Naman Shrestha
With so much to look forward to in life, including giving birth to her child, 27-year-old and 22-week pregnant Crystal Taylor was killed in her apartment complex in broad daylight. In the episode ‘One Moment’ of NBC’s ‘Dateline,’ the viewers are taken right to the middle of the murder case as the victim’s sisters do everything they can to find the culprit. It also provides the intricate details of the investigation that followed.
How Did Crystal Taylor Die?
Born on January 14, 1974, in Texas’ Galveston County, Crystal Taylor grew up in a close-knit family. Being the youngest of the three sisters, she received extra love from her mother and her sisters, Michelle and Monica Taylor, as they were always there for one another. On her 17th birthday, Crystal gave birth to her son, Javonte Woods.
Several years later, Crystal started dating Derek Paul Smyer, and in 2001, she became pregnant with their child. However, the couple seemingly had several arguments about the pregnancy, which did not sit well with the latter. Derek apparently wanted Crystal to abort the unborn child she was determined to keep. On a supposedly regular day, on September 25, 2001, the 27-year-old headed out of her Hawthorne apartment.
Crystal was probably walking to her car to go to work when she and her unborn child of 22 weeks got gunned down by a mystery man in her apartment complex. The first responders rushed to the scene, but it was too late as neither the mother nor the unborn baby boy survived the attack. Then, the police started looking for clues that might lead them to the perpetrator and interviewed the people in the apartment complex.
Derek Smyer Convicted in Contract Killing
Upon some questioning and investigation, the authorities probably found out about Crystal and her boyfriend Derek’s disagreements about keeping their child. Meanwhile, according to the show, the victim’s sisters — Michelle and Monica Taylor — also tried to find out the culprit’s identity to get justice for their late sister. Even though the investigators seemingly suspected Derek’s involvement in the murder, they could not find any concrete evidence against him or anyone else, for that matter.
It was only in 2011 that the investigation showed some significant signs of progress when a particular Skyler Jefferson Moore, an alleged hitman already serving a life sentence, was approached by Los Angeles detectives; he confessed to them what really transpired in 2001. Skylar told the police that he pulled the trigger on Crystal, but he was hired for the job by none other than Derek, who wanted her dead because he felt that Crystal was trying to trap him with her pregnancy. Following the revelation, Derek was arrested and indicted for Crystal and their unborn child’s murder about a decade after the killing.
It is believed that Derek set the crime in motion when he met Skylar, a reputed gang member, in a local park and told him to get rid of her and the baby. Allegedly, the latter agreed to it in exchange for Derek’s support of his gang. Upon digging deeper into Derek’s history, the authorities discovered that his previous girlfriend, Traci Williamson, also faced two violent attacks during her pregnancy.
In April 1998, when Williamson was 7-8 months pregnant with Derek’s son, she was attacked by a man with a knife, but fortunately, she and the unborn child survived the attack. Months after Taylor’s murder, Williamson was pregnant with Derek’s child again and allegedly got attacked in her third trimester as a man knocked her to the ground and punched her stomach multiple times. This time too, both the mother and the child survived the attack.
In light of all these allegations, Skylar, already serving a life sentence, was found guilty of second-degree murder and first-degree murder in Crystal and her unborn child’s murder by a jury in 2017 and faced a death sentence. In June 2017, Derek Smyer was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole after the jury found him guilty of the contract killing of his girlfriend and fetus after evading justice for more than a decade. Currently, he is serving a life sentence in California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison in the city of Corcoran, in Kings County, California.
Read More: Derek Smyer: Where is Crystal Taylor’s Ex-Boyfriend Now?
