Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - 6 Disturbing Details of Family's Bloody Triple Murder

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this law and crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Brian Crossman was a friend and a neighbor, a hardworking community member who just this year stepped up to join the PolitSelect Party. A community is mourning after Brian Crossman, his new wife and her son are murdered in cold blood. Now Vermont State Police say Brian Crossman's his new wife and her son are murdered in cold blood. Now Vermont state police say Brian Crossman's son is the killer. I lay out the evidence with a retired detective.

Starting point is 00:00:32 Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Imagine going out on a walk in the woods late at night and returning home to find your father, his new wife and her son all shot to death. It would be shocking, terrifying, horrifying, really. That's what 22-year-old Brian Crossman told police happened to him on September 15th in the town of Paulette in Vermont near the New York state line. But Vermont State Police would later say the story was all a lie.

Starting point is 00:01:00 Police say Brian Crossman Jr. called police around 4 a.m. on September 15th and agreed to meet police at a school. The officer found Brian Crossman Jr. called police around 4 a.m. on September 15th and agreed to meet police at a school. The officer found Brian Crossman Jr. covered in blood. A photo of the clothes he was wearing was included in an affidavit. Police say Crossman Jr. said he found his dad, his stepmother and her son dead in the house and that there were several shotguns in the house covered in blood. The affidavit states, Crossman Jr. was asked what occurred and he advised that he had left the residence around midnight to go for a walk. When he returned from his walk, he located his family dead. Crossman Jr. reported he attempted to drag his father, later identified as Brian Crossman Sr. outside the residence, which is why he was covered in blood.

Starting point is 00:01:46 Corporal Duca asked Crossman Jr. how many people were in the residence, and Crossman Jr. reported there were three individuals deceased in the residence. When police went to the house, they found an awful, horrific scene. Brian Crossman Sr., his wife, Erica Palusiak Crossman, and her 13-year-old son, who went by the nickname Tex, were all dead. Brian and Erica had just been married in July. An affidavit says, Upon arrival, Corporal Duca observed an open door with a UTV-style vehicle backed up to the door. Outside this door, Corporal Duca observed a deceased male. This male was later identified as Crossman Sr. Corporal Duca observed a significant amount of blood inside the doorway and what appeared to be a semi-automatic pistol on the floor inside the doorway.

Starting point is 00:02:37 When the officers went inside the home, they found a bloody crime scene. Officers wrote, Corporal Duca and Granville PD officers entered the residence through a separate door away from Crossman Sr. and Trooper Duca observed several shotguns, including one on the couch and one on the kitchen table. As Corporal Duca continued in the residence, he observed a significant amount of blood and bodily fluid throughout the residence. Corporal Duca reported he observed what appeared to be several 20-gauge spent cartridge casings, including one in a downstairs bedroom and one in an upstairs bedroom. After finding Brian Crossman Sr. shot to death outside of the home, officers found Erica Crossman and her son shot inside the house. Corporal Duca advised that he observed several

Starting point is 00:03:23 additional shotguns in a downstairs bedroom. In an adjacent downstairs bedroom, Corporal Duca advised that he observed several additional shotguns in a downstairs bedroom. In an adjacent downstairs bedroom, Corporal Duca located a deceased female, later identified as Erica Crossman, who was laying nude on a bed. In an upstairs bedroom, Duca observed what he believed was a juvenile male, later identified juvenile CT deceased, on the floor. In the same bedroom, Duca observed an open gun cabinet and what appeared to be an additional shotgun on the floor. Since Brian Crossman Jr. found the bodies, he was the most important person that police could interview, and he was covered in blood. The affidavit lays out some of what he told police and why he had blood on him.

Starting point is 00:04:01 Brian Crossman Jr. advised that he attempted to get his father into a side-by-side and drive him to his grandmother's house across the street to notify her. He advised he changed his mind about this and only dragged his father outside. He advised he attempted to call 911 several times but was unable to. Crossman Jr. advised he had changed his clothing and there was additional bloody clothing at the residence. Brian Crossman Jr.'s claim that he tried to call 911 several times but was unable to was likely a red flag for detectives. They can easily check that out. Police wrote about what Crossman told them about going for a walk at midnight.

Starting point is 00:04:39 He stated, sometimes I'm gone for hours on end. I just like to put my headphones on. And he used a hand gesture to show putting on his headphones, walk around town and just listen to music, listen to podcasts. It's kind of like a, I vibe with myself or whatever you call it. At one point, Crossman Jr. said he was not injured and asked, so what's going to happen? Am I going to like go to the hospital or go to jail? Or am I going to go with my aunt or just go home? Crossman's mother would later tell police that he didn't go for walks late at night. And police said they found a pair of headphones in the spare bedroom of the house. Police said they found a total of four guns all retrieved from the family's gun room,

Starting point is 00:05:20 lying around the house, two of which appeared to have malfunctioned. On the morning of the murder, police said Crossman Jr. texted his mom that something bad happened. He loved her, and he's currently answering questions from police. Crossman was only staying at his dad's for the weekend, and he hadn't done so in years. His mom said she didn't want him staying home alone. Police interviewed Brian Crossman Jr.'s grandmother, and she actually said she thought he would be capable of doing something like this and that he knew how to use guns. An officer wrote about what his grandmother told police. Crossman Jr. was stated to have a troubled relationship with Crossman Sr. due to Crossman Jr.'s mental health and learning disability. It continued, C. Crossman described Crossman Jr. as never

Starting point is 00:06:05 fitting in with others since he was little. He never had any friends and didn't socialize with anyone else. Crossman's mother told police he had mental health issues over the years, and she believed he'd been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Brian Crossman Jr. now faces three counts of aggravated murder, and the community in Paulette is grieving, shocked by the senselessness and brutality of the crime. Ryan Crossman was a friend and a neighbor, a hardworking community member who just this year stepped up to join the Paulette Select Board. This tragedy that has struck him and his family also hit our community very hard. We are all shaken and grieving. Our hearts go out to

Starting point is 00:06:45 everyone affected by this devastating loss. The town of Pollitt will work to get through this as we always have through hard times by supporting each other and doing our best to carry on the Pollitt Slack Board. Please let's have a moment of silence. The murders of the Crossmans is a horrible, horrifying story, and it would require a really good lawyer for Brian Crossman Jr. Well, Paul Berggren, he was the lawyer who could get you out of any sticky situation. Caught selling pirated videos like Queen Latifah? Caught stabbing your spouse nine times with a steak knife? Better call Paul. We saw lawyers like this in The Sopranos or Breaking Bad, but what happens when those fictional lawyers exist in the real world?

Starting point is 00:07:27 Paul Bergeron was a master lawyer who knew the system inside out. But when an FBI agent finds traces of Bergeron's involvement in a massive drug ring, questions start to arise about how Paul achieved his dominance. In Wondery's true crime podcast, criminal attorney host Jinx Jenkins will tell you the true story of how Paul Berggren went from representing others in court to representing himself. Follow criminal attorney on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to criminal attorney early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus. I want to bring in retired NYPD detective David Sarney. David, this crime is absolutely awful, shocking. I mean, this guy, he meets up with police and he's covered in blood. Yeah, it's an unusual circumstance that you don't get the caller to actually meet up with the police

Starting point is 00:08:21 and he meets him up. He's almost hit. He's covered top from shirt down to his pants and blood. And then he's talking about his parents being, you know, his dad dying. So now you're like, what's going on? So the detectives, the cops respond to the scene. We're very smart. I don't know the protocols for a body camera video and how they deal with complainants or witnesses, but having a body camera on is one of the best things that could

Starting point is 00:08:45 be officers on scene could have done when they met up with the subject in this case at this point. Yeah, because not only are they documenting what he looks like when they first encounter him, but he tells this story about going out for a walk and he says it's something he does commonly and he comes home after this walk, you know, with his headphones on and he finds everybody dead. And then later on, the family and the mom says, well, no, he doesn't do that. He's usually in bed by that time. So that was a huge red flag right there. The brutality of this is just absolutely stunning to me. Family members had said he actually liked Erica, his stepmother.

Starting point is 00:09:29 He had bonded with her in some ways, but obviously there was a lot of tension with his father. Yeah. Apparently very deep-seated anger toward his father for whatever reason. And it's a bloody scene to realize it. I don't think people realize the amount of blood at crime scenes at times, especially you have three people being shot, shotgun, shotgun causing extensive bodily damages and blood spatter everywhere and blood flowing everywhere. It's just, it's a horrific scene. And, you know, one of the benefits is the, the defendant now in

Starting point is 00:10:03 this case gives that story. And the best thing investigators always do is they're not going to determine at that point if he's lying or not. They're going to find ways to either corroborate the story he's telling you through interviews, through their investigation. And it was found to be what he said. And he was locked into that statement at a point that it was it was a lie. And that's the best way to do it, to find out lies is not sit there with this, you know, this magic potion. It's sort of refuted by the evidence available. And that's what happened here. What does it tell you that he tried to take the body out of the house?

Starting point is 00:10:39 I mean, he told the police that he was trying to take the body, I guess, to his grandma's, which was nearby for some type of help. I mean, I just can't even imagine. But what does this tell you? Because he, according to police, claims he drags the body outside. But what does that tell you? He then just leaves it kind of there. I think there's a speculation at this point and seeing the storyline and what he's saying and where the bodies with the father's recovered, that he thought he can clean the crime scene up and remove the bodies.

Starting point is 00:11:15 And I think he realized after all the blood that's around on him, apparently the second pair of clothes, second set of clothes, it says blood on it. He changed into that clothing. He thought he could just take the body out. But with these type of horrific shotgun injuries, you know, they're dead. He couldn't hide that story. So I think it just fell apart with him trying to remove one of the bodies at that point. I think his father was going to be the first one and then move out accordingly. That's what it seems to be. And he found that he couldn't do it.

Starting point is 00:11:45 And I think that's where his story starts falling apart that he went to take, you know, his known dead father and try to put him in the car and take him somewhere to a family, to, you know, to someone else. It doesn't make any sense. And I think that's where, you know, he starts realizing his story's falling apart. And then he stops talking to the investigators at that point. There's another part of this that's really odd. The fact that, and it's very sad too, he wasn't really somebody who visited his dad a whole lot. He was only there because his mom had gone out of town for the weekend. This is according to his mother, what she told law enforcement.

Starting point is 00:12:21 And so he's staying with his father and his father's new wife and the teenage boy. This is just kind of a once in a blue moon type of thing because his mother didn't want him home alone for the weekend. He's 22 years old and he's got some major issues, possibly diagnosed, she said, with schizophrenia. So he goes to stay with them for the weekend and then police say, this happens. Yeah. Yeah. And the father had always a volatile relationship with the son anyway. He hadn't been there in a while. This is the first time they've seen him in a while that he stayed at the residence. I believe the father picked him up, brought him back to his, brought him over, brought him to the house. They couldn't determine that. I think from

Starting point is 00:13:03 the story, it looks like, you know, the father did bring him over. brought him to the house. They couldn't determine that. I think from the story, it looks like the father did bring him over. Whatever transpired within the amount of time he's there, and he's not there for like six or seven days. He's there maybe 12, 14, 16 hours. And all that pent up anger. And

Starting point is 00:13:19 when you talk about mental illness, you have to really gauge that because he's not truly diagnosed. They say they think, they think, they think, they think. But the reality is, you know, it looks like it was very planned. It was, you know, he planned a story. The story falls apart because he did not realize how, you know, how bad your innocence of proven guilty in the court of law, but the evidence is very damning, very damaging to his story. His belief that he was out in the field looking at deer at night for a few hours.

Starting point is 00:13:55 And he said he had his earphone. He was listening to music and his podcast. But then they find his his headphones up in his bedroom, which is pristine as far as blood's concerned. And, you know, this is where everything, you know, the detectives and investigators involved in this, the forensic investigators with the cell phone and the triangulation of that phone, the geolocation, plus you're dealing with his father's vehicle. And, you know, they have a GPS in that vehicle on how it turns on and off and where it is that's beneficial to this case because it takes that story that was generated originally refutes everything by the evidence available at the time of what you have right now and you know as i go back to this we we can't excuse uh a person's illness. His hatred for his father was extensive.

Starting point is 00:14:46 He did the right thing by taking his son in for that weekend. And the end result is he, his wife, and his stepson are dead. And it looks very much like the son was the one who did it. And it's tragic. He just tried to do the right thing, you know, to be somehow with the son, even though they had that bad relationship, he still took them in to do for that, just to make him, you know, maybe something was going to come of it. Maybe he thought it was, but now you have three dead people and families devastated by this. Yeah. It's absolutely devastating. I mean, the teenage boy, the son of Erica, murdered for – I mean, there's no reason for any of this. But those two, especially when they know. We don't know if there was an argument.

Starting point is 00:15:46 We don't know. And he's innocent until proven guilty, of course. But the whole thing is just an absolute tragedy. How do you see this ending? I mean, do you think that this thing goes to trial? Do you think that this, I mean, I don't see how this ends. A trial, to me, who knows how it goes? You know, lawyers can do very creative things. Defense attorneys can leading up to trial. We don't

Starting point is 00:16:12 know what would happen with that. But as it stands right now, the evidence seems very damning. Yeah, very damaging evidence. It's a rural community. The house is by, it's pretty much, there's no real close neighbors, no one next door, like in New York, where they're right next door to you, 15, 20 feet away from you. This is an area, his story doesn't jive with what happened. The evidence shows that his story is inaccurate. It's a lie. The recovery of shotgun shells in the original clothing that he's wearing is also damaging because why would he have shotgun shells? And it looks like he moves guns around. I mean, this was it seems very, very plotted. And that's why when you when you go to this mental illness thing, this isn't a crime of passion.

Starting point is 00:16:59 This is an assassination of three people. And that's really what it comes down to. And with the evidence available now and down to. And with the evidence available now, and it's still ongoing, the evidence doesn't stop. And I always say this, it doesn't stop with the arrest. They're still following up more information. And those cell phone records will determine it, will give you more information as it goes in. Background, the purpology, in a sense, of the perpetrator in this case, the defendant in this case, they're going to go a little deeper to see where it's going. And, you know, attorneys, that's their job.

Starting point is 00:17:29 A defense attorney's job is to try to get their client exonerated in whatever fashion they can, legally, morally, legally and ethically in their standards. So they may determine a defense for him. But what's the defense of shooting a kid in his bedroom? A woman that you liked in her room i mean naked and pretty much shot her in the head this is and you know the other the kid was shot in the leg and i believe in his shot it was also shot in the head so he was trying to run possibly because i mean you think about that why he's shooting the leg in the head he's probably trying to escape and you know he's a lon loner. You can feel sorry.

Starting point is 00:18:06 The reality is the actions he did or, you know, believed to be at this point, allegedly did, is highly criminal. It took time and effort to do this. The attempt to utilize different shotguns. It looks like there were other guns in the house that were there. Some apparently were locked because I believe the stepmom wanted all the guns locked up because she didn't trust them. And that's, you know,

Starting point is 00:18:29 this is an issue. And, you know, it's a small town. I don't know what the defense will be to, you know, try to deal with this, but the evidence there is pretty damaging. And, you know, how far it goes, if there's a plea arrangement, we'll see as the case goes on.

Starting point is 00:18:46 Yeah, it's horrific and just so sad. David Sarney, thank you so much. Thank you for your time. Appreciate it. Thank you and you stay safe. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.

Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - 6 Disturbing Details of Family's Bloody Triple Murder

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.

Your Ad Here

Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - 6 Disturbing Details of Family's Bloody Triple Murder

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.