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Crystal Spencer Pt. Two · The Path Went Chilly

0:29
Welcome back to the Path Went Chile for part two of our series about the
0:33
unexplained death of Crystal Spencer. Robin, do you want to catch everyone up
0:38
what we talked about in our previous episode? Well, Crystal Spencer was an
0:42
aspiring actress who had spent several years living in Burbank, California. She was
0:46
twenty eight at the time. She hadn't had much luck find the acting job,
0:49
so she was making her living as an exotic dancer at a club.
0:53
She got involved with an older man named Anton Klein, who was an aspiring
0:57
screenwriter, and for years she didn't want to tell him that she worked as
1:00
an exotic dancer, but he eventually accepted it and knew that it was a
1:03
way to pay the bills. Crystal had told Anton that she was being considered
1:07
for a job as a hostess at a club in Japan, and she seemed
1:11
excited about it, but the last time she spoke she sounded awfully sick,
1:15
and her sister would say the same thing as well. And then another week
1:19
went by and no one heard from Crystal, and when they finally checked her
1:22
apartment, they found her decomposing body in the corner and she was wrapped in
1:26
a telephone chord, but there was no obvious signs of forced entry or foul
1:30
play, and since the police could not figure out how she died, they
1:34
listed her cause of death to be undetermined, but it seemed obvious they believed
1:38
that there was no foul play and that she had succumbed to some sort of
1:42
mysterious illness. But there were a lot of weird discrepancies with the investigation,
1:48
and I know that a bunch of neighbors of Crystal said that they heard some
1:49
weird screaming from her apartment around the approximate time period she died. And there
1:56
was some suspicion about a guy named Horace McKenna, a corrupt apparently owned a
2:00
share of the club Crystal was dancing, and he was involved in a whole
2:06
bunch of shady stuff. And Anton would later find out that the FBI had
2:09
a file on Crystal to suggest she might have been working as an informant,
2:14
but a lot of the pages have been removed, so he had no idea
2:16
about what she was actually doing for them, and he began to suspect that
2:21
perhaps Horace McKenna had something to do with Crystal's death and killed her, but
2:25
he died a short time after Crystal did, so they never had any evidence
2:30
that they knew each other, let alone that he might have been connected in
2:32
her death. So after all these years, it still officially listed as undetermined
2:38
and no one has any idea how Crystal died. So you can definitely draw
2:42
some parallels between this story and a case we covered on this podcast last year,
2:46
and that's the nineteen sixty three death of Karen cups in it. In
2:50
both cases, the victim was a young woman who was attempting to launch an
2:53
acting career in Hollywood and seemed to be struggling with their own personal demons before
2:59
they were discovered dead inside their apartment, and no one could conclusively determine if
3:02
they were the victim of foul play. I guess the biggest difference is that,
3:07
unlike Karen Cupsonant, no one ever attempted to link Crystal Spencer's death to
3:10
John F. Kennedy's assassination, though her autopsy report was examined by someone who
3:15
worked on the post mortem for Robert F. Kennedy after he was assassinated.
3:20
So I guess everything did come full circle Crystal's case is a particularly difficult one
3:25
to get a handle on, since there is compelling evidence to suggest her death
3:30
being the result of natural causes and the possibility of foul play. However,
3:35
Crystal's biggest advocate is her boyfriend Anton Klein, and if you read online discussions
3:39
about this case, there are a number of people who think there's something off
3:44
about the guy. He does come across as a bit strange in his interviews
3:47
and seems rather snobbish when he describes himself as this cultured individual who took a
3:53
topless dancer under his wing and introduced her to the finer things in life.
3:58
There are also a few things about his story which raised some red flegs.
4:01
I think the one part I just can't get a grasp on is the fact
4:04
that Anton never even attempted to visit Crystal's apartment during the time period he couldn't
4:10
get a hold of her. As you recall, he attempted to call her
4:13
on Nyvy eighth and kept getting a busy signal and the operator told him that
4:17
her phone was off the hook. That seems like something that should raise some
4:20
major concerns, but according to Anton, Crystal was such a disorderly person that
4:26
she had a habit of inadvertently leaving her phone off the hook after she used
4:30
it. But then another five days passed before Crystal's body was discovered, and
4:33
Anton only learned about it after the police called him. He claims he tried
4:39
to reach her at the Wild Goose and was told by the dorman she had
4:42
left for Japan, which is why he never attempted to visit her apartment.
4:46
Even so, it's strange that Anton wouldn't have gone to her apartment first before
4:50
trying to find her at the club. I definitely think it's odd. When
4:55
we first described this case, Anton does seem to be a big advocate for
4:59
her. He is the one who's trying to give different suspects. He continues
5:02
to work with the police, he's trying to get attention on her case.
5:05
But then you have the other side where he doesn't go to her apartment to
5:10
check on her. But I do wonder how in depth was their relationship.
5:15
Remember, she supposedly didn't even tell him she left for Japan, and that
5:19
wasn't even crazy to him. He said, she'll just call me when she
5:21
gets there. So I wonder was it someone that you know? Were Anton
5:27
and Crystal the kind of couple that were together every evening and they talked all
5:30
the time. Or was it kind of like him, like you said,
5:32
being this more pretentious person who says, oh, I help her when I
5:35
can, and she's a nice companion to have, and it's kind of more
5:40
flippant and not as engaged as you would think of a partner would be.
5:45
That is a possibility because I never saw any indication that they were planning to
5:48
get serious, like get engaged or get married or anything in the future.
5:53
So it's possible that maybe Anton is over exaggerating how close relationship was, and
5:58
if you look at the situation. I know we talked about it extensively in
6:00
Part one, this Japan trip, and how little we know about it.
6:05
There is a possibility. And I'm not saying that Anton is responsible or that
6:09
he isn't, because obviously we have no idea, but we don't know.
6:14
Maybe he's the one, or it could have been even somebody who, like
6:18
say, we'd suggested in part one that if Crystal was sexually assaulted at say
6:23
that casino that Horace McKenna owned, and there was powerful people there, so
6:29
if somebody wanted to set her up and they wanted to buy themselves several months.
6:33
You could say, Hey, I've got a friend that's going to hook
6:35
you up with this job in Japan, and then they've got Crystal going around
6:40
telling everybody about this job opportunity in Japan. And then when she goes missing
6:45
or if she doesn't show up places, then they've got a few months before
6:47
people start really asking questions, because we know she was disorganized, and if
6:53
we're to go on what Anton's saying, the fact that she wouldn't call before
6:57
she left, that she would just like impulsively kind to leave without telling her
7:01
loved ones. If that is her mo and that's the way that she operates
7:06
in life, then that would be pretty advantageous for somebody close to her if
7:12
they were indeed trying to set her up because of a situation such as that,
7:15
or it could be something simpler. If it was Anton, it could
7:18
have been because she wanted to leave the relationship and if she wanted to leave
7:24
him, or if things weren't going well. There could have been any number
7:28
of reasons. You could see how somebody could come up with this Japan thing
7:31
and dangle it just like a carrot, and then hope that she bites and
7:35
tells everybody about it, and then they've got this time to one clean up
7:40
the crime scene. Number two basically just put some time between the act of
7:45
killing and maybe they thought they would dispose of the body but just weren't able
7:49
to didn't have a vehicle, it became too arduous to do so, so
7:55
they just left her body there and thought, Okay, well, now we've
7:57
at least just got several days, maybe a week before anyone ask questions,
8:01
because they all are likely going to think, what Anton is saying that she
8:05
just left for Japan. Yeah, that's a good point, because I think
8:07
most spouses if they heard someone say, oh, your girlfriend left for Japan
8:11
without telling anyone, they probably think that's a major red flag and be pretty
8:16
shocked by that. But everyone who described Crystal said that she was very disorganized,
8:20
she was very scattershot, She had a messy apartment, So maybe that
8:24
was kind of her personality, that she would be the type of person who
8:26
would just go off to another country and then not even tell her boyfriend until
8:31
after she arrived. It's also pretty baffling that, in spite of all these
8:37
suspicions about Crystal's death, her body wound up being cremated, But to be
8:43
fair, I get the impression that the decision to cremate Crystal was made by
8:46
her family and not Anton, and that it may have been Crystel's wish for
8:50
her ashes to be scattered beneath the Hollywood Sign after she died. Her family
8:56
maintained that even though they were not allowed to view Crystal's body, they had
9:00
been assured her death was a result of an illness and had no reason to
9:03
suspect foul play. It was not until after the ashes were scattered that Anton
9:09
received information which made him suspect that Crystal was murdered. He showed the autopsy
9:15
report to a number of medical experts, but of course, since exhuming Crystal
9:18
and allowing them to examine her body was no longer an option, there's no
9:24
way they could conclusively determine that foul play had taken place. I believe the
9:28
immediate next of kin is the one who can authorize the cremation of a body,
9:31
So even if Anton had his own suspicions at the outset, Crystal's family
9:37
likely would have made the final call about cremating her, and it might have
9:41
been out of Anton's hands overall. Even though I do think some of Anton's
9:46
actions are a bit strange, I just can't see him being involved in Crystel's
9:50
death. The burmank PD were content to write the whole thing off as some
9:54
sort of illness, and since Crystal's cremation essentially destroyed all potential evidence of foul
10:01
play, Anton would have been completely in the clear if he killed her.
10:05
Yet he's the one publicly insisting that Crystal was murdered, keeping the case in
10:09
the spotlight, taking your story to TV shows like Unsolved Mysteries, and filing
10:13
lawsuits in order to garner access to the police files. It just seems awfully
10:20
brazen for Anton to do this if he was responsible for what happened to play
10:24
Devil's advocate. If Anton had an ulterior motive for appearing on TV, it
10:28
might have been to help launch his own fledgling career as a screenwriter. Believe
10:33
it or not, Anton Klein actually has his own page on the Internet Movie
10:37
Database, which only has one credit. In nineteen eighty seven, a made
10:41
for TV movie was produced called Daniel in the Towers, which covers the story
10:46
of Simon Rodia the artist who constructed Los Angeles Watts Towers. You can actually
10:52
watch the film on YouTube and it stars Michael McKean and a young Sean Harrison,
10:58
who later found fame playing Wualdo Geraldo Faldo on Family Matters. And yeah,
11:03
that's probably the only time you'll ever hear a Family Matters story referenced on
11:07
this podcast. Anyway, Anton got a story by credit on the movie because
11:13
the script was based partly on his doctoral thesis at UCLA. Because of this,
11:18
Anton was hoping to become a full time screenwriter himself, but his career
11:22
never went anywhere. I suppose if Anton was hoping to get himself noticed and
11:28
potentially land some writing gigs, it would have been in his best interest to
11:31
keep his face out there by placing himself at the center of a bizarre murder
11:35
mystery. But regardless of Anton's intentions, I still don't believe he would have
11:41
gone to the trouble of generating so much publicity for Crystal if he murdered her.
11:48
I'm in the same boat. And when you go back to the idea
11:50
where you're talking about her being cremated, it would have definitely been the parent's
11:54
decision because Anton and her were not longtime domestic partners living together. Correct,
12:00
No, I don't think they had ever lived together at any point. They
12:03
just dated each other. Okay, So in less Crystal, which she's not
12:07
a very organized person, so she definitely did not appoint probably someone to handle
12:09
her burial. Legally, it is the spouse or a long term domestic partner,
12:15
and then it would fall to either like adult children or parents if you
12:20
didn't have a spouse or partner. So for the idea that she was cremated,
12:24
it is a little shocking because we have this death and of course there's
12:31
no sign of foul play according to the police, but it's a very bizarre
12:35
way her body was found. She was decomposed. She only was wearing her
12:39
T shirt if I can recall correctly, So she was nude from the waist
12:41
down, and she had that telephone cord wrapped around her. As a family,
12:46
I would want to say, hey, listen, I need more.
12:50
I need you to do more to see how she passed away. She's so
12:54
young, you don't see any big signs of trauma to her body. But
12:58
it's confusing to us. But they made the decision to cremate her and that
13:01
does take away any option, like you said, to have any kind of
13:05
analysis done down the road. When did the neighbors tell the police about the
13:11
screaming they heard? Was that before she was cremated. I'm not entirely sure,
13:16
but I know that we told on the last episode that when they told
13:20
the police, they didn't seem particularly interested in it. So it's possible that
13:24
even if they did tell the police, that Anton and Crystal's family never found
13:28
out about it until much later. See that's what frustrates me the police,
13:33
the way they treated Crystal's death from the get go is that she was simply
13:37
this dancer who was probably dabbling in drugs and things like that, and they
13:41
just discounted the value of her life. And so they said, case closed,
13:45
natural causes, let's be done. And so if the family didn't have
13:48
information, cremation is a much more affordable option. It does allow her remains
13:52
to be scattered in a place that's important to her and not in a graveyard.
13:58
And so I think I think you have to feel just a lot of
14:01
empathy for the family and say, did they even have the information they needed
14:05
to try to advocate for their own loved one and why would Anton continue to
14:11
push and push and push. Yes, he likes attention, Yes he seems
14:15
to be full of himself. But if you're the killer, at some point
14:18
you want to start to distance yourself. When they've told you there is no
14:20
murder, you go, thank you Lord, right, and you back up,
14:24
and you just let it go. I don't think he'd keep pushing for
14:28
years and years to get answers. So now let's discuss the possibility that there
14:33
was no murder at all and Crystal simply died as the result of a serious
14:37
illness. It seems that unsolved Mysteries wanted to portray Crystal in the best possible
14:41
light, as they never made any mention of her substance abuse issues. I'm
14:46
not entirely sure how serious these issues were at the time of Crystal's death,
14:50
but since there were only small traces of alcohol and marijuana found in your system,
14:54
it seems likely that you did not die of an overdose. But there's
14:58
been some debate about just how sick Crystel was the last time she was confirmed
15:01
to be alive. According to Anton, her case of the flu was nothing
15:05
more than a bad cold, and she was gradually getting better. The last
15:09
time he spoke with her. But then there's Cristel's final phone conversation with her
15:13
sister Julie on May the sixth, which has been the subject of some controversy.
15:18
Julie claims that when she refused to provide Christel with her mother's phone number,
15:22
Cristel told her that she was so sick that she could hardly make it
15:24
to the bathroom. Since Crystel's death is believed to have taken place during the
15:28
early morning hours of May the seventh, the police took this exchange as an
15:33
indication that she was suffering from a serious illness at that time, which soon
15:37
killed her. However, Julie insisted that her sister was a drama queen who
15:41
often liked to exaggerate things, and believed that Cristel only said she was incredibly
15:46
sick in order to garner sympathy and convinced Julie to hand over their mother's phone
15:50
number. So it seems like context is everything here, But another neighbor apparently
15:56
told police that they heard the sounds of someone who was violently ill on May
16:00
sixth, even though neither Anton or Julie thought that Crystal sounded that ill during
16:04
their phone conversations with her. However, the one thing which might discount the
16:08
idea of Crystal being sick is the possibility that she was working at the Wild
16:14
Goose that night. Obviously, if Crystal is out there doing topless dancing on
16:18
stage, her owness couldn't have been so bad that she could quote unquote hardly
16:22
make it to the bathroom. There seems to be a discrepancy about whether or
16:26
not Crystal worked on May to six, as the club's records do not support
16:30
this, but a waitress friend of hers and the security officer believe she was
16:34
there that night. Of course, their memories may simply be faulty, but
16:38
you could also infer that since a potential suspect in her murder owned the club,
16:44
this person might have fudged the records to make it look like she wasn't
16:47
working. But we'll get back to him in a little while. This one
16:52
is confusing because it seems like the people that knew her most said she was
16:56
exaggerating, right, it seemed like she was sick, and then she told
16:59
Anton she was feeling a lot better. Then when she's trying to talk to
17:02
her sister and get her mom's phone number. She says, Oh my gosh,
17:06
I'm so sick. You got to give me mom's phone number. I
17:08
can barely make it to the bathroom. I need mom's phone number. It
17:11
does seem to play into this idea that maybe she was using an illness to
17:15
try to get sympathy from Julie, because remember, Julie's being told by mom,
17:21
don't give out my phone number. Your sister just calls and talks and
17:23
talks and talks. I don't have time for that. Don't give her phone
17:27
number my phone number to her. So Julie's doing what her mom asked.
17:30
There's obviously a history of the girls going back and forth with her mom like
17:34
this. And so if she was at the club and she was so ill
17:40
that she was fighting something that would eventually kill her, I don't think she'd
17:44
be able to perform at that level. If she was desperate and she had
17:48
to go, you'd think that coworkers would note she was here, but something
17:52
was really off. She was really struggling, she had no energy, she
17:56
looked really pale. They didn't. They just said she was here and she
18:00
was dancing. And so I feel like you have to almost buy into the
18:03
idea that she was exaggerating the illness, which makes natural causes less likely.
18:08
Yeah, that's a good point, because I do not believe those witnesses of
18:11
the club, specifically Sanity, thing about her being ill or her acting strangely.
18:17
So just since they just said that it seemed like a standard night that
18:19
she was there dancing, that's what makes me believe that they're probably mistaken and
18:22
she was not actually there on me the sixth, Because if she was so
18:26
sick that it would precipitate like this sudden death from an illness, I think
18:32
her coworkers would definitely notice. So now let's talk about the loud screams Crystel's
18:37
neighbors heard coming from her apartment during the approximate time period she's believed to have
18:42
died. It goes without saying that Jet Taylor and Susan Aiken are probably two
18:48
of the least like people to ever be interviewed on Unsolved Mysteries. Jet Taylor,
18:53
well, given the circumstances, I have no qualms about poking fun of
18:57
his name. But Susan Aiken actually has an interesting backstory. So we mentioned
19:03
in our last episode that she won the Miss America pageant in nineteen eighty six,
19:07
and even as her own Wikipedia page. However, she also has a
19:11
familial connection to a very infamous crime. In nineteen sixty four, Susan's father
19:17
and grandfather were just two of the many people believed to have been involved in
19:21
the racially motivated murders of civil rights workers James Cheney, Andrew Goodman, and
19:26
Michael Schwerner, which took place in Nashoba County, Mississippi. They became known
19:32
as the Mississippi Burning murders and were later the subject to the Academy Award nominated
19:37
movie named Mississippi Burning. Even though neither of the Achins were actually convicted for
19:42
their alleged roles in the murders, there were quite a few people who did
19:47
not think a woman from a family associated with such a notorious crime family should
19:52
have won the Miss America title, especially since Susan once gave an interview in
19:56
which she said she didn't believe in interracial marriages. You also might be curious
20:02
to know that, even though Susan and Jet did get married, they wound
20:06
up divorcing in nineteen ninety four, But that's beside the point. The issues
20:11
of the couple have taken a lot of heat over the fact that they heard
20:14
horrific screaming coming from Crystal's apartment and chose to do nothing about it. During
20:19
an interview, Susan was actually quoted as saying, we were already told in
20:23
California you just don't get involved in domestic disputes. But what exactly is she
20:30
talking about. Why are you specifically supposed to ignore domestic violence in California.
20:37
Of course, hindsight is twenty twenty, and they did later report these screams
20:41
to their landlord, who also refused to do anything, so the blame does
20:45
not just fall on them. However, it is strange that a couple who
20:49
did not want to get involved were willing to appear on camera on national television
20:55
to share their account. It is horrific to think that Crystal was part potentially
21:00
tortured and murdered inside her apartment while her neighbors were electing to ignore it.
21:06
And even if Crystal wasn't being violently attacked, what if she was suffering some
21:11
sort of medical problem and at that time her life could have potentially been saved
21:15
if someone had called for help. The scream seemed to be the one aspect
21:19
of this case which lends the most credence to the foul play theory, because
21:23
if Crystal succumb to some sort of illness, would it really cause her to
21:27
scream like that for an extended period of time. I think we talked about
21:33
this on episode one, but when I heard her that she was screaming for
21:37
an extended period of time and the neighbors heard this and did nothing, we
21:41
talked about the idea that if she was so sick and she was scared,
21:45
and she's screaming in agony to that extent, what would have stopped her from
21:48
calling the police in nine one one? What would have stopped her from crawling
21:52
on her hands and knees to the neighbor's apartment and knocking on the door and
21:56
saying, I'm terrified, I'm dying, Help me please. I just don't
22:00
see her sitting there forever in agony, slowly dying, like I feel like
22:06
you would have had enough energy and fight for your life to at least crawl
22:10
to the phone. If you have the ability to scream, that takes a
22:12
lot of effort, Like if you've cried in the middle of the night and
22:15
you've screamed. You're exhausted the next day because it takes a lot of physical
22:18
effort. So I feel like you could have at least pushed yourself towards a
22:22
phone or the door to get some help, lie out in the hallway and
22:26
scream, so if someone had to see you. But then you do.
22:30
You have these neighbors who say, like, well, we heard it for
22:32
a long time and it sounded like she's getting tortured. I will say,
22:37
back in the eighties and nineties, domestic violence was one of those things,
22:41
whatever happens behind closed doors, that's your issue. You deal with it,
22:44
including child abuse, spousal abuse, all of that. And thank god,
22:48
we've taken the front door of people's houses and pushed it open a little bit
22:51
and said, it's actually everyone's problem when someone's beating their spouse, or they're
22:56
hurting somebody inside of a home, or they're abusing their kids, all of
23:00
our problems and so. But it wasn't like that back then, and so
23:03
I do think there was a different mentality at the time, like that's their
23:07
problem, they're messed up. I'm not getting involved in it. But how
23:11
tragic, because like you said, what would it have taken to call the
23:14
police and say you've got to come here. It's a scary sound coming from
23:18
her apartment, and whether it was illness or violence, her life could have
23:22
been saved. Yeah, I know that Jet and Susan originally said that when
23:26
they heard it they wondered if it was some sort of S and M thing,
23:30
that maybe they were going through some sexual activities out there which involved Crystal
23:33
being tortured consensually, but that as they kept hearing it, they're thinking,
23:37
no, this sounds like something much worse. That someone is like being tortured
23:41
against their will, or they're being like beaten or something like that. But
23:45
then they just decided, no, we're not going to do anything about it.
23:48
But you brought up the point about why wouldn't she go for the phone.
23:51
Well, we know that Crystal was found tied up in the phone cord
23:55
as if she was going there to try to seek help or call for help,
23:59
but then died before she could dial in number. But like you said,
24:02
it just seems weird that she would have the energy to screen for a
24:04
long period of time if she was alone, but just not use that energy
24:08
to actually go to the phone. Much earlier it's just so weird that she's
24:14
not wearing any pants and she's completely unclothed in the bottom half of her body.
24:18
She was alone. I guess she could have been sleeping like that,
24:21
and if it was an illness, she could have just woken up and just
24:23
been in like a frenzy or something like that. But it's interesting too though,
24:30
if she was so sick, there was no vomit, there's no feces,
24:33
there's nothing around her that indicate like this horrible stomach bug or poisoning or
24:37
anything like that. It's she's just found. It might be difficult to tell
24:44
as well too, because we're not quite sure on the level of decomposition of
24:48
the body. And I think, isn't it pretty common when somebody dies that
24:52
their body will just kind of release, whether it be urine or feces.
24:57
And maybe even if there was vomit, would you necessarily be able to tell
25:03
if Shay she was foaming at the mouth and it wasn't vomit, Maybe it
25:07
wasn't like vomit as we would you know, typically define vomit, it was
25:11
just boem. Could that have dissipated? Did they even properly investigate for that
25:15
is really the question. Yeah, it's never been said in any of the
25:19
sources. If they found any vomit or feces, I mean, if it
25:22
was found near her body, they could have chalked it up to decomposition.
25:26
But if it had been found in other sections of the apartment, suggesting that
25:30
she had become violently ill, I'm sure we probably would have heard about it.
25:34
But as hod as the circumstances of Crystal's death may be, they can
25:37
still be explained away as some sort of undisclosed medical issue. Like we just
25:41
said, she was new from the waist down and wearing nothing but a T
25:45
shirt, but perhaps that's how she normally liked to sleep. Her body was
25:48
entangled in the telephone chord. But what if her medical issues were so bad
25:52
that she was attempting to call for help but collapsed and got tangled in the
25:56
cord before she could make the call. The fact of the matter is that
26:00
there were no signs of forced entry at the apartment, and even though the
26:03
place was a mess, Crystal was known for being a very messy person,
26:07
so that doesn't necessarily mean that a violent struggle took place. All that being
26:11
said, even though the coroner found nothing on Crystal's body to indicate she was
26:15
the victim of foul play. The autopsy report turned out to be such a
26:19
screw up that I'm not sure you can consider any of its conclusions to be
26:23
reliable. As you mentioned in her last episode, Crystal was five feet one
26:27
hundred and five pounds, while the report listed her as five foot seven,
26:32
one hundred and forty pounds, and that's a pretty big discrepancy. Now,
26:36
personally, I have no doubt that the body found inside the apartment did belong
26:40
to Crystal. Some people have pushed forward the idea that the decomposing body of
26:45
another unidentified young woman was planted there to fake Crystal's death, but I think
26:48
that's pure nonsense, Believe it or not. The security officer at the Wild
26:53
Goose openly theorized that Crystal was abducted and being held as a sex slave in
26:59
Japan, and that the body in her apartment was a decoy. Yeah,
27:03
I don't think so. I think those discrepancies are simple clerical errors and the
27:07
result of a medical examiner doing a very sloppy job. Crystal was positively identified
27:14
through her fingerprints, so I'm sure her body did go to the morgue.
27:17
But I have to wonder if the coroner mistakenly mixed up Crystal with another dead
27:21
body he examined and filled out the wrong information on Crystal's autopsy report. I
27:26
mean, they intended to come up with explanations for the wrong height and weight
27:30
being listed, but didn't account for why the report made no mention of the
27:34
metal pins and plates in Crystal's right ankle. So this begs the question,
27:40
if there were signs of foul play on Crystal's body, could the medical examiner
27:44
have either a overlooked it or b not mentioned it in the autopsy report because
27:48
he mixed up her body with someone else. For this reason, I am
27:52
willing to consider the idea that there might have been something about Crystal's death which
27:56
pointed to murder and just wasn't documented. But since her body was cremated,
28:02
we'll never know. And what's sad is that because she was so decomposed,
28:06
the family never got to see her correct. Yeah, like the I know
28:10
that Anton and her family requested it, but they pretty much just told her
28:12
that told them that no, that you do not want to see this.
28:15
She's in such bad shape. And that's what's sad because then they get the
28:18
autopsy report back and there's all these discrepancies, and there are those kind of
28:22
crazy thoughts that enter your mind, like did we even cremate and get back
28:26
the remains of the right girl? Because we didn't get to see her.
28:30
And so for families, that's one of those components of a case, when
28:33
they don't get an opportunity to touch and view the deceased body, there's those
28:40
fears of like what if they got it wrong, what if they missed something
28:42
and you just don't know. And unfortunately, like you said, cremations occurring
28:48
a few days after the death. But they're starting to get all this information
28:52
after all of this is happening, and they're getting different theories and stuff fed
28:56
to them after she's cremated. So you just got to feel heartbreak for them
29:00
where they're going what's true and what's not because in this case, it's really
29:03
hard to know your heads or tails of all the information they're getting. Yeah,
29:10
I know, on researching this, they made comments about how if you
29:11
knew how many clerical issues and mistakes are made in the coroner's office with dead
29:17
bodies, you would be horrified because they're a whole bunch we probably do not
29:19
even know about. And that's why it's easy to assume that these kind of
29:23
errors could have happened in Crystal's case, and that maybe some evidence which pointed
29:27
to foul play just didn't get just got overlooked or didn't get documented properly.
29:33
It's just so many errors on one body, like missing all of you know,
29:37
the metal plates or rods or whatever it was. And then I could
29:40
see like if it was just that, But then when you add the height
29:42
and weight too, and it's like, okay, so what she had pointed
29:47
toes and that might account for an extra few inches, but how do you
29:49
go from five feet to five seven? That seems absurd? And then also
29:55
okay, maybe the gurney thing, that one makes sense to me. But
29:57
then when you have all of them together, it just is either some giant
30:02
conspiracy, which likely it's not, but it's probably just a collection of clerical
30:07
errors and somebody who's just so sloppy. Did they even scan the body?
30:11
Is the question? Did you or did you just say that you did and
30:15
you found nothing? Like who knows how rush they were, how many bodies
30:18
they had to deal with, if it was chaos at the morgue at that
30:21
time. But it seems like somebody dropped the ball. Oh yeah. Like
30:26
we mentioned earlier, I made a comparison to the Karen Cups in a case
30:29
which we covered on the podcast last year, and that was the one where
30:33
they couldn't determine how the victim died and she had a broken hyoid bone on
30:37
her throat which could point to strangulation. But then it later turned out that
30:41
the particular medical examiner had a habit of breaking hyoid bones by accident during his
30:45
autopsies, so that's the reason it might have been created. So it is
30:48
pretty horrifying to learn, like the kind of mistakes that medical examiners are capable
30:53
of. Nothing quite egregious, is our friend Fammi Malik? No, no,
30:57
oh my god, nobody could be where? Said him? Oh his
31:02
head was chopped off. You must have died of an ulcer, yes,
31:04
amen, gunshot wounds? What that must be poisoning? Was it? The
31:08
dog ate the head? Yeah, the dog ate the head. That was
31:11
his explanation for it. Yeah, the hungriest dog ever of your seeing.
31:17
They eat the skull and everything. Yeah. So now let's examine the foul
31:22
play theory. The one suspect whom Anton Klein has pointed the finger at is
31:26
Horace McKenna, the deceased former California Highway Patrol officer who was apparently the secret
31:33
owner of the Wild Goose. But the connection between McKenna and Crystal is a
31:37
tenuous one at best, and I'm not even sure it was conclusively proven that
31:41
they knew each other. All we have is the account of a former waitress
31:45
friend of Crystal's who claimed that Crystal often frequented McKenna's illegal casino, But this
31:52
waitress preferred to remain anonymous, so we have no idea how credible she is.
31:57
Like Robin just stated, the proposed about Crystal being taken to Japan and
32:01
forced into sex slavery is absurd, and I think that her job opportunity in
32:07
Japan is not really an essential part of this story. There seems to be
32:10
a misconception that Crystal had been offered a new job in Japan and was planning
32:15
to go there. But the impression that I've always gotten is that she was
32:19
being considered for this job at the time of her death, but nothing had
32:22
been made official yet. That's why we found it odd that Anton believed why
32:27
he couldn't get a hold of Crystal was because she'd chosen to leave for Japan
32:30
without saying goodbye, even though there's no indication that she'd actually gotten the job
32:36
yet. But to be fair, Anton came to this conclusion because the doorman
32:40
of the Wild Goose told him that Crystal went to Japan, which opens up
32:45
more questions and makes me wonder if there were people from that club who knew
32:49
more than they were letting on. There's been confusion about whether Crystal was actually
32:53
working there on the evening of May sixth, but whatever the case, she
32:58
wasn't found dead until Life thirteen. Did Crystal not have any scheduled shifts there
33:04
that week which she didn't show up for? Did all the other employees just
33:07
assume that she'd quit without notice and left for Japan. If Crystal had gone
33:13
missing, then I can see why people from the club might have the incentive
33:15
to lie and claim that she'd travel to a foreign country. But there's really
33:20
no need to do that if her body is still inside her apartment and is
33:23
going to be discovered eventually. Remember, she's at a topless dance club,
33:28
and so a lot of times we know that there's a legal behavior happening behind
33:31
the scenes there. There's drug deals, there's sex trade deals, there's money
33:37
laundering, there's all kinds of things that happened there. And was Crystal aware
33:40
of something that started to make her a problem for the club? Remember she
33:46
kept writing in her journal, I'm going to get out of here. I'm
33:49
going to stop having to work at this club. And so if that's the
33:52
case, and that somehow has something to do with what that FBI file was
33:57
on her, right, they had a large file on Crystal, some little
34:00
dancer at a club. Was there a reason for the people there to need
34:05
her gone or to cover and lie about her. I think Anton was given
34:08
misinformation. I think he's an odd ball, and I think Crystal was a
34:13
project of his or this pet friend of his. I don't feel like he
34:16
was this deeply committed, loving man who was just totally concerned about her.
34:21
I think Cristel was fun and he was quote helping her and he got benefits
34:25
from doing that. So I just I don't see him being the killer here.
34:30
I don't think he's the killer either. I think you said he's really
34:34
strange and maybe behaves in a way that is odd. But he was the
34:37
one who was screaming from the rooftops. Something had happened, and he was
34:40
trying to keep attention on the case. And I think if you're responsible and
34:45
the authorities don't seem to care, just walk away. You wouldn't be screaming,
34:50
going there's something wrong here. You know, she was potentially murdered,
34:52
and maybe these are ways in which it could have happened, or people who
34:55
could be responsible. It just doesn't seem to compete who but that FBI file.
35:01
I really wish we knew more about it, And I guess it's on
35:05
brand for Crystal not to if she was an informant, say that she wouldn't
35:09
have shared anything with Anton, because we know that she has a history of
35:13
being deceptive with him about certain things that maybe he might not agree with or
35:16
might not be in line with, you know, what he believes she should
35:21
be doing, because she lied about working at the Wild Goose until one of
35:24
his friends had seen her on stage. So if she was informing for the
35:29
FBI, I think it would be reasonable to assume that she may have kept
35:32
up from him for a variety of reasons. So if Crystal and Horace McKenna
35:38
did know each other, I'd be really curious to know how well they were
35:42
acquainted. I know there were no signs of forced entry at Crystal's apartment,
35:45
but that doesn't mean she couldn't have invited someone inside who subsequently killed her.
35:51
Let's say Crystal really did work her shift at the Wild Goose on the evening
35:54
of May the sixth, If McKenna was there that night, perhaps she invited
35:59
him back to her place after her shift ended, before things went horribly wrong.
36:02
Now be advised you should take the next information I'm about to share with
36:07
you with a huge grain of salt. But if you visit the Unsolved Mysteries
36:09
message board at the sitcoms online for Him, you'll find a lengthy thread about
36:14
this case, featuring a post from two thousand and eight by someone under the
36:17
username Ozzie Rules, who claims to be Cristel's brother. His theory is that
36:22
a few years before her death, Crystal attended one of those parties that McKenna
36:27
allegedly held for his friends in law enforcement, and became disgusted when she saw
36:31
some of the men there sexually abusing underage children. To prevent her from talking,
36:37
McKenna arranged things so that Crystal has sold a bag of tainted cocaine laced
36:40
with boric acid, which caused her to suffer a slow, agonizing death by
36:45
poisoning. WHOA Okay, now, we don't have any proof that she even
36:52
knows McKenna. Yes, he's a bad dude. We know that we know
36:54
that he has this amazing mansion but can't even hold a legal job, and
37:00
that he holds these crazy parties with law enforcement agents being there as his guest.
37:04
I'm sure there's a lot of sexual things going on there. I'm sure
37:07
there's a lot of drug use going on there, but we don't have proved
37:10
that Crystal ever attended these parties. Again, though Crystal was secretive, if
37:16
she was going there to make extra money on the side, I could see
37:20
her not sharing that publicly, and who knows what was going on there.
37:23
But this does seem like a little bit of a stretch because I don't feel
37:28
like we have any information about McKenna ever being charged with a sexual abuse,
37:31
ring of kids or anything like that. And surely at some point he would
37:35
have gotten busted for something, right, I know, that he died like
37:38
less than a year later, So I guess it's possible that he could have
37:42
been killed before they found any evidence that he was abusing underage children. Yeah,
37:45
he was murdered, Yeah, in early nineteen eighty nine. That's right.
37:49
And don't you guys think that if they were at this party sexually abusing
37:53
young children that it would be a conspiracy of those who'd be involved. I
38:00
doubt that you would be doing it in front of dancers from the Wild Goose,
38:04
because then that makes them kind of complicit in the crime and loose lips
38:08
think ships. So if they're going to do it in front of Crystal,
38:12
then they're likely doing it in front of other people. The more people that
38:15
are going to know about the worst crimes that you could be committing, I
38:20
would think, the higher the chances that you're going to get caught for that,
38:23
the higher the probability that you will end up incarcerated for what you've done.
38:29
So, if you're going to do it, you think you would do
38:30
it secretively so that less people who aren't directly involved have information about what you're
38:36
doing. And let me say this, if you're a law enforcement agent who's
38:39
complicit in doing these illicit things like sex and drugs and wild parties. That
38:46
doesn't mean you're okay with child's sex abuse. Like that's a whole nother level.
38:51
These girls, like you said, jewels, these girls are going to
38:53
be witnessing babies being hurt. Like I might be down to do drugs with
38:58
you, I might be down to do some crazy sexual things with you,
39:00
But the moment you bring a baby into this, you want to have a
39:02
child in here where these girls are potentially wanting to be moms one day.
39:07
These are men who are fathers, a large group of fluctuating guests. I
39:12
don't see there being a child sex ring in there. I do think if
39:15
this was a small intimate group where it was the same folks every week,
39:19
and like you said, there was one dancer that was the big entertainer and
39:22
things like that, I could see there being an abuse of a child because
39:27
this is a small group of people all willing to look the other way or
39:30
engage in the act. But not the way they describe these parties. It's
39:34
like, oh, it's sometimes there'd be you know, all these different law
39:37
enforcement officers and things like that, and oh, sometimes you'd have girls like
39:40
it's always changing characters who are down to have a good time, not abuse
39:45
kids. It just it just sounds like not not the right circumstances for a
39:50
child's sex abuse ring. And it's worth mentioning that this was California during the
39:53
nineteen eighties when they had the daycare sexual abuse hysteria scandal, where a whole
39:59
bunch of innoc and daycare providers and teachers were accused of sexually molesting children and
40:04
having these satanic rituals and stuff like that where they would sell them off to
40:07
the cartel and they'd slaughter animals, and it just got so ridiculous. So
40:12
I can totally believe that someone thinking that this is a true story, because
40:16
this was the time period of like the whole sex abuse hysteria, that someone
40:21
would believe a story about Crystal being present for a party like this. Now,
40:25
we're certainly not going to take the word of an anonymous Internet comment or
40:30
as gospel, as we have no idea if this poster was actually Krystel's brother,
40:34
and even if he was, he could have been sharing unverified, third
40:37
hand rumors that he'd heard. Well, I'm not saying I necessarily believe this
40:42
story. The idea of Crystal somehow being poisoned is not that implausible, especially
40:46
if you believe the account from the neighbor who heard the sounds of her being
40:51
violently ill in the hours leading up to her death. If Crystal had ingusted
40:55
poison the symptoms could have conceivably gotten so bad Ristil eventually reached the point where
41:00
she was screaming in agony, which would explain the screams Jet and Susan heard
41:05
during the wee hours of the morning. Crystal soon succumbed to the poison and
41:09
died, but since there was no outward signs of violence, the police were
41:13
inclined to think she succumb to an illness and had no reason to suspect foul
41:16
play. I was inclined to disbelieve the idea that Crystal had been poisoned by
41:22
tainted cocaine, since you'd assume that that's the type of thing that would show
41:25
up on an autopsy. But given all the other mistakes made in Crystel's autopsy
41:30
report, I could see the evidence of poisoning being overlooked. However, the
41:35
main problem with pinning Cristel's death on McKenna is that all these accusations against him
41:40
seemed to start after he was already dead and no longer around her refeude anything.
41:45
If you look at McKenna's backstory, it doesn't seem like he was a
41:50
good guy, and he certainly did his fair share of illegal activity, but
41:53
as far as I can tell, he was never officially linked to any murders.
41:58
The one thing which does raise my eyebrows is that the FBI kept a
42:01
file on Crystal and withheld twenty one pages of documents from the file from Anton.
42:07
It was still unclear why she would have been involved with them. We
42:12
know the FBI was monitoring McKenna's activities at the time of his death, so
42:15
perhaps Crystal really was working as an informant, which is what Anton suspected.
42:21
I can't help but wonder if things might have turned out differently had a contract
42:25
killing not been performed on McKenna ten months after Crystal's death. I'm sure that
42:30
brought an abrupt end to the FBI's investigation into McKenna's activities, and once the
42:36
focus switched to solving his murder, Crystal might have become an afterthought. If
42:40
McKenna had actually lived longer, perhaps a more concrete connection would have eventually been
42:45
made between him and Crystal. The FBI file bothers me so deeply. Remember
42:52
Ann asked to get the file and then twenty one pages of it were kept.
42:58
And so when you think about the size of that file, Crystal was
43:02
doing something big. This isn't a local law enforcemtion. It's like, hey,
43:07
man, make this drug deal for me so I can catch the guy
43:08
around the corner. That's like normal informant stuff. You know, when you
43:13
have someone who might have a run in with getting caught with a little bit
43:15
of drugs on themselves or getting caught doing something illegal that's minor. The police
43:20
might say, if you flip on this person, I'll let you go on
43:22
that. But this is an FBI file built on this girl who seems to
43:27
be relatively harmless and kind of quote unimportant. Right. She dances at this
43:31
club, she hangs out with her friends and family, and that's about all
43:36
we know about Crystal. So the fact that the FBI had her doing something
43:40
that had twenty one pages worth of information that could not be shared with her
43:45
closest friend partner, it's very disturbing. And like you said, if there
43:52
was a drug deal they're exploring, or like a drug ring they're exploring with
43:55
McKenna and then he gets murdered. Do they really need to be chasing the
44:00
drug lead anymore? Or maybe not, Maybe all of that disbanded because their
44:04
leader's gone or the man who was running the show is dead, and now
44:07
we need to focus on the murder itself. But Crystal was doing something that
44:10
got her into trouble and someone I think found out. Now, again we
44:15
still don't have information in proof that she was murdered, but that autopsy where
44:21
the world renowned forensic scientist is saying, yeah, look it looks like she
44:25
was strangled. That in that FBI file they bother me deeply, And it
44:30
is frustrating that if Crystal was involved, this was something that the FBI couldn't
44:35
finally share the truth about it after all these years. Because if it was
44:38
something to do with Horace McKenna, he's now dead and the people who killed
44:42
him have been brought to justice and put in prison. So I wouldn't assume
44:45
that there's still some secret investigation that they have to keep confidential. So if
44:50
she was doing something, why not tell Anton? Why not tell her family?
44:54
Unless of course, it's a case where maybe they put her life in
44:58
danger and they don't want to admit that in order to provide potential liability.
45:04
That's what we theorized in Keith Warne's case, coming full circle to our first
45:08
episode, exactly, Yeah, if that's what I've always suspected that he might
45:12
have been involved in some as an informant for something dangerous going on, and
45:15
the police are so tight lipped because they fear they're going to get in trouble
45:19
if they show what they did to put Key's life in danger. However,
45:23
here's the big issue. If Horace McKenna was actually responsible for Crystal's death,
45:29
what more can really be done. Anton Klein was carrying on this very public
45:34
crusade to find answers and expressing his suspicions to McKenna even though he was already
45:37
dead. Yes, I suppose it's possible that others could have been involved,
45:42
particularly if someone really did sell Crystal a poisoned bag of cocaine. But if
45:46
McKenna was the sole perpetrator, it's not like you can prosecute a dead man.
45:52
But at the same time, I can understand why Anton would be so
45:54
determined to see the police files on this case, as the errors in the
45:58
autopsy report are a to make one suspicious. But ask yourselves this question,
46:04
what would be the point of intentionally listing the wrong height and weight for Crystal
46:07
in her autopsy Unless you believe the absurd theory that someone planted the decomposing body
46:14
of another woman in Crystal's apartment in order to fake her death. I just
46:17
don't see those discrepancies being anything more than a clerical error. That's not to
46:22
say that I completely dismiss the idea of foul play, as I do think
46:25
it's possible that Crystal may have been poisoned. The loud screams and strange manner
46:30
in which Crystal's body was found do lend credence to the idea that she was
46:35
suffering pretty badly prior to her death. I'm not sure how many standard illnesses
46:39
could generate that type of reaction, but if she had some sort of deadly
46:43
poison her system, that's a different story. But the problem is that any
46:47
possible motives for why someone would want to poison Crystal wind up venturing into conspiracy
46:52
theory territory, and there really is a very strong evidence pointing to murder.
46:58
The alleged prime suspect is aised guy who may have owned the place where Crystal
47:01
worked, but we can't be certainly even met. Since there is no hard
47:06
evidence that Crystal was poisoned, I am inclined to lean towards Oukham's razor and
47:10
attribute her death to some sort of fatal, undiagnosed illness. Of course,
47:15
the circumstances are so strange that there's no way I would one hundred percent attribute
47:19
her death to natural causes. But without stronger evidence pointing to a suspect,
47:23
I just think it's more logical to assume this is how things went down.
47:28
Sadly, the fact that Crystal's body was cremated may have ruined any chances of
47:32
proving that foul play had taken place, and short of someone making a full
47:36
confession to her murder, after all these years, I don't think there's any
47:39
way to conclusively determine the full truth about what happened. But if you do
47:45
happen to have any information on the unexplained death of Crystal Spencer, please contact
47:50
the appropriate authorities. Jules Ashley any final thoughts in this case. This is
47:55
one of those like I said, I feel so much pain for the family
48:00
who is in contact with her. Just the day before we know she's likely
48:04
has passed away. You have poor Julie who carries this guilt of saying,
48:07
you know she was asking to talk to her mom. I didn't give her
48:10
the phone number to my mom because my mom had asked me not to.
48:15
And I honestly don't know in hindsight if my sister was being dramatic or if
48:19
she was struggling. And now we have all this misinformation that I don't even
48:22
know what happened to her. She's been cremated. There's no way to get
48:25
answers. The more we learn, the more confusing it becomes. It's one
48:30
of those cases where you ask yourself, even if it was natural causes,
48:35
couldn't the police have done more to do a thorough investigation and to give enough
48:39
respect to a deceased body to say we want to guarantee we know what happened
48:44
in this case. And instead, I think they do what they do often,
48:47
and they learned who the victim was, They saw the kind of disarray
48:52
she lived in and the lifestyle she had, and they said, hmm,
48:54
looks like natural death. I don't see any cause of a concern here.
48:59
Let's move forward, and therefore, any concerns that were brought to them before
49:04
she was cremated, I don't think they passed to the family to allow them
49:07
to make decisions. And I think you have a friend of hers and a
49:13
partner of hers who's left questioning what happened. Her family's left what questioning what
49:16
happened and if it was foul play, and maybe that FBI informant role got
49:22
her in trouble. Why don't we know more about that? I think you
49:27
know they law enforcement doesn't want the family to know. They don't want to
49:30
have any responsibility in someone's death. But how tragic that putting her in that
49:35
position might have actually led to her death. And if nothing else, it
49:38
did lead to this idea that she's somebody who wasn't valuable enough to investigate.
49:43
And that is simply heartbreaking because she was a daughter, she was a sister,
49:46
she was a friend, and she was a partner to somebody, and
49:50
so my heart just goes out and I'm praying that there could be answers,
49:52
but unless someone came to confess, I really don't see how that's possible.
49:59
Yeah, I ca go either way on what happened here, Like I quite
50:04
honestly lean sixty percent towards foul play and forty percent towards an illness, just
50:09
all of these unknown variables. As she just mentioned the FBI report, Why
50:15
are you holding this back? Why aren't you giving this information to Anton or
50:20
to her family? I feel like Crystal's death was it was criminal, how
50:25
little they seemed to care and how many errors were made. I just don't
50:31
know, based on the investigation that they did and the type of autopsy report
50:36
that we have at this point that all of the answers are available to us.
50:42
And it's so unfortunate that Crystal was cremated so that there wasn't the possibility
50:46
to exhume her body later. And I really hope that her family found peace,
50:52
even just thinking about the impacts on somebody like Julie knowing that Crystal had
50:57
called her asked for the number for her mother and she didn't give it to
51:00
her. She gave the reasoning that her sister talks her ear off. But
51:04
I can imagine how many times Julie has gone over that in her head and
51:07
gone, well, maybe things would have been different had I given her that
51:12
number for our mother, And none of this is her fault, but it's
51:15
just the impact that these crimes are crimes, whether it or illness, these
51:20
types of things have on a family, and that's the part that really sticks
51:23
with me with this case. Yeah, I've always been split on this,
51:27
and I do agree that if the police had performed a more thorough investigation right
51:30
at the outset, then we maybe we might have some more conclusive answers,
51:35
and that they just did not treat the family very well. And even though
51:37
Anton Klein does seem to be a bit of an odd individual, I do
51:42
give him credit for keeping Cristel's memory alive, because if he hadn't pushed so
51:45
hard, we might never have heard about her story. For years, I've
51:49
always been inclined to believe she died of just some sort of unknown illness,
51:52
just simply because there is no real evidence pointing towards foul play, and that
51:57
all these stories about Horace mcay and her attending a party was child sexual abuse
52:02
and sex slavery. There's never been anything to substantiate that they're true. But
52:07
like you said, the big elephant in the room here is the FBI file,
52:12
which makes you wonder why would something like this even exist unless Crystal was
52:16
involved in something. I mean doesn't necessarily mean she was murdered, but it
52:21
just shows that there's probably a lot more to her story than what we've been
52:23
told. I do think if she was murdered, that there is some merit
52:28
maybe to the poisoning theory. Like I don't necessarily believe she was sold tated
52:31
cocaine, but given the lack of a struggle or forced entry or foul play
52:37
at the apartment, I do think possibly someone could have slipped her some poisoned
52:42
the day before she died, and that caused her to become more progressively ill,
52:45
until things reached the point where she got so bad that she started screaming
52:50
and had a violent reaction. And in a sense, that would be the
52:52
perfect murder because you don't actually have to be at the scene to kill your
52:57
victim, and there's nothing to link you to it. And who knows,
53:00
maybe if a better autopsy had been done, they would have been able to
53:02
confirm or deny this poisoning theory. But without any of that, we just
53:07
don't know for sure, so very sad case. I don't know if we'll
53:10
know the truth about what happened, but it's good we do these podcast episodes
53:14
in order to keep the memories of victims like Crystal alive. Robin, do
53:17
you want to tell us a little bit about the Trail Went Cold? Patreon?
53:22
Yes, The Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three years now,
53:24
and we offer these standard bonus features like early ad free episodes, and I
53:30
also send out stickers and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up with
53:34
us on Patreon. If you join our five dollars tier tier two, we
53:38
also offer monthly bonus episodes in which I talk about cases which are not featured
53:44
on the Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon, and
53:47
if you join our highest tier tier three, the ten dollars tier. One
53:52
of the features we offer is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsawved
53:57
Mysteries, where you can download an audio five and then boot up the original
54:01
Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or YouTube and play it with my audio commentary
54:07
playing in the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about the cases
54:10
featured in this episode, and incidentally, the very first episode that I did
54:15
a commentary track over was the episode featuring this case. So if you want
54:20
to download a commentary track in which I make more smart ass remarks about Jewel
54:23
Kaylor, then be sure to join Tier three. So I want to let
54:27
you know a little bit about the Jules and Nashty patreons. So there's early
54:30
ad free episodes of The Path Went Chili. We've got our Pathwent Chili mini's,
54:35
which are always over an hour, so they're not very mini, but
54:37
they're just too short to turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing
54:42
those. So we hope you'll check out those patreons. We'll link them in
54:45
the show notes. So I want to thank you all for listening, and
54:47
any chance you have to share us on social media with a friend or to
54:52
rate and review is greatly appreciate it. You can email us at The Pathwentchili
54:55
at gmail dot com. You can reach us on Twitter at the Pathwent.
55:00
So until next time, be sure to bundle up because cold trails and chilly
55:04
pass call for warm clothing. Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy