monday, the morning michelle saw a suspicious man on the stairs of the apartment building. she warned crystal who went a different way to the garage which might have saved her life for 24 hours. what they didn t learn until much later was that crystal left work crying on that last day of her life. she didn t say anything to her family that night, but she did act differently. she went around the room and she hugged everyone. and she never did that. i think she just didn t wanna worry anyone, and i think she kind of just hoped that everything would work out. what was the matter with crystal taylor? they rewound their mental tape a little further, and there it was. a moment. it happened during their car trip back from texas. she was on her phone listening to something. and she put her phone down, and she said, if anything happens to me, it was derek. reporter: derek smyer, the father of her unborn child. did she go into any detail about what he had said to her to make her say
verdict on all counts. thank you very much. reporter: crystal s family was worried. they could only hope the jury believed c-styles video confession, and not his recantation of it. the wait for a verdict was agonizing. that was painful. reporter: one day passed. then two. three days in. i m nervous. i don t want to do this again. i can t do this again. it s not easy. reporter: then it was a week. then one week turned into two. i m like i m just praying. i just keep praying, no matter what i see or what i hear. i keep praying. reporter: every day the waiting was harder. that was true for derek s family too. i started getting nervous. i was there every day, anxiously waiting so that we could hear that verdict. so we could hear that derek was not guilty. i would see the jurors come out of there, red in the face. almost like they re arguing back there.
as a young child, he was my best friend. we went to high school, he was more of a protector for me. i was really quiet in school, but everyone knew who derek smyer was. he had your back? he had my back. and there is no doubt that if anything happened, they would be there to take care of me. so when she heard police were interviewing her brother about a murder, she questioned him herself. and i asked derek, what is this? he said, i don t know. i said, what happened? he said, i don t know what happened. he didn t say that he knew anything about crystal taylor s death? nothing about crystal taylor s death. it sounds to me like you were pretty fixated on derek pretty early. well, he was he was one of our our top three. because remember, we re looking at the son s father, we re looking at her love interest, on and off guy, dino. and we re looking at now derek. how did javonte s father react when you told him crystal had been murdered? his reaction was shock. he was s
and i m driving on the freeway, and all of a sudden, i just felt like she wasn t here. reporter: the news that they lost their baby sister was unbearable. crystal taylor was just 27. when i got in, michelle was on the floor. i m just, like, looking at her. i try to hug her. reporter: now they had to tell their ailing momo her baby was gone. when i had to call my mom to say, somebody killed crystie, and she screamed the most harrowing just scream. i just knew this is gonna kill mom, too. yeah. there s nothing worse than burying your kids. i mean no. especially when you re already so sick. so sick. i i remember when i was talking to my my mom. i was like, don t you leave me. reporter: telling crystal s 10-year-old son was even harder. and we kind of sat next to him like, javonte, your mom died. and he crossed his arms like this and screamed.
detective williams, who ran the name through a gang database and discovered, unfortunately, there was more than one c-styles. there s big c-styles, there s a little c-styles. reporter: eventually williams found a c-styles who d been on probation at the time of the murder. our first goal was to identify the connection between the c-styles and crystal taylor. any gang affiliation, any relatives? was he a boyfriend, ex-boyfriend? the sisters say no. her friends say no. there s no evidence to support that they even knew each other. although maybe they knew each other and she didn t tell anybody. exactly. and we have to also keep that as a card on the table. okay. so how can we start proving this up? i start examining where their lines may have crossed. crystal taylor works in carson. oh, she goes to anderson park. oh, there s information that c-styles hangs out at anderson park. okay.