True Crime with Kimbyr - 12-Year-Old Witnesses Life-Changing Night: The Tragic Case of Crystal Perry: Part 3

Episode Date: December 4, 2024

In the gripping conclusion of this True Crime with Kimbyr series, we examine the night of Crystal Perry's brutal murder through the eyes of her daughter, Sarah. What began as a typical evening turned into a harrowing ordeal, leaving behind devastating questions and a fractured family. Kimbyrleigha navigates the investigation, the suspects, and the search for justice with her detailed research and thoughtful storytelling. Don’t miss the final piece of this chilling case that reveals the heartbreaking impact of Crystal’s death on those who loved her. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After three days of interviews, Sarah even started to doubt her own memory. That's what happens. She told Officer Kagan she'd seen a blue car. And then she said, you know what? It could have been Dennis, but she hadn't seen him. Sarah had seen and heard Dennis in her house so many times and only mentioned the blue car once. So the police felt they had no new concrete information.

On the last day, they got fingerprints from Sarah's hands. All of the finger and handprints on those glass doors in the home belonged to Sarah. So even the fingerprints had led to a dead end. When Sarah asked about the investigation, she was told that the DNA samples were still being processed, but the police lied. We know the DNA samples had already come back two weeks ago, but they were double-checking to see if Dennis was innocent before they revealed to Sarah and the public what they knew. They don't like leaving anything undone in their line of work, and I think we know that all too well, and it's not always for good reasons.

Who knows how long Dennis's DNA results were going to take? It seems like it takes forever. Of course, it was still an open investigation, so the police could not reveal any details to the newspapers. People still speculated about what happened. One newspaper reported that a local man from the area, Lloyd Millett, who had been charged with murdering to other women, might be Crystal's killer.

When they interviewed this man, he said he never, ever visited Bridgeton before, and he hadn't killed her. This ended up being true. There was nothing linking him to the crime. The news of Crystal's murder spread from county to county, and people tried to keep her memory alive. By May of 1996, the family was exhausted with the length of this investigation.

Crystal's sister Carol said, we're tired of waiting. And Crystal's mother told the Portland Press Herald that at the beginning of the investigation, she would call the police sometimes every other day. And they used to call her once in a while, but they don't even do that anymore. The family actually put out a $10,000 reward for any tips that could lead to Crystal's killer. They really hoped that people wouldn't forget Crystal.

And Gracie was obsessed with figuring out who had taken her daughter from her. It was all she would talk about. The family deserved justice, and the Bridgeton PD knew it. For the two-year anniversary of her death, Chief Bell took a team of investigators to the shoe shop that Crystal worked at, and they interviewed the workers for six hours. They told the Bangor Daily News that this was an ongoing and active investigation. They were just waiting on a DNA sample, and we know this was Dennis' second one. It took over 10 months to process.

But when the sample came back, it was negative again. The man was innocent. And I bet this was so frustrating for Detective Pickett. He had done hundreds of hours of interviews, and he kept working on this case, but years went by. And still, he ended up with no substantial. evidence. Then in the summer of 1999, when Sarah was going into her senior year of high school, Detective Pickett got a job in the Peru, Maine area, and he left the Bridgetm PD. So another head detective was assigned to the case. His name was Lieutenant Walter Grib. And sometimes

you know it helps to get a fresh perspective on a case. Lieutenant Grib got the ball rolling really fast. Sarah remembers that when Lieutenant Grib got on the case, he and his team would draw so much blood for men for DNA testing, they were known in the town as the vampires, which I think is pretty cool. These detectives knew that someone in this town was responsible, and they had been walking free for over five years. As part of Lieutenant Gribb's initial investigation, he contacted Sarah. He knew she had been subjected to dozens of interviews, so he promised that if she worked with him, this would be the very last time she was officially interviewed for the case. Of course, Sarah was a little hesitant at first, but eventually she agreed to help. She went to weekly sessions with a Harvard

educated psychiatrist and hypnotherapist named Dr. Daniel Brown. For several sessions, Dr. Brown tried to reveal her repressed memories. When he asked if Sarah remembered seeing anyone attacking her mother, she still answered no. The doctor finally confirmed Sarah had no significant repressed memories, and that was that. Sarah herself had been through a lot in the years after her mother passed away. The first few days she stayed with Gwen, Glenys, and Wendell at Gracie's house. And then she moved in with her aunt Carol and her husband in Peru, Maine. Their home was an hour drive from Bridgeton in a dark isolated part of the woods and Sarah had PTSD and anxiety. She couldn't stand

living at Carol's house. So when Sarah's old babysitter Peggy called Carol and offered to take her in, Sarah was so happy to move back to Bridgeton. But as much as it seemed like this was a nice gesture, there's actually a special place in hell for people like Peggy, and I'm going to tell you why. This poor girl, I swear, she's been through so much. First, Peggy told Carol that she was Crystal's very best friend in the world, which was a lie. She wasn't, and Carol didn't know any better. Peggy was taking advantage of all the money the state was sending her for Sarah. Whatever money didn't go to Sarah's needs, Peggy would keep for herself instead of putting into savings for Sarah. Peggy also hid it in her head that in order to help Sarah,

She needed to keep talking to her about what happened that night. Eventually, Peggy got so frustrated that Sarah wasn't responding to her therapy that she decided to send her back to Carol's house, which was actually a good thing. But after this, Sarah went on a vacation to her aunt Tootsie's house in San Angelo, Texas. Tutsi was actually in the army and had a husband and two young boys. Sarah stayed there for three weeks. That's when those detectives had flown out there. Remember that?

And Tutsi said, she finally had to talk with Carol. about how Sarah felt living there permanently with her. Sarah liked Texas. It was new, she was anonymous, and she'd made friends with an exor neighbor, so she said yes. But while Sarah excelled at school, staying with Tutsi, who was actually controlling and unpredictable, was pretty rough. They had a complicated relationship. Tutsi was strict about little things, including the length of time

Sarah could take a shower and who she could hang out with. But Tutsi loved Sarah in her own way, and remember, Tutsi grew up in the same condition, that Crystal had, they were sisters, and she was trying her best. She once made an entire scrapbook for Sarah for Christmas, full of pictures of her mother, and she addressed it from mom. Tutsi also convinced her husband that they should adopt Sarah, but then she got divorced. And one day she told Sarah, your Aunt Carol and I talked last night, and we agreed it would be best if you went back to Maine.

She gave Sarah two options. Leave next week or leave the next week. or leave at the end of her semester. Sarah wanted to stay till the end of the semester because she had things like band practice. And she wanted to say goodbye to all of her friends, but then all of a sudden, for whatever reason, Tutsi changed her mind. And she said, Sarah would be leaving in three days,

and that the adoption was just so that they could get healthcare. That's really sad. And I keep thinking, are people really this selfish even after someone's mother has died? So Sarah did go back and live at Carol's house house and finished high school in Peru, Maine. Sarah always loved writing and applied to Davidson College in North Carolina as an English major, but she maintained a good relationship with Carol, Gwen, and Glenice.

Sarah graduated in 2004 and became an administrative assistant at the University of North Carolina where she started to work on her memoir. Sarah even got a master's degree in nonfiction writing from Columbia University and held teaching jobs in New York. Now, Sarah is an an assistant professor of nonfiction writing at the University of North Texas. Her first book that I mentioned called After the Eclipse was nominated as a New York Times book review editor's choice. A Barnes & Noble discovered great new writers pick and a poets and writers notable nonfiction debut. Sarah has had a really successful career and she attributes a lot of that success to her mother. Crystal had dreamed of giving Sarah the opportunity to be whoever she wanted and Sarah went for it.

In 2006, when Sarah was 24 and still working at the University of North Carolina, she got a phone call from Lieutenant Grib. He actually had been promoted and was no longer working as the head detective on her mother's case, but he was still working closely with the detectives, and one in particular, the lead detective Chris Harriman. He and Detective Harriman had put in hundreds of hours of work interviewing and investigating the case and preparing the evidence for a trial. Just in case they were able to find a DNA match, and finally,

After 12 years, they called to say they had assaulted. There had been many rumors over the years that a serial killer had done it or a local handyman who was mad at Crystal for rejecting him, but they were ruled out. Here's how they finally figured out who Crystal's killer was. Back in 2003, nine years after Crystal's murder, a man named Michael Hutchinson had gone to jail for criminally threatening someone using a gun.

Now, Mike and his friends were going around after a 19-year-old guy named Ian, who had stolen some of their marijuana plants. They chased Ian all across town in a car, and Mike's friend held Ian at gun point using Mike's gun. Mike ended up receiving six months in prison and three years of probation. Now, the state of Maine requires

that any person who's convicted of a crime go through a routine process of being entered into a database. One of the requirements is to provide a DNA sample. So they used one of those long Q-tips, you've probably seen him before, and they swab the inside of his cheek. They plugged his sample into the Maine state police crime Lab's database, and Michael just moved on with his life.

Well, three years later in 2006, now 12 years after Crystal's murder, Michael Hutchinson was still on probation when he was charged with driving under the influence with his children in the car. He violated his probation, and he didn't show up to court. So on the day of Mike's would-be wedding, while he was supposed to be getting married to Dennis's cousin, Christy, remember Dennis? Chrysle's ex-fiance? Well, Mike was marrying his cousin. It's a small town.

The police intercepted the wedding between the ceremony and the reception. They put Mike in prison again, and he was going to be there for several years because they didn't trust him not to violate probation again. 21 days later, after they ran his DNA again in the system, it came up as a match to the blood and semen found at Crystal's house the night she was murdered. It was him. He was a monster. Detective Gribb asked Sarah if she had ever heard the name Michael Huff. She hadn't. But there was no doubt about it. Michael's DNA was all over the crime scene. Unfortunately, it took this long because there had been a huge backlog at the Maine State Crime

Lab. It had taken three years to even analyze Mike's DNA sample. And this is actually so common here in the U.S. Apparently Maine's backlog is a lot smaller than most states because it can take up to 10 years. They really need more funding, and I want to do something to help. I'm going to figure out somehow, somehow. way, maybe we can think of it together. Luckily, in 2007, the main Department of Public Safety was given $200,000 in grants to help

speed up the forensic examination of the DNA samples so that cold cases can be solved quicker. So Lieutenant Cribb explained that Mike was behind bars for another crime and would continue to be until his trial. They hadn't even confronted him about Crystal's murder yet. At the very least, Sarah was relieved to know that Crystal's murder was locked away, but at the time, Lieutenant Grib asked her if she could please keep things as quiet as possible. He still had to interview Michael. But he did let Sarah know that she could tell her family.

But Sarah knew how fast rumors spread. She knew that if any of her aunts found out, the news would get to Gracie and Gracie would tell the whole county. But sadly, before Sarah could tell her grandmother who Crystal's killer was, Gracie passed away. She had dementia and not many people knew how quickly her health was. actually declining. Gracie never got to learn who the killer of her daughter was, which is just tragic. Lieutenant Grib looked into Mike Hutchinson so he could prepare to make his case. Mike grew up in

Bridgeton in a house where his father, Brad, beat his mother constantly. He was in the same graduating class as Dennis and had really poor grades in school. After his parents divorced, he ended up working for his father as a stonemason. At the age of 19, Mike lived with Brad on High Street, which is right near the junction between Route 93 and Route 302. Here's how close that is to Crystal's house. Under two miles. Mike's mom lived a little further off Route 93, but every single time Mike drove from his dad's house to his mom's house,

he turned onto Route 93 and passed Crystal's. He would have passed Crystal's house at least once a week. And Brad lived close enough to Crystal and Sarah that when they went on walks, they walked right past his house. There would be no doubt that, Mike had seen Crystal before, at least out and about in public, and he somehow targeted her for some reason. Mike regularly abused substances and sold drugs.

He also beat his first wife in front of his children, and she had a restraining order against him. Both of these resulted in a long criminal history of DUI's domestic charges, along with arrest between 2003 and 2006. This man was a criminal through and through, and now Lieutenant Grib needed to confirm that he was also a liar. He visited Mike at the Cumberland County Jail and asked him if he knew Crystal Perry. He told him twice that he didn't.

So Lieutenant Grib was supposed to believe that Mike's DNA was at the crime scene, but he didn't even know Crystal? Nice try. Then Lieutenant Grib noticed a huge scar across the palm of one of Michael's hands. The police knew that Mike's blood was at the scene of the crime. Crystal thought back. So the perpetrator was bound to have a scar from where he was slashed. When Grib asked Mike where he got in that scar, he said it was from a car wreck he was in.

But Grib knew he was lying. He'd already lied about knowing Crystal. He would lie again and again, and this was going nowhere. The police obtained a search warrant. They took a second sample of his DNA, as well as a foot impression so they could confirm that Mike's shoe size

matched the shoe prints that were found in Crystal's home. Then they did even more testing on the carpet fibers and the blood found on the kitchen sink and floor, and everything came back positive to Mike's DNA. There was no doubt about it. He was Crystal's killer. He was indicted on Thursday, April 6, 2006, and charged with the murder the next week. Finally, Crystal's family was able to get the answers they deserved. But stay with me here because there are some really interesting evidence that Sarah and Lieutenant Rib and Detective Harriman were able to find after the trial.

I was shocked to see how much Detective Pickett let his own biases get the best of him. There were some avenues he could have definitely explored and didn't. This case did not need to take 12 years if Mike had been identified as a suspect right away. It was exactly a year until the trial and during that year, Mike's lawyer motioned to suppress the DNA evidence at trial. How? When that was the main reason this man was going to be convicted, he argued that collecting Mike's DNA was an unreasonable search and seizure, but Mike had already been arrested when you're in prison, you're not guaranteed all the same rights as someone outside of jail.

And solving crimes is a lot more important than a criminal's personal privacy. Plus, they swabbed his cheek, they didn't take blood from him, so it was ruled that Mike's DNA evidence would be revealed to the jury no matter what. The trial was held in April of 2007, when Mike was 31 years old. And when Sarah walked into that courtroom and stared at him in the eyes, she said that he had the look of a man

who had something to say. This man also got hepatitis in prison, so his skin was yellow with jaundice. Honestly, it serves him right. And at the trial, Sarah saw people she hadn't seen in years, including Dennis. After Crystal's death, Dennis had trained in special combat in the military

and gotten a job working on White House security systems, all with the goal of getting revenge on Crystal's killer. From everything I know about him, he's no hero, but he had cared about Crystal, and he really wanted her murder to be solved, even though he had been a prime suspect at one time. Sarah was the first to testify. She said Crystal's death caused her survivor's guilt

and PTSD to the point where she struggled to get close to people. Coming from such a large family, Sarah valued getting married and having children of her own one day, and Crystal wanted nothing more than to have her own children and grandchildren. But Crystal was never given the ability to have had that little boy she dreamed of, or the family she always wanted. Crystal would never be a grandma, because Mike Hutchinson ripped all of that away from her.

The prosecution actually showed that videotaped walkthrough of Crystal's house. They took it when the sun came up at 7.15 a.m. on May 12th, just hours after the murder, and they showed everything from Crystal's body to the neat row of perfume bottles in her bedroom. Even after the attack, the greeting card she kept were all standing upright on the kitchen table. which was just a bit eerie. Then they discussed the handprints on the glass door that belonged to Sarah and the boot prints of the perpetrator and the lack of fingerprints anywhere else.

Investigators testified that crystal was one of the cleanest people they ever had the chance to investigate. They called her cleanliness very frustrating, actually, because any marks that were left on surfaces almost immediately dissolved in the cleaning solution that was left behind by how much she cleaned. So they were unable to be able to be able to be. to recover fingerprint evidence from the murderer.

I've never thought about how someone's cleaning habits could affect the way investigators search a crime scene. It's good to know. But also, Mike was a mason, and when it comes to jobs that naturally wear away fingerprints, the top careers are dishwashers and masons. Who knew? I didn't. So it was possible that Mike didn't even have enough

of a strong ridge in his fingers to create solid fingerprints to begin with. Finally, the prosecution brought in crystals blue bathrobe that she was wearing the night she was murdered and the amount of blood on it was horrifying. It was quite a sight for the jury to see. On Monday, April 2nd, Michael Hutchinson testified on his own behalf. Why is it that these types usually insist on doing so? He said that he and Crystal had met at a local bar and the night of her murder, he came by invited by Crystal, and they had consensual sex vaginally and annually. Then all of a sudden, after they were done,

A guy wearing a black motorcycle jacket burst into her house, knocked Mike out, and then killed Crystal. And Mike had to fight for his life to escape, getting a deep cut on his hand in the process. So how did you plan to prove all this, you may ask? I mean, that was quite a story. And why would he wait so long to admit that? Why didn't he just say it from day one? Well, Mike told his attorney, Robert Andrews, he was ashamed. When Robert asked him, why were you so ashamed and didn't come forward,

Mike pointed directly at Sarah and said, quote, I knew Sarah was there, so I did nothing, end quote. That demon actually gave me the chills because what does he mean he did nothing? I mean, he didn't kill Sarah, so was that the nothing he was referring to? Or did he regret killing Crystal with a kid in the house? Or did he regret not killing Sarah when he had the chance? During cross-examination, prosecutor Lisa Marchez absolutely wrecked Mike's version of events.

She destroyed it. There was only one set of footprints on the floor, and they were his. Crystal was barefoot, and only one set of boots made all those frantic prints in the kitchen. There was no proof that a second person had been on that floor, so he couldn't have been knocked out. Lisa gave him one of those finger pointers

and asked him to stand in front of the jury and map out the path that he'd taken throughout the house while he was fighting this intruder. And guess where he pointed to, where all of those greeting cards were still standing straight up. He had no clue. And there were no boot prints near that spot either. He also pointed to the area in the kitchen where Mike said the intruder opened the drawer to get that knife, but there were no drawers on that side of the kitchen. He was just making

things up and it was so clear. Mike Hutchinson was found guilty on Monday, April 9, 2007 for murder, extreme cruelty, and forced sexual penetration. He received life in prison without parole. Maine doesn't have a death penalty. Murder is punishable by anywhere between 25 years to life in prison without parole. So in fact, Michael was the first person in Maine in almost three years to get a life sentence. It's one of the more forgiving states. And he tried to appeal this sentence again because of his DNA sample, but again, he failed. When Sarah started researching for her book, she went through all the documents, the videotaped interviews, and the notes made by detectives.

and she found out that Mike had been lurking in the shadows all along. For example, she found that car wreck report from June of 1994, the one where Mike said he got that scar in his hand. In the report, it said he owned a black Ford pickup truck with New Hampshire license plates. Wow. Recall hearing about a vehicle like that with a New Hampshire plate? Well, if you remembered Crystal's best friend Linda's tip,

you will be right. Sarah found Detective Pickett's report with a note from the tip that she called in. She said she was curious about a black Ford pickup truck with a New Hampshire license plate parked on Crystal Street. It was the same car. It was actually Mike's dad Brad's car.

And Mike used it all the time. Right in the area where Crystal usually went on her walks. Why hadn't Detective Pickett looked into this? Because he didn't think it was important. Then Sarah found. found Detective Pickett's report of his interviews with that girl, Miranda. Remember, she was the one whose dad told her she's got a call in the tip about the car that was kind of chasing her down the road where Crystal lived on the night of her murder?

She was the witness who had driven by Crystal Perry's house on her way home from work. During her initial interview, I told you they asked her to take a lie detector test, but she said she didn't really feel comfortable. Well, actually, according to the notes in the file, Miranda ripped off the lie detector equipment. Didn't they find that a little suspicious? I guess I've never taken a polygraph test. I don't know. Maybe it makes some people very nervous.

But the detectives didn't follow up with Miranda until the next year. And that was after the DNA results came in. Detective Pickett questioned her, and Miranda again said she'd been following the ambulance because she was concerned that her boyfriend was in trouble. And Detective Pickett wrote down a note for himself that said, quote, she's dating Michael Hutchinson, who lived up on Route 32 at the time."

End quote. Wow. He literally wrote the killer's name. So Detective Pickett knew Michael lived in that area where Crystal was. And Miranda had been concerned about him that night, but they never once questioned the man. If they had, maybe they would have seen that big injury on his hand. Or at least the scar, if it had healed by the time they actually brought him in. So Mike was under their noses for 12 years.

But because Detective Pickett looked at the case like a textbook overkill case. And he knew it was common for the perpetrator to be an ex-boyfriend or a fiancé. He was biased and he let that get in the way. I doubt that he had bad intentions, but he could have followed so many different leads. For such a close-knit community, I'm surprised that Mike's DNA never got tested. Also, when Sarah was collecting information for her memoir, she had a conversation with her on Gwen. Gwen and her husband were convinced that they had met Mike before. She remembered coming over to Crystal's house with her husband for a surprise visit.

Crystal didn't know they were coming, and little Sarah opened the door. And when they asked her, where's your mom? She said Crystal was in her bedroom. When Gwen knocked on Crystal's door, she came out with a young man, and it looked like they had just been intimate. This was around the same time Crystal had just started seeing Dennis. And Gwen remembered the guy looked about Dennis's age, young, like 19 or so. He introduced himself with a one-syllable name. Gwen and her husband could not remember

what the name was. And now they think it could have been Mike. Either way, Michael Hutchinson committed the cruelest murder. And Crystal's family will never know how well they knew each other. Had they met at a party? Did they pass each other on their street? Did he target her? Did he come to her that night and make up some story about his car breaking down and needing to get out of the rain. He could have even said he was a friend of her fiancés. We won't know. But all of this was because he wanted to take something from Crystal. He wanted her body. He wanted pleasure on his terms. And he took that and more. We'll never know the truth. That's one gift that killers get to hang on to, knowing exactly what they did. Sarah will never feel safe again. She will never feel safe again.

She doesn't think Mike is insane, he's a sociopath. She thinks he's a man, like any other man, a product of our society. He's a man who grew up in a system of toxic masculinity and generational violence. He killed and violated Crystal because it made him feel powerful. And sometimes that's so much scarier than a one-off incident or even a random serial killer, because these people slide by in society. They could be next to you on the bus or in a store. They could be someone's boyfriend, husband,

or even their father. They're ordinary, but evil. And Sarah wants to create awareness for the systems that create people like this so we can dismantle those systems. It's her mission to tell Crystal's story in a way that actively helps law enforcement become better at training new investigators and that will honor her mother's life. Sarah says, quote, I'm glad Michael Hutchinson is in jail, but I'll be glad when there are no more Michael Hutchinson's, end quote. My heart breaks for Crystal and for Sarah, and all the women who are affected by male violence. Crystal deserved so many more years. She endured constant hardships and continued to still be positive and energetic and kind,

a devoted mom, sister, and friend. She was constantly laughing with her coworkers, pouring energy into her work and finding joy in the small things. Thunderstorms and making the bed and her favorite earrings and ice cream. She was such a passionate, loving mom, and she just danced through life. I'm really glad I could share her story with you today. Thank you so much for being here. Bye.