Crystal did finally tell me what happened to her boyfriend, though, but only after all chance of her plea bargain for twenty-five years being reneged was past. Let me set the stage a little before I get into her story. Crystal was an adorable, little gal: blonde, blue-eyed, freckled, with a turned up nose and a dimpled smile. If your son took her to the prom you would be thrilled. You would take a dozen snapshots of the darling couple and rave to your friends at how cute and sweet and adorable your son’s girlfriend was. And you would tell them how smart she seemed, how personable, how “likeable”. You might notice just a hint of coolness in her blue eyes, like when she looked at you she sort of looked through you, but you would throw that aside as just teenage idiosyncrasies and a little bit of shyness. Crystal was the perfect, All-American girl.

Crystal’s boyfriend, we’ll call him Stuart, was a handsome, smart, affable young man from a well-to-do California family. He was a student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University who got good grades, mostly stayed out of trouble, and was making his parents very proud. He was assured of having a boundless future after he graduated. He had, as they say, “everything going for him”.

Then he met Crystal, the All-American girl. Stuart probably did like to party a little because that was no doubt how he met Crystal, but what nineteen-year-old boy doesn’t tip a beer now and then? It was also likely he and Crystal had partied in that same mine where Stuart finally ended up. I doubt he had any foresight into this eventuality.

Crystal and Stuart dated for some time before the murder took place. During this time, Crystal told me they were prone to “pillow talk” and had spent a lot of hours in bed, sharing cold beer and a puff or two of good weed and just talking. She also told me she came to realize she may have talked a little too much while under the influence of beer and weed because Stuart began asking her little questions about the murder of the girl several months before and how much Crystal may have known.

Also during their time together, Crystal had gained access to Stuart’s bank account. It was never made clear to me if this was with Stuart’s approval or not, only that Crystal took it beyond a casual twenty dollars here and there for gasoline. When Stuart began to complain, and then finally told her to stop raiding his checking account, Crystal grew angry and several rather violent arguments ensued. A breakup was inevitable.

But Crystal realized if they broke up, as angry as Stuart was over the theft from his bank account, he might just go to the authorities with the information he had gleaned from her during their pillow talks: information about the murdered girl whose case had not yet been solved. Crystal, being the clever little sociopath that she was, decided it might be best if Stuart and his information just disappeared. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing, she told me.
Stuart was learning to fly and so many of their dates had involved driving out by the local airport at night and smooching in the car while watching the planes come and go. On that fateful, dark night their smooching and plane watching was interrupted by Crystal’s pistol and Stuart wound up in the trunk of the car like so much luggage. Access to his bank account was now much easier; at least until she was caught, and the information she had regarding the murder of the other girl would remain a secret.

Crystal ended up going to prison for killing Stuart and she took her secrets with her, but during her time in jail it was overheard by other girls in her dorm, that she was bragging about how Stuart was not her first kill. All of this was hearsay, of course, and never brought to light, but I, for one, never put it past her. In all my years spent working in the Yavapai County jail, that pretty, freckled, All-American girl had the most empty, emotionless eyes I have ever seen.