Ep 3: Uncle Hilty

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What was the purpose in calling Keith to placate Carl?

Hilton told the FBI agents that at 6 p.

He had been kind of vague, so I wanted to go back and get a lot more detail from him.

Bob Lee was one of the FBI agents who worked the case. He went to Crawford's office the next morning, on Thursday, September 14th, 36 hours after McKay's disappearance.

We sat down. Hilton initially was nervous. His hands were shaking. He calmed down a little bit as we continued talking to him.

Agent Lee asked him if anyone could verify his story about visiting various security offices, and he said yes. For example...

He talked to his guard named Karen, and asked him, you know, what did you talk about? What time did you get there?

Again, Hilton answered the question, but he was vague about some details. Lee continued asking about the other stops Hilton claimed to have made that night.

How'd you get there? What time? Going into great detail. What did you talk about? Then, where did you go from there?

Beaumont is a small city, an hour and a half east of Conroe.

I think he said it was a waffle house. So I asked him to describe his waitress, tell me what he ordered, tell me what time he got there, tell me what time he left. Then he told me he went to the hotel, told me he got there about 1.30 or 2 o'clock. He also showed me his motel receipt to show me that he had actually checked in.

But Agent Lee didn't ask Hilton about the time discrepancy they'd found with the hotel check-in. It seemed Hilton had stayed ahead of investigators. But Lee followed up on the places. Hilton had been vague. He asked Hilton for more information about Karen, the guard.

At this point, I went back and asked him, what is Karen's last name? He told me he didn't know, but he could find it for me. It was probably in the personnel files. Then he couldn't get the personnel file because his clerk was not there. The files were locked up in a cabinet.

Hilton had an answer for everything.

So I asked him, the next guard he talked to, and then we got to the hotel. Like I said, he told me he checked in about 1.30 or 2.. But I had already received information that he didn't really check in until about 4 or 4.30..

Now, Agent Lee asked about the discrepancy. Why had Hilton said he checked in at 1.30 in the morning when the hotel's record said he hadn't checked in until 4.30??

And when I asked him about it, he explained that the desk clerk was printing up all the receipts for the next day to slip under the tenant's door so they could check out. So he left his credit card with the desk clerk, and she would check him in and run his credit card when the computers were free, and he would pick them up the next morning when he checked out.

Agent Lee acted as if that was a reasonable explanation. But Lee says he didn't buy Hilton's story.

Not a bit. I can't think of anyone who would leave his credit card with the desk clerk at a motel and then go to sleep. I have never had anyone tell me anything like that.

And there were other things about Hilton's story that seemed off.

The thing that stood out the most was when I kept pressing him for Karen's last name and her contact information, he just kept making one excuse after another. Basically, I think Hilton thought he was smarter than I was, and he could tell me a story and get by with it.

But Agent Lee didn't yet confront Hilton with his suspicions.

If I had challenged him, it might encourage him not to talk to me anymore. That's the reason I asked for so many details, because you can disprove lies, but you can't disprove silence.

Agent Lee asked Hilton to come in for a polygraph, but Hilton said he needed to deliver some checks for the security business.

This was on a Thursday, I believe, and he said he couldn't possibly go until Monday, but he'd be happy to do it on Monday.

So for the time being, Agent Lee left it at that.

I was like the last person on Lee.

She was walking back to her car when one of the Everett's friends ran up to her.

He was looking for somebody, and he came running up to me. I think he just put two and two together. I mean, he was just thinking to himself, now wait a minute. What about Hilton Crawford? Why isn't he here?

Beth Martin can't remember the name of the man who ran up to her, but the man said Hilton Crawford. drove a car eerily close to the one Bill Kahn had seen.

He said, Hilton has a car just like that. And he said, and he has a sticker on the car just like that. I think. when he started talking to me about that, I said, man, sounding like we really need to talk to Hilton Crawford. And I called back to the command post, which at that time was in Conroe.

Beth. Martin learned that agents had just finished a follow-up interview with Hilton. They hadn't yet been debriefed on how that interview had gone. But regardless, Martin wanted to see if this tip about the sticker on Hilton's car was real. So she told the agent in charge of the command post, Lloyd Diaz, to talk to Hilton.

Lloyd was one of these guys, you know, he could talk to people. So I said, hey, Lloyd, can you call Hilton Crawford and ask him to come up to the office? Because we just need to ask him a few more things. So Lloyd says, OK.

Beth goes, you go ahead and call him. I said, by golly, I will.

Lloyd Diaz had been working for the FBI for almost 10 years. He was gruff, but persuasive.

I got in a room by myself, closed the door and got him on the phone and said, I don't think you have anything to do with it, but we're trying to eliminate you as a suspect. You know, I know you're close to the family. I know you want to do anything to help. You know, I just poured it on. And I said, you know, is there any way you can come in today, sir?

The dealership tag was gone. But the agent told Diaz that on closer inspection, they had noticed something about the car. There was a bit of residue on the back left bumper, and it was sticky to the touch, a sign that something there had very recently been removed. So the FBI brought out Bill Kahn, the neighbor who saw the car speeding off from the Everett's home. They wanted to ask Bill if Hilton's car was the one he had seen the night of the kidnapping.

My husband, you know, pointed out, yeah, this was the car I saw. And there was an emblem right here. And you can tell it's been removed.

Nancy says that even as her husband, Bill, verified that Hilton's car was the one that he had seen, Bill held out. hope that this was all some big mistake, that Hilton Crawford wasn't really involved.

I mean, he was really just devastated and disgusted at the same time and just hoping that that really wasn't Hilton that did that, that, you know, kidnapped him. I mean, it's just so unbelievable to think that a friend could have done that, you know, taken their son, you know, the Uncle Hilty part of it. That was just so disgusting.

But FBI agent Lloyd Diaz was increasingly convinced that Hilton Crawford had kidnapped McKay.

So now we sit down and start talking to him. You know, we're going along and he doesn't appear, you know, really nervous or anything like that. I said, hey, you know, I know you want to help, do everything you can. And I didn't tell him this. I mean, he wasn't leaving in that car.

And now, almost two days from when McKay had disappeared, there was no time to waste. Since the FBI had taken his car, Bob Lee, the agent who had interviewed Hilton earlier that day, gave Hilton a ride.

Someone asked me if we would take him to the school so he could pick up his wife's car. And we drove him over to the school. And as we were driving, he told us that the mats in the trunk were missing because they had gotten wet.

He goes, oh, well, you know, actually the other day, some guy came to my office and said, hey, your trunk's open. And it was pouring down, raining. I guess I hit my trunk release, getting out of the car. So in order to get all the water out of it, I had to have all the carpeting in the trunk removed.

It's something that he knew we would discover or we had already discovered. So it's like a preemptive strike that I'll give him an explanation that I don't have anything to hide before they ask me a question.

Well, when he said he removed all the carpeting out of his trunk, boom. He had them in his trunk. Either the victim bled in the trunk or, minimally, left hairs in the trunk, right? So it'll prove that the victim was in the trunk. So in order for him to eliminate that possibility, he removed all the interior lining of the trunk to go to pure metal.

Agent Diaz believed Hilton Crawford was somehow involved in the kidnapping, but he didn't think they had enough evidence to arrest him.

Me. knowing it and proving it, that's two different things.

It was hard to know what to do in that situation. If they arrested Hilton, he might lawyer up and stop talking. The FBI still had no idea where McKay Everett was or what the ransomers might do if Hilton got arrested. But at the same time, every hour they waited, something terrible might happen to McKay. What investigators did know was that Hilton hadn't acted alone.

At this point, we've got two things going on, right? We need to get the records to see who this guy's talking to on his cell phone. And I'm over there with these guys. We're looking at the car.

Investigators noted that the car was immaculately clean. In the back seat of the car, they found a pair of handcuffs. It was strange, but Hilton did work in the security business. There was also a plastic cup that said Sam Houston Race Park.

We're going through the trunk and they got the dealership to bring over same model, same everything. Because I had no idea how much carpet there was in the back of this trunk. And I want to see what it looked like, you know, unmolested. So they brought it over and the back of the trunk was wall to wall of that carpeting. And they pulled out every stitch of it.

To the naked eye, the trunk looked pristine. Just shiny metal. But investigators suspected Crawford had ripped out the carpeting to hide something. So they decided to test the trunk with luminol. Luminol is a chemical that glows blue in the presence of blood.

I looked up at the top of the trunk. I said, look at this. You could see the marks of like a tire, iron. Like. the trunk was closed.

In fact, the night of the kidnapping, Hilton had called the number six times. He placed three calls right around the time of the kidnapping. At 7.55, 8.11 and 8.37.. And then called three more times later that night, at 11.10,, 11.13 and 11.30 PM.

So, okay, this is an unknown number to somebody that's not connected him. that we can see. So let's, let's go talk to him.

The number was listed as belonging to a woman named Irene Flores. Because it was a Hispanic last name, Dee has asked his Spanish speaking partner, Donnie Miller, to come out with him to the woman's address. Here's, Donnie.

So here we are, one o'clock in the morning, whatever it was, it was very late. And I'm brand new. My partner is, he is a really good investigator. But he doesn't really believe in the concept of rapport, of establishing some comfort.

Our personalities are different. Donnie is much more mellow than I am. He's more soft-spoken, that'd be the way to put it. We were a good team because he would be the soft-spoken and, you know, whatever. And I'd be the one like, okay, you know, enough of this.

She opened the door, if I remember right. She's in a nightgown. And she never made eye contact.

Irene Flores was a 52-year-old woman with short, dark hair.

We met in like a little anteroom, and she let us into the living room. My partner, he's a bulldog, began immediately to tell her what we could do to her, how we could ruin her life, blah, blah, blah, on and on, on and on, hammer, hammer, hammer.

Flores acted confused. She said she didn't know a Hilton Crawford.

And then, when she'd say her BS, at that point, I'd be the one like, okay, look, let's just take her in. Let's go. Let's go. We're out of here.

At some point, he is fired up. And she's making no eye contact. And he leaves the room. He starts dialing his phone. And I scoot my chair over to hers.

Donnie is a smart guy, and everybody contributes in their own way.

Butchie Collins said, free their minds and their asses will follow. I want to free her mind, so her lips will follow.

Different personalities make it work.

The Dalai Lama says, only when we listen do we learn. So I want to throw verbal point guard. I want to throw the ball verbally to a place so comfortable that she will talk about those things that I direct her to. And then I want to STF. you, shut the F up.

You know, so you have all different types, period. And hopefully you get the right guys together and make a great team, which that night, Donnie and I were a really good team.

I think it's the last page of Harry Potter where Dumbledore says, words are our most inexhaustible source of magic. And here's the most inexhaustible source of magic. We begin to speak in her language. She's a Spanish speaker and we begin to talk literally and figuratively in her language. When I scoop my chair over, I notice that she scoops hers over.

With Lloyd Diaz barking into the phone in the other room, Flores admitted to Donnie Miller that actually she did know Hilton Crawford, that in the past she'd worked for him as a security guard.

And I ask her, do you know what my partner's doing? This is not good cop, bad cop. This is my partner doing his damn thing. He is angry and he is dialing the phone furiously. And I said, do you know what he's trying to do?

Irene Flores told the FBI agents that the kidnapping was not what it seemed.

She really confessed. She said that Crawford knew of a person that wanted to break up from her husband.

But that person was behind the kidnapping. Instead, it was McKay's mother, Paulette, who was trying to make a clean break from Carl.

She wanted Crawford to stage a kidnapping and to get the ransom money for her to start a new life. And that he needed her to make the phone call for the ransom.

We interviewed Irene Flores. Here's how she remembers.

the kidnapping. She wants to get away from her husband and she needs, you know, some finance. He told me, you know, just say this, when you make the phone call, just say that we've got the boy, and if you want to ever see him again, don't call law enforcement. And that was it. And they're going to reunite and whatever, and she's going to leave.

Irene Flores told the FBI agents that after making the ransom call, she'd barely spoken to Hilton.

Hilton had called me at work and told me that the boy was safe, that he was on his way to Mississippi.

Hilton had told Flores to lie if she was contacted by law enforcement. He wanted her to tell them.

And that was the last time I talked to him.

In the early hours of Friday, September 15th, just over two days from when McKay disappeared, Irene Flores confessed to making the ransom call. She admitted her and Hilton's involvement in McKay's kidnapping, but her confession had added a curveball to the case. According to Flores, Paulette was the one behind the ransom.

He told me, you know, the wife, the mother, she's involved, she was to separate from her husband. But I really didn't give it much thought. I just believed him. I believed him and I believed what he told me about the lady. He knew these people.

Agent Lloyd Diaz believed Flores.

She was telling the truth.

But he wasn't sure that he believed the story that Hilton had told her.

No, because if that was true, for one thing, once the FBI gets involved, he'd be like, look, I did this for the moms. You know, at that point, I'm handing it all up.

Diaz thought that if Paulette was really behind the kidnapping, Hilton would have confessed once the FBI had circled in on him.

I call up and say, OK, this is what we got, guys. I'm given information, and this, that, and the other, you know, to put his arrest warrant. So now we got to get the warrant, get it signed, which that takes a little while putting it all together.

Agent Diaz wanted to be there for Hilton's arrest.

I don't care about putting the cuffs on him. I just want to be there, OK? You know, when you're putting a lot of energy and emotion and everything else trying to solve this kidnapping, you got a 12-year-old boy missing, and I mean, you want to be there.

As the FBI waited on the judge for a warrant, they began running through possible scenarios.

You have a perimeter, you have cover, you get him to come out. You see on TV them knocking down doors. I mean, even the worst guys.

Law enforcement still had no idea just how bad of a spot Hilton had gotten himself into. They had to prepare for anything.

You don't know what somebody with his back against the wall like that is going to do.

Because this wasn't just about making the arrest. This was about returning McKay home safe.

Of course, we still got the boy missing. I mean, don't forget that.

That was the question that loomed large. Where was McKay? And would Hilton lead investigators to him?

In my heart,

I know you'll never harm my son.

You loved him, like your son.

For more information, including pictures, find us on social at The Ransom Podcast or visit our website, ransompodcast.

Yeah.

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I'm Brian Greenberg. I'm Victor Rassook. Check out our new podcast, We Almost Made It. You guys might remember us from HBO's How to Make it in America. And guess what?

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