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Hell and Gone Murder Line: Twilight Crooks · Hell and Gone: Murder Line

0:46
Speaker 1: School of Humans.
0:49
Speaker 2: Helen Got Murder Line actively investigates cold case murders in
0:53
Speaker 2: an effort to raise public awareness invite witnesses to come
0:56
Speaker 2: forward and present evidence that could potentially be further investigated
1:00
Speaker 2: by law enforcement. While we value insights from family and
1:03
Speaker 2: community members, their statements should not be considered evidence and
1:07
Speaker 2: point to the challenges of verifying facts inherent in cold cases.
1:12
Speaker 2: We remind listeners that everyone has presumed innocent until proven
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Speaker 2: guilty in a court of law. Nothing in the podcast
1:19
Speaker 2: is intended to state or imply that anyone who has
1:22
Speaker 2: not been convicted of a crime is guilty of any wrongdoing.
1:26
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.
1:32
Speaker 3: On August twenty eighth, two thousand and one, fifteen year
1:35
Speaker 3: old jesse Marie Twilight Song Crooks, who everyone knew was Twilight,
1:41
Speaker 3: was hanging out at her home on Larman Mill Road
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Speaker 3: in Plano, Kentucky, when she got a phone call. The
1:48
Speaker 3: phone call came in at ten point fifty two pm
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Speaker 3: from a phone booth at the Plano County Store, which
1:54
Speaker 3: was a convenience store less than a mile away from
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Speaker 3: her home in that small town. The Plano Country Store
2:01
Speaker 3: was kind of the center of Twilight's social circuit. A
2:05
Speaker 3: friend of hers later told police Twilight would often walk
2:08
Speaker 3: by there to buy cigarettes or hang out, and would
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Speaker 3: get people to drop her off and pick her up there,
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Speaker 3: so receiving a call from that phone booth would not
2:18
Speaker 3: have been out of the ordinary for her. But Twilight crooks,
2:24
Speaker 3: like many teenagers, had secrets, and like many of us
2:28
Speaker 3: back in the day, sometimes she lived a double life
2:32
Speaker 3: after hours, a few minutes after getting that call, at
2:36
Speaker 3: around eleven PM, Twilight snuck out of her house. Now
2:41
Speaker 3: according to the police report, when she left home, she
2:45
Speaker 3: was wearing pajama bottoms and a T shirt, and she
2:48
Speaker 3: was barefoot. Her friends later said that wasn't super unusual.
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Speaker 3: It would make sense if she was planning on hanging
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Speaker 3: out for a while and then coming back home.
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Speaker 1: On not being out for long.
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Speaker 3: Investigators have said they believe Twilight went out to meet
3:04
Speaker 3: someone she knew. Her friends told police when she left
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Speaker 3: the house barefoot, a lot of the time, she would
3:11
Speaker 3: have someone pick her up. They would ride around, and
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Speaker 3: then whoever picked her up would drop her back home.
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Speaker 3: But her family never found out who she was planning
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Speaker 3: to meet that night because she was never seen alive again.
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Speaker 3: I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the past eight years of making
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Speaker 3: my true crime podcast, Helen Gone, I've learned that there
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Speaker 3: is no such thing as a small town where murder
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Speaker 3: never happens. I have received hundreds of messages from people
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Speaker 3: all around the country asking for help with an unsolved
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Speaker 3: murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities. If
3:47
Speaker 3: you have a case you'd like me and my team
3:49
Speaker 3: to look into, you can reach out to us at
3:51
Speaker 3: our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven
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Speaker 3: four four six one four five. That's six seven eight
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Speaker 3: seven four four six one four five, or you can
4:02
Speaker 3: send us a message on Instagram at Helen Gonepod. This
4:07
Speaker 3: is Helen Gone Murder Line. The next morning, Twilight's father,
4:57
Speaker 3: Bobby and his wife Linda, Twilight's stepmother, realized that Twilight
5:01
Speaker 3: was not in her bed. Anne had not come home
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Speaker 3: the night before. They called the Warren County Sheriff's office
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Speaker 3: to report her missing the next morning, August twenty ninth,
5:10
Speaker 3: at six oh five am. At the time, the police
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Speaker 3: report noted Twilight had run away in the past. We're
5:18
Speaker 3: trying to get more information about exactly what was going
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Speaker 3: on in Twilight's life that year. Twilight Crooks was born
5:26
Speaker 3: on October twenty second, nineteen eighty five, in Santa Fe County,
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Speaker 3: New Mexico. Her mother was Native American, part of the
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Speaker 3: Arapaho tribe. She was also part Cherokee on her father's side.
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Speaker 3: Twilight lived with her dad and stepmom, but apparently regularly
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Speaker 3: visited her mother and the rest of the tribe, and
5:45
Speaker 3: was excited to share what she had learned about their
5:47
Speaker 3: culture with her friends. In Kentucky, Twilight was, according to Bobby,
5:53
Speaker 3: doing well at school. Her family and friends all described
5:56
Speaker 3: her as very bright. She was a sophomore at Greenwood
5:59
Speaker 3: High School in Bowling Green and she was very accomplished.
6:03
Speaker 3: Bobby Crooks later told journalists Twilight got straight a's and
6:07
Speaker 3: was very popular in her class, and that she had
6:10
Speaker 3: dreams of going to Harvard. But Twilight had reportedly run
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Speaker 3: away several times before. According to the police report, Twilight
6:19
Speaker 3: was considered a habitual runaway. According to the missing Persons report,
6:24
Speaker 3: on August twenty eighth, the days she disappeared, Twilight called
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Speaker 3: her father and asked if she could have dinner with
6:30
Speaker 3: a friend.
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Speaker 1: Her dad said that was fine.
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Speaker 3: After that, she went to that friend's house had dinner
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Speaker 3: and was home by around seven pm. Linda and Bobby
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Speaker 3: told police they went to bed at around ten pm
6:43
Speaker 3: after they said Twilight had done her homework, and they
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Speaker 3: told police that when they went to bed, Twilight was
6:49
Speaker 3: taking a shower. After she got out of the shower,
6:52
Speaker 3: she got that late night call at ten fifty two pm,
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Speaker 3: and a few minutes after that, without her parents knowing,
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Speaker 3: left the house. Twilight's friend talked to us about the case.
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Speaker 3: We asked her how she met Twilight.
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Speaker 4: Me and Twilight we met in elementary school. We went
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Speaker 4: to Cumberland Trace Elementary. I remember she was just so
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Speaker 4: sweet and kind, and I remember her grandmother would come
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Speaker 4: and eat lunch with her sometimes at school, and like
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Speaker 4: I was always intrigued by her Native American roots and
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Speaker 4: stuff like that. And she used to make bracelets for
7:28
Speaker 4: everybody with seeds and stuff. We were very close friends
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Speaker 4: all the way up until she was killed. We were
7:38
Speaker 4: teenagers and we experimented and weren't always making the safest choices.
7:44
Speaker 4: I just remember that she was very trusting, and she
7:48
Speaker 4: trusted a lot of people, and that is, you know,
7:52
Speaker 4: what cost her her life. I believe I always felt
7:55
Speaker 4: like it was somebody that we knew that we went
7:57
Speaker 4: to school with, or maybe somebody that you know, we
8:00
Speaker 4: knew from our town, because where her body was found
8:04
Speaker 4: was so close to her house. And she was a
8:07
Speaker 4: good kid. I mean, she had good grades, She had
8:10
Speaker 4: big dreams and a bright future. She was just a
8:15
Speaker 4: really sweet girl. And she was always smiling and always laughing.
8:18
Speaker 4: She had the biggest smile, and it was light of
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Speaker 4: a room. You know.
8:24
Speaker 3: Twilight had a brother who was two years older. Linda
8:27
Speaker 3: told detectives they had reached out to Twilight's brother, but
8:30
Speaker 3: that he had not heard from her and had no
8:32
Speaker 3: idea where she was. They also called around to her
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Speaker 3: friend's houses, but no one had seen her at first
8:39
Speaker 3: because she had stuck out and left home in the past.
8:41
Speaker 3: Detectives treated the case like a run away, but when
8:45
Speaker 3: she didn't come home, police from the Warren County Sheriff's Office,
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Speaker 3: who led the investigation, as well as other agencies including
8:52
Speaker 3: the Bowling Green Police Department and eventually the FBI, scoured
8:56
Speaker 3: the area for her, along with her family and the
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Speaker 3: rest of the community. Her family pasted missing posters all
9:03
Speaker 3: over town looking for Twilight five foot five, one hundred
9:08
Speaker 3: pounds with brown hair and brown eyes, wearing braces. On
9:13
Speaker 3: September tenth, two thousand and one, at around four pm,
9:17
Speaker 3: nearly two weeks after Twilight disappeared, a dog walker was
9:21
Speaker 3: in the woods near Matlock Old Union Road in Plano,
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Speaker 3: about ten miles from Bowling Green. This is a very
9:28
Speaker 3: remote area that has a lot of trees and other
9:30
Speaker 3: types of vegetation around. Today it's a soybean field. The
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Speaker 3: dog walker found skeletal remains near a dried up pond
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Speaker 3: that dental records later confirmed were Twilight Crooks. Her body
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Speaker 3: was in pieces. On September tenth, two thousand and one,
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Speaker 3: Twilight Crooks's body was found. The next day was September eleventh,
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Speaker 3: two thousand and one, the day that terrorists attacked the
10:07
Speaker 3: World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon
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Speaker 3: in Washington, d C. And suddenly the entire country was
10:14
Speaker 3: focused on the terrorists attacking the United States. The murder
10:18
Speaker 3: of a fifteen year old young woman of Native American
10:20
Speaker 3: descent seemed to be quickly forgotten, although back in Kentucky
10:26
Speaker 3: police were conducting their investigation, but it seemed like there
10:30
Speaker 3: were a lot of missing pieces. Law enforcement tried to
10:33
Speaker 3: figure out who had called Twilight minutes before she left
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Speaker 3: her house. They checked and discovered that the caller ID
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Speaker 3: showed the call came in from the Plano Country Stoor's
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Speaker 3: phone booth. But back then there were no surveillance cameras
10:48
Speaker 3: at the store. It was a very different environment in
10:51
Speaker 3: two thousand and one than it is today. There were
10:53
Speaker 3: no ring doorbells or cell phone cameras, no surveillance video
10:57
Speaker 3: outside that phone booth. The Independent newspaper in the UK
11:02
Speaker 3: did an article about Twilight's case in twenty twenty three.
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Speaker 3: They interviewed Warren County Sheriff Bratt Hightower. According to the article,
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Speaker 3: Sheriff high Tower told the journalists quote, there is no
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Speaker 3: way of telling who placed the phone call to her
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Speaker 3: at the payphone that night end quote. Police were tight
11:21
Speaker 3: lipped about the investigation. They did not even release a
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Speaker 3: cause of death, but rumors in town were already flying,
11:29
Speaker 3: and when police talked to students at Twilight's high school,
11:32
Speaker 3: several teens told police that there was a rumor going
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Speaker 3: around that Twilight had died of a methamphetamine overdose and
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Speaker 3: that the people who were with her panicked and hid
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Speaker 3: the body and Twilight's friend said police did not interview
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Speaker 3: a lot of Twilight's friends, including herself.
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Speaker 4: It's hard because this has happened twenty four years ago,
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Speaker 4: and I just feel like there wasn't much of a
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Speaker 4: follow up or anything like that with her friends. They
12:00
Speaker 4: didn't give her story the attention that it deserved, and
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Speaker 4: like they never came to school, never questioned any of
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Speaker 4: us about what happened, or if we knew or or
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Speaker 4: hung out or they never ever came to the school
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Speaker 4: to interview anybody. They just made one announcement when they
12:16
Speaker 4: had found her on the intercom that morning, and then
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Speaker 4: you know, of course nine to eleven happened in the
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Speaker 4: following day, which completely made her story just disappear. Like
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Speaker 4: I don't remember seeing anything else about it on the
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Speaker 4: news after nine to eleven. Everything was just focused on that.
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Speaker 4: I don't think they mentioned her name for like probably
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Speaker 4: a couple of years. I want to.
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Speaker 1: Say, though the case is still open.
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Speaker 3: We were able to access some information via a Foyer request,
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Speaker 3: but it seems like everything is redacted.
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Speaker 1: On some pages. There are more black boxes than there
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Speaker 1: are regular text.
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Speaker 3: So we're gonna have to do some serious sleuthing to
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Speaker 3: figure out who these people are and how they were
13:01
Speaker 3: connected to Twilight. We got the autopsy report, but it's
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Speaker 3: redacted too, so we don't know the cause of death.
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Speaker 3: The toxicology report is also blacked out, so we don't
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Speaker 3: know if Twilight had drugs in her system or not.
13:16
Speaker 3: But the incident report refers to a weapon being used
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Speaker 3: and it lists the weapon as a knife. That, plus
13:23
Speaker 3: the fact that the police were very clearly treating and
13:26
Speaker 3: labeling this as a murder investigation, would appear to point
13:30
Speaker 3: away from the theory that this was an overdose or
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Speaker 3: something that could have been accidental. There were also rumors
13:38
Speaker 3: flying around that Twilight had been decapitated. Police also had
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Speaker 3: some issues with the physical evidence. After nearly two weeks
13:46
Speaker 3: in the Kentucky heat, Twilight's body had been skeletonized. Crime
13:51
Speaker 3: scene photos that show part of Twilight's remains show that
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Speaker 3: her skull was lying next to the lower part of
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Speaker 3: her body, her spine and legs, but we can't tell
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Speaker 3: from these photos whether her head was removed by a
14:04
Speaker 3: human or whether animals detached her skull. We also aren't
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Speaker 3: able to see her torso in these photos. It's been
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Speaker 3: reported that her body was partly covered with twigs and branches,
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Speaker 3: like her killer was trying to cover up the body,
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Speaker 3: but maybe didn't do a very good job or didn't finish.
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Speaker 3: When police processed the scene, they did find some physical evidence.
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Speaker 3: One of the items and evidence was a yellow and
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Speaker 3: white drinking straw, but no fingerprints were found on that straw.
14:36
Speaker 3: Since they hit a dead end with the phone booth,
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Speaker 3: police were trying to figure out who Twilight was meeting
14:42
Speaker 3: that night by delve into her personal life, and like
14:46
Speaker 3: many teenagers, Twilight's love life was complicated. Twilight had been
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Speaker 3: dating someone a boyfriend, but they had recently broken up.
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Speaker 3: Police talked to him and he said he hadn't talked
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Speaker 3: to Twilight in a while. However, another friend of hers
15:01
Speaker 3: told police she had seen Twilight standing outside the Plano
15:05
Speaker 3: store arguing with the ex boyfriend. The friend could not
15:08
Speaker 3: remember the exact date when she witnessed that argument. The
15:11
Speaker 3: friend's name and the ex boyfriend's name are both redacted.
15:16
Speaker 3: But there was another guy whom Twilight was talking to,
15:19
Speaker 3: someone who friends said she met on the internet and
15:22
Speaker 3: had been talking to regularly before she disappeared. This guy
15:26
Speaker 3: was supposedly in Cincinnati, Ohio. Now police wanted to figure
15:30
Speaker 3: out who this guy was and to find him. Could
15:33
Speaker 3: he have been the person Twilight was meeting that night.
15:36
Speaker 3: Twilight was active in church. She had recently taken a
15:40
Speaker 3: trip with Hillville Heights Church to Cincinnati July. One of
15:45
Speaker 3: Twilight's friends from her church group told police that during
15:48
Speaker 3: this trip, Twilight told her she had met a guy
15:51
Speaker 3: off the internet and she was supposed to be meeting
15:54
Speaker 3: him in person at King's Island. The last day of
15:57
Speaker 3: that church trip, which was July seventeenth, Twilight stayed in
16:01
Speaker 3: a Hampton Inn hotel room with a chaperone and two
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Speaker 3: other girls. The police talked to the chaperone, her name
16:07
Speaker 3: was Terry. Terry told them that Twilight was talking to
16:11
Speaker 3: the same guy the one she had met in Cincinnati
16:14
Speaker 3: for several hours on the phone on one of the
16:17
Speaker 3: nights they were there. She said she got concerned Twilight
16:20
Speaker 3: might try to sneak out. Terry, the chaperone said, Twilight
16:25
Speaker 3: told her she had been sexually active with eight different guys,
16:28
Speaker 3: that she was on the pill, and that her dad
16:30
Speaker 3: was too strict on her. She also said that her
16:33
Speaker 3: stepmom was always telling her what to do. Twilight told
16:36
Speaker 3: the chaperone she had met the guy the summer before
16:39
Speaker 3: when she was with her mom in Clarksville, Tennessee, and
16:42
Speaker 3: that since that time, in addition to talking on the phone,
16:46
Speaker 3: they had talked on the internet. Terry said that Twilight
16:49
Speaker 3: started talking to the guy on the phone at around
16:51
Speaker 3: eleven thirty pm and they talked for two to three hours.
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Speaker 3: The chaperone said she was worried about Twilight sneaking out
16:59
Speaker 3: because she said she overheard part of the conversation and
17:03
Speaker 3: Twilight was talking about meeting this guy later on. Terry
17:07
Speaker 3: told police that after that night, she told the church
17:10
Speaker 3: staff she didn't want to be responsible for Twilight anymore
17:12
Speaker 3: because she was afraid of what she might get involved in.
17:16
Speaker 3: One of the detectives on the case, Detective Davis, contacted
17:20
Speaker 3: the Cincinnati Police. He asked them to send an officer
17:23
Speaker 3: to the residence of the person whom Twilight had been
17:26
Speaker 3: talking to. The Police in Cincinnati did locate the guy
17:30
Speaker 3: that she had been talking to online, but they found
17:33
Speaker 3: no trace of Twilight at his residence, and the guy
17:37
Speaker 3: said he had not seen her and had no idea
17:40
Speaker 3: where she was. This seemed to be another dead end,
17:45
Speaker 3: so with the internet love interest crossed off, Detectives back
17:48
Speaker 3: in Kentucky began looking closer to home. This included focusing
17:53
Speaker 3: on the people who last saw Twilight, her dad and stepmother.
18:09
Speaker 3: In January of two thousand and two, Twilight's stepmother, Linda,
18:12
Speaker 3: contacted police. According to information contained in the autopsy report,
18:17
Speaker 3: she said she was upset about the amount of time
18:19
Speaker 3: the investigation was taking. She also said the family wanted
18:23
Speaker 3: to know more details about how Twilight died, but police
18:27
Speaker 3: declined to give the family any information about cause of
18:30
Speaker 3: death because, as indicated in these documents, they believe this
18:34
Speaker 3: might harm the investigation. They asked Linda Crooks to take
18:38
Speaker 3: a polygraph test, which she agreed to do, according to police,
18:42
Speaker 3: but then when they called her to set up a
18:44
Speaker 3: time to come in and take it, Linda did not
18:47
Speaker 3: call back. At some point, according to police documents, they
18:51
Speaker 3: did tell Linda Crooks how Twilight was killed. They asked
18:56
Speaker 3: both Bob and Linda to take polygraph tests, but in
18:59
Speaker 3: the end, both of them refused. On September twenty fifth,
19:03
Speaker 3: two thousand and one, officers searched Bob and Linda's residents
19:07
Speaker 3: and vehicles. They took a number of items from the
19:11
Speaker 3: home including a Dell computer, the one that Twilight was
19:14
Speaker 3: using to email from. They also filed court orders to
19:17
Speaker 3: get her email communications, but they found nothing of even
19:21
Speaker 3: in cherry value in those emails. They began looking into
19:25
Speaker 3: Twilight's local romantic entanglements, and they learned that recently she
19:29
Speaker 3: had a boyfriend, though they had broken up sometime before
19:33
Speaker 3: she disappeared. After talking to Twilight's friend, who, as we said,
19:38
Speaker 3: saw Twilight arguing with the ex boyfriend late at night
19:41
Speaker 3: at the Plano store, police went to talk to the
19:43
Speaker 3: ex boy They asked him to take a polygraph test.
19:46
Speaker 3: He said no and referred them to his lawyer. So
19:50
Speaker 3: it seems like that avenue of investigation was pretty much
19:53
Speaker 3: shut down after that. Police were also exploring other potential
19:58
Speaker 3: suspects near the area where Twilight's body was found. Police
20:02
Speaker 3: talked to people who lived near that area. They told
20:05
Speaker 3: law enforcement about another guy described as a local boy.
20:09
Speaker 3: They said this local boy drove up and down the
20:12
Speaker 3: road where Twilight's body was found on a regular basis.
20:15
Speaker 3: Now this was before the murder, but they said after
20:19
Speaker 3: Twilight's murder, after her body was found, this guy disappeared
20:23
Speaker 3: and had not been back since. Police apparently tried to
20:27
Speaker 3: find this person, but he had left the area and
20:30
Speaker 3: quit school. As the days and weeks went by, police
20:37
Speaker 3: questioned several people, but they had no official suspects and
20:41
Speaker 3: made no arrests.
20:43
Speaker 1: Seemed to be.
20:44
Speaker 3: A flurry of activity early on in the investigation in
20:47
Speaker 3: two thousand and one, and then a little bit in
20:49
Speaker 3: two thousand and three, and after that. A couple of
20:52
Speaker 3: years later, items from the crime scene were sent in
20:56
Speaker 3: for testing, but to this day this case is still
21:00
Speaker 3: an open investigation. A podcast listener did a Foyer request
21:05
Speaker 3: and did receive part of the case file. Again, parts
21:08
Speaker 3: of it have been heavily redacted. Even though there were
21:12
Speaker 3: a lot of blacked out areas, we were able to
21:15
Speaker 3: cross reference addresses with names, and in some cases previous
21:19
Speaker 3: interviews are mentions of people, and we were able to
21:22
Speaker 3: get some clues. Another natural question is how long was
21:27
Speaker 3: Twilight out in those woods? Could she have left home
21:30
Speaker 3: voluntarily or been kidnapped and held somewhere and killed later.
21:36
Speaker 3: The autopsy report estimated Twilight's time of death as sometime
21:40
Speaker 3: around two or three am on August twenty ninth, which
21:43
Speaker 3: which would mean that the evidence points to her being
21:46
Speaker 3: murdered shortly after she left home, So the crucial window
21:50
Speaker 3: of time remains between eleven PM when Twilight left her
21:54
Speaker 3: house and early the next morning, August twenty eighth into
21:58
Speaker 3: the early morning hours of August twenty ninth, two thousand
22:00
Speaker 3: and one. One of the bigger questions surrounding this case
22:05
Speaker 3: has been what was Twilight doing on the night she
22:08
Speaker 3: walked out of her house after she had dinner with
22:11
Speaker 3: her friend. Her parents said she came home and that
22:14
Speaker 3: she was there until ten pm to their knowledge, but
22:17
Speaker 3: she may have made a stop prior to or after that,
22:21
Speaker 3: because we've discovered. Police interviewed someone on September nineteenth, two
22:25
Speaker 3: thousand and one. This person's name is also redacted, but
22:29
Speaker 3: they told police they saw Twilight at around nine to
22:32
Speaker 3: fifteen pm at the Plano store and that at that
22:35
Speaker 3: time she was wearing her pajamas, a white T shirt,
22:39
Speaker 3: and checkered bottoms. This person told police that Twilight had
22:43
Speaker 3: told him was going home and going to bed. The
22:45
Speaker 3: guy added that Twilight was a good girl who loved
22:48
Speaker 3: life and had no enemies. Twilight often hung out at
22:53
Speaker 3: the Plano store. She sometimes would stop there multiple times
22:56
Speaker 3: per day. She smoked and it was where she would
22:59
Speaker 3: buy cigarettes. Twilight's friend said that to her knowledge, Twilight
23:04
Speaker 3: had never actually run away from home, but she admitted
23:07
Speaker 3: that back then, Twilight, like a lot of teens, had
23:11
Speaker 3: a wild streak and a habit of sneaking out.
23:14
Speaker 4: I remember she got her tongue pierced and I had
23:16
Speaker 4: mine done, and a few other people did. And I
23:18
Speaker 4: remember one day at school she was crying and I said,
23:21
Speaker 4: what's wrong, and she said her dad made her take
23:24
Speaker 4: her tongue piercing out because she got caught sneaking out
23:27
Speaker 4: of her window, and so she was grounded. We were
23:31
Speaker 4: just young and rebellious and fishing boundaries and then experimenting
23:34
Speaker 4: with things that we probably shouldn't have been, not making
23:38
Speaker 4: the safest choices. And I believe she snuck out that
23:42
Speaker 4: night to use drugs, but that doesn't change like who
23:45
Speaker 4: she was. You know, we all were kind of wild
23:48
Speaker 4: at that age. I mean, we all smoked weed, and
23:51
Speaker 4: we were experimenting like ecstasy and myths and cocaine. My
23:57
Speaker 4: class in two thousand and three when we graduated, I
24:01
Speaker 4: think we had fourteen of our classmates that were dead
24:03
Speaker 4: by the time we graduated. It was like our class
24:07
Speaker 4: was just cursed or something. I felt like, you know,
24:09
Speaker 4: because there was people that died of overdoses, that they
24:12
Speaker 4: were people that died in correct from being intoxicated, you know,
24:17
Speaker 4: and then Twilight was murdered, and you know, there was suicides,
24:21
Speaker 4: and you know, it's just it seemed like our our
24:25
Speaker 4: class was just like, I don't know, we just we
24:29
Speaker 4: were all wild back then.
24:33
Speaker 3: Bobby Crooks said in twenty eleven that he preferred to
24:37
Speaker 3: remember Twilight as she had been in life. Same quote.
24:40
Speaker 3: I have a beautiful daughter, and a certain part of
24:43
Speaker 3: me wants to keep that image. I'll eventually have to know,
24:47
Speaker 3: but it hasn't bothered me for the last ten years
24:49
Speaker 3: to not know. I've got this image of her growing up,
24:52
Speaker 3: what she looked like, and how she acts.
24:54
Speaker 1: That's what we hold on too. I can completely understand.
24:59
Speaker 3: Why he feels that way, but as an investigator, in
25:03
Speaker 3: my opinion, the key to solving this case is figuring
25:06
Speaker 3: out what Twilight did after hours, figuring out the things
25:10
Speaker 3: that she didn't tell her parents. I wonder could she
25:15
Speaker 3: have left home, then come back home and gone out again,
25:18
Speaker 3: because there's something else in the crime scene photos that
25:21
Speaker 3: in my opinion makes that a possibility. When she was
25:25
Speaker 3: found in the woods, Twilight was wearing jeans, not pajama bottoms,
25:30
Speaker 3: So if she left the house barefoot, how did she
25:34
Speaker 3: end up wearing jeans and a completely different set of clothes.
25:42
Speaker 3: In two thousand and six, police released more information about
25:45
Speaker 3: the clothes Twilight was wearing when her remains were found.
25:49
Speaker 3: She was wearing a blue Edmondson County High School jersey
25:53
Speaker 3: with the number ten on the back. This was a
25:56
Speaker 3: high school that was twenty one miles away from Bowling Green,
25:58
Speaker 3: where Twilight went to school. Her friends and family didn't
26:02
Speaker 3: recognize the jersey and said, to their knowledge, she did
26:06
Speaker 3: not know anyone from Edmondson County High School. So one
26:10
Speaker 3: theory is that Twilight snuck out to meet up with
26:13
Speaker 3: her killer and that her killer gave her the jacket.
26:17
Speaker 3: Police did find hair at the crime scene. In early
26:20
Speaker 3: two thousand and three, detectives contacted Twilight's biological mother to
26:24
Speaker 3: get hair samples from her. They had hairs from the
26:27
Speaker 3: crime scene, which they were able to confirm were not
26:30
Speaker 3: a match to Twilight. Police also spoke to someone else,
26:34
Speaker 3: a friend of Twilight's, but the friend's mother told the
26:37
Speaker 3: young man to go into the house and not to
26:39
Speaker 3: talk to law enforcement. They requested hair samples from this
26:43
Speaker 3: young man, but his mother told police if they wanted
26:46
Speaker 3: to talk to him to get in contact with their attorney.
26:49
Speaker 3: So this person's hairs were never tested. There are a
26:53
Speaker 3: lot of dead ends like this in the case file,
26:56
Speaker 3: and that's part of what we're going to be exploring
26:58
Speaker 3: in Part two next week. We are going to go
27:01
Speaker 3: through this case file and we're going to find out
27:03
Speaker 3: who some of these redacted people were and try to
27:06
Speaker 3: see if we can nail down where Twilight Crooks was
27:10
Speaker 3: on the night she was murdered. There has not been
27:14
Speaker 3: a lot of media attention on this case. Some commenters
27:17
Speaker 3: online have said they think that's because Twilight was Native American.
27:21
Speaker 3: There have been a lot of stories about the epidemic
27:24
Speaker 3: of missing and murdered Indigenous women. According to data provided
27:29
Speaker 3: by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the FBI
27:33
Speaker 3: reported five two hundred and three missing Indigenous girls and
27:36
Speaker 3: women in twenty twenty one. According to this report, which
27:40
Speaker 3: was quoted in The Independent newspaper, this is a race
27:43
Speaker 3: equal to more than two and a half times their
27:45
Speaker 3: estimated share of the US population. Though I'm sure that's true,
27:49
Speaker 3: and it may have been a factor.
27:51
Speaker 1: In my opinion. It could also be a.
27:53
Speaker 3: Case of bad timing, because after nine to eleven, everyone's
27:57
Speaker 3: attention shifted to national security and Twilight's case disappeared from headlines.
28:03
Speaker 3: But Sheriff high Toower told The Independent he believes keeping
28:07
Speaker 3: the case in the news could help get it solved.
28:10
Speaker 3: He said, quote from a law enforcement perspective, the more
28:13
Speaker 3: that we can keep this on the front pages and
28:15
Speaker 3: on the front burner, then I think the more opportunity
28:18
Speaker 3: there is that it may resonate with that key person
28:21
Speaker 3: who is holding that particular piece of valued information that
28:24
Speaker 3: could really help unleash the rest of this case.
28:27
Speaker 1: End quote.
28:29
Speaker 3: The Warren County Sheriff's Office has stated this is still
28:32
Speaker 3: an open and active case. Meanwhile, Twilight's family is left
28:36
Speaker 3: wondering what happened that night twenty five years ago when
28:40
Speaker 3: she left the house. Bobby told The Independent in twenty nineteen,
28:45
Speaker 3: there are a million things that run through your mind.
28:48
Speaker 3: Who would have done it? Why would they have done it?
28:50
Speaker 3: There are no answers end quote. Next week, in part two,
28:59
Speaker 3: we are going to talk to more of Twilight's friends.
29:02
Speaker 3: We're going to see if we can figure out if
29:03
Speaker 3: there were other people she was talking to, people who
29:06
Speaker 3: the police may.
29:07
Speaker 1: Not know about.
29:09
Speaker 3: We're going to try to see if we can figure
29:11
Speaker 3: out who the owner of that jersey is, if they
29:14
Speaker 3: know Twilight, who picked her up that night, and what
29:18
Speaker 3: horrors happened to her in those woods after that. I'm
29:22
Speaker 3: Catherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone
29:27
Speaker 3: Murderline is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts.
29:31
Speaker 3: It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced
29:34
Speaker 3: by Etaly's Perez Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her
29:37
Speaker 3: research assistance and James Wheaton for legal review. Noah Camra
29:42
Speaker 3: mixed and scored this episode. Our theme song is by
29:45
Speaker 3: Ben Sale, Executive producers of Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and
29:49
Speaker 3: LC Crowley. Listen to Helen Gone ad free by subscribing
29:53
Speaker 3: to the iHeart True Crime Plush.
29:54
Speaker 1: Channel on Apple Podcasts.
29:56
Speaker 3: If you were interested in seeing documents and materials from
29:59
Speaker 3: the case, you can follow the show on Instagram at
30:02
Speaker 3: Helen gonpot. If you have a case you'd like me
30:06
Speaker 3: and my team to look into, you can reach out
30:08
Speaker 3: to us at our Helen Gone murder line at six
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30:21
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