Speaker 1: School of Humans.
Speaker 2: Helen Got Murder Line actively investigates cold case murders in
Speaker 2: an effort to raise public awareness invite witnesses to come
Speaker 2: forward and present evidence that could potentially be further investigated
Speaker 2: by law enforcement. While we value insights from family and
Speaker 2: community members, their statements should not be considered evidence and
Speaker 2: point to the challenges of verifying facts inherent in cold cases.
Speaker 2: We remind listeners that everyone has presumed innocent until proven
Speaker 2: guilty in a court of law. Nothing in the podcast
Speaker 2: is intended to state or imply that anyone who has
Speaker 2: not been convicted of a crime is guilty of any wrongdoing.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3: On August twenty eighth, two thousand and one, fifteen year
Speaker 3: old jesse Marie Twilight Song Crooks, who everyone knew was Twilight,
Speaker 3: was hanging out at her home on Larman Mill Road
Speaker 3: in Plano, Kentucky, when she got a phone call. The
Speaker 3: phone call came in at ten point fifty two pm
Speaker 3: from a phone booth at the Plano County Store, which
Speaker 3: was a convenience store less than a mile away from
Speaker 3: her home in that small town. The Plano Country Store
Speaker 3: was kind of the center of Twilight's social circuit. A
Speaker 3: friend of hers later told police Twilight would often walk
Speaker 3: by there to buy cigarettes or hang out, and would
Speaker 3: get people to drop her off and pick her up there,
Speaker 3: so receiving a call from that phone booth would not
Speaker 3: have been out of the ordinary for her. But Twilight crooks,
Speaker 3: like many teenagers, had secrets, and like many of us
Speaker 3: back in the day, sometimes she lived a double life
Speaker 3: after hours, a few minutes after getting that call, at
Speaker 3: around eleven PM, Twilight snuck out of her house. Now
Speaker 3: according to the police report, when she left home, she
Speaker 3: was wearing pajama bottoms and a T shirt, and she
Speaker 3: was barefoot. Her friends later said that wasn't super unusual.
Speaker 3: It would make sense if she was planning on hanging
Speaker 3: out for a while and then coming back home.
Speaker 1: On not being out for long.
Speaker 3: Investigators have said they believe Twilight went out to meet
Speaker 3: someone she knew. Her friends told police when she left
Speaker 3: the house barefoot, a lot of the time, she would
Speaker 3: have someone pick her up. They would ride around, and
Speaker 3: then whoever picked her up would drop her back home.
Speaker 3: But her family never found out who she was planning
Speaker 3: to meet that night because she was never seen alive again.
Speaker 3: I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the past eight years of making
Speaker 3: my true crime podcast, Helen Gone, I've learned that there
Speaker 3: is no such thing as a small town where murder
Speaker 3: never happens. I have received hundreds of messages from people
Speaker 3: all around the country asking for help with an unsolved
Speaker 3: murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities. If
Speaker 3: you have a case you'd like me and my team
Speaker 3: to look into, you can reach out to us at
Speaker 3: our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven
Speaker 3: four four six one four five. That's six seven eight
Speaker 3: seven four four six one four five, or you can
Speaker 3: send us a message on Instagram at Helen Gonepod. This
Speaker 3: is Helen Gone Murder Line. The next morning, Twilight's father,
Speaker 3: Bobby and his wife Linda, Twilight's stepmother, realized that Twilight
Speaker 3: was not in her bed. Anne had not come home
Speaker 3: the night before. They called the Warren County Sheriff's office
Speaker 3: to report her missing the next morning, August twenty ninth,
Speaker 3: at six oh five am. At the time, the police
Speaker 3: report noted Twilight had run away in the past. We're
Speaker 3: trying to get more information about exactly what was going
Speaker 3: on in Twilight's life that year. Twilight Crooks was born
Speaker 3: on October twenty second, nineteen eighty five, in Santa Fe County,
Speaker 3: New Mexico. Her mother was Native American, part of the
Speaker 3: Arapaho tribe. She was also part Cherokee on her father's side.
Speaker 3: Twilight lived with her dad and stepmom, but apparently regularly
Speaker 3: visited her mother and the rest of the tribe, and
Speaker 3: was excited to share what she had learned about their
Speaker 3: culture with her friends. In Kentucky, Twilight was, according to Bobby,
Speaker 3: doing well at school. Her family and friends all described
Speaker 3: her as very bright. She was a sophomore at Greenwood
Speaker 3: High School in Bowling Green and she was very accomplished.
Speaker 3: Bobby Crooks later told journalists Twilight got straight a's and
Speaker 3: was very popular in her class, and that she had
Speaker 3: dreams of going to Harvard. But Twilight had reportedly run
Speaker 3: away several times before. According to the police report, Twilight
Speaker 3: was considered a habitual runaway. According to the missing Persons report,
Speaker 3: on August twenty eighth, the days she disappeared, Twilight called
Speaker 3: her father and asked if she could have dinner with
Speaker 3: a friend.
Speaker 1: Her dad said that was fine.
Speaker 3: After that, she went to that friend's house had dinner
Speaker 3: and was home by around seven pm. Linda and Bobby
Speaker 3: told police they went to bed at around ten pm
Speaker 3: after they said Twilight had done her homework, and they
Speaker 3: told police that when they went to bed, Twilight was
Speaker 3: taking a shower. After she got out of the shower,
Speaker 3: she got that late night call at ten fifty two pm,
Speaker 3: and a few minutes after that, without her parents knowing,
Speaker 3: left the house. Twilight's friend talked to us about the case.
Speaker 3: We asked her how she met Twilight.
Speaker 4: Me and Twilight we met in elementary school. We went
Speaker 4: to Cumberland Trace Elementary. I remember she was just so
Speaker 4: sweet and kind, and I remember her grandmother would come
Speaker 4: and eat lunch with her sometimes at school, and like
Speaker 4: I was always intrigued by her Native American roots and
Speaker 4: stuff like that. And she used to make bracelets for
Speaker 4: everybody with seeds and stuff. We were very close friends
Speaker 4: all the way up until she was killed. We were
Speaker 4: teenagers and we experimented and weren't always making the safest choices.
Speaker 4: I just remember that she was very trusting, and she
Speaker 4: trusted a lot of people, and that is, you know,
Speaker 4: what cost her her life. I believe I always felt
Speaker 4: like it was somebody that we knew that we went
Speaker 4: to school with, or maybe somebody that you know, we
Speaker 4: knew from our town, because where her body was found
Speaker 4: was so close to her house. And she was a
Speaker 4: good kid. I mean, she had good grades, She had
Speaker 4: big dreams and a bright future. She was just a
Speaker 4: really sweet girl. And she was always smiling and always laughing.
Speaker 4: She had the biggest smile, and it was light of
Speaker 4: a room. You know.
Speaker 3: Twilight had a brother who was two years older. Linda
Speaker 3: told detectives they had reached out to Twilight's brother, but
Speaker 3: that he had not heard from her and had no
Speaker 3: idea where she was. They also called around to her
Speaker 3: friend's houses, but no one had seen her at first
Speaker 3: because she had stuck out and left home in the past.
Speaker 3: Detectives treated the case like a run away, but when
Speaker 3: she didn't come home, police from the Warren County Sheriff's Office,
Speaker 3: who led the investigation, as well as other agencies including
Speaker 3: the Bowling Green Police Department and eventually the FBI, scoured
Speaker 3: the area for her, along with her family and the
Speaker 3: rest of the community. Her family pasted missing posters all
Speaker 3: over town looking for Twilight five foot five, one hundred
Speaker 3: pounds with brown hair and brown eyes, wearing braces. On
Speaker 3: September tenth, two thousand and one, at around four pm,
Speaker 3: nearly two weeks after Twilight disappeared, a dog walker was
Speaker 3: in the woods near Matlock Old Union Road in Plano,
Speaker 3: about ten miles from Bowling Green. This is a very
Speaker 3: remote area that has a lot of trees and other
Speaker 3: types of vegetation around. Today it's a soybean field. The
Speaker 3: dog walker found skeletal remains near a dried up pond
Speaker 3: that dental records later confirmed were Twilight Crooks. Her body
Speaker 3: was in pieces. On September tenth, two thousand and one,
Speaker 3: Twilight Crooks's body was found. The next day was September eleventh,
Speaker 3: two thousand and one, the day that terrorists attacked the
Speaker 3: World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon
Speaker 3: in Washington, d C. And suddenly the entire country was
Speaker 3: focused on the terrorists attacking the United States. The murder
Speaker 3: of a fifteen year old young woman of Native American
Speaker 3: descent seemed to be quickly forgotten, although back in Kentucky
Speaker 3: police were conducting their investigation, but it seemed like there
Speaker 3: were a lot of missing pieces. Law enforcement tried to
Speaker 3: figure out who had called Twilight minutes before she left
Speaker 3: her house. They checked and discovered that the caller ID
Speaker 3: showed the call came in from the Plano Country Stoor's
Speaker 3: phone booth. But back then there were no surveillance cameras
Speaker 3: at the store. It was a very different environment in
Speaker 3: two thousand and one than it is today. There were
Speaker 3: no ring doorbells or cell phone cameras, no surveillance video
Speaker 3: outside that phone booth. The Independent newspaper in the UK
Speaker 3: did an article about Twilight's case in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3: They interviewed Warren County Sheriff Bratt Hightower. According to the article,
Speaker 3: Sheriff high Tower told the journalists quote, there is no
Speaker 3: way of telling who placed the phone call to her
Speaker 3: at the payphone that night end quote. Police were tight
Speaker 3: lipped about the investigation. They did not even release a
Speaker 3: cause of death, but rumors in town were already flying,
Speaker 3: and when police talked to students at Twilight's high school,
Speaker 3: several teens told police that there was a rumor going
Speaker 3: around that Twilight had died of a methamphetamine overdose and
Speaker 3: that the people who were with her panicked and hid
Speaker 3: the body and Twilight's friend said police did not interview
Speaker 3: a lot of Twilight's friends, including herself.
Speaker 4: It's hard because this has happened twenty four years ago,
Speaker 4: and I just feel like there wasn't much of a
Speaker 4: follow up or anything like that with her friends. They
Speaker 4: didn't give her story the attention that it deserved, and
Speaker 4: like they never came to school, never questioned any of
Speaker 4: us about what happened, or if we knew or or
Speaker 4: hung out or they never ever came to the school
Speaker 4: to interview anybody. They just made one announcement when they
Speaker 4: had found her on the intercom that morning, and then
Speaker 4: you know, of course nine to eleven happened in the
Speaker 4: following day, which completely made her story just disappear. Like
Speaker 4: I don't remember seeing anything else about it on the
Speaker 4: news after nine to eleven. Everything was just focused on that.
Speaker 4: I don't think they mentioned her name for like probably
Speaker 4: a couple of years. I want to.
Speaker 1: Say, though the case is still open.
Speaker 3: We were able to access some information via a Foyer request,
Speaker 3: but it seems like everything is redacted.
Speaker 1: On some pages. There are more black boxes than there
Speaker 1: are regular text.
Speaker 3: So we're gonna have to do some serious sleuthing to
Speaker 3: figure out who these people are and how they were
Speaker 3: connected to Twilight. We got the autopsy report, but it's
Speaker 3: redacted too, so we don't know the cause of death.
Speaker 3: The toxicology report is also blacked out, so we don't
Speaker 3: know if Twilight had drugs in her system or not.
Speaker 3: But the incident report refers to a weapon being used
Speaker 3: and it lists the weapon as a knife. That, plus
Speaker 3: the fact that the police were very clearly treating and
Speaker 3: labeling this as a murder investigation, would appear to point
Speaker 3: away from the theory that this was an overdose or
Speaker 3: something that could have been accidental. There were also rumors
Speaker 3: flying around that Twilight had been decapitated. Police also had
Speaker 3: some issues with the physical evidence. After nearly two weeks
Speaker 3: in the Kentucky heat, Twilight's body had been skeletonized. Crime
Speaker 3: scene photos that show part of Twilight's remains show that
Speaker 3: her skull was lying next to the lower part of
Speaker 3: her body, her spine and legs, but we can't tell
Speaker 3: from these photos whether her head was removed by a
Speaker 3: human or whether animals detached her skull. We also aren't
Speaker 3: able to see her torso in these photos. It's been
Speaker 3: reported that her body was partly covered with twigs and branches,
Speaker 3: like her killer was trying to cover up the body,
Speaker 3: but maybe didn't do a very good job or didn't finish.
Speaker 3: When police processed the scene, they did find some physical evidence.
Speaker 3: One of the items and evidence was a yellow and
Speaker 3: white drinking straw, but no fingerprints were found on that straw.
Speaker 3: Since they hit a dead end with the phone booth,
Speaker 3: police were trying to figure out who Twilight was meeting
Speaker 3: that night by delve into her personal life, and like
Speaker 3: many teenagers, Twilight's love life was complicated. Twilight had been
Speaker 3: dating someone a boyfriend, but they had recently broken up.
Speaker 3: Police talked to him and he said he hadn't talked
Speaker 3: to Twilight in a while. However, another friend of hers
Speaker 3: told police she had seen Twilight standing outside the Plano
Speaker 3: store arguing with the ex boyfriend. The friend could not
Speaker 3: remember the exact date when she witnessed that argument. The
Speaker 3: friend's name and the ex boyfriend's name are both redacted.
Speaker 3: But there was another guy whom Twilight was talking to,
Speaker 3: someone who friends said she met on the internet and
Speaker 3: had been talking to regularly before she disappeared. This guy
Speaker 3: was supposedly in Cincinnati, Ohio. Now police wanted to figure
Speaker 3: out who this guy was and to find him. Could
Speaker 3: he have been the person Twilight was meeting that night.
Speaker 3: Twilight was active in church. She had recently taken a
Speaker 3: trip with Hillville Heights Church to Cincinnati July. One of
Speaker 3: Twilight's friends from her church group told police that during
Speaker 3: this trip, Twilight told her she had met a guy
Speaker 3: off the internet and she was supposed to be meeting
Speaker 3: him in person at King's Island. The last day of
Speaker 3: that church trip, which was July seventeenth, Twilight stayed in
Speaker 3: a Hampton Inn hotel room with a chaperone and two
Speaker 3: other girls. The police talked to the chaperone, her name
Speaker 3: was Terry. Terry told them that Twilight was talking to
Speaker 3: the same guy the one she had met in Cincinnati
Speaker 3: for several hours on the phone on one of the
Speaker 3: nights they were there. She said she got concerned Twilight
Speaker 3: might try to sneak out. Terry, the chaperone said, Twilight
Speaker 3: told her she had been sexually active with eight different guys,
Speaker 3: that she was on the pill, and that her dad
Speaker 3: was too strict on her. She also said that her
Speaker 3: stepmom was always telling her what to do. Twilight told
Speaker 3: the chaperone she had met the guy the summer before
Speaker 3: when she was with her mom in Clarksville, Tennessee, and
Speaker 3: that since that time, in addition to talking on the phone,
Speaker 3: they had talked on the internet. Terry said that Twilight
Speaker 3: started talking to the guy on the phone at around
Speaker 3: eleven thirty pm and they talked for two to three hours.
Speaker 3: The chaperone said she was worried about Twilight sneaking out
Speaker 3: because she said she overheard part of the conversation and
Speaker 3: Twilight was talking about meeting this guy later on. Terry
Speaker 3: told police that after that night, she told the church
Speaker 3: staff she didn't want to be responsible for Twilight anymore
Speaker 3: because she was afraid of what she might get involved in.
Speaker 3: One of the detectives on the case, Detective Davis, contacted
Speaker 3: the Cincinnati Police. He asked them to send an officer
Speaker 3: to the residence of the person whom Twilight had been
Speaker 3: talking to. The Police in Cincinnati did locate the guy
Speaker 3: that she had been talking to online, but they found
Speaker 3: no trace of Twilight at his residence, and the guy
Speaker 3: said he had not seen her and had no idea
Speaker 3: where she was. This seemed to be another dead end,
Speaker 3: so with the internet love interest crossed off, Detectives back
Speaker 3: in Kentucky began looking closer to home. This included focusing
Speaker 3: on the people who last saw Twilight, her dad and stepmother.
Speaker 3: In January of two thousand and two, Twilight's stepmother, Linda,
Speaker 3: contacted police. According to information contained in the autopsy report,
Speaker 3: she said she was upset about the amount of time
Speaker 3: the investigation was taking. She also said the family wanted
Speaker 3: to know more details about how Twilight died, but police
Speaker 3: declined to give the family any information about cause of
Speaker 3: death because, as indicated in these documents, they believe this
Speaker 3: might harm the investigation. They asked Linda Crooks to take
Speaker 3: a polygraph test, which she agreed to do, according to police,
Speaker 3: but then when they called her to set up a
Speaker 3: time to come in and take it, Linda did not
Speaker 3: call back. At some point, according to police documents, they
Speaker 3: did tell Linda Crooks how Twilight was killed. They asked
Speaker 3: both Bob and Linda to take polygraph tests, but in
Speaker 3: the end, both of them refused. On September twenty fifth,
Speaker 3: two thousand and one, officers searched Bob and Linda's residents
Speaker 3: and vehicles. They took a number of items from the
Speaker 3: home including a Dell computer, the one that Twilight was
Speaker 3: using to email from. They also filed court orders to
Speaker 3: get her email communications, but they found nothing of even
Speaker 3: in cherry value in those emails. They began looking into
Speaker 3: Twilight's local romantic entanglements, and they learned that recently she
Speaker 3: had a boyfriend, though they had broken up sometime before
Speaker 3: she disappeared. After talking to Twilight's friend, who, as we said,
Speaker 3: saw Twilight arguing with the ex boyfriend late at night
Speaker 3: at the Plano store, police went to talk to the
Speaker 3: ex boy They asked him to take a polygraph test.
Speaker 3: He said no and referred them to his lawyer. So
Speaker 3: it seems like that avenue of investigation was pretty much
Speaker 3: shut down after that. Police were also exploring other potential
Speaker 3: suspects near the area where Twilight's body was found. Police
Speaker 3: talked to people who lived near that area. They told
Speaker 3: law enforcement about another guy described as a local boy.
Speaker 3: They said this local boy drove up and down the
Speaker 3: road where Twilight's body was found on a regular basis.
Speaker 3: Now this was before the murder, but they said after
Speaker 3: Twilight's murder, after her body was found, this guy disappeared
Speaker 3: and had not been back since. Police apparently tried to
Speaker 3: find this person, but he had left the area and
Speaker 3: quit school. As the days and weeks went by, police
Speaker 3: questioned several people, but they had no official suspects and
Speaker 3: made no arrests.
Speaker 1: Seemed to be.
Speaker 3: A flurry of activity early on in the investigation in
Speaker 3: two thousand and one, and then a little bit in
Speaker 3: two thousand and three, and after that. A couple of
Speaker 3: years later, items from the crime scene were sent in
Speaker 3: for testing, but to this day this case is still
Speaker 3: an open investigation. A podcast listener did a Foyer request
Speaker 3: and did receive part of the case file. Again, parts
Speaker 3: of it have been heavily redacted. Even though there were
Speaker 3: a lot of blacked out areas, we were able to
Speaker 3: cross reference addresses with names, and in some cases previous
Speaker 3: interviews are mentions of people, and we were able to
Speaker 3: get some clues. Another natural question is how long was
Speaker 3: Twilight out in those woods? Could she have left home
Speaker 3: voluntarily or been kidnapped and held somewhere and killed later.
Speaker 3: The autopsy report estimated Twilight's time of death as sometime
Speaker 3: around two or three am on August twenty ninth, which
Speaker 3: which would mean that the evidence points to her being
Speaker 3: murdered shortly after she left home, So the crucial window
Speaker 3: of time remains between eleven PM when Twilight left her
Speaker 3: house and early the next morning, August twenty eighth into
Speaker 3: the early morning hours of August twenty ninth, two thousand
Speaker 3: and one. One of the bigger questions surrounding this case
Speaker 3: has been what was Twilight doing on the night she
Speaker 3: walked out of her house after she had dinner with
Speaker 3: her friend. Her parents said she came home and that
Speaker 3: she was there until ten pm to their knowledge, but
Speaker 3: she may have made a stop prior to or after that,
Speaker 3: because we've discovered. Police interviewed someone on September nineteenth, two
Speaker 3: thousand and one. This person's name is also redacted, but
Speaker 3: they told police they saw Twilight at around nine to
Speaker 3: fifteen pm at the Plano store and that at that
Speaker 3: time she was wearing her pajamas, a white T shirt,
Speaker 3: and checkered bottoms. This person told police that Twilight had
Speaker 3: told him was going home and going to bed. The
Speaker 3: guy added that Twilight was a good girl who loved
Speaker 3: life and had no enemies. Twilight often hung out at
Speaker 3: the Plano store. She sometimes would stop there multiple times
Speaker 3: per day. She smoked and it was where she would
Speaker 3: buy cigarettes. Twilight's friend said that to her knowledge, Twilight
Speaker 3: had never actually run away from home, but she admitted
Speaker 3: that back then, Twilight, like a lot of teens, had
Speaker 3: a wild streak and a habit of sneaking out.
Speaker 4: I remember she got her tongue pierced and I had
Speaker 4: mine done, and a few other people did. And I
Speaker 4: remember one day at school she was crying and I said,
Speaker 4: what's wrong, and she said her dad made her take
Speaker 4: her tongue piercing out because she got caught sneaking out
Speaker 4: of her window, and so she was grounded. We were
Speaker 4: just young and rebellious and fishing boundaries and then experimenting
Speaker 4: with things that we probably shouldn't have been, not making
Speaker 4: the safest choices. And I believe she snuck out that
Speaker 4: night to use drugs, but that doesn't change like who
Speaker 4: she was. You know, we all were kind of wild
Speaker 4: at that age. I mean, we all smoked weed, and
Speaker 4: we were experimenting like ecstasy and myths and cocaine. My
Speaker 4: class in two thousand and three when we graduated, I
Speaker 4: think we had fourteen of our classmates that were dead
Speaker 4: by the time we graduated. It was like our class
Speaker 4: was just cursed or something. I felt like, you know,
Speaker 4: because there was people that died of overdoses, that they
Speaker 4: were people that died in correct from being intoxicated, you know,
Speaker 4: and then Twilight was murdered, and you know, there was suicides,
Speaker 4: and you know, it's just it seemed like our our
Speaker 4: class was just like, I don't know, we just we
Speaker 4: were all wild back then.
Speaker 3: Bobby Crooks said in twenty eleven that he preferred to
Speaker 3: remember Twilight as she had been in life. Same quote.
Speaker 3: I have a beautiful daughter, and a certain part of
Speaker 3: me wants to keep that image. I'll eventually have to know,
Speaker 3: but it hasn't bothered me for the last ten years
Speaker 3: to not know. I've got this image of her growing up,
Speaker 3: what she looked like, and how she acts.
Speaker 1: That's what we hold on too. I can completely understand.
Speaker 3: Why he feels that way, but as an investigator, in
Speaker 3: my opinion, the key to solving this case is figuring
Speaker 3: out what Twilight did after hours, figuring out the things
Speaker 3: that she didn't tell her parents. I wonder could she
Speaker 3: have left home, then come back home and gone out again,
Speaker 3: because there's something else in the crime scene photos that
Speaker 3: in my opinion makes that a possibility. When she was
Speaker 3: found in the woods, Twilight was wearing jeans, not pajama bottoms,
Speaker 3: So if she left the house barefoot, how did she
Speaker 3: end up wearing jeans and a completely different set of clothes.
Speaker 3: In two thousand and six, police released more information about
Speaker 3: the clothes Twilight was wearing when her remains were found.
Speaker 3: She was wearing a blue Edmondson County High School jersey
Speaker 3: with the number ten on the back. This was a
Speaker 3: high school that was twenty one miles away from Bowling Green,
Speaker 3: where Twilight went to school. Her friends and family didn't
Speaker 3: recognize the jersey and said, to their knowledge, she did
Speaker 3: not know anyone from Edmondson County High School. So one
Speaker 3: theory is that Twilight snuck out to meet up with
Speaker 3: her killer and that her killer gave her the jacket.
Speaker 3: Police did find hair at the crime scene. In early
Speaker 3: two thousand and three, detectives contacted Twilight's biological mother to
Speaker 3: get hair samples from her. They had hairs from the
Speaker 3: crime scene, which they were able to confirm were not
Speaker 3: a match to Twilight. Police also spoke to someone else,
Speaker 3: a friend of Twilight's, but the friend's mother told the
Speaker 3: young man to go into the house and not to
Speaker 3: talk to law enforcement. They requested hair samples from this
Speaker 3: young man, but his mother told police if they wanted
Speaker 3: to talk to him to get in contact with their attorney.
Speaker 3: So this person's hairs were never tested. There are a
Speaker 3: lot of dead ends like this in the case file,
Speaker 3: and that's part of what we're going to be exploring
Speaker 3: in Part two next week. We are going to go
Speaker 3: through this case file and we're going to find out
Speaker 3: who some of these redacted people were and try to
Speaker 3: see if we can nail down where Twilight Crooks was
Speaker 3: on the night she was murdered. There has not been
Speaker 3: a lot of media attention on this case. Some commenters
Speaker 3: online have said they think that's because Twilight was Native American.
Speaker 3: There have been a lot of stories about the epidemic
Speaker 3: of missing and murdered Indigenous women. According to data provided
Speaker 3: by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the FBI
Speaker 3: reported five two hundred and three missing Indigenous girls and
Speaker 3: women in twenty twenty one. According to this report, which
Speaker 3: was quoted in The Independent newspaper, this is a race
Speaker 3: equal to more than two and a half times their
Speaker 3: estimated share of the US population. Though I'm sure that's true,
Speaker 3: and it may have been a factor.
Speaker 1: In my opinion. It could also be a.
Speaker 3: Case of bad timing, because after nine to eleven, everyone's
Speaker 3: attention shifted to national security and Twilight's case disappeared from headlines.
Speaker 3: But Sheriff high Toower told The Independent he believes keeping
Speaker 3: the case in the news could help get it solved.
Speaker 3: He said, quote from a law enforcement perspective, the more
Speaker 3: that we can keep this on the front pages and
Speaker 3: on the front burner, then I think the more opportunity
Speaker 3: there is that it may resonate with that key person
Speaker 3: who is holding that particular piece of valued information that
Speaker 3: could really help unleash the rest of this case.
Speaker 1: End quote.
Speaker 3: The Warren County Sheriff's Office has stated this is still
Speaker 3: an open and active case. Meanwhile, Twilight's family is left
Speaker 3: wondering what happened that night twenty five years ago when
Speaker 3: she left the house. Bobby told The Independent in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 3: there are a million things that run through your mind.
Speaker 3: Who would have done it? Why would they have done it?
Speaker 3: There are no answers end quote. Next week, in part two,
Speaker 3: we are going to talk to more of Twilight's friends.
Speaker 3: We're going to see if we can figure out if
Speaker 3: there were other people she was talking to, people who
Speaker 3: the police may.
Speaker 1: Not know about.
Speaker 3: We're going to try to see if we can figure
Speaker 3: out who the owner of that jersey is, if they
Speaker 3: know Twilight, who picked her up that night, and what
Speaker 3: horrors happened to her in those woods after that. I'm
Speaker 3: Catherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone
Speaker 3: Murderline is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 3: It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced
Speaker 3: by Etaly's Perez Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her
Speaker 3: research assistance and James Wheaton for legal review. Noah Camra
Speaker 3: mixed and scored this episode. Our theme song is by
Speaker 3: Ben Sale, Executive producers of Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and
Speaker 3: LC Crowley. Listen to Helen Gone ad free by subscribing
Speaker 3: to the iHeart True Crime Plush.
Speaker 1: Channel on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 3: If you were interested in seeing documents and materials from
Speaker 3: the case, you can follow the show on Instagram at
Speaker 3: Helen gonpot. If you have a case you'd like me
Speaker 3: and my team to look into, you can reach out
Speaker 3: to us at our Helen Gone murder line at six
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Speaker 2: School of Humans