I definitely think it's odd. When

65
00:04:55.519 --> 00:04:59.680
we first described this case, Anton
does seem to be a big advocate for

66
00:04:59.720 --> 00:05:02.519
her. He is the one who's
trying to give different suspects. He continues

67
00:05:02.560 --> 00:05:05.519
to work with the police, he's
trying to get attention on her case.

68
00:05:05.839 --> 00:05:10.439
But then you have the other side
where he doesn't go to her apartment to

69
00:05:10.560 --> 00:05:15.959
check on her. But I do
wonder how in depth was their relationship.

70
00:05:15.040 --> 00:05:19.199
Remember, she supposedly didn't even tell
him she left for Japan, and that

71
00:05:19.319 --> 00:05:21.759
wasn't even crazy to him. He
said, she'll just call me when she

72
00:05:21.800 --> 00:05:27.319
gets there. So I wonder was
it someone that you know? Were Anton

73
00:05:27.360 --> 00:05:30.839
and Crystal the kind of couple that
were together every evening and they talked all

74
00:05:30.879 --> 00:05:32.839
the time. Or was it kind
of like him, like you said,

75
00:05:32.879 --> 00:05:35.600
being this more pretentious person who says, oh, I help her when I

76
00:05:35.680 --> 00:05:39.879
can, and she's a nice companion
to have, and it's kind of more

77
00:05:40.000 --> 00:05:44.319
flippant and not as engaged as you
would think of a partner would be.

78
00:05:45.360 --> 00:05:48.399
That is a possibility because I never
saw any indication that they were planning to

79
00:05:48.519 --> 00:05:53.040
get serious, like get engaged or
get married or anything in the future.

80
00:05:53.120 --> 00:05:58.120
So it's possible that maybe Anton is
over exaggerating how close relationship was, and

81
00:05:58.160 --> 00:06:00.879
if you look at the situation.
I know we talked about it extensively in

82
00:06:00.920 --> 00:06:04.480
Part one, this Japan trip,
and how little we know about it.

83
00:06:05.240 --> 00:06:09.879
There is a possibility. And I'm
not saying that Anton is responsible or that

84
00:06:09.920 --> 00:06:14.480
he isn't, because obviously we have
no idea, but we don't know.

85
00:06:14.560 --> 00:06:18.120
Maybe he's the one, or it
could have been even somebody who, like

86
00:06:18.160 --> 00:06:23.600
say, we'd suggested in part one
that if Crystal was sexually assaulted at say

87
00:06:23.639 --> 00:06:29.240
that casino that Horace McKenna owned,
and there was powerful people there, so

88
00:06:29.519 --> 00:06:32.319
if somebody wanted to set her up
and they wanted to buy themselves several months.

89
00:06:33.000 --> 00:06:35.480
You could say, Hey, I've
got a friend that's going to hook

90
00:06:35.519 --> 00:06:40.480
you up with this job in Japan, and then they've got Crystal going around

91
00:06:40.480 --> 00:06:45.399
telling everybody about this job opportunity in
Japan. And then when she goes missing

92
00:06:45.600 --> 00:06:47.959
or if she doesn't show up places, then they've got a few months before

93
00:06:47.959 --> 00:06:53.279
people start really asking questions, because
we know she was disorganized, and if

94
00:06:53.279 --> 00:06:57.079
we're to go on what Anton's saying, the fact that she wouldn't call before

95
00:06:57.120 --> 00:07:01.240
she left, that she would just
like impulsively kind to leave without telling her

96
00:07:01.279 --> 00:07:05.959
loved ones. If that is her
mo and that's the way that she operates

97
00:07:06.000 --> 00:07:12.720
in life, then that would be
pretty advantageous for somebody close to her if

98
00:07:12.759 --> 00:07:15.240
they were indeed trying to set her
up because of a situation such as that,

99
00:07:15.560 --> 00:07:18.600
or it could be something simpler.
If it was Anton, it could

100
00:07:18.639 --> 00:07:24.079
have been because she wanted to leave
the relationship and if she wanted to leave

101
00:07:24.160 --> 00:07:28.199
him, or if things weren't going
well. There could have been any number

102
00:07:28.240 --> 00:07:31.680
of reasons. You could see how
somebody could come up with this Japan thing

103
00:07:31.800 --> 00:07:35.480
and dangle it just like a carrot, and then hope that she bites and

104
00:07:35.560 --> 00:07:40.959
tells everybody about it, and then
they've got this time to one clean up

105
00:07:40.959 --> 00:07:45.600
the crime scene. Number two basically
just put some time between the act of

106
00:07:45.720 --> 00:07:49.240
killing and maybe they thought they would
dispose of the body but just weren't able

107
00:07:49.279 --> 00:07:55.000
to didn't have a vehicle, it
became too arduous to do so, so

108
00:07:55.040 --> 00:07:57.279
they just left her body there and
thought, Okay, well, now we've

109
00:07:57.279 --> 00:08:01.399
at least just got several days,
maybe a week before anyone ask questions,

110
00:08:01.399 --> 00:08:05.240
because they all are likely going to
think, what Anton is saying that she

111
00:08:05.399 --> 00:08:07.480
just left for Japan. Yeah,
that's a good point, because I think

112
00:08:07.519 --> 00:08:11.319
most spouses if they heard someone say, oh, your girlfriend left for Japan

113
00:08:11.600 --> 00:08:16.160
without telling anyone, they probably think
that's a major red flag and be pretty

114
00:08:16.160 --> 00:08:20.680
shocked by that. But everyone who
described Crystal said that she was very disorganized,

115
00:08:20.720 --> 00:08:24.600
she was very scattershot, She had
a messy apartment, So maybe that

116
00:08:24.759 --> 00:08:26.759
was kind of her personality, that
she would be the type of person who

117
00:08:26.800 --> 00:08:31.560
would just go off to another country
and then not even tell her boyfriend until

118
00:08:31.600 --> 00:08:37.679
after she arrived. It's also pretty
baffling that, in spite of all these

119
00:08:37.720 --> 00:08:41.879
suspicions about Crystal's death, her body
wound up being cremated, But to be

120
00:08:43.000 --> 00:08:46.440
fair, I get the impression that
the decision to cremate Crystal was made by

121
00:08:46.440 --> 00:08:50.360
her family and not Anton, and
that it may have been Crystel's wish for

122
00:08:50.399 --> 00:08:56.320
her ashes to be scattered beneath the
Hollywood Sign after she died. Her family

123
00:08:56.360 --> 00:09:00.600
maintained that even though they were not
allowed to view Crystal's body, they had

124
00:09:00.639 --> 00:09:03.600
been assured her death was a result
of an illness and had no reason to

125
00:09:03.639 --> 00:09:09.240
suspect foul play. It was not
until after the ashes were scattered that Anton

126
00:09:09.360 --> 00:09:15.440
received information which made him suspect that
Crystal was murdered. He showed the autopsy

127
00:09:15.480 --> 00:09:18.840
report to a number of medical experts, but of course, since exhuming Crystal

128
00:09:18.960 --> 00:09:22.840
and allowing them to examine her body
was no longer an option, there's no

129
00:09:24.000 --> 00:09:28.639
way they could conclusively determine that foul
play had taken place. I believe the

130
00:09:28.639 --> 00:09:31.480
immediate next of kin is the one
who can authorize the cremation of a body,

131
00:09:31.919 --> 00:09:37.639
So even if Anton had his own
suspicions at the outset, Crystal's family

132
00:09:37.879 --> 00:09:41.720
likely would have made the final call
about cremating her, and it might have

133
00:09:41.799 --> 00:09:46.720
been out of Anton's hands overall.
Even though I do think some of Anton's

134
00:09:46.759 --> 00:09:50.919
actions are a bit strange, I
just can't see him being involved in Crystel's

135
00:09:50.960 --> 00:09:54.080
death. The burmank PD were content
to write the whole thing off as some

136
00:09:54.159 --> 00:10:01.000
sort of illness, and since Crystal's
cremation essentially destroyed all potential evidence of foul

137
00:10:01.000 --> 00:10:03.720
play, Anton would have been completely
in the clear if he killed her.

138
00:10:05.240 --> 00:10:09.879
Yet he's the one publicly insisting that
Crystal was murdered, keeping the case in

139
00:10:09.919 --> 00:10:13.919
the spotlight, taking your story to
TV shows like Unsolved Mysteries, and filing

140
00:10:13.960 --> 00:10:20.200
lawsuits in order to garner access to
the police files. It just seems awfully

141
00:10:20.240 --> 00:10:24.799
brazen for Anton to do this if
he was responsible for what happened to play

142
00:10:24.879 --> 00:10:28.840
Devil's advocate. If Anton had an
ulterior motive for appearing on TV, it

143
00:10:28.960 --> 00:10:33.000
might have been to help launch his
own fledgling career as a screenwriter. Believe

144
00:10:33.039 --> 00:10:37.879
it or not, Anton Klein actually
has his own page on the Internet Movie

145
00:10:37.960 --> 00:10:41.159
Database, which only has one credit. In nineteen eighty seven, a made

146
00:10:41.159 --> 00:10:46.919
for TV movie was produced called Daniel
in the Towers, which covers the story

147
00:10:46.919 --> 00:10:52.759
of Simon Rodia the artist who constructed
Los Angeles Watts Towers. You can actually

148
00:10:52.840 --> 00:10:58.120
watch the film on YouTube and it
stars Michael McKean and a young Sean Harrison,

149
00:10:58.639 --> 00:11:03.120
who later found fame playing Wualdo Geraldo
Faldo on Family Matters. And yeah,

150
00:11:03.159 --> 00:11:07.240
that's probably the only time you'll ever
hear a Family Matters story referenced on

151
00:11:07.279 --> 00:11:13.919
this podcast. Anyway, Anton got
a story by credit on the movie because

152
00:11:13.960 --> 00:11:18.720
the script was based partly on his
doctoral thesis at UCLA. Because of this,

153
00:11:18.080 --> 00:11:22.200
Anton was hoping to become a full
time screenwriter himself, but his career

154
00:11:22.240 --> 00:11:28.080
never went anywhere. I suppose if
Anton was hoping to get himself noticed and

155
00:11:28.120 --> 00:11:31.279
potentially land some writing gigs, it
would have been in his best interest to

156
00:11:31.360 --> 00:11:35.600
keep his face out there by placing
himself at the center of a bizarre murder

157
00:11:35.639 --> 00:11:41.120
mystery. But regardless of Anton's intentions, I still don't believe he would have

158
00:11:41.120 --> 00:11:46.799
gone to the trouble of generating so
much publicity for Crystal if he murdered her.

159
00:11:48.840 --> 00:11:50.240
I'm in the same boat. And
when you go back to the idea

160
00:11:50.240 --> 00:11:54.120
where you're talking about her being cremated, it would have definitely been the parent's

161
00:11:54.200 --> 00:12:00.000
decision because Anton and her were not
longtime domestic partners living together. Correct,

162
00:12:00.960 --> 00:12:03.480
No, I don't think they had
ever lived together at any point. They

163
00:12:03.559 --> 00:12:07.120
just dated each other. Okay,
So in less Crystal, which she's not

164
00:12:07.120 --> 00:12:09.759
a very organized person, so she
definitely did not appoint probably someone to handle

165
00:12:09.799 --> 00:12:15.840
her burial. Legally, it is
the spouse or a long term domestic partner,

166
00:12:15.879 --> 00:12:20.039
and then it would fall to either
like adult children or parents if you

167
00:12:20.120 --> 00:12:24.279
didn't have a spouse or partner.
So for the idea that she was cremated,

168
00:12:24.360 --> 00:12:31.159
it is a little shocking because we
have this death and of course there's

169
00:12:31.200 --> 00:12:35.559
no sign of foul play according to
the police, but it's a very bizarre

170
00:12:35.639 --> 00:12:39.279
way her body was found. She
was decomposed. She only was wearing her

171
00:12:39.279 --> 00:12:41.519
T shirt if I can recall correctly, So she was nude from the waist

172
00:12:41.519 --> 00:12:46.320
down, and she had that telephone
cord wrapped around her. As a family,

173
00:12:46.039 --> 00:12:50.879
I would want to say, hey, listen, I need more.

174
00:12:50.919 --> 00:12:54.200
I need you to do more to
see how she passed away. She's so

175
00:12:54.320 --> 00:12:58.240
young, you don't see any big
signs of trauma to her body. But

176
00:12:58.279 --> 00:13:01.720
it's confusing to us. But they
made the decision to cremate her and that

177
00:13:01.799 --> 00:13:05.279
does take away any option, like
you said, to have any kind of

178
00:13:05.320 --> 00:13:11.919
analysis done down the road. When
did the neighbors tell the police about the

179
00:13:11.000 --> 00:13:16.519
screaming they heard? Was that before
she was cremated. I'm not entirely sure,

180
00:13:16.679 --> 00:13:20.480
but I know that we told on
the last episode that when they told

181
00:13:20.559 --> 00:13:24.279
the police, they didn't seem particularly
interested in it. So it's possible that

182
00:13:24.360 --> 00:13:28.679
even if they did tell the police, that Anton and Crystal's family never found

183
00:13:28.679 --> 00:13:33.000
out about it until much later.
See that's what frustrates me the police,

184
00:13:33.000 --> 00:13:37.240
the way they treated Crystal's death from
the get go is that she was simply

185
00:13:37.320 --> 00:13:41.559
this dancer who was probably dabbling in
drugs and things like that, and they

186
00:13:41.559 --> 00:13:45.039
just discounted the value of her life. And so they said, case closed,

187
00:13:45.159 --> 00:13:48.279
natural causes, let's be done.
And so if the family didn't have

188
00:13:48.360 --> 00:13:52.919
information, cremation is a much more
affordable option. It does allow her remains

189
00:13:52.919 --> 00:13:56.519
to be scattered in a place that's
important to her and not in a graveyard.

190
00:13:58.120 --> 00:14:01.360
And so I think I think you
have to feel just a lot of

191
00:14:01.399 --> 00:14:05.399
empathy for the family and say,
did they even have the information they needed

192
00:14:05.440 --> 00:14:09.919
to try to advocate for their own
loved one and why would Anton continue to

193
00:14:11.039 --> 00:14:15.360
push and push and push. Yes, he likes attention, Yes he seems

194
00:14:15.360 --> 00:14:18.879
to be full of himself. But
if you're the killer, at some point

195
00:14:18.000 --> 00:14:20.679
you want to start to distance yourself. When they've told you there is no

196
00:14:20.799 --> 00:14:24.440
murder, you go, thank you
Lord, right, and you back up,

197
00:14:24.840 --> 00:14:26.919
and you just let it go.
I don't think he'd keep pushing for

198
00:14:28.039 --> 00:14:33.519
years and years to get answers.
So now let's discuss the possibility that there

199
00:14:33.639 --> 00:14:37.399
was no murder at all and Crystal
simply died as the result of a serious

200
00:14:37.399 --> 00:14:41.120
illness. It seems that unsolved Mysteries
wanted to portray Crystal in the best possible

201
00:14:41.200 --> 00:14:46.720
light, as they never made any
mention of her substance abuse issues. I'm

202
00:14:46.720 --> 00:14:50.399
not entirely sure how serious these issues
were at the time of Crystal's death,

203
00:14:50.600 --> 00:14:54.639
but since there were only small traces
of alcohol and marijuana found in your system,

204
00:14:54.000 --> 00:14:58.240
it seems likely that you did not
die of an overdose. But there's

205
00:14:58.279 --> 00:15:01.399
been some debate about just how sick
Crystel was the last time she was confirmed

206
00:15:01.399 --> 00:15:05.399
to be alive. According to Anton, her case of the flu was nothing

207
00:15:05.440 --> 00:15:09.679
more than a bad cold, and
she was gradually getting better. The last

208
00:15:09.720 --> 00:15:13.840
time he spoke with her. But
then there's Cristel's final phone conversation with her

209
00:15:13.879 --> 00:15:18.039
sister Julie on May the sixth,
which has been the subject of some controversy.

210
00:15:18.559 --> 00:15:22.159
Julie claims that when she refused to
provide Christel with her mother's phone number,

211
00:15:22.399 --> 00:15:24.440
Cristel told her that she was so
sick that she could hardly make it

212
00:15:24.480 --> 00:15:28.360
to the bathroom. Since Crystel's death
is believed to have taken place during the

213
00:15:28.399 --> 00:15:33.360
early morning hours of May the seventh, the police took this exchange as an

214
00:15:33.360 --> 00:15:37.440
indication that she was suffering from a
serious illness at that time, which soon

215
00:15:37.559 --> 00:15:41.480
killed her. However, Julie insisted
that her sister was a drama queen who

216
00:15:41.519 --> 00:15:46.120
often liked to exaggerate things, and
believed that Cristel only said she was incredibly

217
00:15:46.159 --> 00:15:50.679
sick in order to garner sympathy and
convinced Julie to hand over their mother's phone

218
00:15:50.720 --> 00:15:56.399
number. So it seems like context
is everything here, But another neighbor apparently

219
00:15:56.399 --> 00:15:58.879
told police that they heard the sounds
of someone who was violently ill on May

220
00:16:00.240 --> 00:16:04.240
sixth, even though neither Anton or
Julie thought that Crystal sounded that ill during

221
00:16:04.279 --> 00:16:08.600
their phone conversations with her. However, the one thing which might discount the

222
00:16:08.639 --> 00:16:14.039
idea of Crystal being sick is the
possibility that she was working at the Wild

223
00:16:14.159 --> 00:16:18.080
Goose that night. Obviously, if
Crystal is out there doing topless dancing on

224
00:16:18.159 --> 00:16:22.440
stage, her owness couldn't have been
so bad that she could quote unquote hardly

225
00:16:22.480 --> 00:16:26.440
make it to the bathroom. There
seems to be a discrepancy about whether or

226
00:16:26.480 --> 00:16:30.559
not Crystal worked on May to six, as the club's records do not support

227
00:16:30.600 --> 00:16:34.720
this, but a waitress friend of
hers and the security officer believe she was

228
00:16:34.720 --> 00:16:38.879
there that night. Of course,
their memories may simply be faulty, but

229
00:16:38.919 --> 00:16:42.919
you could also infer that since a
potential suspect in her murder owned the club,

230
00:16:44.360 --> 00:16:47.799
this person might have fudged the records
to make it look like she wasn't

231
00:16:47.799 --> 00:16:52.159
working. But we'll get back to
him in a little while. This one

232
00:16:52.240 --> 00:16:56.120
is confusing because it seems like the
people that knew her most said she was

233
00:16:56.159 --> 00:16:59.240
exaggerating, right, it seemed like
she was sick, and then she told

234
00:16:59.279 --> 00:17:02.840
Anton she was feeling a lot better. Then when she's trying to talk to

235
00:17:02.879 --> 00:17:06.720
her sister and get her mom's phone
number. She says, Oh my gosh,

236
00:17:06.759 --> 00:17:08.039
I'm so sick. You got to
give me mom's phone number. I

237
00:17:08.079 --> 00:17:11.119
can barely make it to the bathroom. I need mom's phone number. It

238
00:17:11.319 --> 00:17:15.920
does seem to play into this idea
that maybe she was using an illness to

239
00:17:15.920 --> 00:17:21.160
try to get sympathy from Julie,
because remember, Julie's being told by mom,

240
00:17:21.480 --> 00:17:23.680
don't give out my phone number.
Your sister just calls and talks and

241
00:17:23.720 --> 00:17:27.000
talks and talks. I don't have
time for that. Don't give her phone

242
00:17:27.039 --> 00:17:30.319
number my phone number to her.
So Julie's doing what her mom asked.

243
00:17:30.640 --> 00:17:34.519
There's obviously a history of the girls
going back and forth with her mom like

244
00:17:34.599 --> 00:17:40.680
this. And so if she was
at the club and she was so ill

245
00:17:40.759 --> 00:17:44.240
that she was fighting something that would
eventually kill her, I don't think she'd

246
00:17:44.279 --> 00:17:48.640
be able to perform at that level. If she was desperate and she had

247
00:17:48.680 --> 00:17:52.480
to go, you'd think that coworkers
would note she was here, but something

248
00:17:52.599 --> 00:17:56.759
was really off. She was really
struggling, she had no energy, she

249
00:17:56.759 --> 00:17:59.920
looked really pale. They didn't.
They just said she was here and she

250
00:18:00.119 --> 00:18:03.759
was dancing. And so I feel
like you have to almost buy into the

251
00:18:03.799 --> 00:18:07.519
idea that she was exaggerating the illness, which makes natural causes less likely.

252
00:18:08.880 --> 00:18:11.559
Yeah, that's a good point,
because I do not believe those witnesses of

253
00:18:11.559 --> 00:18:17.039
the club, specifically Sanity, thing
about her being ill or her acting strangely.

254
00:18:17.240 --> 00:18:19.359
So just since they just said that
it seemed like a standard night that

255
00:18:19.400 --> 00:18:22.680
she was there dancing, that's what
makes me believe that they're probably mistaken and

256
00:18:22.720 --> 00:18:26.319
she was not actually there on me
the sixth, Because if she was so

257
00:18:26.440 --> 00:18:32.039
sick that it would precipitate like this
sudden death from an illness, I think

258
00:18:32.079 --> 00:18:37.799
her coworkers would definitely notice. So
now let's talk about the loud screams Crystel's

259
00:18:37.799 --> 00:18:42.400
neighbors heard coming from her apartment during
the approximate time period she's believed to have

260
00:18:42.480 --> 00:18:48.440
died. It goes without saying that
Jet Taylor and Susan Aiken are probably two

261
00:18:48.519 --> 00:18:52.880
of the least like people to ever
be interviewed on Unsolved Mysteries. Jet Taylor,

262
00:18:53.039 --> 00:18:57.160
well, given the circumstances, I
have no qualms about poking fun of

263
00:18:57.160 --> 00:19:03.400
his name. But Susan Aiken actually
has an interesting backstory. So we mentioned

264
00:19:03.440 --> 00:19:07.440
in our last episode that she won
the Miss America pageant in nineteen eighty six,

265
00:19:07.880 --> 00:19:11.680
and even as her own Wikipedia page. However, she also has a

266
00:19:11.720 --> 00:19:17.519
familial connection to a very infamous crime. In nineteen sixty four, Susan's father

267
00:19:17.599 --> 00:19:21.759
and grandfather were just two of the
many people believed to have been involved in

268
00:19:21.799 --> 00:19:26.519
the racially motivated murders of civil rights
workers James Cheney, Andrew Goodman, and

269
00:19:26.599 --> 00:19:32.680
Michael Schwerner, which took place in
Nashoba County, Mississippi. They became known

270
00:19:32.759 --> 00:19:37.680
as the Mississippi Burning murders and were
later the subject to the Academy Award nominated

271
00:19:37.759 --> 00:19:42.359
movie named Mississippi Burning. Even though
neither of the Achins were actually convicted for

272
00:19:42.440 --> 00:19:47.079
their alleged roles in the murders,
there were quite a few people who did

273
00:19:47.119 --> 00:19:52.160
not think a woman from a family
associated with such a notorious crime family should

274
00:19:52.160 --> 00:19:56.079
have won the Miss America title,
especially since Susan once gave an interview in

275
00:19:56.119 --> 00:20:02.599
which she said she didn't believe in
interracial marriages. You also might be curious

276
00:20:02.640 --> 00:20:06.440
to know that, even though Susan
and Jet did get married, they wound

277
00:20:06.519 --> 00:20:11.279
up divorcing in nineteen ninety four,
But that's beside the point. The issues

278
00:20:11.319 --> 00:20:14.440
of the couple have taken a lot
of heat over the fact that they heard

279
00:20:14.519 --> 00:20:19.240
horrific screaming coming from Crystal's apartment and
chose to do nothing about it. During

280
00:20:19.240 --> 00:20:23.799
an interview, Susan was actually quoted
as saying, we were already told in

281
00:20:23.839 --> 00:20:30.880
California you just don't get involved in
domestic disputes. But what exactly is she

282
00:20:30.920 --> 00:20:37.079
talking about. Why are you specifically
supposed to ignore domestic violence in California.

283
00:20:37.119 --> 00:20:41.559
Of course, hindsight is twenty twenty, and they did later report these screams

284
00:20:41.559 --> 00:20:45.039
to their landlord, who also refused
to do anything, so the blame does

285
00:20:45.079 --> 00:20:49.559
not just fall on them. However, it is strange that a couple who

286
00:20:49.559 --> 00:20:55.799
did not want to get involved were
willing to appear on camera on national television

287
00:20:55.839 --> 00:21:00.440
to share their account. It is
horrific to think that Crystal was part potentially

288
00:21:00.480 --> 00:21:04.039
tortured and murdered inside her apartment while
her neighbors were electing to ignore it.

289
00:21:06.119 --> 00:21:11.359
And even if Crystal wasn't being violently
attacked, what if she was suffering some

290
00:21:11.400 --> 00:21:15.039
sort of medical problem and at that
time her life could have potentially been saved

291
00:21:15.079 --> 00:21:19.400
if someone had called for help.
The scream seemed to be the one aspect

292
00:21:19.440 --> 00:21:23.839
of this case which lends the most
credence to the foul play theory, because

293
00:21:23.920 --> 00:21:27.799
if Crystal succumb to some sort of
illness, would it really cause her to

294
00:21:27.839 --> 00:21:33.839
scream like that for an extended period
of time. I think we talked about

295
00:21:33.839 --> 00:21:37.400
this on episode one, but when
I heard her that she was screaming for

296
00:21:37.400 --> 00:21:41.319
an extended period of time and the
neighbors heard this and did nothing, we

297
00:21:41.400 --> 00:21:45.119
talked about the idea that if she
was so sick and she was scared,

298
00:21:45.160 --> 00:21:48.599
and she's screaming in agony to that
extent, what would have stopped her from

299
00:21:48.640 --> 00:21:52.799
calling the police in nine one one? What would have stopped her from crawling

300
00:21:52.839 --> 00:21:56.319
on her hands and knees to the
neighbor's apartment and knocking on the door and

301
00:21:56.319 --> 00:22:00.720
saying, I'm terrified, I'm dying, Help me please. I just don't

302
00:22:00.720 --> 00:22:06.880
see her sitting there forever in agony, slowly dying, like I feel like

303
00:22:06.880 --> 00:22:10.519
you would have had enough energy and
fight for your life to at least crawl

304
00:22:10.759 --> 00:22:12.480
to the phone. If you have
the ability to scream, that takes a

305
00:22:12.519 --> 00:22:15.680
lot of effort, Like if you've
cried in the middle of the night and

306
00:22:15.680 --> 00:22:18.160
you've screamed. You're exhausted the next
day because it takes a lot of physical

307
00:22:18.200 --> 00:22:22.240
effort. So I feel like you
could have at least pushed yourself towards a

308
00:22:22.319 --> 00:22:26.519
phone or the door to get some
help, lie out in the hallway and

309
00:22:26.559 --> 00:22:30.200
scream, so if someone had to
see you. But then you do.

310
00:22:30.240 --> 00:22:32.720
You have these neighbors who say,
like, well, we heard it for

311
00:22:32.799 --> 00:22:37.039
a long time and it sounded like
she's getting tortured. I will say,

312
00:22:37.480 --> 00:22:41.160
back in the eighties and nineties,
domestic violence was one of those things,

313
00:22:41.160 --> 00:22:44.319
whatever happens behind closed doors, that's
your issue. You deal with it,

314
00:22:44.359 --> 00:22:48.559
including child abuse, spousal abuse,
all of that. And thank god,

315
00:22:48.680 --> 00:22:51.880
we've taken the front door of people's
houses and pushed it open a little bit

316
00:22:51.920 --> 00:22:56.279
and said, it's actually everyone's problem
when someone's beating their spouse, or they're

317
00:22:56.359 --> 00:23:00.160
hurting somebody inside of a home,
or they're abusing their kids, all of

318
00:23:00.200 --> 00:23:03.960
our problems and so. But it
wasn't like that back then, and so

319
00:23:03.400 --> 00:23:07.720
I do think there was a different
mentality at the time, like that's their

320
00:23:07.759 --> 00:23:11.200
problem, they're messed up. I'm
not getting involved in it. But how

321
00:23:11.240 --> 00:23:14.680
tragic, because like you said,
what would it have taken to call the

322
00:23:14.720 --> 00:23:18.799
police and say you've got to come
here. It's a scary sound coming from

323
00:23:18.799 --> 00:23:22.279
her apartment, and whether it was
illness or violence, her life could have

324
00:23:22.319 --> 00:23:26.599
been saved. Yeah, I know
that Jet and Susan originally said that when

325
00:23:26.599 --> 00:23:30.160
they heard it they wondered if it
was some sort of S and M thing,

326
00:23:30.200 --> 00:23:33.319
that maybe they were going through some
sexual activities out there which involved Crystal

327
00:23:33.359 --> 00:23:37.119
being tortured consensually, but that as
they kept hearing it, they're thinking,

328
00:23:37.160 --> 00:23:41.279
no, this sounds like something much
worse. That someone is like being tortured

329
00:23:41.599 --> 00:23:45.759
against their will, or they're being
like beaten or something like that. But

330
00:23:45.839 --> 00:23:48.400
then they just decided, no,
we're not going to do anything about it.

331
00:23:48.799 --> 00:23:51.480
But you brought up the point about
why wouldn't she go for the phone.

332
00:23:51.519 --> 00:23:55.440
Well, we know that Crystal was
found tied up in the phone cord

333
00:23:55.599 --> 00:23:59.079
as if she was going there to
try to seek help or call for help,

334
00:23:59.079 --> 00:24:02.799
but then died before she could dial
in number. But like you said,

335
00:24:02.960 --> 00:24:04.759
it just seems weird that she would
have the energy to screen for a

336
00:24:04.759 --> 00:24:08.759
long period of time if she was
alone, but just not use that energy

337
00:24:08.799 --> 00:24:12.920
to actually go to the phone.
Much earlier it's just so weird that she's

338
00:24:14.000 --> 00:24:18.200
not wearing any pants and she's completely
unclothed in the bottom half of her body.

339
00:24:18.880 --> 00:24:21.119
She was alone. I guess she
could have been sleeping like that,

340
00:24:21.640 --> 00:24:23.680
and if it was an illness,
she could have just woken up and just

341
00:24:23.880 --> 00:24:30.079
been in like a frenzy or something
like that. But it's interesting too though,

342
00:24:30.079 --> 00:24:33.720
if she was so sick, there
was no vomit, there's no feces,

343
00:24:33.759 --> 00:24:37.640
there's nothing around her that indicate like
this horrible stomach bug or poisoning or

344
00:24:37.680 --> 00:24:44.119
anything like that. It's she's just
found. It might be difficult to tell

345
00:24:44.160 --> 00:24:48.799
as well too, because we're not
quite sure on the level of decomposition of

346
00:24:48.839 --> 00:24:52.160
the body. And I think,
isn't it pretty common when somebody dies that

347
00:24:52.240 --> 00:24:56.920
their body will just kind of release, whether it be urine or feces.

348
00:24:57.640 --> 00:25:03.559
And maybe even if there was vomit, would you necessarily be able to tell

349
00:25:03.680 --> 00:25:07.200
if Shay she was foaming at the
mouth and it wasn't vomit, Maybe it

350
00:25:07.240 --> 00:25:11.640
wasn't like vomit as we would you
know, typically define vomit, it was

351
00:25:11.720 --> 00:25:15.359
just boem. Could that have dissipated? Did they even properly investigate for that

352
00:25:15.559 --> 00:25:19.240
is really the question. Yeah,
it's never been said in any of the

353
00:25:19.279 --> 00:25:22.519
sources. If they found any vomit
or feces, I mean, if it

354
00:25:22.559 --> 00:25:26.880
was found near her body, they
could have chalked it up to decomposition.

355
00:25:26.000 --> 00:25:30.920
But if it had been found in
other sections of the apartment, suggesting that

356
00:25:30.960 --> 00:25:33.119
she had become violently ill, I'm
sure we probably would have heard about it.

357
00:25:34.240 --> 00:25:37.400
But as hod as the circumstances of
Crystal's death may be, they can

358
00:25:37.480 --> 00:25:41.839
still be explained away as some sort
of undisclosed medical issue. Like we just

359
00:25:41.880 --> 00:25:45.559
said, she was new from the
waist down and wearing nothing but a T

360
00:25:45.720 --> 00:25:48.680
shirt, but perhaps that's how she
normally liked to sleep. Her body was

361
00:25:48.799 --> 00:25:52.480
entangled in the telephone chord. But
what if her medical issues were so bad

362
00:25:52.759 --> 00:25:56.480
that she was attempting to call for
help but collapsed and got tangled in the

363
00:25:56.519 --> 00:26:00.119
cord before she could make the call. The fact of the matter is that

364
00:26:00.160 --> 00:26:03.519
there were no signs of forced entry
at the apartment, and even though the

365
00:26:03.519 --> 00:26:07.039
place was a mess, Crystal was
known for being a very messy person,

366
00:26:07.160 --> 00:26:11.799
so that doesn't necessarily mean that a
violent struggle took place. All that being

367
00:26:11.839 --> 00:26:15.839
said, even though the coroner found
nothing on Crystal's body to indicate she was

368
00:26:15.839 --> 00:26:19.240
the victim of foul play. The
autopsy report turned out to be such a

369
00:26:19.279 --> 00:26:22.960
screw up that I'm not sure you
can consider any of its conclusions to be

370
00:26:23.039 --> 00:26:27.319
reliable. As you mentioned in her
last episode, Crystal was five feet one

371
00:26:27.400 --> 00:26:32.160
hundred and five pounds, while the
report listed her as five foot seven,

372
00:26:32.359 --> 00:26:36.559
one hundred and forty pounds, and
that's a pretty big discrepancy. Now,

373
00:26:36.599 --> 00:26:40.599
personally, I have no doubt that
the body found inside the apartment did belong

374
00:26:40.680 --> 00:26:44.960
to Crystal. Some people have pushed
forward the idea that the decomposing body of

375
00:26:45.000 --> 00:26:48.839
another unidentified young woman was planted there
to fake Crystal's death, but I think

376
00:26:48.880 --> 00:26:53.200
that's pure nonsense, Believe it or
not. The security officer at the Wild

377
00:26:53.240 --> 00:26:57.960
Goose openly theorized that Crystal was abducted
and being held as a sex slave in

378
00:26:59.039 --> 00:27:03.559
Japan, and that the body in
her apartment was a decoy. Yeah,

379
00:27:03.599 --> 00:27:07.519
I don't think so. I think
those discrepancies are simple clerical errors and the

380
00:27:07.559 --> 00:27:14.200
result of a medical examiner doing a
very sloppy job. Crystal was positively identified

381
00:27:14.240 --> 00:27:17.400
through her fingerprints, so I'm sure
her body did go to the morgue.

382
00:27:17.839 --> 00:27:21.759
But I have to wonder if the
coroner mistakenly mixed up Crystal with another dead

383
00:27:21.799 --> 00:27:26.440
body he examined and filled out the
wrong information on Crystal's autopsy report. I

384
00:27:26.480 --> 00:27:30.079
mean, they intended to come up
with explanations for the wrong height and weight

385
00:27:30.160 --> 00:27:34.440
being listed, but didn't account for
why the report made no mention of the

386
00:27:34.440 --> 00:27:38.759
metal pins and plates in Crystal's right
ankle. So this begs the question,

387
00:27:40.279 --> 00:27:44.480
if there were signs of foul play
on Crystal's body, could the medical examiner

388
00:27:44.519 --> 00:27:48.960
have either a overlooked it or b
not mentioned it in the autopsy report because

389
00:27:48.960 --> 00:27:52.920
he mixed up her body with someone
else. For this reason, I am

390
00:27:52.960 --> 00:27:56.920
willing to consider the idea that there
might have been something about Crystal's death which

391
00:27:56.960 --> 00:28:02.519
pointed to murder and just wasn't documented. But since her body was cremated,

392
00:28:02.680 --> 00:28:06.359
we'll never know. And what's sad
is that because she was so decomposed,

393
00:28:06.400 --> 00:28:10.039
the family never got to see her
correct. Yeah, like the I know

394
00:28:10.119 --> 00:28:12.519
that Anton and her family requested it, but they pretty much just told her

395
00:28:12.599 --> 00:28:15.839
that told them that no, that
you do not want to see this.

396
00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:18.880
She's in such bad shape. And
that's what's sad because then they get the

397
00:28:18.920 --> 00:28:22.440
autopsy report back and there's all these
discrepancies, and there are those kind of

398
00:28:22.519 --> 00:28:26.720
crazy thoughts that enter your mind,
like did we even cremate and get back

399
00:28:26.759 --> 00:28:30.160
the remains of the right girl?
Because we didn't get to see her.

400
00:28:30.400 --> 00:28:33.839
And so for families, that's one
of those components of a case, when

401
00:28:33.839 --> 00:28:40.319
they don't get an opportunity to touch
and view the deceased body, there's those

402
00:28:40.359 --> 00:28:42.400
fears of like what if they got
it wrong, what if they missed something

403
00:28:42.839 --> 00:28:48.920
and you just don't know. And
unfortunately, like you said, cremations occurring

404
00:28:48.960 --> 00:28:52.359
a few days after the death.
But they're starting to get all this information

405
00:28:52.920 --> 00:28:56.839
after all of this is happening,
and they're getting different theories and stuff fed

406
00:28:56.839 --> 00:29:00.000
to them after she's cremated. So
you just got to feel heartbreak for them

407
00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:03.880
where they're going what's true and what's
not because in this case, it's really

408
00:29:03.880 --> 00:29:10.079
hard to know your heads or tails
of all the information they're getting. Yeah,

409
00:29:10.119 --> 00:29:11.880
I know, on researching this,
they made comments about how if you

410
00:29:11.960 --> 00:29:17.200
knew how many clerical issues and mistakes
are made in the coroner's office with dead

411
00:29:17.240 --> 00:29:19.680
bodies, you would be horrified because
they're a whole bunch we probably do not

412
00:29:19.759 --> 00:29:23.000
even know about. And that's why
it's easy to assume that these kind of

413
00:29:23.079 --> 00:29:27.480
errors could have happened in Crystal's case, and that maybe some evidence which pointed

414
00:29:27.519 --> 00:29:32.480
to foul play just didn't get just
got overlooked or didn't get documented properly.

415
00:29:33.039 --> 00:29:37.079
It's just so many errors on one
body, like missing all of you know,

416
00:29:37.119 --> 00:29:40.680
the metal plates or rods or whatever
it was. And then I could

417
00:29:40.680 --> 00:29:42.680
see like if it was just that, But then when you add the height

418
00:29:42.720 --> 00:29:47.039
and weight too, and it's like, okay, so what she had pointed

419
00:29:47.079 --> 00:29:49.440
toes and that might account for an
extra few inches, but how do you

420
00:29:49.480 --> 00:29:55.400
go from five feet to five seven? That seems absurd? And then also

421
00:29:55.880 --> 00:29:57.599
okay, maybe the gurney thing,
that one makes sense to me. But

422
00:29:57.599 --> 00:30:02.480
then when you have all of them
together, it just is either some giant

423
00:30:02.519 --> 00:30:07.079
conspiracy, which likely it's not,
but it's probably just a collection of clerical

424
00:30:07.240 --> 00:30:11.839
errors and somebody who's just so sloppy. Did they even scan the body?

425
00:30:11.920 --> 00:30:15.039
Is the question? Did you or
did you just say that you did and

426
00:30:15.079 --> 00:30:18.759
you found nothing? Like who knows
how rush they were, how many bodies

427
00:30:18.799 --> 00:30:21.839
they had to deal with, if
it was chaos at the morgue at that

428
00:30:21.920 --> 00:30:25.839
time. But it seems like somebody
dropped the ball. Oh yeah. Like

429
00:30:26.079 --> 00:30:29.799
we mentioned earlier, I made a
comparison to the Karen Cups in a case

430
00:30:29.839 --> 00:30:33.079
which we covered on the podcast last
year, and that was the one where

431
00:30:33.119 --> 00:30:37.079
they couldn't determine how the victim died
and she had a broken hyoid bone on

432
00:30:37.119 --> 00:30:41.000
her throat which could point to strangulation. But then it later turned out that

433
00:30:41.079 --> 00:30:45.400
the particular medical examiner had a habit
of breaking hyoid bones by accident during his

434
00:30:45.480 --> 00:30:48.960
autopsies, so that's the reason it
might have been created. So it is

435
00:30:48.960 --> 00:30:52.960
pretty horrifying to learn, like the
kind of mistakes that medical examiners are capable

436
00:30:53.000 --> 00:30:57.599
of. Nothing quite egregious, is
our friend Fammi Malik? No, no,

437
00:30:57.680 --> 00:31:02.160
oh my god, nobody could be
where? Said him? Oh his

438
00:31:02.200 --> 00:31:04.839
head was chopped off. You must
have died of an ulcer, yes,

439
00:31:04.880 --> 00:31:08.400
amen, gunshot wounds? What that
must be poisoning? Was it? The

440
00:31:08.440 --> 00:31:11.279
dog ate the head? Yeah,
the dog ate the head. That was

441
00:31:11.319 --> 00:31:15.559
his explanation for it. Yeah,
the hungriest dog ever of your seeing.

442
00:31:17.079 --> 00:31:22.759
They eat the skull and everything.
Yeah. So now let's examine the foul

443
00:31:22.799 --> 00:31:26.799
play theory. The one suspect whom
Anton Klein has pointed the finger at is

444
00:31:26.880 --> 00:31:33.039
Horace McKenna, the deceased former California
Highway Patrol officer who was apparently the secret

445
00:31:33.079 --> 00:31:37.599
owner of the Wild Goose. But
the connection between McKenna and Crystal is a

446
00:31:37.599 --> 00:31:41.839
tenuous one at best, and I'm
not even sure it was conclusively proven that

447
00:31:41.880 --> 00:31:45.839
they knew each other. All we
have is the account of a former waitress

448
00:31:45.880 --> 00:31:52.559
friend of Crystal's who claimed that Crystal
often frequented McKenna's illegal casino, But this

449
00:31:52.640 --> 00:31:56.279
waitress preferred to remain anonymous, so
we have no idea how credible she is.

450
00:31:57.000 --> 00:32:01.440
Like Robin just stated, the proposed
about Crystal being taken to Japan and

451
00:32:01.519 --> 00:32:07.160
forced into sex slavery is absurd,
and I think that her job opportunity in

452
00:32:07.240 --> 00:32:10.319
Japan is not really an essential part
of this story. There seems to be

453
00:32:10.359 --> 00:32:15.640
a misconception that Crystal had been offered
a new job in Japan and was planning

454
00:32:15.680 --> 00:32:19.440
to go there. But the impression
that I've always gotten is that she was

455
00:32:19.480 --> 00:32:22.160
being considered for this job at the
time of her death, but nothing had

456
00:32:22.200 --> 00:32:27.480
been made official yet. That's why
we found it odd that Anton believed why

457
00:32:27.480 --> 00:32:30.599
he couldn't get a hold of Crystal
was because she'd chosen to leave for Japan

458
00:32:30.680 --> 00:32:36.559
without saying goodbye, even though there's
no indication that she'd actually gotten the job

459
00:32:36.640 --> 00:32:40.160
yet. But to be fair,
Anton came to this conclusion because the doorman

460
00:32:40.279 --> 00:32:45.519
of the Wild Goose told him that
Crystal went to Japan, which opens up

461
00:32:45.559 --> 00:32:49.920
more questions and makes me wonder if
there were people from that club who knew

462
00:32:49.960 --> 00:32:53.759
more than they were letting on.
There's been confusion about whether Crystal was actually

463
00:32:53.799 --> 00:32:58.640
working there on the evening of May
sixth, but whatever the case, she

464
00:32:58.799 --> 00:33:04.119
wasn't found dead until Life thirteen.
Did Crystal not have any scheduled shifts there

465
00:33:04.119 --> 00:33:07.319
that week which she didn't show up
for? Did all the other employees just

466
00:33:07.359 --> 00:33:12.960
assume that she'd quit without notice and
left for Japan. If Crystal had gone

467
00:33:13.039 --> 00:33:15.880
missing, then I can see why
people from the club might have the incentive

468
00:33:15.920 --> 00:33:20.839
to lie and claim that she'd travel
to a foreign country. But there's really

469
00:33:20.880 --> 00:33:23.160
no need to do that if her
body is still inside her apartment and is

470
00:33:23.200 --> 00:33:28.759
going to be discovered eventually. Remember, she's at a topless dance club,

471
00:33:28.759 --> 00:33:31.359
and so a lot of times we
know that there's a legal behavior happening behind

472
00:33:31.359 --> 00:33:37.319
the scenes there. There's drug deals, there's sex trade deals, there's money

473
00:33:37.400 --> 00:33:40.359
laundering, there's all kinds of things
that happened there. And was Crystal aware

474
00:33:40.400 --> 00:33:45.960
of something that started to make her
a problem for the club? Remember she

475
00:33:46.200 --> 00:33:49.240
kept writing in her journal, I'm
going to get out of here. I'm

476
00:33:49.279 --> 00:33:52.720
going to stop having to work at
this club. And so if that's the

477
00:33:52.799 --> 00:33:57.200
case, and that somehow has something
to do with what that FBI file was

478
00:33:57.279 --> 00:34:00.599
on her, right, they had
a large file on Crystal, some little

479
00:34:00.680 --> 00:34:05.559
dancer at a club. Was there
a reason for the people there to need

480
00:34:05.599 --> 00:34:08.880
her gone or to cover and lie
about her. I think Anton was given

481
00:34:08.960 --> 00:34:13.159
misinformation. I think he's an odd
ball, and I think Crystal was a

482
00:34:13.199 --> 00:34:15.920
project of his or this pet friend
of his. I don't feel like he

483
00:34:16.119 --> 00:34:21.719
was this deeply committed, loving man
who was just totally concerned about her.

484
00:34:21.719 --> 00:34:25.239
I think Cristel was fun and he
was quote helping her and he got benefits

485
00:34:25.280 --> 00:34:30.119
from doing that. So I just
I don't see him being the killer here.

486
00:34:30.039 --> 00:34:34.360
I don't think he's the killer either. I think you said he's really

487
00:34:34.440 --> 00:34:37.480
strange and maybe behaves in a way
that is odd. But he was the

488
00:34:37.519 --> 00:34:40.880
one who was screaming from the rooftops. Something had happened, and he was

489
00:34:40.920 --> 00:34:45.599
trying to keep attention on the case. And I think if you're responsible and

490
00:34:45.800 --> 00:34:50.079
the authorities don't seem to care,
just walk away. You wouldn't be screaming,

491
00:34:50.119 --> 00:34:52.320
going there's something wrong here. You
know, she was potentially murdered,

492
00:34:52.360 --> 00:34:55.800
and maybe these are ways in which
it could have happened, or people who

493
00:34:55.880 --> 00:35:01.400
could be responsible. It just doesn't
seem to compete who but that FBI file.

494
00:35:01.519 --> 00:35:05.679
I really wish we knew more about
it, And I guess it's on

495
00:35:05.880 --> 00:35:09.000
brand for Crystal not to if she
was an informant, say that she wouldn't

496
00:35:09.000 --> 00:35:13.320
have shared anything with Anton, because
we know that she has a history of

497
00:35:13.320 --> 00:35:16.639
being deceptive with him about certain things
that maybe he might not agree with or

498
00:35:16.840 --> 00:35:21.360
might not be in line with,
you know, what he believes she should

499
00:35:21.360 --> 00:35:24.519
be doing, because she lied about
working at the Wild Goose until one of

500
00:35:24.599 --> 00:35:29.159
his friends had seen her on stage. So if she was informing for the

501
00:35:29.239 --> 00:35:32.599
FBI, I think it would be
reasonable to assume that she may have kept

502
00:35:32.679 --> 00:35:38.000
up from him for a variety of
reasons. So if Crystal and Horace McKenna

503
00:35:38.119 --> 00:35:42.280
did know each other, I'd be
really curious to know how well they were

504
00:35:42.280 --> 00:35:45.480
acquainted. I know there were no
signs of forced entry at Crystal's apartment,

505
00:35:45.679 --> 00:35:50.639
but that doesn't mean she couldn't have
invited someone inside who subsequently killed her.

506
00:35:51.519 --> 00:35:54.119
Let's say Crystal really did work her
shift at the Wild Goose on the evening

507
00:35:54.159 --> 00:35:59.079
of May the sixth, If McKenna
was there that night, perhaps she invited

508
00:35:59.159 --> 00:36:01.679
him back to her place after her
shift ended, before things went horribly wrong.

509
00:36:02.480 --> 00:36:06.920
Now be advised you should take the
next information I'm about to share with

510
00:36:07.000 --> 00:36:09.840
you with a huge grain of salt. But if you visit the Unsolved Mysteries

511
00:36:09.880 --> 00:36:14.800
message board at the sitcoms online for
Him, you'll find a lengthy thread about

512
00:36:14.800 --> 00:36:17.800
this case, featuring a post from
two thousand and eight by someone under the

513
00:36:17.880 --> 00:36:22.719
username Ozzie Rules, who claims to
be Cristel's brother. His theory is that

514
00:36:22.800 --> 00:36:27.719
a few years before her death,
Crystal attended one of those parties that McKenna

515
00:36:27.760 --> 00:36:31.239
allegedly held for his friends in law
enforcement, and became disgusted when she saw

516
00:36:31.320 --> 00:36:36.599
some of the men there sexually abusing
underage children. To prevent her from talking,

517
00:36:37.000 --> 00:36:40.320
McKenna arranged things so that Crystal has
sold a bag of tainted cocaine laced

518
00:36:40.320 --> 00:36:45.599
with boric acid, which caused her
to suffer a slow, agonizing death by

519
00:36:45.719 --> 00:36:51.880
poisoning. WHOA Okay, now,
we don't have any proof that she even

520
00:36:52.039 --> 00:36:54.800
knows McKenna. Yes, he's a
bad dude. We know that we know

521
00:36:54.880 --> 00:37:00.119
that he has this amazing mansion but
can't even hold a legal job, and

522
00:37:00.159 --> 00:37:02.760
that he holds these crazy parties with
law enforcement agents being there as his guest.

523
00:37:04.920 --> 00:37:07.079
I'm sure there's a lot of sexual
things going on there. I'm sure

524
00:37:07.119 --> 00:37:10.719
there's a lot of drug use going
on there, but we don't have proved

525
00:37:10.719 --> 00:37:16.199
that Crystal ever attended these parties.
Again, though Crystal was secretive, if

526
00:37:16.199 --> 00:37:20.280
she was going there to make extra
money on the side, I could see

527
00:37:20.320 --> 00:37:23.440
her not sharing that publicly, and
who knows what was going on there.

528
00:37:23.440 --> 00:37:28.800
But this does seem like a little
bit of a stretch because I don't feel

529
00:37:28.840 --> 00:37:31.239
like we have any information about McKenna
ever being charged with a sexual abuse,

530
00:37:31.320 --> 00:37:35.800
ring of kids or anything like that. And surely at some point he would

531
00:37:35.840 --> 00:37:38.000
have gotten busted for something, right, I know, that he died like

532
00:37:38.039 --> 00:37:42.280
less than a year later, So
I guess it's possible that he could have

533
00:37:42.280 --> 00:37:45.360
been killed before they found any evidence
that he was abusing underage children. Yeah,

534
00:37:45.360 --> 00:37:49.000
he was murdered, Yeah, in
early nineteen eighty nine. That's right.

535
00:37:49.760 --> 00:37:53.239
And don't you guys think that if
they were at this party sexually abusing

536
00:37:53.320 --> 00:38:00.079
young children that it would be a
conspiracy of those who'd be involved. I

537
00:38:00.159 --> 00:38:04.440
doubt that you would be doing it
in front of dancers from the Wild Goose,

538
00:38:04.880 --> 00:38:08.440
because then that makes them kind of
complicit in the crime and loose lips

539
00:38:08.519 --> 00:38:12.719
think ships. So if they're going
to do it in front of Crystal,

540
00:38:12.960 --> 00:38:15.480
then they're likely doing it in front
of other people. The more people that

541
00:38:15.519 --> 00:38:20.400
are going to know about the worst
crimes that you could be committing, I

542
00:38:20.440 --> 00:38:22.800
would think, the higher the chances
that you're going to get caught for that,

543
00:38:23.119 --> 00:38:28.599
the higher the probability that you will
end up incarcerated for what you've done.

544
00:38:29.000 --> 00:38:30.800
So, if you're going to do
it, you think you would do

545
00:38:30.880 --> 00:38:36.920
it secretively so that less people who
aren't directly involved have information about what you're

546
00:38:36.960 --> 00:38:39.519
doing. And let me say this, if you're a law enforcement agent who's

547
00:38:39.519 --> 00:38:46.360
complicit in doing these illicit things like
sex and drugs and wild parties. That

548
00:38:46.400 --> 00:38:51.519
doesn't mean you're okay with child's sex
abuse. Like that's a whole nother level.

549
00:38:51.920 --> 00:38:53.199
These girls, like you said,
jewels, these girls are going to

550
00:38:53.239 --> 00:38:58.360
be witnessing babies being hurt. Like
I might be down to do drugs with

551
00:38:58.360 --> 00:39:00.920
you, I might be down to
do some crazy sexual things with you,

552
00:39:00.239 --> 00:39:02.440
But the moment you bring a baby
into this, you want to have a

553
00:39:02.559 --> 00:39:07.159
child in here where these girls are
potentially wanting to be moms one day.

554
00:39:07.199 --> 00:39:12.280
These are men who are fathers,
a large group of fluctuating guests. I

555
00:39:12.320 --> 00:39:15.840
don't see there being a child sex
ring in there. I do think if

556
00:39:15.880 --> 00:39:17.920
this was a small intimate group where
it was the same folks every week,

557
00:39:19.480 --> 00:39:22.679
and like you said, there was
one dancer that was the big entertainer and

558
00:39:22.719 --> 00:39:27.199
things like that, I could see
there being an abuse of a child because

559
00:39:27.199 --> 00:39:30.840
this is a small group of people
all willing to look the other way or

560
00:39:30.920 --> 00:39:34.599
engage in the act. But not
the way they describe these parties. It's

561
00:39:34.639 --> 00:39:37.119
like, oh, it's sometimes there'd
be you know, all these different law

562
00:39:37.199 --> 00:39:40.800
enforcement officers and things like that,
and oh, sometimes you'd have girls like

563
00:39:40.880 --> 00:39:45.079
it's always changing characters who are down
to have a good time, not abuse

564
00:39:45.159 --> 00:39:50.480
kids. It just it just sounds
like not not the right circumstances for a

565
00:39:50.559 --> 00:39:53.639
child's sex abuse ring. And it's
worth mentioning that this was California during the

566
00:39:53.679 --> 00:39:59.360
nineteen eighties when they had the daycare
sexual abuse hysteria scandal, where a whole

567
00:39:59.400 --> 00:40:04.639
bunch of innoc and daycare providers and
teachers were accused of sexually molesting children and

568
00:40:04.679 --> 00:40:07.239
having these satanic rituals and stuff like
that where they would sell them off to

569
00:40:07.320 --> 00:40:12.719
the cartel and they'd slaughter animals,
and it just got so ridiculous. So

570
00:40:12.840 --> 00:40:16.599
I can totally believe that someone thinking
that this is a true story, because

571
00:40:16.599 --> 00:40:21.519
this was the time period of like
the whole sex abuse hysteria, that someone

572
00:40:21.559 --> 00:40:25.599
would believe a story about Crystal being
present for a party like this. Now,

573
00:40:25.599 --> 00:40:30.159
we're certainly not going to take the
word of an anonymous Internet comment or

574
00:40:30.199 --> 00:40:34.400
as gospel, as we have no
idea if this poster was actually Krystel's brother,

575
00:40:34.880 --> 00:40:37.360
and even if he was, he
could have been sharing unverified, third

576
00:40:37.440 --> 00:40:42.559
hand rumors that he'd heard. Well, I'm not saying I necessarily believe this

577
00:40:42.639 --> 00:40:46.880
story. The idea of Crystal somehow
being poisoned is not that implausible, especially

578
00:40:46.960 --> 00:40:51.360
if you believe the account from the
neighbor who heard the sounds of her being

579
00:40:51.440 --> 00:40:55.079
violently ill in the hours leading up
to her death. If Crystal had ingusted

580
00:40:55.079 --> 00:41:00.760
poison the symptoms could have conceivably gotten
so bad Ristil eventually reached the point where

581
00:41:00.800 --> 00:41:05.880
she was screaming in agony, which
would explain the screams Jet and Susan heard

582
00:41:05.960 --> 00:41:09.039
during the wee hours of the morning. Crystal soon succumbed to the poison and

583
00:41:09.079 --> 00:41:13.800
died, but since there was no
outward signs of violence, the police were

584
00:41:13.840 --> 00:41:16.920
inclined to think she succumb to an
illness and had no reason to suspect foul

585
00:41:16.920 --> 00:41:22.280
play. I was inclined to disbelieve
the idea that Crystal had been poisoned by

586
00:41:22.360 --> 00:41:24.920
tainted cocaine, since you'd assume that
that's the type of thing that would show

587
00:41:25.000 --> 00:41:30.760
up on an autopsy. But given
all the other mistakes made in Crystel's autopsy

588
00:41:30.800 --> 00:41:35.719
report, I could see the evidence
of poisoning being overlooked. However, the

589
00:41:35.760 --> 00:41:40.119
main problem with pinning Cristel's death on
McKenna is that all these accusations against him

590
00:41:40.480 --> 00:41:45.159
seemed to start after he was already
dead and no longer around her refeude anything.

591
00:41:45.880 --> 00:41:50.159
If you look at McKenna's backstory,
it doesn't seem like he was a

592
00:41:50.199 --> 00:41:53.199
good guy, and he certainly did
his fair share of illegal activity, but

593
00:41:53.239 --> 00:41:57.679
as far as I can tell,
he was never officially linked to any murders.

594
00:41:58.360 --> 00:42:01.679
The one thing which does raise my
eyebrows is that the FBI kept a

595
00:42:01.719 --> 00:42:07.880
file on Crystal and withheld twenty one
pages of documents from the file from Anton.

596
00:42:07.400 --> 00:42:12.079
It was still unclear why she would
have been involved with them. We

597
00:42:12.239 --> 00:42:15.599
know the FBI was monitoring McKenna's activities
at the time of his death, so

598
00:42:15.719 --> 00:42:21.239
perhaps Crystal really was working as an
informant, which is what Anton suspected.

599
00:42:21.880 --> 00:42:25.079
I can't help but wonder if things
might have turned out differently had a contract

600
00:42:25.119 --> 00:42:30.239
killing not been performed on McKenna ten
months after Crystal's death. I'm sure that

601
00:42:30.320 --> 00:42:36.440
brought an abrupt end to the FBI's
investigation into McKenna's activities, and once the

602
00:42:36.480 --> 00:42:40.280
focus switched to solving his murder,
Crystal might have become an afterthought. If

603
00:42:40.360 --> 00:42:45.440
McKenna had actually lived longer, perhaps
a more concrete connection would have eventually been

604
00:42:45.519 --> 00:42:52.239
made between him and Crystal. The
FBI file bothers me so deeply. Remember

605
00:42:52.280 --> 00:42:58.639
Ann asked to get the file and
then twenty one pages of it were kept.

606
00:42:58.840 --> 00:43:02.800
And so when you think about the
size of that file, Crystal was

607
00:43:02.840 --> 00:43:07.559
doing something big. This isn't a
local law enforcemtion. It's like, hey,

608
00:43:07.559 --> 00:43:08.519
man, make this drug deal for
me so I can catch the guy

609
00:43:08.519 --> 00:43:13.119
around the corner. That's like normal
informant stuff. You know, when you

610
00:43:13.119 --> 00:43:15.079
have someone who might have a run
in with getting caught with a little bit

611
00:43:15.079 --> 00:43:20.400
of drugs on themselves or getting caught
doing something illegal that's minor. The police

612
00:43:20.440 --> 00:43:22.440
might say, if you flip on
this person, I'll let you go on

613
00:43:22.519 --> 00:43:27.199
that. But this is an FBI
file built on this girl who seems to

614
00:43:27.239 --> 00:43:30.840
be relatively harmless and kind of quote
unimportant. Right. She dances at this

615
00:43:31.400 --> 00:43:36.400
club, she hangs out with her
friends and family, and that's about all

616
00:43:36.440 --> 00:43:40.519
we know about Crystal. So the
fact that the FBI had her doing something

617
00:43:40.639 --> 00:43:45.039
that had twenty one pages worth of
information that could not be shared with her

618
00:43:45.519 --> 00:43:52.480
closest friend partner, it's very disturbing. And like you said, if there

619
00:43:52.559 --> 00:43:55.199
was a drug deal they're exploring,
or like a drug ring they're exploring with

620
00:43:55.480 --> 00:44:00.960
McKenna and then he gets murdered.
Do they really need to be chasing the

621
00:44:00.039 --> 00:44:04.360
drug lead anymore? Or maybe not, Maybe all of that disbanded because their

622
00:44:04.440 --> 00:44:07.920
leader's gone or the man who was
running the show is dead, and now

623
00:44:07.920 --> 00:44:10.639
we need to focus on the murder
itself. But Crystal was doing something that

624
00:44:10.719 --> 00:44:15.039
got her into trouble and someone I
think found out. Now, again we

625
00:44:15.079 --> 00:44:21.000
still don't have information in proof that
she was murdered, but that autopsy where

626
00:44:21.039 --> 00:44:24.920
the world renowned forensic scientist is saying, yeah, look it looks like she

627
00:44:25.000 --> 00:44:30.719
was strangled. That in that FBI
file they bother me deeply, And it

628
00:44:30.800 --> 00:44:35.000
is frustrating that if Crystal was involved, this was something that the FBI couldn't

629
00:44:35.039 --> 00:44:37.960
finally share the truth about it after
all these years. Because if it was

630
00:44:38.000 --> 00:44:42.639
something to do with Horace McKenna,
he's now dead and the people who killed

631
00:44:42.719 --> 00:44:45.480
him have been brought to justice and
put in prison. So I wouldn't assume

632
00:44:45.480 --> 00:44:50.800
that there's still some secret investigation that
they have to keep confidential. So if

633
00:44:50.800 --> 00:44:54.079
she was doing something, why not
tell Anton? Why not tell her family?

634
00:44:54.519 --> 00:44:58.239
Unless of course, it's a case
where maybe they put her life in

635
00:44:58.360 --> 00:45:02.719
danger and they don't want to admit
that in order to provide potential liability.

636
00:45:04.559 --> 00:45:08.159
That's what we theorized in Keith Warne's
case, coming full circle to our first

637
00:45:08.239 --> 00:45:12.519
episode, exactly, Yeah, if
that's what I've always suspected that he might

638
00:45:12.519 --> 00:45:15.920
have been involved in some as an
informant for something dangerous going on, and

639
00:45:15.960 --> 00:45:19.239
the police are so tight lipped because
they fear they're going to get in trouble

640
00:45:19.280 --> 00:45:23.519
if they show what they did to
put Key's life in danger. However,

641
00:45:23.559 --> 00:45:29.000
here's the big issue. If Horace
McKenna was actually responsible for Crystal's death,

642
00:45:29.320 --> 00:45:32.920
what more can really be done.
Anton Klein was carrying on this very public

643
00:45:34.000 --> 00:45:37.599
crusade to find answers and expressing his
suspicions to McKenna even though he was already

644
00:45:37.639 --> 00:45:42.639
dead. Yes, I suppose it's
possible that others could have been involved,

645
00:45:42.840 --> 00:45:46.800
particularly if someone really did sell Crystal
a poisoned bag of cocaine. But if

646
00:45:46.880 --> 00:45:51.400
McKenna was the sole perpetrator, it's
not like you can prosecute a dead man.

647
00:45:52.159 --> 00:45:54.239
But at the same time, I
can understand why Anton would be so

648
00:45:54.360 --> 00:45:58.639
determined to see the police files on
this case, as the errors in the

649
00:45:58.679 --> 00:46:02.800
autopsy report are a to make one
suspicious. But ask yourselves this question,

650
00:46:04.400 --> 00:46:07.480
what would be the point of intentionally
listing the wrong height and weight for Crystal

651
00:46:07.559 --> 00:46:14.239
in her autopsy Unless you believe the
absurd theory that someone planted the decomposing body

652
00:46:14.280 --> 00:46:17.559
of another woman in Crystal's apartment in
order to fake her death. I just

653
00:46:17.599 --> 00:46:22.159
don't see those discrepancies being anything more
than a clerical error. That's not to

654
00:46:22.159 --> 00:46:25.679
say that I completely dismiss the idea
of foul play, as I do think

655
00:46:25.719 --> 00:46:30.280
it's possible that Crystal may have been
poisoned. The loud screams and strange manner

656
00:46:30.480 --> 00:46:35.159
in which Crystal's body was found do
lend credence to the idea that she was

657
00:46:35.199 --> 00:46:39.119
suffering pretty badly prior to her death. I'm not sure how many standard illnesses

658
00:46:39.159 --> 00:46:43.679
could generate that type of reaction,
but if she had some sort of deadly

659
00:46:43.719 --> 00:46:47.360
poison her system, that's a different
story. But the problem is that any

660
00:46:47.440 --> 00:46:52.599
possible motives for why someone would want
to poison Crystal wind up venturing into conspiracy

661
00:46:52.639 --> 00:46:57.880
theory territory, and there really is
a very strong evidence pointing to murder.

662
00:46:58.280 --> 00:47:01.360
The alleged prime suspect is aised guy
who may have owned the place where Crystal

663
00:47:01.400 --> 00:47:06.239
worked, but we can't be certainly
even met. Since there is no hard

664
00:47:06.280 --> 00:47:09.960
evidence that Crystal was poisoned, I
am inclined to lean towards Oukham's razor and

665
00:47:10.000 --> 00:47:15.320
attribute her death to some sort of
fatal, undiagnosed illness. Of course,

666
00:47:15.320 --> 00:47:19.760
the circumstances are so strange that there's
no way I would one hundred percent attribute

667
00:47:19.760 --> 00:47:23.039
her death to natural causes. But
without stronger evidence pointing to a suspect,

668
00:47:23.360 --> 00:47:27.800
I just think it's more logical to
assume this is how things went down.

669
00:47:28.719 --> 00:47:32.119
Sadly, the fact that Crystal's body
was cremated may have ruined any chances of

670
00:47:32.199 --> 00:47:36.920
proving that foul play had taken place, and short of someone making a full

671
00:47:36.920 --> 00:47:39.800
confession to her murder, after all
these years, I don't think there's any

672
00:47:39.800 --> 00:47:45.199
way to conclusively determine the full truth
about what happened. But if you do

673
00:47:45.320 --> 00:47:50.280
happen to have any information on the
unexplained death of Crystal Spencer, please contact

674
00:47:50.280 --> 00:47:55.559
the appropriate authorities. Jules Ashley any
final thoughts in this case. This is

675
00:47:55.599 --> 00:47:59.800
one of those like I said,
I feel so much pain for the family

676
00:48:00.079 --> 00:48:04.719
who is in contact with her.
Just the day before we know she's likely

677
00:48:04.760 --> 00:48:07.800
has passed away. You have poor
Julie who carries this guilt of saying,

678
00:48:07.960 --> 00:48:10.920
you know she was asking to talk
to her mom. I didn't give her

679
00:48:10.920 --> 00:48:14.679
the phone number to my mom because
my mom had asked me not to.

680
00:48:15.360 --> 00:48:19.920
And I honestly don't know in hindsight
if my sister was being dramatic or if

681
00:48:19.920 --> 00:48:22.880
she was struggling. And now we
have all this misinformation that I don't even

682
00:48:22.880 --> 00:48:25.760
know what happened to her. She's
been cremated. There's no way to get

683
00:48:25.800 --> 00:48:30.719
answers. The more we learn,
the more confusing it becomes. It's one

684
00:48:30.760 --> 00:48:34.840
of those cases where you ask yourself, even if it was natural causes,

685
00:48:35.719 --> 00:48:39.079
couldn't the police have done more to
do a thorough investigation and to give enough

686
00:48:39.119 --> 00:48:44.480
respect to a deceased body to say
we want to guarantee we know what happened

687
00:48:44.480 --> 00:48:47.079
in this case. And instead,
I think they do what they do often,

688
00:48:47.280 --> 00:48:52.039
and they learned who the victim was, They saw the kind of disarray

689
00:48:52.119 --> 00:48:54.400
she lived in and the lifestyle she
had, and they said, hmm,

690
00:48:54.880 --> 00:48:59.239
looks like natural death. I don't
see any cause of a concern here.

691
00:48:59.559 --> 00:49:04.280
Let's move forward, and therefore,
any concerns that were brought to them before

692
00:49:04.280 --> 00:49:07.920
she was cremated, I don't think
they passed to the family to allow them

693
00:49:07.920 --> 00:49:13.079
to make decisions. And I think
you have a friend of hers and a

694
00:49:13.079 --> 00:49:16.440
partner of hers who's left questioning what
happened. Her family's left what questioning what

695
00:49:16.559 --> 00:49:22.559
happened and if it was foul play, and maybe that FBI informant role got

696
00:49:22.599 --> 00:49:27.639
her in trouble. Why don't we
know more about that? I think you

697
00:49:27.679 --> 00:49:30.719
know they law enforcement doesn't want the
family to know. They don't want to

698
00:49:30.760 --> 00:49:35.159
have any responsibility in someone's death.
But how tragic that putting her in that

699
00:49:35.199 --> 00:49:38.360
position might have actually led to her
death. And if nothing else, it

700
00:49:38.440 --> 00:49:43.679
did lead to this idea that she's
somebody who wasn't valuable enough to investigate.

701
00:49:43.719 --> 00:49:46.559
And that is simply heartbreaking because she
was a daughter, she was a sister,

702
00:49:46.760 --> 00:49:50.639
she was a friend, and she
was a partner to somebody, and

703
00:49:50.679 --> 00:49:52.800
so my heart just goes out and
I'm praying that there could be answers,

704
00:49:52.840 --> 00:49:57.679
but unless someone came to confess,
I really don't see how that's possible.

705
00:49:59.400 --> 00:50:04.239
Yeah, I ca go either way
on what happened here, Like I quite

706
00:50:04.239 --> 00:50:09.719
honestly lean sixty percent towards foul play
and forty percent towards an illness, just

707
00:50:09.880 --> 00:50:15.400
all of these unknown variables. As
she just mentioned the FBI report, Why

708
00:50:15.440 --> 00:50:20.320
are you holding this back? Why
aren't you giving this information to Anton or

709
00:50:20.360 --> 00:50:25.360
to her family? I feel like
Crystal's death was it was criminal, how

710
00:50:25.440 --> 00:50:31.159
little they seemed to care and how
many errors were made. I just don't

711
00:50:31.199 --> 00:50:36.400
know, based on the investigation that
they did and the type of autopsy report

712
00:50:36.480 --> 00:50:40.800
that we have at this point that
all of the answers are available to us.

713
00:50:42.400 --> 00:50:46.960
And it's so unfortunate that Crystal was
cremated so that there wasn't the possibility

714
00:50:46.960 --> 00:50:52.480
to exhume her body later. And
I really hope that her family found peace,

715
00:50:52.039 --> 00:50:57.519
even just thinking about the impacts on
somebody like Julie knowing that Crystal had

716
00:50:57.559 --> 00:51:00.079
called her asked for the number for
her mother and she didn't give it to

717
00:51:00.119 --> 00:51:04.239
her. She gave the reasoning that
her sister talks her ear off. But

718
00:51:04.280 --> 00:51:07.639
I can imagine how many times Julie
has gone over that in her head and

719
00:51:07.719 --> 00:51:10.880
gone, well, maybe things would
have been different had I given her that

720
00:51:12.000 --> 00:51:15.880
number for our mother, And none
of this is her fault, but it's

721
00:51:15.960 --> 00:51:20.639
just the impact that these crimes are
crimes, whether it or illness, these

722
00:51:20.679 --> 00:51:23.559
types of things have on a family, and that's the part that really sticks

723
00:51:23.599 --> 00:51:27.679
with me with this case. Yeah, I've always been split on this,

724
00:51:27.800 --> 00:51:30.599
and I do agree that if the
police had performed a more thorough investigation right

725
00:51:30.639 --> 00:51:35.119
at the outset, then we maybe
we might have some more conclusive answers,

726
00:51:35.480 --> 00:51:37.880
and that they just did not treat
the family very well. And even though

727
00:51:37.920 --> 00:51:42.360
Anton Klein does seem to be a
bit of an odd individual, I do

728
00:51:42.400 --> 00:51:45.239
give him credit for keeping Cristel's memory
alive, because if he hadn't pushed so

729
00:51:45.360 --> 00:51:49.639
hard, we might never have heard
about her story. For years, I've

730
00:51:49.639 --> 00:51:52.960
always been inclined to believe she died
of just some sort of unknown illness,

731
00:51:52.119 --> 00:51:57.440
just simply because there is no real
evidence pointing towards foul play, and that

732
00:51:57.559 --> 00:52:02.480
all these stories about Horace mcay and
her attending a party was child sexual abuse

733
00:52:02.639 --> 00:52:07.760
and sex slavery. There's never been
anything to substantiate that they're true. But

734
00:52:07.920 --> 00:52:12.480
like you said, the big elephant
in the room here is the FBI file,

735
00:52:12.559 --> 00:52:16.079
which makes you wonder why would something
like this even exist unless Crystal was

736
00:52:16.119 --> 00:52:21.000
involved in something. I mean doesn't
necessarily mean she was murdered, but it

737
00:52:21.119 --> 00:52:23.519
just shows that there's probably a lot
more to her story than what we've been

738
00:52:23.559 --> 00:52:28.519
told. I do think if she
was murdered, that there is some merit

739
00:52:28.559 --> 00:52:31.760
maybe to the poisoning theory. Like
I don't necessarily believe she was sold tated

740
00:52:31.840 --> 00:52:37.599
cocaine, but given the lack of
a struggle or forced entry or foul play

741
00:52:37.599 --> 00:52:40.800
at the apartment, I do think
possibly someone could have slipped her some poisoned

742
00:52:42.519 --> 00:52:45.199
the day before she died, and
that caused her to become more progressively ill,

743
00:52:45.360 --> 00:52:50.519
until things reached the point where she
got so bad that she started screaming

744
00:52:50.559 --> 00:52:52.760
and had a violent reaction. And
in a sense, that would be the

745
00:52:52.800 --> 00:52:57.599
perfect murder because you don't actually have
to be at the scene to kill your

746
00:52:57.679 --> 00:53:00.719
victim, and there's nothing to link
you to it. And who knows,

747
00:53:00.760 --> 00:53:02.280
maybe if a better autopsy had been
done, they would have been able to

748
00:53:02.320 --> 00:53:07.679
confirm or deny this poisoning theory.
But without any of that, we just

749
00:53:07.760 --> 00:53:10.000
don't know for sure, so very
sad case. I don't know if we'll

750
00:53:10.000 --> 00:53:14.320
know the truth about what happened,
but it's good we do these podcast episodes

751
00:53:14.360 --> 00:53:17.840
in order to keep the memories of
victims like Crystal alive. Robin, do

752
00:53:17.880 --> 00:53:21.440
you want to tell us a little
bit about the Trail Went Cold? Patreon?

753
00:53:22.199 --> 00:53:24.159
Yes, The Trail Cold Patreon has
been around for three years now,

754
00:53:24.199 --> 00:53:30.280
and we offer these standard bonus features
like early ad free episodes, and I

755
00:53:30.320 --> 00:53:34.800
also send out stickers and sign thank
you cards to anyone who signs up with

756
00:53:34.880 --> 00:53:38.079
us on Patreon. If you join
our five dollars tier tier two, we

757
00:53:38.119 --> 00:53:44.480
also offer monthly bonus episodes in which
I talk about cases which are not featured

758
00:53:44.519 --> 00:53:47.360
on the Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon, and

759
00:53:47.400 --> 00:53:52.320
if you join our highest tier tier
three, the ten dollars tier. One

760
00:53:52.320 --> 00:53:57.599
of the features we offer is a
audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsawved

761
00:53:57.599 --> 00:54:00.960
Mysteries, where you can download an
audio five and then boot up the original

762
00:54:01.039 --> 00:54:07.599
Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or
YouTube and play it with my audio commentary

763
00:54:07.639 --> 00:54:10.719
playing in the background, where I
just provide trivia and factoids about the cases

764
00:54:10.719 --> 00:54:15.880
featured in this episode, and incidentally, the very first episode that I did

765
00:54:15.880 --> 00:54:20.199
a commentary track over was the episode
featuring this case. So if you want

766
00:54:20.199 --> 00:54:23.280
to download a commentary track in which
I make more smart ass remarks about Jewel

767
00:54:23.360 --> 00:54:27.800
Kaylor, then be sure to join
Tier three. So I want to let

768
00:54:27.800 --> 00:54:30.320
you know a little bit about the
Jules and Nashty patreons. So there's early

769
00:54:30.360 --> 00:54:35.719
ad free episodes of The Path Went
Chili. We've got our Pathwent Chili mini's,

770
00:54:35.760 --> 00:54:37.679
which are always over an hour,
so they're not very mini, but

771
00:54:37.719 --> 00:54:42.280
they're just too short to turn into
a series, and we're really enjoying doing

772
00:54:42.320 --> 00:54:45.519
those. So we hope you'll check
out those patreons. We'll link them in

773
00:54:45.599 --> 00:54:47.760
the show notes. So I want
to thank you all for listening, and

774
00:54:47.880 --> 00:54:52.360
any chance you have to share us
on social media with a friend or to

775
00:54:52.440 --> 00:54:55.199
rate and review is greatly appreciate it. You can email us at The Pathwentchili

776
00:54:55.239 --> 00:54:59.840
at gmail dot com. You can
reach us on Twitter at the Pathwent.

777
00:55:00.320 --> 00:55:04.039
So until next time, be sure
to bundle up because cold trails and chilly

778
00:55:04.119 --> 00:55:07.559
pass call for warm clothing. Music
by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy