Dateline NBC - Before the Storm

Episode Date: August 2, 2022

A mother of two who vanishes during a storm turns out to be a victim of something sinister. Dennis Murphy reports. Originally aired on NBC on July 15, 2019.

Tonight on Dateline. She was gorgeous and everybody loved her. She had numerous lovers, men and women. My brother comes up to me and he's like, Crystal's missing. Hurricane Harvey is moving in this direction. I knew she would never leave her kids in the middle of a hurricane,

so I always knew it wasn't going to be good. We're stuck in the house. Immediately we went to social media. What kinds of things did you put up on it? Pictures of her, her license plate. By the time they find the car, it's halfway under water. You have both the husband and the boyfriend failing their polys. On the same day, yes sir.

When we saw him riding a bike, we said, that's what he did. He thought he was smarter than we were. A killer storm and a killer on the loose. If he couldn't have her, nobody could. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Dennis Murphy with Before the Storm.

The woman captured on security camera moving ghost-like from one room to the next is 37-year-old Crystal McDowell, a real estate agent from Baytown, Texas. It's Thursday, August 25th, 2017. At 7.35 a.m., Crystal gets into her black Mercedes coupe and backs out of the driveway. Looks like she's on her way to work, but Crystal never makes it to the office that day. Texts, phone calls, and emails go unanswered. When Crystal's extended family gathers later that evening to watch a pay-per-view boxing match, cousin Jade Cherry says they aren't sure if they should be annoyed or concerned. It was the night of the Mayweather and McGregor fight. And my whole family is here. And my brother comes up to me immediately and he's like, Crystal's missing. But in my head, I'm like,

what? Like, you don't think, you know, or like, make sense. And he's like, no, like, she's missing. No one's talked to her since 7 in the morning. I was like, well, that doesn't mean anything. Like, her phone could be broke. She's busy. She works a lot. Crystal's aunt, Cindy Searate, a local beautician, was also dismissive when her son called to say Crystal was missing.

He calls me, said, mom, mom, maybe heard Crystal's missing. And I'm like, whatever. I'm like, she's not missing. And so I text her and ask her, I said, hey, babe, how are you? Where are you at? I waited, just kind of blew it off, started watching TV, tried to call her, no answer. Then that's when I started to worry. Blessed with a trifecta of looks, smarts, and charm, Crystal was a favorite with both her real estate clients and co-workers. Her main passion, though, was her two children. I love you. And the love she had for them is obvious to see.

The love for her husband, though, wasn't as strong. After 10 years of marriage, Crystal split with husband Steve McDowell. But the remodel of her new home ended up taking longer than the divorce. And this is where Crystal's life story gets complicated. While she waited to get the keys to a place of her own, Crystal continued to live with her now ex-husband. Like I said, complicated. Tell me about the divorce, Jade.

Who wanted out? Which one of them? Crystal, for sure. So she gave him his walking papers? Yes. And how did he take it? Not well. So even though they're divorced, they're spending nights together? Right, right.

Now, after 24 hours of silence, the family called the Chambers County Sheriff's Department to report Crystal missing. Anytime we get a call like that, automatically take it serious. First stop for Deputy Cody Hammes was the McDowell house to see if Crystal's ex-husband Steve had heard from her. And his immediate response was, you know, did something happen? Is there something I should know of? Then McDowell threw Hammes a curve. He said Crystal had a new boyfriend, and there were nights when Crystal just never came home. An awkward tale for any recent ex-husband to share,

but to Deputy Hammes, it wasn't so much what McDowell said, but how he said it. Just in a real kind of strange tone of voice, and I'm just asking a general question. My instincts were just really kicking off that whole moment. That the husband had sort of a fishy story or response to what you were asking him? Just his whole manners. Just didn't appear to be acting normal, per se. That's when Deputy Hammes asked for backup to help figure out this mess. Detective Donnie Walters got the call. The first thing I noticed that bothered me was they had been divorced for six months,

but yet he's still wearing a wedding ring. Why? That's not normal, normal behavior. What was his demeanor like as you're talking to him? Almost cocky. He put himself out that he was a whole lot smarter than we were. And just like that, the search for Crystal slingshot it from a simple well-being check to a possible homicide, which meant looping in DA Cheryl Leak. Early on in

this investigation, like hours into it, when you went around the table with all your investigators, who did you think the suspect was? I pissed off ex-husband. When I heard that she was divorced, but still living with her ex-husband, and that she had a boyfriend, the first thing I thought was the husband did it. But those suspicions seemed less certain after detectives spoke to Crystal's boyfriend, who struck them as being as off-kilter as the husband. He was cooperative, but he just kind of had that air about him also. You know, the husband has given a suspicion. Now the new boyfriend has given a suspicion. Even though they were both being very cooperative, it was cooperative to a point that it was almost questionable, I guess. You wonder why they were being so helpful.

Yes, sir. So what was going on? It was certainly suspicious that Crystal's ex-husband never reported Crystal missing. But the boyfriend, whose house Crystal stayed at the night before she disappeared, the place where these surveillance videos were recorded, well, he never filed a missing person report either. Coming up, Crystal's boyfriend did something else that attracted the attention of investigators. He gave those surveillance videos to the media before them. It's being played on cable TV before your guys have even seen it. That is correct. Bottom line is,

Jeweler was a prime suspect for me. And there could be many more. She had numerous lovers throughout her marriage, men and women. Baytown is a notch in Texas' Bayou Belt. It's a land of pumpjacks and refineries the size of cities. Fortunes ebb and flow with the price of crude. And in August 2017, the price per barrel was on the rise. Banks were lending, houses were being flipped, and luxury items like diamonds were in demand. Baytown's oldest and biggest jewelry store, Robson's. Hi, I'm Paul from Robson's Jewelers. Paul Hargrave managed the store and appeared frequently in commercials like this one.

He was Crystal's date the night before she went missing. Seemed to be a casual dinner just like any of us would have at a nice restaurant over there in Houston. Chambers County Sheriff Brian Hawthorne. Her companion that night, how do we describe him? Is he kind of a new boyfriend? Yes, very new boyfriend. And he's a guy who's a well-known name in the county. Correct. Big jeweler?

The jewelry store has been there for probably 50-plus years. So she's had dinner that night, and then she goes home to spend the night at his place? That is correct. He told us the last time he had seen her is he was getting in the shower, and she had gotten dressed and left. That makes him the last person known to have seen her alive. That is correct. Which puts him in something of an investigative jam, right?

Well, it obviously puts him as a person of interest, that's for sure. But Hargrave's investigative status was soon upgraded. Remember that security camera footage of Crystal leaving for work? Those videos were recorded at Hargrave's home. We know that because he gave us and other news organizations the footage. But the sheriff said Hargrave didn't give those videos to his investigators, didn't even tell them about it. Not at first. They released some of the video and pictures to the national media before our detectives even had it.

So it's being played on cable TV before your guys have even seen it? That is correct. And that didn't sit well with the sheriff. The bottom line is the jeweler was a prime suspect for me. But D.A. Leak had the opposite take when it came to the surveillance footage. She thought the timestamp videos backed up the boyfriend's alibi. All that did was really confirm what I already thought. I really didn't think he had anything to do with it.

I really didn't. You weren't looking do with it. I really didn't. You weren't looking at the boyfriend that way? No, because he wouldn't have had a motive. The motive is going to rest with the ex-husband, because any logical person is saying, okay, they're divorced, she spends the night with a new boyfriend, and she comes home the next morning, and ex-husband's supposed to be okay with that?

No, I don't care who you are. You're not okay with that. So the DA was looking hard at the husband while the sheriff was betting on the boyfriend. It had to be one or the other, right? Well, maybe not. Did I mention that Crystal's life was complicated? Her name is Crystal because her parents named her after crystal meth. You're kidding.

No. And her parents both died when she was 11. They died within six months of each other from AIDS, from drug use. At one point around 13, she was abducted by a man and he kept her hostage, kept her in a chicken coop. Are you kidding? Sexually assaulted her. How awful. She managed to escape and then eventually ended up down here in Baytown with her grandmother and a paternal aunt. Crystal eventually ended up living with her cousin Jade's family and somehow clawed her way back from the abuse she suffered as a child, which could explain all those photos and videos Crystal took

with her own daughter. She may have wanted the world to see just how much her own little girl was loved, wanted, and protected. When I think of Crystal, I think of loving. It was very, very loving and a hard worker. Those are the two things I think of when I think of Crystal. It was Jade's parents who introduced Crystal to her eventual husband, Steve. And my dad has been friends with Steve since, you know, childhood friends since forever of her high school. So I've always grown up around Steve. Tell me about Steve first. Who is the guy that you remember? Very childlike. He's like a big kid. And like a big kid, he loved his toys, video games, and muscled Ford Mustangs. I remember the day she told me she had met him.

Okay, tell me that story. Very smitten. I found somebody I love, Aunt Cindy. He's perfect. He's funny. We talk a lot. And I really thought she had met the man of her dreams. And then you met him. And then I met him. And what did you think? I thought he was the nicest, most passionate, kind person I'd ever met. We were always at their house playing.

All of us kids were over there. And they're goofy and silly, and they would go on trips and things like that. The trips were a job perk. Shortly after her marriage to Steve, Crystal landed a flight attendant position with Express Jet. And with her outgoing personality, Crystal was soon an airline favorite. And that's when her life became even more complicated. She had numerous lovers throughout her marriage, men and women. She was very social.

And because she traveled all over the United States with ExpressJet, she had flight attendant friends and pilots all over the country. So there were a lot of players and a lot of different directions that we found ourselves going in the first week. And if she's been intimate with people here and there, you've got to wonder, we've got an angry husband here, an angry wife, right? That is correct. In fact, that was some of the avenue that we were looking at was other angry spouses. Crystal McDowell had been missing just two days by the time the Chambers County Sheriff's Office had uncovered all of these promising leads to pursue. But suddenly, pursuing leads became next to impossible, as Little Baytown suffered a disaster of epic proportions. It was a biblical storm. It really was.

I felt like I was on Noah's Ark. Coming up... It just kept raining and kept raining. It just kind of changed everything. A hurricane puts a homicide case on hold, but not forever. Immediately, we went to social media. What kinds of things did you put up on it? We put pictures of her, her license plate.

When Dateline Continues. Record breaking, epic, biblical, all words to describe Hurricane Harvey, meaning it was a storm like few had ever seen. Harvey was not only massive, but slow-moving. And once it hit Houston and Baytown, it weirdly just stopped. It just kept raining and kept raining. Half of the county was going underwater, 5 o'clock in the morning, and we were already doing high-water rescues. It seemed no one was talking about a missing woman any longer. The whole community and everyone in it was now fighting just to survive. What was the scariest moment for you in Harvey? Well, when the water started coming down

my walls in my house and it was overflowing and I was watching to see if which way it was going to come in first, either the front door or the back door. I've never experienced that before. It just never stopped. There were boats actually traveling the roads, and the only communication we had was through our phones. Thank God our phones were working. Crystal's cousin, Jade Cherry, was stranded in her mom's home with a pair of newborns.

I have two screaming twins. They're four months old. Half breastfeeding, half formula. Wasn't making breast milk. Scared to run out of formula. With the entire county in peril, the search for Crystal McDowell was no longer an investigative priority for the Chambers County Sheriff's Office. I had no other choice but to divert some of the resources to rescuing our citizens. You don't have the manpower, you just don't have the resources for an event like this. When you have this kind of a storm and this much devastation, you could never have enough manpower. So Jade picked up the slack.

Housebound with twins, she did the only thing she could think of to find Crystal. Immediately we went to social media. What kinds of things you put up on it? We put pictures of her, her license plate. Because her car was missing. Yes. Nice car. Beautiful black Mercedes, yeah. And we're posting and we're sharing and I'm just, you know, repeatedly like keep sharing it, keep sharing it, keep sharing it. Jade was crowdsourcing the search for Crystal. And what do you know? I get a text from someone and it said, hey, Jade, I don't know if they found your cousin or her car yet, but her car is at Motel 6 off 146. And I'm like, how do you know that it's her car? Do you have a picture of it? And she said,

my friend posted it on Snapchat and was like, wow, like this Mercedes about to be flooded. I would be so mad if this was my car. Jade's friend then forwarded this picture of the car. It's just the car and water and the water is right underneath the license plate. And it's Crystal's. And it's Crystal's car. So the first thing I did was call my dad and I tell my dad, Crystal's car is at Motel 6 on 146. He's like, what? Like, how do you know? So I sent him the picture while I'm on the phone with him.

And his reaction was the same as mine, like, holy crap, this is her car. This is her. But with the roads and fields flooded, Jade's family could only get to the Motel 6 by boat. Same with the detectives from the Sheriff's Department. We had a commandeering airboat that was actually out in the neighborhood doing rescues to get up to the hotel. So this Motel 6 is going under, too.

It's completely under. It's out on I-10. Yes, sir. Get in the airboat, make a route around the motel, and sure enough, there's a car. Finding Crystal's car was a huge break, but one wrapped in a riddle. Did Crystal leave her Mercedes at the Motel 6, or did someone else?

You could tell that it had been haphazardly parked. And the keys were inside. Yeah. Connect the dots here. What's going on? It's like, come and get it. This is, I want somebody to take this car because something happened. This is a tasty prize.

Oh, absolutely. Steal me, huh? Absolutely. But nobody seemed to have taken the bait. Well, there was a couple that tried, but the Steal me, huh? Absolutely. But nobody seemed to have taken the bait. Well, there was a couple that tried, but the problem is the water was too hot. Crystal's car was later towed to a garage where a CSI team went through it. Forensically, what happens in that case?

If the crime scene techs were going to process that vehicle, are they going to come up with anything? Yeah, nothing. That's when Dateline posted a Missing in America report, viewed more than 100,000 times online. But the story generated no usable leads. By the time the last remnants of the storm howled out of Texas, a week had gone by. With his county in shambles, Sheriff Hawthorne knew he needed an outside assist on the McDowell case, and he put out a call for help. One answered by Texas Ranger Stephen Jeter. So what do you do? Ground zero. Went back in like nothing had been done before.

On day one of this investigative reboot, Jeter had ex-husband McDowell sitting in a chair for his first formal interview. I told him, hey, look, we're your ex-husband. We're going to take your story, and I got to rule you out as a suspect. So he's a cooperative guy, I think, right? Oh, yeah. Once you reached out to him, he was very cooperative. McDowell told Jeter the same story he told the sheriff's deputies a week earlier. He hadn't seen Crystal since Thursday night when she left for her date. According to him, that was the last time he saw her alive. You woefully underestimate a Texas Ranger if you see just an elite gunslinger in hat and boots. Cheater has gone through extensive training on how best to interview a suspect by reading both behavior

and body language. So tell me about his demeanor. Tell me about what you're seeing as much as what he's saying to you, Ranger. Probably lack of concern or sincere concern, even for what we now know as an ex-wife. So I asked him, hey, let's take a lie detector test. McDowell said, sure, he'd be happy to. And? He failed. How badly did he flunk the poly? He couldn't have failed any worse. Which naturally would have made McDowell the prime suspect.

Except that it didn't jibe with everything else Jeter was hearing about him. From the family members that he had been talking to, you know, they were all in Steve's corner. They all thought that Steve treated Crystal right and was a good person for Crystal. And all agreed that Steven was an involved and loving dad. According to Jeter, Crystal's boyfriend, Paul Hargrave, was the one the family pointed fingers at. They didn't know anything about him, so he was the boogeyman. Then the boyfriend was brought in for questioning,

and he too cooperated, handed over those videos, his cell phone, and agreed to be strapped to the polygraph. And? Failed miserably. He did too? Yes, sir. So that's a dilemma.

You have both the husband and the boyfriend failing their polys. On the same day, yes, sir. Both of them on Saturday. You have both the husband and the boyfriend failing their polys. On the same day, yes, sir. Both of them on Saturday. I'm like, what the hell is going on? I mean, I just, I couldn't believe it. And I thought, well, maybe they're in it together, you know. So that really threw us off, really threw us off.

The skies may have cleared, but that didn't mean any new light was shed on the investigation. Everything seemed just as dark and confusing as before. It looked as though the only way to solve this mystery was to find Crystal, or her body. Coming up, caught on camera, a rider in the storm. When we saw him riding a bike, we said, that's what he did. By Tuesday, September the 5th, the sky was clear and the water down. With the break in weather, Texans took to ripping up carpets,

tearing out drywall, and hauling flooded cars to the salvage yard. But there was no break in the hunt for Crystal. She'd been missing for 11 days and was now presumed dead. Bodies become evidence, don't they? And she tells her story from the grave. So you need the remains? Gotta have her remains. But where were they? If Crystal's body had been dumped in one of these bayous, the receding floodwaters would almost certainly have swept it out to the Gulf of Mexico. Nevertheless, a call went out for volunteers for what many thought was a futile search.

A local group, Texas EquiSearch, took the lead. On the first day out, Wednesday, September the 9th, more than 100 people systematically worked grids by foot, Texas EquiSearch took the lead. On the first day out, Wednesday, September the 9th, more than 100 people systematically worked grids by foot, ATV, and airboat. But as light waned on that first day, EquiSearch founder Tim Miller wasn't hopeful. You know, at this point, it doesn't look good.

You know, it doesn't look good at all. While volunteers worked the wetlands in search of Crystal, Ranger Jeter worked to solve the central dilemma of his investigation. He had two men in his crosshairs, the ex-husband and the new boyfriend. He needed to focus on one or the other. So you started asking questions, who's got a camera around here? That's right. He had investigators check businesses near the Motel 6 in search of surveillance footage. What'd you come up with? Well, fortunately, a lot of people had some.

Almost too much. Hours upon hours of footage. But buried deep within this investigative ore, detectives uncovered gold. Images of the man they believed killed Crystal McDowell. The first clip they found was this footage, recorded Saturday, August 26th at 6.37 a.m. The outer bands of Hurricane Harvey are starting to hit Baytown. Near the top of your screen, you can see the taillights of Crystal's Mercedes as it's being backed into the Motel 6 parking lot.

And we can see somebody walk from the car. Five hours later, a different security camera at a gas station next to the motel shows this blue car pull in next to a pump. This one caught the eye of a watchful investigator because it's a rare Mustang GT, just like Stephen McDowell's. And he couldn't have had a more distinctive car than a Shelby, but boy, it's hard to mistake that vehicle. Yeah, without a doubt.

The driver, who looks just like Stephen McDowell, does something odd. Rather than pumping gas, he instead walks towards the Motel 6. It appears to be looking at his wife's ditched car. Investigators were now certain McDowell was the one who ditched Crystal's car, and did so with the expectation it would conveniently disappear. And the thought blown, nobody stole it yet? I think that's exactly what went through his head. Oh, s***, the car's still here. But now they had a puzzle to solve.

If McDowell was acting alone, once he left the car, he would have been on foot, miles from his house. For two weeks, we're going, how in the hell did he do this? How did he do this? How did he get back home? To find out, they pulled security camera footage along all the roads in the area. And they found this video of a man riding a bike in the driving rain along the I-10 feeder road. The video was time-stamped at 7.05 a.m., 25 minutes after Crystal's car was dropped off. And that's when the pieces all fell into place. When we got to his house, we saw a bicycle in the garage. And the thing about this bike is it has unique mag wheels. Then Jeter remembered. McDowell's alibi for that Saturday morning was

that he'd been shopping at this Walmart across the freeway from the Motel 6. So Jeter had the security camera footage pulled. A guy looking like Stephen McDowell, dressed in a sweatshirt with a hoodie up, is seen paying cash for a bike with unique mag wheels. It's just minutes after Crystal's Mercedes was abandoned. When we saw him riding a bike, we said, that's what he did. He walked across the interstate to Walmart. He bought the bike, a Red Bull, and a pack of cigarettes. Ironically, the storm that brought the investigation to a halt also led to its biggest break. The floodwaters prevented Crystal's car from being stolen,

which in turn led detectives to focus on the surveillance cameras near the Motel 6. Had that not happened, they never would have found these videos of McDowell. This plane fell apart with the rain. So he was a victim of Hurricane Harvey too? In more ways than one. But when confronted with all this evidence, McDowell denied it was him. There's no doubt in my mind that that's you. I want to show you that. I'm guessing you'd like to see that. McDowell eventually admitted this footage at the gas station was him, but the Walmart clips? No way, he said. By now, investigators were convinced McDowell was Crystal's killer. As for the boyfriend, an innocent man who had nothing to do with Crystal's disappearance.

D.A. Leak by then had enough evidence to charge McDowell with murder, but she believed she needed one more piece of evidence to ensure a conviction. I wanted that body. Why is that important? Well, it's important for a lot of reasons. It's easier to try a murder trial when you've got a dead body. It just is. But, you know, she deserved to be found.

You know, she deserved to be found. Her kids deserved for her body to be found. Her family deserved for her to be found. Investigators all believed McDowell knew where the body was, but he steadfastly denied any involvement in Crystal's disappearance. After an hour of getting nowhere, McDowell was allowed to go home to his children. But now District Attorney Leak and Ranger Jeter had a whole new problem on their hands. I had found some folks that I had interviewed throughout the week that had said he'd actually talked about murder-suicide sometime earlier.

Right after the divorce, McDowell had reportedly threatened to destroy the entire family. It was like, I'm going to kill myself, I'm going to kill the kids. You're going to be blamed for the ruination of my life. Yes. Now that he was once again under stress,

Leak worried that McDowell might finally decide to bring his whole world crumbling down around him. Coming up, a prosecutor gets tough. You tell him that we're not letting him see his children until he takes us to the body. A gamble that pays off. He said I'm ready to talk. When Dateline continues. Worried that Stephen McDowell might snap and kill his children along with himself, District Attorney Cheryl Lee turned to an old high school classmate for help, Crystal's Aunt Cindy.

Cindy Searate. She was good enough to stay close. Cindy said she felt duty-bound to watch over the kids, just five and eight at the time, as the Rangers closed in on Steven. I had told my husband I was going over there. He said, I don't think this is a good idea. And I'm like, well, I truly feel he's going to kill the kids. I feel like he's going to kill himself. He's going to kill the kids. What was in your head, Cindy? What was your mission about this? I've got to go over to Steve's idea. Protect the kids. I just knew if I could stay close, talk to him, that's what hairdressers do best.

I mean, keep him calm or try to get him to confess. Is he frightening you at that point? No. I mean, I carried a gun the whole time. When you were over at his house? Oh, yeah. I had a gun on me at all times. Why?

Because I really felt like he was going to snap at any moment. The Texas Rangers were really getting under his skin. Even so, McDowell returned for further questioning. You could see literally he was losing weight before your eyes. The Rangers laid out all the evidence against him. The polygraph, the videos, the lies they caught him in. But McDowell held tight, would not confess. And by evening time, Leak was getting nervous. I just can't get these kids off my mind

that something is going to happen. So Leak decided to put the kids into protective custody with Child Protective Services. Once the children were safely secured, Leak sent a message to their dad. You tell him that we're not letting him see his children until he takes us to the body. And I said, I'm done. I'm done. I said, he's dicking us around and I'm sick of it. And he's not going to get away with, I'm not telling you where she's at, if I can help it. I'm sorry, you're just not going to get away with that. You killed her. You don't have the right to do that.

And now you don't have the right to leave her somewhere where nobody's ever going to know if she's going to just wash up somewhere. And everybody that loves her sitting around wondering, where is she? That night, an exhausted McDowell asked Ranger Jeter and his partner, Ranger James Holland, to present a counteroffer to DA Leak. He told Holland, let me go home and then tomorrow morning I will tell you everything, and I'll take you to where Crystal's at. With that verbal agreement, the district attorney and Ranger Jeter

allowed McDowell to walk out of the sheriff's office, knowing it was a risky decision. Did you feel at all weird about letting him walk that night? Yes, I did. I felt like he's fixing to break, because I thought he was going home for probably to ultimately take himself out. On the morning of Saturday, September the 9th, Rangers Jeter and Holland went knocking on Stephen McDowell's door, not sure what they'd find. But to Jeter's surprise, McDowell answered the door. He said, I'm ready to talk. At 12.45 p.m., McDowell was back in the chair and made good on his promise to talk.

McDowell said he knew Crystal had a long string of affairs. And you've confronted her at different times about those affairs. Yes, I confronted her. And she told me to stay out of the business. She says that I'm not dominant enough in the bedroom, that's what she says. Pretending to be sympathetic, Ranger Holland slowly teased out the details of Crystal's death. It was slow and brutal. Were you fighting when that happened? Yeah. Is that when she told you that she didn't love you anymore? Yeah. And did you snap? Yeah. Did you mean to suffocate her?

No. It just happened? I did not mean to hurt her. I love her. And how did you suffocate her? Squeezed her. The bond around her like this. Okay.

Like a chokehold or something? Did she say anything when that was going on, or did she fight, or what happened? She said it was scary. How did you eventually know that she was no longer alive? I stopped doing it. McDowell said he then wrapped her in trash bags and hid her body in the trunk of the Mercedes. He said he dumped her body the following morning. But before he revealed where, McDowell said he wanted a deal.

He wants the death penalty off the table. What's the calculus that your prosecutor has to go through here, your DA? We don't find Crystal without his help. It's just flat not going to happen? It's not going to happen. District Attorney Leak was on the same page. And with Jeter as her go-between, she agreed to forego the death penalty.

Well, she needs the body today. We're not going to seek the death penalty if you take her to us today. Shortly thereafter, he agreed, all right, I'll take you to Crystal's location. They retraced McDowell's route, which eventually led to this short, narrow strip of blacktop known as Needle Point Road.

It's heavily wooded next to a ravine. Ranger, would you ever have gone down that road? Never. That place was four to five foot underwater two weeks earlier. At a seemingly random spot, McDowell said, stop, this is the place. Jeter and Holland then set off on foot into the thicket. Within a short period of time, we found what we believed were the remains of Crystal McDowell. There was not much left of her. She was pretty much decomposed.

Stephen McDowell had not only confessed, but given up the body. So, case closed, right? Well, not in Texas, because a murder defendant here can claim sudden passion, that the victim somehow played a role in their own death by provoking the killer. And McDowell wanted to make that argument before a jury, hoping he could drastically reduce his sentence. I can tell a jury, look, if you find this story of sudden passion, then the maximum you can give him is 20. He can get out in

as little as two. What worried District Attorney Leak was that there were even some in law enforcement who thought that this was a sudden passion case. Were you under courthouse pressure or law enforcement pressure from this take on the case that this is a poor henpecked guy and he snapped and we're really in manslaughter country here. And why are you guys going for the full ride? Because I don't care how henpecked somebody might be or how much they say they are, which, in my opinion, he was not. That was a ploy.

There's still no excuse to kill anybody. A popular prosecutor who's also a single mom. Leak has built a reputation as a fierce advocate for women and children. And on this case, she was going to be the voice of Crystal McDowell. She was begging him, please stop fighting with me. I've been in an unhappy marriage for 10 years. Please stop using the kids as pawns. You've used me long enough.

Please, please, please. I'm tired. I'm exhausted. I can't fight with you anymore. To leak the killing of Crystal McDowell was a black and white case of premeditated murder. The big question, though, would all 12 members of a jury see it that way? Coming up, two shockingly young witnesses take the stand. Why'd you bring the kids in? They wanted to talk about it.

And the jury makes a worrying request. I'm like, oh God, where are they going with this? After a year of court hearings and motions, Stephen McDowell finally went on trial for the murder of his ex-wife Crystal in June 2019. DA Cheryl Leak made sure she was well-armed with evidence depicting the extent to which McDowell tried to cover up the crime. She showed the jury McDowell's confession. The video of him dumping Crystal's Mercedes and buying that bicycle at Walmart, and later checking on the car to see if it had been stolen.

But the video that really got the court's attention, pre-recorded testimony of Crystal and Stephen's two children. Why'd you bring the kids in? Well, I didn't want to. Tender age? Yes. I spoke to their guardian and I said, look, if you don't think that this is going to be something that they can handle, I will absolutely not put them on the stand. It's just not worth it to me. But they wanted to talk about it. It being their mother's murder, the daughter, now seven, said she saw it happen.

No cameras were allowed in court, so we turned to the trial transcript on the daughter's testimony. She told the court they were arguing about her going with another man. And she said, I'm going to take my children with me. And then he pushed her on the bed and said, no, you're not. And then he started putting his hands like that. The daughter demonstrated for the jury by putting her own hands over her nose and mouth. The daughter continued. And she tried to put her hands up and her nose and mouth. The daughter continued,

and she tried to put her hands up and her feet up so dad wouldn't have so much weight on her. And then he glanced at me, really mad at me. And then mom glanced at me and tried to say, help. And then when he was done, he told me to go in my room. Don't tell anyone. Damning testimony from a child. The defense tried to undercut it, contending the daughter had heard about the killing from relatives and just made up a story to fill in the blanks. Then, in rebuttal, the defense called their own star witness, Stephen McDowell. When he was on the stand, did he do himself any good? Mm-mm. Who did the jury meet?

They met a conniving, manipulative crybaby. Through his tears, McDowell told an entirely new and strange story about how he killed Crystal, that it was nothing more than a freak accident. In the midst of their argument, he said, Crystal got hysterical, so he put her in a bear hug to calm her down. I just wanted to hug her, he told the court. I just wanted to stop fighting. I wanted to quit going back and forth because it was going nowhere, and I was frustrated, and I was upset, and I was mad. His lawyer asked, what happened next? McDowell responded, she became limp, and she fell. D.A. Leak couldn't believe what she was hearing. He hugged her to death. Yeah, that's a new one on me. Yeah, that was fun.

That had not been told before. No, and there's no way. And then we were actually looking it up on, you know, we're Googling it, you know, at dinner that night going, how do you hug somebody to death? When the case went to the jury, Leak thought an outright acquittal seemed unlikely. But a hung jury was a distinct possibility. Just one, just one juror. That's all it needs. And I thought, God, if the one believes his story, you know, we're cooked. And sure enough, during deliberations, one of the jurors asked to see McDowell's confession tape again.

Does it make you nervous? It always makes me nervous because I'm like, oh God, where are they going with this? An hour after re-watching the confession, the jury came back with a verdict. Guilty. But now came the penalty phase when the jury would decide if this was a premeditated killing or one of sudden passion. How stressful was this case for you? Oh, it was real stressful. I mean, when you get a case like this where you have the perpetrator who can convince even some members of law enforcement that he might have been the victim in all of this, then you worry about what's a jury going to think. How do you straddle this thing?

Forgive the thought, but it's like, how do you not get seen as a hard-ass woman? Do you know what I mean? I don't know, and I think that— Because you could be judged. Right, absolutely. And I think I'm seen like that by a lot of jurors, and there's nothing I can do about it. I mean, if I tried to be anything different than I am,

it would come across as insincere. That authenticity apparently resonated with the jury in Crystal's case. They rejected the sudden passion argument and found that Crystal's murder was premeditated. They sentenced Stephen McDowell to 50 years in prison. Aunt Cindy wasn't in court that day. Instead, she distracted the kids with a trip to the multiplex. And we went to the movie and just had a really good day. So the kids at the movie and dad's going away virtually forever. Exactly. And they never asked a question. You know, he had got 50 years and it was almost a relief. I mean,

I'm actually for the death penalty for this kind of stuff, but I mean, it's better than 20. It's better than two. Crystal's children are now being raised by an old friend whose own parents had once given Crystal a home. She makes them stay focused in school. They have regiments. They have routines. She loves them. She truly loves them, and she is honored to raise them. They are, I mean, they're just, they're phenomenal kids. As for Crystal, Leak hopes she'll be remembered more as a loving mom than an up-by-the-bootstrap survivor of awful abuse. She wanted a family. She wanted that family that she never had. She wanted children. She wanted a family. She wanted that family that she never had. She wanted children. She wanted to love something unconditionally and have somebody love

her unconditionally. I love you. And she was still looking for that love right until the hours before the winds began howling and the waters rose. That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again Friday at 9, 8 central, and of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.