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Cops Find Dead Body In Her Crawlspace After Anonymous Tip · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Have you ever had a gut feeling that something was
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: just like terribly, terribly wrong?
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely. Right.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, one of those visceral, bone-deep instincts where your
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: stomach just drops out of you completely unprompted.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like an alarm bell just going off in your head.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: But then, you know, you look around and everyone else
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: in your life, your friends, your family, even the authorities,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: they're all looking at you with these incredibly calm, reassuring faces. Mm-hmm.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: And they tell you that there's a perfectly logical, completely
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: mundane explanation for whatever it is you're panicking about. They
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: tell you to, like, take a breath. Just wait it out.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: That specific kind of psychological dissonance is, well, it's incredibly isolating.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Because when you're forced to choose between trusting your own
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: primal intuition and trusting the systems and the people that
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: society tells us are supposed to know better.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: You start to feel like you're the one losing your mind.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Precisely. It's a very specific type of lonely. Right.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: And for most of us, thank God, those gut feelings
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: usually turn out to be nothing.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: Just a misunderstanding, usually.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like a cell phone battery that died on a
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: road trip or something.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: But today, we're opening up a really harrowing set of
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: transcripts from the Law and Crime Network.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: This one is, it's a heavy one.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: It really is. Because in this case, a mother's intuition
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: wasn't just accurate. It was literally the absolute only thing
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: standing between a brutal killer and total permanent silence.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: We're doing a deep dive into the disappearance of a
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: 35-year-old man named Carl Bean. He went by the nickname KJ.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: And we're going to examine the absolutely chilling discovery of
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: his body and untangle this very dark web of paranoia, drugs,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: and betrayal.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Which is incredibly complex.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I want to set the expectation right now
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: for you listening. This isn't just about the grim details
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: of what happened. I really want to know How the
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: systems we rely on can fail so spectacularly.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: And how the human mind can rationalize living in a
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: literal nightmare.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Exactly. So to understand the mechanics of this failure, where
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: do we even begin?
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: Well, we have to look at the camouflage that hid
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: KJ's disappearance in the first place. And this takes us
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: back to May of 2022 in Denver, Colorado. If we
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: look at the victimology here.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Which is how law enforcement assesses a victim's lifestyle.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: Right, exactly. How they assess vulnerability. So KJ was in
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: a very precarious position. He was 35. He had military training,
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: but he was living a highly transient lifestyle. The records
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: show he had moved back to Denver the previous year,
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: but he was essentially, you know, bouncing around between friends'
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: couches and occasionally just living out of his car.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Wait, stop right there, because that word transient, I mean,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: that feels like it does a lot of heavy lifting
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: in police work.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: It absolutely does.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Like if someone doesn't have a fixed address or a
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: nine-to-five job, where a manager is going to call if
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: they don't clock in, the timeline of their disappearance instantly
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: gets blurry, doesn't it?
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: It doesn't just get blurry. It often completely disintegrates. Wow.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: Because the absence of a strict daily routine means that
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: days or even weeks can pass before anyone in their
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: immediate physical orbit realizes that bouncing around has actually transitioned
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: into missing.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Because there's no set schedule to break.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The friction of everyday life, you know. paying a mortgage,
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: swiping a key card at an office building that creates
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: a data trail. Right. When you remove that friction, you
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: remove the alarms.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: But there was one alarm that didn't rely on a
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: data trail. His mother.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: Yes, Kyla Durstein.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Right, Kyla, who lived in Phoenix at the time. Yeah.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: By May of 2022, she realizes she hasn't heard from
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: KJ since about two weeks prior to Mother's Day.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: Which was highly unusual for them.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: Right. She makes it explicitly clear in the source material
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: for her son to miss Mother's Day and go totally
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: radio silent was a massive red flag.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: A huge deviation from his baseline behavior. Yeah.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: She's calling his phone. It's going straight to voicemail. She's
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: tracking down his friends in Denver, and nobody has seen him.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: So what does she do?
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: Well, she eventually hires a private investigator, basically a family friend,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: to dig into what KJ was doing right before he vanished.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: And the information that private investigator uncovers ends up becoming
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: the perfect logical excuse for everyone in KJ's life To
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: completely stop looking for him. Right.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Wait, so what do they actually find?
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: Well, the PI discovers that KJ had an active warrant
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: out for his arrest.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. Okay.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. In May of 2022, the exact same month his
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: phone stopped ringing, KJ and another man were caught attempting
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: to steal catalytic converters at a park and ride in Thornton, Colorado.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: Hold on. If they were caught, why was there an
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: active warrant? Wouldn't he just be sitting in jail?
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: You'd think so, but the police picked KJ up and
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: questioned him at the scene, but they didn't have immediate
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: rock-solid proof at that exact moment.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: So they just let him go?
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they released him pending further investigation. It was only
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: like a day or so later when investigators finally secured
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: video evidence of the theft that a formal felony warrant
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: was issued.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: But the critical piece of information here is the man
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: KJ was arrested alongside.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, who was it?
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: His name was Haskell Leroy Crawford.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: I have a feeling Haskell Leroy Crawford is going to
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: become very, very important to this timeline.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: Oh, he absolutely is.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: But looking at the immediate fallout of this warrant, KG's
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: friends look at the situation and they just kind of
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: build a narrative, right?
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They see a guy with military training who knows
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: how to survive, who now knows the police are actively
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: hunting him for a felony property crime.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Stealing car parts is no joke.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: Right. So they immediately jumped to the conclusion that KJ
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: used his military skills to voluntarily go off the grid
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: to avoid going to prison.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: Which, I mean, if you don't know the whole truth,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: kind of sounds plausible. Sure.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: This is a textbook, almost fatal example of confirmation bias.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack that.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: So confirmation bias is basically our brain's tendency to search for, interpret,
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: and favor information in a way that confirms our preexisting beliefs.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: While totally discarding anything that challenges them.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Because the human brain hates ambiguity. It causes a
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: ton of stress.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: It's exhausting not knowing.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: Right. So KJ's friends and eventually the police, they wanted
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: a non-threatening explanation for why this man vanished.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: The narrative of the resourceful military veteran on the run
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: is neat.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: It's very neat. It makes logical sense. And most importantly,
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: it effectively neutralizes any sense of panic.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Because if someone is actively trying to hide from the law,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: you don't form search parties.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: Right. You assume they're safe, just laying low, out of sight.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: He essentially weaponized his own life experience against him. His
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: military training, which normally implies discipline and capability, became the
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: excuse for why he wasn't answering his mother's calls.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: But Kyla wasn't buying the whole off the grid theory.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: Mothers rarely do in these situations.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: Right. So she takes what is supposed to be the
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: proper official step. In July of 2022, which is two
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: months after you go silent, she contacts the Denver area
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: police department and officially files a missing persons report.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: Or at least she believes she filed a missing persons report.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: This part of the transcript is just infuriating. Tell me
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: how this happened.
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  Speaker 2: It's a massive failure.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Because nearly a year goes by and Kyla is just
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: waiting for updates, living in this agonizing limbo. And it's
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: only much, much later that she discovers the officer she
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: spoke with that day never actually filed the report. It
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: wasn't misfiled. It never existed in the National Crime Information
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Center database at all. How does a sworn officer just
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: not plug the alarm box into the wall?
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: Well, it requires a perfect storm of systemic overload and, frankly,
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: implicit bias.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: Walk me through that. Okay.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: Imagine a busy dispatch center or a precinct desk. Officers
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: are constantly triaging immediate violent threats. Right.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: They're busy.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: Very busy. So a call comes in from out of state.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: A mother says her 35-year-old son is missing. Okay. The
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: officer runs the son's name and sees two things right away. One,
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: he is documented as transient, living out of his car.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: And two, he has an active felony warrant for stealing
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: car parts.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: So the triage matrix basically just pushes him immediately to
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: the bottom of the pile.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The system is fundamentally overwhelmed, so these cognitive shortcuts
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: take over.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: The assumption is this adult male doesn't want to be
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: found because he's running from a warrant.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: Right. The officer thinks... I am not going to dedicate
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: limited municipal resources to hunting down a fugitive who is
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: voluntarily hiding. So the officer slowly decides not to generate
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: the paperwork. But the consequence of that non-action is just devastating.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: Because the first 48 hours are everything, right? I mean,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: if you don't lock down the data, it just evaporates.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: Precisely. The window for preserving digital evidence, pulling CCTV footage
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: from the areas he frequented, Pinging cell towers.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: All of that data gets overridden so fast.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: It closes rapidly. When that window is slammed shut because
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: an officer made an assumption, the mountain that homicide investigators
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: eventually have to climb becomes exponentially steeper.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: God, put yourself in Kyla's shoes for a second. The
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: official system has completely failed you. Your son's friends have
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: basically written him off as a fugitive hiding in the woods.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: She was entirely on her own.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the police literally threw your report in the trash.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: You have zero structural support. So she realizes she has
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: to generate her own gravity.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: She has to build the investigation herself.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Exactly. She has to create a space that will pull
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: in clues. And she turns to the Internet. She and
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: one of KJ's friends create a Facebook page dedicated solely
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: to finding him.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: Which is often the absolute last resort for families of
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: the missing.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. When the official avenues are blocked, social media
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: becomes the public square. You're throwing a message in a
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: bottle into this massive ocean of data that just hoping someone, somewhere,
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: recognizes the face.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: And for months, she gets nothing. Just the deafening silence
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: of the internet.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: Must have been agonizing.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: But then we jump to March or April of 2023.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: This is almost a full year since KJ vanished.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: Kyla's inbox finally gets a message. And it is from
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: a user with a bizarre, almost taunting username. It was, nope,
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: try again.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: The sociology of that username alone tells you everything you
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: need to know about the ecosystem this tip is coming from.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: What do you mean?
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: Well, this is not a concerned citizen calling a recorded
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: police tip line. This is someone using a burner profile,
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: intentionally hiding their identity, stepping very, very carefully out of
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: the shadows.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Because they're terrified of the information they possess.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: So imagine opening this message. The very first line reads,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: and I quote, I'm so sorry to tell you this,
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: but KJ was killed.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: It's just a punch to the gut.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Kyla replies instantly. desperately begging for more information. And later
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: that day, the user sends this massive detailed message.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: She finally identifies herself, right?
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she identifies herself as a woman named Sierra, and
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Sierra drops an absolute bombshell.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: What does she say?
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: She tells Kyla that a friend of hers, a woman
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: named Casey Back, had recently come over to her apartment.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: Casey was completely high on drugs. Okay. And while she
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: was sitting in Sierra's living room, just out of her mind,
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: she started rambling. She confessed that her boyfriend, Haskell Leroy Crawford,
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: the same guy from the catalytic converter arrest, had murdered KJ.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: And the confession didn't stop at the fact of the murder.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: It bled into the horrifying mechanical logistics of the cover-up. Yeah.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: Sierra tells Kyla that Casey admitted she helped clean up
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: the murder scene. She said they dragged KJ's body into
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: a crawlspace inside Casey's own apartment, and then Leroy covered
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: him with cement. Cement.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: Just incredible detail.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: Now, Sierra admits that initially she thought this was just
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: a drug-induced fantasy. She thought it was the paranoid rambling
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: of an addict.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: Which is a fair assumption, given the context.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Right. But something about the specificity of the story, the
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: sheer detail of the cement in the crawl space, it
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: really haunted her. It stuck with her. It did. So
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: Sierra went online and Googled KJ's name. That is how
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: she found the mother's Facebook page. Wow. And that is
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: when she realized the specific details from this terrifying drug
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: ramble perfectly matched KJ's a real-world missing person.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: Let's break down why Casey confessed in the first place,
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: because it's a fascinating look into what we call leakage
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: in criminal psychology.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Leakage?
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah. When two or more people share the secret of
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: a heinous crime, the psychological burden of carrying that secret
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: is immense.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, you would have to constantly monitor every single
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: thing you say.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: It requires an incredible amount of continuous cognitive control. You
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: are actively maintaining a compartmentalized reality.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: No worries.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: Every waking minute. Right. Now, introduce heavy narcotics into that equation.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: Oh, man.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: Drugs severely impair the prefrontal cortex, which is the part
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: of the brain responsible for executive function, impulse control, self-regulation.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: Basically, the brain's brakes.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Think of the prefrontal cortex as a high-security firewall.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: The chemical barrier that Casey was using to keep this
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: horrific secret locked away simply dissolved under the influence.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: The firewall completely crashed.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: It crashed. She didn't go to the police to confess.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: She went to a friend while intoxicated because the human
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: mind is fundamentally not built to silently harbor the knowledge
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: of a brutal murder.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: Especially when that murder is buried literally under your own feet.
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The pressure is too much.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: That makes total sense. The drugs basically stripped away the filter.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: But look at Sierra the tipster. I find her actions
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: really revealing here. She figures out this murder is real.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: But she doesn't call 911. She doesn't go down to
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: the local precinct. She goes straight to the victim's mother
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: on Facebook using a burner account.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: Why bypass the entire justice system?
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: Well, it speaks volumes about the complete lack of trust
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: in law enforcement, particularly within populations that are adjacent to
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: substance abuse or the criminal justice system.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: They just don't see the cops as the good guys. Exactly.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: Exactly. For Sierra, going to the police meant putting herself
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: directly in the crosshairs of a major homicide investigation.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: Oh, because they start looking into her too. Right.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: It meant opening up her own life, her own apartment,
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: her own habits to police scrutiny. Furthermore, there's the very
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: real fear of retaliation on the streets.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: If people find out she snitched.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: Exactly. By going to the mother via a burner account,
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: Sierra is trying to offload her own psychological burden, the
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: guilt of knowing this horrible truth, without actually interfacing with
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: the system she fears.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: To her, the badge represents danger, not safety.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: Precisely.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: It's just surreal to think about Kyla's perspective in all this.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: You know, you spend a year waiting for a detective
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: to call and say they found your son at a
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: shelter or something.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: And instead.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: Instead, you get a Facebook DM from, Nope, try again,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: laying out the exact gruesome details of his murder and
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: concrete entombment.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: It's unfathomable.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: It forces you to ask if Sierra hadn't been Just
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: curious enough to type KJ's name into a search bar.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: Would that body have stayed hidden in that crawlspace forever?
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: It is highly probable. Remember, the police were not looking
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: for him.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: Because the report wasn't filed.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: The official report did not exist in the system. Without
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: Sierra's specific curiosity, that concrete tomb might never have been breached.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: That is terrifying. But Sierra's tip finally provided the one
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: thing a mother's intuition couldn't. A physical address.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: Yes, a location.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: So. Kyla acts immediately. On April 1st, 2023, she calls
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: the Aurora non-emergency line from Phoenix.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: She gets an operator named Ethan. She lays out the
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: entire puzzle, the timeline, the Facebook message, the specific address
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: of the apartment, the names of Casey Back and Leroy Crawford.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: And how does the system react this time?
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: This time, the system actually works. The operator immediately alerts
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: the Aurora Police Department's Homicide Division. And the police response
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: from this moment forward moves at absolute breakneck speed.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: It has to. In law enforcement, the moment a specific
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: location and a specific suspect are named in relation to
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: a clandestine grave.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: The clock starts ticking.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: It becomes a frantic race against the clock. If word
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: gets back to the suspects that the police are asking questions,
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: the evidence could be destroyed or the suspects could flee.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: You have to lock it down.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: And they did. Two days later, on April 3, a
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: detective formally contacts Kyla. They get the full background. Later
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: that same day, they locate Sierra, actually pull her in
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: for an interview.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: Okay, so they're verifying the source. Right.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: And Sierra swears that everything she told Kyla is the
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: absolute truth. She recounts Casey coming over high, rambling about
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: the murder in the concrete. So investigators start pulling their
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: own records. And they hit a massive breakthrough almost instantly.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: They pull up KJ's catalytic converter arrest from the previous year.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: The Thornton incident.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: Yes. And sitting right there on the arrest report, Next
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: to KJ's name is Haskell Leroy Crawford.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: That document is the linchpin.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: It proves they knew each other.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: It's the direct, verifiable link that detectives need to bridge
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: the gap between a street rumor and a prosecutable reality.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: It establishes a pre-existing relationship and a shared criminal history
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: between the missing person and the alleged killer.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: And the background check on Leroy yields an incredibly lucky
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: break for the tactical team.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: Oh, what did they find?
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: They discover Leroy is not currently out on the streets.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: He's already incarcerated in Jefferson County. He's been locked up
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: since September of 2022 on a completely unrelated attempted homicide charge. Wow.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: Which fundamentally alters the tactical planning for the search warrant.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: It means the primary violent threat, the suspected killer, is neutralized.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: The SWAT team or detectives don't have to worry about
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: breaching an apartment and walking into a shootout with Leroy.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: Well, that makes sense.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: Their focus can shift entirely to securing the physical crime
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: scene and dealing with the alleged accomplice, Casey Beck.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the very next day, April 4.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: The police execute the warrant. They arrive at Casey's apartment.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: And the scene they walk into is just, it's jarring
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: in its mundanity. Casey is there, just living her life.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: She has two children who live in that apartment with her.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: She has two dogs named G and Pluto running around.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: Oh my God.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: The police literally have to pause the raid to arrange
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: for Casey's mother to come pick the kids up from school.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: And they have to secure these barking dogs before they
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: can take Casey down to the station.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: Just consider the macabre everyday reality of that environment for
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: a second.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: It's insane.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: You have children waking up, getting dressed for school, eating
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: breakfast in the kitchen. You have dogs running around barking
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: at the mailman. All of this incredibly domestic, normal life
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: is taking place mere feet above the decomposing, concrete-encased body
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: of a murdered man.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: A man that we later learned these kids used to
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: affectionately call Uncle Carl.
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: The psychological compartmentalization required to just fry an egg in
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: that kitchen is staggering.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: It really is. It's like a modern drug-fueled version of
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: Edgar Allan Poe's The Telltale Heart.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: That's a perfect analogy.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: But instead of a heart beating under the floorboards, it's
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: a concrete tomb underneath a bedroom closet. How does a
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: human being normalize living inside a crime scene like that?
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: How do you sleep at night knowing what is beneath you?
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: You survive it through a combination of extreme denial, paralyzing fear,
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: and heavy substance abuse.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: So you just numb it out.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: Exactly. When the human mind is faced with a trauma
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: or a reality that is too horrific to process, like
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: knowing you helped entomb a friend under your own belongings,
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: the mind fractures.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: It builds walls.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: Massive mental walls. You utilize narcotics to numb the smell,
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: to suppress the anxiety. to keep the intrusive memories at bay.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: And the routine.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: The mundane routines of life, taking the kids to school,
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: feeding the dogs. They become desperate, mechanical anchors to sanity.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: But as we saw with our confession to Sierra, those
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: psychological walls are inherently fragile.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: The truth acts like water.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: It always finds a crack to seep through.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: And the physical truth was about to be exposed. Hmm.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: With Casey and the dogs finally out of the apartment,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: the police push past the living areas. They go into
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: one of the closets. On the floor, they find a
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: trap door. But this isn't just a standard access panel.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: It has been intentionally rigged with locks.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: Which immediately signals intent to conceal.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: They remove the door, revealing a crawl space. Immediately, a
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: foul odor hits them. The detectives shine their flashlights down
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: into the dark space, and they see a large... highly
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: suspicious mound of concrete.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: The tomb.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And when they look closely through the cracks in
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: the rough concrete, they can clearly see human remains.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: At that exact second, the entire paradigm of the case shifts.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: It is officially no longer a missing person's inquiry. It
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: is a homicide investigation, and that apartment is ground zero.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: They have the body. But a body encased in concrete
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: doesn't tell you the narrative of how it got there.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: Forensic evidence only goes so far. Right.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: For the story... The detectives have to go back to
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: the station and face the woman who's been sleeping above
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: it for almost a year. They bring Casey back into
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: the interrogation room.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: This is where it gets really interesting.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: Looking at the transcript, this interrogation is a masterclass in
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: psychological leverage.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: Because interrogations are rarely the screaming matches you see on television.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: They're not just banging on tables.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: No, not at all.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: They are carefully structured psychological environments designed to bypass a
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: suspect's natural defense mechanisms.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Well, in this first interview... The detectives played incredibly soft.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: They sit down with Casey, and they don't immediately accuse
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: her of murder.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: Okay, what do they say?
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: They explicitly say, look, we don't think you are the
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: primary person involved in this. We don't think you created
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: this whole mess, but we know you know about it,
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: and we think you were somehow involved in the cleanup.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: They're offering her an out.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: A massive glowing exit ramp.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: What you're describing is a core component of the read technique,
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: specifically a tactic called theme development.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: Theme development.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The interrogator offers the suspect a moral justification or
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: a minimized role for their actions. You frame them not
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: as a cold-blooded monster, but as a victim of circumstance.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: Someone who was forced or pressured into it.
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Panicked into a bad situation by saying, we don't
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: think you created this mess. The detective is subtly giving
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: her psychological permission to blame Leroy.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: They are building a bridge for her to walk across.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: Hoping she will grasp that lifeline and start talking. She
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: has spent nearly a year surviving by pretending that Trapdoor
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: did not exist. To admit its existence to an authority
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: figure is to bring her entire fragile, compartmentalized world crashing
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: down instantly.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: The illusion shatters.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: In that specific moment in the interview room, her fear
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: of the immediate legal consequences vastly outweighs the psychological relief
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: of confessing.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: Well, the detectives don't indulge her delusions. They charge her
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: with being an accessory to a crime, and they put
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: her in a jail cell.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: A reality check.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: And that physical reality check works faster than any interrogation
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: tactic could. Because at exactly 7.44 p.m. that same evening,
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: the police station gets a phone call. Who is it?
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: It's a man identifying himself as Casey's new boyfriend. He
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: tells the cops, Casey just called me from the jail.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: She is ready to talk.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: Never underestimate the psychological impact of the heavy steel door
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: clanging shut.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: It changes everything.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: The isolation of a holding cell is an incredibly powerful catalyst.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: When a suspect is left alone with their thoughts, completely
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: stripped of their distractions, their familiar environment.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: And crucially, their drugs.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: Yes, and their drugs. The walls close in very quickly.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: The illusion of control evaporates.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: So the detectives bring her back into the room for
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: interview number two. She waives her right to an attorney.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: And she immediately points the finger.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: At Leroy.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: At Leroy. She admits that Leroy killed KJ. She even
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: provides the motive she claims Leroy was paranoid, that he
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: thought KJ was a rat who was snitching to the
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: cops about their thefts.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: And that Leroy felt he needed to be silenced. But
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: then she starts spinning this narrative to completely minimize her
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: own presence during the violence.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: This behavioral progression from absolute rigid denial to minimization is
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: extremely common.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: Like a stepping stone to the truth.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: Right. Once a suspect realizes that claiming total ignorance is
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: no longer tenable because the police clearly have the evidence,
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: they will pivot.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: They admit the bare minimum.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Just enough to seem cooperative while still aggressively protecting
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: themselves from the most severe legal charges, like accessory to
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: murder or conspiracy.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: So listen to the story she expects the detectives to believe.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: Let's hear it.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: She claims she was just coming home from a normal
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: day at work. She walks into her apartment, walks into
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: her bedroom, and oop, there is KJ, already dead on
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: the floor with a white Walmart bag tied over his head.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: Just stumbled upon it.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: Right. She claims Leroy then physically forced her to grab
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: KJ's arm and help drag him into the crawlspace. And
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: when the detectives ask her about the concrete, the massive
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: mound of masonry in her closet, she claims total ignorance.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: Of course she does.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: She says Leroy must have thought it was smart to
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: cover it up and that he must have done all
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: the concrete work the next day while she just wasn't
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: paying attention.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: It is a narrative meticulously crafted to remove all agency
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: from her actions. She is painting a picture where she
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: is merely a passive, traumatized observer who stumbled into a
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: nightmare and was physically coerced into moving a limb.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: But logically, there are massive, glaring holes in this story.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: She expects us to believe she just walked into her bedroom,
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: and didn't hear a struggle prior to that.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: Unlikely.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: More importantly, she claims she didn't notice the concrete. Have
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: you ever mixed concrete?
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: It's not a subtle process.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: No. We are talking about three heavy bags of industrial
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: concrete being carried into a small living room, mixed with
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: gallons of water, and poured into a closet.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: Inside a small apartment.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: The dust alone, from mixing that much dry cement inside
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: a closed apartment, would coat the furniture. It is loud, messy...
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: Heavy labor.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: How do detectives sitting across from her know when to
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: accept a partial truth like this and when to call
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: out the obvious lie?
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: Experienced investigators know instantly that she is lying about the concrete.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: The logistics of indoor masonry make ignorance impossible.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: You can't miss it.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: But strategically, detectives will often choose to bank a partial
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: confession rather than aggressively destroying the suspect's story right then there.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: Why let her lie? Why not call her out?
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: Because they need her locked into a narrative on tape.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: They now have her on record admitting she was physically present,
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: admitting she moved the body, and definitively identifying the killer.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: Okay, it's huge.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: That is a massive tactical win for day one. They
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: can use the forensic evidence later to tear down her
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: lies about her level of involvement.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: Ah, I see.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: If they had pushed too hard and called her a
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: liar right then, she might have felt cornered, invoked her
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: right to counsel, and the flow of information would have
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: stopped completely.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: They take the chips they've won and walk away from
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: the table for the night. So while Casey sits in
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: jail locked into this half-truth, the investigators split the case
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: into two parallel tracks.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: What are the tracks?
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: They need to definitively identify the remains pulled from the concrete,
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: and they need to confront the man accused of orchestrating
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: the entire nightmare, Haskell Leroy Crawford.
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: And Leroy is currently sitting in a jail cell in
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: Jefferson County, 27 miles away. Completely unaware that the tomb
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: has been opened.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: Right. So the very next day, April 5, detectives make
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: the drive out to the Jefferson County Detention Center. They
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: sit down with Leroy.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: They go through the standard formalities, reading him his Miranda rights,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: making sure he understands he's being recorded. And then they
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: employ a very subtle, almost casual tactic.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: They don't just jump to the murder.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: No, they don't walk in and scream, murderer. They slide
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: a single photograph across the metal table. It's a picture
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: of KJ. And they just ask Leroy, can you tell
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: me who this is?
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: This is a classic information gathering technique. You want to
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: gauge the suspect's baseline physiological and verbal reaction to the
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: victim's face before you introduce the massive stressor of a
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: murder accusation.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: Leroy looks at the photo and plays it incredibly cool.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: He says, yeah, that's KJ. He was one of my friends.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: Very casual.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: When the detectives ask when he last saw his friend,
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: Leroy feigns complete ignorance. He casually shrugs and says, it's
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: been a while, probably a year. He asks what this
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: has to do with him since he's locked up for
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: something else. And that is when the detectives deploy the tripwire.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: They tell him they are from the major crime section
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: and they investigate missing persons and homicides.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: The word homicide is the trigger. Watch his reaction.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: It is instantaneous. The moment they say homicides, Leroy's entire
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: demeanor shuts down like a vault. He immediately says, I'm
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: in here for talking to a cop. I think I'm done.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: He invokes his rights, and the interview is over in
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: a matter of seconds.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: The contrast between Leroy's reaction and Casey's reaction is a
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: fascinating case study in criminal psychology.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: It's night and day.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: Casey was messy. She panicked. She lied poorly. She tried
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: to gaslight them about pieces of wood. She minimized. She
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: was reacting emotionally.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: Out of her depth.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: Totally. Leroy, on the other hand... exhibits a hardened, highly
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: institutionalized response. He knows exactly how the adversarial legal system works.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: He knows the rules.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: He knows that speaking to homicides investigators without a lawyer
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: is a fatal error. His immediate shutdown isn't a sign
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: of panic. It is a cold, calculated, remorseless move by
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: a predator who understands the rules of the game.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: He gives them absolutely nothing. Meanwhile, as Leroy is stonewalling
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: the detectives 27 miles away at the apartment, an expert
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: excavation team is painstakingly chipping away at that concrete mound.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: Brutal work.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: They manage to extract the remains and transport them to
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: the Arapahoe County coroner's office. Shortly after, using dental records
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: or DNA, the coroner makes the positive identification.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: It's officially him.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: The remains belong to Carl K.J. Bean, and the manner
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: of death is officially ruled a homicide.
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: Which brings a devastating, crushing finality to the situation for
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: Kyla and all of K.J.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: 's friends.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: The ambiguity of the off-the-grid theory is permanently erased by
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: forensic science.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: His friends actually end up setting up a fundraiser to
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: cover his funeral costs. And reading the comments on that page,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: they describe him as a kind, genuine person with a
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: big smile and a contagious laugh.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: That's heartbreaking.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: It is such a stark, brutal contrast to the way
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: he ended up encased in concrete in a dark hole.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: And it really makes you reflect on the tragic irony
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: of how this all started.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: The catalytic converters.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a relatively minor property crime-stealing catalytic converters in a
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: park and ride. was the spark that ignited this deep,
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: consuming paranoia in Leroy, ultimately leading to premeditated murder.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: Paranoia is an incredibly dangerous catalyst, especially when combined with
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: a criminal lifestyle.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: Because everyone is already on edge.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: Exactly. In the criminal underworld, trust is highly fragile. A
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: minor arrest can easily be misinterpreted as a betrayal.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: Ah, I see.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: If Leroy convinced himself that KJ traded information for his
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: freedom after that initial arrest... That perceived betrayal becomes a
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: psychological justification for extreme violence.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: But to prove that violence in a courtroom, to actually
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: convict Leroy of first-degree murder, the prosecutors realize they have
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: a massive problem.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: Leroy isn't talking.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: Leroy invoked his rights. Their entire case rests heavily on
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: their star witness, Casey Back. But they know Casey's story
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: about walking in and finding a Walmart bag over KJ's head.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: is a lie.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: I can't take that to trial.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: To win a trial, they need Casey to stop minimizing
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: and tell the entire unvarnished horrifying truth about what actually
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: happened in that apartment.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: And time, combined with enforced sobriety, is often the tool
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: prosecutors use to extract that truth from an accomplice.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: Fast forward three months to July of 2023. Casey has
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: been sitting in a jail cell this entire time.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: Getting clean.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: Her system is finally completely clean of whatever narcotics she
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: was using to build those mental walls. She is fully sober,
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: and she is looking at serious prison time.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: The reality is setting in.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: She finally agrees to sit down with police for a
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: third interview. And this time, the minimization is gone. She
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: holds absolutely nothing back.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: This is where we get the full picture.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: The story she tells is one of the most chilling
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: sequences of events imaginable.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: She finally outlines the premeditated ambush and the protracted period
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: of torture.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: Here is the actual setup. Casey admits that she knew
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: exactly what was about to happen. She says Leroy was
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: hiding in the corner of her apartment, holding a 9mm handgun.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: Waiting.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: Leroy ordered her to open the door when KJ arrived.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: Casey acted as the bait. She opened the door and
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: casually asked KJ, hey, do you want to smoke? As
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: a lure to get him inside and comfortable.
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: Luring him into a trap.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: As soon as KJ walked through the door, Leroy stepped
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: out from the shadows, but he had switched weapons. He
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: now had a 20-gauge shotgun pointed at KJ.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: The deployment of a shotgun at close quarters inside an
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: apartment is an overwhelming show of legal force.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: It's meant to terrify.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: It is designed to induce immediate paralyzing compliance from the victim.
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: You don't fight back against a shotgun at five feet.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: Leroy forced KJ into the back bedroom, Casey's bedroom. This
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: is not a quick argument that accidentally got out of hand.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: Casey tells the detectives that Leroy held KJ hostage in
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: that bedroom for hours. He turned up the stereo system
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: incredibly loud to drown out the noise of the assault.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: Oh my God.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: Leroy began physically beating KJ, hitting him with the gun.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: According to Casey, Leroy was trying to torture a confession
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: out of KJ. He was absolutely convinced KJ was a
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: police informant who was working with the cops to rat
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: him out.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: We need to pause and consider the sheer scale of
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: the violence here. This wasn't a crime of passion or
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: a momentary explosive lapse of judgment.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: It was calculated.
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: This was a protracted, multi-hour session of physical and psychological torture.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: The killer had hours to reconsider, to cool down, to
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: realize his paranoia was baseless, and to stop.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: But he didn't.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: But instead, the paranoia drove him to maintain the torture
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: throughout the entire night.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: As the sun came up the next morning, the torture
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: reached its horrific conclusion. Casey tells detectives she finally walked
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: into the back bathroom, and there was KJ. He was dead.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: slumped by her toilet.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: The method of death was awful.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: It was brutal. A wire was wrapped tightly around his
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: neck and the other end was anchored to the shower
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: shelf in her bathroom. He had been strangled.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: The cold calculation required to construct a ligature and anchor
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: it to a fixture is deeply chilling.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: It's not an accident.
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: It removes any claim of an accidental death during a struggle.
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: It is pure, intentional murder.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: Then comes the cleanup, which introduces a whole different level
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: of psychological nightmare. Casey says Leroy turned to her, the
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: mother of his children, and explicitly threatened to rape and
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: kill her if she did not help him clean up
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: the murder.
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: Using the ultimate leverage.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: She told the detectives she was in a total panic
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: because her children were sleeping in the very next room
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: and were about to wake up for the day.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: So, under extreme duress, she complied. She said Leroy wrapped
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: KJ's body in a white mattress cover. He forced her
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: to help drag the heavy body from the bathroom and
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: dump it down into the closet crawlspace.
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: The psychology of this specific dynamic is disturbing. You have
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: a toxic relationship rooted in domestic dominance and likely fueled
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: by drug dependency. The abuser uses the ultimate leverage, the
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: safety of the children sleeping nearby, and the threat of
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: extreme sexual and physical violence to force the mother to
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: become an active participant in the desecration of a human body.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: In that moment, her primal survival instinct overrides all morality.
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: Completely overrides it.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: I want to focus on what happens next because to me,
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: We pivot from the sheer horror of the murder to
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: the cold, calculated mundanity of the cover-up.
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: The concrete.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: After they dumped the body, Leroy left the apartment. He
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: was gone for two or three days. When he returned,
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: he didn't come back to mourn or lay low.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: He came back to work.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: He came back with his work tools and three heavy
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: bags of concrete. Think about the physical reality of what
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: he did. We are not talking about kicking some loose
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: dirt over a shallow grave in the woods.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: No, this is an indoor construction project.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: Leroy went to a hardware store, bought roughly 240 pounds
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: of dry concrete, loaded it into his vehicle, brought it
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: back to a residential apartment complex, hauled it inside, and
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: essentially performed heavy construction work inside a closet to build
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: a tomb.
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: Let's break down the mechanics of that task. To mix
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: three 80-pound bags of concrete, you need a substantial amount
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: of water.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: Which he has to carry in.
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: He is carrying buckets of water from the kitchen or
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: bathroom into the closet. He has to mix it in
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: a trough or a large container. The friction of mixing
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: dry cement sends a thick layer of alkaline dust into
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: the air, coating the room.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: It's a massive mess.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: It is physically exhausting, back-breaking labor that takes hours to
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: complete properly.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: And what is happening in his brain while he does this?
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: He is performing a series of mundane, methodical tasks over
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: the body of a man he literally just tortured.
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: It demonstrates a profound psychological detachment. While he is measuring water,
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: mixing the slurry, and pouring it over the remains, he
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: isn't in a blind rage.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: He's focused.
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: He requires patience and focus. The ability of a killer
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: to transition from a frenzy of paranoid torture to the calm,
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: practical execution of masonry work to hide his monstrosity shows
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: a complete and utter detachment from the humanity of the victim.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: KJ wasn't a person anymore to him.
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: KJ was no longer a person. He was simply a
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: logistical problem that needed to be paved over.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: With this full, unvarnished story finally on the record, the
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: legal system had exactly what it needed to close the
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: trap on Leroy Crawford. The vague rumors and the half-truths
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: were gone.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: They had their witness.
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: They had an eyewitness willing to testify under oath to
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: every brutal detail. Which brings us to the fallout and
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: the final judgments. What did this all cost the perpetrators,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: and did Kyla finally get the justice she fought so
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: hard for?
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: The resolution of this case is a stark example of
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: the harsh pragmatism of the justice system. It rarely looks
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: like perfect, poetic justice.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: It's messy.
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: It is almost always a series of calculated compromises.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: Let's look at Casey's fate first. Because she finally cooperated,
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: and because the prosecutors recognized the context of extreme domestic
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: coercion and the credible threats to her life and her children,
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: they offered her a deal.
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: What did she get?
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: Casey pled guilty to being an accessory to a crime.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: She received a deferred judgment and was released from jail.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: I know that a deferred judgment can be a bitter
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: pill for the public to swallow. People hear that a
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: woman helped bury a murdered body under her floorboards and
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: eventually walked free, and they are rightfully outraged.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: It feels wrong on a gut level.
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: But you have to evaluate the justice system's pragmatism in
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: this specific context. Prosecutors operate in a reality where they
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: often have to make deals with the devil they know
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: the accomplice to catch the devil they want the primary murderer.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: They needed her testimony to get Leroy.
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Without Casey's full testimony... Leroy might have taken his
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: chances at trial. If a jury found the forensic evidence
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: lacking context, he might have walked. By securing Casey's cooperation,
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: they guaranteed a conviction for the actual killer.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: It was a tactical sacrifice, and it worked. Facing a
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: mountain of physical evidence, and the prospect of his accomplice
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: taking the stand against him, Lurie Crawford decided not to
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: roll the dice with the jury.
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: He took a plea.
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: In April of 2025, he pled guilty to second-degree murder.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: The judge sentenced him to 30 years in a state prison.
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: 30 years is a substantial sentence, ensuring that this deeply
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: paranoid and violent individual will be removed from society for
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: the majority of his adult life.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: At his sentencing hearing, KJA's mother, Kyla, was finally allowed
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: to speak in open court. She stood up and addressed
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: the judge, but her words were clearly meant for the
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: man in handcuffs.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: What did she say?
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: She said, he murdered my only child. We may never
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: know all the details, but the defendant does. I hope
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: it haunts him every day for the rest of his
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: life like it does me.
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: It is a devastating final statement. It acknowledges a hard
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: truth the legal system can provide a prison sentence, but
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: it can never provide true closure or answer every painful
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: question a mother has about her child's final moment.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: Looking back on Kyla's journey, it is awe-inspiring. Everyone in
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: positions of authority tried to tell her the logical, comfortable story.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: The police didn't even file the paperwork.
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: They dismissed her.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: His friend said he was happily off the grid. She
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: was the one who absolutely refused to let her son
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: just be a guy who faded away into the statistics.
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: He fought for him.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: Her relentless push against a broken bureaucracy, her willingness to
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: engage with a burner account on Facebook. She is the
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: singular reason Leroy Crawford is sitting in a concrete cell today.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: instead of walking the streets.
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: If we synthesize the major themes we've explored today, there
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: are several vital takeaways. First, we see the incredibly deadly
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: consequences of unchecked paranoia within criminal circles, where a minor
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: theft escalates into brutal torture based entirely on baseless suspicion.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: It spiraled out of control so fast.
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: Second, we see the absolute necessity of questioning assumptions. The
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: off-the-grid theory was a comfortable lie that almost allowed a
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: killer to successfully commit the perfect murder.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: And finally, We see the unstoppable force of a mother's intuition.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: When the systems we rely on fail completely, it is
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: often only the people who love us most who will
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: dig through the noise to find the truth.
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: Which leaves us with a final thought. I want you
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: to mull over as you go about your day.
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: What's that?
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: We live in an era where we assume we are
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: all entirely trackable. We are surrounded by digital footprints, cell
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: phone pings, and security cameras. We think it's impossible to
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: simply vanish.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: We feel connected constantly.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: But this story proves how terrifyingly easy it is for
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: someone to disappear into the cracks of the system simply
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: because the people in charge decide they want them to
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: be lost. It makes you wonder if you vanish tomorrow
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: and the authorities found a convenient excuse not to look
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: for you, who in your life would refuse to accept
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: the logical explanation and keep digging until they hit concrete?
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: That is a question that will absolutely stay with you.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us on this deep dive. Remember,
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: the surface explanation is rarely the whole truth. Keep looking
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: beneath the floorboards. We'll catch you on the next one.