SPEAKER_00 0:00

In Tragedy, a true crime podcast, we discuss missing persons' cases, violent crime, and other sensitive topics that may be difficult for some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. Our show is a place where every story matters and every voice deserves to be heard. To support this podcast, you can subscribe at www.tragedy a true crime podcast.com for early access to new episodes. And join our Facebook community, Tragedy, a True Crime Podcast, for updates, discussions, and ways to support the families we feature. Welcome to Tragedy, a True Crime Podcast. I'm Elisa.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

And I'm Michael.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Today we're honored to welcome Lee Hickey. Lee is an accomplished author whose passion for history has led her to write two nonfiction books exploring historical true crime. Through years of research, she has examined historical records, documented real cases, and worked to preserve stories that might otherwise have been forgotten. Her writing reflects a deep appreciation for careful investigation and a commitment to ensuring that the people at the center of these stories are never lost to history. But today, Lee isn't joining us as just an author or researcher. She's here as someone who knew Crystal McCrory personally. Long before Crystal's story became the subject of questions and investigation. She was simply a friend. Someone whose kindness, personality, and presence left a lasting impression on the people fortunate enough to know her. We'll also talk with Lee about the unique perspective she brings as a true crime author. Having spent years researching historical cases, she understands the importance of preserving facts, asking thoughtful questions, and giving voices to stories that deserve to be remembered. That perspective, combined with her personal friendship with Crystal, offers a meaningful lens through which to reflect on this case and why it continues to resonate today. Thank you for being here and welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02 2:12

Thank you so much for having me, and I'm sincerely honored to be here.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

We would love for you to start by introducing yourself and telling us about your friendship with Crystal.

SPEAKER_02 2:23

Well, first and foremost, a lot like Crystal, I'm a wife and a mother. That's always been what I wanted to be. That was my dream when somebody says, What did you want to want to be when you grow up? It was um a wife and a mother. And uh I think Crystal and I had that in common. Of course, I'm an author and I'm a DSP, which is a direct service professional. I work with special needs individuals and um do other things on the side. And I met Crystal at a thrift store, actually. We were at the Scotty, we called it. That was the name of it. And um, it was in the downstairs basement of a church, and everything was like under a dollar. You could go in there and buy clothes for your children and, you know, dishes, whatever it was, shoes. And so I ran into her because she lived nearby and she could walk there. And I just saw her a couple of times. And once I said hello and we started talking, it was like we had just been friends forever.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

So talk to us um when you met her and you guys really connected. What are some things that really flourished in your relationship? Things that you really enjoyed doing together?

SPEAKER_02 3:26

Shopping. We'd then so once we, you know, met and really got talking. I think she invited me to walk to her house with her from from there with um my daughter. And she had her son Corbin was my daughter's age. So I think around the time they were both about five, maybe. And they were both going into kindergarten. So we had that to talk about. And we walked to her house and she showed me around and she showed me her, she was really good at decorating and she liked piecing things together, much like her outfits, to make them coordinate. She liked to have cool things in her house that looked nice. And she showed me her closet because she was telling me how many great things she always got at the Scotty, because she would be the one that would always be there first when it first opened, and she could be there almost every time it was open because she was right down the road where I was probably lucky to get there once or twice a week. And uh she showed me this closet that she opened the doors and it was just full of awesome jeans, and she said, Go ahead, find anything you want, and you can have it. Seriously, if if there's something that fits you, just take it because I'll just get more. So that really kicked off our friendship.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

So it sounds like she was a very giving and generous person.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

Yeah. I always say she would not only give you the shirt off her back, she'd let you go in her closet and pick a pair of pants to match.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

I like that.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

A lot of the people that we have talked to have just um told us about her spark and her joy and that she was really funny. So we would love to hear more about that.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

Yeah, she she had a way, and and I always say she she said the funnest things with her sweet Southern girls. So even if she was kind of like pointing something out gently about you, um, she she just had such a fun way of saying it where I don't even know how to explain it. She was never mean or rude, but she could make fun in in a way that didn't make you feel like she was judging you, but kind of calling things out.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

And we've heard a lot about pranks, that she liked to play pranks. Right. Lots of people have talked about that too.

SPEAKER_02 5:23

Oh gosh. Let me think. I don't recall that specifically, other than I feel like she was teasing. She was very teasing and liked to kid around a lot. But I can't say that I remember a specific prank that she played.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

Well, maybe those are specific for certain people who like those kinds of things because not everybody's here for that kind of thing. Yeah. So that makes sense. Yeah. So I want to take you back to when you first learned about Crystal and the events surrounding her passing. And and primarily, let's start with even just maybe the weeks and months before she died. And is there anything that stood out to you if you think back um in the weeks and months before her passing?

SPEAKER_02 6:09

No, and because she had moved out of state and been gone for several years, our link really kind of became Facebook. You know, we would talk on the phone like once in a great while to have a quick catch up, but I was kind of following her life online and she was following mine that way too, you know, seeing each other's kids grow and we missed each other terribly, but our our time together was always doing things. So I felt slightly disconnected in that sense, that I wasn't right there in her life, of course, to see everything that was going on. So I didn't know Tony. I didn't know a lot. Like I didn't even really know Mason very well. She had him later. And so I felt somewhat disconnected with that, but always close in heart to her. And just we'd always pick up right where we left off as far as, you know, our conversations and things like that. So I really can't say too much about the months leading up to it. Like, of course, I had known about her accident. That was horrible. But from what I saw online, of course, she always painted a very rosy picture. Even when I knew her and we were friends and I was in her life, she always painted a rosy picture. And that was another thing we kind of had in common. We both had problems in our relationships, but we sugarcoated it because we wanted to be optimistic and feel positive about it, even if it wasn't. Those there's so many ways that I feel like um I could relate to her in those senses.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

You mentioned something about an accident. What was that?

SPEAKER_02 7:32

Well, I just know she had gotten into a really bad car accident and she had to have surgeries and she had very severe back injuries and things like that. And it's just really startling. And it was terrible to to care about her so much, but be so far away and not there in her life to to help her or or be there, but just kind of stay updated. So, you know, when I heard what had happened, you know, it was told to me that she had killed herself. First of all, none of that made any sense to me. And having been able to relate to her so closely, like I said, I feel like we had so much in common with our personalities. It didn't make sense to me because that's something I wouldn't do because I love my children too much to do that. And I know she did too. And especially knowing that she had a grandchild on the way. And that would have been, I mean, she would have just been counting down the seconds until that baby was born. She would have wanted to live for that. So it just instinctively immediately didn't make sense to me. But I mean, it's what I was told. And when I my my first thing was, so I want you to know too that I barely knew Jana at this point. I had heard of Jana through Crystal, that that was her sister. That was her baby, in fact, she called her that my baby sister. She never just called her my sister, that's my baby sister. And just how much she loved her, and like Jana was her rock, and and they were always there for each other, even if they didn't always see it eye to eye, that that was her girl. So when I saw a post that was put on Facebook by Tony, who by the way, again, I had no idea, I don't know him at all. But his post said something like, just spent my first night alone or something, and it wasn't that bad. I forget the exact wording, but it was something like that. And it wasn't as bad as I thought. And it was like a punch in my gut. I'm like, wasn't as bad. I don't understand that. I can't understand how anybody could say those words this close to her passing. How could it not have been so bad? I went out on a really big limb because, like I said, I didn't know Jana other than that's Crystal's sister. And so I private messaged her and um I said something to her like, please, please forgive me if I'm out of line right now. Um, because I had no idea how close she was and and what her perspective was, but I said that was such a red flag for me, that post. And, you know, all my red flags are going up, and I I'm just not feeling good about that. And I was holding my breath because I thought I might have just really offended her. I might have really just been out of line, and she might be really upset with me saying that, and my heart was pounding. And then she came back with Lee. Oh my gosh, thank you so much for saying that. I'm not crazy. I'm not the only one. And that began our friendship.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

You've spent years preserving the stories of people whose cases might otherwise have been forgotten. How has Crystal's case reinforced the importance of that work?

SPEAKER_02 10:23

Well, for me, when I'm writing about these people in the past, it's like they would just be forgotten. You know, I mean, especially considering they were over a hundred years ago, these people that I'm writing about. But when when I think when something really significant happens to somebody that can be learned from, you know, from people in the future and people in the present, I feel like it's important that those stories be told for that, you know, capacity of learning and taking from it and dissecting it. So whether it's, you know, the murder I wrote about or um tragedy, anything like that, I think what's just important is keeping the story alive. So and seeing that this isn't just being swept under the rug like she, you know, she's just been forgotten, she's gone and only her family remembers her. But the importance of, you know, what happened and what went wrong afterwards and, you know, why it's so important to not let that be swept under the rug, because we need to learn from that so it doesn't happen again.

SPEAKER_00 11:18

Which is exactly what we are trying to do with this platform and this podcast. Uh so I would love for you to, I know you've published two books.

SPEAKER_02 11:27

Just tell us about your books. Well, the first one is called Girl in the Glass Coffin, The Tonkin Affairs, and it's based on the true story of a young girl that died in 1899 from appendicitis. She was born um to a super wealthy family, like our equivalent of millionaires. Um, and it was sort of like the Gilded Age of the West Side of Oswego back around the turn of the century. I believe what happened was so her mother used the excuse that she couldn't possibly bury her because she was afraid of the dark. But I think the truth is that um the art of embalming was sort of new at that time and it was only afforded by the wealthy. And what the embalming process did, I believe, for Virginia was plumped her skin enough to bring her, you know, she had been so sickly there for those few days, and her body had gone through so much that she probably looked horrible in her death. But then after she was embalmed and she had her hair and makeup done, and they put a beautiful white gown on her and white shoes and a white bow in her hair, I think she just looked alive again, like she was just a sleeping child, and that's why they couldn't part with her. Um, they ended up keeping, they ended up having a hermetically sealed coffin made for her and keeping her in their mansion for over 15 months. So that's kind of the central part of the story. But really, because they were so wealthy, of course, drama follows wealth. And so there were so many other incredible things that happened associated with the family. There was a freak accident. Um, the murder of Corus Suite was actually associated with their family as well. There was scandal, betrayal, a whole blackmail scheme. So I always say that if if that book, if Netflix were to pick that up, it would be a series because every chapter would be its own episode where the murder of Cora Suite, I more just bring that whole story to life. And and really what I'm walking you through is the psychology of the murderer, what happened to him when he was young, and how neglected he was, and how abuse contributed to um the deterioration of his mind to make him, you know, capable of doing what he did. So that's more of like I always say if Netflix picked that up, it would be a movie. So, but we tried to be as accurate as we could in both of the books and and and put as many facts and true, you know, dates and names and things like that into it to keep it as, you know, nonfiction as possible, but we brought it to life with fiction to make it feel like I'm showing people, not just telling them what happened.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

So would you I'm hearing you kind of blend the line between nonfiction and historical fiction. Is the genre mostly historical fiction?

SPEAKER_02 13:52

Yeah, definitely. I can't call it nonfiction because I'm, you know, I'm first of all, I'm putting personalities to these people that I've never met, and nobody that's alive has ever met. So we really don't know who they are except based on what the newspaper articles from the past tell us. And I will tell you though, that the newspaper articles back then were like tabloids. They really put in salacious details and they um embellished and things like that. So you almost feel like when you're reading about these people that you know them and and also just using empathy and thinking, well, if that were me and I was in that situation, how what might I have been feeling and thinking, you know? So um there's actually a lot of me, I think, personally, in every character, just because of um bringing them to life with empathy.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

That makes a lot of sense. And unfortunately, um I I could contend that some of the newspaper articles we've we have read about the uh people who are victims of crimes that we're supporting are salacious and say things that are not true. Uh and so maybe there hasn't been as much growth in that area as we would hope for.

SPEAKER_02 14:58

Yeah. That's probably still typical. And uh tell us about your second book. Well, that is the murder of Corus Suite. So that's where I bring the whole murder to life. So I talk about the murder of Corusuite in the first book in chapter 18, but it's so condensed to fit into that story that, you know, my husband and I, as soon as we finished that book, we're like, we really need to bring this to life. And of course, the more he found out and the more research we did on Manzer, the murderer's history, the fact that he was in two different orphanages and that he had been pretty much abandoned as a very young boy and just kind of followed that timeline of his life up through. And then once we get to the murder, everything is out there in in, you know, abundant detail in the newspaper articles. I mean, almost, I mean, the trial is basically written out word for word, so we could get all of the testimony. So from that point on, it's very, it's very accurate, but it's just kind of like the the life of of Manzer and what he did.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

We started our podcast about a year and a half ago initially to support Michael's family. And there's an unsolved homicide in his family. And we've sort of become self-taught, I guess, in investigations. You're talking about gathering newspaper articles and all these things that you're doing, which technically are investigative strategies. We would love any of your learnings or tips that might help us to better serve our families when it comes to investigating and trying to dig these things up.

SPEAKER_02 16:30

I think I would say that there's no bunny trail that isn't worth going down because you never know where it's gonna lead. So for example, we would get one article and it might like for just right off the very skimming the surface, the the girl in the glass coffin had an older brother, Harold. So one of the newspaper articles mentioned his friend Tommy Candy. So my husband's like, oh, well, let me research Tommy Candy. And then all of this, you know, world of stuff comes up about him. And then what you do is you can, you know, like, here's a puzzle piece and here's a puzzle piece, and now you can put those two together. So we learned through learning about these boys that they were, they were best friends, they were like brothers, they lived right across the street from each other. So sometimes it's just filling in the blanks. So you never know what piece of the puzzle you're gonna find when you go down a bunny trail. Even if it looks like, you know, it probably will lead nowhere, it might be worth pursuing because you never know what you're gonna find.

SPEAKER_00 17:19

Yeah, we we are learning that lesson like in real time with some things that are coming up um in some of the cases that we've covered, which we're looking forward to talking about um in future podcasts once we kind of get those pieces put together. So I'd like to go back to Crystal. And what would you like people to remember mostly about her?

SPEAKER_02 17:43

Oh, she was just so full of love. She just was so unconditional and friendly and loving to anybody. I don't know of anybody that she didn't like, anybody that she met that she didn't just instantly hit it off with. Whether well, she was at my wedding. So, you know how it is with bridesmaids, you we have a variety, so friends are always different. And she just fit right, just loved everybody, got along with everybody. In fact, I was talking to one of my best friends, and she said, You know what I remember about Crystal? We were at your baby shower, and I said, Oh my gosh, I'm so thirsty. And Crystal said, Here, have a piece of watermelon. There's more water in watermelon than there is in water. And she's like, I never forgot that. It was just so fun and witty. And she was just like, jump right in to be helpful any way she could.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

Is there anything about Crystal that you wanted to share that we didn't give you an opportunity to share?

SPEAKER_02 18:32

Oh gosh, well, yeah, there's probably, you know, a well of stuff. I think one of the biggest things, well, I was saying earlier that there was a lot that I felt like I had in common with with Crystal. And one of those things is um, I think we both have the tendency to be codependent in our relationships, and especially my relationships in the past. I'm in a very, very healthy and wonderful marriage now, finally, in my I'm 50 at this point. But I went through it in my younger years and I feel like she did too. So not only did we try to paint this rosy picture when we were in relationships, even if they weren't, you know, trying to just sugarcoat everything, but also we would evolve ourselves around the people that we were with. So for example, um, in my in one my marriage, I was like, um, I became a hunter and I went ice fishing and I rode a dirt bike and I went downhill skiing because that was what he wanted to do and what he liked to do. And I felt like Crystal did the same things, like she would just adapt herself to her person to be everything she could be for them, but kind of would lose herself a little bit in that other than you know, she I know she was herself when she was with me and we would do our thrifting and stuff like that, but really um the central parts of her life, her life like mine would would become entwined in their wants and needs. So one example I have of that is the way she pursued her faith and her religion. So when she was with somebody, she would just adopt their faith and their religion wholeheartedly, not even like superficially, but really adapt and adopt the, you know, all of it. And so a couple of her religions were vastly different, but I feel like she was equally devoted to both. But really, it was a lot about her devotion to the person that she was with more than to the religion itself, if you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_01 20:18

Oh, absolutely. Um I want to circle back for a second because there's I was just thinking about this while you guys were talking, and that is you talked about there's just no way that you could possibly believe that she she would have killed herself. And so is there anything about the case in particular that sticks out to you that supports that?

SPEAKER_02 20:33

I mentioned like she knew she was she had a grandbaby on the way. All right, that would have been everything to her. Like I I've actually, and and because we were so similar in personality and the way we think and stuff, I I know that when I have something I'm looking forward to, I've actually had this thought before like, watch me get in an accident and die before that can happen and I get to experience it, you know, just kind of like a you know, silly thought. But I was thinking, like, in real life, I that's exactly why I wouldn't harm myself, is because, first of all, how much it would hurt my children. But when you have that type of thing to look forward to in life, it's everything, it's worth everything. I I do know though that there was that tendency to be so emotionally entwined, but also her history showed me she was not afraid to move on and to leave somebody, nor was I. And that was another thing we had in common. And so just given her history and her past, she wouldn't have been afraid to leave a relationship, I don't believe. I believe that history had showed her that she could pick up and move on and create a new, you know, place for herself in the world and be happy. So why would why would this have broken her to that point when she had already overcome so much? So that was part of it too. And just none of it made sense to me. And not just her bright, shiny personality, because I know people with bright, shiny personalities do have mental illness that's so severe that that it leads them, you know, to doing the unthinkable. I just didn't see her in that place. I never interpreted her as having any kind of um deep depression or anything like that. Can you talk about the impact that her death has on you? I felt like I lost her a bit when she moved. So I already felt the impact of like, like, I'm losing my friend, you know, she's not gonna be here anymore. And that was hard for me. But then I learned that when she died, it was so much worse. Because at least when she moved back to Louisiana, I knew she was happy and healthy and with the family that also missed her terribly. And and you know, we could stay connected. And, you know, gee, I thought I missed her before. And the loss was just so complete and so, so horrible. And of course, I wasn't just thinking of myself, but of her children, even of her grandchild that would never know her. So it I was just horrified for her sister and her and her brothers, and um all of it was uh just horrible.

SPEAKER_00 23:00

You've been listening to Tragedy, a true crime podcast. Our purpose is to honor victims by sharing their stories through the voices of friends, family, and those whose lives were forever changed. If today's episode resonated with you, we encourage you to subscribe, leave a review, and share the podcast so these important stories continue to be heard. Together, we can preserve their memories and ensure their voices are never forgotten. If you have ideas for cases we should cover or questions about what you heard, you can connect with us through our Facebook group, Tragedy a True Crime Podcast, on X at Tragedy Podcast, by email at Tragedy a True Crime Podcast at gmail.com, or by visiting our website www.tragedy a true crime podcast.com. Thank you for listening, and we hope you'll join us next time.