It actually wasn’t uncommon for people to be caught by Crystal’s security, trying to break into Crystal Forest. It’s thought Crystal deliberately chose to live in the remote and dangerous Colliecrith National Park to prevent intrusion into his life by the media and fans. A dense, ancient woodland with hidden dips and gullies, great drops and no discernible paths, it’s a place where it’s very easy to become disoriented and lost, even for the most experienced woodsmen.
What’s arguably more disturbing, though, is that there were girls who didn’t have to break in – who were invited to spend time at Crystal Forest with the star. Usually in their early teens, from underprivileged or troubled backgrounds, these children were personal guests of Crystal. Of course, with no explanation ever forthcoming from the Crystal camp as to why young girls were spending their time in a luxury tree house with a middle-aged man, the tabloid press were left to speculate. This, according to Crystal, was why he rarely did interviews. In one statement released by Crystal’s aide and signed by his family, he said, ‘You people always think the worst, instead of trying to understand. I have nothing whatsoever to hide. The shame is on you.’
Despite protests from his fans, there were many who were uncomfortable with Crystal’s behaviour. This is something I want to explore as this series goes on. I don’t want to put myself in a pro or anti-Crystal camp just yet. It’s important that we listen to the facts.
Back to Ian.
—When we arranged to meet him, that was a big moment. We’d told him that we’d take up his challenge – we’d go into that forest with him and find that ghost, that spectre. He told us that our imaginary twelve-year-old was a ‘special girl’ and that was when he openly admitted who he was, that he was Zach Crystal. He then said he needed to speak to our parents to make the arrangements.
—I take it you two posed as your decoy’s parents too?
—Correct. When he thought he was talking to adults, he told us it would be a wonderful surprise for our daughter. We could all stay at his place in Scotland, you know, Crystal Forest. He sent us all these pictures, of the guest suites there, the views over the hills, the forests. I mean, it looked amazing, that place, it really did. He said money was no object; we’d be allowed to do whatever we liked out there. He was going to hire cars for us, send us on helicopter rides up into the mountains, that sort of thing.
Then, when he thought he was speaking to the kid again, you know, he was telling her all sorts about the things ‘special girls’ got to do there: watching horror movies in his tree house and all that. He sent a picture of that too. It was amazing really. He had his own place above the mansion – a two-storey wooden house nestled in the trees.
—You still have these pictures?
—Yeah but they just look like … like anyone could have taken them, you know? They don’t prove anything. Amazing place though; little gable roofs and turrets made of wood, moss growing all over, little rickety walkways. Like something from a fairy tale, you know?
But he was also talking all this filth as well, when he thought it was the girl, really disgusting sexual stuff – telling her that he’d teach her things while they were up there. Awful. Just awful.
—It seems such a risky thing to do, on his part, don’t you think?
—I think he got caught up in it all, just the whole delusion. He was used to getting what he wanted. Maybe what happened next was a cry for help. Maybe it was all on purpose. Who knows? What I do know was that he needed help. He really needed help. The guy was sick.
Crystal bought first-class tickets and told Ian that they and their ‘daughter’ would be picked up by limo from Inverness airport and driven to Crystal Forest. Everything, he said, would be taken back, however, if they told anyone, broadcast it online or the media found out.
—Did you ever ask him where he’d been for the last year? I mean, he’d been missing a while hadn’t he? He was still missing, as far as anyone knew.
—Honestly, I didn’t want to push it. I thought if I did that, he might get cold feet, chicken out. We just went with it. I couldn’t believe it.
Ian and his girlfriend took the flight, touched down in Inverness and waited.
—He said his people were going to meet us when we arrived. There’s a restaurant in the airport, he told us to meet him there. Obviously, me and the missus didn’t have a kid with us, and we clocked this bloke in a suit, holding up a sign with our fake name on it. There was this big, black limo in the car park, tinted windows. That’s when it all started to go wrong.
—What happened?
—We should have known something was up. We were sat in the Starbucks next to the restaurant, trying to get ourselves together. This was real. We were going to tell them that our daughter wasn’t able to make it after all. We were going to film it all. We were sorting out our hidden cameras, when this massive bloke comes and sits down opposite us.
‘Monster-Busters?’ he says. ‘You’re in serious shit.’
We look round and there’s all these huge blokes in suits; they’re all surrounding us. Then this woman arrives. Long, black coat, sunglasses. The security all move out of the way and she sits down too. She tells us who she is.
—She was…
—His sister. It was Naomi Crystal.
Naomi Crystal, Zach’s twin, had, by this point, moved into Crystal Forest on a permanent basis with her daughter from a previous relationship, Bonnie, who was thirteen at the time. There was a lot of speculation in the media about Naomi giving up on finding her brother and about how quickly she’d done so. Without Zach Crystal in the picture and the property costing a huge amount to run, Naomi eventually put the mansion up for sale. Rumours abounded about her plans to destroy the wooden tree house above it.
—She was very calm, very scary. I was totally starstruck. I couldn’t speak. She sat down and told us exactly what was going to happen next.
To the horror of Ian and his girlfriend, they had been set up. Naomi Crystal explained that Ian was going to hand over everything – their devices, all the printed chat logs, everything. They were going to stay quiet about it all. She said if the media found out about it, she would ‘ruin’ them both.
—What did you do?
—Well, obviously, we agreed, didn’t we? Then, when we got home, we sang like birds. Of course we did. It was the right thing to do, morally.
Then, of course, he made his miraculous comeback. And the shitstorm descended on us.
Ian and his girlfriend allegedly chatted to Zach Crystal in March and April 2019. When Crystal re-emerged in May of that year, his first act was to sue Monster-Busters for defamation, for a sum of around £30 million.
The headlines said it all: ‘Return of the Zach: Zach Crystal Emerges To Sue over “Ludicrous” Claims’. ‘Zach Crystal Reborn: Megastar Returns with New Album, New Tour and £30 Million Defamation Demand against Amateur “Hunting” Group’.
Crystal’s second act was to do a full-length, in-depth television interview, live on Ruby, a BBC chat show hosted by Ruby Rendall, who was a national institution. It was on this show that he announced his comeback.
Ian Julius had to pick up the pieces.
—It’s never stopped. The trolling, the abuse from his fans, you know? Honestly, it was hell. Death threats every single day. Dog shit, eggs all over our house. We had to move. I’ve had to declare myself bankrupt. My life is effectively over. I’m living day to day now. Still, no one really believes me.
Look at that interview, think about the absolute rubbish he was talking. All this stuff about being a teenager in the body of a middle-aged man, how you could heal people using your imagination. If you or me had said something like that, we’d be in the looney bin. But it was Zach Crystal wasn’t it? So it was fine.
Ian Julius and the Monster-Busters were steamrolled by Crystal’s mighty PR machine. Despite publishing the chat logs, the tickets, the photos from the airport, everything they had, online, Crystal’s massive and active fanbase and the Crystal estate laughed
them off as fake. Indeed, there’s plenty of videos online now that will tell you exactly how Ian faked all of it.
Ian has become just a straw man, swept away by the might of Zach Crystal.
Or the almighty?
—We didn’t give up though. We didn’t give up, not once. I was being bombarded with threats, bots, trolls and Zach Crystal fans online. Everyone was saying I was just another crazy. I knew we’d had an effect though. I knew that we’d done something. Why else would he have come back like that? It’s more than a coincidence, right? It has to be. Why else, other than to try and smooth it all over?
—I guess the pro-Crystal side of this is asking why, Ian. Why would Zach place himself in this potentially damaging position?
—You know what I think? Crystal was playing the long game. I don’t know whether he knew who we were all along, from the moment we started chatting online. I mean, how could he? But he must have suspected something. I think we had him. Genuinely. I think we had him and as soon as he realised it, he used us. We were the springboard for his comeback.
And what a comeback it was. Forty-five years old now, Zach Crystal poured out his heart to Ruby Rendall and the world on the 20th July, 2019. It was his first-ever full-length television interview. For many, it was the first time anyone had heard him actually speak unguarded and without his face obscured by some bizarre mask or veil. Many were surprised at how normal Crystal seemed during the interview. It was a live broadcast, and there were some bizarre technical hitches, but the command Crystal had over a hysterical audience of fans was something to behold. For many, it was rather sinister. This episode of Ruby outranked the Frost-Nixon interview by thirty million viewers and became the most viewed television interview in history. It was on this show that Crystal announced, among some rather bizarre claims, his upcoming new album and world tour, to the adulation of fans worldwide. News outlets around the world were screaming headlines about the Forever tour and album sales of Crystal’s previous two releases skyrocketed. A cynic might say that all of this conveniently distracted from the circumstances of Crystal’s triumphant return.
There were those, however, who still had much to say about Crystal, about his obsession with teenage girls and their dubious rendezvous in the tree house up at Crystal Forest. Then there were the remains found in the forest and the increasingly bizarre rumours online of strange sightings just before he disappeared.
I know, we’ve not even touched on some of Crystal’s oddest aspects, but we have five more episodes to come and believe me, these things will be discussed.
Let’s stay in 2019 for now. Zach Crystal’s image began to appear everywhere. He was still elfin, skinny, clothed in his elaborate forest-wear, like something from a fantasy movie, his thick blond hair tied up at the back of his head, a knowing smile on his lips, piercing blue eyes.
‘Whatever they say about me,’ he told Ruby Rendall in that interview, staring into the camera, ‘means nothing. Their words can’t touch me; they can’t kill me. However hard they try.’
But two months later, Zach Crystal would be dead. Crystal Forest would be a smouldering wreck and things would only get worse for Ian Julius.
—I was naive, to be fair. I thought when he died, that it would be over. How thick am I?
The first to point the finger at Ian Julius after Crystal’s death was pro-Crystal blogger, Sasha Stewart. Sasha, who has a vast following on YouTube, Instagram and her own podcast named The Crystal-Cast is a fanatical defender of Zach Crystal and claims she spent time at Crystal Forest. Zach Crystal himself gave her a shout-out on the Ruby interview, further bolstering Sasha’s listenership.
Fire-scene investigators were unable to identify with certainty the cause of the blaze at Crystal Forest, but Police Scotland, in a brief statement, said they believed it had been started deliberately. Zach Crystal was the only casualty and therefore his death has been considered by most to be suicide.
Sasha’s video entitled ‘Who Killed Zach?’ focuses on many of the apparent ‘lies’ spread by the ‘mainstream media’ concerning Crystal. She documents the heartless way the newspapers tried to capture the star’s grief when his close friend and aide, James Cryer, was found dead in the forest near the property. She then moves on to Ian Julius and his ‘attempted sabotage’ of Zach Crystal’s return. According to Sasha, it was obvious to the world that Crystal’s disappearance was simply to write and prepare for the Forever tour and the brand-new album.
Sasha’s position is that Ian’s claims are completely false, that he made everything up to attract attention and make money. Crystal, Sasha claims, was in a vulnerable state after losing his best friend and having to face ‘a barrage of daily attacks from the press’ about his penchant for teenage girls and about the remains found on his property, which had ‘all been brought up again’.
In her ‘Who Killed Zach?’ episode, Sasha concludes that Ian’s accusations against Crystal, painting him as some kind of online predator, were the final straw, and Crystal burned down his property with only himself inside. Despite the investigation into the fire being inconclusive, Sasha, along with the majority of Zach Crystal’s fan base, believes suicide is the only explanation. They argue that while Crystal Forest employed a great many staff – cleaners, cooks, drivers and the like – and Naomi Crystal and her daughter had moved in, Zach was the only casualty. Why is it that everyone else escaped alive? Furthermore, Zach’s thirteen-year-old niece survived the fire; if Crystal was a predator, surely he would have wanted to harm her too?
Unfortunately, since the death of Crystal, very little has been said by those left behind. Naomi, clad in her trademark sunglasses and dressed in black, read a brief statement from outside the blackened ruins of Crystal Forest, a few days after her brother’s death:
‘Today the world mourns the loss of a wonderful human being. Not only a vastly talented musician, but an advocate for worldwide charity. Today the world mourns the loss of a son, a brother and an inspiration to many the world over. Zach Crystal is still with us through the medium of what he left behind, his music and his message to help others, which will remain with us forever.’
—I was just … shocked. The whole world was shocked, but it was just … I couldn’t believe it. After everything, after all of this, all the work we’d done, I just couldn’t believe he’d managed to get away with it. He didn’t have to answer for any of it.
I was gutted. Totally gutted. We all were.
After Sasha Stewart released her episode of The Crystal-Cast, blaming Ian Julius for the suicide of Zach Crystal, Ian tells me his world imploded.
—I was doxxed pretty early on by one of the Crystal nutters. Probably Spooky Sasha herself. That girl is seriously scary. There were people outside my house, stuff being chucked at the windows. I managed to get my missus away early on, let her escape somewhere else. I stayed behind, called the police, let them focus on me for a bit. But it never stopped, never went away. Wherever I went, someone would find me and it would all start up again. It’s still happening now. I imagine after this goes out, someone’ll find me and I’ll have to move again.
—So why talk then? What is it that you feel you need to get out?
—Because it was true, all of what happened to us. Why would I lie? To get attention – this sort of attention? Do they think that this is what I want? To be moving house constantly, to be waking up at every little sound, wondering if some maniac’s breaking in and trying to stab me? Some of them actually believe I did this for money.
—You sold your story to a few tabloid newspapers though. That’s true, isn’t it?
—It is. But that’s the game isn’t it? How else was I supposed to get the story out there? I didn’t have the videos or any photos from the airport anymore – they took our phones. I had a backup of the chat-logs but that was it.
—There was no way of proving, conclusively, that it was Zach Crystal.
—Right. But it was him. I just know it was him.
—Why do you think Crystal
was this reckless?
—OK, so this is what I reckon happened, right? Crystal had been gone for a year, hadn’t he? Vanished. After his best mate, his right-hand man, had just died. That’s dodgy in itself, right. His sister moves in and tries to sell the place. Why? She wants it torn down, that tree house. Again, why? What’s in there that they want destroyed?
And all the years before he vanishes, he’s got girls staying there, hasn’t he? All those young girls from care homes and the like, that he’s supposed to be ‘helping’. I mean, who’s letting a twelve-year-old hang out with a middle-aged bloke? If that was just some guy down the street, the postman, the guy pushing trolleys round ASDA car park, no one’s letting them hang out with a kid. But it’s Zach Crystal, so it’s OK? That’s just messed up.
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