[Ashleigh Banfield, Host:] Breaking news tonight, a beautiful woman, a grisly death, exclusive details about that Texas realtor who vanished before a hurricane, where she was murdered and where the killer dumped her body.
[Unidentified Male:] Crystal`s body was discovered by the Chambers County sheriff`s detectives and Texas Rangers in a wooded area.
[Banfield:] Crystal McDowell, strangled the day she disappeared, as police reveal it was the suspect who took them to her body.
[Unidentified Male:] We`ve been able to charge who caused the disappearance.
[Banfield:] A full confession from Crystal`s ex-husband as haunting video of her birthday skydive comes to light.
[Unidentified Male:] Steve, your idea? So she gets hurt, I`m blaming you, all right, buddy?
[Crystal Mcdowell:] He has a really good life insurance policy.
[Unidentified Male:] Oh, cool. Perfect.
[Banfield:] Divorced in June and dead by summer`s end, the sheriff shares exclusive details tonight. Good evening, everyone. I`m Ashleigh Banfield. This is PRIMETIME JUSTICE as Tropical Storm Irma continues to pound northern Florida and grind its way up into Georgia and South Carolina. Tonight, we`ve got breaking news on a mystery that we`ve been following since Hurricane Harvey flooded Texas. And that is what happened to Crystal McDowell, the beautiful realtor who disappeared before the rain and the floods inundated Houston. The mother of two she disappeared on Friday, August 25th, and for the next two weeks, her family and her friends desperately searched for her until they stopped searching for her. Their only clues had been a videotape of Crystal leaving her boyfriend`s apartment the morning that she vanished. She was on her way to her ex-husband`s house to pick up her two kids, and until now, we assumed she didn`t make it because her beautiful black Mercedes was found in a flooded Motel 6 parking lot with the keys still in it, doors unlocked. Sadly, just this last Saturday afternoon, they found Crystal`s body.
[Unidentified Male:] Today at 2:45 PM, Crystal`s body was discovered by the Chambers County sheriff`s detectives and Texas Rangers in a wooded area of west Chambers County. This case was about trying to bring Crystal McDowell home, and we`ve made that happen and we`ve been able to charge who can caused the disappearance.
[Banfield:] It didn`t take long before Crystal`s ex-husband, Steve McDowell, was arrested, photographed like this and then charged with murder. And what police say happened is chilling. They say McDowell admits that Crystal, indeed, did make it to his home that morning, but that he strangled her in that home not long after she arrived, with the kids still in the home. Later, in the middle of the night, he took her body and dumped it deep into the woods, according to officials, off of Interstate 10, not far from the home where those kids were. And last Saturday, we`re told that he tearfully led investigators right to the area where he dumped the body of the mother of his two kids and that he offered a full confession. Sheriff Brian Hawthorne is with the Chambers County sheriff`s office. He joins me live right now from Texas. Sheriff, this is not the news that we were hoping to hear. You have been on this case from the very beginning. I guess the first question I have is, how did you get this full confession?
[Brian Hawthorne, Chambers County Sheriff:] Ashleigh, the confession, you know, is a combination of a lot of detective work and a lot of interviews. So you know, as you gather information and you start building your cases and you look at your persons of interest, you tailor your interviews to each individual. And things started coming around for the detectives and the Rangers to start asking a lot more questions of Steve McDowell.
[Banfield:] So can you and I`m going to press you. I understand you`re still now headed towards a murder case with this man, so I get it if you can`t answer, but I`m going to go anyway. Can you give me the answer to the mystery of how her Mercedes ended up at that Motel 6, half submerged in water?
[Hawthorne:] Well, I can tell you that he drove it there and then parked it. And it`s obvious that it was in the hopes that it would be stolen, like I had told you when we found it. And it probably would have been just due to the nature of that intersection of a Motel 6 and everything that takes place there off interstate 10. But because of Hurricane Harvey and the floodwaters, nobody would have been able to drive it out of the parking lot.
[Banfield:] Was this timed, then? Do you think it was a coincidence that the hurricane was happening as this crime happened, or was this planned so that there would be this great cover of being able to dump a car in an area where it might get stolen, might get flooded?
[Hawthorne:] No, I think it`s completely coincidental because I think he would have probably parked it somewhere else had he realized that the flood waters of Cedar Bayou and essentially receiving 50 inches of rain was going to flood the entire hotel and that entire part of town. So I think it was coincidental.
[Banfield:] So if he dropped that car at Motel 6 he lived about, I don`t know, two-and-a-half, three miles away. Did he have another vehicle there?
[Hawthorne:] That`s part of our investigation right now and I really it`s not in my best interests to talk about that aspect of the investigation.
[Banfield:] So let`s get to that morning when Crystal had sent text messages sort of en route to Steve`s house. We didn`t think that she made it. And you definitely do know that she made it. Can you take me to the parts of the investigation you can reveal, when she got there what happened? And what else do you know about what happened in that house with those kids there?
[Hawthorne:] Well, about the only thing that I can say is that she did make it. It appears that the line of text messaging it`s not fully clear to us, but we do know that she did get there. He told us that she did get there and that at some point in her encounter with him that morning is when he strangulated her. And we have what we have today.
[Banfield:] So ultimately, if she died in that house, she eventually was dumped in the woods. Did he put her body in that Mercedes and then make that trip with her in the Mercedes? Like, give me sort of the connect the dots between her dying in the house and ending up in the woods.
[Hawthorne:] Well, a lot of that is still part of the investigation. It is still being documented. But it is our belief that after, you know, the strangulation and the death, he then put her in a car. And you know, we`re still documenting exactly which vehicle it is. But it`s my belief it is the Mercedes. And then drove her to this kind of a it`s not I wouldn`t say deserted, but it is not a frequented area by the public, and had that ability and he did this in the middle of the night, early, early in the morning, where there would not have been any type of traffic, and essentially ditched the body deep into the woods, where it was very difficult to find.
[Banfield:] So if I`m doing my math right, Crystal leaves her boyfriend, Paul`s, house at around 7:00 in the morning on Friday morning. On her way, about 10, 15 minutes away by driving, she would have arrived at Steve`s house, her ex-husband, where the two kids were. She was supposed to pick them up. If she died that morning, but she wasn`t dumped until that night and deep into the night, like even into Saturday morning, literally in the middle of the night, was her body in the trunk of that car while he was looking after the kids all that Friday?
[Hawthorne:] Well, that is our belief, but a lot of that is still part of the investigation and the detectives are still working on that.
[Banfield:] Understand. Can I go a little further and push you? Would he have I mean, if he now is the only parent alive of those two children and is caring for them that Friday, presumably, since they were in the house at the time of the strangulation, they would still be in the house at the time of the dump, the body being dumped. Do we know if they were taken in the car while that happened, or were they left at the house? Do we have any idea where they were at that time?
[Hawthorne:] We believe they were left at the house, and he just took advantage of an opportunity in which it was early in the morning and the children were presumably asleep.
[Banfield:] Was Steve using Crystal`s phone at that time to fabricate text messages, or was he sending text messages after she was dead, suggesting, Just come pick up the kids, and will you be here at any time soon? I`m paraphrasing, but effectively suggesting she was running late. Was that him covering, or do we know if she was already dead by then?
[Hawthorne:] That`s parts of the investigation that we are keeping close. So I would rather not comment on that right now.
[Banfield:] I respect that. Obviously, through and I know that, you know, video played a really big role. Surveillance video played a really big role, great policing. Obviously, you`re in the middle of, literally, a storm and a hurricane and the aftermath, and you`re still able to within two weeks, you know, bring this case to fruition. I think that says a lot about your men and women and your department and you, as their leader, video, interviews, witnesses all comprising sort of the narrative for you. When you felt like you had your guy and he then buckled, he took you to the spot where he dumped her. Is that correct?
[Hawthorne:] He took us to the area. That is correct.
[Banfield:] Can you tell me what I just I`m trying to, you know, imagine what it would be like to be a fly on the wall of that cruiser as it`s heading to that location and he is directing you. What was this like?
[Hawthorne:] Well, you know, he was from everything that I have watched and observed and saw all of on Saturday when that took place, he was extremely emotional. And you know, I like a lot of people that commit these kind of crimes, they later regret that they did. And I think that`s probably the case with Steve McDowell. But we can`t change the actions and the decisions that he chose to do on that Friday morning. So you know, from a law enforcement perspective, I try not to take too much emotion and remorse. I`ve got to act on what the law is and what the expectations of the Constitution are. So I don`t want to put too many feelings in people`s head. Bottom line is he committed the murder, and that`s what we`re dealing with.
[Banfield:] So I can only imagine the personality in the pictures that we`re running right now, but his mugshot is almost illegible. I cannot see what is in those eyes. I cannot see what is in that face, given what you`re telling me. And I can only wonder, did he look like this? Was he despondent, flat affect? Was he devastated? Was he emotional? Was he weeping when he was trying to walk you literally into the woods to find that body?
[Hawthorne:] All of the above. You just you`ve named him all in one sentence.
[Banfield:] It`s it`s hard to fathom. How was this confession? Was it one big verbal logorrhea? Was it a number of different interviews? Was it days upon days, hours upon hours? Like, how did you get all of this information out of him?
[Hawthorne:] Well, the you know, I had told you over the last couple of days that I had asked the Texas Rangers to come in and assist us. And they sent two of the truly finest interviewers probably in the area, or especially in the state of Texas, that you know, between all the information that the detectives and the Rangers had put together, they pretty well would craft the questions. And I just can`t tell you how much I appreciate the two Texas Rangers that worked so hard on this case with us. And it`s just a matter of education and knowing how to ask the right questions. And Steve was very forthcoming. I`ve told you all along he always cooperated with us. We never never he didn`t always tell us the truth, but he always cooperated with us.
[Banfield:] I have one more question about the car at the Motel 6 now that, you know, law enforcement believes he was the one who took it there and who backed it into that spot. Is there truth to the fact that he returned several hours later to check out the handiwork, to see if maybe someone had taken the car?
[Hawthorne:] Yes. We identified that he did return back to the scene, which is a pretty common thing in law enforcement. We quite often see people come back to see their handiwork, or to see whether their plan materialized. And in this case, he returned to see if his plan had materialized, and it had not. So that is part of our case.
[Banfield:] Sheriff, I am not even a fraction into the list of questions I have for you. Can you stay with me? I have so much more I want to ask.
[Hawthorne:] I will.
[Banfield:] OK. Sheriff Hawthorne`s going to stay with me as we continue to just unravel this unbelievable story that, you know, heretofore was a mystery. It is not now. But sad it is because when Crystal disappeared on August 25th, it was her uncle, Jeff Walters, who initially sounded the alarm about Steve McDowell, her ex-husband.
[Jeff Walters, Crystal`s Uncle:] She did not walk away without contacting anyone and just disappear. I know she didn`t. I know her husband has threatened her before and told her that she would never go out of their house. She would never leave him.