S2E3: Speculation
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Crystal had told her landlord that she was ready to report and expose some people for sexually assaulting her at a party just prior to when she disappeared.

One of the theories is that to keep her quiet from that reporting might be one of the reasons that she was killed. On the first day, I pulled out a manila folder and I wrote, Missing Mystic was going to be the title of my folder. And by the time I went to Creststone and came back, I crossed it out and put Murdered Mystic. She didn't just walk away and she's not just missing. ♪

From Tenderfoot TV in Atlanta, this is Up and Vanished. I'm your host, Payne Lindsey. There was only one thing that everyone in town kept saying that matched up, that was kind of the common tone, and it was these guys that she was hanging out with. Everyone said they were bad news. Eli, the father of Akasha, heard a similar story.

So did Crystal's family, Amy and her husband Alex. I think we need cooperation with the people who she specifically made contact with claiming that she had been sexually assaulted.

It's going to be hard to get the date at this point from those people. What was that before or after the drug circle? I think it was after. Actually, no, I think that the accusation was before. But the exact date of the incident was still in question. After she moved to Crestone, there became some rumors that some seedy, rough characters were around her apartment and that she'd gotten back into the drug scene. I think she was in with a bad crowd. And I think she knew it.

And I don't know whether she tried to get out or figure out a way to be safe and it came to an end or whether or not she didn't realize it in time. I think the people that were in Crystal's life at the very end were dangerous, are dangerous, because they're still out there. It's not a past tense. I don't think poking around, they care. They don't think anybody's going to out them. I put a camera in accused murderers' faces.

They all react a little differently. It's always a good show. They might be more willing to talk to somebody asking questions, trying to find out where she's at than they would go talk to the deputies. Mary, a longtime Crestonian, shared her perspective with me. In promoting tourism to Crestone, we would say we've got plenty of nothing.

And that was true because no noise, no traffic. We have lots of nothing. So when you come up the road here, don't expect to be entertained. You got to create that for yourself.

I've been here for 34 years. Back in the mining days, there was two newspapers in Crestone. One was called the Crestone Miner and one was called the Crestone Eagle. They both lasted for about four or five years in the boom days. So when I started the paper up, I named the paper the Crestone Eagle, 29 years ago. And it's just grown along with the community. People come here to get away from it all.

People wanting to live closer to the environment. Plus, it's an incredibly beautiful place at the end of the road up against the mountains. People live here who want to have a quiet lifestyle. We're one of two counties in Colorado that does not have the uniform building code.

It's still a mystery in our community. The Sheriff's Department will put an update out saying that they're still looking into this disappearance. From what we've heard from the Sheriff's Department and the deputies, they don't have enough solid evidence to actually arrest anyone. I don't think it's really gone away from people's minds. People who knew Crystal, I think they're hoping that somebody who knows something will finally speak up.

There's been times where the rumor mill has really gotten going. You know, with rumors, there's always some amount of truth and a lot of wild speculation. There's probably some truth, but then I think there's just, you know, everybody's watched a lot of murder mystery television and they make things up.

You get that sort of grapevine stuff that one person says something and somebody else hears it and then they add to it and it goes on down the line and it bears no resemblance to the truth. This community has a sense of people they might suspect. You know, whether that's true or not, we don't really know. You live in a small town, you always have people you might not like or might have a bad reputation. That doesn't mean that they're guilty. That just means people wonder if they're the ones responsible.

But without the sheriff actually making an arrest, it's all speculation. So we just don't know. She walk out the door and disappear off the earth, what? I think people want to see resolution. People cared about her. They want to know what happened to put her to rest. And then I think also to see justice done. Kind of creepy to live in a community and not know if that perpetrator is one of your neighbors or somebody that's still here.

I was back in Denver after getting an initial feel for Crestone. I wanted to dig deeper into Crystal's life before she went there. Who were her friends? Where'd she hang out at? It was time to explore Crystal's past life more in depth. We spoke to a friend of Crystal's, a roommate who knew her before she moved to South Colorado. So my name is Danielle. I'm originally from Grand Junction, Colorado.

I've been here my whole life, so I guess maybe sometimes I take it for granted because I wake up to the mountains every day. But yeah, it's beautiful here. There's a lot of Native American history. And so I think that's like the spirit of Colorado. That's what draws people here. And I think that's why Crystal had such a connection to this place, you know?

Crystal...

Even with everything that she had been through in her life, she was still a happy, bubbly person. This is Angela. She's the mother of Crystal's closest college friend, Mikey, and very much a mother figure in Crystal's life. Her laugh, you could hear her from like a mile away, literally. I was like, oh, there's Crystal. She had her demons. But once she had that baby, she stopped all that. And we would talk about that.

She said, "Now that I have Akasha, I will never go back to that." She was a wonderful mother. She was so bubbly and happy. And Crystal would always call and check in with Akasha. She's got Crystal's eyes, which is amazing. And then she's got the best hair. Like, so jealous of this child's hair. She has Crystal's personality and Eli's looks. You're like, "Darn it, you're so cute."

If she didn't have an option, we absolutely would have adopted her 100%. Like if she didn't have Lala or Eli, 100% we would take her. I still wish I could. Kasha's had support from day one between our family, Eli's family, all these different support systems. So it's like Kasha is getting the chance that Crystal never had. In her soul is to look out for other people and to make people feel good and to make people feel like somebody. And that's what Crystal did.

Kasia is such a mini crystal, but she was brought to us before we lost Crystal. And she makes up her own songs and she sings. The one that I love is just a short clip, but she has the best taste in music. This is stuff she makes up. Kasia was...

between two and three. So, you know, she has memories, but the things she comes up with now, even though Crystal's been gone for two years, the gestures, the attitude. She says eerie things that, like, like she said to her grandma Sylvia, her grandma Lala. She was, like, hugging her on the bed, and Kasia said, my mom says thank you for loving me.

And, you know, kids do say the darndest things, but the things she says are very articulate, insightful, and just too much of a spiritual mother-daughter connection. Every time I see Kasia and she says, mommy, you know, mommy told me or something like that, I'm going, man, she is, she's talking to her and she's trying to tell us something.

Did you guys go up by the drum circle? Well, we stopped a little bit up there along a river. Kasha just stopped and she goes, "Mommy's here. She wants us to come get her." I've lost it. You know, a little kid doesn't come up with, "Mommy's cold in a cave. We need to go find Mommy." Three-year-olds don't come up with that stuff. If she's not a conduit for Crystal on the other side, I don't know what is. We developed kind of like a mother-daughter relationship.

Crystal always tried to see the best in people, and that was her downfall. She didn't see the bad people. She had a hard life. She always gave everybody the benefit of the doubt. If I would have known that she was raped, I would have been up there. I would have had Peter take me, and I would have been up there in a heartbeat. She was a beautiful person. She was one of those bright lights that you don't find often. So it's just hard.

I want resolution for Akasha. I want her to know I want the remains so that we can put Crystal to rest. And I want closure for Akasha so that she knows, you know, and justice, justice for Crystal. She didn't deserve that. She was a good person. If she had her last dollar and you needed it, she would give it to you.

Mikey was there from college and all that stuff, and he was her best friend, so he knows all about her. So he'd be a good character witness. We met at a house party. I was 18, she was 18. And in the party, she's like, you have an eyebrow ring, I have an eyebrow ring. That is neat. We're going to be friends. And then after that, we just became best friends.

We had a safe ride bus, I remember, and it would take you home after you would go to parties. It's a college town. And there was no room to sit on the bus. And so she's like, sit on my lap. And I was drunk and I was like, nobody ever holds me anymore. And then she was hugging me and she wouldn't let go. And then she walked me into my dorm and I was stumbling and she put me in a bed and I told her to wrap me like a burrito. I remember that was our first night. And then after that, we just became best friends forever.

We started a little red book, it's called My 10%. Basically, I have everybody write one quote they live their life by, but a lot of Crystal's literature is in it. She was a huge inspiration in my life when I was young because I was dealing with family issues, coming out of the closet. But yeah, she was, me and her were like this. I mean, she was spiritual, I'm spiritual as well, pretty empathic. She loved rock and roll, she loved to sing, she had tattoos all over her.

She was always the center of the room. I'm sure people told you, like, you could hear her laughing, like, blocks away. She's been a huge influence on my life and my family's life, and I'm her best friend. Mikey, Angela's son and Crystal's best friend, has been trying to find Crystal since she disappeared. The week that I found out that she was missing, I went crazy. I didn't really know the type of people that she was hanging out with. I was going through Facebook, mutual friends.

About a year ago, I got a friend request from her on Facebook.

And I got on there. I was like, hey, where have you been? Everybody's been looking for you. I just freaked out. Like, oh my God, I miss you. I love you. And then I was going through her Facebook and I noticed that she was still missing. And I was like, what the hell is up with this? She was always my friend on Facebook. So for me to get a friend request from her, she would have had to have not been my friend and then sent me another friend request. I don't know how...

I accepted the friend request and then I messaged her immediately like, "Where have you been?" And I posted on Facebook, "This is my friend. I just got a friend request from her. She's been missing. Like, I don't know if this is a sick joke that somebody's playing." If this person is doing that, then they have to know her immediate friends because why is this happening to her immediate friends? I'm like, you know, is she out there lost? She's trying to get a hold of somebody. She can't talk. It's just so bizarre.

I asked Mikey to show me what he and Crystal like to do together in Denver. I wanted to go somewhere Crystal had gone before. Somewhere esoteric and strange, like the way Danielle described Crystal. Where did Crystal hang out at in Denver? Me and her, every Sunday, we used to drive all the way from Gunnison to Denver to go to the church nightclub.

on Sundays. It's an alternative night. It's like a goth night. Crystal has never really goth or anything like that, but me and her like to see. I run one of my events as Denver's largest alternative goth night. I call it the safe zone for all expressionists. Goths, gays, fetish, burner, who cares? Transgender, nobody cares. Um,

Just very nice people. You would think that goth people are angrier and stuff, but they're actually just these people. They're all artists and pretty spiritual, cool people. We just loved the music, you know? She loved rock and roll. She loved to sing. She had tattoos all over her. Yes, I dressed in black, but it doesn't mean I'm goth. I'm Rufio. I one day dress with color and some days I don't. But yeah, Goth Night is a lot of fun. The Church Night Club is where we used to go out all the time when we were kids. ♪

I could take you guys tonight. Mikey offered to take me to Crystal's old stomping grounds, a club in Denver called Church. The crowd itself, no matter how busy, how slow, never causes a problem. It's the people who come in and want to screw with people. It's a very good crowd.

These are some very good people here. I came out of the closet here. Doesn't matter what you dress like, what music you want to listen to, any sort of sexual preference, this crowd doesn't care. If you just want to come in and have a good time, that's what everybody's here for. Nobody wants to fucking give anybody grief for anything. And as long as they just are here to have a good time, there's never problems.

It's when you get that one or two people who think that they have the right to judge other people that the problems rise. We try and protect our ground. It was dark and loud, but it wasn't off-putting. All walks of life just dancing in their own space, in a place that wouldn't judge them. Everybody seemed happy. If anyone seemed strange, it was me, wearing a backpack and holding a microphone, trying to imagine Crystal's life in Denver before she went to Crestone.

Mikey pulled out a little red book that he shared with Crystal. He wanted to share a passage Crystal had written, so he walked outside on the patio away from the music.

One day I know I'll say many things, but for now I'd like to tell you. You're an angel, lighthearted, stepping gently around the cracks in the ground, looking away from the sun, eyes burning, wings steady on your back. How beautiful to be this way. Michael, wonderful, lovely, misunderstood boy. You are my light. You are my joy. There is so much learning to do.

And we can close our eyes, we run together, we will see so much clearer. In the end, so this is for my amazing and wonderful super best friend, Chaos. If there was a buyer in my house, it's the first thing that I would go grab. When she first went missing, we were on the phone 24-7 with everybody and anybody who talked to us. And they were talking back then.

A year of writing emails to all these news stations trying to get her story out there. And finally, Chris Halsney calls me. Thank God for Chris Halsney because he was instrumental in getting that story out there. Swatch County has six officers to police what is essentially the size of Rhode Island. It's kind of a scary situation, you know? I would think that that would make it harder to investigate.

If there's any ounce of remorse or if you have any ounce of goodness in your heart, you'll come forward and turn yourself in. But I don't think you will because I think you're an evil person and what you did is a very evil thing. And you took away a mother from a baby. Now that little child has to live knowing that she'll never see her mother again. And that's what makes you the most evil person.

The problem that I see with this is no one's going to talk unless they move out of Postone because they go disappear too. Finding out exactly everyone that's in that group is going to be important. There's a drug culture that's hidden in Crestone.

Some of it is because Colorado, they legalize marijuana and everybody can go out there and they feel that that can be part of this experience that they're looking for. That has drawn in some harder drugs to the area. The Sewatch County Sheriff's Office has sometimes four deputies to cover a thousand square miles. You know, unless something really awful happens, they have very few resources to tackle any kind of drug distribution network out there.

And a cold case like this is so full of rumors and innuendo that you need to cut through it to try to come up with an idea of what's most viable. Because it's our job to filter all that stuff. How do you cut through it? I cut through it simply with multiple sources. Being as honest with my viewers and readers as I can be. If something is a rumor, I say, this is a rumor.

We heard it from two or three or four people. Just a rumor. I'm not telling them that's a fact. I'm not telling them that's something I found. I found a whole bunch of people who told me the same rumor, one that we couldn't confirm. And most of the time, we wouldn't even put a rumor in an investigative story. But in this case, almost everything's rumor. And I think as long as you tell people who are listening what people mostly believe and leave it in that realm, I think it's fair to report.

And I let people then understand that that's our flaw. Almost a year later, there was a party in Denver and a friend of Crystal's was at that party and she was having a conversation with a girl. It was a late night party in Denver. I was coming towards the end of it. People were kind of winding down, I guess. And I was on the back porch smoking a cigarette.

You know, throughout the time that I had heard that Crystal was missing, whenever anybody mentions Crestone, I just always was like, oh, Crestone, do you know Crystal? This girl there was talking to a different couple of people on the porch, and I overheard her say, I'm from Crestone, I live in Crestone.

So I immediately, without really expecting any kind of a response, was just like, "Oh, you're from Crestone. Do you know Crystal?" She turned to me and gave me this crazy look. I knew that she knew something.

I see it so clearly in my head, I don't really know how to explain it. She's not guilty in the least. I don't believe this girl has anything to do with this and it took a lot of guts for me to come forward with this information because I didn't want to get this girl in trouble because she just started pouring out whatever she could tell me about it, understanding that Crystal was my sister's

Crystal's friend was certain this girl was telling the truth, and that she had intimate knowledge about Crystal's disappearance.

She only knew her by her nickname, but was uncomfortable sharing that information with me. I eventually found her on Facebook and asked if I could talk to her about Crystal. She responded saying, "As far as I'm concerned, when she went missing I was not around the area for a couple years. Her and I never lived in Crestone at the same time. I wish I could help more. I hope her and her family find peace. I looked for an ex-husband, or an ex-boyfriend, but I didn't find much. Crystal's friend believed there was a real connection here, but at this point it was only rumor."

This is the thing that really bothers me is the thought of her going over into hard drugs and being totally irresponsible. And I just didn't see it. It all goes back to that apartment. It irritates the shit out of me when people say that, maybe because I don't want to believe it. I'm sure that's it. To me, it's kind of like a smear campaign after somebody's gone.

Rodney's been frustrated with the way some people have portrayed Crystal. The idea that she was on drugs and abandoned her daughter and family. Rodney's right. Crystal didn't abandon Akasha. In fact, Akasha was back and forth between Denver and Crestone the entire time she lived there. For whatever reason, Crystal wasn't happy in her relationship. She wanted a fresh start. During her time in Crestone, she traveled back and forth to Denver with Akasha. When she wasn't with her in person, she'd call her every single day.

In reference to the rumor Crystal was using drugs, Rodney kept going back to the apartment. For her, the place was really clean. Unless somebody staged it. Well, I don't believe that for a second. Yeah, her clothes were scattered out in front of the bathroom where she hangs them, but that was her usual stuff.

There wasn't one beer can, one beer bottle. There was no alcohol bottles. Invariably, when people have a big party or they're doing a lot of parties, there's going to be some evidence somewhere. You know, unless somebody came in and cleaned the place, not a chance. At this point, one thing seemed very clear. Crystal was in with the wrong crowd, a bad crowd. And she claimed to those close to her, just a few weeks before she went missing, that she was raped. I knew there was obviously more to the story, and it wasn't in Denver.

I really hope I have service. Because that would not be fun. Back in Crestone, I had rented a house out in the Baca. The cell service in my GPS was pretty spotty. So David, one of the locals, offered to let me follow him to the address. Is it? Are you like flashing your lights and shit? No.

When I got to the house, I dropped my bags down and went outside for a few minutes. I was amazed by the absolute silence. It felt like a vacuum.

The next day, David offered to take me up to the side of the drum circle. These are all junipers. Normally it's pinions. This happens to be a juniper forest. It's always great on the full moon, so we got a big moon. You can see everything. You see people's faces. You can see everybody. But this is this dark place with no lights. That's just a vast tract of wilderness that's just held and protected. What was the vibe like that night?

It wasn't clear. It was a little awkward for me. I remember leaving early that night. It wasn't as comfortable as usual. It wasn't quite as much fun as usual. You know, there was a different element of people there too. There was a different element of people. Some of these druggies, yeah, it was very noticeable. Disappointing when that happens.

There's a pretty solid row of people about this far away from the fire, right? Solid row of people, especially the people that have instruments and stuff. The last time I saw her, she was standing right there. She was standing right there. Later that week, David invited me to the drum circle ceremony on the night of a full moon. I met up with him in town, and he offered to ride with me. I was anxious to see what this thing was all about. If it's not cloudy, there's so many stars that you can actually see by starlight.

but cloudy like this it's definitely gets pitch black it'll be dark it'll be almost hard to get around you know turn right and this goes all the way to the drum circle lovely turn left right there welcome to north crestone drum circle

Up and Vanished is an investigative podcast told weekly, produced for Tenderfoot TV by Payne Lindsay, Mike Rooney, and me, Meredith Steadman, with new episodes every Monday. Executive Producers Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright.

Additional production by Resonate Recordings, as well as Mason Lindsay, Rob Ricotta, and Christina Dana. Our intern is Hallie Bidal. Original score by Makeup and Vanity Set. Our theme song is Ophelia, performed by Ezra Rose. Our cover art is by Trevor Eiler. Special thanks to the team at Cadence 13. Visit us on social media via at Up and Vanished, or you can visit our website, upandvanished.com, where you can join in on our discussion board.

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