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You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them Geese, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Good Evening. Longtime author Stephanie Dickinson straddles the lines of true crime and memoir in Razor Wire Wilderness as she examines the lives of those affected by violence. In this immaculately assembled account that takes readers directly inside incarceration and face to face with inmates. Crystal Riordan watched as her boyfriend beat a teenage Jennifer Moore to death in a vermin infested New Jersey hotel room. Could she have stopped it?
Or could she be his next victim? Now, Crystal is serving a maximum thirty year sentence, while the man who beat Jennifer to death received only a fifty year sentence. So what does it take to survive in a maximum
security lockdown for thirty years? Is it possible to thrive the answers only lead to more questions in Dickinson's raw and emotional look into the criminal justice system and how it failed not just one, but countless victims of violence and what unfolds is a beautiful depiction of moral ambiguity, loss and redemption within the confines of the prison walls and beyond. The book they're featuring this evening is Razor Wire Wilderness with my guest author and journalist Stephanie Dickinson.
Welcome to the program, and thank you so much for this interview. Stephanie Dickinson.
Thank you so very much for inviting me.
It's an honor.
Thank you so much. This is an incredible, unique true crime book. As many people know the case of Crystal Riorden and her boyfriend Draymond Coleman and this brutal murder and Crystal's role in that as well. Before we talk about this relationship that I just mentioned in the introduction, tell us about your life. You were born in Iowa. You say you're a child of the farm, your family
who practiced for Square religion. Tell us a little bit about your life in Iowa, who you were, what your early life was like.
Well, I was raised as a single mother. After the death of my father, I was three years old and I had two young brothers older than myself that we were all into the age of six. And after my father's death, we moved back to my grandmother's farm in Iowa, and it's a beautiful farm. I didn't realize how beautiful Iowa was until I left it. But my mother and my grandmother are very very religious, and so the Bible was our daily bread. It was the most important thing.
We went to church twice a week. And my mother.
And grandmother are very sincere in their belief.
And really strong women, and nothing but praise for them. But as a young girl, I rebelled against the strictures of of that world. I think we all become very much in our elesant years, in our teenagers, we very much wanted to see the world. And I when I was when I was eighteen years old, I had worked in Canada for a summer at a Christian camp and I left the camp and I hit hiked to Montreal. And when I was in Montreal, I met a man named Michael Weston and we became involved and I went
back to Iowa. But then on Thanksgiving of that year, I had hied down to North Carolina to visit him, and I attended a party and as described in the book, at that party, there was a really drunk friend of Michael's and he took out his father's shotgun. And I went to use the bathroom and just to comb my hair, I couldn't find the light switch, and I sat down on the towilt, not to use the bathroom, but just
to sit. And Charlie came into the bathroom and he had the twelve page shotgun balanced on his hip and he laughed and the gun went off very very close to my face. But the doctors had told me you're alive because you leaned forward. And at that point I lost consciousness and I lost the use of my left arm in that bathroom, and it's been it was quite a journey to return, but I did. And and four months flare, I was in college.
And then and what did you do? You you say, with this disability here, what did you end up doing?
Well?
I got a master degree. I'm the MFA and Creative Writing and and as as a lot of people are finding out, because m f A is just so popular, it's a hard degree to sell. There's not a lot of not a lot of ads that want for someone with their m f A. So I took temporary jobs as a word processor, believe it or not, a one
armed word processor or one useful word processor. And I've supported myself with that in all the all the years since, and I worked for some some really large firms and and work my way up to fairly fairly decent salary. But I've been told by doctors that that doesn't sound as unusual as as you might say that I would be. I would do word processing.
It.
A lot of disabled people will do something that you would think would be outside their capability of performing it. And there must be something challenging in that because and I've also found that we're processing leaves me that mental space.
To do my writing.
Let's talk about that writing. What were the first opportunities you had to write? And tell us about your writing career.
Well, I've been writing since I went to school and the University of Oregon, and when I came to New York City, I always said that I'd lived and now I'm going to write about it. I attended a number of workshops in New York City.
I studied with the wonderful William Packard.
Who developed the New York Quarterly, and I studied at the Writer's Studio with Philip Schultz, who who won the Pulitzer a number of years ago, and just learned some really wonderful things, met wonderful writers in the city, and it's just been that part of my life has just been wonderful. And I even started my own small press, Rain Mountain Press, just just out of the love of the thing to publish books that might the mainstream pressice might not be interested in, and to do small print runs.
And I started publishing with short story collections. I've done flash fiction and poetry. Poetry has always been a tremendous love of mine. I did write a novel, thinly veiled autobiographical novel called Half Girl, which is about the shooting, and it took took many a year to get to
that point. I'm speaking about the disability very openly with you, but it took me a long time to be able to even admit that to myself, because I think when you're eighteen years old and you go through something so traumatic that changes your body image, and you're in that in that age where you want to be attractive you go through, you know, it takes a lot to come
out into the open with that sort of thing. So I published Half Girl and it won an award, and then I've published a more short story collection, so Hm with small presses.
But nicely published. And so I've just really.
Found that part of my life really quite wonderful.
But when I talk about sorry, go ahead, no, when.
I approached Christal, which we'll talk about that that is nonfiction, and so that was that was a bit of a challenge, just to understand how well my more poetry centric world would melt with that more harsh, gritty on nonfiction world.
Before we talk about the initial contact that you have with Crystal Riordan in this prison and the questions you ask her and the reason for corresponding with her in the first place. There are some regrets with this Thanksgiving other than that obviously that you're now disabled, and you go into that in quite detail in the book, but just in general, you have regrets from that Thanksgiving, but
you also have regrets about your own behavior. You say that you didn't tell your father that you were hitchhiking to this in five states over for this Thanksgiving Day party, but also your background. It seems you took a lot. You felt guilty about your behavior and felt some responsibility for what had happened that Thanksgiving Day, didn't you.
I certainly do, and I still do to this day. The hurt I brought my mother, who has said, who had a very hard life, and my family has been tremendous, And it took a long time to really embrace that. That that how I hurt myself had incredible ramifications in my families in the rest of their lives too. And so many people say it wasn't your fault, but I I hitchhiked a long way without telling anyone. I was.
I treated treated my mother badly that way. And I was sexually promiscuous, And that was sort of after being raised in such a religious environment. It was it was sort of an embracing on that more hedonistic kind of lifestyle. But and it was the impulsiveness of that age. And so I have tremendous, a real passionate response to that age.
And two and two women who find themselves making impulsive bad decisions in that in that window when when you can make a mistake that will last the rest of your life, And to this day, my brothers still still have, you know, feelings about this.
And any emotion about the shooting.
So you really don't realize what what what how your behavior affects other people. At that age, sometimes you just don't care because you're you're finding yourself. And I look at the way I acted then and it makes me ashamed, it does, you know. I think I've accepted that, but it's something that doesn't go away.
But very much you realized that your life did turn around, and it wasn't the end of your life as you knew it. It was a new life and you thrived and persevered and succeeded when you first Obviously you're a writer, and you also have interest in true crime writing, and you write in this Razor Wild Wilderness that not since Manson were you interested in a case that it is at a point of obsession with the Crystal Reordan case, and in fact, with the tie in with your writing.
You had written a fictional book loosely based on the case called Love Highway. So tell us a little bit about Love Highway before we talk about you. First, your first correspondence with CRISP. Reordan and why.
When I first saw you know, Jennifer Moore's face on the cover of the Daily News. She was then considered missing, and she had walked off into the night, eighteen years old. And I was just struck because that was that age, at eighteen, that she had made this.
Had made this mistake. And I read.
The particulars of what had happened, the underage drinking and leaving the club, and she and her friend's car had been taken to the pound, just of mistakes that led to her vulnerability. Then the next day we saw Draymond Coleman on the cover of the Daily News, and then we saw.
Crystal, Crystal Ruder's picture, And.
When I read that there was another woman, a young woman in the room who was there when Jennifer was killed and raped, I was I just couldn't. I was just you know, not or just fixated with that. How could this be? How how could someone so close in age to a girl not watch, not run away from run away from the room and and call the police.
And as more more so, it was that that that threesome, that that toxic interplay between the three Coleman and Jennifer and Crystal, but that a girl watched another girl being killed. I I felt I really wanted to write about that, or to understand it, to try to to to grapple with that, because it was so foreign to any way that I say. So A short story led to the novel,
which was loosely based on the case. But as I came to know Crystal, I was surprised at at how I did come close to some of her, some of her characteristics. But it was as I was finishing Love Highway one of my friends who had read the manuscript said well, why don't you get in touch with Crystal. Why don't you write to her and see if she'll
write you back. And so I called and the man Correctional Facility for Women in Clinton, New Jersey, and they gave me her ID number in the address, and I wrote her, and a friend of mine said, just just ask her, how are you doing? I've been thinking about you, And so that was really kind of the tone in the letter, you know, how are you doing it? I've been thinking about you and introducing myself a little bit
of my history. And she she wrote me immediately back and told me that she didn't usually write people back.
But.
That there was something she could feel, some sympathy or something you know that that in my letters that that she responded to. And one of the ground rules was from the beginning she didn't want to be judged. She'd been judged so many times already that that that was the one that rock, I don't want to be judged. And our correspondence began, and it has continued to this day.
Is uh, it's moved into the more email and video chads and and the whole and jpage, just the whole whole electronic array that that visits are not allowed anymore under the COVID conditions.
There were some.
Prior to that, but it's been I think Crystal has said that she considers me family. And sometimes when you make a commitment to someone and not perfect, and you're not perfect, and you're not taking away the enormity of what was done, but but you've made a commitment to this person and.
They're going to keep it. So so that was.
The initial contact and it's it's been, you know, quite quite a journey since then. As I didn't realize that knowing Crystal was going.
To take me into the prison system itself.
We have to talk about this crime for those people that really don't know what was entailed here, But you didn't ask in all of this correspondence, you didn't ask why when Jennifer was screaming, and we have to get to the details of this was screaming? Did she turn up the TV set? Nor did you ask her? Why
didn't you try to help Jennifer? So before you endeavored to do this, despite the misadventures and the things that you left your moral compass, you believed and it led to this event that you could never changed you forever. How could you put those things aside? What was it about your background or what was it about Crystal just looking at photos, looking at her mugshot, finding out some details of the crime. Despite the headlines, why did you write Crystal rd RD?
I think I wanted to find out who she was. I did want to understand. I thought if I knew who she was, If I knew who she was, then I would understand. I wouldn't have to ask why she
did what she did. And I think that if I had asked her, it would have been very difficult for her to tell the truth, if she even knows what that truth is, because we do sculpt memory, and that night was so painful, and the moral ambiguity was so great that I don't know what she would have said, and I have asked some questions and I've gotten different answers. So but I did feel that getting to know her that I would discover what it happened. I would discover
why the why of this, and I was reaching. I did reach out my hands as you went buying friendship to her too, because I do believe that the redemption is possible for all of us, and and that we deserve to be looked at as a as a human being, no matter what has transpired before we met. So those were the reasons I reached out to her sometimes. I once gave an interview onto a television show called for
My Man, which I described in the book. I don't believe it's on anymore, but it was an LA based show that that profile young women who committed crimes for their men, and they were called Ride or Die chicks.
And the team had come to New Jersey and wanted to do a segment on Crystal and they could not find anyone who would speak in her behalf her parents or not talk, and so they they found online You had My Interesting Love Highway, And I probably had published an essay, and they contacted me and asked me if I would speak for her, and so I did on New Jersey and was interviewed for almost four hours for the for the for the segment, very very lovely and
warm interviewer. But I learned things from their investigation. They were able to speak to detectives and police. They had some information very painful to Peter for me, and so so that was that was I had to There have been some bumps where I've had to think about what what what Crystal, Crystal, what what you know costs her to take some actions that it was reported in the newspaper the day after the murder that she advertised herself
on Craigslist. She was going by the the name Lisa then as a prostitute to give the full full service for one hundred and fifty dollars, And that was that was really made a lot of in the newspaper. Here is this young woman who the day after a murder is is selling herself on Craiglist. Says that added to this whole shame that this.
Woman is really depraved.
I think in the press.
When you talk about Crystal and how she got to this point again, you call it moral ambiguity. We'll talk about more about that, but let's talk about what you found about Crystal's background.
Crystal Husbands. Yeah, sorry, Crystal.
Crystal was born into a home.
Her father's Irish and her mother was French. She had two.
An older and a younger sister, and they were terribly neglected. The mother worked as a prostitute. The father dealt drugs and they were left alone a lot. They had shared one bed, and they went hungry. And I was so moved by the stories that her older sister would go hunt food in the refrigerator and there wasn't much, but she found can ravioli and pickles, and so that was their comfort food in bed, eating cold ravioli and pickles.
That was their food. And and I found that story so resonated with me.
It just lodged in me.
And they had an uncle. Their mother's brother would come over and he molested Crystal and her younger sister. To this day, Crystal had flashbacks and will hide in the bathroom in the in the prison, because I think that that that is where as a child they tried to hide from from their uncle is in the bathroom, right
They when the oldest girl went to school. It was nose that they had lice and that they were so dirty, and the Job Protected Services came in and they did take the take the girls from the home and they were put into foster care, and they moved around and thought the sisters were broken up. The older sister went in one car and Crystal and her younger sister into another.
And Crystal and her sister were adopted by through the Catholic charities, by a very wealthy Connecticut family who really really hoped for the best and wanted to make a family.
But Crystal's adoptive mother was very strict. Here we run into the fourth Graare religion again, and I think Crystal just needed a mother to just love her unconditionally, and this wasn't going to happen in this home, even though her god parents had the best of intentions and created tea parties for their daughters, and but it was this strictness and harsh punishment I don't think that Crystal could could handle. And she had a lot of screaming in
the night, h inability to sleep through the night. And when she reached adolescence, and you will find in the book that she was a role model a certain point of her life to her friends and there and their parents. They they Crystal was the friendliest, the most beloved girl,
and she also became an incredible basketball player. Because Crystal was very tall, she's she's five nine, and in what was junior high she was she was already being scouted, so that that this is where things started to go wrong, really wrong. She started staying out, she started seeing seeing guys.
There's a rumors, we don't really know the.
Entire story, but Crystal's mother could not handle this kind of behavior, and she went to a child psychiatrist and they suggested Crystal being taken to larm which is a school in Maine. It's closed now, but it was infamous for its attack therapy and for taking only the most troubled kids from the United States in a very very isolated Poland Springs, Maine, and they were at the Mercy of incredible rules. And Crystal's always said she'd rather be in prison at Elon and she spent four years there.
You would do things like you'd be punished and not be able to go to the bathroom, so you would sit in a corner and you could not sloug your shoulders. You could not close your eyes because you had people watching you in the in the cafeteria, you couldn't look at a member of the opposite sex or you would
be severely punished. And punishment was gathering the whole group of students, you know, perhaps one hundred students, and they would shouting and scream at you, and with everything and so and so reading researching Elan, the students became weaponized and the school itself, the teaching part of the school took place at night, and it took place for just
a few hours and some trailers after eight o'clock. It just seemed so bizarre to me that the whole day would be spent screaming, and this is quite quite well documented.
And then this.
Very very small portion of the day, you know, relegated to being taught. And so I think that really hurt Crystal chances in making her a college a college future. So she was able to leave it on after four years when she was eighteen years old, and at eighteen
she went. She did not want to go to adoptive parents, and they did offer to send her to college, but she said she wanted her freedom, and she went to live in New York City with another Elin graduate who was a prostitute working for her boyfriend as a prostitute, and Carrie Anne said, Crystal, you can stay here, but
you have to work too as a prostitute. And that's what started Crystal's sex work and Draymond having to be a friend of Carrie Anne's pimp and he came to department and Crystal says they had an ambetiate, he had clicking, an immediate attraction to each other. I said, well, what was it about him? And she said, well, he was funny and he paid, so it's attention to me and we just had such a good time together. And I think too that he was a lot bigger than her,
I mean, she's so tall. That said that there was something about his size that really appealed to her where it might have frightened other people. And Crystal has said was kind of a note of pride in her voice. He fought for me, which means he took Crystal's quote unquote ownership away from her current pen and fought for her.
And she became his prostitute as sex worker. And they left the apartment where she was living and they went and started they're kind of their vagabond life living in these hotelsies written by the Week hotels which were good according to Crystal, for the work, for the sex work. So this is the trajectory that Crystal was on before.
The murder.
Now one thing that is in the book, But it was very difficult for me, and I think it will be difficult for readers to understand. Crystal did become pregnant by dream, and I think she used protection with with her right, you know. But I said, what happened to the to the baby? You didn't have her very long?
She said, she went out to Oh and the Dream and kept her working through her whole pregnancy, and shortly after the baby was born, she came home from war and she said that Draymond had signed her away, that the baby was given.
Up to the foster system.
And people have asked me a question that you know, saying, well, her scenasure, we are being required to. So that's another one of those those real pockets of question and mysteriousness.
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the haystack. And right now you can try ZipRecruiter for free at this web address ZipRecruiter dot com slash murder. Once again, remember to go to this unique place. ZipRecruiter dot com slash murder. ZipRecruiter the smartest way to hire. Now, we just spoke about Crystal's trajectory into this life turning tricks in these rent a week, Rent for a week CD, very filthy, dirty CD, disgusting hotels and motels to do this sex work. You say that the biggest disappointment she
had this child. And one day she came home and he had given the child to foster care. You say she stopped feeling and caring around that time. Tell us what happens just previous to this July twenty sixth, two thousand and six, and how on earth Crystal comes to be part of this incredibly horrifying murder.
I think Crystal was considering leaving him, At least some part of her was considering leaving him. There were reports by escort services that that she worked for, that she was frightened of Draymond. That that they never saw a Crystal smile. That he would call constantly about the money, and so that was that was testified to buy you know, third parties, that she was just visibly afraid of of him. And she said that she once tried to hang herself and that Draymond found her and he cut her down
and then he punched her. And and I think if that happened, it would be that Crystal is his moneymaker and his he she belongs to hi him and she cannot she cannot damage his inventory. So that would be that would be that impulse there to punch her after this really self destructive act. And so they were having problems right before this this July. This July evening, Dreamond was said too. He has was reported to saying he
only liked women who were prostitutes. He also was obsessed by threesomes, and he people who lived in the hotel, the latest Hotel were saying that he constantly asked man if they knew anyone that would have threesomes. And Crystal was reported to said she she wanted him to get out of his system, and that was really nice on her partner way that.
Things don't leave.
Your system like that. They don't. That's kind of wishful thinking, and we all think wishfully at times. But it was it was at this point in their life that that the murder were leading up to that July that July night, that things were unsettled between them and he was becoming more violent, and so she would have to make some decisions there. She did tell me, she said, I loved him so much. I didn't think I could live without him. And she said, I know I was weak minded. I'm
really trying to change that. But that was that was, you know what what she expressed to me on more than one occasion, how much she loves him. And so if it's now July and Draymond has been going all night Crystal, Crystal has worked all night. Draymond comes in, it's almost dawn. He doesn't even have cab fare. He has Jennifer with him, but he doesn't have cab fare, so he has to come up and get Crystal so
she can pay the cab. And they had an argument on the stairs because Crystal now knows he has Jennifer with him, and she tells him, I'm going to leave you, whether she meant it or not, but but she she she could tell him that, and that also made him very visibly angry. But just to back up just a little, Jennifer and her friend had come up of a club
the guesthouse and discovered the car in the toad. The girls went to the guest house and the towpound refused to release the car because the girls were visibly drunk, and Jennifer's friend passed out. She was so upset, so intoxicated, she passed out and an ambulance was called and she
was taken to the hospital. And Jennifer, perhaps thinking she was going to be arrested because she was underage, walked out of the toepound a lot and walked towards the West Side Highway in Manhattan, which is a very frightening place for a young girl who doesn't even have her bag with her because that's locked in the car. She only has her cell phone with her and it's running down on it needs to be charged. And so she's walking.
It's still dark, and someone has following her, and it's Draymond Coleman, and she has enough power and to fall into college boyfriend and Harrington Park and she's just a man is following me, he won't stop, and he's offering me drugs, And of course her boyfriend said, find a cab, Get into a cab, come here, go to your father's.
We'll pay, you know.
But that's the last phone, that's the last Jennifer's communication with anyone besides Crystal and Draymond and before her death. So we don't know how Draymon uh talked Jennifer into the cab with him. I asked, I did ask Crystal that, and she said he could be charming when he wants to be. Now, I don't know how charming he could be if she was already frightened of him following her, but she did get into the cab with him, and they went to Weehawking to the Park Avenue hotel, which
was definitely not Park Avenue. It was a really CD hotel, excuse me hotel where a lot of drug dealers and sex workers worked and lived and and the bathrooms were shared bathrooms in the hallway, so you get the picture. And it was here that Draymond convinced Jennifer that he had a charger in the room and she could come and charge her phone and then she could call and she could leave, and she was so eneborated that there was footage that shows Draymond almost carrying her up the
stairs and into the room. So there we are, and Crystal goes into the room joins them. I don't know if Crystal thought, Okay, here's Draymond bringing another girl. He wants a threesome. This is this is what it's.
Going to be.
But surely then once the door closed, you knew that Jennifer wanted nothing to do with Draymond or threesome. She wanted out of that room and she wanted to get home. And that's when the violence started. He began to hit her, and Crystal left the room and went to the hallway bathroom, the shared bathroom, and she stayed there for quite some time. When she came back into the room, she was strangling her.
And I don't know in what you know to screet the bludgeoning and the screaming, and Crystal turned up to television and the reports were that that Draymond bludgeoned Jennifer so badly that her eyes swelled shot, she could no longer see, and that he broke so many bones in
her face. And and that was another detail that I just have not been able to forget or stop thinking of almost every day because my face was part of being shot, and I know how delicate it is and how important a girl's face is, and for him to just bludgeon that this and this beautiful face of Jennifer's, is really a terrifying thought. She scratched Draymond and creased.
She fought, she was she's a soccer player, as a captain of the soccer team, and she fought and scratched him incredibly and deeply, and that perhaps made him matter. I think Crystal left the room again. This is on the hotel video camera, and she goes downstairs and and she buys a coke and had this truly went against
her in the penalty phase of the trial. But when she went back to the room, he he Jennifer was almost lifeless, and he goes, I'm doing this to Crystal because because I love you, and it twisted hideous profession of love for Crystal. So he's doing this to this
eighteen year old girl. So I don't wand and at that point, and this is something that Crystal told her friend Lucy in prison, I don't want to I don't know the accuracy of it by Crystal said actor Jennifer was dead, that is when Draymond raped her, and it was the most disgusting thing that she ever ever seen. So you have this split, this is what you've seen, and you can leave, but you stay and then you help Draymond clean her and cut her fingernails off and
take her pulse. And so that that was it was grim beyond belief. And she was put into a suitcase or cannabis bag, I'm not sure, and carried to a dumpster in New Jersey and put in the put in the dumpster, and then Draymond and Crystal left the left the hotel, they went to another like written by the Week motel in Harlem, and in the cabs there, Dreamond had Jennifer's cellphone. He made a call to his mother and this was how they were immediately immediately caught.
Mm hmm.
So they're in Harlem and and Draymond goes out to buy pot or lead and crystals alone and that's when the police come and she's arrested. And shortly after Drayman is arrested, and she's she undergoes fourteen hours of entire nation. She immediately tells the police everything she.
And then she takes them.
To New Jersey shows them where the body is. I don't know if she's thought that that would ebsolve her from responsibility for certain actions, but it it it doesn't really, So so this is this is this is the grim and gruesome story of what happened. And of course there were so many details. You don't know you know exactly what happened, or people can change their stories, but it was the police said it was the filthiest room that they'd ever gone into. It was very, very grim. So
that is what you have to understand. Then two.
To no Crystal. And yet.
She said, I am I am a good person, and she said to me many times, and I believe, I believe that, I believe that there is goodness in her, a lot of goodness, and she's but she could what happened. She could not could not break away from from Draymon in that moment. And I also think four years at Elawn, well, you're passive and watching all this attack therapy, which is just so incredibly violent, that that callister in some way or made her passive when something's so horrific is going on.
So Jesus is an opportunity to stop for a second. Stephanie for these messages.
What lucky lands? You can get lucky just about anywhere.
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today. Has anyone seen the bride and groom?
Or sorry, we're here. We were getting lucky in the limo and we lost track of time.
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Now you talked about that's how Crystal Reardon came to be in prison, and you say that she stayed in the county jail for almost four years twenty ten. This trial finally came to fruition and then Draymond Coleman looked for a plea agreement, this noble guy that she loved, and he had to put it on her and said that she also had sex with Jennifer Just to add
to the salaciousness and horror of this story. Already, she's already called the gen sleigh hooker, but this is this is much worse for her what he does say, doesn't he.
You know, I don't think, and I have told her certain things. I don't think she could accept that he did these things that he told the police he had jex with Jennifer, and she didn't according to her, And I believe her there. She's a pretty straightforward about that,
the sexual aspects of her life. But I don't think she would believe that he would testify against her that he took this plea and pled guilty and then she put guilty, and she could have you know, I do think she could have gotten much, you know, even after she turned the plea agreement, she could have gotten much reduced sentence if she fled the Stockholm syndrome or or they're extenuating circumstances where more closely looked at. But he
gave her up. He's promised her throughout the years that he's going to write it all up and he's going to give his testimony that she had nothing to do with it. It was all him. And every time he says that she's hopeful, or she says he'll do it, and so that's this magical thinking that regard that, that regards dreaming in that light. I don't see her having that magical thinking about other people or other situations in prison, but she does about him. He's going to come through someday,
and she says, I know, I shouldn't. She doesn't communicate with him much, but when he does write her, then she will respond to him. And she said, I know I shouldn't. I know, I shouldn't. It's very very weak of me. But he has no one else, And yeah, that's not really you know, he does, he's got a mother, and but but really she's she she is the one person that really did profoundly love him. So that is true.
But her friend Lucy, who who I write about in Raising Wild Wilderness Too, has nothing but contempt for Draymond and and uh really really believes that he was totally responsible for what went on in there, and that her fear of Dreamond prevented her from taking the action that she should have. So, you know, as in regards Dreamond, that that's kind of a it's it's not ambiguous there he was real me.
In monstrous things, you take us into a place called maximum compound, which is as it sounds, maximum security at the EMCF Clinton, New Jersey. So this is the ednam Mahan Correctional Facility, two hours ride from Manhattan. You talk about her life in there, and you share your thoughts and your information and your background, and she has shared hers and that's where we get this profound information about
her horrific background. But you talk about life and how Crystal lives and how she survives in this maximum compound. Tell us about some of the life in this place.
Well, it's very recommended as far as you have a schedule and you must get up in the morning a certain times that the lights flare on. You're not in cells, you're in wings and units, but you stare affecting to sink with five other women and one shower and one toilet, so you're messed on top of each other trying to get yourself clean before breakfast is called.
And there are.
Three counts a day where everyone lines up and there's no speaking during the count. Everyone has to be accounted for and so that takes that takes about twenty minutes. So you've got you've got that kind of structure, structure in your day. The meals are you won't see fresh fruit, you won't see fresh vegetables. You know, they are in
industrial kind of food. If the chicken cast roll is on the menu, there won't be an eighth in because the inmates working in the kitchen will have gotten there first. But I learned so much about how the inmates take tougherware with them to the meals so they could pick out those things they can use to cook with. There's one microwave in the e MCF. It's one of the last remaining microwaves in the New Jersey prison system. But they
make incredible use of it. They take milk, where they take sugar packets or just little things you know from the meal that they can mix with the commissary items and make some kind of.
Better tasting food. So and there's so little.
Time given for them to eat. You know, they're told to get moving almost as soon as they sit down. And then you have the medication call, and if you take medication, if you don't hear that call, you are out of luck.
For that day.
So because the corrections officers, some are really good people and some you know, really look down upon the inmazes as subhuman is.
Not worthy of treatment. Like a human beings.
So that's going on all the time. Each inmate has a job or they're going to school, one of the two things. So after breakfast and after the count, you go to your job, and you do receive state pay for that, and sometimes just minimal amounts of money, and that goes into your commissary account and everything. This is interesting for me to find out everything costs money. You have to buy all your hygiene products, you have to buy your toilet paper, you have to buy everything once
through that commissary. And so the desire for people on the outside to help with money is always there, and you can understand why. Even though these commentary items are very much reduced in price for the inmates making forty dollars a month, they are very pricey and and that kind of leads to and of course everything on the
commentary list. While some of it's good tasting, like candy bars and snacks and desserts, it's all really high in sodium and sugar and so so a lot of the inmates gain a lot of weight, and there's an unhealthiness to a lot of the women because of their diets so awful, and that leads you to the medical the medical portion of the prisons or is truly truly a disgrace to our country that you have to fill out these forms, and which isn't a bad things, but the
inmates are off not even believe that they're ill, they're they're accused of taking it. And so, for instance, Lucy had a lump under her arm which turned out to be cancerous and she had to get outside her family to to to call administrators to get her looked at in the medical units. So you've got a real need for something better with the medical system there. And and Lucy told me that, uh, there was a veterinarian that practiced for years at e MCS as a medical doctor
and when that was discovered, he was arrested. But but to think that that would.
Be the kind of.
Kind of operation that you would have is is really really suspect. So and yet there's a lot of life and love in the prison. And and I do go into Crystal's relationships with different girls, different women, and there's very oftentimes very passionate and friendships are very very passionate. And I often wondered, you know, on the outside, we
were sort of spoiled by all the things. We get to watch Netflix constantly, and there's so much to read and just everything coming at us that we often neglect the people that are most important to us. And I noticed that in prison there's a real focus because there's not a lot else on your friendships, on other people. I mean, and I've never heard the word love so much seeing emails between inmates, I love you, I miss you, you know, just very and and so there's just a.
Lot of.
Affection there too, and then and there is there is also you know, fighting too. I mean, that's it's part of the prison situation, I think. And but of course in the women's prison is not quite as you know, as dangerous as in the men's prisons. But but I I think Crystal has has really gone She's navigated the prison system pretty well. She's very well liked, has a lot of friends and liked by staff and and other inmates alike. So she.
You mentioned, yes, you mentioned the violence in Are you right about the violence? And I was surprised at the level of violence. I don't know why I was surprised, Maybe because I think women's prison is going to be different, and it doesn't seem to be different except Obviously there's different characteristics in this quest for love has got to be much different than a male prison. But it's interesting the camaraderie and you detail the relationship with this Lucy Wems.
They are very close, they become great friends, and this is part of how she navigates this time in prison and how she heals herself and becomes a different person
is through the help. Like you say, the camaraderie, the friendship, the love that she has and she finds in prison, but also that your relationship with Lucy and with Crystal and the things that you provide them, the little things that they can't get otherwise, but also the things that are intangible things that you provide for Crystal, for Lucy, but for Crystal, especially in this situation.
Well, you know, people say that that when an outside person the friends uh and inmate, that they get weary, that that it's very strong for a while and then a person drops off because life moves and and there's some kind of stasis that goes on with people in prison. They're there, they're there, they're there, even though they too have life that's very active, but it doesn't seem that way.
Maybe for the outsider or the inmate has needs and they'll always have these needs and and I guess some people get weary of it, but that's hung in there. And and I think that that that has been really helpful to Crystal, that she knows that she has someone that's a go to guy that is there for her.
And and beautifully, I had published one of the essays that eventually found its way into the book on an online journal, and a photograph that's in the book of Crystal's basketball team was seen by one of the other girls pictures there and they showed it to one of the women's mothers, and she has written Crystal and has is really interested in Crystal, Crystal's life. She said she she loved Crystals as a as an adolescent. She she
couldn't imagine the girl she knew in this situation. But she is reconnected with Crystal, and that's just in a real positive thing. So so that that that's also something that kind of came through, you know, my interest in her, in in my wanting to to share her story with with a larger group of people. And I think that's meaningful to Crystal too. I think, you know, I was very worried that you know, I don't pull a lot of punches in the book.
I mean and.
That that it's not victim. I'm not portraying Crystal as a victim in all cases.
I'm not. Uh.
She's a human being, and she has made mistakes, and she's presented both ways. She's presented that way, and I I have been worried about her response to some of that, but I think we've talked about it, and I think she understands that that it just has to be that way or or there's no reason to write a book that wants to get inside someone.
MH.
You right, for some Crystal can never repay the debt she incurred in that hotel room. But you're right, But your own experience with impulsiveness and bad judgment has shown you. Life sometimes does give us a second chance, and we must seize it. Cannot abandon our former selves, but we can go beyond them. Do you really do you believe
that Crystal Well, she will be released one day? Do you believe that she has successfully done that, that she has taken this opportunity and go beyond this horrific crime and this horrific event and this horrific time in her life.
I do. I have high hopes for her. But what frightens me, or what I have some misgivings about, is the length of how long she's been institutionalized. She was four years at ELAN and now she's going into her sixteenthear of incarceration, and so that structure that incarceration or these institutional settings give you kind of takes away some of your free will, which I think was part of
the reason she froze in that room. And so that I do worry about it is she's going to be able to handle all the choices, all the the structurelessness of our lives, you know, and she will need help, you know. And her new friend is going to really
help her, and I'll help her. And there are a lot of halfway house and there's a lot of programs now for paroles or people being released from prison, and if she avails herself of some kind of bridging structure, you know, I think that I think because I do think that she has kindness in her heart.
I think she.
Wants a relationship with someone who really loves her.
And I think she's.
Had some disappointments at EMCF and some really longer lasting relationships. So I do have high hopes, but I have some reservations, Like I just expressed about the structurelessness, it's going to be quite a quite a sea change when she's released.
Yeah, how many years does she have before her schedule release?
Well, that's the eighty five percent rule. So she's sentenced to thirty years, but to serve eighty five percent of it doesn't serve all thirty years. And so when she's released, she has I think six more years.
She will be released into.
A halfway house, and she will not be on parole once she's served that eighty five percent that is considered sentence served. Now Lucy is out on parole. She she's was paroled. She didn't serve that eighty five percent of her time. But but Crystal will serve that time. And but the eighty five percent rule unfortunately applies to Draymond too. I think I've calculated it, and I don't think that he could possibly get out until he's almost eighty. But
Crystal will be in her forties. I think, you know, she will have a good portion of her youth will be will be gone, and you know, I think that she does understand what she did and just I know what I did was wrong, and that would be helping Draymond clean the body and cover up the crime, and and not going for Jennifer's help. So I have high, high hopes. And she has availed herself and she is working on her associate degree. She's done quite well, very
well in her college classes. She loves poetry, she's she she has the kindness, she truly does. I've never heard her speak badly about other people, which I think is you know, her adoptive mother, yes, and and certain people.
But I'm never really here. But she loves her adopted mother too very much.
The relationship isn't real strong, but she she treasures she has of it. But I've never heard her speak badly of people.
And that's kind of rare.
And so I notice things like that. I think that he speaks someone whose card is pretty good. So mm hmm.
Yeah. It's really a remarkable book. And also just regrettably, I guess the daughter that she gave away, she has been forced to not be in contact with this young woman whatsoever. Just another sad chapter in Crystal Reardan's life. I want to thank you so much, Stephanie for coming on and talking about Razor Wire Wilderness. It's a remarkable book. Thank you so much for coming on and talking about it.
Stephanie, thank you. You've just been really wonderful and I really appreciate it.
Thank you, thank you. You have a great night, and thanks again.
Okay, bye bye