The Kristal Reisinger Case - Episode 1 (Revisited)

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Speaker 7 It's one of Britain's most notorious crimes, the killing of a wealthy family at Whitehouse Farm. But I got a tip that the story of this famous case might be all wrong.

Speaker 9 I know there's going to be a twist, one day, a massive twist.

Speaker 11 At every level of the criminal justice system, there's been a cover-up in this case.

Speaker 7 I'm Heidi Blake. Blood Relatives is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker.
Find it now in the In the Dark podcast feed.

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Speaker 12 I'm on the top of a mountain.

Speaker 12 It's dark. Really dark, actually.

Speaker 12 And I can barely make out the faces of people talking.

Speaker 12 Light it up.

Speaker 14 Roy,

Speaker 14 you look familiar. Do I?

Speaker 9 You've been here before? I have.

Speaker 14 Okay, I've been here a long time. Okay.

Speaker 14 Welcome.

Speaker 15 Where are you from?

Speaker 10 Atlanta.

Speaker 16 Ah.

Speaker 17 We came out just for the strength of the light.

Speaker 14 Ah, yeah, pretty much.

Speaker 17 I have an instrument. It's made out of steel with a round thing around there.
It's called a tongue drum.

Speaker 17 The guy here makes it their ends of propane tanks, and he welds them together, and there's little cut slits.

Speaker 19 This night is still vivid in my mind. The kind of dark where the edges of the world disappear.

Speaker 19 The kind of dark where you question everything.

Speaker 19 I was here standing in the middle of a drum circle, recording a podcast. But what if I wasn't? What if I was actually part of something bigger, something unknown?

Speaker 19 Because standing in that moment, surrounded by strangers, I felt like I was on the edge of something.

Speaker 19 Something unsettling. If you stepped too far away from the fire, you'd vanish into the black.

Speaker 19 It was my first real investigative trip with a full team. Mike, Meredith, Rob, and my brother Mason were all there.
I remember the way they looked at me. Like, what the hell is this?

Speaker 19 What has he gotten me into? And honestly, I wasn't sure either. But I leaned into it.
I walked up to a random guy playing a tin drum and just held my microphone next to him. And he kept playing.

Speaker 12 That was it.

Speaker 20 We were in.

Speaker 19 But my mind wasn't on the music. It was scanning the crowd, looking at every face.

Speaker 19 And even though I was trying to act chill, I had twisting knots in my stomach with only one question rattling around in my brain.

Speaker 19 Was the person responsible for Crystal Rising Earth's disappearance standing right here with us?

Speaker 12 From Tinderfoot TV in Atlanta, this is Up and Vanished. I'm your host, Payne Lindsay.

Speaker 21 Long before this land was called America, Native people danced in a circle around the drum for celebration, fellowship, renewal, and healing.

Speaker 19 When I started up and vanished, I was chasing the truth. Now I find myself chasing something else too.

Speaker 19 Understanding. The passage of time changes how you see things,

Speaker 19 how you see people, and how you see yourself.

Speaker 19 Back then, just a guy with a microphone searching for answers, and now, I understand that some questions never really go away.

Speaker 19 They haunt the places where they were left behind.

Speaker 19 My journey into investigating the disappearance of Crystal Ann Reisinger, who went missing in July of 2016, began in Hollywood, California at a hotel downtown.

Speaker 19 We met in an awkward, brightly lit hotel conference room with what seemed like the biggest table on Earth.

Speaker 19 Sitting across from me was Crystal's ex-boyfriend Eli and their five-year-old daughter Akasha.

Speaker 19 The setting was already strange and uncomfortable for everyone, but I was ready to dive in once again,

Speaker 19 just like I had done in Tarek Rinstedt's case.

Speaker 10 My name is Elijah Ghana. I'm an ex-boyfriend of Crystal, father of our daughter.
And what's your name, Akasha?

Speaker 16 Say you're right here, right here near the mic.

Speaker 23 Say your name.

Speaker 24 My name is Akasha.

Speaker 24 How old are you akasha

Speaker 24 five five

Speaker 24 well you're pretty big

Speaker 10 i had a good buddy of mine we've been friends for years he had a friend that he wanted to introduce me to it was like a friend of a friend introduction kind of a thing and when we met it was kind of like fireworks immediately.

Speaker 10 It was one of those things where we just kind of fell in love really fast. The relationship moved really fast.
It seemed like it was just fast forward to instant relationship kind of thing.

Speaker 10 And we were moved in together and it was just, yeah, just an awesome, wonderful experience. My first impression was like, where were you my whole life?

Speaker 10 She was very sweet, very intelligent, very deep thinker, covered in tattoos, piercings, different looking, kind of wild looking person.

Speaker 10 My type of girl.

Speaker 12 Eli had met Crystal in Denver, and they fell in love almost instantly. At first, things were great.
They moved in together. Crystal gave birth to their daughter, Akasha.

Speaker 12 But after a few years, Crystal expressed to Eli that she was ready for a big change in her life.

Speaker 10 She really wanted to get out of the city. She was always on a spiritual journey.
She was always on a quest,

Speaker 10 you know, always trying to go deeper and deeper into things.

Speaker 12 According to Eli, Crystal was always on some sort of spiritual quest, and she found herself drawn to a tiny town in south central Colorado called Creststone.

Speaker 10 She went to Creststone, Colorado, which is known to be a big spiritual gathering place. She believed Creststone was just energetically just a great place to channel and be.

Speaker 10 And the energies there were amplified, the Earth's natural energies. She was very sensitive to a lot of things.

Speaker 10 And so she was really sensitive to like the Earth and the rocks, plants, people, animals.

Speaker 18 It didn't matter.

Speaker 10 It was just real sensitive to energies and stuff.

Speaker 12 So she felt like that was a great place to align her energies with the earth's energies it's just such a tiny isolated place it's way out in the mountains even though crystal had moved nearly four hours away from denver she kept in touch with eli and her daughter akasha daily i mean she did not miss more than a day at the most without keeping in touch crystal was enjoying creststone she was happy there and eli supported this it had always been in crystal's nature to want to know more about the world around her to find her purpose and for the first time she seemed to have found her place Crystal had this keen sense of the world's energy around her and was always seeking a higher level of understanding.

Speaker 12 But that wasn't the only unique thing about her.

Speaker 10 Well, I gotta include this.

Speaker 10 So

Speaker 10 Crystal was pretty psychic.

Speaker 1 She was kind of a clairvoyant.

Speaker 10 She would know things or had premonitions of things and it would always happen.

Speaker 10 One time she called me up and she had a really bad premonition that something bad was going to happen to to both me and her. It was going to be something violent and something that we may not survive.

Speaker 10 She couldn't tell me exactly what it was going to be, but it was going to happen soon within the few days. It was something that was unavoidable.

Speaker 10 It was something that couldn't be changed, is what she said.

Speaker 10 I knew not to take it lightly, coming from her.

Speaker 10 Two days later, I was on my way home from work, and I have no memory of the events, but I just remember waking up in the hospital. They were working on my face.

Speaker 10 I had been stabbed in the face, beaten, brutally beaten. All the bones in my face were pretty much broken, blown out, orbital sockets, and everything.

Speaker 12 He'd been attacked by a stranger and nearly beaten to death. But from there, things took an even darker turn.

Speaker 10 So she came down and took care of me immediately from Crestone. till I could take care of myself.

Speaker 10 And then two days after she got back to Crestone, she disappeared.

Speaker 12 Have you seen her since then?

Speaker 16 No.

Speaker 10 That was the last I've seen of her.

Speaker 10 After a couple of days of not hearing from her and I was calling her and no reply, I definitely had a bad feeling.

Speaker 10 I got hold of the police and they said that someone had already filed a missing persons report and it was their landlord.

Speaker 10 So I got a hold of her landlord and immediately things didn't sound good.

Speaker 10 She said it wasn't like her not to come home. Nobody knew where she was.
The police were trying to steer it one way, like she killed herself, but I knew there was no way.

Speaker 10 Me and her stepdad went out, scoured the whole town. We went all around the vicinity in the woods.
We were looking for her, hiking all around. Couldn't find her.

Speaker 10 We questioned, I think, every person in that area, like like within that town. I think we definitely, it was a, it's a tiny, tiny place.
You can barely call it a town.

Speaker 10 It's so small, but we definitely encountered everyone that lives there, questioned them, asked them if they seen her, you know.

Speaker 12 Crystal had vanished without a trace. Two years later, Eli still has no answers, and it's changed him as a person.

Speaker 16 I'm just a whole.

Speaker 10 Like something just

Speaker 10 so big and profound in my life is gone.

Speaker 10 I'm so incomplete.

Speaker 10 If it wasn't for our daughter, she has just been

Speaker 10 the healer.

Speaker 16 Just like Crystal said this whole time.

Speaker 10 She's kept me strong. She's healing me.

Speaker 10 I just feel like, I can't imagine where I would be without her.

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Speaker 28 At this time, we'd like to ask our flight attendants to please take the seats for

Speaker 12 Next, I was off to Denver, Colorado, to meet with Rodney, the father figure in Crystal's life, and the family that raised her.

Speaker 29 Good to see you. Thank you for having us sooner.

Speaker 16 No problem.

Speaker 29 Hey, this is my wife, Debbie.

Speaker 1 Hi, Debbie.

Speaker 1 Nice to meet you.

Speaker 12 We met Rodney at his house.

Speaker 1 Did you have something to eat?

Speaker 12 With me was one of our producers, Meredith. And Rodney introduced us to his wife, Debbie.

Speaker 31 You can generally tell a lot of people by their kids.

Speaker 32 That's what I've found.

Speaker 33 Have you met Kasha?

Speaker 18 Unbelievable little girl.

Speaker 11 And she's indicative of Crystal. She's got that sparkly,

Speaker 11 inquisitive, that just love you to death. That is Crystal.

Speaker 26 I feel feel like I failed her.

Speaker 30 We lost a son years back to suicide and I never wanted to feel that again

Speaker 30 and this is bringing all that back.

Speaker 11 What I should have said or what I should have done or, you know, I lay awake at nights thinking about what I should have done or should have said or.

Speaker 30 You really start dissecting just about every two minutes of the past 15 years and it's amazing the things I remember and the things I don't remember.

Speaker 26 She used to be in here.

Speaker 30 She had this whole downstairs to herself for a couple of years.

Speaker 26 The bed was

Speaker 26 right here.

Speaker 29 There was a nightstand over here.

Speaker 20 And

Speaker 16 mascara all over the floor.

Speaker 34 It just

Speaker 32 really hurts.

Speaker 33 I can't explain it any better than that.

Speaker 25 I just,

Speaker 33 you know,

Speaker 33 when I'm talking about the mascara on the floor and all that stuff, you start thinking back in the past and you start thinking about the really stupid crap that you get upset about,

Speaker 33 that in hindsight is really what it is, just crap.

Speaker 33 It's part of living and everything else.

Speaker 26 I failed to protect, I failed to

Speaker 26 be able to help.

Speaker 33 I want to, people keep saying, you know, you shouldn't live in the past and everything else, but you know,

Speaker 25 it It warms my heart that you're even considering this.

Speaker 31 I hope we can find Crystal before I die.

Speaker 11 Crystal was just a wonderful

Speaker 30 lost soul, so to speak.

Speaker 31 But she kept going forward.

Speaker 25 She lived with us for a number of years.

Speaker 33 When she was 15 and a half, she met our son.

Speaker 12 I asked him about Crystal's upbringing and how he became the father figure in her life.

Speaker 31 She's from Arizona, and she was awarded the court.

Speaker 26 They sent her up here to live with an aunt.

Speaker 25 Evidently, the aunt was off the wall.

Speaker 31 So she didn't really have a place to stay.

Speaker 30 So there started our saga.

Speaker 25 We finished our basement and we let her stay in a room down there.

Speaker 31 And then over the years, you know, we've helped her get into college and moved her, and it was just like having another child.

Speaker 25 She had an incredible ability to keep going.

Speaker 25 She really, really wanted to succeed at something.

Speaker 25 And some, excuse my friend, some fucking piece of shit

Speaker 30 took that away from her.

Speaker 12 Since Crystal went missing, Rodney's been doing some investigating of his own.

Speaker 33 There is a lot of inconsistencies in the actual last time that she was seen.

Speaker 32 For some reason, the 13th is the one that sticks with me, July 13th of 2016.

Speaker 12 When she was first reported missing, Rodney drove down to the town of Crestone

Speaker 13 and met with their police department.

Speaker 32 They were telling me at that point she was a wild partier and having these noisy parties in her apartment.

Speaker 16 If she was having such wild parties, the apartment would reflect that.

Speaker 33 And it did not in any way, shape, or form reflect it.

Speaker 12 Crystal lived in a small apartment by herself in the center of town. Rodney canvassed the area himself, along with the police.

Speaker 32 The day or so before she disappeared, she had bought all her normal health foods, veggie burgers, her almond milk, her organic vegetables. They have a record of her using her food stamp card.

Speaker 32 As far as when she bought the stuff, I think it was on the 12th or the 11th of July, just a couple days before she went missing.

Speaker 33 She stuck to making sure she had contact with Kasha.

Speaker 30 You know, if that's an indication of a person that's completely off the rails and going south, nah, I don't buy it.

Speaker 33 That's a crock of shit that the police and a few people in that town are spreading around.

Speaker 9 Rodney took her in, let her live in the basement, in the house, made sure she got to school, gave her money for clothes, and fed her.

Speaker 12 This is Chris Halsney.

Speaker 12 He's an investigative reporter from Fox News in Denver.

Speaker 12 And he's the only TV reporter to ever cover Crystal's story.

Speaker 9 He just saw a need. He saw this poor girl and no way to survive without just living on the street.
And he took her in. What a kind-hearted guy.

Speaker 26 This is the file

Speaker 32 of different things that we got out of her apartment.

Speaker 26 I guess you could go through it and see if there's anything that's even of interest to you.

Speaker 9 When she went missing, he was the first one to get in his truck and drive five hours and start handing out these flyers because

Speaker 9 he had always taken care of her.

Speaker 27 This is from Cresto.

Speaker 26 Yes, this was in her apartment.

Speaker 12 While at Rodney's house in Denver, he gave our producer Meredith and I a box of Crystal's belongings from her apartment in Cresto.

Speaker 12 It was full of mostly pictures dating back to when she was a young child.

Speaker 12 There were also tons of documents, bills and receipts, all kinds of things. Rodney encouraged us to go through it ourselves to see if there was anything helpful.

Speaker 26 And there are things in here that we didn't know about,

Speaker 32 you know, classes she had taken. It's a little bit of a glimpse into her life.

Speaker 26 She always tried to move forward and always was able to survive.

Speaker 32 And

Speaker 26 one of the things that always struck me was that

Speaker 26 she just wanted to be a good person.

Speaker 12 After two years of searching for Crystal and still no answers, Rodney wants as many people as possible to hear her story.

Speaker 32 I don't know if this is a tipping point, but there comes a point where it's like, man,

Speaker 26 as you guys start making your presence known in Fox News,

Speaker 34 Chris said that

Speaker 26 he's going to push more.

Speaker 28 Crystal Ann Reisinger dropped off the face of the earth last July.

Speaker 28 As she was living at Crestone, a town of of less than a thousand people in south central Colorado, not far from the Great Sand Dunes National Park, investigative reporter Chris Halsney traced Reisinger's final days to discover it is unlikely she simply walked away.

Speaker 28 Only three by three blocks long, Crestone at first glance is just another sleepy, laid-back hippie town. The surrounding mountains and sand dunes hold a raw, peaceful beauty.

Speaker 28 But the nearby hills may also be hiding some very dark secrets. Considered sacred ground by the Navajo, this place has lately been attracting truth seekers of a worldwide New Age religious movement.

Speaker 28 Crystal Reisinger was one of those drawn to Crestone's soul.

Speaker 9 I've long been reporting cold case crimes.

Speaker 9 We'd been running a series of reports called Death on a Train.

Speaker 9 This friend friend of Crystal's had seen that series of reports, and she called Tieri and said, I saw what you could do for this other woman. Can you help Crystal?

Speaker 28 The tiny town of Crestone is full of big rumors about what happened to Crystal, so the Fox 31 problem solvers came here to figure out fact from fiction.

Speaker 28 One thing most people agree on is that this is the last place she was seen.

Speaker 28 It's called a drum circle.

Speaker 9 She was seen at what they call a drum circle.

Speaker 9 It's part party, part religious experience. There's a full moon.
Hundreds of people from the area around Creststone on the full moon go out of town to this park

Speaker 9 and they start this huge bonfire and they sing and they dance and they do drugs and they drink.

Speaker 9 It means something different to a lot of different people. The Native Americans would be offended that it became a party, but that's just what it's morphed into in Creston.

Speaker 9 So watch County Sheriff's Deputy say they believe someone who went to the drum circle full moon ceremony knows exactly what happened later that night.

Speaker 9 We couldn't find anything substantial that she was seen after the drum circle.

Speaker 12 I asked Crystal's former boyfriend Eli about drum circles too.

Speaker 13 He'd been to some.

Speaker 10 It's just a party out in the woods. It just goes on all night.

Speaker 10 They just play their drums pretty much all night, and there's a lot of drinking and drug use going on.

Speaker 10 Apparently, there is this one guy that's seen her walking off alone into the forest.

Speaker 10 Other people are putting her at the drum circle. It's either walking towards the drum circle or walking just off into the woods.

Speaker 12 Chris Halsney had spent several days in Crestone, developing his news story on Crystal. I asked him to describe the place.

Speaker 9 It's not much. It's just a few blocks of a couple, a little hotel.

Speaker 9 little restaurant deli, a couple little grocery stores, a liquor store.

Speaker 9 It's not much of a town.

Speaker 9 The population of the place really is just outside of town. This group had given away free land to all sorts of religious sects to set up houses and housing, churches, temples just outside of town.

Speaker 9 There's a lot of little roads and electricity running out to these places, but they're very private. But that's where most of the people are, is just out of town in these religious areas.

Speaker 9 It's quiet. No one's going to bother you in Creststone.

Speaker 9 If you leave people alone, they'll leave you alone. It's the tale of two worlds there.
There's 143 people that are officially registered to live in Creststone,

Speaker 9 and their income is very low, poverty level low. You get outside of town into the county, There are some really nice homes and high income.
There's definitely two sets of people there.

Speaker 12 Crystal's ex-boyfriend Eli had gone down to Creststone with Rodney to search for her, but he didn't learn much at all.

Speaker 10 Well, local people don't like to give up too much information if you're an outsider.

Speaker 10 And they're just like, if you can imagine, just like a really super tight-knit community where everyone knows each other for generations and they don't like outsiders much, even though there's a lot of outsiders coming in through the town that kind of resent them.

Speaker 9 They're distrustful.

Speaker 9 She fit in there and she knew it. That's why she wasn't going to come back to Denver.
She fit in.

Speaker 9 And I don't think she wanted to leave there. I think she just found her place.

Speaker 9 And I don't think any of her friends or family thinks she wanted to leave.

Speaker 9 It's heartbreaking to see all the life in her eyes at that young age.

Speaker 9 Happy birthday to Kasha.

Speaker 9 Happy birthday to you.

Speaker 9 Make a wish. Yay.
Yay, Kashi. Ready? You want to go? What are you

Speaker 1 doing?

Speaker 35 Kashi, google.

Speaker 9 Do it, mama.

Speaker 1 Yay, Kashi, go.

Speaker 9 You're missing your mama.

Speaker 9 Running around,

Speaker 9 you know, excited about life.

Speaker 9 And when you sit down and just have a quiet moment with her, she knows exactly why you're asking the questions, and it's because she knows her mother's gone.

Speaker 9 Whenever I see a missing poster, I think maybe there's still a chance.

Speaker 9 She was a little flaky that she found just the right guy and ran off and wanted to disappear, that she's in Mexico or Argentina or Costa Rica.

Speaker 9 Maybe she's in a cult somewhere and she's just falling off the face of the earth and doesn't want anybody to find her.

Speaker 9 At least she'd be be alive.

Speaker 9 At least someday maybe she could come back to the realization her daughter's here and there's people that love her and have been looking for

Speaker 9 that little girl to have an answer.

Speaker 17 You paint such an interesting picture of this town, Crestone. It's a tale of two worlds.

Speaker 9 Well, what we found is that it's really a peaceful meditative place and thousands of New Age religious seekers from all over the world have come there, but there's a real dark side there.

Speaker 9 The drug culture is strong and a very thin police force.

Speaker 9 Maybe it was a religious thing for her, but more she was more Mother Earth. She was more trying to connect to this planet.

Speaker 9 Because she'd done that before, for quite a while I think police and neighbors thought, she's going to turn back up. She's going to come back.
She just went on one of these journeys.

Speaker 12 I spent quite a bit of time in Denver, digging into Crystal's past and meeting some of her family. But it was clear that if anyone knew what happened to her, they weren't here.
They were in Cresto.

Speaker 12 Before I made the trip there myself, I spoke to Crystal's father Rodney one more time.

Speaker 25 There's just something

Speaker 31 really,

Speaker 30 really strange about this whole deal.

Speaker 33 You know, we've been down there from time to time. I call the sheriff.

Speaker 34 I call a deputy, and very rarely does he get back to me.

Speaker 10 They're undermanned and underfunded, and

Speaker 9 I don't know.

Speaker 31 I want to trust them, but boy, I tell you,

Speaker 30 things are starting to chip away here.

Speaker 31 For one reason or another, I don't know if it's, you know, if it goes back to their undermanned, underfunded, and overworked, and, you know, and everything else, because there's only like six of them in that whole county.

Speaker 30 So Creststone alone, I think, keeps them busy. Boy, it's easy to get lost up in all this.
You know, I find myself going different directions all the time.

Speaker 12 And I met with Amy, Rodney's daughter, and Crystal's sister.

Speaker 37 So are you spiritual at all?

Speaker 13 Spiritual, sure.

Speaker 36 But you're not like meditating.

Speaker 27 Yeah, so you'll definitely be walking in as a total weirdo.

Speaker 36 Like, what is this?

Speaker 12 Amy was with her husband, Alex, also a good friend of Crystal's. I asked her husband Alex about my safety in Crestone, since he'd been there several times himself.

Speaker 15 Your safety?

Speaker 10 Yeah, carry something. I don't know.

Speaker 13 You know.

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Speaker 9 There's still hope.

Speaker 9 I think it takes one brave soul who lives in Creststone, who's on the fringe of something a little seedy, to have the courage and and the heart to step forward and let the authorities know what they know.

Speaker 9 It is old Navajo country, and they have left it pristine and rough and unowned for a reason, just to leave its beauty.

Speaker 9 But at the same time, you don't just stumble across things out there. You stay on the trail.

Speaker 9 The minute you drive into town and buy a soda at the deli, just about everybody knows you're there.

Speaker 9 And when you ask the first question about Crystal, 10 more people know you're there. In another hour, 100 people know you're there.

Speaker 9 I got the feeling people didn't like me there asking questions.

Speaker 22 Starting route to Credstone, continue on I-70 West.

Speaker 19 Now, years later, I look back at that moment and realize I wasn't just walking into a town. I was stepping into a reality I hadn't fully grasped yet.

Speaker 19 The weight of a disappearance that transpired in a world so far removed from mine. I was searching for Crystal, but by the time I had left, I realized I was searching for something else too.

Speaker 19 An understanding of the town, the people, and the fine line between hope and truth. This was all happening less than a year from Terra Grinsted's case.

Speaker 19 It was time for me to either buckle down and dive in deeper, or just not do this. But I jumped in fully, leaning into my gut once again.

Speaker 20 Sunshine beating on the good times, moonlight raising from the grave. String band playing more of that honky-tonks.
Pretty young thing going dancing in the rain.

Speaker 20 Head darling, skipping on the black top. Head darling, running running through the trees, honey.
Head darling, leaving for the next time, less than my sense catches up and within me.

Speaker 19 What I didn't anticipate back then, or what I couldn't anticipate, was just how bizarre Creststone was.

Speaker 19 The strange, almost surreal mix of people I met. These moments that felt almost otherworldly, and the confrontations with people I would would confidently later call evil.

Speaker 35 If you start using his words as credibility in any of your podcasts,

Speaker 22 your own self will all fade away quicker than we can take the stage down.

Speaker 22 Do what you want, just the warnings there. Do what you want, though, man.

Speaker 22 I don't run.

Speaker 22 You know why?

Speaker 22 Because if I ever do,

Speaker 22 that's called the head start.

Speaker 22 Some say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. That's right, girl, give me a call.
I saw him on user podcast, Lindsay. It's my new dating app.

Speaker 22 Baby, baby, it's me. It's me, darling.
You know I wouldn't hurt nobody. It's me.
Anyways, what was I saying?

Speaker 22 Oh, yeah, right. 828-202.

Speaker 22 As long as you're 17-21, you're good.

Speaker 22 I'm not that much of a creep.

Speaker 22 But I'm 23 in the dark.

Speaker 22 So listen here, girls. You tired of listening to this man's podcast? Tune in at channel 0.05%er.

Speaker 22 I'm not a nomad. I just know I'm mad.

Speaker 22 Maybe your female podcasters will take sympathy on that and find that sexy as well. The point is this.
It's a three or four or five year missing persons case.

Speaker 22 With this much involvement and interest,

Speaker 22 I can only imagine how fucking pissed the Department of Justice is that they likely gonna fucking do her themselves and fucking throw her in someone's yard.

Speaker 22 I'm glad I'm not there and I don't have a yard here.

Speaker 22 It seems like some shit you should keep quiet, sir, like maybe some like um

Speaker 22 You know, wait a second. Did I make any sense?

Speaker 22 Any sense to me, like a teacher?

Speaker 22 The bitch probably in Witsec.

Speaker 22 Why else I got reports of feds telling people to shut the fuck up about it?

Speaker 22 Why else would feds be telling people to stay sh quiet about that little theory about her being in WitSec?

Speaker 22 Because I think she probably ran off on him or something. I don't know what the fuck happened that ain't for me to think about.

Speaker 22 I'm not allowed to think about that kind of stuff because I'm one of them dudes that's called smart and clever and shit. I just thought I was drunk, but the room's really been spinning.

Speaker 22 Am I on a fucking ride? What is this shit, dude? You're gonna have to pay me to get off of it. No, now I'm off of it.
You're gonna have to pay me.

Speaker 35 Better idea.

Speaker 22 Let's earn off of this. Since my main focus isn't money.

Speaker 22 It's not in clearing my name. It's not in proving my innocence.

Speaker 19 I've covered a lot of cases, been been to a lot of places, but there is nowhere on Earth that I've ever been that's quite like Cresto.

Speaker 19 Over the years, this case has stayed with me in ways I never expected. Of all the cases I've ever investigated, none have continued to unfold post-season quite like this one.

Speaker 19 The story didn't stop when the season ended. It kept going, pulling me back into its orbit over and over again.
Since 2018, I've traveled to Colorado at least 10 times or more just for Crystal's case.

Speaker 19 And in that time, I've had conversations that still haunt me. Late-night phone calls with a man named Catfish, whose words lingered long after I hung up.

Speaker 19 Meetings with people who held pieces to the puzzle but were too afraid to speak about it. And through it all, I've stayed in contact with law enforcement.
Something very special in this case.

Speaker 19 I've met with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation on record multiple times over the span of three years, and as recently as last week. Crystal's disappearance is not a cold case.

Speaker 19 It's actually far from it. This is not forgotten.
Crystal is not forgotten. And my own quest for the truth has been on my mind since 2018.

Speaker 19 And I want you to know that justice is closer than it's ever been before. So here's what's next.
This Friday, we're going to refresh you on everything that happened in Up and Vanished Season 2.

Speaker 19 the people, the timeline, the details. There's a lot you need to know and remember.
We'll lay it all out for you in a clean way so that we can pick up exactly where we left off.

Speaker 19 Because what happens next, you won't want to miss it.

Speaker 19 I'm excited to finally share with you what we've learned, and I think for the first time, I can say with confidence we are closer to the truth than ever before.

Speaker 19 So, stay tuned this Friday as we continue Crystal's story.

Speaker 2 Up and Vanished is an investigative podcast told weekly, produced for Tenderfoot TV by Payne Lindsay, Mike Rooney, and me, Meredith Stedman, with new episodes every Monday.

Speaker 2 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 Bidall.

Speaker 2 Original score by Makeup and Vanity Set. Our theme song is Ophelia, performed by Eza Rose.
Our cover art is by Trevor Eiler. Special thanks to the team at Cadence 13.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 If you're enjoying Up and Vanished, tell a friend, family member, or co-worker about it. And don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts.
Thanks for listening.

Speaker 24 Deborah had to have surgery. I had hip surgery in November of 2024.

Speaker 38 Her United Healthcare nurse, Crystal, checked on her.

Speaker 37 We do a routine call after surgery, and I could tell that she was struggling.

Speaker 38 Deborah needed help.

Speaker 24 My infection markers were through the roof.

Speaker 38 And Crystal knew what to do.

Speaker 37 I called the hospital and said she's coming in and got Deborah the help she needed.

Speaker 24 Crystal and United Healthcare saved my life.

Speaker 38 Hear more stories like Deborah's at UHC.com. Benefits, features, and her devices vary by plan area.
Limitation and exclusions apply.

Speaker 39 Every story has layers and sometimes the truth hides in plain sight. I'm Josh Dean, host of Chameleon, the podcast about people who transform, deceive, and survive.

Speaker 39 From con artists to unbelievable yet true occurrences, we dive into stories where nothing is ever quite as it seems. Because to understand the world, you sometimes have to change the way you see it.

Speaker 12 Listen to Chameleon wherever you get your podcasts.