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I went home. I have a TV because someone gave me one. I hardly ever watch it. That's not me. I don't come home and turn on the TV. I'm too busy, first of all. I'm never home. That night I came home and for some reason I flipped the TV on and it was on channel 12.
And a concert was just starting, and it was one that had been recorded here in Denver, and it was Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Well, you have to be old to know who they are, first of all. And they just stepped up on the stage. Just as I turned the TV on, they start their first song. And it was a song that probably no one in the world, unless they were as old as me, would have known. Mama said, don't go near that. Don't be a catfish jump.
Mama said don't go down to the river and stay away from Catfish John. And I'm like, don't go down to the river. I'm like, there's something going on here. The only other band that ever did that song was the Grateful Dead. Well, that was her favorite band.
There's something about this, about the river and everything. So then when I told, it was either Amy or Angela, I can't remember who it was about it, and they're like, that's his name. And I go, who? They said, the guy, John, you know, his name is Catfish John. That's what they call him. I'm like, what the? Unbelievable. You tell me that she didn't tell me to turn that TV on and hear that song. Of course it happened. No one else would have known that.
And I'm like, okay, Crystal, what are you telling me here? And then when I got it confirmed that that was the guy's name, Catfish John, what the hell are the chances of that? A billion to one. I knew it was something from her. 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. They found a skull and it's female and it matches the age range. This skull had dental work done, so the question is, is it crystal? We need to find out if she had dental work done and where she had it done, if she did. I called Wayne back and told him to check social services in Gunnison, Colorado.
If you want to call Wayne, it might be better getting it from the source. They found a skull of a female that's about the same age. In Colorado, it could be one of 12 different ones that have been reported.
Well, two people out for a hike end up finding a human skull and that leads to the discovery of more human remains.
He was walking with his dog when he found a human skull. Continuing our coverage of Colorado at 6, the skull was on Mud Lake Open Space property near Nederland. The man he immediately called authorities. Right now they're working to identify that skull. There's a list of possibilities. So whenever they find, you know, a boy or a girl or a man or female, anytime they find any body or anything, it's unidentified, they'll call everybody else just to check. That wasn't her at all. It was someone up in Boulder.
So it wasn't crystal? How? Throw it down to my chapter.
Some of those shafts crapped out on the bottom and it goes into water and we don't know how far down it goes or anything. It is vast wilderness. There are hundreds of mine shafts and crevices and rock formations with deep crevasses. Unless somebody gave law enforcement very specific intel about where to look,
The chances somebody would find her are very limited. We have every reason to believe that the Soich County Sheriff's Office has enough information to make a case if they find Crystal. Back to the reward, if somebody is willing to take that money to share with authorities where they heard Crystal,
Crystal may be, then that's probably enough to get them the reward because that I think will lead to the arrest of specific suspects. It has to be someplace familiar for the suspect or suspects.
I don't think that the suspects in this case are so brilliant that they can go to Google Maps the terrain and figure out a new place they've ever been to just find the perfect place to hide a body. These are local people who know the area and the places they need to get to. There's elevation involved and you can't carry a body very far. Some place that they know that isn't that hard to get to.
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Honestly, there's really no confirmation that the drum circle is even relevant. Kind of in a sense because it keeps coming up, but it might just be happenstance that this all transpired around the same time as the drum circle because I don't know of... I couldn't tell you a single connection to the drum circle. I mean, drum circle just kept coming up from the beginning, but really, I don't know if it has any connection.
For us, it started out at last time she was seen on the 13th after the drum circle, but if the drum circle is on the 18th, so if it was July 18th, and people are saying last time she was seen on the 13th, you know, there's a lot of stuff here to weed through. It almost seems like a movie or something that happens to somebody else. As time goes on, I'm losing the real image of
and this is real this is a beautiful young lady the evil piece of crap took her life you have to try and move on in life that's what's so hard is you can't move on because i know it just but you know until the person is is found hopefully not found but convicted and all that stuff there's this distancing myself kind of in a sense we've given pretty much everything that we think we know
And you guys are going to be able to go out and talk to all the other people that we don't know or never had contact with or anything else. When I start thinking that I've done all I can do, that's my fear as I'm getting into that thinking.
But I don't know what else to do other than sit here and talk to you. Well, that's why media is so huge right now, because there will literally be nowhere to hide. That's why I keep trying to get people to share it on Facebook and stuff, no matter where you're from. I don't care if you're from New York or Colorado, no matter where you're from, the story, I meet people from all over the country right here. It is such a small worldwide web. Eventually, there will be nowhere for them to hide short of fleeing the country and changing their identity.
I gave Maurice a copy of the police report and he went over it in detail.
I had heard through social media that a man named John had been seen with Crystal shortly before she was last seen. John goes by the nickname Catfish. I spoke with John at his home. John 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. John 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 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.
John said that he fell asleep as she was leaving. John offered to let me search his house and the grounds to prove that Crystal was not there. John said that he did not know Crystal that well. John stated that around his birthday, that Crystal had come over to his house. He just said, well,
The last time Crystal was seen or heard from was likely July 13th, but Catfish's birthday is on July 21st. Because of his use of drugs and drinking and stuff, he has disjointed thinking. He can't reason this stuff out like you're doing with these dates and stuff, so he made a mistake. He revealed himself when he made that statement. John offered to let me search his house and the grounds to prove that Crystal was not there. It's not unusual for a guilty person, police officers, to search their
I tried to contact him on Facebook, but he ignored me.
Yeah, that's the power. And you've got people who you buy from and who gets drugs from you. And sometimes people are the people in the park that he could have had to do a favor for him and not ever say anything about it. In the terror case, they never ratted out each other. When you drive space out there, sometimes you tend to think that you've gone further than you have. There's a whole host of opportunities on that drive.
The police report mentioned Crystal's counselor in Crestone, so I tracked her down and gave her a call.
I was living in Creston. I was teaching human development and I went to the Bliss one night and I ordered a glass of wine and a salad and she comes walking up to me and she said, I'd never seen her before, she said, will you do a reading for me? And I said, be back in 15 minutes and don't be late. In 15 minutes she walks back up to me and she said,
Do you have your cards? You know, I don't do tarot card readings. But I said to her, I said, I don't need cards to read you. And I said to her very sternly, you are about ready to lose everything, even your life, if you don't turn things around. And she started crying. She had no life force.
And she said, exactly. And she said, will you help me?
She was leaving town that day and she was coming back for, I think it was spring break. She was in school. I said, what day will you be back? She told me, I think it was like a month away. And I said, you stay with me for a week. I will take care of you and I will help you. And I said, in the meantime, I need for you to call me once a week. She lost her college. She lost her job. So she called me and she started building herself up.
And the day she was supposed to see me, she drove into town and instead of coming to the Bliss and seeing me, she went and saw Brian. She got there early and she saw Brian. Brian showed up at the Bliss and he said to me, "You need to call Crystal." And I said, "Why do I need to call her?" And he goes, "She's very upset. I totaled her car." He thought it was real funny that he totaled her car.
And Brian asked to borrow my car and then he totaled it.
And I said, how do you feel about that? And she says, I think he did it on purpose. Really? Yeah, he did it on purpose. These guys were the ones who had the drugs. I mean, these guys were, I mean, Crystal was so beautiful. She was shamanic. She was beautiful, energetic. She was intelligent. She was Earth Mama. And then they would just take her energy. I said, what are you going to do about it? Stand up and fight for your life. When's he going to pay you?
Filed in the combined court, Gunnison County, Colorado. May 22nd, 2014. Plaintiff Crystal Reisinger versus defendant Brian...
The amount claimed from Defendant Brian is $2,200. Such claim arises from the following event. On March 16, 2014, Brian borrowed my vehicle and ended up totaling it. Defendant Brian hangs out at the Bliss Cafe in Crestone, Colorado. Address is 187 West Silver, Crestone, Colorado. Signed,
Crystal Reisinger. She had filed suit against Brian back in '14 and that never came up until I saw it in her file folder and a box of pictures. And guess who served the papers on Brian? Certificate of Service, State of Colorado, County of Sewatch. Dan Warwick being first duly sworn states as follows:
Dan Warwick, the sheriff.
He wasn't the sheriff at that time in 2014. He was a lieutenant. You know, I don't know if it means anything, but the sheriff never mentioned that he had had contact. He led me to believe that he didn't know of Crystal other than her there in Crestone. But that's not true, if I'm understanding it, because he was the one that served the papers on Brian for Crystal.
Brian also goes by Dready Brian. I started asking around to see if anyone knew any more about Crystal and Brian's relationship. Angela, who I spoke to earlier on the podcast, told me an interesting story.
Brian told me the backstory of their relationship. And their backstory of their relationship is when Crystal was teaching at Western State College, she had Akasha. And when she had Akasha with her, Brian was watching Akasha for her. And he lived with her. So he ended up crashing her car. And Crystal was very upset about that. And they had a falling out. They kind of started to become friends again.
I asked Crystal's latest boyfriend too, aka the Crestone boyfriend.
I think he might have been there.
Back in Crestone, I met up with David again. So there's the path goes up here and there's caves up in there. And that's one of the things that we always thought. It's like, well, maybe she never really left from here, you know. But there's this story that keeps coming back that, oh, she went back to Crestone.
David said that one of his friends in town might have some more information about Crystal, so he drove to her house. "Hey, this is Gladio." "Hey, how you doing?" "That's a bad nickname, man. You go to the south or go to prison, that's not a good handle." "And that's how we all felt 20 years ago when he first showed up. We were like, 'Catfish.' And it's usually the guy that has already killed somebody."
and drags him to the bottom of the river and hides him. I always knew him as not anywhere stable when he came. He was kind of couch surfer. He's at his dad's and he has a few friends that he'll land at their place. I'm sure he'd rather do that than be at his dad's because at his dad's he's probably going to get harassed about being high. So he would be looking for other druggies to land with when he'd get here.
And I do know that every time I repost anything about Crystal, Catfish tries to come and friend me on Facebook. So he's watching. He is keeping an eye on every fucking post that is related to her. Because we're not friends on Facebook. I've never been his friend on Facebook. But he has tried to friend me like three or four times in the last year every time I've posted. An article or a news story or something, he sends me a friend request and I just giggle. You know, I've never met Crystal and...
I didn't have any interaction with her, but I know a lot of different people that know her, and they all have different stories. One of my friends, her kids were hanging out with Crystal, and her stepdaughter and her son. Crystal had been coming and going from up there quite a bit, and then she came up one day really upset and crying and said that Catfish had locked her up in his house for a couple days and raped her.
and she was really upset and couldn't decide what to do and she laughed upset and Zuki finally asked him, she's like, "What's going on? Why was she crying? What's going on?" And it took her a couple of days to get the info out of him and they finally told her and she's like, "Oh my gosh, she needs to call the police." Well, Crystal decided that she would go back over to Catfish's and confront him herself and didn't want to call the police and nobody's seen her since. So that's what I heard.
I've even seen posts like when they posted that news story, the Fox 5 news story, and people were making comments. Laura posted it, and underneath her post, someone, some guy got on there. I don't know, but he apparently was here, and he's like, I don't understand why we're still talking about this. I told Wayne Clark that that girl was murdered, and she was loaded in this vehicle,
by catfish and driven to this area and thrown in a mine shaft. And I don't understand why they haven't found her or why more information hasn't been resolved because I told them, we've all told them what happened to her that day and they haven't done shit. And I don't get what's wrong with Sewatch Police Department.
Recently, an anonymous person shared a message with me. I vetted the information and I confirmed its authenticity. It's a message sent by a Crestone local to a deputy at the Swatch County Sheriff's Department. And the story is pretty damning. I shared it with Maurice too to get his feedback. Yeah, I'm reading it. Hi, Wayne. I know we haven't met, but I know you're the local cop in Crestone, which my girlfriend and I really appreciate.
About an hour ago tonight, my roommates and I witnessed something we felt was suspicious enough to report to you. We lived down Enchanted Lane and passed our neighbor coming home from town tonight. He is the second right coming down Enchanted from Camino Del Rey, and I believe his name is Catfish, though I have never personally met him.
He was out in the middle of the pouring rain by his car and appeared to have a shovel leaning against a golden 1980s or early 90s minivan. He also had a bundle laying on the ground that appeared to be something human-sized next to the open back door of his van. We don't know what this bundle was, but it was certainly suspicious.
Again, we don't want to make false accusation about anything to anyone, but we were all concerned enough to decide to contact you. This was at about 8:30 tonight, and we all witnessed this strange occurrence. - This is troublesome. If you believe this, then he definitely goes outside of his house. This is incriminating.
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.
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