Insight: Kristal
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Get your quote today at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. I thought a lot of things, but what you just said, for me, you hit it. Making people fall in love with Crystal once they learn her story. Just looking at the pictures of Tara Grinstead, you know, looking at her, it's like, wow.

What a beautiful person. And then you read her bio and, you know, to read the stuff about her. And I didn't think of it this way, which really excites me in a sense, because Crystal was just a dynamic person. Yes, she had problems and this and that and the other, but she was a beautiful, loving, you're obviously aware of, with a beautiful daughter. You know, I mean, oh, wow.

Up and Vanish presents a bonus episode series. This is Insight. ♪

This is Amy, Rodney's daughter, and essentially Crystal's sister. Crystal, over a decade ago, dated my brother at the time, and they had a fairly long relationship, I mean a couple years I think, and then they broke it off, but my parents sort of took her in as another child, basically. She was just in our life ever since.

Here's Mikey, Crystal's best friend from college back in Gunnison. She got A's in college, always A's, and she partied. Me, I would take notes, sit in our dorm for hours, take it like just studying and studying, studying. I'd get B's, you know.

If you're hearing some jingling noises, that's just Mikey playing with his keys.

After she had her baby, it was like pulling teeth to get her to go out, which I totally understand because the crystal that evolved after she had her kid, she blossomed into a very, like, didn't really drink. She wasn't, she was vegan, vegetarian, all this other stuff. And then she was getting so into it that she would give me a guilt trip for drinking and not eating meat, okay? I'm like, girl...

When I first met her, she had no piercings, blonde hair and flowers in her hair. And then it evolved to all these tattoos and like colored hair. And then it transitioned to this hippie style of her. She'd wear just like fabrics and like cloaks over her hair, just very like mountain town hippie girl. The last time I talked to her, I was working on one of my deco stuff at the club and she called me and sounded different on the phone. She sounded really happy.

It was kind of like a good, not like a good vibe, but just say I love you. Hi Mikey, how are you? I'm like good, I'm making an alien spacecraft. Elvis is gonna come out of it on stage. She's like you would. And she just says, you know, wanted to see how it's doing. She's like I know I haven't talked to you for a little while, because it was like a couple months.

And she just was saying, I love you. And I'm like, I love you too. And I was like, I'm going to call you right back. I was like, I'll call you right back after I'm done with this project. I was scraping it all over my hands. But yeah, that was the last time I talked to her. She's the kind of person that would be misunderstood. To get a mental image of her, you can imagine a tattooed

Blonde girl, blonde, long dreadlocks, tattooed, lots of piercings, gauged out ears, very outgoing personality, very sweet girl. But just on her looks alone, I think, you know, she had a hard time finding a job, of course, having a hard time fitting in.

people taking her seriously, and I think she really wanted that. But if you got to know her, she was incredibly intelligent, really smart, super deep, really sensitive, very high morals, very high morals. Even though she liked to party when I met her, she was in no way a troublemaker. She was just loved to laugh, have a good time, and she did that a lot.

We had been together for a couple of years and we were at a pawn shop and she just picked up a guitar and started playing Stevie Nicks. Blew me away. I had no idea she could even play a guitar. She never played during our first two years together and all of a sudden she just picks up a guitar and starts playing some Stevie Nicks. And I was like, man, he played guitar? I was like, where? I know. She was always blowing me away like that. She had like so many talents, so many more talents I'm sure I didn't even get to see yet.

Yes, that is Kasha singing in the background. This is Jenny. You may remember her from a previous episode.

We headed off, her, Mikey and I, and Lucas and Sunny and Derek. Hesstone, you know, small mountain town, time stops. And it was kind of similar in Gunnison, very middle of nowhere town. It was a college town. She left to move to Denver. Mikey did the same.

I couldn't wait to meet Akasha.

She was sober. She looked so good. You could just tell, like, she was on the right path. But it was kind of worrisome for me to hear how much she was detaching. She never really explained where her demons came from. I don't think she wanted to come off as weak. But we knew, you know, we knew. You know, we all knew each other's kinds of stories, and we didn't judge each other's

We had very similar lives in the sense that her mom was schizophrenic. My mom was schizophrenic. My parents were very well off. My dad built his own business. It became very successful. I was fortunate enough that my mom was able to get on some very good meds. She stabilized. Crystal was not lucky. Her mom was institutionalized. Crystal was pretty much on her own for a long time. So...

She and I connected in that way, and we talked about that a lot. And, you know, that's how we formed our relationship. It was really hard for a kid to see their mom like that, you know, but she wasn't around it like I was around it because her mom was institutionalized from it, and her mom was mean. Some people, it makes them mean. Other people, like my mom, her visions were of God, and, you know, she would speak to God and that kind of thing.

We connected that way and we developed kind of like a mother-daughter relationship. Save on Cox Internet when you add Cox Mobile and get fiber-powered internet at home and unbeatable 5G reliability on the go. So whether you're playing a game at home or attending one live,

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You may remember Danielle from episode three. She was a roommate of Crystal's in Denver when they were in their young 20s. Here she remembers some of the things Crystal told her about her early life.

She told me she was also a ward of the state. And it was funny because we would literally be laughing about, like, her experience, like she said, about having her birthday party in jail. Like, she truly felt, she said in the most oddest situation of being in jail, she felt connected with and truly felt loved when they gave her a birthday party because I think from growing up it was a little bit, maybe a little bit more rough.

The first thing that got me about Crystal was her laugh. She did have that laughter, that very positive Buddha laughter. I'm telling you that Buddha laughter, seriously, that's what it is. Giant belly laughter. I'm laughing because I can hear it in my damn head. It goes through me. I needed a roommate situation, and so I moved to downtown Denver.

And I met her coincidentally, her and her boyfriend. They just bought apartments off of Colfax and Lafayette. It was like this old Victorian apartment. We were paying like 800 bucks. It had like five bedrooms in it. And it was like Gothic style. It was pretty cool. It was huge. It was massive. It had wood floors. They creaked. They were old. We believed it was haunted. We did have some interesting experiences there.

I think she was very rebellious. She was a rebellious teenager, which we, that's what I think we all had in common. We had that rebellion in common. Crystal was all about the free lifestyle, like never could stay in a place at one time. I don't think we ended up in that apartment too long. I even lived in that apartment. She was still trying to find a place to live. We would be at a place and she's still looking for a place. Gypsy soul for sure.

Crystal was working at the Hard Rock Cafe on the 16th Street Mall. We liked to observe it. We loved people watching, that's what it was. She's a Scorpio, and Scorpios are incredibly intuitive. We'd walk down the streets, that's kind of like a game we would play, we'd walk down the streets and she would just stop somebody and she would just like, she would just read it and just be like, this is what I feel about you. And their reaction would be like, that's kind of spot on, so...

Yeah, she definitely opened up my world to that as well. But we were always into that. We were always into going into that little world. And I know during that time it was impactful. She did it with me. She did it with me. I'm trying to think of something in particular she said. The things that she said I couldn't interpret at my age, but now I fully understand now. And...

Yeah, it was pretty spot on. I always resonated with anything that Crystal said. I really did think she was very intuitive, very intuitive. One thing she said was I wasn't awake. I didn't know what she meant by that and she was right. Because I wasn't awake during that time. I think she always knew what was going on in my head. Scorpios always go through births and transformations and they go through like hardcore rebirths and transformations.

There is a beautiful darkness about a Scorpio too. I think she was a little tapped into some of that darkness a little bit, as well as some of that light. The last time I spoke to her, she said that she was trying to get in alignment. So she must have entered a period of darkness, which can happen sometimes when you're so tapped into those realms. And I think she was.

We met up for lunch. That's probably the best I've ever seen her because she was ready to be a mother and she wanted to be a mother and she was dedicated to being a mom. It changed her life like Olivia changed mine. I know that.

She seemed like a very happy pregnant woman. We were eating Thai food. We went out for Thai. I'm trying to describe her presence when she's happy. And like you, I mean, it will make you instantly smile. It's just very joyous. When we would reconnect, we would always go back to what's it like being a mom? She was so ready and wanted to be a mom. I mean, when she had her daughter and she's pregnant, I think that's the most happiest I ever saw her.

Yeah, she was hitting me up all the time, yeah. More so Facebook because her number changed like constantly. I have like seven different Crystal numbers. We've heard that. Yeah. And she didn't have the best one for cell phones. No, no, no, she didn't. So we had lunch and then she like resurfaced again, but that's when she, it was in those messages, she said she wasn't feeling in alignment. And then I think a couple months later, Crystal disappeared.

I don't remember who posted it, but I saw her picture and I was like, what? And I called the police to ask what information they had. And he was like, when you knew Crystal, was she using drugs? When we had lunch, she was glowing. She seemed like she had a direction. And then when I talked to the cops, they made it sound like she's just like this drug-addicted woman now that just took off. They said she...

um had an apartment and they investigated the apartment and it didn't look like it wasn't ransacked but that cops told me they basically just made it sound like she left her daughter and took off and it was so didn't sound right to me it sounded a bit off they treated her like she was a bum my gut told me that's exactly gut reaction yeah she's just partier and just

left her kid and yeah, they pretty, and that is the typical, that's Colorado. It's more, it's a little cowboy attitude out here. So it's a little judgmental. I feel like she's brought you guys here. I really do. She's not having any answers. Like what you're doing is you're providing a lot of healing yourself.

Crystal, she called me Adge or AJ, but she'd call me Adge all the time. AJ ran together. I also spoke to Danielle and Crystal's friend, AJ. They were all on the same crew of friends in Denver. AJ is the one who got that strange friend request from Crystal after Crystal had already gone missing. When I met her, I was probably about 23, 24. We were all in our early 20s.

We all, you know, peers, tattooed, kind of alternative. And I think that's just what really drew us all together. How would you describe Crystal? Free spirit. She was just always into spirituality and into healing people and into positive energy and positive things. Light, she'd always talk about the light. And she was always just right there. Yeah, we all, we all...

We're there for each other. We're each other's backbone and each other's strength. There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about her.

Her smile, her laugh, her voice. You could seriously hear her laugh a mile away and exactly know who it was. It was contagious, absolutely contagious. She was friends with everybody. She loved everybody. Even strangers, she was friends with everybody. There wasn't anyone that she wouldn't give the shirt off her back to. Super enlightening all the time.

I always call her Crystal Clear. That was my thing. I'm calling her because every time she talked, everything was as clear as crystal. You could see through anything. Like, she made so much sense about everything. Go talk to Crystal Clear. She'll help you. Yeah, she's very smart. And yeah, she's great. Five and a half, six years ago, that was probably the last time I saw her. I actually got to hang out with her in the same room.

Just happy like she always was. She was super happy. I just knew that if she's missing, something bad happened because she's too strong of a person to run from anything. You know, she's not just going to go up and disappear unless like there was something that was really bothering her and she wanted to go for a weekend. Disappeared that long, especially without talking to someone even a week or a month. That's unlike her.

I sat down with the Irvins, Rodney, Debbie, and their daughter Amy. I wanted to hear a little bit more about Kasha and Crystal's relationship. If Crystal had still been around, I could see Kasha would have been one of those given a lot of freedom and room to roam. But you know, she was well loved and Kasha knew. You can tell when somebody knows they're loved.

You know, it's hard not to give your kids, as they're getting old enough to eat, little treats and, "Oh, have some M&Ms," and, you know, want to give them those sugary things. Crystal was very adamant. Yeah, she was. She did not eat meat. Kasha wasn't allowed to have meat. To this day, well, she's a little bit spoiled now, but it was fruits and vegetables.

And a lot of noodles. She'll take a bowl of blueberries over a lollipop any day. Any day. She just won't even eat it. It's like not of interest to her. She eats so healthy and doesn't think anything of it. The first Easter when she wasn't an infant, so maybe a year and a half, I wanted to give her an Easter basket. They were staying with us at that time. I said, is it okay if I put something in there? She can have a few M&Ms and that's it.

You know, I could not load it up with chocolate bunnies and all the little junk that you always load kids up with on Easter. She got to have a few, and that was it. So she was very health conscious when it came to her. Very. The quality of what Kasha ate, and it wasn't just any fruits and vegetables, it was organic fruits and vegetables, and only certain juices and stuff like that.

Kasha never refused. Like, you know, with some of our nieces and nephews, it's like, meh.

I mean, from the very beginning,

Her family just wants to find her. They suspect she's dead. If she was alive, there'd be a lot of questions, but they'd be overjoyed. We didn't try to solve this case. We tried to introduce our viewers, people in Colorado, to who Crystal was. She's this person with a daughter and people who love her. Just because she lives out in the middle of nowhere doesn't mean finding her isn't important.

We just wanted people to care about her enough to care about finding her. People on social media are kind. They sit behind their keyboard and they can type up nasty, mean things that they would never say to someone's face. They're just trolls. Us in the media, we see it all the time. It doesn't matter what you do, there are trolls out there trying to disparage some of the greatest people. It's just part of the new anonymous game of social media.

But I don't know whether they're real. Are they being serious or are they just haters? Crystal may not have made all the best choices in life, but I challenge anybody to say that they've made all the best choices in life. That doesn't mean that she didn't love her daughter. That doesn't mean that she didn't want to improve her life. It's really unfair to disparage somebody who is very likely the victim of a homicide. Every day, we rise.

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