Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
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Since the beginning, almost every story and theory led me right back there. So I looked up the lunar calendar and planned a trip to Crestone. Good evening. Michael, is that you? Hey!
Thanks to my brother Mason, he didn't really make a covert appearance. Roy, you look familiar. Do I? You been here before? I have. Okay, I've been here a long time. Okay, good. Welcome.
Who are you filming? Atlanta. Oh. George came out just for this stream, sir. Ah, yeah, pretty much. The atmosphere was pretty relaxed. And to be honest, it was kind of underwhelming. I was going to see if she wanted the chicken steak. Sure. As I walked around the area, I met a man named Roy.
He's a long-time Christonian and almost always attends the drum circles. What is that thing? It's called a tongue drum. Okay. It's a guy here makes it, uh, they're ends of propane tanks. He welds them together and there's little cut slits that do-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
It wasn't me, you know. And then he goes, here, take it home, play it. And I'm like, oh, you're going into me? You know, I'm literally crying. He's like, no, just take it home and play it. My other higher calling, I was changing tracks right away, is this Urbite girl.
It's not cannabis. It's called Spilantia. Spilantia. Spilantia. It comes from Peru. I collected the seeds over 30 years ago. It cures giardia, malaria, dysentery, candida, thunks on the toes, parasite in the belly, builds the immune system, instant painkillers, some other great work.
I cleaned it. Oh, but it hurts. I can't work on my chair. I got a t-shirt. Whoa. Toothache, gum disease, baby's teething. I've actually broken two teeth and I did it right away, six times a day. No abscess, no infection. Anyway, I got sidetracked. Yeah, that's one of my other high points. Because this is considered the new age capital of the world, this planet earth religious experiences for people out there, the drum circles were well attended and
They went all night, all walks of life. But it's dark. People are going off into the woods. They're coming and they're going. People aren't specifically paying attention. Crystal that night didn't make much of an impression on anybody specific there. But there are witnesses that definitely saw her there with some men that they didn't know. It was really hard for me to find anyone who actually interacted with Crystal there. When she came, when she left, who she was with, that was all still a mystery.
Hi, guys. This is Roy, just making contact. I'm home for the day, and I'll be staying with Dean tomorrow, and I hope you're enjoying it. I'll be seeing you at the cloud. Have a good night. She was there, happy and crystal the way she is, drumming and dancing like everybody else, and then the dark cloud came in. What do you mean? The drinkers are this other darker group. You know, they kind of put a lateral...
They were all high-end. I don't remember details or who, you know, but, you know, just people were hanging out and talking. It was probably one of those full nights, you know, at least 20 people in the circle or so. I didn't see, like, when she actually left, you know, but that's after they left or some of them left, that's when she wasn't there anymore. Did she leave with somebody, you think? That's what I suspect. I don't know. I didn't see it, so I can't say so.
There was somebody in town who was questioning, you know, how she could arrive with people at the drum circle and nobody associate that other person with them and can't remember what they look like and when and where she left.
What do you feel now from us?
You're good folks. You're just traveling through. There's a lot of hidden stuff in there, you know?
the fact that you're asking questions about this, I wouldn't be surprised if you're doing some detective work for this thing because it's a crucial thing. I'm so protective of the women in this community. And now, whenever I see someone new in the circle, and once the darks come in, the darks, don't be pulled out, wander off with these guys. They just want to go get drunk and take drugs and have sex and sometimes it's harmless. But
I just don't like your energy. From Tenderfoot TV in Atlanta, this is Up and Vanished. I'm your host, Payne Lindsey. What if I was accused of murder? Let's say I'm innocent. I didn't do it. Would I hide myself away? Would I hide my face from everyone in town and be a recluse?
And I'm thinking about it, and I would be pretty upset about it, and I would want to clear my name. I would probably be a pretty loud, squeaky wheel in the town to vindicate myself, if anything. I don't think I'd be hiding. And so I'm thinking, why are these guys hiding? I would like to hear from these guys, man. If there's any way you can find them, get a hold of them, question them, ask them some questions. I'm sure they're going to deny whatever, but I'm really interested to hear their chain of events for that night.
It would appear that the people that may know something or are closer to that circle are more hesitant to talk. If you have a murderer on your hands and you have a murderer there, and this murderer is one of the individuals, there is going to be that reluctance to talk. As soon as I walked into her apartment, there was no friggin' way that she up and walked away.
One of the things we'd like to do is find out who the close people are and then bug the shit out of them. Not harass them. I want to get them behind bars so bad. Rodney had a plan for us. There was a flip phone in that box of stuff of crystals. There's one in there. It's not charged.
The phone Rodney gave me was an old flip phone. It wasn't the phone she was actively using when she disappeared, but the one right before that. When I got to my office, I found a charger and turned it on.
I started flipping through all the contacts. And one in particular caught my eye. One labeled "boyfriend." I checked your ex-boyfriend Eli's number. And this one was different. So I decided to call it. At the tone, please record your message. When you've finished recording, you may hang up or press 1 for more options.
After a few months of researching, I had finally got my hands on the police reports. And on the first page, I think I found the boyfriend. Here's what it says. On July 30th, 2016, at approximately 1.49 hours, I, Deputy Tyler Harford, was on duty in the county of Sewatch and state of Colorado when I was notified of a possible missing person in the Crestone, Colorado area.
I spoke with the reporting party, Ara McDonald. Ara stated a tenant by the name of Crystal Reisinger was living in an upstairs room and she hasn't been seen in at least two weeks. Ara stated Crystal's boyfriend had messaged her on Facebook also asking Ara if she had seen Crystal. Stated Crystal seemed manic and told him to leave her house, so he did.
Stated Crystal said she was going to walk to the mountains and die. Stated this was the last time he had seen her. The account that this boyfriend gave is the first of many similar accounts. Especially in the beginning, many people suggested Crystal walked away from her life, willingly, due to some overwhelming mental state. When I spoke to Sheriff Dan Warwick, he mentioned a group called the Rainbow Gathering. He never said the group was involved, but he did say you could never rule these things out.
In this area, cults and unregulated congregations like the Rainbow Gathering draw people in, especially those looking to disconnect from modern society. To give this theory due diligence, I spoke to someone familiar with the Rainbow Gathering. She and her roommate were associated with the group during their youth. My best friend was actually in a relationship with a rainbow kid, as they called themselves. We went to a party at like this super janky apartment in downtown, and we met five members of the rainbow family, which is what they called themselves.
We were kind of that hippie type too, so we just meshed with them really quickly. If I were to try and describe them, I would say they're all about trying to live at zero cost. They're really looking for a place to stay. They lived with us for over a year. It just kind of sucked because they were always there. There was always just tons of trash everywhere. Beer bottles, it was just a total disaster all the time.
The smell of these people would blow your mind. These are people that don't bathe and they refuse to bathe. There's definitely a lot of partying. It impacted my life heavily. I was in college, like I had classes at 8 a.m. but they would be up partying and being loud and like playing instruments and just being absolutely ridiculous until like four in the morning on a nightly basis. It's like not just like a weekend thing, like every night.
They consider themselves like a non-organization. There's no leader, really. There's no initiation. You don't have to do anything to become a rainbow kid. It's more of if you show up to a gathering one time, you're probably not rainbow. But if you go there every year, you're rainbow, if that makes sense. They're very anti-structure and anti-rules people.
Some of them are going to be people who like have like children and they've been in this rainbow family for, you know, 10, 15 years and they've decided to raise a family in it. Is that a good place for a child to grow up? No. They were pretty open with their drugs and alcohol. If they had it, they would give it. But I would just say that in general, they took more than they gave. They kind of have jobs too. You have a role, like whether it's kitchen, you're helping prepare food or security is one.
There's a lot of violence at the gatherings, a lot, to the degree that they do actually have security. One of the things that they do to basically get someone under control is if you display any type of violence or if you get kind of out of hand, like on drugs, like if you're tripping too hard or whatever, they'll actually tie you to a tree. They'll tie your hands behind you on a tree and they will leave you there so that you can't hurt yourself or anyone else. They become very primal.
And you couple that with drug use and a ton of alcohol. Basic needs like sexuality can become violent. A lot of male on female violence. I just always felt like something terrible was going to happen to her. I just think these people are bad news.
You're dealing with people who have rejected law and they've rejected structure and civilization. Ultimately, he ended up getting arrested for evidently growing psilocybin mushrooms in his apartment. When he got arrested, we were not talking. We had officially had a falling out. She chose to be with him and kind of live that rainbow lifestyle. And I was just, I couldn't do it.
They immediately assumed that I had something to do with it, that I told on him. At some point after I received the threats, I was driving down 421, headed to my class, and noticed that my gas gauge was just rapidly dropping. I only knew enough to just pull off the road and lift my hood up, and they had cut my fuel line. I don't think that they did that to scare me. I mean, if they did, then they didn't care if it scared me or killed me.
They are untraceable. They don't have addresses. They don't have phone numbers. These people can do whatever they want and never get caught because no one even knows they're alive. They travel everywhere. They can be in one state one day, and a week later, they're on the other side of the country. In the eyes of law enforcement, it seemed like drifters could not be ruled out in Crystal's case. And that would be bad, because this kind of drifter might be virtually untraceable. But drifters aren't the only hard-to-trace people in Southern Colorado.
Another thing unique to Cresto, people make up their own names here. And those are the names that they are known by. This is Jim McAlpin from the Cresto Museum. Nobody knows their real names. No one's ever seen a driver's license with their real name on it or a birth certificate with their real name on it. So there are people here, you have no idea who they really are. They'll give you a name. In a lot of cases, you know it's not their real name.
Okay, that makes it very difficult for the sheriff's department to track things down as to what happened. Because, well, yeah, what's his real name? There was a guy here for 30 years, at least, maybe 40 years, named Kailash. Kailash, it's a sacred mountain in India, in the Himalayas. Clearly, that's not the name on his birth certificate. But nobody knew his real name. When he died, his obituary had his real name in it. His name was Carl Hoffman.
Wow. I knew this guy for 30 years. I never knew his real name. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Whether you love true crime or comedy, celebrity interviews or news, you call the shots on what's in your podcast queue. And guess what? Now you can call them on your auto insurance too with the Name Your Price tool from Progressive. It works just the way it sounds. You tell Progressive how much you want to pay for car insurance and they'll show you coverage options that fit your budget.
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We came here to ask some questions about Crystal, too. Yeah, I know, and that's really important. I found a tarot card. They gave us a box of her pictures, and this was in it. It's the chariot. This is Phoebe, a tarot card guru with a practice based in Denver. Years ago, she helped teach Crystal how to read cards. As her teacher and mentor, Phoebe clearly had a special bond with Crystal. It's about, well, I'll show you. Find it in my deck.
See, this is from a different deck, and I remember her having this. Yeah, it's the chariot, and the cards were a little different in her deck. You can see the picture. The chariot is the vehicle of the self, the spiritual vehicle. She's trying to get information to us.
Can you tell us about these cards and what this is? Yes, and I actually teach this. I have them shuffle the deck so their energy is in there. Do you mind showing us? No, not at all. Anybody interested in looking into themselves? How much does it look into us? Anything that you need to see. Nobody really knows the true history of the Tarot. There's so much symbology in here, not only the numbers and the elements and the astrology, but it also has the tree of life in it.
which you see over there on that wall, that's from the Kabbalah. How ancient is that?
There's no such thing as telling fortunes because everything in life just is. And what you're looking at in here, this is self-therapy. It's a way of looking at the issues in your life and getting clarity, confirmation. What can I do about this? If I can't, what can I do about myself? I call it a spiritual book of everything. And it's a faith-based thing because you're believing it. It's an intuitive tool that just accesses your intuition.
And everyone, especially all women, have it. Who's this? That's my grandma. And I keep her here because she was a medium and a reader back in, you can tell by the outfit, that was like the 1890s. She passed away when I was 11, and I swear I was the only one there. And she was talking to me about spiritual things, and she just went to sleep. And I didn't even know she passed because it was so gentle. My grandmother had lots of sayings about
If you're having the experience, you must need the lesson. Imagination is the same word as intuition. You spell it different. If you're asking the question, you already have an idea what the answer is. And don't ever put your purse on the floor. Grandma would tell you it's bad for prosperity. How about the bag? Is that okay? Yeah, so hang it on your chair, put it on the table, whatever. You know, and every time I tell people that, they'll say, my grandmother said that. It's like you're putting your prosperity down on the floor.
We were all part of each other. I mean, she took my original Tarot class years ago, and then there was some of the people involved in it said, we want to keep doing stuff. So we formed a group that would meet every month and just kind of play with stuff, like try different readings, try different things. And she was in that group. We were all real close kind of with that.
We didn't know anything about this because she moved to Greeley to go to school and I was mentoring her because she got a gig in a coffee shop doing readings. So she'd contact me and I'd help guide her. And then I didn't hear from her for a long time. I thought her life was on track.
And then I hear that she met some idiot and moved to Crestone. And we all know Crestone is hippie town, you know. And I've only been there a few times. I don't know that much about it. But then to hear that she got into all the drugs and everything. And I'm like, Crystal, are you sure you're talking about the same person? When we went out there last summer, they were offered $1,000. And before we left, they said they'd do $2,000. The friends and family of Crystal aren't wealthy.
They never thought $1,000 or $2,000 would get the attention of some possible criminal to rat out some other criminal in town. I sent the PDF of the reward poster to all the newspapers. It was going to read, to the persons responsible for Crystal's disappearance, but I wanted to put in there for Crystal's murder. I'm not sure if that's a wise thing to do or screw it.
You know, I'm going to call it what it is. You know, because everybody there is, well, we know what happened. You know, she's disappeared and everything. Now she was murdered by this piece of shit. I need to start really pushing buttons. The 10,000 is a collection from friends and family.
I have a feeling that if Rodney had to sell his prized truck to make that money happen for the right person to get suspects in custody for Crystal's disappearance, I think he'd do it. I think he'd mortgage his house.
Big money being offered for information. Investigative reporter Chris Halsney joining us to talk about the increased reward. The 10 grand reward for leading authorities to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for Crystal's disappearance is about to increase to $20,000 after an anonymous donor recently agreed to double it.
Irvin believes that kind of money might help motivate someone in this tight-knit community to speak up, then safely move out. As the pressure increases between us calling the sheriff every week and you sniffing around, you just keep that pressure on. It keeps pressure on people in town, too. They're like, oof, this isn't going to go away. Money and pressure. That's how this gets solved. You can buy a lot of meth for 20 grand.
There is a lot of inconsistencies in the actual last time that she was seen. The drum circle seems to be the kind of the central part here. The 13th. Do you know if that was the drum circle night or no? I'm thinking that that was the drum circle night. Then one day around July 13th, 2016, after attending a drum circle festival, she vanished.
The last time Crystal's family heard from her was July 13th, 2016. Crystal's last Facebook post was July 14th. After scouring through about a dozen Facebook accounts, I found the date for the drum circle, the night of July 18th. So if Crystal was in fact at the drum circle, then where was she for four whole days with no contact?
On 08/06/2016, while I was in Crestone, Colorado on personal business, I, Deputy W. Clark, was approached by David Steele. David stated that he was a personal friend of Crystal Reisinger's and that they had frequently hung out. David said that he had heard that Crystal had been seen at the last full moon ceremony, but that he did not remember seeing her there.
We had a lot of false information right off the bat of when she came up missing. Well, if you tell me she went missing on this day, but your neighbor says, "She was here this day. I talked to her." It starts to diminish the fact of, is she missing? No. People throwing days out there saying, "Oh, she's been missing from this day." And it delayed a lot of our response.
You reported a missing person, but they were seen after you're trying to claim they're missing. That did not help the case at all. It's one of those things we need to get an accurate time. And if you don't know the accurate time, don't say.
I think we're pretty clear on it now. I don't think her disappearance came from anything that has to do with the drum circle. After a few weeks of trying, the Crestone boyfriend finally answered, and he agreed to talk to me. I don't know if I want to talk about it, man, like on the phone, or I'm kind of paranoid about it a little bit. The last actual time I saw her, we got into an argument because she wasn't going to sleep. I was just worried about her.
I saw her, it was like, I think the 12th, the 11th or 12th. We had a huge argument because she wasn't going to sleep. I was worried and turned into an argument and she asked to leave and I left. It was like 6 in the morning. I figured that I needed to speak because we were going through like a breakup and stuff. Like, we were trying to figure out what we were doing. I don't know. I figured she needed space for like a week or two and then
There's definitely a lot of stuff that people are saying. It's kind of misleading information,
the drum circle thing. And so I was like, I don't know. Like I was at the drum circle. I never saw her. Your interview with David, like was like, he, uh, I don't know. Maybe he did see her at the drum circle, but I went over there and I was talking to people looking for nobody. Nobody said they saw her. They might've been just trying to like, maybe she was there and want to see me and people were vouching for her. But I don't know. I mean, I can tell you everything.
I can help you with anything that you need questions answered and stuff. If I know what it is, I'd like to tell you. She called me on June 28th from catfishes. I came and picked her up and I took care of her for like the next two weeks or so because...
Yeah, she was very, she was super, I've never seen her that scared. Like, she, something happened, like, I don't know. Like, she told me about what she remembered, about what happened to her at his house. She, like, I don't know. Like, I guess she thought Catfish might have had a car or something. And she, like, I don't know, he tricked her. She said that he was just fucking with her head, like, telling her that she was dead and that...
She doesn't, like, she was trying to tell me that there was a bunch of people over there, but she couldn't remember. She thought she might have gotten raped. And I told her, like, to go to the police. And, uh, yeah, I don't know. Like, when I picked her up from Catfish's, she fucking, she told me that he held her there. He wouldn't let her leave. He took apart her phone. She called me from her phone.
In the last page of the police report, there's an entry about Catfish.
On 08/10/2016, I, Deputy W. Clark, was on duty in the town of Sewatch, state of Colorado. I had heard through social media that a man named had been seen with Crystal shortly before she was last seen. Goes by the nickname "Catfish." I spoke with his home, stated that he had had traumatic brain injury and has not left his house in several months.
He said that he gets items delivered to his home, so he does not have to go out. There were quite a few boxes around his home with labels from Amazon. He stated that around his birthday, that Crystal had come over to his house. When I asked him how she got there, he said that he did not know and that she just knocked on the door. He said he did not see a car outside. He was not sure of the date or the time, except it was still light outside when Crystal showed up.
He stated that they drank wine, smoked marijuana, and watched movies. He said that he fell asleep and woke up when Crystal was leaving. He said that she took a $10 book that he had bought on computers. He said that he did not get up to walk her out of the door and did not know what time it was when she left due to the wine and marijuana. He said that he fell asleep as she was leaving and offered to let me search his house and the grounds to prove that Crystal was not there.
Catfish said that he did not know Crystal that well and had no idea where she might go. End of report. Hey, Payne Rodney, I need you to call me back when you get this, if you would, please. Would you go through the paperwork and see if Crystal had any dental work, anything to indicate any dental work? I just got a call from Wayne about an hour ago, and he said that they found a skull
And it's female, and it matches the age range. Next Monday, we will have a special episode for you. We're taking a week off from our regular programming to answer your questions. Monday's episode will be a Q&A episode, so please give us a call at 404-410-0911. That's 404-410-0911. And leave us any question you may have on Season 2's case.