[music playing]
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: At 14,000 feet above sea level,
Steve McDowell has arranged a special gift
for his wife, Crystal.
ALL: (SINGING) Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday, dear Crystal.
Happy birthday to you.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: A few years later,
Steve's birthday girl disappears in the middle of a hurricane.
It wasn't just that Crystal was missing.
People were dying everywhere.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Detectives suspect foul play.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: The one-time real estate agent
is last seen leaving her lover's house on the way to meet
up with her former husband.
And she just did not realize the danger
she was putting herself in.
Is this the story of a woman lost in a hurricane?
Or is it a tale of murder?
The daughter said that she saw, you know, her father,
saw Steve strangling Crystal.
Nearly half of women murdered are killed by their partners.
But plenty of men also fall victim to the same fate.
I'm Michelle Trachtenberg, and this is "Meet, Marry, Murder."
[theme music]
Steve and Crystal McDowell never had what most people would call
a traditional relationship.
He was a little bit of a Mr. Mom.
She wore the pants in the family pretty, pretty much.
Anything Crystal wanted, he tried his best to do.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: But the arrangement worked for them.
While Crystal was career driven, Steve was more of a Mr. Mom
and had a daughter from a previous marriage.
His role in the marriage was to help
take care of their children, because she had two jobs.
In a lot of ways, he probably spent more time
with the children than Crystal did.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: When Crystal met Steve,
it seemed like she'd finally found the stable home
she never had growing up.
She did have a rough childhood.
Through the investigation, we learned
that both of her parents died early in life
during her childhood.
Both of them were very recreational,
potentially addicted to drugs.
She was moved around and raised by a number of different people
in the family.
CINDY SERATTE: My name is Cindy.
And Crystal is my niece by marriage.
My family was best friends with their family
on the grandparents' side.
So we all just kind of grew up knowing that the grandparents
were taking care of her.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Crystal's aunt, Cindy Seratte,
remembers a little girl who didn't let
life's adversity hold her back.
She was a little firecracker then.
She was cute, and funny, and outgoing,
had a big personality--
sweet, sweet, loving child.
She was loved by everyone.
She never let anything get her down.
She was always fun and rambunctious.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Crystal was raised by her grandparents
in Baytown, Texas.
BRIAN HAWTHORNE: It's about 20 miles to the east of Houston.
Baytown is more of a suburban, very middle class, lots
of petrochemical workers, schoolteachers, some people
that commute into Houston.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: By her mid-20s,
Crystal had met Steve McDowell, a lively, good-looking guy
seven years her senior.
She was in the salon when she had told me she had met Steve,
and that he was very sweet and caring,
and that he meant a lot to her, and things may be going forward
with their relationship.
And I asked her basically if she thought
she was in love with him.
And she said, yes, ma'am, Aunt Cindy.
I think I am.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Crystal was ambitious and outgoing.
Steve McDowell was less driven.
When I first met Steve, I--
I liked him.
I thought he was a pretty cool guy.
He was nice.
He was very laid back.
You know, she was always the wild, and fun, and eccentric,
and live life on the edge.
And he always kind of let her take
the front seat of everything.
He was a supervisor at one of those warehouses that services
the chemical factories, particularly dealing
with ethylene and plastics.
And I thought that was a good pair, because as much as she
traveled, as much as she had friends and wanted to go,
he just kind of went along.
I liked him.
I just thought she had found her soul mate for life.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Almost immediately
after Steve and Crystal got married in 2007,
cracks appeared in their relationship.
I think she just knew that they weren't compatible.
He was very emotional, very needy.
They started arguing a lot, basically
just growing pains of marriage.
But he was so emotional that he would throw out threats.
She basically, within the first year,
noticed there was just a lot of signs
that it just was not going to work.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Crime reporter
Carolyn Canville investigated the McDowells' marriage.
So she decides it's time to file for divorce.
Steve kind of manipulates the situation
and gets Crystal not to go through with a divorce.
So they continue trying to make the marriage work.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Desperate to save his marriage,
Steve McDowell could be persuasive.
Anything he could do, literally, to get her,
he would.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: It worked.
They stayed together and first had
a baby boy and then a daughter.
Their children had kind of interesting names.
Like, one of them was named after a video game.
And another one was named after a pretty
common type of marijuana.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: But that wasn't
the only unconventional thing about the McDowell family.
BRIAN HAWTHORNE: Crystal and even Steve, I think,
dabbled with other relationships while they were married.
You know, to the best of our knowledge
and what we could see, it was probably
more behind each other's backs.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: It was clear that neither Steve
nor Crystal were happy.
So why stay together?
Crystal hadn't really wanted to be
married for a really long time.
She was mainly staying for the children.
She loved Steve as a person.
She respected him as far as a dad was concerned.
She never spoke ill of him.
She just kind of fell out of love with him.
She had a hard time with it, because she wanted
her family to be together.
She literally had spent her whole life without her parents.
And he didn't have parents that he had any contact
with for the most part.
He revolved around Crystal's family.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: As for Steve,
he kept doing everything he could
to keep Crystal from leaving.
I think he was living in a fantasy land.
And I do believe he was being manipulative.
He wanted to do whatever it took to keep her.
Well, there's no doubt that Steve is the type of person
that can be very manipulative.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Steve and Crystal
had been married for five years when he arranged her birthday
surprise to go skydiving.
ALL: (SINGING) Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday, dear Crystal.
Happy birthday to you.
That was so fun.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: As their 10th anniversary approached,
it was clear that Steve and Crystal's marriage
was on its last legs.
They just kind of grew apart.
She went one way.
He went another.
Her dreams and visions were going different places.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: By early 2017,
Crystal had launched a lucrative new career
as a real estate agent.
Oh, she was an amazing realtor.
Everyone loved her.
She reached out to so many people.
And her whole motto is that she just wanted
to be a blessing to someone.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Meanwhile, Steve
was only too happy to let his wife pay the bills.
I think there had been times when he maybe
didn't have as steady of a job.
She really is the breadwinner for this family.
She is really supporting the whole family.
She would go, and she'd work, and work, and work.
And it was never enough.
Then the more that she did, it was like the more he expected.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Eventually, Crystal
got fed up that Steve wasn't pulling his weight,
and she filed for divorce.
I think when a divorce is being finalized,
or during the period of time the divorce is going through,
is a very dangerous time, because the desperate person
that doesn't want to let go is at a point where
they may try or do anything.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Despite the growing tension
between them, Crystal let Steve know she'd always put
their children's needs first.
She made it perfectly clear that we would still
have something to do with him, and that if she got divorced
from him, that we would stay in contact
and that we would accept him, because that
was her children's father.
So they're doing their best to keep things civil and amicable
in front of the children.
They don't want to upset them any more than they need to.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: After giving it the old college try,
Crystal quickly began wondering if she'd
made the right decision.
A few weeks after the divorce, Crystal called 911.
She said that her husband refused
to give her the children, and he was threatening her.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Steve's temper tantrum
was a clear indication to Crystal
their post-marriage relationship wouldn't be as harmonious
as she first thought, despite her efforts
to keep things civil for the kids, and that she'd find out
it was only to get worse from there.
And Steve was threatening to harm himself and the children.
So it's pretty clear that while Crystal was doing everything
she could to maintain things, keep things even and stable
for the children, that Steve was exhibiting
some pretty dangerous behavior.
[music playing]
Even after a terrifying episode in which Crystal
McDowell had to dial 911 when her ex-husband, Steve,
refused to return her children to her,
she decided not to press charges for the sake of the kids,
a mistake she would later regret.
She was renovating her townhome.
It was a townhome that they had owned together.
And she got it in the divorce.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: With Steve still not working,
Crystal bought him a house nearby in Mont Belvieu
so the kids would continue to have some sense of stability.
The whole reason Crystal bought a home in Mont Belvieu
is because it is a very good school district.
Mont Belvieu still has the warm and cozy, kind of country feel,
know your neighbor type feel.
The whole idea was to get into the school district,
get them set up into the home.
And then she was going to live in her home in Baytown.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: The arrangement
also proved convenient for a different reason.
While Crystal's townhouse was being renovated,
Steve invited her to live with him and the kids.
He had asked her to just stay with him,
that he would move out of the master bedroom.
She could have the master bedroom
if she would just stay at the house with him
and the kids, which she did.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: The setup seemed to benefit both of them.
CINDY SERATTE: Crystal thought, I'll just stay there.
And that'll give me the opportunity to spend
some time with the kids.
And then that way, when I am home,
I can help get them to school and get them breakfast.
She wanted to be a part of their life.
She was going to see the kids more often.
But she also had a built-in babysitter with Steve.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: According to Sheriff Brian Hawthorne,
however, the unusual living arrangement actually fueled
Steve McDowell's delusional belief that he and Crystal
would get back together.
BRIAN HAWTHORNE: Crystal moving back into the house
was just a manipulative scenario that put Steve thinking that he
had an opportunity to re-engage his relationship with her when
in fact she had no intentions.
And she just did not realize the danger
she was putting herself in.
And I would tell her, you know,
I don't think it's a good idea.
I don't think you need to stay there.
Basically, he's not in a position
where he is willing to accept you as a friend.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Within days, Crystal realized
her aunt might have a point.
Her ex-husband wasn't ready to let her go.
I seen a change in Crystal when it come to her mannerisms
toward Steve.
Like, at first, you know, she was
very compassionate and kind.
And then it got to be where he would start following her too
much or calling her too much.
Steve would come in.
And just their body language-- you know,
they didn't make eye contact.
They would have a lot of tense body language, very one word.
It was just very uncomfortable.
He was delusional.
And he would cry a lot.
He would get mad a lot.
His emotions were all over the place.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Steve became convinced
that Crystal was dating again.
He obsessed over her every move.
Well, he started stalking her at the real estate business.
Like, he had put trackers on her car.
He was accusing her of different things
that was going on at work.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Nothing was going on at work.
But Steve was right about one thing.
His ex-wife had met someone.
She has a new boyfriend.
She's met Paul Hargrave.
He's a local jeweler.
Paul was adventurous.
From what she said, he was very charming.
And I think she was finally ready to move forward,
like it was going to be OK for her.
She had met somebody that she could enjoy their company.
I think she just felt things falling in place.
And she goes on Facebook, and she says, I have
never been happier in my life.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: But did Steve know why Crystal
was so happy all of a sudden?
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: But there was also
another reason Crystal wanted to keep her new man
a secret for the moment.
The family was going on a family
cruise, kids and everybody.
And Steve was going to be a part of it.
I think she wanted Steve to go so she would have
a built-in babysitter on the cruise ship with the children
so she could enjoy her family and enjoy
other people on the cruise.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Steve had other plans.
Steve intended on hoping to get remarried to Crystal
on the cruise.
I mean, I think he just had thought so much stuff up
in his mind about renewing their vows
and just falling back in love.
He was just a little bit delusional,
because she never let on that she was going to remarry him.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Crystal then
made a fateful decision, telling Steve she wouldn't
be taking him on the cruise.
Instead, she was taking her new boyfriend.
And ultimately, she wanted Paul
to go on the cruise with her.
She wanted to go with her new boyfriend, not her ex-husband.
So she has to break the news to Steve that he won't be going
on the cruise this time, that she's going to be
taking her boyfriend, Paul.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Steve McDowell was crushed.
Steve was devastated about being uninvited.
She had told him that she had met Paul
and that, you know, she was--
she was divorced.
They were gonna stay divorced.
And she was moving forward.
And he didn't like that.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: The day Crystal broke
the news to Steve, on August 21, 2017,
two storms started brewing--
a category 4 hurricane began bearing
down on the region, and Steve McDowell's rage
at being rejected.
He comes in the house and he finds her dressed to the nines
to go out with her new boyfriend.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Three days later, on August 24,
all of Southeast Texas began bracing itself for Hurricane
Harvey to make landfall.
BRIAN HAWTHORNE: Everybody was in hurricane preparation mode.
A number of people had already evacuated to Dallas or Austin,
different places, San Antonio, trying
to get away from the Coast.
So we'd gotten a lot of rain.
We have a lot of businesses that have a tendency to close up.
The highways-- there's very little traffic,
because nobody gets out in it.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Back in Mont Belvieu,
the hurricane's effects were still relatively mild.
So Steve hoped he might be able to convince Crystal to stay
over to be with the kids.
But she had other ideas.
I call it the straw that broke the camel's back.
She had come to the house.
He was out in the backyard, playing with the kids.
He thought it was gonna be a Steve, and Crystal,
and the kids evening.
Instead, she left, and went, and got together with Paul.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Crystal and Paul
made a date to go to the mall and then out to dinner.
BRIAN HAWTHORNE: During all of this time, it's raining.
It's raining pretty heavy at times.
The storm was affecting the Texas Coast.
And instead of actually going back home,
she went and stayed the night at Paul's house.
And I think that also definitely frustrated Steve.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Steve McDowell was still
clinging to the delusion that he had a chance
of winning Crystal back.
With Hurricane Harvey about to make landfall,
little did Crystal know that her decision
to stay at her new boyfriend's house
instead of hunkering down with Steve and their kids
would mean she'd end up facing the fury of a storm
more dangerous than the hurricane itself.
[music playing]
The morning of August 25, 2017, with Hurricane Harvey bearing
down on Southeast Texas, Crystal McDowell
is captured on security cam leaving her new boyfriend's
home after spending the night.
On her way out the door, she sends a text
to her ex-husband, Steve.
At one minute after 7:00, she sends him a text message.
On my way.
Do you have water?
I may stay here with the kids.
Seems like just rain.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: But it isn't just rain.
It's actually the start of something much, much worse.
BRIAN HAWTHORNE: It went ashore and stalled.
And then it started moving back to the east.
And then once it moved back to the east,
then that's when we started having
the winds and the heavy rains.
The hurricane was really bad.
I mean, people were flooded out of their homes.
I mean, they had lost everything.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Crystal's aunt
Cindy is hunkering down in her Belvieu home
to wait out the storm when she gets
a troubling call from her son.
We were watching TV, actually.
And he had-- he was burning my phone up.
And finally, I answered it.
And he just told me, he said, Mom,
did you know that Crystal was missing?
And I'm like--
I kind of really chuckled at first.
I'm like, Crystal is not missing, son.
He said, yes, Mom, she's missing.
Like, nobody can find her.
I said, Clinton, Crystal didn't run off.
She's not missing.
She probably flew to Belize or somewhere to escape the storm.
She's not missing.
And he goes, Mom, everybody's looking for her.
Her friends, her family--
no one has heard from her.
She's not responding to text messages.
She's not responding to phone calls.
People are getting really worried.
She was reported missing by family members.
I had called her several times,
and texted her, and said, hey, babe.
Where you at?
Everybody's looking for you.
And I knew that when she did not text
me back within an hour or so, there was something wrong.
And that's when I started to get worried.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Cindy immediately
gets in touch with Crystal's uncle, Jeff Walters, who
had not only helped raise Crystal,
but also happened to be her boss at the real estate agency.
Jeff is the one who filed the missing persons
report on Crystal with the Chambers
County Sheriff's Department.
But with Hurricane Harvey going on at the same time,
they're stretched a little thin.
BRIAN HAWTHORNE: There, where Crystal and Steve were
residing, that particular area of our county
got somewhere in between 55 and 60 inches of rain over,
you know, about a 72 to 48-hour period,
just depending on how you looked at it.
So neighborhoods were all going underwater.
So while all this was taking place, dealing
with a missing persons case, at the same time,
we're trying to do everything we can to help our citizens,
whether it's evacuate them from their homes using airboats
or our high water vehicles, also trying to secure their homes.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: The sheriffs
believed Crystal probably just got lost in the storm.
She was very smart.
She wouldn't have drove her car through high water.
Before she left, basically, the roads were not flooded.
So she could have got out.
When she come over that morning to get the kids,
she could have got out safely.
She would have never jeopardized her kids.
She wouldn't put herself in the middle of that.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: The rest of Crystal's family
also believes her sudden disappearance
is due to something far more sinister.
They immediately told us that we
needed to be looking at Steve.
Basically, he was just saying, he don't
know what happened to her.
She just never come in.
It was odd.
His body language was very different.
But at the first, you don't know if they're
just distraught because they do believe she's missing
or if, you know, technically, he did something.
But it definitely crosses your mind.
I never really thought that he would kill her.
I figured he probably had her somewhere
and was torturing her.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Homicide detective
Rod Demery is no stranger to this kind of investigation.
ROB DEMERY: You look for immediate people
that they may be in contact with.
You look for the immediate area.
You kind of expand that as the worry and concern
grows to a large-scale search.
That includes searching places, looking for vehicles.
It's pretty involved, leaving no stone
unturned until you can find some sign
or evidence of this person.
When we sat down as a team and started
looking at who we felt were our persons of interest,
Steve was no doubt one of them.
But we also had other people of interest too.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Within 48 hours
of Crystal's disappearance, storm waters
flood most of the County.
Normally, the search would be on in full force.
So the waters are rising.
And homes are underwater.
And entire neighborhoods are flooded.
And the police are doing everything they can.
But a lot of these deputies and these police officers,
their homes are underwater.
They can't get to scenes, because there's
no way to get there.
Their cars are underwater.
The streets are impassable.
So a normal investigation can't happen.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Instead, Sheriff Hawthorne's team
only questions three people in connection
with Crystal's disappearance--
her former husband, Steve, her uncle Jeff,
and her new boyfriend, Paul.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Paul immediately
points to Steve as the one who cops should be focusing on.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Uncle Jeff
is similarly concerned about Steve's unhealthy obsession
with Crystal.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: But when detectives finally
interview Steve, they find him more than willing to cooperate.
Steve was very willing to talk to us.
The individual that immediately uses
their right to not answer questions or not
give any kind of information--
sometimes that has a tendency to make
you even more of a suspect.
Well, Steve, day after day after day, all we'd have to do
is ask him if he'd come to the sheriff's
office and answer questions.
Steve will tell police initially
that Crystal never showed up.
He doesn't know where she is.
She had sent some texts and said
she was gonna come get the kids and that she never showed up.
And he was sticking to it.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: After coming up
empty handed with Steve, detectives
ask Cindy to do them a favor.
As far as I was told, just to hang out with him, talk to him,
and just to listen, to be an ear for, you know, the police.
Steve was kind of sweaty.
He was kind of shaky.
He was all over the place, very agitated,
very emotional, which could be expected,
because his wife was missing.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Over the course of several days,
Cindy works to build up Steve's trust.
CINDY SERATTE: His emotions were everywhere.
He had cried.
He would talk about how much he loved her
and how much he missed her.
I would try to get into his psyche.
And it-- you know, at one point, he
screamed, and raised his fist, and accused
me of being just like Crystal.
I mean, he started shaking and got in my face.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Is Steve worried
sick about his missing ex, or does
he just have something to hide?
As Hurricane Harvey starts to wind down,
detectives get a little bit closer to finding an answer.
August 29, three days after she's been reported missing,
Crystal's car is found.
A friend sees her Mercedes parked outside
of a Motel 6 in Baytown.
The keys were still inside the vehicle.
This is really strange.
They can't even get the car out, because the waters are still
rising, and the car is submerged.
So they have to have it towed out.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: The discovery of Crystal's car
raises a number of questions.
Primarily, why hadn't she taken her car keys with her
when she left it there?
And where did she go after?
As they continue their search for answers,
an interesting piece of surveillance footage emerges.
Steve is seen dumping something
into a trash can at this local gas station and leaving.
But they were not able to find out what those contents
were, because that garbage can had
been swept away by floodwaters.
Everything is washing away.
So everything that police are trying to do,
they're being hampered by this crazy hurricane.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: But with the hurricane finally
dying down, they're able to start
piecing together some answers.
The evidence just continued to keep mounting.
And most of it was video surveillance from business
security cameras, whether it was the service station where we
later found her car at a Motel 6 parking lot,
and the gas station caught somebody's parking the car.
And that person that got out of the car resembled Steve.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Now that they
were able to confirm that Steve was the one who dumped
Crystal's car, detectives finally
realized her sudden disappearance
meant this was more than just a regular missing persons case.
[music playing]
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: By September 8, 2017,
Crystal McDowell had been missing for 14 days.
Detectives strongly suspected her ex-husband, Steve,
had killed her.
But they didn't have the evidence to prove it yet.
But one of the things that you learn from a detective's
perspective in law enforcement is you never rule out anybody
or anyone until you truly have that physical evidence
or a confession.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Steve McDowell currently had
custody of his two children.
As he became more and more of a person of interest,
myself and the district attorney were concerned
that he had already made a threat
in a previous year of taking his own life
and taking the kids' life.
So we know that somehow, some way,
that was already in his mind.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Cindy began to fear
for the children's safety.
I would go over there.
I would try to get the kids to school,
help Steve with the kids a little bit.
If I could keep him close to me and keep the kids close,
I could keep an eye on him and maybe
somewhat protect the kids.
So we took the legal avenues, got
the Child Protective Services involved in it.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: As police wait for authorization
to take custody of the children, they
uncover another piece of evidence that gets them one
step closer to arresting Steve.
There was an interstate highway and a state highway
where this Motel 6 was.
And directly catty-corner of that was a Walmart.
And we were able to get video surveillance of Steve
buying a bicycle, and an energy drink, and a pack
of cigarettes very early in the morning, like 5:45, 6:00 AM,
very early.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Curiously,
Steve's early morning shopping spree
is on the very same day surveillance cameras also
caught him dumping Crystal's car.
And then we got additional security video surveillance
of him riding that bicycle down the Interstate 10
service road towards his house.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Steve's actions are highly suspicious.
I would say it was very unusual to be riding
your bike home in the rain.
And it really wasn't on an adult bicycle, either.
It was a kid's bicycle.
And the detectives had seen the bicycle in the garage
on earlier searches.
But obviously, they just assumed that that bicycle was
one of the children's bikes.
And it wasn't until we started putting all the video when we
discovered the car, then the video of the car being parked,
and then the video of him buying the bicycle,
and then the video of him riding the bicycle home.
Obviously, we went back and did another search of the house
and then the garage.
And there was the bicycle.
And we were able to identify, that was the bicycle that he
had purchased from the Walmart shortly after parking the car
in the Motel 6 parking lot.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: After confirming the bike
to be the same one Steve bought at Walmart,
investigators are finally able to start
piecing the puzzle together.
When I got to see it the very first time,
I was personally giddy, because he was
one of our persons of interest.
And he was becoming a stronger and stronger
person of interest.
And those were the pieces of the puzzle that we needed.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: It still isn't quite enough to charge
Steve with murder.
But then something happened to make him crack.
Everything's pointing to him.
He's not being very cooperative.
Police are zeroing in on Steve at this point.
Steve's getting nervous.
The police are nervous enough that they have had the children
taken away from him.
Steve then confides in his older daughter, the one
from his previous marriage.
He admits to her that he killed Crystal.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: After Crystal had been missing
for 15 days, on September 9, 2017,
Steve McDowell turned himself in.
At this point, Steve must realize that it's over.
He finally confesses to police.
He ultimately broke down and told us that he
would take us to the body.
It's a heavily wooded area near Needlepoint Road.
BRIAN HAWTHORNE: We would not have located it
if Steve hadn't taken us to it.
It was very important for us and very
important to the prosecution that we did locate
the body for two reasons-- one, for prosecutorial reasons,
and also for the ability for the family
to have some closure based upon what had happened to Crystal.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Finding Crystal's body not only
brought closure, but also realization of the horror she
experienced before she died.
The details of what he did were disturbing.
When we finally were able to recover the body,
the body had a lot of decomposition.
And there had also been some wild animal activity.
Very difficult to identify exactly how she died.
He tells police that they argued.
He strangled her with his bare hands.
Once she was dead, he covered her face with plastic.
He tied her up.
He stuffed her body into a garbage bag.
You know, it makes you wonder how a person can do something
like that and not have remorse, or how a person can
do something like that and not snap
and go, oh my god, what am I doing?
The next morning, he loaded that
garbage bag with his ex-wife's body in it into his vehicle.
And he drove it until he got to this heavily wooded
area near Needlepoint Road.
And he dumped her body there.
And for 15 days, it's been there.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Aunt Cindy
had the difficult task of delivering
the news to Crystal's children.
He destroyed so many lives.
He destroyed his children's life.
I mean, he destroyed Crystal, and her dreams, and her goals,
and her visions of her family.
And the kids will grow up without a mom.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: But would the kids grow up
without their father as well?
Steve refused to admit to Crystal's murder.
Instead, he claimed in court that Crystal's death
had been a tragic accident.
In the trial, he tried to say he squeezed her
to death, as in hugging her.
He testified that this was a sudden passion crime
and that he never intended on killing her.
And in Texas, under the law, a heat-of-the-moment killing
could actually get a defendant as little
as two years in prison.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Steve's denials further
disgusted Crystal's family.
He was a coward to do it.
So man up and at least say you did it.
If you snapped, or you premeditated it,
or you went nuts, whatever happened, at that point,
you own it.
You know you did it.
You own it.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Despite Steve's claims of innocence,
the prosecution knew they had a star witness on their side, one
who was only seven years old.
The daughter said that she saw her father,
saw Steve strangling Crystal.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: After leaving her boyfriend
Paul's house on the morning of her murder,
Crystal arrived at Steve's house to pick
up their children as planned.
Once she got there, the two began to argue.
This little girl testifies that she
actually woke up while her mommy and daddy were arguing.
She'd gotten up to go to the bathroom.
The argument was about Crystal having another man.
And she said that Mommy got mad.
And Mommy said, I'm just going to take my children and leave,
and that Daddy said, no, you're not.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Exactly what happened next isn't clear.
Crystal's daughter testified that when Steve saw her,
he sent her back to her room, but that before she went back
upstairs, she saw Steve grab Crystal in a kind of chokehold
from behind.
And that's what it appears that he did to her,
was strangled her till she ultimately passed out.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Was Crystal's death really
a spontaneous crime of passion, or was it
a premeditated murder?
That it takes four minutes to smother someone--
I mean, at some point, you would think he would have snapped
and realized, what am I doing?
My child is watching, and my wife's dying.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: If this was a tragic accident,
then why hadn't Steve called 911?
Why had he gone to such extreme lengths
to cover up Crystal's death?
The manufactured text messages, the consciousness
of his guilt when he tries to hide the body,
throw the body away, or whatever the case may be,
it just doesn't seem like sudden passion.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: By June 12, 2019,
the jury had heard enough.
After only three hours of deliberation,
they returned their verdict--
guilty.
Steven McDowell is convicted of murder in the death
of his ex-wife, Crystal.
He's sentenced to 50 years in prison.
The earliest he could be paroled is the year 2042.
He will be 70 years old at the time.
He's currently serving his time in the Texas
prison systems, Coffield Unit, in Tennessee Colony.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: Crystal's aunt
Cindy is still trying to come to terms
with the loss of her niece.
I have pity for him.
You know, he'll live the rest of his life, or the majority
of it, in prison.
And he'll get what he deserves.
I feel bad for him that he made that choice.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG: For Sheriff Brian Hawthorne,
the tragedy was avoidable.
All Crystal had to do was put some distance
between herself and Steve.
If you're leaving a hostile relationship,
you need to figure out how to separate yourself, and continue
to grow as two separate people, and raise
your family in a healthy way.
And moving back in with your ex-husband
is not a healthy way to do it.
Could the sad tale of Crystal McDowell's murder
have had a different ending if she'd made a clean break
from her husband, Steve?
Obviously, we'll never know for sure.
But what we do know is that her story is a tragic reminder
that the person most likely to kill you
may be the person you married.
I'm Michelle Trachtenberg, and I'll see you next time
on "Meet, Marry, Murder."
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