Found Deceased TX - Crystal Seratte McDowell, 38, Baytown, 25 Aug 2017 #2 *Arrest*

DNA Solves
DNA Solves
DNA Solves
Status
Not open for further replies.
ExpressJet

Although she only became a realtor about a year ago, Crystal is already bringing in tens of thousands of dollars in revenue each month for the company, Jeff told Dateline. Prior to becoming a realtor, she had been a flight attendant for ExpressJet for several years.

Jeff works as a supervisor and said his niece had both a showing and a closing Friday. It’s unclear if she made it to either appointment.

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/mis...sing-realtor-crystal-seratte-mcdowell-n796691
 
Yes, this doesn't make sense to me. Unless that's how she planned to introduce him to the kids before the cruise?

I think that Crystal was probably telling everyone different things and she finally ran into a corner and all of these things were supposed to happen at once. This whole thing of who she was spending the storm with, along with the cruise. Did she tell the ex she would be with the kids and the boyfriend that she would be with him?

The cruise sounds like it could have caused her a lot of issues... I guess it all depends on whether her ex knew he wasn't going; did she really change the reservation to her boyfriend's name; did the boyfriend think he was going but it was really the ex because she misled him on the cruise?

Any chance she just got tired of keeping up with both lives? I wonder if she has a history of depression or mental illness of any sort.

Part of me wonders if she left too. At some point when you keep too many balls in the air they crash down.


J.M.O.
 
Me too! Nothing he says makes sense.

I am pretty sure he said last night that he took the stills of the security footage with his phone.

Interesting. Didn't someone here suggest yesterday that that would explain the poor quality? And then he said it? Maybe he's reading here.
 
Man, seriously starting to think that even if this poor woman's body was found 10 feet from PBP some of ya'll would be demanding proof that the boyfriend didn't know the ex worked there. :facepalm:

Lol. I agree....I think they could lock someone up that confessed and they will be steadfast it's the BF


J.M.O.
 
Quite frankly I hope she left, because that means there's a chance she'll come back to her children and all the people that love her.
 
The boyfriend told CrimeOnline that he went straight to work not long after Crystal left that Friday morning, and worked a long shift at his store that day. He said security cameras near his home and at the store would corroborate this, and that police were at the store on Labor Day downloading surveillance footage to confirm his alibi. CrimeOnline was unable to reach the police to confirm this, and Walters told us he knew nothing about it, and that he does not know Hargrave very well.

As CrimeOnline previously reported, Walters, who works with his niece at a real estate agency, first reported her missing on the Saturday after she was last seen. He told CBS News that Crystal’s ex-husband showed him a text message from Crystal in which she said she was taking their children to go to Dallas and ride out the storm.

“He showed me a message on his phone where she said she was going to get the kids and go to Dallas. I have reservations about believing that she sent that message,” Walters told CBS News, adding, “I have strong feelings about what’s happened but I’d rather not voice them right now.”

When asked to elaborate on that text message, Walters confirmed that he had seen the message himself but declined to say anything further.

“I’m letting the police handle it,” he said.

Crystal’s husband did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

http://www.crimeonline.com/2017/09/...continues-boyfriend-shares-her-last-messages/
 
I understand your point. And I am not a parent. But I also think we just don't know enough about the situation. A friend of mine is getting divorced, but they all live together. The kids know that mommy and daddy are not together, but still love them very much. I have a lot of respect for single parents, and while some of them make terrible decisions with things like this, many do not. She may have known him for a while now. We just don't know.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

We don't know that her kids even knew that the parents weren't together anymore. But even if they did, they are young and don't understand complex things like adult relationships. All they know is that mom and dad live in the same house and so nothing is any different to them. And even if they knew about the divorce and understood wholly what "not together" means, when the parents live in the same home and present themselves as a happily married couple, the kids will have hope that their family will stay together.

Changing a family vacation to bring along mommy's new "friend" instead of daddy would be so confusing for those kids. I find that to be a downright cruel thing to do. Even if they NEVER were told daddy was going, if they all lived together and everyone but dad went, and then mommy has a new friend, those kids are going to wonder why dad stayed home.
 
Did her uncle actually talk to her on Friday and hear her voice or did they text? If he actually heard her voice then all the dates on the video still would seem irrelevant I think.
 
Quite frankly I hope she left, because that means there's a chance she'll come back to her children and all the people that love her.

Yes me too, and I've considered that. But I would have thought she'd contact the ex to let him know she's ok and she's taken off for time to think. ...for the sake of her children.
 
Reading the transcript right now. Bf says they got footage from Monday-Friday. I wonder if the date on all those videos are off by 6 days as well.

I also see that he mentioned getting the footage off his DVR. I thought so. I figured he had it saved to the Dvr in his home, not at a server located elsewhere. In that case, what was the delay in turning the footage over? As I said, if the police wanted my camera footage they would need only to take the dvr to the station and plug it into a TV. Easy as pie.

So, why did he only give screenshots at first, then turn over the dvr four or five days later? Deleting footage? Alarm bells ringing for me.

He also mentions an IT guy. For what? Those security cameras look crappy, so they're likely cheap. Anyone here could set them up right out of the box. Mount the cameras and plug them into the back of the dvr. Connect the dvr to a tv, and viola you're done.

It seems too that he is saying that the inside cameras upload to the cloud, as a way to explain why the outside camera has a way-off time stamp. It's dubious at best that some footage would save to the cloud and some would save locally, unless he had two different systems hooked up. If so, why? And why would he want footage of his home to upload to the cloud, when there's the potential of either of them caught on camera walking around in various states of undress?

Maybe the 8/19 isn't a mistake -- I don't see how it could be honestly-- but that was the only clear footage he had of her leaving the house lately. Maybe there's no actual footage of her leaving on the 25th because she didn't leave under her own power.

It seems to me that footage doesn't prove she drove off on Friday morning. It makes me think the opposite. If she's there Thursday night and no one got any communication from her Friday, except by text -- text that recipients say didn't sound like her, maybe it wasn't from her. If she was at his apartment, her phone was too.

Something else that I found weird: the sheriff said she'd been living with her boyfriend and her ex sometimes. Did he make a mistake or was she pretty much living with the bf, rather than the ex as was said in the beginning? I was under the impression that she lived with the ex and occasionally stayed with the bf, but it seems like it might be the other way around? Thought the ex might be jealous that she stayed with the bf sometimes. But maybe the bf pretty much considered them to be living together and he was jealous that she wasn't as committed if she sometimes stayed with her ex.

I also think someone here said the boyfriend said she spent two nights with him. Sorry I don't have time to look right now. Maybe I'm mistaken, but if I'm not, then she was with the bf Wednesday night as well.

Did she go to work on Thursday? Did anyone else see or talk to her Thursday?

Motive? Jealousy? Maybe she was going to cancel the trips? Sure the Wednesday messages sound lovey-dovey, but if she was with the bf, he had access to send them. That's especially so since he claimed her phone was malfunctioning and he was going to give her a replacement. Maybe he convinced her to give him her phone with the promise that he would get it fixed and did give her his spare. If she wasn't working Thursday or Friday, a day or so without her regular number probably wouldn't be a huge deal

Frankly, I find it odd that in the short time she'd been with him, both her phone and her computer started malfunctioning. Conveniently he claimed to have replacements for both. Could he have sabotaged both? Did he went her to use his laptop so he could track her communications with a keylogger? And an old phone of his, he would surely have the password to, to see who she might be communicating with.

Someone else said this smells like a setup to point the police towards the ex. I wonder.

I just don't believe the camera footage explanation at all. If the footage is a lie, why? Unless it's to cover up something bad that happened.

ETA: if the boyfriend said Crystal was going to ride out the storm at home, why would she want to ride it out with him and not her kids? It seems like she'd want to be with the kids at a scary time for them.

Wait. Does he have two DVR's? One for outside cameras and one for inside? If he only has one, isn't that what records the date and time stamp?

I agree - why would she go anywhere but to be with her kids during a bad storm. Especially since it sounds like the ex's area flooded a lot if he had to be helicoptered out for the polygraph test.
 
Yes someone had suggested he took the still pics from the video with his phone! In the other thread! They were spot on!
 
Yes someone had suggested he took the still pics from the video with his phone! In the other thread! They were spot on!

And he said it after they suggested that, right? I hope he didn't decide that was a great excuse from reading it here...
 
Yes me too, and I've considered that. But I would have thought she'd contact the ex to let him know she's ok and she's taken off for time to think. ...for the sake of her children.

I don't think she left on her own. But, just to play devil's advocate, let's say she did leave to clear her head. If she left voluntarily, she might now be afraid to come forward since it's blown up into a national story, with police and search parties, as well as maybe the FBI being involved. Not to mention her private life having been dragged out to the public.

Something like that could cause more stress and encourage her to lay low and not have to deal with things.

It happened recently with the girl who went missing voluntarily from the Raleigh airport Starbucks.

While it's possible, there's too many weird things in this case to make me think she left of her own accord.
 
The good news is that the weather here is absolutely beautiful today. Crisp air, low humidity, and not a cloud in the sky. If it were any other day I imagine the searchers would die of heat exhaustion.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Members online

Online statistics

Members online
167
Guests online
1,775
Total visitors
1,942

Forum statistics

Threads
602,043
Messages
18,133,821
Members
231,218
Latest member
mygrowingbranches
Back
Top