Latest / The Path Went Chilly / Crystal Spencer Pt. One

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Crystal Spencer Pt. One · The Path Went Chilly

0:30
Welcome back to the Pathway Chili. I'm Robin, I'm Jules, and I'm
0:35
Ashley. So before we dive into this week's case, I wanted to take
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a second to share something super magical with our listeners. You guys are getting
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another fun friend to hang out with on the Pathway Chili because I am expecting
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a new baby coming October of this year. Yay yay, So I'm excited
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we look for and having this little bundle of joy co host with us about
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ten years from now. Hey man, Reagan already has to digest everything,
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but this one. I'll be growing up listening to true crime too, So
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everybody buckle up and get ready. May sixth, nineteen eighty eight, Burbank,
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California. Crystal Spencer, a twenty eight year old aspiring actress working as
1:21
a topless dancer, phones her sister and mentions that she's feeling ill. No
1:26
one hears from Crystal after this, and one week later, her decomposing body
1:30
is discovered in a corner inside her apartment. She is nude from the waist
1:34
down, entangled in her telephone cord, and the coroner is unable to determine
1:41
her cause of death. However, neighbor's report having heard screams from Crystal's apartment,
1:46
and her boyfriend notices odd discrepancies in her autopsy report which make them suspect
1:51
that she was a victim of foul play. After that, the path what
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a chili. So today we're going to explore a pretty strange case which was
2:00
featured on Unsolved Mysteries, the Unexplained nineteen eight death of Crystal Spencer. This
2:07
is the story of a small town girl who moved to Hollywood with aspirations of
2:09
becoming an actress, but wound up coming to a tragic end. However,
2:15
the exact circumstances what actually happened to her a big mystery. All anyone knows
2:20
is that Crystal was found dead inside her apartment one week after she was last
2:23
heard from. For her body was so decomposed by this point that no one
2:28
was able to determine how she died. It's possible that she simply succumbed to
2:31
an unknown illness, but there are enough bizarre elements in this story to suggest
2:36
that she may have actually been the victim of foul play. Cristel's biggest advocate
2:40
was her boyfriend Anton Kleine, who is quite a unique character himself, and
2:45
has pushed forward the theory that Cristel was murdered and that the potential perpetrator was
2:50
a former police officer who became a murder victim himself less than one year later.
2:54
But we'll delve into that in a little while as well. To try
2:58
to determine the most likely explain for Crystal Spencer is bizarre death. This one
3:02
is really bizarre because you had the phone call to her sister where she says,
3:07
I'm feeling ill and if that's all we had, and later she's found
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decomposing in her apartment, you could almost wonder is it something where she was
3:15
truly sick? Is it something where she had ingested something earlier that evening?
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But then when you start to talk about the way she was discovered, where
3:23
she's nude from the waist down, she's entangled in a telephone cord, and
3:29
there's screaming herd coming from her apartment. That's it's horrifying. You know that
3:35
something makes it to the effect that she's been a victim of foul play.
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This couldn't have been an accident. It doesn't sound like something where she would
3:43
be going through a mental health crisis. We've seen those cases where mental health
3:46
actually ends up being the issue, but this one seems so bizarre that it's
3:51
where the coroner says there's an undetermined cause of death. It seems like there's
3:55
foul play clearly based on the way she's discovered. Yeah, it's definitely a
4:00
weird one because they couldn't find anything on the autopsy report to figure out how
4:04
she died, so if it was natural causes, it was likely an illness
4:09
that no one had ever heard of before. So it's definitely one of those
4:13
cases where there's no explanation that makes one hundred percent complete sense. Our story
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begins in Burbank, California, in nineteen eighty eight. Our central figure is
4:24
twenty eight year old Crystal Spencer, who originally hails from the small northern California
4:30
town of Yukaiah. Like many young women, Crystal dreamed of becoming a famous
4:34
actress and left home to make a move to Los Angeles in nineteen eighty two.
4:40
Unfortunately, Crystal had little success finding much acting work, so in order
4:45
to pay the bills, she took a job as a topless dancer at the
4:47
Wild Goose a club located near Los Angeles International Airport. The job paid decent
4:54
money, and Crystal could take home hundreds of dollars in tips every night,
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but as the years passed, her attempts at an acting career never went anywhere,
5:02
as the only job she was able to procure were two small roles in
5:06
television commercials. In May of nineteen eighty seven, Crystal became involved in a
5:12
relationship with Anton Klein, a PhD candidate in history who was attempting to find
5:17
success as a screenwriter. Even though Anton was nearly a decade older than Crystal
5:23
and they hailed from different backgrounds, the two of them hit it off.
5:27
According to Anton, he helped broaden crystal cultural horizons by introducing her to the
5:32
world of museums, art galleries, and classical music. However, Crystal would
5:36
not tell Anton about her job as a topless dancer, and he only found
5:42
out about it four months into their relationship as a friend of who has just
5:45
happened to see her on stage at the Wild Goose. Even though Anton was
5:49
not happy about Crystal's profession, he knew that it was helping her make ends
5:54
meet and reluctantly accepted it. I think anybody who cares about someone would be
5:59
concerned about this kind of career and this kind of lifestyle because of who Crystal
6:03
would have been exposed to and the way that you view her with respect and
6:09
love and care. And then you assume that the people who are frequenting her
6:13
bar are not doing the same. So I absolutely understand the concern and kind
6:17
of frustration that that's the way she has to be making money right now.
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But it's interesting that Crystal's working hard. Her site is set. Yes,
6:28
she's at the topless bar, but she continues to go on. She's trying
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to get these acting jobs and it just doesn't work when you have people in
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these big cities and you have, you know, minimum wage jobs going on.
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It's no wonder people turned to a career like this, and I don't
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think they're always, Especially in the eighties, I don't think you were really
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aware necessarily of all of the risk and all of the things you were going
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to be exposed to, right that this wasn't just a job that you went
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to and you got to go home. There were bigger risks associated with that.
6:57
Yeah, I think that Antin was particularly understanding because he was kind of
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going through the same thing, like she wanted to break in as an actress
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and he was hoping to break in as a screenwriter as well, So he
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knew what the struggles were at trying to find work on Hollywood, and the
7:11
difference was Anton did have a full time job which paid the bills, but
7:15
he also understand stood that the options may have been a bit more limited for
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Crystal. So he figured, well, I'm not particularly happy that she's working
7:23
in a place like this, but I'll let her do it because it helps
7:25
her Meatan's meet. The couple's relationship continued on for a year until Anton stopped
7:31
by Crystal's apartment in Burbank on May fourth, nineteen eighty eight. Crystal was
7:36
sick with the flu, but she had some important news. She was being
7:41
considered for a potential job opportunity in Japan. The three month gig would involve
7:46
working as a hostess girl at a Japanese nightclub, but even though Crystal was
7:49
nervous about the idea of living abroad, she was determined to go for it.
7:55
In fact, before she got the job, she had made an entry
7:57
in her journal which read quote, I feel stuck. I'm going to get
8:01
unstuck. God guide me, get me out of the wild goose by the
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end of May end quote. After Anton left Cristel's apartment, they spoke on
8:09
the phone again the following night, and she told them she was feeling much
8:13
better. On May the sixth, Bristol had a telephone conversation with her sister
8:18
Julie, who lived in Torrance at the time. Their mother was renting temporary
8:22
quarters from a family in Los Angeles, and Cristel asked for her new phone
8:26
number. According to Julie, her mother had told her to only use it
8:31
in the event of an emergency, and since Chrystel had a tendency to talk
8:35
people's ear off on the phone, Julie pretended she did not have the number.
8:39
Cristel responded by saying she was really sick and could hardly make it to
8:43
the bathroom, but Julie figured she was just being over dramatic and refused to
8:46
give out the number. Their call soon ended, but this would turn out
8:50
to be the last time Crystal was confirmed to be alive. Oh poor Julie.
8:56
I feel really bad for her. She's doing what her mom asked like,
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Hey, listen, your sister talks my ear off, don't give her
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this number, and Julie's doing what her mom told her to, but to
9:05
be holding that, you know, my sister is now deceased. She didn't
9:09
feel good. She was wanting to reach out to my mom. That's heavy.
9:13
That's a lot of emotional baggage to carry, and a lot of guilt
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to carry even though it's not needed. And then you also have from May
9:22
fourth to May six that Crystal is pretty sick. She obviously is telling Anton,
9:28
I have the flu. I feel really sick. By the time she's
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talking to her sister, she said, I can barely make it to the
9:33
bathroom, and I feel really sick. It sounds like she was distressed too
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about work at the time. Was there ever any testing to see if someone
9:43
at work could have been doing something like poisoning her or making her ill,
9:48
or even potentially did they know if work knew she was sick and therefore compromised
9:52
or weaker at the time where someone might see her as more of a victim.
9:58
It's kind of weird because there's going to be some ambiguity about when exactly
10:01
was the last time Crystal went to work, and I don't we might talk
10:05
about this on this episode or the next. But years later, her brother
10:07
would make a comment on a message board talking about all these rumors that he
10:11
had heard that Crystal may have been poisoned and this was the source of her
10:16
illness. But we don't really know when or where this poisoning would have taken
10:20
place. But if it is, what happens as we're going to talk about.
10:22
They obviously did not find any traces of poison in her autopsy. Yeah,
10:28
that's what I was wondering. If she was poisoned, she might have
10:30
been in a weaker state. But it's clear from what you see or what
10:33
you're hearing, it sounds like someone then came to her apartment to hurt her.
10:37
Because being nude from the waist down and having the cord wrapped all around
10:41
her, it seems would she have done that herself. That seems a little
10:46
bit bizarre. I've got a question for you, Robin. Okay, So
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I don't know if either of you are very familiar with hostess culture in Japan,
10:56
but I remember I've listened to a couple episodes. I think God Rotten
11:00
Mango and Stephanie Sue went into the culture really deeply. There was a case
11:05
rather recently where a hostess murdered a host from another bar and she was like
11:11
thought to be too pretty to kill in the press and all this. And
11:13
then there's another case where a Korean man who was quite wealthy who was living
11:18
in Japan killed a British woman who was there working at a hostess club.
11:24
She goes really deeply into the culture there, and it's really really interesting.
11:26
But the Yukuza thought to be pretty involved in a lot of these clubs,
11:33
because organized crime is often involved in a lot of those types of clubs.
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So I find it interesting that she was considered for a job opportunity at a
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hostess club in Japan. I wonder how she would have procured this interview,
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how she could have got this job opportunity. Do you know any of those
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details? Unfortunately we don't really. I mean, she just said she was
11:56
being considered, she had never actually gotten hired. But aren't any specific details
12:01
about how this process worked, if she actually talked to someone from Japan or
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auditioned at some sort, or if it would have gotten given her the opportunity
12:09
to cross paths with some shady characters. So probably know, it just could
12:13
be a thing where someone liked her looks and says, oh, you'd be
12:16
good over in Japan. But it's not clear to me if she still had
12:20
like more of an addition process before she got the job. I was just
12:24
wondering if maybe she was mixing with certain people that maybe knew somebody that was
12:28
like, hey, you know friend of mine, or you know a relative
12:31
or whomever runs this club back home, and you would be great for it,
12:37
because it's not like today, you know, back then it was obviously
12:39
there wasn't the Internet, so you couldn't just apply for a job online.
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You would either have to see like some posting physically somewhere, or you would
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likely have to know somebody or read something in the classified section of the newspaper.
12:52
Maybe yeah, And it isn't really even true whether she was getting this
12:58
job through the Wild Goose or if she actually read about it independently. I
13:01
mean, we're going to talk about a former cop that had a lot of
13:05
connections in Los Angeles, and it's very possible that Crystal could have gotten this
13:09
gig through him. But it's just a lot of details are murky because I
13:13
don't think Crystal shared too many details with their friends and family about how she
13:18
was looking to procure this job. Anton claimed that the next time he tried
13:22
to contact Crystal was on May eighth, but after calling her number multiple times,
13:28
he kept getting a busy signal. He contacted the operator, who told
13:31
him that Crystal's phone was off the hook, and this did not concern Anton
13:35
too much since Cristel was a very disorganized person who had a tendency to leave
13:41
her phone off the hook after she finished a call. Anton then spoke to
13:45
the door man at the Wild Goose to ask if anyone had seen Crystal,
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and he was told that she hadn't worked there for a couple of days because
13:52
she left for Japan. Anton figured Cristel already left to start her new job
13:56
without saying goodbye, and even though he found that unusual, he believed she
14:01
would soon call him from Japan. Well. On May thirteenth, which incidentally
14:07
happened to be Friday the thirteenth, neighbors from Crystal's buildings started complaining about a
14:11
foul odour coming from her apartment, so the police were notified. When they
14:16
arrived and went inside, they discovered Cristel's body. She was resting in a
14:22
corner nude from the waist down and dressed only in a red shirt. Her
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body was entangled in her telephone cord, and there were no records of any
14:30
calls from her apartment since she last talked to her sister on May sixth.
14:35
By this point, the body was in an advanced state of decomposition, which
14:39
seemed to indicate that Crystal had been dead for several days before she was found.
14:43
There were no signs of any forced entry, and while the apartment was
14:46
in a state of disarray with belongings scattered everywhere, Crystal was not an orderly
14:52
person and her place was often a mess, so this did not prove that
14:56
a struggle had taken place. An autopsy was performed, there were only slight
15:01
traces of alcohol and marijuana found in crystal system well. There was no indication
15:07
that she might have died by suicide. There was no signs of trauma or
15:11
assault on her body either. In the end, while the authorities were inclined
15:16
to think that Crystal died of natural causes or some unknown illness, the Los
15:20
Angeles County Coroner could not figure out what killed her and officially ruled her cause
15:24
of death to be undetermined. Okay, So for me, I'm overwhelmed when
15:31
you say there was no sign of any kind of struggle or foul play that
15:35
had taken place. It didn't kind of physical attack on her. I was
15:39
sure there'd be some kind of indication that she was strangled or something because of
15:43
the way her body was found. But then I'm thinking, Okay, if
15:46
she's let's say, dying of an illness, or she can't catch her breath
15:50
or she can't breathe and she's panicking, could she have gotten caught up in
15:54
the phone cord. Possibly, But it seems so bizarre to me that you
16:00
know, she's working at this club, she's complaining of being sick for several
16:04
days, which I mean would allude to there being some natural cause going on
16:08
leading up to her death. But she is in a high risk lifestyle.
16:12
She is engaged with people who likely do deal in criminal activity and violence.
16:19
And so the fact that Anton hadn't heard from her, the fact that no
16:22
one hears anything. And it's odd too that Anton says I didn't hear from
16:26
her and it wasn't concerning because I thought she'd call from Japan. It kind
16:30
of shows how Crystal lived. There was probably a very risky lifestyle there where
16:37
she's not checking in with people all the time. It's not abnormal for her
16:41
to go missing for a couple of days and not contact you. That signifies
16:45
a kind of high risk lifestyle too, So I'm shocked. I'm kind of
16:48
a speechless when you say nothing was found that could show someone put their hands
16:52
on her body. I was sure that was going to be what happened.
16:57
Yeah, when you hear the detail about the timeelephone chord, that really does
17:00
sound on the surface like there's a violent struggle. But I guess it's not
17:04
impossible that if she was having a violent seizure or something, or she was
17:08
having a bad reaction, that she could have attempted to call nine one one,
17:11
but before she dibbed the number, she kind of fell over something like
17:15
that entangled herself in the chord. Because that is the one piece of evidence
17:18
which points to foul play. Yet there's nothing else in the apartment that indicates
17:22
that someone else was there and could have murdered her. Did they do a
17:26
rape kit? That's actually never been clarified, and I am actually curious about
17:32
that. But I think if they had found any semen or any signs of
17:34
sexual assault, I think they would have recorded it. But then again,
17:37
because of the decomposition, I don't know if that can kind of skew the
17:41
results or something so that you can't really tell if someone has been sexually assaulted
17:45
after a certain period of time. I was also wondering, and that I
17:49
obviously not a forensic pathologist, so I don't know. But depending on how
17:55
many days somebody has been dead, is there any way that that decomposition could
18:00
mask some signs of physical assault. It is possible, Like I've studied other
18:04
cases like that, I don't know the exact timeline, like I've seen it
18:10
in cases where say someone has been murdered in an outdoor area in a rural
18:15
area, and they've been out in the elements for several days or a week
18:18
before their body is found, and then there's so much decomposition that they say,
18:22
we can't say with any certainty if this person was raped or sexual assaulted.
18:26
But I don't know if things would reach to that point if she's been
18:29
dead for about a week inside an apartment. So on several occasions, Crystal's
18:36
family requested a viewer body, but was told by the Coroner's office that it
18:40
was in no condition to be seen. In spite of this, her family
18:44
was given the impression that Crystal was the tragic victim of a fatal illness and
18:48
had no reason to believe that anything was amiss. Crystal's body would soon be
18:52
cremated, and her friends and family held a private memorial service in which her
18:56
ashes are scattered beneath the Hollywood Sign. However, Anton would soon uncover information
19:02
which led them to believe that Crystal may have been murdered. It turned out
19:07
that at around four am on the morning of May to seven, two of
19:10
Cristel's neighbors, who lived downstairs beneath her apartment, were awoken by what sounded
19:15
like a woman screaming. The neighbors were Jet Taylor and yes that is his
19:18
real name, and his Deionce Susan Aiken, who happened to be semi famous
19:23
since she was a former Miss Mississippi who won the Miss America pageant in nineteen
19:27
eighty six. The couple believed that the screams were coming from Crystal's apartment and
19:33
thought they also heard some gagging and choking sounds. At first, they thought
19:37
it might have been a sexual s and m thing, but the noises continued
19:41
on for a great deal of time, and begot the impression that they were
19:45
genuine screams of pain. Susan would describe it as sounding like someone being tortured
19:49
while being continuously burned with a cigarette putt. However, even though Susan wanted
19:55
to call the police, Jet did not want to get involved, figuring that
19:57
it might be a domestic dea, which wasn't their business, so he talked
20:02
her out of it. Later that day, Jet did tell the building's landlord
20:06
about the screams and advised him to check it out, but he did not
20:08
want to get involved either. After Jet and Susan learned about Crystal's death,
20:14
they finally shared their account of the screaming with the police, but claimed that
20:18
the officer they spoke to seemed disinterested and dismissive of the murder theory. In
20:22
fact, he seemed to imply that Cristal was a drug addict who died of
20:26
an overdose and told them quote, don't you believe she was just sick?
20:30
Well, I mean you can have both. You can have yes, that
20:33
she was sick and that she was also a victim and in fact, that's
20:37
often more probable than someone who's not sick being a victim. So that's a
20:42
really insensitive and frustrating comment to have an officer make. It seems just uneducated.
20:48
Right. The more sick someone is someone who's an addict, someone who's
20:52
homeless, someone who's in a high risk lifestyle, then they also have a
20:56
higher threat of being the victim of foul play. So anyway, that's an
21:03
ignorant comment. But when you go back and you hear these screams, they
21:07
don't sound like a sexual scream like you could even think about was she using
21:12
that chord to sexually exphyxiate herself? But then there's also no sign of strangulation
21:18
or anything. So that doesn't make any sense because let's say you were into
21:22
erotica where you were using a chord so powerfully that it would have you pass
21:26
out a little and come back and pass out and come back. Then you
21:30
would see marks, or you would have some kind of act of you know,
21:33
discolouration around her neck or something. But that's not how they found her.
21:37
They said, there's no sign of any kind of foul play, And
21:41
at first, a chord tightly around your neck or signs that you had something
21:45
tightly around your neck would indicate potential of foul play. So that doesn't seem
21:49
right. And the longevity of her screams like she's almost being tortured, is
21:55
really concerning, because again, if it's sexual and she alone in that apartment,
22:00
how often are you hearing screams? How long do you hear those screams.
22:06
The neighbors clearly picked up that there was a concern, and it's almost
22:11
like that concern was kind of shut out because there wasn't any evidence to point
22:15
to foul play, so they just said, let's chalk it up to her
22:17
being sick. Did they stop short of investigating the way they needed to to
22:22
get a clear answer of whether or not it was natural, accidental, or
22:26
homicide. Whenever I think of autoerotic asphyxiation, I think of the case of
22:32
David Carrodine where he was doing it and I think he was living in Thailand
22:37
at the time, and then he was found deceased, and it was like,
22:40
is there more to it or is it just that this was something that
22:42
he liked to engage in. Yeah, I remember that was kind of a
22:47
big controversy. I know that the consensus seems to be that it was just
22:49
an accident where he just kind of went too far and inadvertently caused his own
22:55
death. I mean, in Crystal's case, like, even though she was
22:57
wrapped in a phone cord, it didn't really look like autoerotic asphyxiation and didn't
23:02
look like she was strangling herself. But I do wonder though, like about
23:06
the illness explanation. If you're like violently ill and you feel like you're dying
23:10
or something, are you going to have the energy to scream for a prolonged
23:14
period of time. I mean, I know that that's what the police think,
23:18
is that she died of an illness, But is that typical to cause
23:21
reaction just to start screaming for a long time. I don't think so.
23:25
I feel like, if she had this strength to be sitting there like moaning
23:27
and screaming to a point that sounded next door like she's being tortured, why
23:32
not pick up the phone call nine one one. Why not walk to your
23:34
neighbor's house and be like, I'm so sorry, but I think I'm dying,
23:37
Like I'm scared. You would do something like that, wouldn't you?
23:41
If you had the energy to sit there and for hours be in so much
23:44
pain as to scream. I feel like you could find a way to get
23:48
assistance in the time that that took. I agree, it just seems unlikely
23:55
that you'd be screaming and wailing so loudly, and that does take a great
24:00
reservoir of energy to continue on with that. So unless you were restrained in
24:06
some capacity or unable to walk, maybe she'd suffered some kind of seizure or
24:11
something like that, and maybe he was unable to use her limbs properly.
24:17
I don't even know what would be an explanation for being able to be so
24:22
loud vocally but not being able to move your body physically. Anton also became
24:29
suspicious when he found Crystal's camera in her apartment and decided to develop the film,
24:33
which was inside. The last time they saw each other, Anton and
24:37
Crystal had taken eight photographs of themselves together, but there was a ninth photo
24:42
on the roll featuring a man with a mustache sitting at Crystal's table, whom
24:47
Anton did not recognize. He eventually figured out the identity of the man and
24:52
gave his name to the police, who interviewed him and dismissed him as a
24:56
suspect. Well, Anton does not believe this man was in in Cristel's death.
25:00
The fact that police did not even bother to check Crystal's camera themselves made
25:06
him question the thoroughness of their investigation. He continually asked for Crystal's autopsy report
25:11
and was refused on multiple occasions, but finally received a copy from the Los
25:17
Angeles County Coroner's office. It was here that he noticed some very odd discrepancies.
25:22
The report listed Crystal as five to seven and one hundred and forty pounds,
25:27
but this was not accurate at all. Only three weeks before her death,
25:32
Crystal had visited a clinic and their medical records listed her as five feet
25:36
tall and one hundred and five pounds. In addition, Crystal had metal pins
25:41
and plates in her right ankle from an accident that she'd suffered nine years earlier,
25:45
but the report made no mention of this, and stated that her body
25:49
was tested for foreign objects such as metal, but turned up nothing. This
25:53
made Anton wonder if the autopsy report was for the wrong body. In fact,
25:59
given that the advanced state of decomposition had made Crystal virtually unrecognizable when she
26:03
was found. Anton even pondered the possibility that the body in Crystal's apartment might
26:10
not have actually been her. However, investigators would maintain that the discrepancies in
26:15
the autopsy report were nothing more than clerical errors. They claimed that they ran
26:19
the body's fingerprints through both county and state files and positively identified her as Crystal.
26:26
Believe it or not. By the time they did this, the fingertips
26:30
were too deteriorated for normal printing, so they actually had to surgically remove her
26:34
fingertips from her body and send them to a lab to make a formal ID.
26:40
The official explanation for the height and weight discrepancies was that mismeasurements of height
26:45
can occur when a body is bent or toes or pointed, and the body
26:48
weights could be miscalculated by fifty pounds or more when workers failed to account for
26:53
the weight of movable gurneys the body is resting on. It should also be
26:57
noted that no X rays or dental records were used to officially identify Crystal,
27:03
and that the coroner's office failed to keep any tissue samples for further review before
27:07
her body was cremated. Okay, so, what did they do properly?
27:12
I mean, like, how do you know any of this was proper when
27:15
there's all of these discrepancies. It's frustrating. Like I said, it feels
27:21
like with the comment where they said, or she's just sick, Like did
27:23
you think about that? You know, it's almost as if that was their
27:26
conclusion from the get go. And we've talked about so often, Yes,
27:30
her body was incredibly decomposed. Yes there's not a clear sign that something happened.
27:34
But if they went in assuming this is a natural death or an accident,
27:40
did they fall short of putting the time and resources into it? And
27:42
when you get a report and you see that there's all these discrepancies, how
27:47
do you not think that they dropped the ball here? This is one of
27:51
those cases where, even if Crystal's death was natural causes, you can understand
27:55
Anton for being so angry about this and wanting to perform his own in independent
28:00
investigation because he believed she could have been murdered. And we always talk about
28:03
how with every death scene you should always treat it as a potential homicide at
28:07
the outset and only go towards natural causes or accidental death or suicide if the
28:14
evidence takes you in that direction. But it seems like here they just automatically
28:18
assumed it was some sort of illness or natural death and did not do a
28:21
proper investigation and seemingly made every clerical error imaginable when cataloging her body, so
28:29
that by the time Anton started checking into it, he was finding like all
28:33
these discrepancies which made him believe that a major screw up occurred here. So,
28:37
even though Crystal's body was no longer available, Anton had several medical experts
28:42
review Crystal's autopsy, and they all concluded that an additional investigation should be performed.
28:48
One of the experts he consulted was doctor William Eckert, a renowned forensic
28:52
pathologist who had worked on the post mortem of Robert F. Kennedy, and
28:56
he thought there was a possibility that the exact cause of Cristel's death was strangulation.
29:03
In spite of this, the Burbank Police Department continued to maintain that they
29:07
had already performed a full investigation and found no evidence of murder. They claimed
29:11
their inquiry revealed that Crystal had a history of alcohol and drug abuse and had
29:17
threatened suicide in the past. The official autopsy report even contained quotes from Crystal's
29:22
friends who claimed she was depressed about her situation and had developed a drinking problem,
29:27
and Cristel's own mother even described her as having a quote unquote unstable personality.
29:33
Even though Jet Tailor and Susan Aiken had reported hearing screaming from Cristel's apartment
29:38
during the early morning hours of May the seventh, another neighbor apparently told police
29:44
that they heard the sounds of someone who was violently ill, which started during
29:48
the day on May the sixth and gradually got worse as the night went on.
29:52
If these sounds were made by Crystal, then this will lend credence to
29:55
the idea that she was suffering from a fatal illness. While her exactly cause
30:00
of death was listed as undetermined, a coroner spokesman was quoted as saying that
30:03
out of the approximately eighteen thousand deaths investigated in Los Angeles each year, there
30:10
are about forty or fifty where it is just impossible to tell how the victim
30:14
died. However, there was some uncertainty about how sick Crystal actually was on
30:19
May to sixth, as she allegedly danced at the Wild Goose that night,
30:23
even though the club did not have a record of Crystal signing in for that
30:26
ship. A waitress friend of hers and the club's security officer recalled her having
30:32
worked there on Made the sixth and May the six Just to recall, that's
30:37
the night that she was talking to her sister. That's the last time she
30:38
had the phone call, Yes, exactly. So the way she was acting
30:42
on the phone with her sister does not seem like she would have been working
30:45
that same day. So there is a possibility that maybe these employees are just
30:49
mistaken about the night she was there. Yeah, Either that she's playing it
30:53
up for her sister, or and she's not really sick, which decreases the
30:59
likelihood that she's dying of natural causes. Or is she so desperate that she
31:03
needs that money or feels so desperate that she needs that money and goes is
31:08
there someone that night that poisoned her? Again, because you hear of people
31:12
who will say, yeah, you know, there'll be a case where there's
31:17
a poisoning death, but you go the wife tried to kill him on May
31:19
thirteenth, it didn't work. She just got really sick or he just got
31:22
really sick, and then tried again on April fourth, and then tried again
31:26
on May six, Like, is it possible she did go to work and
31:29
someone slips in the air drink and then broke into her apartment that night as
31:32
well? I mean it is possible because I remember Anton, when he last
31:36
saw Crystal, said that she was very sick. But then when he spoke
31:40
to her again on May the fifth, she told him that she was feeling
31:42
much better. And then all of a sudden on May the six when she
31:45
talks to her sister, she's very sick again, and so sick that she
31:48
says she can't make it to the bathroom. So if this was a poisoning,
31:52
I guess it is possible that someone attempted it the first time it did
31:56
not work, so they may poison her again sometimes between me the fifth and
32:00
the sixth, and this time it actually did work. And you see here
32:04
too that this renowned forensic pathologist says he thinks that it actually could have been
32:08
strangulation. If you think it could have been, how is everybody else so
32:13
clear that no, it's not. Her body was so decomposed to immediately say
32:17
we're confident that this is either this is natural causes, nothing happened, and
32:22
then you have a world renown forensic pathologist who comes in and says, hmm,
32:27
I actually believe that, you know, strangulation is a high probability.
32:30
To just rule that out seems wild to me. The fact that she was
32:36
an exotic dancer might have factored in, especially since they thought that she had
32:40
a problem with alcohol, that she had mental health issues, and the potentially
32:45
an issue with drugs as well was brought up. I just think that there
32:49
they may have lost their vigor to investigate, and we're just too quick to
32:52
go, oh, this was obviously just accidental. It was an illness.
32:58
It was not murder. Just like they were too quick to write her off
33:00
because she was like the less dead. Yep, she's a less valuable victim,
33:05
right, the invaluable victim. That seems wild. Anton continued to believe
33:10
that a cover up was being orchestrated for Crystal's death. He claimed that he
33:15
spoke on the phone with law enforcement officials who told him, quote, bad
33:20
things happened to bad girls. When Anton asked for clarification about what that statement
33:24
meant, the official replied, quote, you know, exactly what I mean
33:30
before abruptly hanging up. Crystal's mother filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles County
33:35
Coroner's Office over the mistakes with the autopsy report, while Anton filed suit against
33:40
Burbank PD on multiple occasions in order to garner access to their files about the
33:45
case. On each occasion, the courts ruled against Anton, but he made
33:51
sure to keep Crystal's story in the spotlight, as it was profiled on an
33:54
episode of Unsolved Mysteries in March of nineteen ninety one, and featured on such
34:00
TV shows as Hard Copy and A Current Affair. The Los Angeles Times published
34:05
an extensive article about the case in February of nineteen ninety two, and one
34:09
of the original detectives, Kevin Kraft, claimed that Anton had accused him of
34:14
being associated with Japanese organized crime. Well. A few weeks later, the
34:20
Times published a letter that Anton had written to the editor in which he denied
34:23
ever having said this. It was during this article that Anton named a potential
34:29
suspect in Crystal's death. Horace McKenna, a three hundred pound bodybuilder nicknamed Big
34:35
Mac. McKenna, was a former California Highway patrol officer who was fired and
34:40
spent time in prison after he was caught passing counterfeit money. After he was
34:45
released, McKenna became the owner of a bunch of talkless bars, one of
34:50
which was allegedly the Wild Goose. As a convicted felon, McKenna could not
34:54
legally get a permit to operate these bars, which is why he was not
34:58
listed on their financial reas and was considered to be a secret owner who took
35:02
home a bulk of the profits. McKenna was known for being a very eccentric
35:07
figure who lived on a forty acre estate which housed exotic animals like monkeys,
35:13
wildcats, and alligators. He also allegedly operated an illegal gambling casino out of
35:20
a warehouse in Inglewood, and, according to a waitress who worked at the
35:22
Wild Goose, Crystal often spent time at the casino. He was rumored the
35:28
McKenna often held parties for his friend's law enforcement and used some of the women
35:32
from his populace bars to entertain them. Well, whether or not he's a
35:37
murderer or not, this guy clearly is up to no good because he can't
35:40
even get a permit to operate a bar, he's a convicted felon, and
35:45
yet he lives this luxurious lifestyle. So you have to step back and say,
35:51
where did you get those funds? Like you're not even able to procure
35:53
certificates and permits and things you need to run a business establishment, So where
35:59
are you laundering your money from? How are you getting access to all of
36:02
these funds, and yet you can't legally operate an operation a legal operation.
36:09
So it's definitely a concerning friend and associate to be linked to. And it's
36:15
concerning that he has his law enforcement friends over at these almost you know,
36:20
near illegal parties where you don't know what's going on there. But that's not
36:23
surprising all the time. What does Anton think? Does he know that there
36:28
was trouble between the two when he throws his name out, because that's a
36:30
big accusation. Well, that's the thing is that, as we're going to
36:35
talk about, Torus, McKenna was already dead by the time Anton started publicly
36:38
accusing him. He is quite a shady character. You could probably do a
36:43
whole podcast episode on just McKenna himself because of all the stuff he was involved
36:46
in throughout his life. But the problem is is that we still aren't even
36:52
one hundred percent certain if he ever crossed paths with Crystal. I mean,
36:55
it's rumored that he was a secret owner of the Wild Goose, and we've
36:59
heard all the stories about these parties he was hold, but it's nothing more
37:02
than your saying gossip, because I don't think anyone has ever verified that,
37:07
Yes, Crystal often spent time hanging around McKenna and entertaining some of his friends.
37:10
So it could be just be a thing where this is like Anton's speculation,
37:15
where he's heard about this guy and he automatically assumes that because he was
37:19
involved in such shady stuff that he had to have a role in Crystal's death.
37:23
We know she was really depressed about her situation, that she'd had people
37:27
close to her that had said as much, and we don't know if she
37:30
knew Horace McKenna. But is it possible that she was really depressed about her
37:36
situation not just because she was working at the Wild Goose, but maybe because
37:39
something happened at one of these parties at Horace McKenna's, Because it seems like
37:45
there's a potential that there could be some powerful people there. We know that
37:49
there's friends in law enforcement, but we have to think maybe there's other people
37:52
who were higher up, and did she know too much? Did she see
37:57
too much? Was there some motivation to silence? Sure, it is certainly
38:01
possible, and there have been a lot of rumors like that that have spread
38:05
over the years, even though they've never been confirmed. And I can see
38:08
something where if Crystal had to attend one of these parties and she was sexually
38:12
assaulted by, say a law enforcement officer, I could see a remaining silent
38:15
about that and not telling Anton because she didn't initially even want to tell him
38:21
that she was working at a topless bar. So if she was getting involved
38:23
with in situations where other men were having sex with her or raping her,
38:28
I could see her not telling Anton and then being very depressed about it because
38:34
it doesn't seem like to both of you that I mean. Now, it's
38:37
a little bit different if you're going to move abroad and start a completely different
38:42
job, But it seems more extreme back in the nineteen eighties because you'd have
38:45
to get calling cards, you'd have to use payphones, less people spoke English,
38:52
you didn't have translation apps, you didn't have the internet, you didn't.
38:55
You couldn't call on your smartphone. These weren't options, and there was
39:00
no cell phones back then. There was no computers or there was no internet.
39:04
There was computers, but you just didn't have that option. So to
39:07
make this decision, especially when you already have a boyfriend, you have to
39:12
ask the question is what are the reasons that she's running away? Is she
39:15
running away because she isn't happy, is she trying to leave her problems,
39:19
or is there a specific incident that she's trying to flee from. Well,
39:22
that's the thing is that she apparently said that her gig in Japan was only
39:25
going to be about three months, so it would just be a temporary thing.
39:30
It wouldn't like pause her to uproot her life or anything. But it
39:34
is kind of frustrating that we have no more details about the Japan gig,
39:37
about who got it for Crystal and who she hooked up with, because if
39:42
it was something to do with Horace McKenna, then you can kind of see
39:45
that maybe there are aulterior motives here that if McKenna is connected to Japanese organized
39:51
crime, maybe he's sending her over there to entertain friends of his. But
39:54
we just don't know anyway. By the time Anton publicly expressed his suspicions about
40:00
McKenna, he had already become the victim of his own murder. On March
40:04
ninth, nineteen eighty nine, ten months after Crystal's death, a government fired
40:08
twenty rounds into McKenna while his limousine was parked outside his match in Brea,
40:13
California. The prime occurred only hours after court records were unsealed, which revealed
40:17
that a Los Angeles district attorney was investigating McKenna and his business partner, Michael
40:23
Woods for tax fraud. Anton would eventually learn that the FBI had been keeping
40:28
a file on Crystal, and although they turned it over to him, twenty
40:31
one pages of documents from the file were withheld. This made Anton suspect that
40:37
Crystal was working as an informant for the FBI as part of their investigation into
40:42
McKenna, which may have put her life in danger. Well. Even though
40:45
mckennon's murder was still unsolved at the time Anton pointed the finger at him,
40:50
there would finally be a resolution in two thousand. It turned out that mckennon's
40:54
death was a contract killing orchestrated by his partner Michael Woods and another business associate,
41:00
David Amos, who paid a gunman named John Patrick Sheridan twenty five thousand
41:05
dollars to shoot ni Kenna so that they could take control of his businesses.
41:09
In exchange for their testimony, Amos and Sheridan each received twenty year sentences from
41:14
manslaughter, while Woods was convicted at his trial and received a sentence of twenty
41:19
five years to life for hers degree murder. Throughout all this, no evidence
41:23
was ever found to connect Horas McKenna to Crystal Spencer or implicate him in her
41:28
debt. The investigation into Crystal's death was never reopened, so the actual circumstances
41:34
of how she died continued to remain unknown. So I guess you could say
41:38
the path went Chile. Okay, let's rewind to where Anton eventually learned that
41:44
the FBI was keeping a file on Crystal and they turn it over to him.
41:50
There's twenty one pages withheld. That's a big document that the FBI has
41:54
on her for what? Question mark for what? Because something bigger's going on
42:01
than her just being a topless dancer who might struggle with alcohol. Something bigger's
42:07
happening, So, yes, you withheld this information. Is it that she
42:12
was an informant? It doesn't have to be mckinna, but it could be
42:15
someone who finds out she's telling about the Topless Bar. A lot of human
42:21
trafficking and sex abuse goes on in these bars, a lot of undercover prostitution
42:27
happens, All kinds of things occur in these places, drug deals. So
42:30
if she was being in an informant, whether it's related to McKenna or not,
42:35
that is a high risk position to have her in as well. And
42:39
what in the world was the file started for in the first place. Yeah,
42:45
that is the most frustrating element of this case that we've never found out
42:47
what was in that file or what Crystal would have been doing for the FBI,
42:52
which just seems crazy that this topless dancer who wants to become a Hollywood
42:57
actress would become involved in something like this. Part of me is wondered if
43:00
maybe it has something to do with her so called Japan trip, like maybe
43:04
it was some sort of undercover assignment where she was going to be sent over
43:07
there to help the FBI with an investigation. But that's all just speculation.
43:13
We still don't know. And even though, like McKenna, was already dead
43:17
by the time Anton tried to inquire about this file, they still would not
43:21
give him this information about why exactly they were keeping her on the payroll.
43:27
See. To me, that's a major red flag and problem. I don't
43:30
think the FBI has a file on me, unless it's because of my Internet
43:34
searches. But the fact that there was even a file on her says that
43:38
there was something bigger going on in Crystal's life that clearly none of us are
43:43
aware of. So I think this would be a good time to bring an
43:45
end too Part one, but join us next week as we present part two
43:49
of our series about the unexplained death of Crystal Spencer.