Crime Junkie - SURVIVED: Chrystul Kizer and Cyntoia Brown

Episode Date: January 24, 2022

When 17-year-old Chrystul Kizer is arrested for first-degree murder in Milwaukee, the investigation uncovers a connection between her and her victim that can’t be ignored. And it mirrors an eerily similar story -- that of Cyntoia Brown -- that played out over a 15-year span in Tennessee.To learn more about The Mission of the Indiana Protection of Abused and Trafficked Humans Taskforce (IPATH) or to view their resources please visit HERE.  For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/survived-chrystul-kizer-cyntoia-brown/

Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And I have two stories for you today, actually, one that is unfolding right now in Wisconsin and another that began nearly two decades ago in Tennessee. They are stories about vulnerable girls who became victims first of sex trafficking and then of the justice system. Complicated stories with imperfect endings, but stories that we all need to better understand. These are the stories of Crystal Kaiser and Centoya Brown. It's just after 5 a.m. on Tuesday, June 5th, 2018. And first responders in Kenosha, Wisconsin

are racing to the scene of a house fire. A neighbor had just woken up to see flames coming off the roof of a small house on the corner and they called 911. Now firefighters focus on getting the fire under control. And once they do, that's when they realize there had been someone in the house, a man. According to Danine Smith's reporting for the Journal Times, the man's body is badly burned, too badly to make a positive ID. But they're 99% sure that it's the homeowner, 34-year-old Randy Voller. They're also 99% sure that Randy didn't die in the fire. They suspect his death probably had more to do with the two bullet holes in the side of his head. Now that the house is a crime scene, right

away police start looking around for anything that might help them figure out more about their victim and lead them to whoever is responsible for his death. But they don't really find much like some empty beer bottles on the floor, leftover pizza in the fridge, several hotel room keys. But it's not so much what's there that's interesting. Rather, it's what's missing that catches their attention. Neighbors tell officers that Randy's car, a BMW that's usually in his driveway, is missing. They can't put their finger on it, but something about the whole thing doesn't seem random to police. And so they want to retrace Randy's footsteps to understand his last movement, see if they can figure

out if he saw anyone the night before. And when they look at his credit card records, something stands out right away. It's an Uber ride. I mean, you did just say that his car wasn't the same from the driveway. Right, but the ride was from Milwaukee to Kenosha at 8.42 p.m. the night before Monday night. So to your point, maybe that was Randy making his way home if he left his car somewhere, but police are interested to know if just maybe someone else had visited him that night. So they call up Uber, who gives them the name of the driver, who in turn says that, yes, I did drive from Milwaukee to Randy's address on the evening of June 4th, but Randy wasn't

the passenger. It was a girl. He describes her to police as a short black girl named Crystal. The very next day, they're able to do a lot more with this information. According to Ashley Lutheran, who reported on this for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, on Wednesday, police find Randy's BMW abandoned in Milwaukee. When they search the car, it's kind of a mess of garbage and empty containers, but amid all of that mess, they find two things. They find a phone and they find a store receipt dated Monday night. Now, when police go to that store, they luck out because it actually had functioning surveillance cameras. And on that footage, they see who they're looking for, not one person, but four. It's a group

of teenagers, three boys and a girl buying all of the stuff that matched what police found inside Randy's BMW. And they're the same people whose pictures police find on that cell phone that they found inside the car. Just a visual match. They don't have names for the faces yet. But investigators hand the footage and the cell phone over to their intelligence unit, and they're able to identify at least two of the individuals. When police get in touch with one of them, he tells them the identity of the girl in the video. And that's when things really start clicking into place. He tells them that the girl on the video is his sister, Crystal Kaiser. Crystal is the same name that the

Uber driver gave. And when police look into the address where the Uber picked her up, it was an address tied to someone named Crystal Kaiser. So all roads are leading back to her. According to Danine Smith, who reported on this story extensively for Kenosha News, it turns out the crystal that they're looking for is 17. And they see that she'd actually been arrested before. In fact, just that Monday, the day before the fire at Randy's house, Crystal had been in court pleading guilty to charges from an incident almost a year before when she fled from police after they tried to pull her over driving a stolen car. So the BMW wasn't even the first stolen car. Well, it's not even the second. According

to Ashley Lutheran's piece for the journal Sentinel, by the time police finally caught up with Crystal after she ran from the stolen car, she admitted to being involved in about 20 other car thefts. But here's where things truly get wild. They check her Facebook profile and they find to their surprise, a selfie that she had taken inside Randy's house posted less than five hours before police arrived to find the place on fire. And the caption under that photo says my mugshot. But despite all of this, police don't arrest Crystal right away. Instead, they wait and they watch as she continues about her life. And on June 8, this is now three days after the fire at Randy's house, they watch a video of Crystal

going live on Facebook, holding a gun and ammunition, making references to shooting a quote unquote rich white dude and talking about giving her brother a BMW. And the most bananas thing she's saying that she isn't afraid to kill again. Now that is enough for police to make an arrest. So the next day they track Crystal down at her boyfriend's house in Milwaukee, arrest her and bring her in for questioning. At first, she denies everything saying she didn't even know Randy. So obviously she didn't shoot him. But they have that selfie of her in his house. So they challenge her on that. And she tells him, okay, yes, I did know him, but I still didn't shoot him. She says that she and a friend were both

at Randy's place that night, and it was the friend who shot him. But then police are like, okay, well, what about that video you made on Facebook saying that you killed the guy and you would do it again. Finally, Crystal sees the writing on the wall and tells them, okay, yes, I did shoot Randy. Yes, I did set the house on fire. And yes, I did take his car and laptop. But she clarifies and says she wouldn't call it robbery since Randy was going to give her both of those things anyway for her 18th birthday. That seems like an awfully generous birthday present from a guy she claimed to not even know five minutes ago, right? That's the piece of the puzzle that is really still missing. Like,

how are these two connected? And once police start digging in to answer that question, they realize this is anything but a straightforward murder case. It turns out their victim Randy had his own run in with the police just a few months back. It was in February of 2018. That's when a 15 year old girl made a 911 call in the middle of the night from his house saying that this guy had given her drugs and was going to kill her. According to a piece Jessica Contrera wrote for the Washington Post, police responded to that call and found the girl out wandering the streets in nothing but a bra and unzipped jacket. So by then she'd at least escaped the house it sounds like. Yeah, but escaped

might not quite be the right word or at least that's not the way the girl saw it. I mean, yes, she called 911 and yes, she was half naked on the street in the literal middle of the night. So clearly it had been a speedy exit. But once she's actually with police, she started to kind of walk that back. She told them that actually the guy she called about Randy Voller, he was her friend and she didn't really want to get him in trouble after all. Hang on. She's 15 and he's what like mid 30s you said? Yeah. I was going to ask what business does he have being friends with a 15 year old? But the answer is none. He does not have business being friends with a 15 year old. Yeah, nothing good, certainly.

And actually to clarify point, not that it even matters, but she was actually only 14 when she met Randy the very first time. And how they met is that he had responded to an ad that she had on back page, which for anyone who doesn't know about it was kind of like the yellow pages for sex work. Okay, but she's 14. That's not sex work. That's human trafficking. A thousand percent. And listen, I don't know the details of what was actually on back page. Like I don't know if she had posted the ad or someone's posting it for her, but I do know that the girl told police Randy had paid her for sex several times. Did he know she was 14? Oh, he knew. I mean, she says that he had even told her one time about how

he liked the bodies of younger girls so much better than women his own age. And the thing is this girl said that she wasn't even the only teenager Randy was hanging around with. She knew that Randy had similar relationships with other underage girls and she even had names. And of course, one of those names was Crystal. Sure was. Now at the time that that was happening, of course, Crystal like was just a name in a police file. They had no idea who she was. It didn't mean anything. But they heard enough to know that at the very least he had at least one 15 year old who made that 911 call who was clearly and admittedly being sexually abused by Randy and she's telling them that there are more

potential victims out there. So 10 days after that 911 call, police had knocked on Randy's door with a search warrant and they had left with several computers and hard drives, which more than confirmed their suspicions about Randy. They found so much child sex abuse material, hundreds of photos and videos, some of which Randy had made like literally of him actually abusing victims and all of the material featured underage black girls. Some of them looking as young as 12. So wait, Randy had been arrested for child sexual abuse or possession of child sexual abuse material or something like that before he was killed? Arrested, yes, not necessarily charged. According to more of Deneen Smith's reporting for

Kenosha News, police arrested Randy the same day that they had found all that stuff on his computers for charges on suspicion of second degree sexual assault of a child on child enticement prostitution and use of a computer to facilitate a child sex crime. Now all of that happened on February 22nd. So was he just out on bail waiting to go to trial on those charges or what? No, that's what I'm saying. He had never been charged yet. Like they book him. They do fingerprints, mugshot, the whole nine yards, whatever. But then police let him go. No bail, just like off you go then. But they basically told him that at some time to expect a summons to come back because they were going to keep investigating

and they did fully intend to charge him some time. And did they? Nope. So the DA says that his office was literally just about to lay those charges when they got news that he had been killed. Okay, but that's like four months from February to June and they had all of that evidence, like legit videos of him sexually abusing girls, videos of him. What the hell was the DA doing for four months, waiting to press these charges? From what I can tell, it's not necessarily the DA's office dragging its feet because they say that they didn't know anything about Randy or the investigation until May 24th. The prosecutor assigned to the case, a specialist in sex crimes, I guess reviewed the file and told

police that she needed more information. In particular, she wanted the identities and ages of the girls in the videos. And the report from police with that information hit her desk on June 5th, which is literally the same day that Randy's body was found burning in his house. I'm still not sure what was happening between February, whatever, when they found all of this stuff on his computer till May 24th when it seems like they actually did something about it. But okay, whatever. Yeah, police and prosecutors have taken a ton of heat for that for sure. Again, it's not clear what police were doing in that timeframe. We know they were working to collect more evidence or working to identify the victims

in the videos since the DA's office had to like tell them to do that. So it seems like it's likely that the case just didn't get high priority. I'm sorry, if a serial child sex abuse perpetrator getting them off the streets isn't a top priority, I'm not sure what is to be honest. Neither do I. But Jessica Contrera raises an excellent if a little disturbing point in her article for the post that many law enforcement still see victims of trafficking as willing participants. In that police report from February that led investigators to Randy in the first place, it actually refers to the 15 year old who placed the 911 call as quote prostituting herself out end quote. So basically in their

minds, he just wasn't that dangerous of an offender because it's not like he's snatching girls off the street. They're coming to him. Again, I don't know what investigators were thinking or why it took so long to send the file to the DA. But I know that when the detectives investigating Randy's murder start trying to figure out who he is and again, how he knew Crystal and why she may have killed him, what they uncover is that file, which is just pages and pages of still shots of underage girls that had been pulled from the videos Randy made so that police could start finding the identities of his victims. So is Crystal one of the girls in the file? She is. And as she sits in jail on a $1 million

bond, she starts to fill in some of the details for detectives. Not only about what happened in those early morning hours of June 5th, but for the nearly two years before that, Crystal says that she met Randy in the fall of 2016. At the time, she was just 16 and her life was less than ideal. The year before, her mom had fled an abusive relationship, moving Crystal, her brother and her two sisters from their hometown of Gary, Indiana to Milwaukee. And it was tough. I mean, they lived in a shelter for several months. And even by 2016, when Crystal says that she met Randy, the whole family was still working to get back on their feet. She says that they needed money for snacks and school supplies. And a friend

had suggested that maybe she post an ad on back page and try to make a little money that way, which she did. And the very first person to respond was Randy. Crystal says that he paid her $250 that first time in exchange for sex. And soon they were seeing each other once a week. He would take her out for meals at nice restaurants. He bought her clothes and jewelry and would even give her cash to sometimes like $500 at a time that she shared with her siblings who were, of course, in the same position she was. So after that, she didn't bother posting on back page anymore. And I assume he knew she was 16. Well, Crystal says that the first time she actually told him she was 19. But I find it honestly really

hard to believe that anyone would look at Crystal and think she was 19. If anything, I look at her and I think she looks even younger than she is. But here's the thing, even if he did believe her like at the very beginning, it didn't take him long to learn the truth since she says that he bought her cupcakes on her 17th birthday. So during the almost two years that Randy and Crystal were quote unquote friends, that's how she thought of him at the time, she says that he didn't just pay her for sex, but he also sold her to other men for sex. She says that Randy would drive her around to different hotels to meet men for 30 minutes at a time, sometimes more than once a day. And she always handed

the money over to him. And she says she never really questioned that arrangement because one, he was an adult and she was a kid. And two, she felt like she owed him for all of the dinners and clothes and money that he had given her. Wait, that is legit the definition of human trafficking. You could not paint a clear picture if you tried. Absolutely. And it is child sex abuse too since she is 16 and 17 during this time. And I mean, the men that she was meeting in those hotels were at least twice her age, if not much older. Right. So what does Crystal say happened on June 5th in Randy's house? Like, what does what's her version of what went down? Well, Crystal

tells police that after she left court that day in Milwaukee, she and her boyfriend immediately started fighting and it just like kept escalating. He had been violent toward her before and she was worried. So she texted Randy to see if she could come to his place until things blew over. So that's when he called her that Uber to take her from Milwaukee to Kenosha. When she got to Randy's place, she said they ordered a pizza and the plan was to just like chill out and watch a movie. At some point, Randy offered her drinks and drugs. I'm not sure if she drank any alcohol, but she says she did take the drugs, which started to hit her while they were watching the movie. Then she says Randy started to touch her, but Crystal

told him she wasn't interested. As she tells a post reporter, Jessica Contrera, quote, I didn't want to do that stuff anymore because I was trying to change. End quote. But she says that Randy wasn't taking no for an answer. She says he started telling her that she owed him for everything he'd done for her, including bailing her out of jail to the tune of $400. And eventually she says that she was on the floor and Randy was on top of her, trying to take her pants off while she tried to get away. And she did get away somehow at some point, which is when she grabbed the gun that she had in her purse, one that she had been carrying only for a few weeks at this point for protection. And she shot Randy in the

head. She says that she doesn't remember pulling the trigger. But according to a piece from box six news Milwaukee, after the shooting, she put her dishes in the dishwasher and tidied up. And then she used tissues and toilet paper to start the fire, something she says that she saw in an episode of criminal minds, if you can believe it. And she did this as a way to get rid of the evidence. And she left with the laptop. She left with some cash and Randy's BMW. Now at first glance, it seems like she has a pretty decent case of self-defense. But the evidence is actually telling police and prosecutors a different story, one that to them looks a whole heck of a lot like premeditated murder.

In addition to that Facebook live video Crystal made a few days after the murder, essentially admitting that she'd killed someone. They also find Facebook messages Crystal sent before the murder, messages to friends about how she was going to get a BMW soon and text literally the night of the murder that are even more incriminating. And actually, I'm going to get you to read a few of them, right? This is from Jessica Contreras piece in the Washington Post. Okay, it says, quote, the night of the crime, according to prosecutors, Crystal was texting two people about where the key to the quote car was, and that she had learned how to start

it. At 10.42pm, she texted, when you want me to do it pay at 11.09pm. None, but I finna do it right now though. 11.13pm. I'm finna do it. 12.03am. Just order some pizza. So I'm a wait, it's just gonna splatter everywhere. I looked it up on Google and it's a pillow. I'm a wait until he's asleep. End quote. I mean, it doesn't look great for Crystal. No, it doesn't. Do we know who she was talking to? The police think they were involved, like co-conspirators? So no, we don't know who they are. The source material just says that she was texting friends. And to my knowledge, no one else is facing charges in this, so they're not considered co-conspirators, like you were saying. So what does Crystal have

to say about all that? Well, this point, she hasn't explained it, which is why the self-defense story isn't flying with police and prosecutors. Now, they don't deny that Crystal was a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of Randy, even that she was trafficked by him. But they also don't think that it was the root cause of the murder. But you can't separate Crystal the victim with Crystal the person on trial for murder. She's only one person. I'm not saying killing Randy isn't a crime abusive, though he was to her. But it has to be more nuanced than that, right? I mean, that's the problem with the law. It's pretty black and white right now. It doesn't leave a lot of room for context. And we don't talk about

this kind of context enough for people to even begin to understand how to process it and wrap their minds around it. Everything she experienced in life, the sexual abuse by him, the trafficking by him, even the violence that she witnessed as a child and then lived through herself later on, like all of that informs who she is. For sure, the story Crystal is telling doesn't match up with the evidence police have gathered, like the texts and the Facebook posts. But at the same time, she wouldn't have even known Randy if it hadn't been for a relationship that he initiated that was completely abusive from the start. Right. But the other thing prosecutors make a point to say, and this goes back to everything

being very cut and dry, no room for interpretation, is they say, you know, we don't look at Randy and think, man, we're like, we're not going to bother prosecuting that murder because he was a predator who would have likely been charged for a sex crime anyways. Like, was he a bad dude? Yes. Does that make it okay to kill him? No. But as Crystal sits in prison on that million dollar bond, she'll never be able to raise herself. Support for her starts to spread and grow fueled in large part by Jessica Contreras piece in the Washington Post. Basically, her supporters want the DA to drop the charges entirely and let her go. They say that Crystal is a victim and her behavior during those wee hours of June 5th, 2018 when

she was just 17 years old is a direct result of being trafficked. They say you can't untangle Crystal the victim of human trafficking from Crystal the person who pulled the trigger. Just like you said, and the advocates are saying we shouldn't be locking her up and just throwing away the key. We should be getting her help, the help that she needs as a victim of a crime herself as a survivor of child sexual abuse and human trafficking. No one is saying she didn't do it. No one is disputing the facts of this case. What they're saying is that none of this would have happened if Crystal hadn't been trafficked in the first place. And that's pretty much the argument her legal team wants to use in court. It's

actually called an affirmative defense, which exists under Wisconsin's law to provide victims of human trafficking from prosecution for crimes related to that trafficking. Does it apply in a murder case though? I mean, I guess I thought that was more about charges related to sex work specifically, like maybe even theft, that kind of thing, not murder. No, so you're, you're right. The affirmative defense has never been used in a murder trial. Like I don't think it's been used anywhere in a murder trial, not just Wisconsin. This would be the first time. So it's one of the reasons is actually a really big deal. It could set a precedent for other cases. And the other is that it is a complete defense,

which means that if a jury agrees that the murder was a direct result of trafficking and finds her not guilty, Crystal would be free to go. And this kind of affirmative defense hasn't been used in court, but it's not like the concept is brand new. Self defense is in and of itself an affirmative defense. And so is insanity. Yeah, but you know, just to throw this out there, it's not as easy as her defense team deciding like, yeah, let's just use this strategy. It actually has to go up to a judge to decide if it's even something Crystal can argue in court. Oh, and yeah, in December of 2019, the judge actually says no, the affirmative defense law does not apply in a murder case. However,

her lawyers appealed that decision. They took it to a higher court, who decided in June of 2021 that Crystal can use the affirmative defense at trial. And is that what she does? Well not so far because the case still hasn't gone to trial. Crystal has been out on bond since June of 2020, though. And the last I heard the DA is still moving forward with first degree murder charges. But there's no trial date set or anything like that, at least not as of this recording. So it's always possible that the case will, you know, never go all the way to trial. Maybe they'll make a plea agreement or, you know, there are almost one and a half million signatures on a petition calling for the DA to drop the

charges against her entirely. But advocates and survivors of human trafficking say that even just the ability to argue the affirmative defense in court is huge. For them, it's a signal that things are changing, that the justice system is starting to see victims of human trafficking as truly victims, one who need treatment and support, just like any other victim. But all of us kind of recognizing it's really freaking complicated. Yeah, and honestly, it kind of reminds me of a story we told a few months back about Billy Stafford, the guy who was shot by his wife after years of domestic violence. Again, not a good dude. But the prosecution argued basically what the DA in this case is saying,

that being a bad dude doesn't make murder any more okay. And I mean, I'm 100% in agreement with that. When it comes down to it, it's victim blaming really. But being a victim, either of human trafficking, like Crystal or domestic violence, like Billy's wife Jane, it does change the context of the crime. And it should be taken into consideration by everyone from police to prosecutors to corrections, like all the way along the process. Yeah. And just like you said, Jane Hirschman and Billy Stafford, I think that's a great example because the crown, remember, this was a Canadian case, was like hell bent on first degree murder charges. They wouldn't reduce the charge to manslaughter or anything

like that. They refused. So they trotted their argument in court and what did the jury decide? They found Jane innocent. And that's the risk that I think the DA is facing in this case too. If you go in guns blazing with first degree murder, and that jury finds her not guilty, then what? Right. And I'm just thinking about some of the specialty courts out there, like drug courts, mental health courts, domestic violence courts, and whether there's maybe an option that bridges the gap between prosecution and defense, one that helps get justice for Randy, but also acknowledges that Crystal would benefit more from like actual rehabilitation than

hard time. I mean, it's certainly a lot more progressive than the approach the justice system took in another case, a strikingly similar case that happened 15 years earlier in Tennessee. And actually want to try something a little different with this episode. So Brett, I asked you to dive into the second case so I could really focus on crystals. So I'm going to pass it over to you to tell the next story. Okay. So the story I have for you today starts on August 7th, 2004 in Nashville, Tennessee. It's a little after 7pm that day when a call comes into 911 dispatch. This patcher asks

the usual, what's the address of your emergency? And the caller, a woman, gives them a straight address on Mossdale Drive. The next question, of course, is what's the emergency? What's going on over there? And the caller responds with just one word, homicide. And according to court documents, the operator tries to get more information, but the caller hangs up before answering any more questions. This has got to be one of those like, this is a prank, is it not moments, but the operator dispatches first responders right away. When police arrive, they get no answer at the front door, but are thankfully able to get in through the garage. And it doesn't take them long to find what they're looking for. They're

in the bedroom lying naked, face down on the bed in a pool of blood is a man. It looks as though he's been shot and his hands are kind of laced together under his face, almost like he'd been sleeping. And when the paramedics arrive, they confirm what officers already knew. The man is dead. Please identify him as 43 year old Johnny Allen. And right away, they get to work searching the home for evidence. They find one shell casing onto the bed, which is really all they expected to find since there seem to be only one bullet at play here that went straight through Johnny's head and into the wall. Was there like any kind of gun too? No, they don't find a gun, which along with the position of the body is what

makes them pretty confident that they're dealing with a homicide and not a suicide. Now I wasn't able to find a ton of detail about the investigation, except to say that something leads them first to Johnny's truck, which they find abandoned in a Walmart parking lot and then to a motel just down the street. Now by now it's the wee hours of August 8th, like full on middle of the night. And they're standing outside room 302 knocking on the door. A man swings the door open and police immediately pull him outside. And within seconds, a young woman, a naked young woman named Santoya Brown comes flying out the door saying, cut didn't do it. I'll tell you everything. Cut is Santoya's boyfriend. And I know you can't

see me right now, but heavy air quotes on the word boyfriend. In her book, Free Santoya, she writes about cut at that time in her life when she was essentially homeless, aimless, using drugs and hustling to get by. He was every single kind of abusive, I mean physical, emotional, sexual, but also she was pretty much dependent on him too. Anyway, police bring them both in for questioning, but the person they really want to talk to is the woman. She tells them that her name is Santoya Denise Mitchell and that she's 19 years old. She tells them that she'd met the man for the first time two nights before on August 6th at about 11pm when he pulled up next to her in his truck at a sonic and asked if she

was hungry. She tells police that she was hungry and this guy looked safe, like a businessman, someone who had an actual job, a career. So she climbed into his truck and they headed to the sonic drive-in. She says Johnny bought her a burger and offered to let her stay at his place and she agreed. And during the drive to his place, Santoya says he told her he was a real estate agent and he volunteered in the community and was kind of this man about town. He seemed like a nice enough guy and everything seemed fine. That is, she tells police until they got to his place. That's when things started to get a little strange. And I get the sense that what she means is that his demeanor changed. She says

he started showing her all the rifles he has in his place and tells her how he used to be a sharpshooter in the military, that kind of stuff. Is this like happening in like an intimidating way? Yeah, totally. And she says they finished their food and then watched TV for a bit and then she told him she was really tired and asked if he would mind if she slept for a little bit. And he was like, sure, that's fine. She tells police that what she was really hoping for is that he would fall asleep so she could sneak out without making any sort of scene. But according to Santoya, while they were

laying in bed, the man started touching her and whispering to her. And at first she was just like kind of shifting around in the bed, pretending to be asleep and kind of uncomfortable and annoyed. But then she says he grabbed her hard between the legs. And when she turned around to face him, she saw this terrifying look in his eyes, an aggressive look. She says her first thought was, Oh my God, he is going to hit me. But instead of hitting her, he rolled away in the opposite direction, which is when it dawned on her that no, he's not going to hit me. He's going to kill me. She says she was sure he was reaching for a gun. And in a split second, Santoya says she reached into her purse on the nightstand,

grabbed the gun she'd started carrying just a couple of weeks before, pointed it at Johnny and pulled trigger. But there are parts of Santoya's story that aren't really adding up to police. It's not that they think that everything she's saying is a lie. They can see these nuggets of truth in it. But what she's telling them is basically that she shot Johnny in self defense. But that's not what it looked like to police at the scene. To them, remember, it looked like he'd been asleep when he was shot. So if they're not seeing it as self defense, what's their theory at this point? Or do they still not even have one? No, they do. Police think that Santoya is skipping over

an important detail that she's a sex worker and that she killed Johnny Allen while he slept so she could rob him. Well, I mean, is there anything missing from the house besides his truck? So when they arrest Santoya at the motel, they find his wallet and some guns, both of which have been stolen from the house. And eventually she says that she ended up taking $173 for him. So with this, police feel they have enough to charge Santoya with first degree murder, which they do. And according to court documents, it's only after the arraignment that police learn that this 19 year old Santoya Denise Mitchell is in fact 16 year old Santoya Denise Brown.

Okay, so I mean, now we're talking about a minor, which I would imagine changes the charges or or even the theory of what happened, like, does it for them? No, not at all. In fact, the prosecution is planning to ask the judge to transfer Santoya to adult court, which would mean the minimum sentence if she's convicted on the charges is 60 years with no possibility of parole for 51 years. And I assume that life is probably an option to them if she's being looked at as an adult. Oh, yeah, absolutely. In the Netflix documentary Murder to Mercy, the Santoya Brown story, they actually say that Tennessee has the harshest mandatory minimums in the country when it comes to juveniles being tried in adult court,

which actually happens way more frequently than I think we even acknowledge or know about, even for those of us in the truth crime community. And Santoya is one of them. Her case is transferred to adult court. And when the time finally comes to put it before a jury, she's 18 years old. And while that's still so, so young, the Santoya the jury sees is not the 16 year old in actual legit pigtail braids who was arrested back in 2004. It's a slightly older, slightly more mature looking Santoya. And the story she tells about the night of August sixth is actually not markedly different from the one she told police during that first interrogation. What is different, though, is what she shares about everything that led

up to the night of August sixth, which is like, for example, how Santoya was born when her biological mother was just 16 years old. And even at 16, she was drinking heavily every day all throughout her pregnancy. Her bio mom kept drinking after Santoya was born. But then she discovered crack cocaine and soon found herself with a full blown substance use disorder on top of the alcohol use. This whole time is like Santoya living with her. Like did she actually keep custody of Santoya this whole time? Yeah, she did off and on until Santoya was adopted at age two. But her adoptive mother, Ellenette said on the murder to mercy documentary that she and her husband had been caring for Santoya since she was only six

months old. And even though her mom and dad provided a loving home for Santoya, by the time she was a teenager, her life was already off the rails. It seemed like she was always getting in trouble for something. By the time she pulled that trigger in Johnny Allen's bedroom, she'd already been kicked out of school or rested and served time in juvenile detention. And so when she met that guy cut, the one she was living in the motel with, and he convinced her to start exchanging sex for money, she was like, honestly, sure, whatever. Yeah, but again, 16, no one's a sex worker, like she herself is a victim of trafficking, whatever role cut played in that. I mean,

totally, totally. But back in 2006 at Santoya's murder trial, that's not the way the jury sees it. Because that's not the way the prosecution presented it. So after only six hours of deliberation, the jury comes back with a guilty verdict, guilty of first degree murder, guilty of felony murder, guilty of aggravated robbery, and Santoya is sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 51 years. And to say that Santoya changed in prison would kind of be the understatement of a lifetime, Ashley. While there, Santoya finishes high school and starts working towards an associate's degree, she earns another degree, a bachelor's this time in organizational development, graduating with a 4.0 GPA. She

starts writing the book, the one I mentioned earlier called Free Santoya. I mean, she's literally a new and completely different person. But despite all that work, it was never enough to get Santoya anywhere with appeals. The courts rejected every request her team made. But then in 2017, a reporter happens to mention Santoya's case in a story about a new Tennessee law, one that prohibits minors from being charged and sentenced as sex workers. And it is exactly what Santoya's defense didn't even know that they always needed. So on the heels of that story comes an absolute flood of support. Rihanna posts on social media about Santoya, and Kardashian does too. LeBron James, TI, Lana Del Rey, and all of a sudden, hashtag

Free Santoya Brown has a million tweets and is growing by the day. And just to give you a flavor of the tone shift, like culturally in the 13 years since all this started, can you just read Rihanna's post for us? Sure, she writes, quote, Imagine at the age of 16, being sex trafficked by a pimp named Cutthroat. After days of being repeatedly drugged and raped by different men, you were purchased by a 43 year old child predator who took you to his home to use you for sex. You end up finding enough courage to fight back and shoot and kill him. You're arrested as a result, tried and convicted as an adult and sentenced to life in prison. This is the story of Santoya Brown. She will be eligible for parole when

she is 69 years old. End quote. Oh, that's heavy. Yeah. And laying it out that way, that she won't even be eligible for parole until she's almost 70 because of about five seconds of time that happened when she was 16. There's actually a picture of Santoya on Rihanna's Instagram post. And again, she looks so young. And that's what she would have looked like on that night. Johnny Allen picture up outside at the sonic for the express purpose of taking her back to his house for sex, which is again, the prosecution's theory all along of what happened and eventually what Santoya admitted to again, like the actual like black and white events don't change. It's all about this context. She was a child. She looks like a child. It

just seems bananas to me that anyone would look at this girl and think anything other than that, like how can you look at her and call her an adult? I know. And I think some of that had to do with the life that Santoya had been leading up to that point, like before she was arrested for the murder, not to mention the way she acted when she was first locked up, which you can probably guess was super aggressive, defiant, violent. But I mentioned before the change of law in 2017 relating to human trafficking, the one that kickstarted the whole free Santoya Brown movement. Well, there's another important way public sentiment is at least starting to shift. First came a Supreme Court decision in 2010 that said,

uh, guys, juveniles can't be sentenced to life without parole for non-homicidal violence. And then two years later in 2012, Kaylin Ford reported for ABC News that a second Supreme Court decision said, we take that back. Actually, life without parole for any juvenile for any crime, including homicide, constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Do either of those actually apply to Santoya? I mean, I know that technically she isn't serving life without parole. She can get parole that 69, but isn't that effectively life in prison? Like what she's supposed to do with her life the first time she steps into the world, she's 69 years old.

Right. So first thing, small correction to the Rihanna tweet you read before, she would actually be 67 because she did get some credit for time served. But honestly, that's neither here nor there. But neither of the rulings apply to Santoya because technically, like you said, her sentence isn't life without parole. But that almost doesn't matter because by this time she's got all this momentum building behind her. Santoya has changed. The world has changed. So Santoya and her team decided to ride this wave of support and make their one final Hail Mary pass, which is to ask the governor for clemency. And when I say Hail Mary pass, this is truly a Hail Mary pass, the very, very last possible opportunity

for someone to look at Santoya's 2004 crime and 2006 conviction and consider how appropriate the punishment really is given all that has changed in the meantime. And in May 2018, Santoya goes before the board of pardons and paroles in Tennessee to essentially plead her case. And just for clarity, her going before the parole board isn't really necessarily about proving guilt or innocence, right? Like my understanding is parole board is you have to like show that you've changed and you should be considered for a lease even though her sentence wouldn't necessarily allow for it. Right, exactly. So what her team is asking

the board to recommend to the governor is that Santoya's sentence be commuted from first degree murder to second degree murder, which means that even if they're successful, she may still have to serve time, whether behind bars or on parole. She'll still have a record, all that stuff. But even within those confines, a commutation to second degree murder would give Santoya a second chance. One of the people who testifies on her behalf at that hearing is actually a Tennessee state prosecutor, the one who argued against Santoya's appeal and was ultimately successful because the verdict was upheld. But he tells the board he had no idea that the person he'd just argued should stay in prison for 51 years

was the same person sitting in his classroom making straight A's. And once he knew that, he realized he needed to do something about it. Ultimately, the board is essentially split. Two of them vote for clemency, two vote against it, and two say that she should be eligible for parole after 25 years. So what does that even mean? Well, it means the governor has a lot to consider making his decision. I mean, these recommendations go to him and in theory, the board weighs one way or the other and he can say, oh, like everyone's in agreement on this one, let's do this. He's got a completely split vote. But it's actually not until January 2019, eight months after that hearing that Santoya finds out that the decision has

been made. The governor has decided to commute Santoya's sentence to 15 years, which doesn't mean she's free to go right then and there. She still has seven months to go. Yeah, but there's a big difference between seven months and 51 years. I mean, not to mention a big difference between being released from prison at 67 or 31, which is how old Santoya is when she walks out of that Tennessee women's prison for the first time since she was 16 years old. And to say the time in prison changed Santoya is again, almost not the right word. She is transformed during those years. She had always been smart, a psychologist who evaluated Santoya way back in 2004 and testified that her IQ was in the 90th percentile of

the entire population. But prison had given her the time and space to focus that intelligence. Hang on, are you actually saying like for once that I've never heard this, but prison actually worked? Okay, do not put words in my mouth. I would say that time worked. I mean, who's to say what kind of impact the right kind of trauma informed counseling and treatment would have had on Santoya's life if she had been given those opportunities, you know, right from the start. If she'd been recognized as a victim of human trafficking, facing an impossible situation every day of her life rather than as an adult who knowingly and intentionally committed murder. You know, I think it's easy for us to like, look at

Santoya's story, hear her story and things like, wow, things have really changed. We're acknowledging that things were more complex than the system allowed for at the time, whatever. But it's important to remember commutation is not exoneration. Santoya is still technically a convicted killer. And there's a lot that comes along with that job she can get, whether or not she's able to vote. Like, again, she's out of jail and that is a huge step, but it is not, you know, giving her 100% of her life back that she lost. Again, certainly something, but I wouldn't call it a clear win for advocates of human trafficking survivors. I do think it illustrates really well how much things can change in a pretty short amount of time

though, public sentiment towards victims, but also laws and the way that they're implemented. But also, again, you guys shows you the power that you have those million tweets. Like, that's what got people paying attention to those cases. And I think that's where all of our crime junkies come in. And I always kind of wonder, like, would Santoya's story have unfolded differently if it happened today rather than in 2004? And, you know, I think there's a way for us to kind of know that I think we'll all be watching Crystal's case to find out. You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com.

And be sure to check out our Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast. But do stick around because we're giving it to you a little bit early, but we have our profit of the month coming up. Okay, I'm going to be honest, this might be one of the most inspiring prebit of the month submissions I've ever gotten. High bar, okay. It is a story about a pug, but it's also a story about so, so much more. I cried while reading the submission when I spoke to our listener Annalise who submitted the story

and the whole time I was preparing this segment. So just going to warn you right now. A few years ago, our listener Annalise found herself in an abusive relationship with a guy that I'm just going to call the jerk. And as we see so often, he started out really sweet and doting towards Annalise, but soon became controlling and manipulative. He would take her money and not repay her, degrade her in front of people with no regard, fed her lies about her family, made her text him like every two hours to keep track of where she was. And actually, I know this will specifically make you spiral with rage. He especially utilized his faith to manipulate her to be more obedient and submissive to him.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, all again, all you guys, this is not just a jerk. This is like all signs of like an emotionally abusive relationship. So red flag, red flag, red flag all across the board. The jerk was very much not a good dude. And Annalise was really struggling. I mean, she was lonely because he had completely isolated her. She was so depressed and saw it no way out. She even contemplated taking her own life just to escape her situation. And she knew that these thoughts were dangerous and they terrified her. But she decided that there was one thing that might help, at least with her loneliness. And that was getting a dog. So Annalise and the jerk go off to an adoption event. And

all the dogs there are getting all the pets and the cuddles and the attention. And that's why I can't go to adoption events anymore because I come home with dogs and all the dogs again, just getting all the love, except for Arthur. Arthur was a 12 year old pug who was completely deaf, had hair loss due to a weak allergy, and pretty much had no teeth left. He looked like he was rounding the bend to Rainbow Bridge real fast. And even though she had wanted a younger dog that she could spend years and years with, the jerk actually pushed Annalise towards Arthur, saying things like, you know, just take him, no one else wants him anyway. And in hindsight, Annalise believes that he did that expecting Arthur

not to live long. And Annalise would then turn to him for comfort using this poor geriatric dog as just another way to manipulate her and her emotions and like have this power hanging over her head. However, Arthur outlasted the jerk. That's actually her words, not even mine. Arthur brought Annalise the joy that gave her the confidence to leave the companionship that showed her what love really actually looks like. Since he looked and acted a bit like a contankerous old man, Arthur taught Annalise to laugh again, but never manipulated or belittled her when she just needed a good cry. Annalise got out of her abusive relationship and Arthur helped her do it. And when she was ready, helped her in forging the relationship

with her now husband Trent, who also bonded with Arthur immediately and loved him immensely. Trent and Annalise gave Arthur his best and most amazing life until he passed peacefully in his sleep last year at the age of 17. Annalise said that though they grieved Arthur more than they thought they ever would or could be possible, she knows that he left her with a brand new life and she'll always be grateful to him for being her friend when she desperately needed one. And she adopted Arthur from the Pacific Pug Rescue, which we'll be linking to on our website along with pictures of Arthur who was so freaking adorable. And evidently he'd been adopted out and returned back to the rescue three times before Annalise met

him, which is just wild to me because one, I don't know, Arthur seems like he was the perfect dog. And two, talk about fate. Oh my goodness. I'm like, I'm so quiet because I'm weeping. Okay. Okay. So I need you to take some deep breaths because the story is not quite over. On top of this amazing story of a girl and her cranky old pug, Annalise now works at an organization dedicated to helping women heal from the damage of domestic violence. Oh, I love this. The organization is called Abuse Recovery Ministry Services and she is incredibly passionate

not only about helping others recover from situations of domestic violence, but raising awareness that domestic homicides are domestic violence cases and there is help out there. So we'll be linking to that organization as well as Pacific Pug Rescue and posting pictures of Arthur on our website, crimejuggypodcast.com.