That's a Bad Sign

Vampire rapist John Brennan Crutchley and spree killings of Ronald Gene Simmons

December 24, 2020 Emily Winchurch & Liz Mahoney Season 1 Episode 18
That's a Bad Sign
Vampire rapist John Brennan Crutchley and spree killings of Ronald Gene Simmons
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

John Brennan Crutchley, better known as the  Vampire rapist, was a suspected serial killer who is believed to have murdered up to 30 women. Although never convicted for these crimes, one brave teenage girl was able to put him behind bars... but only after he raped her and drank half her blood. Then we get into the holiday spirit with the Christmas time killing spree of Ronald Gene Simmons. He killed 16 people in Arkansas - including his entire family.

Sources:
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Gene_Simmons
https://murderpedia.org/male.S/s1/simmons-ronald-gene.htm
https://allthatsinteresting.com/ronald-gene-simmons
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brennan_Crutchley
https://www.truecrimelabpod.com/post/johncrutchley
https://www.ranker.com/list/facts-about-john-brennan-crutchley/cat-mcauliffe
https://www.stitcher.com/show/our-weird-world-2/episode/009-john-brennan-crutchley-69726523

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Liz: [00:00:00] Welcome back guys. You're listening to, that's a bad sign. 
Emily: [00:00:03] I'm Liz and I'm Emily. And we're your hosts. And this is episode 18, 18. 
Liz: [00:00:10] I only know that because I haven't written down 
Emily: [00:00:12] to start off recommendation coroner. I believe I go first. Correct. So for my recommendation, I am doing a show called in the dark.
And it's a Netflix show and there's two seasons out already. And I believe a third one's coming out too soon and it's about a girl and she's blind and her best friend is murdered. So for some reason, the police don't have the bandwidth to look into it slash don't believe her. So she takes it upon herself to solve her best friend's murder.
It's super corny, but I found it very entertaining and I finished it in like three days and it's like, uh, Mystery suspense with the blind leading character, which I think is really interesting. 
Liz: [00:00:55] That's definitely interesting. I think I've heard of it, but I haven't watched it, but I have a lot of free time coming up with the, uh, holiday break.
So I'll definitely look into it. 
Emily: [00:01:04] Okay. There's mine. 
Liz: [00:01:05] My recommendation is the docu-series murder on middle beach. 
Emily: [00:01:09] Everyone's been telling us to watch it. 
Liz: [00:01:11] It was a little slow. The first episode. I'm not going to lie, but it gets really interesting. This family is. Messed up. I have no idea what it's about. So this w Connecticut woman gets murdered.
She happens to be in the middle of a divorce with her husband. Her husband had been CEO of a company, but then he got into some legal trouble than he was poor. So, yeah, she actually was supposed to be going to court that day when she is murdered at her house. And then more of the family comes into play.
And you find out that her sister who was an alcoholic, apparently most people in the family were an alcoholic. She actually tried to hire a Hitman one time to kill her sister, because she was so deep in this alcoholism crazy spiral. Um, but since then they had been kind of like close again. It's just, it's bizarre.
And then the mom and then the aunt, sorry, hold on. 
Emily: [00:01:59] Are you giving anything away? 
Liz: [00:02:00] No, no, no, no, no. I mean, no, there's nothing really to give away, but it's super interesting because the son is the person who's making the documentary. 
Emily: [00:02:09] Oh, the woman who was murdered son. Yes. Wow, good for him. 
Liz: [00:02:14] So that's sort of a really interesting part of it because he's interviewing his extended family, his mom's old friends, et cetera, et cetera.
Um, and he's finding out things that he never knew about his family. 
Emily: [00:02:27] Can I just ask, when did the murder take place? What year? 
Liz: [00:02:30] 2010. 
Emily: [00:02:31] And. Is it still unsolved or at the end? Do you know what happened? 
Liz: [00:02:36] It's still unsolved. No. 
Emily: [00:02:39] So that gives me anxiety. 
Liz: [00:02:40] I know that's a little bit frustrating at the end, but I mean, you can definitely watch it and come up with your own theories because I feel like I have mine.
Emily: [00:02:48] So in the dark and murder on middle beach? Yes. 
Liz: [00:02:51] That's it. Cheers guys.
this week, I am going to cover the spree killings of Robert Jean Simmons. My references include Wikipedia Murderpedia and all that's interesting.com sounds about right. Oh, and the reason that I picked this case is because this episode is coming out during Christmas week and this crime took place over a Christmas week.
Emily: [00:03:24] Woo Onfi. 
Liz: [00:03:27] Yeah. I really wanted to do a holiday murder. And can I just tell you. There are so many murders that happen around the holidays. I couldn't even believe it. 
Emily: [00:03:34] I wonder why, but also I wish you sent me one. I completely forgot. 
Liz: [00:03:38] Some of them didn't have a lot of information, but I will tell you that a lot of them were people killing their families.
Oh my God. Yeah. Wild. 
Emily: [00:03:46] Oh boy. Okay. 
Liz: [00:03:47] Anyway, this is just one. So Ronald gene Simmons was born on July 15th, 1942, Loretta and William Simmons in Chicago, Illinois. Unfortunately, just three years after Ronald was born. His father died of a stroke, but his mom Loretta remarried less than a year after her husband died.
That man was William D. Griffin, who was a civil engineer for the army Corps of engineers. So in 1946, the Corps moved Griffin and the whole family to little rock Arkansas. And after that, they kind of bopped around Arkansas state at different locations. When Ronald was 17, he dropped out of high school and he joined the us Navy.
Uh, and then he was stationed at the Naval station Bremerton in Washington state. Don't know what that is, but no. There he met Becky Ulibarri, who he ended up marrying in July, 1960 in New Mexico. So they ended up relocating to New Mexico over the next 18 years. The couple has seven children, which I was writing that.
And I was like seven children. Oh my God. But this is, that was the sixties. I don't know. I feel like people had a lot more kids. 
Emily: [00:04:51] Yeah. But still seven kids is a lot 
Liz: [00:04:54] of work so much. At one point. I don't know exactly when, but Ronald left the Navy and then he joined the air force either way. He had a 20 year career in the military.
He was actually even awarded a bronze star medal for his service as an airmen, as well as the air force ribbon to for excellent marksmanship 
Emily: [00:05:11] Markman ship. Isn't that 
Liz: [00:05:13] she would like, yeah, like having good aim. 
Emily: [00:05:16] Uh, Oh, 
Liz: [00:05:18] Foreshadowing. So on November 20th, 1979, Ronald retired from the military service with the rank of master Sergeant.
So all in all, he had a pretty successful military career. However, in April of 1981, Ronald, it came out, was being investigated by the department of health and human services in Cloudcroft, New Mexico, where they lived. Because there were allegations that he had, he was fathering a child with his 17 year old daughter, Sheila, whom he had been sexually abusing.
Emily: [00:05:45] No. 
Liz: [00:05:47] Yep. And when I read that, I was like, how did that get, you know, who reported them? Yeah. And so a different website actually said that the daughter eventually admitted to her school counselor, that she was pregnant with her dad's baby. 
Emily: [00:06:01] That is so painful. 
Liz: [00:06:03] So they opened an investigation. And then in response to this, Ronald decides to flee the state of New Mexico.
And he moved his entire family to ward Arkansas in a really remote, rural 
Emily: [00:06:13] area. I mean, obviously there's going to be a reason, but why would the wife and children go with him? 
Liz: [00:06:19] Yeah. There's like really no reason. Um, 
Emily: [00:06:22] abuse, victims and manipulation, 
Liz: [00:06:25] a lot of abuse. Apparently the people in this New Mexico town.
Said that he was always, he always had a beer in his hand. So it sounds like there was some addiction issues there as well. Oh boy. The family moves to ward Arkansas, and then to Dover Arkansas in the summer of 1983, there, the family settled on a 13 acre property that has two old mobile homes that were combined somehow to make one bigger mobile home.
There was no telephone. There was no indoor plumbing. And the property was surrounded by a makeshift fence that was as tall as 10 feet high in some places. So it sounds terrifying. 
Emily: [00:07:02] Sounds like a prison. 
Liz: [00:07:03] There were also no trespassing signs and junk cars scattered along the property. 
Emily: [00:07:09] That sounds horrible.
Liz: [00:07:10] I did read though, cause I was questioning this because there were so many kids, they did go to school. They said, I guess the kids were always clean and ready for the school bus. So the teachers never really caught on to anything weird going on, but there was a lot of weirdness because they weren't allowed to have friends over.
They weren't allowed to go to their friend's houses. It seemed like they really just kept to the family. I don't know. 
Emily: [00:07:31] Yeah. For a teacher. How would you know. 
Liz: [00:07:33] To make ends meet. Ronald worked a bunch of low paying jobs in the nearby town of Russellville. It said that he had to quit a job as a clerk in, at a motor freight company.
After there were numerous reports of inappropriate sexual advances that were reported. He also worked at a mini-mart at some point. So just not the highest paying job, especially if you're trying to support a wife and seven 
Emily: [00:07:56] that's a bad sign. Yeah. 
Liz: [00:07:58] 100%. All right. So this is where things took a turn.
I literally was just about to say, this is where things take a turn for the deadly. Like I think I am. I like it. I like it. So fast forward to 1987. It's just before Christmas. Ronald decides he's going to kill his entire family. 
Emily: [00:08:24] Why, 
Liz: [00:08:25] you know, one of the most frustrating parts about this story is that there's really no clear answer as to why.
Emily: [00:08:31] I mean, clearly he was just so messed up in the head. 
Liz: [00:08:34] So on the morning of December 22nd, Ronald drove to a nearby Walmart and purchased a 22 caliber pistol. When he returned home, he first killed his wife, Becky, and then their oldest son, gene, by shooting them both with the gun that he just purchased. Oh, 
Emily: [00:08:50] my God.
Liz: [00:08:51] I know this is in the eighties, but the fact that it was, and still is so easy for anyone to purchase a gun, really scares the shit out of me, 
Emily: [00:08:57] especially because he bought it and then turned around and immediately did this. Yeah. 
Liz: [00:09:01] So after that, God, this is so depressing. 
Emily: [00:09:04] No, no, no, no. 
Liz: [00:09:05] He strangles his three-year-old granddaughter.
Barbara. No. Whoa, 
Emily: [00:09:10] who who's his daughter? We think. 
Liz: [00:09:13] Nope. Nope. That'll come up later. Oh God. He then dumps the three bodies into assess pit that is on the property that he had forced his children to dig previously 
Emily: [00:09:24] asshole. 
Liz: [00:09:25] So then he waited for his older children to come home from school when they did it.
Ronald told them that he had presence for them and that he wanted to give them each the present one at a time by themselves. So they all had to go to their rooms. 
Emily: [00:09:38] Don't do it, do not do it. 
Liz: [00:09:40] So then he first goes to his 17 year old daughter, Loretta, his room. He strangled her and he held her under water and drown her.
Emily: [00:09:50] Oh, 
Liz: [00:09:53] the three other children, Eddie, Marianne, and Becky were all killed the same exact way. So right now that's a total of seven people. Of his own family, then a few days go by and it's December 26 around noon. And then the remaining members of the family start arriving at the Simmons home because they had a planned Christmas visit.
Like any normal family. Would 
Emily: [00:10:15] we say remaining members? You mean like his sister and 
Liz: [00:10:20] his other children they're adults and they have their own families. 
Emily: [00:10:24] Got it. And you said seven people were killed, but that was because a wife and granddaughter. So yes. Makes sense. Okay. So there's more siblings. Yep.
Liz: [00:10:33] Ronald's son Billy arrives with his daughter-in-law Renata and Ronald shoots them both like upon entering the house so 
Emily: [00:10:42] horrible. 
Liz: [00:10:43] Oh no, it gets worse. He does that in front of their 20 month old son. Who he then strangles and drowns the same way he did with his other young children. 
Emily: [00:10:54] So why does he feel need to strangle the children?
Like at least shoot them and put them out of their misery quickly? I don't 
Liz: [00:10:59] know. I was having the same question when I was reading and doing my research. Cause he does shoot all the adults and he strangles all the children. 
Emily: [00:11:05] That's horrible for the children. That's a terrible way to die. 
Liz: [00:11:09] And I feel like it's almost more personal to be doing it that way because you're so close, you know?
Emily: [00:11:13] Oh yeah. And you have to look at them and it takes a few minutes at least to do. Oh my God. 
Liz: [00:11:17] It's horrible. So shortly after he kills that little family, another group of family members arrived at the house and it's Ronald's daughter, Sheila and Sheila is the one that he had sexually abused. IL. So Sheila is there with her husband, Dennis and her daughter, Sylvia.
Who is Ronald child? 
Emily: [00:11:38] Oh no. 
Liz: [00:11:39] Incestual child. 
Emily: [00:11:41] No. Oh, 
Liz: [00:11:43] So they have that daughter and then they have their son, Michael, Sheila and Dennis were both shot basically. As soon as they entered the house, same, he did with his other son and then both children were strangled. And then after everyone is dead, Ronald lines up the corpses.
In neat rows in the living room. And he covers them with jackets. 
Emily: [00:12:03] What is going on? 
Liz: [00:12:05] I don't know. But after that, he decides to go into town to have a beer at the local bar. 
Emily: [00:12:10] Can I ask, is this Christmas day, Christmas Eve. 
Liz: [00:12:13] This is the day after Christmas 
Emily: [00:12:14] day after Christmas, 
Liz: [00:12:17] but he had killed. Those seven family members on the 22nd.
And then I don't know, left their bodies and backyard. Oh. And then killed everyone else when they came on the 26th. So this is going on over a few days span, but I don't know how, what he was doing in the four days between, 
Emily: [00:12:33] and then you said he went to the bar? 
Liz: [00:12:36] Yeah. He went to the bar. No one suspected anything.
I think he was probably a local at the bar. I would assume. So then he goes home that night and then the next day he spends hanging out in the house with all of his dead family members and he just drinking beers in the house. And that is not even where the killing spree ends. Cause now he goes beyond family.
No Ronald drives to Russellville, which is the town where he had been working. He walks into a law office and shoots and kills the receptionist who was 24 year old. Kathy Kendrick. Apparently Ronald had been infatuated with her. And Kathy had rejected him. So I don't know, this is his revenge. You can't kill someone just because they don't like you.
Emily: [00:13:16] So she deserved that she was asking for it. Yeah. Oh, crazy people. 
Liz: [00:13:22] Then after that, he goes to an oil company office and shoots a man named JD Chafin and that guy dies. And then he wounds another man named rusty Taylor. I'm not exactly sure how that wheel company ties into this, but. And that's what happened?
Emily: [00:13:37] It's like, was he targeting them or were they random? I'm 
Liz: [00:13:40] not entirely sure. It seems like. Was going from place to place. So I feel like you would have some sort of thought process there. I don't know. 
Emily: [00:13:47] I agree. It sounds like they're targeting 
Liz: [00:13:49] maybe because then the last place he goes is to the mini-mart where he used to work.
Uh, he shoots an, Oh no, sorry. That's not the last place. He goes, he goes to the mini Mart. Yes. Where he used to work and he shoots and injures two more people. Then he goes to the office of the motor freight company where he used to work. He shoots and injures another woman. And then after that he just sits down and starts chatting with one of the secretaries until the police arrive.
Emily: [00:14:14] That poor secretary was probably freaking out. 
Liz: [00:14:17] I cannot even imagine how much I would be sweating. 
Emily: [00:14:21] Okay. So what happens? The police come, 
Liz: [00:14:23] the police get to the scene, Ronald hands over the gun and just surrenders without any resistance. It's so crazy though, because he just, he never, I mean, obviously he was a horrible person because he's sexually abusing people, including his own children.
But he didn't really do anything violent that we know of up until this one point. And then he just goes off. You 
Emily: [00:14:43] might get into this, but do they have any idea of what caused all this? No. 
Liz: [00:14:48] What there's like, there's like, there's, I think there's theories, but I'm not, there was nothing like concrete. So does 
Emily: [00:14:55] it just end here?
Liz: [00:14:56] No. So he gets charged with 16 counts of murder. He's found guilty of all of them, and he gets sentenced to death as he should. 
Emily: [00:15:03] Of course. He didn't 
Liz: [00:15:05] even try to appeal his death sentence. And he says, quote to those who oppose the death penalty. In my particular case, anything short of death would be cruel and unusual punishment.
What meaning if he, he, he, he thinks he should get put to death. He's like anything less than that would be the wrong thing to do because I killed 16 people, but 
Emily: [00:15:27] emit to why you did it. What's going on. 
Liz: [00:15:30] I don't know, but while he's on death row, Ronald has to be kept separate from the other prisoners because they're all threatening to kill him.
And I was sitting there thinking there probably are a lot of murderers in there. So what's different about this guy maybe is cause he killed so many people 
Emily: [00:15:44] and his children and the babies, 
Liz: [00:15:45] but no it's because. He was refusing to fight his death sentence. They all thought that that was going to ruin their chances of overturning their own death sentences.
You know, this guy is sitting there being like, yes, I deserve it. 
Emily: [00:15:57] Why would that ruin everyone? Else's 
Liz: [00:15:59] I think because probably they're trying to argue that you probably should never be, get sentenced to death. And this guy is sitting there saying I should be sentenced to death. So he's kind of like counter arguing with what they're saying.
Oh, um, so the only theory that I read. About why he might have done this is because he was like a scorned lover. So potentially whatever this not relationship, but weird obsession infatuation with this one woman was like, maybe set him off. But I mean, obviously there's more to the story than that. We just don't know to kill his 
Emily: [00:16:34] whole family, 
Liz: [00:16:36] his entire family, including a three-year-old a 20 month 
Emily: [00:16:39] old and over a span of days.
Liz: [00:16:42] Yeah. Yeah. 
Emily: [00:16:44] Um, so did he end up getting put to death? 
Liz: [00:16:47] Yeah. So on June 25th of 1980, he was killed by lethal injection. None of his surviving relatives would claim his body. So he was buried in a Potter's field 
Emily: [00:16:59] by, I don't know what a Potter's field is. 
Liz: [00:17:01] I don't either. And I actually, I didn't mean to look that up, but I figured it was insignificant.
And just 
Emily: [00:17:05] if they're throwing him in there then probably 
Liz: [00:17:08] yeah. In the middle of nowhere, essentially, but yeah. That is the wild and horrifying killing spree of Ronald gene Simmons. It's not even, I mean, yes, it's a family Annihilator, but it's like a family and I are litter plus. 
Emily: [00:17:22] Yeah. Oh my God. Happy holidays, everybody.
Liz: [00:17:26] Like I was so depressed saying Merry Christmas Eve to you all. Um, yeah, that one, that was a really sad one, but I'm also surprised that I had never heard of it before. I hope I didn't depress you too much. 
Emily: [00:17:40] I mean, mine will just depress everyone even more, I guess. Do you have any other commentary on that?
Besides the fact that it was really sad and we should drown our sorrows and our wine? 
Liz: [00:17:49] Not really, but on that note, I have not drank enough wine to deal with that. So 
Emily: [00:17:54] I've been eyeing your 
Liz: [00:17:55] it's a full glass over here, and I definitely need to drink some of it. Mine's empty. 
Emily: [00:17:59] All right. Cheers. 
Liz: [00:18:00] Cheers.
Emily: [00:18:09] all right, Liz, my sources include. Wikipedia true crime lad POB wait. Nope. True crime lab, pod.com. So maybe that's a podcast, a ranker.com and our weird world, which is a podcast. And he only had two reviews and I listened to it and it was awesome. So I gave him the review. So just want to actually give him a big shout out.
Liz: [00:18:36] Oh wow. That's awesome. 
Emily: [00:18:38] Yeah. I thought the guy was super cool. 
Liz: [00:18:40] Okay. 
Emily: [00:18:40] So I don't want to give you, we usually start off with here's the killer in the years of the name, but I'm just going to skip all that because I don't want to give anything away. 
Liz: [00:18:49] Love it. 
Emily: [00:18:49] The years, 1985 and a woman who actually her name is unknown to this day.
She is hitchhiking because it's the eighties. That's pretty normal. And she's picked up by a man named John Brennan. Crutchley. He says, he'll take her wherever she needs to go. He just needs to stop by his house to pick up his notebook. So she agrees and they pull up to his very nice house and they're in the driveway and he offers her to come inside and she thinks it's sketchy.
So she says, it's fine. She's just going to wait in the car. So he leaves the car and then he closes the door and then goes around to the passenger side. And he opens the car door and puts a rope around her neck and starts to set up I her, 
Liz: [00:19:31] Oh, no. As soon as he started walking towards the passenger side of the car.
Yeah. 
Emily: [00:19:37] So she doesn't die, but she passes out. He brings her body inside. And when she comes to, she is lying on top of his Island kitchen. Tied down to it. And there are lights and cameras. Like it's a production set surrounding her 
Liz: [00:19:53] ill. I have actual chills. 
Emily: [00:19:55] So she comes too, and she knows all the cameras, like I said, and he immediately just starts brutally raping her and videotaping it after you're doing that for a few hours.
He takes out needles. I you'd see at a doctor's office and he sticks multiple in her arm and he starts draining her blood. Then when he has enough, he starts drinking her blood in front of her, the poor, Oh, I don't know if I mentioned this. She's a teenager. So this teenager is naked watching this man drink her blood.
And he starts telling her that he is a vampire and this is his way to cleanse the soul. 
Liz: [00:20:33] This is a real story. 
Emily: [00:20:35] Yes. It just straight out of a horror 
Liz: [00:20:37] movie. Oh my God. 
Emily: [00:20:39] Also, I'm not looking at my notes because I know this story so well, so let me just quickly glance at them to make sure I'm not missing anything.
Okay. Yes. So after this happens, he locks her into his bathroom. And he throws her in the bathtub and he uses two pairs of handcuffs, one on her wrist and one on her ankles. And he just leaves her in the bathtub and she lost so much blood. So obviously this girl who is a teenager is exhausted. 
Liz: [00:21:04] She has, she's probably like passing out.
Yeah, exactly. 
Emily: [00:21:07] So he comes back hours later and he brings her back to the kitchen Island and he does the same thing again. Then he throws her in the bathroom, throws her in the bathtub and . He comes back a third time, the next morning. So 20 hours have passed and she first got there and he does the same thing, rape and drink her blood.
And then he puts her in the bathroom. But this time he says, I need to leave. Do not try to escape my brother's here and he will kill you. And then he goes on to tell her when I get back, we're going to continue this rape and blood drinking ritual that we got going on. 
Liz: [00:21:49] I, this is really disturbing trouble.
Emily: [00:21:52] So the girl he leaves and the girl, just things I'm going to die, regardless if he does it or his brother does it. So I'm going to try to escape. She's in the bathtub and she hears the car start to leave. Like, you know, when you hear the car in the driveway. So she manages to get up and she looks out this tiny window and she sees him drive away.
So she decides she's going to get out. So she opens the window because luckily the window lock, it was locked from the outside, but the window lock was broken. So she opens the window slightly. She came and get open all the way because she's lost so much blood and she pushes her away through the window.
Liz: [00:22:34] Oh my God. 
Emily: [00:22:36] Two things here. One, the window is so small that when investigators went back to look later, they were baffled by the fact that she could get through it. They honestly didn't know how her body could fit. Maybe because she lost so much blood. It probably made her really thin. I don't know. And then the other thing is, I don't know if this was the first or second story and I try to look it up and I couldn't find any details, but the girl got through the window being handcuffed and half naked.
She was actually naked and she had a towel and then she got out. So I'm guessing it's the first floor. 
Liz: [00:23:09] I would think probably if you're going to like. I'm sure she didn't have a lot of energy to be like jumping on. 
Emily: [00:23:15] Yeah. Who knows? But I mean, regardless of the amazing that she got out, so she's out of the house finally, but she still has her handcuffs on her wrists and her legs.
So all she can do is crawl. She came and walk. 
Liz: [00:23:28] That's so sad 
Emily: [00:23:29] and she crawls to the, the road and she's waiting for someone to stop and multiple cars keep driving by. What 
Liz: [00:23:37] is with this? I feel like you mentioned this in one of your other stories. 
Emily: [00:23:42] I'm pretty sure last episode or when I did Mary Vincent. Yes.
So last episode I covered this. I'm not going to go into it, but the same thing, a woman who is distressed, naked, and clearly very violently abused people drove by. So I think that should be our recommendation. If a woman is naked on the side of the road, help her 
Liz: [00:24:02] at the very least. Call the cops. Yes. Don't just, how could you just continue on your day?
Emily: [00:24:08] Well, people drive by her until a man pulls up and he instantly brings her into the car and he brings her to the hospital. But before they leave this girl turns to the man and points to the house that she just crawled out of. And she said, there's a man in there and he's been raping me and drinking my blood.
Please don't forget that house. Good for her. She's so smart. 
Liz: [00:24:30] Incredible. 
Emily: [00:24:31] They get to the hospital and the doctors take care of her. She tells her story and the man who picked her up, tells the story as well and gives the coordinates of the house and the doctors. They instantly believe her because they realize that this woman is missing 45% of her blood.
45% black. Wow. And she doesn't have any injuries. And she has these marks in our arms. So they say yes, someone would have had to drain this blood out of her. And another doctor's looking at her and said, if she didn't get medical attention, she would have died within the next 12 hours hours. 
Liz: [00:25:07] I'm just like sitting here in shock because the story is crazy.
Emily: [00:25:11] The dog and the police believe her and they're ready to go to the house. And she says, No, I don't want to press charges. I never want to see this man again. And she's so traumatized that she doesn't want to confront this guy. She just wants it to be over, which is even more sad. Like how traumatizes young girl was a teenager like that.
She was even willing to go to the cops. She just wanted it to be over. But the cops apparently convinced her and they say, he's going to do this again. 
Liz: [00:25:42] I feel like once you get to the, like, this could be another girl. 
Emily: [00:25:45] Yeah. 
Liz: [00:25:46] That's when you really break through to the person. 
Emily: [00:25:49] So the police go to his home and they arrest him immediately and they searched the place.
Whoever he saying, look, I'm a married man, and this is just a misunderstanding because this was all consensual. So this young girl was actually a sex worker and I picked her up and she was a Manson girl. Cause you know, the Charles Manson stuff just happens. We just throwing around a buzzword and he saying, this Manson girl came on to me.
And we're just having some kinky sex, but I want you to keep this on the down low because my wife and child are out of town for the holidays. So this is around Thanksgiving. Oh, You and 
Liz: [00:26:28] I, you didn't even realize you were doing a holiday. I want a new, did 
Emily: [00:26:32] this holiday theme episode, but he said, let's keep this on the down low.
I'm just having an affair. That's all this. He says, 
Liz: [00:26:38] I'm sorry. I'm my blood is like literally boiling right now. The fact that a man can even make that excuse is so out of control. 
Emily: [00:26:44] Oh, the police two things. The police aren't buying it. Thank God. No, no, no. The police are, do not like him. And the other thing is my first episode, the first serial killer I did.
He bit off a woman's nipple. And he also claimed, Oh no, she was asking for it. These men that just brutally beat women and say, no, no, she wanted it. There's a special place in hell for them. 
Liz: [00:27:09] Also. Nobody wants that. 
Emily: [00:27:11] Nobody wants someone to take your blood and then drink it in front of me. Oh no, 
Liz: [00:27:15] no. 
Emily: [00:27:16] During the police's initial search, they find the video camera and the light equipment that the young woman described and they find her DNA there.
So they know she's telling the truth. However, the video camera, the tape has been wiped clean, so they don't witness the rape and the blood drinking. They still believe her, but they don't have evidence. 
Liz: [00:27:34] I'm sure. As soon as he got home and realized that she was gone, he had time to get rid of everything.
Emily: [00:27:39] Oh, of course. Please also find a stack of credit cards, which were several inches thick. Which isn't illegal, but it doesn't look good. 
Liz: [00:27:50] That is suspicious. 
Emily: [00:27:51] That that's a bad sign. 
Liz: [00:27:53] I was going to say that's a bad sign, but honestly there's been nothing good about this entire story. There's been no good signs.
It's all been bad tabs 
Emily: [00:28:00] from the start. They find a collection of woman's necklaces hidden in his closet 
Liz: [00:28:07] trophies 
Emily: [00:28:07] trophies, but also he has a wife. So it's. It 
Liz: [00:28:11] could be it's like circumstantial , 
Emily: [00:28:14] but then they find cards, like little index cards with women's names on them and their sexual performances. 
Liz: [00:28:22] Not that I want to know the details, but what do you mean by 
Emily: [00:28:24] that?
So I don't necessarily know, but all I know is that the police contacted each of these woman. And some of the women said this guy's into really kinky things. I am too. I had a kinky relationship with him and yet we did some weird like BDSM stuff. So he would take notes about each woman and what he did with them.
So I don't know, like this woman, we, I don't know, nipple clamps, this woman whip, this woman drowning, like he had his BDSM notes on each woman. But some of the woman said, yes, I had sex with him and started off because we met on some website and we want to have like consensual kinky sex. However, there's always a safe word that you have.
And I said my safe word and he completely ignored it. So it quickly went from something being consensual to actually being abuse, rape. Because, and, but those women never could report it because they went into his home and they agreed to have sex, 
Liz: [00:29:19] like who had ever believed them. 
Emily: [00:29:21] Exactly. But yes, if you have a safe word and he ignores it and just starts completely still hurting you, then, then that is a rape and that is abuse.
Also, sorry. Do you watch how he met your mother? 
Liz: [00:29:34] I haven't seen all the episodes. I've seen a bunch though. I don't know if I'm going to know the reference you were about to bring up though. All 
Emily: [00:29:39] right. Well, I've seen it probably fi I've seen the whole series probably five to six times. I'm obsessed with it, but there was an episode where Robin is dating Barney and they're talking about their sex life.
And he says something like, I'm sorry. If I went too far there. Talking about saying, I love you. And she says, Oh no, it's okay. As long as I don't say flugelhorn you haven't gone too far. 
Liz: [00:29:59] Oh yeah. I've I don't know. 
Emily: [00:30:02] I'm sorry, is this weird? I'm bringing this 
Liz: [00:30:04] Blueboard, uh, you know, tying it into pop culture. 
Emily: [00:30:07] So the police have have enough to arrest him.
However, they still want to bring in the FBI because it's way out of their depth here. So they bring in Robert wrestler. And you all may know him as the FBI agent who played a significant role in psychologically profiling, violent offenders in the seventies. And he's the one who's credited with the term serial killer.
Liz: [00:30:32] Oh yeah. An icon. 
Emily: [00:30:33] So wrestler interviews Crutchley and he is convinced that Crutchley has most certainly killed before. And he identifies him as a quote, serial killer of the organized type. It just doesn't sound 
Liz: [00:30:46] good. No, it doesn't 
Emily: [00:30:48] also wrestler. The FBI profiler did a ton of researching into crushed Lee's background.
And he found that I, one point crunchy lived in Fairfax County, Virginia in the mid seventies. And guess what a ton of teenage girls went missing during that time also in 1977, a 25 year old secretary Deborra Fitzjohn went missing and she turned out to be. Crutchley his girlfriend and he was the last person to see you're alive.
Also when he was living in Pennsylvania, a ton of young women went missing there and invests. His name has come up in investigations, linked to the Lyon sisters in Wheaton, Maryland, and a possible rape murder of teenage Cathy Lynn BD and nearby Aspen Hill where his second wife's family lived. His name came up in that investigation.
Liz: [00:31:40] This is crazy that he's never actually been detained. 
Emily: [00:31:43] He's never been caught. They never had enough evidence against him. So now they have enough on this rape and this FBI agent is coming forward saying his psychological profile shows he's this hero killer. And although it's never been proved, he has most likely killed all these woman because everywhere he goes, women disappear.
Liz: [00:32:02] Yeah. And he's like flying under the radar. 
Emily: [00:32:04] Totally. So in June, 1986. So this is a few months after this incident occurred. He pleads guilty on kidnapping and rape charges. In exchange for, he says all avoid going to court. If you drop the grievous bodily harm charge for extracting the woman's Ballade.
Liz: [00:32:25] Sorry, I don't really have words for that because how can you drop that charge? How that's disturbing 
Emily: [00:32:31] clearly this woman didn't even want to prosecute. So to get her through a trial, 
Liz: [00:32:34] no, till I totally get it, but it's just, that's such a scary detail to leave out of. 
Emily: [00:32:42] Agreed. Agreed. Agreed. But. And honestly it's on the up and up from here.
Okay, great. So there's no trial, but there is a sentencing hearing. And at the sentencing hearing, his wife refuses to go on the stand. However, she then later talks to the press later that day. Now, even like years later, later that day, and she tells the press, my husband is innocent. He's just sort of the quote.
A kinky sort of guy. 
Liz: [00:33:10] No, no, honey, he's not. 
Emily: [00:33:13] She also called it an affair and said, I can't make this up. Quote, it was a gentle rape devoid of Amy overt brutality. 
Liz: [00:33:24] Why a gentle rape, a 
Emily: [00:33:26] gentle rip. You should never use those terms to work. 
Liz: [00:33:28] No, that's not a thing. 
Emily: [00:33:30] Crutchley takes the stand. And the blood drinking comes up.
I think the judge asked him about it and he says he was introduced to blood drinking in the seventies by a nurse. And it was a way for them to purify themselves during these sexual acts. And at the end of the day, it shouldn't be taken consideration during this. K is because he actually never drank the teenager's blood.
He said that he couldn't get it down because it cog 
Liz: [00:33:58] calculating coagulated 
Emily: [00:34:00] coagulated. So he said, yeah, I might have taken the blood, but I didn't drink it. So let's leave that off the table. 
Liz: [00:34:06] No. 
Emily: [00:34:07] So he gets on the stand and says all this crazy nonsense and then wrestler the FBI agent. I mentioned also gets on the stand and he gives his opinion about Crutchley essentially saying this man's crazy.
And I think he's a serial killer. So the judge based on hearing these two testimony exceeds the state guidelines and sentences Crutchley to 25 years to life in prison with 50 years of subsequent parole. 
Liz: [00:34:33] That's a good judge. So we like this job. 
Emily: [00:34:35] Yeah. But it doesn't end there. After serving 11 years of his sentence Crutchley was released in 1996 for good behavior.
Liz: [00:34:45] No. 11 years, that's less than half of the minimum sentence that he was given. 
Emily: [00:34:51] Yes. So 11 years, but then he has to serve 50 years of parole. And on his first day of parole, they do a drug test and he fails for marijuana. 
Liz: [00:35:01] What a moron. 
Emily: [00:35:02] So they send it back to prison and they say, that's your third strike.
Your first was kidnapping. Your second was rape. And your third is marijuana use. So now you're going to prison for life. 
Liz: [00:35:15] Let's go 
Emily: [00:35:16] on March 30th, 2002, crushed Lee died in prison. Who's found dead in his cell with a plastic bag over his head. And his cause of death was ruled. Autoerotic asphyxiation, 
Liz: [00:35:29] very fitting.
Emily: [00:35:30] Right. I'm not surprised he went out that way. 
Liz: [00:35:32] How did you find that story? I have, 
Emily: [00:35:34] so I actually first heard it on an episode of my favorite murder, but that was a while I remember hearing 
Liz: [00:35:40] it on there. 
Emily: [00:35:40] The whole thing is nuts. 
Liz: [00:35:42] I cannot believe anything about that actually, but it feels like an episode of criminal minds and it might've been because I feel like they base all their shows off of real things.
Um, 
Emily: [00:35:53] well, 
Liz: [00:35:54] Watches. Cheers. I think cheers to a really horrifying episode. Sorry to do this to you guys during the holidays, but, 
Emily: [00:36:01] but Merry Christmas, 
Liz: [00:36:03] happy Hanukkah. All the above. .

Murder start