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 0:46

And I'm Michael.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

When tragedy strikes a family, it doesn't only affect parents, siblings, or children. It changes the lives of everyone who loves them. Sometimes those who marry into a family become some of its strongest advocates, standing beside the people they love through unimaginable grief and unrelenting search for answers. Today's guest is Scott Laudiger, Jana's husband. Today we'll talk with Scott about the woman Crystal was, the impact her death had on the family, what it was like supporting Jana through years of investigation, and why this search for answers continues more than three years later. Scott, thank you for joining us. To begin with, we would like for you to introduce yourself to our listeners, tell us how you became part of the McCrory family, and share what Crystal was like from your perspective.

SPEAKER_02 1:38

Hi guys, my name is Scott Laudiger. I'm the w husband of Jana Laudiger, and I'm excited to be here to talk to you on this spousal support that I've been able to give to her over the last three and a half years. Crystal was uh a sister-in-law to me, and whenever I saw her, whenever I came across her, she always had this silly grin, and she was always laughing about something. And you couldn't help but just to laugh with her, even though it may have been the stupidest joke, stupidest thing in the world, she made you laugh no matter what. And one of the other things I remember is that we couldn't go by Walmart's parking lot without looking for her car first because she always parked in the same spot every time, and we knew exactly where to look and we knew exactly what her car looked like.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Now, was she a frequent Walmart customer?

SPEAKER_02 2:35

She was very much a frequent. Um, I don't know if it was once a day, twice a day, but I'm sure she seemed to be there like eight times a week. Holy crap.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Wow, she must have really been capitalizing on those Walmart deals.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

Yeah, she loved to shop.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

You know, I am a I love to shop too, but when it comes to Walmart, I find I discovered like Walmart pickup and drop-off. And because I get pretty much the same things every time, I just am like, yes, reorder the same items. And I just pull up and let them put them in my car for me. So I I can see loving Walmart.

SPEAKER_02 3:14

Well, because of that situation, we don't freak with that anymore very much, and so the Walmart delivery has been um our go-to now.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

Well, um, thank you for sharing your perspective and your recollections of Crystal. Um, and and so we know our listeners know that when Crystal died, you weren't just grieving her loss, but you were also watching your wife lose her sister. So, what do you remember about those first few days?

SPEAKER_02 3:44

The sheer shock of it all. I mean, when she got the phone call, the look on her face was, I gotta go. And I'm like, oh, okay. And so she left. And I remember trying to call her a couple times, but I knew it wasn't I wasn't going to get a hold of her because of what was going through her head. She was racing to get there, she didn't know what to expect, didn't know what was going on. And it was quite a bit later on that evening before I got a chance to talk to her, and it was tough, um, very tough, but not as tough as it was later, because right now she's still in shock, she's still trying to comprehend, she's still trying to figure out what happened. Later on, when it hit, then you started seeing the anger, the frustration. Why, if, could I? All those different things coming through your mind and and also coming out of her mouth of what could have been different.

SPEAKER_00 4:52

We can tell by um speaking with Jana that she um is very persistent. And we in every family that we've supported, there's there's always been at least one person, and I always call them our fierce person. And I can tell that she is the fierce person in Crystal's story. And and so was there like a one moment that you realized that she was not going to stop asking questions until she felt she'd exhausted every lead, or did you just know from knowing her that that's the way it was going to be?

SPEAKER_02 5:22

When she asked the question, Tony, did she leave a note? And he goes, No. And then says, Well, can I have the laptop so I can search for a note? When there wasn't a note in the mail or on the computer or at the house, immediately a red flag went out for her. Because she left notes all the time. I'm not now I'm not saying um that was the case, I it was just the first thing I remember as being the trigger for her to say, okay, something's not right about this. And then at the um funeral home, when they're getting her prepared, some of the other things and some of the things that she saw on the body and and what the funeral home director told them, again, questions started to come up. It continued on with the meetings with the sheriff and with the coroner. And what I s what I found was that that shock of her dying to all these questions that she was asking turned straight into determination. She was determined to find the answer to what happened here, and that's what drove her for the first year 1,000%. She delayed everything else on the grieving process because she was determined to find an answer, find a clue, find anything that will help her understand what happened.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

And I want to just um remind our listeners who may have not listened to uh Jana's episode. The the biggest concern here as as we understand it in Crystal's death is the swiftness in which her manner of death was rolled.

SPEAKER_02 7:06

Correct.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

And then what you're describing are sort of the red flags that were going off in Jana's mind is as she's gathering information, and maybe that's not clicking with what um was rolled initially with, and I think it was like less than two hours as a suicide.

SPEAKER_02 7:22

That's correct, it was.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

And so you talked a little bit about um how that first year was um kind of a delay of grief and all the work that she was doing. And what did that what does that look like to you, supporting her on a day-to-day basis as she spends, as I know, countless hours researching and organizing evidence?

SPEAKER_02 7:40

Uh just making sure she's okay. I mean, uh she has you know something to eat, something to drink, she needs anything, you know, doing the little things around to make sure that it doesn't bother her. Uh just giving her some space to um do what she needs to do and to listen when she wants to talk about it. Um not all the times that she wants to talk, but there are quite a few times when she did. And and sometimes I play devil advocates. I I asked her, well, what about this? You know, this could happen. And I was I was determined to say, okay, Jenny, you gotta you gotta realize this is what happened. And and I didn't say go on because everybody else told her go on. I was not gonna say that. But I was always I always grew up being a uh a police advocate, and if what they said had to be true, well, she convinced me early on, and I couldn't do that. I had to say, you need to do this, you need to go on, you need to go further. We need whatever we need to do, it's do this. And once she figured, once she got that word for me, I think that just gave her that extra emphasis, impetus to go, okay, let's do it.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

What you're really speaking to and resonates with me is that that support of what we've learned of the terminology is a secondary victim. And I I I'd like you to continue talking about that, particularly because I know that we have listeners who are in your position where they are a spouse or a brother or a sister or a mom or a dad of someone who is a secondary victim. And and to go a little bit further, I would like for you to talk about grief and the what you really said that's important is you said, I would never tell her to just go on, which I think means like just go on with your life. Can you talk more about that? Because I think that's really, really important how you were approaching that for her.

SPEAKER_02 9:46

I've never had someone that close, that young pass away or die on me. Uh it's always been a grandmother, grandfather, someone like that. Well, we knew their end of the life was coming. And when I look back at their yes, I was grieving, but I was also happy because of all the memories I had with them. With her, her memories instantly stopped right there without knowing that that was going to be the last one. And seeing that look in her eye, seeing that feeling that hurt in her voice, even if it was plain Jane, I had I couldn't say, do it, you know, go on, forget about it, it's go on. She needed an answer for herself to complete the process for her. Not for anybody else, but for her. I couldn't deny her that possibility of not getting an answer. And the more she dug, the more questions, the more concern. It just it just brought more and more questions. And so I had to look at this and go, we've got to get an answer for you. We need to find something for you to make this work. Because otherwise it's going to continue on and on and on. And for me, it was it was tough because every day I had to figure out a way to, you know, let her go, hey, everything's great. Love you. Family loves you. We're here, we're gonna hear whatever you need, let us know. And I know she got tired of it constantly going, why can't I get an answer? Why why is it taking so long? But talking to people, meeting with people that have been through the similar situation helped quite a bit. And it made me change my role a little bit because once she found some other support systems, okay, I was more of like, What do you think about this? I was more of a sounding board versus a crutch. And then as I was we're going back and forth now, it became almost like I became a co-questioner with her because I'm asking, okay, well, why why wasn't this? Why wasn't that? Why wasn't it, you know? So I kind of joined the case with her at that point, saying, This isn't right. It it's it's continue. It's it's just figure this out.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

There are a couple of things that you said there that um I want to respond to. And the first one is about you talked about other support systems. Something we have learned in our year and a half of um doing this podcast is the systems and supports that are out there, the nonprofits that are advocating um for secondary victims and supporting families. And I'd just like for you to share with us how did you find those um other support systems? How did that happen for your family?

SPEAKER_02 12:38

Well, we were searching for answers and we and she's she was digging all over the place. And you know, we ran a couple, ran across a couple of lawyers that thought that would help us. And so we paid them to help. And that was kind of a, you know, at first it was good because it gave her a means to explain to somebody else what's going on and for them to kind of go, okay, I understand. And for them to believe her was important because she didn't want to think she was coming off as, you know, this is this case meant as nothing, you know, it there was substance to it. Then we ran into uh she found a investigator out of Tennessee, and that sparked a very good relationship early on. And the big best thing about that relationship is that when we went to Washington, DC with four other families, there was two or three families that she was able to really draw strength from. I mean, they've been dealing with their missed children for decades, over a decade. Well, we're only been without crystal for a year or two. So to understand what we're going through times 10 was unimaginable for us and to know that you know they're still dealing with it. And there's still a person out at in uh Mississippi that she contacts regularly for support and for advice. And I think that early on, that trip was probably one of the best things that happened because she got to meet other people that are in the same boat and gave her strength to continue this fight.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

So this trip to Washington, D.C. is something I do not recall us discussing. We'd love to hear more about that.

SPEAKER_02 14:30

Uh, we were going there because there was an act that was supported and it went through, but it had no substance to it. Basically, it it stated that if there's a suspicious death in the area that it needs to be investigated. Well, there wasn't any money to provide, and they didn't know which agency it was going to support. If you know, if it was the sheriff's department, is another sheriff's department going to come and look at it, or is the state police going to come look at it, or is the feds or the feds going to come look at it? Either way, you're looking at a bunch of money, which they had no money tied to it. So we're trying to add some some teeth to it and try to get some legislators or some representatives and senators to say, hey, we have this on the books now, it's make it worth worth what it's written on, because right now it's worth nothing. And so we went and we were talking to each one of our home state representative or senator, and we never on the state of Louisiana, we never got a chance to talk to our actual people, but she made a a very good impression on Bill Cassidy's senior staff, and he was blown away by her presentation and by what she said and by what took place, and that sparked some emails, and those emails sparked other contacts and other avenues. Now, we're still going down some of those avenues, and the Bill Cassidy issue didn't come to fruition. We ended up going someplace else, but those emails did allow us to get something done a year later in the state of Louisiana that's been called the Crystal Law about shipping remains across country, you know, count uh state lines. So little things eventually became bigger things because of stuff that we didn't realize we were doing at that point.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

The reason that we started our podcast is because Michael's uncle uh was murdered. It's it'll be 12 years um this year. There have been no arrests, um, nothing. I essentially I used the term cold case. And we've been talking recently about reaching out to our state representatives, something like that. And we're just not sure like how that happens. How did you guys make that bridge to be able to to reach out to those local those representatives?

SPEAKER_02 17:05

It was very frustrating at first. The people that we thought were were going to be our friends or help us did not want to help us. And I will go ahead and tell you, um, I'm a Republican, I'm on the conservative side. But those sides did not they they talked a good game, but they couldn't come through with what they they said or what we thought they could do for us. What happened was that through a friend of a friend or through an acquaintance of another representative or another senator, they read it on their own and then they contacted us, or we contacted them briefly, and they read it, and they came back to us. That's how we got some push from uh our local legislation is that they had to buy into it first. And it was one of those things that, oh, yeah, yeah, we're good friends, I'll do it for you. No, it even it's like they had more important things going on, and and and I get it. I mean, their jobs are big and they get a lot of requests every day. But once we got a state representative, two or three step representatives reaching out saying, Hey, what can I do to help you? Now you've got the ear of somebody that can do something powerful for you, and this is what they can do, and and that's how we were able to get that bill across about um uh sending cremated remains across state lines. That's how it was, you know, it seemed simple, but it took some time and effort to get it get it processed, and but that we had to have buy-in on the other end, and that and I guess that's the hardest part. If you're gonna look for legislation, legislative help on your end is that they've got to fully buy into it like you are. If they're not into it, they're not gonna do what you want them to do.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

I think that's really helpful. And to me, it sounds very similar to our experiences with with law enforcement. We have some partners that we have connected with and they say it's persistence, right? It's pressure, not being like ugly and nasty, but not going away and continuing to to push and get that message out and hopefully it gets to the right person.

SPEAKER_01 19:25

Well, the other thing too is you have to consider that, you know, we've heard this multiple times on the podcast where the system is really designed for the criminal. Yes. And it's unfortunate that that's true, but that's what we've seen time and time again. We've had multiple people talk about it. It's always the same story where people talk about, well, I was expecting to get help. I had this victim advocate that was not helpful to me. I've had multiple contacts with law enforcement and we haven't heard anything about it. And then the other piece that we hear a lot about is how instead of a system being for the victims of the victim family, but that part of it, that side of this coin is person-dependent. That most people aren't around to help you. They they say they are. But occasionally you can find that diamond in the rough of someone that's really taking the job seriously, really trying to be an advocate and really trying to be supportive of the families and you know of the victims that are involved in the system.

SPEAKER_02 20:21

On that one person that you're talking about that wants to help out, eventually he's going to get overloaded. And eventually he's got to say no. Because one person or even a serious people can only handle so many cases before they go, Oh my God, I'm I can't, I can't, I can't do this.

SPEAKER_01 20:38

Oh, you're right. I mean, we we even experience a little bit with this podcast because, you know, I'm not sure if you listen to our origin story, our listeners know this story, so I'll do a brief one. But we started out with the idea of just helping uh my family, you know, because I'm you know, I'm the nephew of Jody Kilgore. But what we found right away is people started reaching back out to us, and that that list got longer and longer. And uh originally we were like, I'm we're not sure what to do next. And now we have a backlog of what four months now? Is it four months?

SPEAKER_00 21:08

Yeah, pretty close to that.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

You know, I wish we could do them all right now, and we're we're trying to keep up. Right. And we just started, we've only been doing this for a little over a year.

SPEAKER_02 21:16

Yeah, it it's I mean, everyone wants to do good and wants to help out, you know, the good people. Uh I call them the top 10 percenters that that want to want to do something, but uh, you're human, you can only do so much, and I mean eventually it wears on you. And I can s I can see the weariness in her eyes and her voice sometimes when she's explaining this thing for the umteenth time to this person, hoping that she can get some um you know, some help or some push or some you know something to help you know help with the case.

SPEAKER_00 21:53

So you talked about this push for answers, and you're kind of circling back to that too. And earlier I said there's Two things I wanted to respond to, and that's actually the second one. So, in your opinion, why are there no answers, or what is preventing answers from coming from happening for you all?

SPEAKER_02 22:12

Because a horrible investigation. It was pathetic. I told her this after the first year and said it may take a change in sheriffs before we finally get a decent investigation. Well, now my thought pattern is even if we get a sheriff that will take a second look at everything, the the evidence that's left is not much. And it's not enough to say, oh, there's a smoking gun. Yeah, that's what happened. You got all these investigations, you got all these um recreations of how the gun's gonna fly off here, the shell casing's gonna go here, the bullet's gonna go here, she's gonna land like this. And you know, in real situation, none of that happened. But it's hard to say that's exactly what happened, and you can't go, okay, this is what should have happened. Well, they did they say, well, you can't tell us what should have happened, this is what happened. So it I it's just if they would have just two things I I think if they would have if they'd have swabbed their hands for gunshot residue and if they would have checked his phone call phone call records, I think we could have solved this case very quickly.

SPEAKER_00 23:25

I wish you could see my face because you you started off saying, you know, you can't go back and do an investigation, and our listeners know that this is something we discuss regularly when it comes to Michael's uncle and the sheer ineptness and mistakes that were made almost 12 years ago now that cannot go be you can't go back and fix them. You know, you the the crime tape came down and people, you know, the family still lives in this house, and you can't go back and go, oh, let's look one more time because like they just they botch and even the sheriff's office even will acknowledge that. We have them like at a town hall saying, Yeah, we know we didn't do a good job. And we keep saying, Okay, well, let's stop saying that and let's start moving forward. That's our frustration.

SPEAKER_02 24:13

Well, our sheriff is so full of himself and so pig headed and so uh arrogant, he will never admit that he did a poor job or they did a poor job on this case. Yeah, he's gonna say that you know everything that they they did was to procedure and this is what they found. Period. And so it that's tough when you got somebody that pig headed that you can't talk to, you can't reason with. And that and I guess that's another burn on the side that you know when she starts getting frustrated and tired and she goes back and listens to his phone calls with her, oh my god, that fires her back up again, and we're we're ready for round 15.

SPEAKER_01 25:04

When is the next election? I think within about a year. All right. So the reason I'm saying that is because one of the strategies that Elisa and I have talked about quite a bit is, you know, they may not be interested in the case while they're sending a sitting sheriff, but if they now have someone to compete against, I'd be interested in bringing it up during that campaign. I'd also be interested in bringing up to his opposition.

SPEAKER_00 25:27

Yeah, we got really excited because we thought our sheriff's election was this year, and it's not, it's still two years out. So I was like, oh, well, well, you know, hopefully between now and then there will be an arrest and there will be a trial. But if not, we're we're ready for this.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

If not, there will be signs out in the courthouse while they're trying to talk to people about getting re-elected. I can guarantee you that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:52

Um, we don't live in the in the parish where it's the sheriff's being elected. We have talked to a person that wants to run against him. We're not sure how much um power he has or you know if he can if he can beat him. Uh because he he is a smooth talker. He he will rub shoulders with the right people. And but I've heard that you know people are getting tired of it, and I think they want something new because there has been a lot of negative publicity about their parish from news agencies and and online and things like that and billboards. So it it's it makes them go, okay, what's going on here? So I wouldn't be surprised if something changed. We don't have the capability right now if of funding somebody to say, hey, go out there and beat us butt. Now we can't do that. But we will we will talk to them and hope that they win and and then come back and talk to them, see if there's anything that they can do for us.

SPEAKER_00 26:56

Part of also what we've learned is the role that the state attorney's office plays in all of this. And we have three families that we have supported in our county, and then one family that we're supporting in the county right next door. And in um two of these uh cases that we have supported, charging documents were taken to the state attorney's office, but they were declined. And I actually had an opportunity to speak with a a sheriff in a local county, and and he really helped me understand. He said, our current state attorney's office really is very hesitant to take a probable cause document and move forward on it unless they feel very strongly that they will get a conviction. And I mean, that's kind of how we felt, but hearing it from somebody, I guess in some way it was gratifying but frustrating at the same time.

SPEAKER_02 27:49

And that's a very good point because I forgot to talk about the AD in the area. Uh, she's not going to take a case that's gonna make her look bad or thinks that she can't win. And it's gonna make her look good bad because she made a lot of comments about the case that she had no business saying. Um, you know, basically saying, well, your brother-in-law knew what he was coming home to, so he wanted somebody else to go look instead. Oh, that's BS. If you're a husband, if you're a spouse, you're going you're running home as fast as you can to check yourself for your spouse, not sending somebody else in to check for you, unless you're five states away and three time zones away. Uh it it just no, I I don't but you know, for her to say something like that, and and then it's like she had no will, no uh no emphasis, whatever, to hey, I can I can do this, I I can figure out a way we can do this. No, she didn't want to touch it with a 10-foot pole, and she let um Janet know that real quickly. Um and we have so it as long and that's another situation, we may get a new sheriff, but the AD is still the same, we're still in the same boat.

SPEAKER_00 29:02

It's like the planets have to line up, which they do. I don't know, I'm not a science teacher, but once every million years, probably not even that. That and that's that's what Michael is talking about when we're when we keep coming back to this system not being a victim-centered system, and how many things have to go right for families to and people will use the word justice, which we kind of shy away from now, but that that is what makes sense is for people to get justice, all these things have to line up perfectly.

SPEAKER_02 29:32

Right.

SPEAKER_00 29:33

And it's just that's not the way it's should be or is supposed to be, but it is.

SPEAKER_02 29:39

Justice for the few, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_00 29:42

I want to go back to uh the impact that this has had um on you and your family, and specifically about your relationship and support of Janice. So I'm wondering what have you learned about her through this process that maybe you think you wouldn't have learned otherwise?

SPEAKER_02 30:02

I knew she was determined because of the way we dated. I oh, say more. When we first started seeing each other, I just came out of a really bad marriage and I was swearing off marriage, everything. I just didn't want to know. I I didn't want to do anything. And we started seeing each other and we were having we're laughing and having a good time, and and then she asks, Well, do you want a date? And I go, No. You want to get something, you want her to do something, tell her no. And she will work 1,000 million percent to change the no to a yes. And that's what she did. Because she took every reason I had why I said no and reversed it back into me. And uh, and so I had no other choice but say, okay, okay, we'll date. So it's not like she outsmarted you. She did. Uh, I told her I didn't want any more kids. Well, the kids love me. I told her I was worried about the kids with the dogs. Next thing you know, I find a picture of the two biggest dogs in the bed with the smallest girl, just loving them. I'm like, all right, well, so much for my vicious dogs, and yeah. So, all right, all right, all right.

SPEAKER_00 31:25

Determination and persistence, it sounds like she just well, and knowing what she wants and not letting anything get in her way.

SPEAKER_02 31:33

And there was something there between us. It was uh it and uh once I realized it, then it was, and that's what I've told her. I said, I don't care what happens here, I don't care what happens on this case, I don't care what happens outside, I don't care what happens inside. We're in this together forever, and don't ever, ever, ever forget that. I may not 100% agree with what's going on, but I'm always here, and you can always count on me being here, without a doubt. And so that gave her the confidence and the boost to say, okay, I will do this, I'll do that.

SPEAKER_00 32:07

And let's take that a little bit further. What would you say to the spouses and partners of people who are fighting for answers in cases like this?

SPEAKER_02 32:15

It's gonna be longer than you realize, much longer. Uh, there's gonna be more pain than smiles, uh, more pain than laughter. Uh, you're gonna have to create your own times with her. You're gonna have to let the one thing I did like on my birthday and on Father's Day, I told her, I says, Can we have one day where we do not talk about the case? And she said, Okay, we can do that. And so that was kind of like my birthday gift or something like that. Just, you know, let's just go do something ourselves and forget about this for a little bit. But also know there's gonna be more downs and ups. There's gonna be times when you're not gonna have answers that they're gonna ask you. And that's okay. That was hard for me to learn early on because I wanted to find answers for all the time. I wanted to make things better all the time, but I couldn't. And so I had to learn that just being a silent person there looking at her saying, I love you, it's got to be enough. And it was.

SPEAKER_00 33:24

And I'd like to close with just asking you, what do you what have you learned about standing behind someone you love through a journey like this?

SPEAKER_02 33:33

I have learned that it's okay to go against the um the established authority. They're human, they're not always right, like we're tend to believe. They make mistakes and when they make mistakes, they need to be held accountable, especially when it involves somebody's life, which in most of the time these situations do. And you need to push, you need to push, and you need to hold them accountable one way or the other. Either it's by um their peers coming up to them saying, Hey, you you screwed this up, or eventually, if uh they go to Pearly Gates and say, Oh no, you messed this thing up. We gotta talk about this. You know, somewhere they gotta be held accountable.

SPEAKER_00 34:26

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 TragedyAtrue 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.