Killing Dad: The Crystal Howell Story - 7: The Murder of Michael Howell

Episode Date: May 9, 2023

The shot that ended Michael Howells life and the unfathomable encounter with her secret accomplice is revealed for the first time. 

Pero ¿cómo es posible que sean las tres de la tarde? ¿Qué lleves casi una hora de atascot y quede todo el camino por delante? ¿Y tú estas ahí dan tranquila a tus cosas? ¿Cómo si te dese todo igual? ¿Cómo es posible? Vamos, que tú vas a trabajar no estás lleno, ¿no? ¿A dónde vas tú tan contenta? ¿Eh? ¿A dónde? Llega el mejor momento del año. Llegan tus vacaciones. Este uno de Julio sortió extraordinario de vacaciones

de Lotería Nacional, con 20 millones aún decimos. Lotería este recuerdo que juegas con responsabilidad y solo sierres mayor de da. My name is Jason Alexander, the star of bedtime stories of the Ingleside Inn, a brand new scripted comedy podcast in which I play Palm Springs Hotelier, a Mel Haver, who in the 1970s turned the rundown Ingleside Inn into the best kept secret getaway for Hollywood's elite, thieves and mobsters. The series also stars Brian Jordan Alvarez, Michael secret getaway for Hollywood's elite, thieves, and mobsters.

The series also stars Brian Jordan Alvarez, Michael McKean, Richard Kind, Lance Bass, and Moira. You can find bedtime stories of the Ingliside Inn on Sirius XM, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Don't forget to follow the show so you never miss an episode. The following episode contains graphic material and talk of suicide that may be triggering to some audiences. If you are in distress, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 to be confidentially connected with someone in your area.

Crystal had been looking for a way out of her dad's house because of his volatile moods. She used a routine, dad-daughter grocery shopping day to pre-plan shoplifting and hopes of being caught and hauled off to the police station to ask for help. Instead, the store manager released Crystal to her dad with a scolding and public humiliation for Michael Howell. After a fear evoking threat in the kitchen, Crystal says her dad uttered what would be his last words. told me it's not even being about running away, that you would deal with me when you got a kid in my dad waiting right down for it and that was the last thing he ever said to me. I'm Melissa McCarty and I'm Kelly McLear. We are Emmy-nominated investigative journalists,

and we've been talking to Crystal Howell since her dad's murder in 2014. Eight years after Michael Howell's murder at 25 years old, Crystal is telling her story. We bring you the exclusive series, Killing Dad, a first-degree mistake. Michael Howell told Crystal he'd deal with her after his nap. His former roommate Hold says he was a creature of habit, especially under high stress.

When Michael couldn't take it anymore, whatever it was he couldn't take, he would lie down on the sofa and he had this funny little old, old, tried-eyed shirt that he had rolled up. He would put it over top of his eye, and he would take a nap. I salated on the mountaintop in the mist of a strange relationship with her mom and sister. Crystal's mounting fears and her racing thoughts of which she felt her dad was capable of,

finally erupted, putting the team in a state of panic. After I went into the bathroom and I locked the door and I got in the shower and I was just kind of panicking I guess, like not really sure what to expect or what was going to happen. like not really sure what to expect or what was going to happen. Like things have never really gone that far between us. So it's been different, I guess. Like I was scared and I just started running the shower water. And I wasn't washing or anything. I was just kind of spinning in there trying to clear my head and figure out what to do.

Like I can't leave because I don't have a phone. I don't have a way to contact anybody to come get me or to tell anybody what happened. So in my head I'm thinking, well, I don't want to die if I'm being stabbed to death. So maybe I can just beat him to the punch and shoot myself and I will have to deal with whatever happened. Because I don't know, I was really worried about how things might play out because my dad

had talked a lot about torturing people. I guess. And so I didn't know if I would be excluded from that or if that would happen to me. So I would just scared of what he might do. And I was a really scared guy. I was afraid of the pain of it. So I stood in the shower for a little bit and I got out and I put back on the same clothes that I've been wearing.

And on my way out, the bathroom, my dad's room was right on the right and I walked in there and I grabbed the shotgun and I walked downstairs with it. And I was in my room this point and I was kind of confused about the mechanics of this specific gun because it was kind of my dad's gun and I didn't really know how to work it or if he's thinking was on off, I was kind of confused by that. But I remember I bumped the gun in a bullet and fallen out of it. And I knew it and then it was loaded

and had bullets in it. And I remember thinking, I was, what's been going to happen if I do kill myself? That's kind of where my brain took me. Like, who's gonna be there to stop my dad when he goes through the job? Who's going to be there to kind of calm him down? And what does this mean for my family? I was thinking, what does this mean for my dad's life in general?

Like, will he be the one to find me or would he call a police? And that didn't take care of it. And I was just thinking kind of about the aftermath of what to it's not looked like for his life and the life of the people that I loved. I didn't, I don't know, I didn't think I did. And I remember my dad had talked a lot about wanting to die and dying asleep. And I just remember kind of thinking, well, I mean, I can't be the one to keep that thing in. I don't really, the guy should sit there and plot it out or anything.

I just, it was a simple thought. I get it. And so, when I was going up the stairs. I wouldn't say how the body is buried, but it was like I wasn't myself. I didn't have control of what I was doing. In a very long while afterwards, I didn't even remember even walking up the stairs. I didn't remember what happened or months and months afterwards.

The next thing I remember was the gun going off. But it's like in my memory, I can see flashes of what happened. I remember seeing my feet go up the stairs. I remember the gun being raised and the next thing I knew, I began with all of it. And I dropped the gun and I ran out of the room back into my dad's room. Where was your dad, Crystal? He was sleeping on the couch.

And how long when you ran up to your dad's room, how long do you remember staying there? Was it hours, Was it minutes? And what were you thinking? It was minutes, and I just remember kind of breaking down like, I didn't realize really what I was doing at the time. Like, all I could think about was kind of like,

the things that I've been talking about, like, you don't think in the moment is that life is just going to be over I guess like being a teenager like all I do a death and stuff like that was what I think in movies so it's like when the movie's over you can start it over and that hurts in the live and you don't realize, like, it's over after that. And I just remember, I looked out, like, the doorway in my dad's room and I saw my dad. I just remember thinking, like, what did I do? How did I do this? Like, who am I becoming? I mean, because I've been fighting so hard my whole life to not become the way that my dad was and to not be violent and to not think that way, and to kind of pull myself apart from that part of him. And to know that I succumbed to being like that, like it kind of broke me a little bit and I just remember not being able to breathe. I like to

fell on the ground. I like literally just all the weight of my body to fill down the ground. And I remember thinking I had a calm place, that's a calm sleep, but I couldn't breathe. So I went outside and I always sat in a driveway and just kind of try to catch my friends and figure out kind of what it was and the exit from here, like what do I do? I didn't know what to do. I didn't have a clue and I didn't

think it's true. It just happened so bad. Did you ever go and check on your father afterwards? I guess what I'm trying to ask, you know, also, I mean, did you, um, did you shoot him in the head? Was it in the chest? Yeah, it was one shot to the head.

The only thing I remember seeing afterward was, you know, I looked out of his bedroom door and I saw him and I heard like his last breath. And I don't know, I guess it's something that's really hauntedly subulline. I'm not sure the right way to freeze it, but it's something you can't forget. I'm going to have a hard to try. But I went outside to catch my breath. And I was probably outside maybe like 15 or 20 minutes. I would say around that, just kind of freaking out and crying and not sure what to do.

I'm just kind of lost in shop, scared. But before I'd ever went outside, I tried to shoot myself sitting on the table in the living room. I didn't really know how to do it or anything like that. Like I never looked in anything like that. Like I never do, will there's anything. So I had held the barrel of the gun with my hand and kind of

right to between my knees and I put it in my mouth and I pulled the trigger with my foot and the gun was empty and I felt the the click in my mouth and I just remember thinking kind of like maybe it was to say like maybe it wasn't supposed to die like I figured there was some kind of reasoning for that but I didn't know what it was. I didn't have any sort of plan or I didn't like I never sat there and thought about killing anyone or hurting anyone. It just happened so fast that there was no thinking, there was no... It was basically like an impulse.

It was just like there was no thought at all. Like, like, I've got a body experience of the best way I can think to put it. It's like I wasn't myself. With her dad shot dead inside the house, Crystal stumbled outside, fell on Bended Knee, and cried. What happens next is an encounter and an influence that led her down an unforeseen path that would dub her a callous killer, making headlines

that stigmatized this case. He's got a key over sometimes when he was hungry or sometimes needed like a day for a while. I always find it the same that he did drugs, but I never had. His name is Lindsay. Lindsay is not his real name. It's the name we will refer to him as because for the first time since her dad's murder in 2014,

Crystal is revealing her accomplice. It's important to mention Crystal never intended to out this person. We pieced together who it was during our investigation into the case. Crystal, though, is still fearful of him. I'm a little bit nervous and scared because a part of me does think like what kind of retaliation could there be?

Like what if he does something because whenever I was in county jail I didn't receive a fee for any messages from him, so that worries me a little bit. But she confirmed his identity for us. I met in labor I first made North Carolina at the moving theater. I kind of brought home and it raised into my dad and it's never since then my teacher kind of showed up kind of nowhere. So I'm sitting in the driveway and I'm still just freaking out like not sure what to do, not sure how where to phone that how I might be in the call of police, and I can have to walk in the mail, I don't know what my name can prove it, I'm still just kind of having, like a mental health breakdown, that sort of feels like, I feel like the world is crashing on top of me.

And I'm just sitting there, and I don't know where I just hear the crunch of gravel under some speed. And I look up and I see him and there's no getting composed. You're like, I can't take my way through this. I can't pretend to be okay like I'm not bad all by peeing just stand up and pertinent nothing happened. So he's seen me and he's not crying and he's just basically like, what's wrong? Like, what are you doing out here? Where's your dad? And I remember telling him that I shot my dad in a patient

believe me at first. He blasted on like it was a joke. Like, because people who didn't really knew, that wasn't something that I would do. I'm not like that. And I told her, no, I'm serious. I need to call the police. I shot my dad.

Like, I need to do something about it. And he kind of was like, you're not going to call the police. That's not a good idea. You need to just take me aside and show me what happened. And he told me, basically, the police weren't going to care what happened. I explained to him like my dad, and I was company with a knife, and I showed him my leg, and the blood on my pants. And I said, I mean, it was kind of the self defense. I was scared. I didn't know what to do. And he told me the police aren't going to care about the story.

They're just going to want to arrest you and ask questions later, basically. So, at that point, I was thinking about how, you know, I showed him, and I don't think he's until he saw what happened. They even believed me. I think he still thought I was just being morbid, maybe. I don't know. But he was basically like, so far, like, okay, it's real. And after I thought it was reaction, I was like, okay,

I'm calling the police, but I need to get a phone and he's called the police. And he told me, no, don't do that. I was just startled by seeing this, like, I need't really see it be true. And so he basically he asked if I had a shovel. You know, we went outside and he tried to dig a hole in the woods. But it was February and it was cold outside, so the ground was frozen. And so I'm just feeling the whole time like I need to call a police, I need to call a police, like I need to do something. And there's this type inside of me to do, I do it with the right thing to call a police,

but at the same time I'm being told like don't, they're not going to help you. And I do still have that doubt in the back of my mind from all the time that I tried to go to them for help and not for cheating that. And so I'm kind of on the fence, like do I hold them, do I just forgive them, I think they're okay, what do I do? And we're walking back out of the woods and the old women are able to be dug. And he picked up the shovel and pointed at the shed and was like, that's our plane B, that's what's gonna happen. And I just remember feeling confused,

like, I didn't have a plane A, so how can I even have a plane B? Like, I just kind of moved in third way, he's telling me to do because I don't know what to do, so who else do I follow? And from there on, the body was moved. My dad's body was put in the shed outside. Crystal, was this guy your age? Or was he a little older?

He was older, I think he was 25 at the time, if I'm correct. Lanzia's six years older than Crystal with a robust criminal record. He was known around the small North Carolina town, especially to Crystal's best friends at the time, summer and tailor. I know this person, and I know who he was and who he is now, and it's not a good person.

I never liked him from the start. I'll just be honest, and he knows that I don't like him. I just, I tried to stay away from him at all costs because he gave me weird vibes and because I knew his history. He had previously been incarcerated. Taylor had her own encounters with Lanzi. This sounds so bad because I hate being like, I'm not a judgemental person, I'm usually

like, but 100% the kid you would look at in high school and be like, he's going to shoot at the school. 100% like trench coats, fucking like you're hiding guns in there, like you're something bad is going to happen and you're going to be the cause of it. With Michael's lifeless body bleeding out on the couch. Lanzi took charge of a hysterical crystal and helped clean the crime scene. When he was telling you, let's use the shed, let's use this, this barrel.

Do you remember what you were thinking at that time? I remember kind of thinking, it was disrespectful to my dad's body, and it's not weird, but, I remember kind of thinking like it was just going to put some of my dad's body in it and it's from the weird light. But I didn't want my dad to be in there. I just wanted to be alive. I didn't thought I was just freaking out.

But I guess that was like my initial thought. Like my dad deserves something better than this. Like, it's not fair that this had to happen and it should not do it. And I just, it was easy for me to fall in line with what people say. Like, do this, do that. Like, it was easy for me to kind of submit to people who were kind of authoritative over me. It wasn't that I was age or anything, it just. I was so weak at the time, like I was lost and.

I never made decisions in life on myself, so if somebody's saying do this, do that, then why not do it? Like he seemed to kind of know what he was doing. He moved around like everything was okay.

I mean, while I'm kind of freaking what he was doing. He moved around like everything was okay. Meanwhile, I'm kind of freaking out. So I feel like it would just be common since I guess to follow the guy that thinks that nobody's doing. When you're going through the motions of actually putting your dad's body in there. Were you shaking? Were you crying? Were you silent? Numb? Trying to stop what he was doing. I'm trying to pretend that this wasn't happening.

Trying to force myself to be okay. I guess I was kind of numb. I guess, is how I would put it, but not even that, like, maybe numb on the outside, but on the inside, I'm having, like, a war with myself. After her dad's body was placed in a bin in the shed, the two went back inside the house. inside the house. We went back inside and we grabbed a couch. And the whole family moving the couch, I'm thinking, maybe it's not too late. Maybe I can call somebody. Maybe I can get help.

Maybe somebody can step in and do the right thing. But again, there was that tug of, well, I'm already this for how do I back out of this now? I'm the bad guy in this situation like there's no like seats for what I did so nobody's really going to understand what happened so we just began moving the couch through the kitchen and out the door and I remember my phone had started ringing and the couch was going through the door. And it was my friend Taylor and her dog had been hit by a car. A bizarre coincidence. As Crystal is in the aftermath of killing her dad, her best friend Taylor witnessed

a different kind of death. My dog, I watched my dog get run over. And I called Crystal Crying, and I was so upset, and I said, I want you to come over now. I need you to be here for me. And no, not even a fucking, didn't even have to contemplate it. She was on her way to the house to come, I mean, just console me and tell me everything

was gonna be okay and spend time with me. I remember thinking like maybe she had intuition and knew what I was doing and I talked about telling her but I didn't want to involve her. She was kind of always a good girl. I didn't even talk about her. First, I'm still with her, honestly. We always just goofed off.

So I didn't know how to approach that subject and tell her. So I just told her I've put some back into my waistband and me and Lindsay went over to the side of the mountain and pushed to the out the side of the mountain and pushed to the couch down the mountain. And it just kind of tumbled. So we went back inside and he had been wearing gloves and I had a puff and this on my hand. So I took those off and he ended it to him.

And he was basically picking stuff up like he took the shell off the ground and he put it and dropped it inside of the glove and he put it back in the garbage. And he pulled the trash and I said, I'm going to get my shoes on, I'm going downstairs. So I didn't take a shower anything before I left. I just kind of threw on some clean clothes and I threw my old stuff on the ground, and which is like I'm not ever wearing that again.

Like I just threw it there at the end. At this time, I thought maybe I'll just leave, and I'll never come back to this house, and how it's pretty good to do a happen. But as we're leaving, I dropped playinging off at the bottom of the mountain. And I told him, I was like, you get off here, I don't know how you're causing body. He just kind of figured out a way to override or something. She says Lanzi was stunned being rushed out of the house

after what he'd done for her. He left her with memorable parting words. 20 was getting-a-half of her told me to hide out in the house. He was like, you owe me one crystal-how. And he said my first and last name. And something about that just made me feel... I just can't know maybe or worried. Lanzi would re-emerge in a way that would only make sense to those living in a small town. For now, Crystal headed to Taylor's house.

How was your state when you arrived at Taylor's house? Were you holding it in? Whenever I got to Taylor's house. Were you holding it in? Whenever I got to Taylor's house, you know, it was kind of weird because I didn't drive. So I remember lying and telling her to my dad was at a town because I didn't want her to ask me what's going on. I'm not very good at lying. Like, I don't know, I'm just not good at it.

And so I figured if I'll for a while, I'll be caught off guard if she asks me something and I don't have an answer to it. So I just told her my dad's out of town and I remember a hucking tailor that she was crying because her dog had died and I started crying too. And it's common, your friends are in here hurting. So I just really got to explain it

way high-tiered, but that's really... Crystal wasn't allowed to drive her dad's land rover, and her friends knew that. So she piled on lie after lie, telling them her dad was in Georgia for work. Later that night, Crystal and Taylor went over to Summer's house. The three best friends gathered to support each other,

but they had no idea whose grief and guilt they were truly consoling. We were hanging out with Summer and her boyfriend who lived with her. And they were smoking weed, so I just smoked weed too, and I was like, maybe it was a hell. I'm not really willing to try anything at a point like, because on the outside, I'm smiling and I'm laughing, but on the inside, I guess I'm crumbling and on the part. And it's trying really hard to hold it together. So Taylor got a car to be she had to be home that night.

So I was at Wall Street, she was home. And on the drive-back, there were hours. She was just quiet and it was dark outside. And I get my thoughts, kind of, I've got the best of it. And I'm thinking, I'm gonna have to face this at some point. I don't wanna go back to the house, what I'm gonna do. I don't really have an face this at some point. I don't want to go back to the house, what I'm going to do. I don't really have an idea of what to do.

I'm kind of lost. I'm just drawn to blank. And I feel myself like I'm starting breaking down. Like I can feel it coming. I can feel that I'm about to cry. I've never been an emotional type. So I'm just trying to hold it in because I don't have an explanation like I can't just sit here and say, oh it's about

your dog for the rest of my life. I can't pretend to be distraught about my friend's dog. So we get to her house and I actually, like my mom called me out of the house, I call my mom, I'll be in there to visit. And so she got out of the car and went inside. And I just remember crying really hard, like feeling like I'm leaving it. Feeling lost, feeling angry myself, angry at the world. Just unsure of what to do, confused. And I'm trying to figure out who I was.

How can I cover this? So how can I figure out where to move? And I thought about all the time as my dad had talked about committing suicide. And when I went inside, I was obviously upset. And I lied to Taylor. And she just, like, says in my dad, killed himself. She was shaking.

She was crying. Like, it was like, it wasn't a put on, like, I don't know how someone could, like, put on that type of performance. It was very genuinely upset. And we stayed at my mom's for like a little bit. My mom was in fucking shock too. The news quickly spread to summer. I get a call from Taylor saying,

hey, something's really going on. Crystal's mom just called and told her that her dad killed himself out in front of her house. In Georgia, I was like, that makes no sense. What's going on? So they come over to my house. My parents are hysterical trying to console her. I'm hysterical. Everybody's crying, freaking out, trying to figure out what's going on. She draws a picture for me. How he was shot. In the at the time, in the moment, in my brain, my immediate thought was, oh shit, this is terrible. Crystal went back to her house to grab her dog Teddy and some clothes to stay at Taylor's

house. Days after her dad's murder, it was clear. She wouldn't be able to escape what she had done. I remember one time, after one I started drinking a lot because I kind of was having hallucinations and stuff and so alcohol was around and I kind of drank a few times and got drunk to try to forget.

And I remember one time I was drunk and I was going through videos on my phone and I remember seeing this video that I took of my dad in the dog and he just got a message with me to see him alive again and I was sitting in the back seat of Taylor's women's car. And I was watching it and crying hysterically. And you know, when I'm crying, I'm crying so hard. It's quiet. Like they don't hear me cry. And so when she looks back there, I'm crying so hard.

She's kind of crying so hard. Like what's happening? What's going on? And I remember just telling her, like like it is my fault about my dad and that felt like an admission I guess. What would seem like a proactive suggestion from Summer to help Crystal get back on her feet would later become tabloid fodder putting a target on all of their backs to this day. target on all of their backs to this day.

After we've decompressed, we're talking, you know, just kind of chillin, hanging out. She's like, I don't know what I'm going to do. Maybe we should get an apartment in Asheville and we can, you know, go in together. Okay. So being the person that I am for coming from the, the that I grew up I grew up in a way that you don't waste anything if you have something you use it I was like that's your dad's house Why wouldn't you want to be close to him if it's paid for let's just stay there why pay rent when we could just You know we're eight you know 16 17 18 at the time like We don't want to work Who wants to work?

No one wants to work at that who went in their life. So that was sounded better and better by the minute. I don't know how to go in on my own. So I don't really have a option but to go back.

So I invited multiple people that I would just go with to say at the house and they read. The first set of friends to move in were summer and her boyfriend Elijah. We go up to the house to clean. We go inside, I see that the couch has been pushed off to the bank, which it was not previously pushed off the bank.

And I asked about it. I was like, why is the couch down there? She said my dad cut his arm with his machete and blood on it. So we just tossed it down the bank. I read Neck so totally and being from the self that kind of sounded normal people do stuff like that all the time or they'll burn their trash or just whatever it's a pretty normal thing to see something like that. We go inside there's like this huge this massive public. probably, every bit as big as the living room, maybe the kitchen, even maybe even bigger.

It's like this big black, thick rubber tarp. I don't know. I question it, and she was really like, really weirded out about it. So I just folded it up and put it in the pantry. It didn't think anything of it. Still uneasy with people living in her dad's house, Crystal gave her friends some house rules.

We were not allowed to go in his bedroom. We were not allowed to really investigate the house that we were living in. We were not allowed in the shed, which I can understand not going in the bedroom. The shed, I don't really know why we would need to go in there anyway, but it should we need to, we should be able to. Needing a few more people to help pay the bills

to sustain the eight bedroom house, Crystal agreed to allow one more girl she knew from school to move in. The decision would bring her back to the day she was desperately trying to forget. After that, we're kind of trying to find people that we know that we all get along with to be like, well, who else is going to move in? And there was a girl who went to school with me and we were like, well, who I was part of

moving. And she was acting her nineteen times, so she was an adult, she could not do what she wanted to do. And so the actor, school like, hey, you want to move in with us? Like, let's go. And she was like, yeah, but I'm keeping my boyfriend moving with us. And I'm like, I'm sure a wild carer from the jaw, and we know she had the same room.

I don't know for the carer. Taylor and I went with us, by the way. He was just kind of hidden out. She still was living at home. She was 17, not laughing about yet. And, but I was in the room talking to her, and she was talking about his guy, and she's talking to him with his first initial,

like she didn't call my school name, like I just figured it was a nickname or whatever. And so, I listened to her talk about this guy and the light. The light that's in her eyes is the same spark I get that I recognize from when I used to a child and I used to talk about him. So I'm like, well, she was really the in love with this guy. And she was the cool part and thought so I figured, you know, he's probably cool too. And so she said that he didn't have a car. And we had to take him up.

He had been famous, mom. And so I'm like, okay, cool. You know, whatever. Let's go pick him up. And he's driving a town in luxury, like trailer. And she just had a car. I'm kind of socially awkward. So I'm, I just stay in his trailer. And she just had a car. I'm kind of socially awkward, so I'm, I just stay in the car. And I see the door open.

And I see this tall guy, you know, kind of cover over her and give her a hug. And as he looks up over her shoulder, I see that the guy, he's dating Lansing. Your stomach must have dropped at that point. I was thinking, you know, a lot of the people that I hung out with weren't older people. So my friends didn't know a lot of my other friend group. Like the people I hung out with in school didn't know. The other people I hung out with on regular basis.

So I didn't even think like they didn't other. It is just not down, but I'm still not thinking that. And it just surprised me. And I guess I was kind of like, oh shit. Lanzi, the older guy who helped Crystal clean up the crime scene and who knows where her dad's body is. Coming up on the next episode of Killing Dad and who knows where her dad's body is. Coming up on the next episode of Killing Dad, what impact will Lansing have on the House of Teens? It's not to a point where he told me basically like,

this is a money I want to save for it. It is not good. It's over for you. And then now, in from this party, that had a sobering effect on all. She was raped that night. Thank you.