Cold Case Files: Murder in the Bayou

I couldn't find Krystal

and I knew there was something wrong.

You don't expect your child to be murdered.

It was such a nightmare.

She just disappeared.

Then her body was found under the Trinity River Bridge.

- I can still see her just like it was yesterday.

I still see it here.

- We just kept having girls coming up missing

and their bodies being dumped along the bayous, the swamps.

We've got a monster somewhere.

- It's disturbing that you've got somebody out there

that's hunting young girls.

- We're gonna go find the man that killed my daughter

and he's gonna have to pay for what he did.

Thank you.

That's genuine Chambers County alligator

that I actually shot myself.

I moved down here in 1976.

This is home now.

Down here you've got a lot of bayous.

You got a lot of marshland.

At Chambers County,

I think we actually have more water than we do land.

Being on the Texas Gulf Coast,

it's very green, it's very lush.

It's a lot of fishing, a lot of crabbing.

It's a big place for birders.

- I see the beauty of the swamps,

but also I'm aware of the beast.

I see the other side of it as a dangerous place,

alive with death.

- The sun is starting to set

on the wetlands of Chambers County.

The sheriff's office receives a call

about a body found along the marshy banks

of the Trinity River.

It was almost time to go home.

It was 4:30, 4:45.

I left and went to the scene.

When I arrived, the victim is about 150 yards, at that time,

down to the bank of the river.

We had a young white female.

Her dress was pulled up, so I'm thinking sexual assault,

and I can clearly see it's a homicide.

She didn't have any kind of identifying information.

I could tell that she had been strangled with something

just because of the abrasions on the throat.

I can still see her just like she was laying,

just like it was yesterday.

I still see it here.

To be as young as she was and then dumped,

in my mind, there's no excuse for that.

- 40 miles across the bay

in the Gulf Coast town of Texas City,

the family of 13-year-old Krystal Jean Baker is on edge.

Earlier that day, Krystal left the house

while under her grandmother's care.

- She wanted to go be with her friends,

but her grandma said no,

and of course she got in an argument with her.

She walked down the street and she called me

and I was at work.

- Krystal tells her mother

that she's calling from the corner store.

- I was a little angry at Krystal when I talked to her

and I told her, I said, "Krystal," I said,

"You need to go back to your grandma's."

But about an hour later,

my mom calls me and tells me she didn't show up.

I was trying to get in touch with everybody,

and I kept calling up her friends.

There was no sign of Krystal

and I knew there was something wrong,

that she would be here right now if something wasn't wrong.

- Krystal's mom, Jeanie,

contacts her local police department in Texas City.

- When we first got the call with Krystal Baker,

we assumed that she had run away.

Krystal was 13 years old.

She rebelled against her grandmother.

It seemed she had just gone somewhere and didn't call home.

And back then we didn't really address runaways

the way you would do today.

99.9% of the time the child returns home.

In the Texas City Police Department, they made a report.

They gave out a BOLO to the patrol officers

to be on the lookout for Krystal Baker.

- They just kept telling me, "Oh, well, she's a runaway."

And I kept telling 'em, "No, she's not."

- Historically along the Gulf Coast,

there had been a real problem with the police assuming

that someone who had gone missing had run away.

Working on this book about Krystal's case,

I spent a lotta time with Jeanie.

Jeanie knew that Krystal had not run away

and she was really scared.

- I really felt like something bad happened to her.

I just had this feeling in my stomach and in my heart

'cause me and Krystal had such a good connection.

- Like many residents of the Texas bayou region,

Krystal and her mother have spent much of their time

enjoying the water.

- Texas City Dike is like a beach

and then there's a little bayou,

where you go fishing, and you go with your family,

and go out and have a good day.

We'd swim in the ocean and sometimes Krystal would go

a little farther than I wanted her to,

and I had to tell her, "Come on in," you know?

And I liked the spunk in her.

Good spirit. A beautiful smile.

She was just a natural beauty.

- The striking teen bears a resemblance

to an iconic star, who some believe is her great aunt.

- We found out through my husband's side

that Krystal was related to Marilyn Monroe.

I think she does look a little bit like Marilyn Monroe.

- The connection to Marilyn Monroe

is kind of a family legend.

Nobody knows if it's true or not,

but some of the pictures of Krystal,

she's this very vulnerable,

very beautiful young girl breaking out into the world

and it reminded me a little bit

of portraits of Marilyn at that age.

That's what stays with you about these cases.

When Krystal went missing, this was a young girl

just at the very beginning of her life.

- It's heartbreaking to not know where your kid's at.

You want your kid home.

Across the bay,

deputies are investigating

the murder of the Jane Doe

found in the boggy wetlands of Chambers County.

- It was basically my first big homicide.

To say I was overwhelmed would be an understatement.

There's no witnesses.

We're looking around for any kind of evidence.

We picked up a cigarette pack, cold drink bottle,

anything that was in probably about a 50-foot radius.

As I'm looking around the area,

I don't see signs of a scuffle in the dirt.

- I think it was pretty clear that she was killed

somewhere else and then dumped

because the crime scene was just her.

- I don't have anything that tells me who she is,

knowing that there's parents somewhere

wondering where she's at.

That's frustrating.

After we found the victim,

we tried to reach out to other agencies in the area

asking if anyone had any missing persons.

This was 1996.

We did not have the computer system

to network like we do now.

- Finally, two weeks after

the dead Jane Doe was found,

Investigator Moon gets a call

from the Texas City Police about a missing girl.

They had the missing

person that was very similar

to what I had described.

Height, weight, and there was a birthmark.

So I left and went to Texas City.

I'm thinking in my mind,

we're gonna be able to make a positive identification.

- Investigator Moon and the Texas City Police

ask Krystal's mom to view some photos at the station.

- I thought I was gonna go down there

and look at pictures of Krystal, you know,

good pictures, you know,

to put in the newspaper or something.

And then they put down all these graphic pictures

of my daughter, how they found her,

what she looked like, for me to identify her.

And I seen the little freckles she had right here.

I knew it was my daughter.

I almost passed out

'cause she didn't even look like herself.

There was so many bruises on her body and even on her face.

It was like, who did this?

This is my baby that's lying in here dead.

- You know, it felt like I was just in a daydream,

in a nightmare.

I didn't know I was gonna look at pictures