RR: In this state … in this opening of the mind, you talk about being able to see things.
ZC: That’s right. There is so much to see with an open mind. Often, very often, some of the young people open up in the therapy sessions I provide for them. They realise that they’ve seen things too, but they’ve let their minds dismiss them. They’ve let themselves be conditioned not to believe. When they’re with me, that world is open again. Sometimes we see things that frighten us.
RR: There’s an old story attached to that piece of forest, isn’t there?
ZC: There is and that’s another example of magic. That story is centuries old, passed down – it has so much magic, so much power. It is that which I’m trying to harness. Turning a bad thing into something good.
RR: Are you saying it’s true?
ZC: It’s just what I’ve been saying: we’re conditioned not to believe in spirits, visions; we’ve trained our minds to be closed to them. Not me. I have seen things up there. I saw things before my parents died; I saw them before my best friend died. I know there is magic there, and I know that one day I can use it for good.
RR: Zach, you’ve faced a great deal of criticism for spending so much time with young girls.
ZC: I know. It’s amazing isn’t it? You offer help, therapy, companionship, support, and what do the media want? They want a bad guy. They want Zach the ripper. I take these girls into the magical places and I help them. They open their minds, they shake off their shackles, they allow themselves to remember, to feel. Then we talk about it. It’s very beautiful, very cleansing.
RR: There have been people – women – saying that there were incidents between you and them in Crystal Forest.
ZC: Incidents. Right. Incidents. It’s funny they should talk to the media about it, isn’t it? You would think, wouldn’t you, Ruby, that if something bad happened to you, you would go to the police, right? You wouldn’t sell your story to a tabloid or a TV station. You wouldn’t want money from it, right?
RR: I—
ZC: You know who does talk about these things, who tells the truth? Sasha Stewart. She is a very special person. She’s someone who was there, someone who has spent time at Crystal Forest. She’s talking about it for free on her podcast.
RR: That’s very true. Obviously I can’t promote her podcast on the BBC, but it’s true, she has been there. Up to Crystal Forest. Nothing bad happened, am I right?
ZC: She’s been all over Crystal Forest, she’s been in the tree house, and the only things that happened up there for her were good things. You can see how it helped her. She’s doing so well now, doing so much better with her life. Up at Crystal Forest, you see, she was finally allowed to dream. Dreams and imagination are powerful things. Soon they’re going to be even more powerful.
RR: So what is it you actually do up there, in Crystal Forest, in that tree house?
ZC: There’s a lot of just having fun – dressing up, dreaming, imagining. It’s also very therapeutic. We talk to each other up there. Talking helps those troubled young people – it helps them heal. We look out at the forest, nature all around us. It’s very beautiful, serene. In the evenings we watch horror movies, just like teenagers do.
RR: But you’re not a teenager, Zach, you’re a forty-five-year-old man.
ZC: Maybe so, but age is just a number. My heart is something else. That’s the other thing with these girls: they never had a proper teenage-hood either. They all had to grow up so fast, it’s sad. Up at Crystal Forest it’s like something from a Famous Five story – a clubhouse, a magical palace in the forest.
RR: Your image, Zach, it seems like what you wear and how you are, it’s like something out of a story. Like out of an old book.
ZC: Maybe I am … maybe I am a figment of imagination – someone’s imagination. Maybe that’s why I’m here. Maybe I’m a dream … I think if we all dreamed a bit more, allowed our imagination more space, the world would be better, don’t you think?
RR: So what would you say to those who doubt you?
ZC: Whatever they say about me means nothing. Their words can’t touch me, they can’t kill me. However hard they try.
[Applause, getting louder. Crystal stares straight and resolute into the camera.]
RR: When you put it like that, Zach, it all just sounds reasonable. It sounds constructive – it sounds genuinely helpful. We’re going to go to something else now, another exclusive that we’ve been keeping up our sleeves. We’ve managed not to leak it and … Well, would you like to introduce it?
ZC: Aw Ruby, I’m shy, you know that.
RR: Ladies and gentlemen and everyone else – it is my absolute pleasure to share for the first time ever. The premiere of brand-new music from Zach Crystal.
[Applause and cheering]
RR: Yes, yes. Recorded back up at Crystal Forest, this is rare footage. A pre-recorded performance, by Zach Crystal, from a studio session in 2007. A track that was cut from the Damage album. This has never been heard before now. This is called ‘From the Start’.
[Wild applause]
Episode 4: The Special Girls
Hi love, just me again. I don’t know if you’re sick of my voice yet … Well, I guess you have the choice to turn it off if it gets boring. I’m sorry for the tears. I’m sorry if hearing this makes you sad. You’ll be twenty-three tomorrow. Well … when I’m recording this, you will. It’s on the calendar, even though I know the date. Why would I need to remind myself of the day I gave birth to you, love? Silly, I know. Silly of me to write your name on the calendar like that. Silly of me to bake you a cake as well. But I do it. Every year. Just in case … just in case…
[…]
Sorry. I’m back. Composed myself and had a cup of tea. Tilly’s in here now with me. Well, not with me as such, but with me as much as cats allow. She’s never liked being stroked much, though, has she? Not by me, anyway. I feel that she just tolerates me. She’s tolerated me more in the last few years. Sometimes she even comes and sits on my knee in the evenings. Bless her. She came running into the house with her tail like a bottle brush just now. I don’t know what she’s been doing out there in the dark. I guess that’s what prompted me to record this for you my love. Tilly always used to run up to your room when she was scared, didn’t she? Maybe there’s foxes or something in the garden tonight.
There was a shadow out there earlier that scared me silly too…
Poor old Tilly. Maybe we need each other more than we know.
It was you who was always her favourite, though. She never minded you picking her up. She would climb into bed with you, wouldn’t she? Leave your bedroom covered in cat hair. She used to sit around your neck too, didn’t she, love? When you were doing your homework. What a sight it was. Bless. It was you she ran to when we went to the shelter, do you remember? We looked at her through the cage door, those sad little concrete paddocks that you said looked like death row. She ran straight to you, didn’t she? Rubbing that fur of hers against the cage and purring. They’d never seen her do anything of the sort before. That’s what they said, wasn’t it? You said she’d chosen us.
Poor old Tilly. I hear her in the night you know, scratching at your door, even when it’s open. I go up and she looks at me as if to say ‘Where’s she gone? What have you done with my Kirsty?’ Poor old soul. She’s not getting any younger. Remember when we first moved here? We were all a bit like Tilly. We’d never seen so much space before. And a garden! A real garden that was ours. I’ve had to start getting someone in to help me with it lately. My arthritis just won’t let me get on like I used to.
Tilly spends a lot of time sat at the windowsill in the living room, staring out at the drive, and I wonder if she’s waiting for you to come home. Or maybe she’s looking at that …
No, it’s nothing. Just silly old Tilly.
I’m sorry. I know I said I’d try not to, but I can’t help it. I can’t help it Kirsty, love. I miss you, and every year it gets harder. I just want you to know that I’ve kept yo
ur room just how you like it. I’ve not been prying into your things. All I’ve done in there is change the bed sheets, open the window to let the air in. That’s all. I’ve left the posters up. It’s hard for me to do that, love. You know it is, but I’ve left them. I haven’t messed with them. I remember you making that collage for school, from all your magazines, sat at the table.
I’ve said all this before. I’m sorry, love.
What else? What else has been going on? There’s a new café opened down the high street. All vegan. Me and Mary from number nineteen went down and had a try of their cakes. They’re so fancy and you’d never think there was no butter in them. It’s done up nice inside, too, you know. They do all sorts – pizzas and breakfast and everything. I said to Mary, I said, we’ll have to come back, won’t we?
What else? Mary keeps telling me I need to sell up and move somewhere smaller. She says she doesn’t like me rattling around the place all on my own. She says it’s too much, but I always tell her that you might have gone to university and it would be the same. I’d have still kept your room ready if you ever needed to come home, love.
If you ever do want to come home, love, I’ll be waiting for you. I’ll have the heating on and we can sit in the dining room and play a game of Monopoly, just like we used to.
Well … that’s it for now, love. That’s all I’ve got for you. I’m sorry if it’s a bit sad, and that I don’t have much to say. I’m trying to get out, trying to do more than just rattle round the house like some old ghost.
I’d better get back downstairs and get your cake iced, hadn’t I? Or else Tilly will have her face in the buttercream. You know what she’s like…
Speak to you tomorrow, my love.
I miss you.
I love you.
So, so much.
Welcome to Six Stories.
I’m Scott King.
Over these strange six weeks, we’re delving into something that at its heart, I guess, is a cold case.
A fire. Four tragic deaths.
Allegations. Rumours, whispers.
Like always, we’re raking up old graves.
This grave is very different though – we’re trying this time to find the door to an elaborate mausoleum. We’re perambulating the winding paths of a graveyard, searching for the most direct way into a heavily fortified and guarded plot. Unfortunately, it seems most of the ways in are barred.
The case of Zach Crystal, unlike many of the cases I’ve covered, is well known. Globally so. The enigmatic musician, whose disappearance, return and subsequent death will live long in the history books, is the subject of this series. Will we ever be able to fully explain the man? I doubt it. Will we be able to prove or disprove the allegations of, among others, five women – Sammy Williams, Mary Wooton, Gabrielle Martinez, Zofia Kowalski and Jennifer Rossi – who have claimed they were assaulted as teenagers by Crystal.
No. At least, that’s not what I’m here to try to do.
Will we be able to find out exactly what happened at Crystal Forest and the circumstances of the fire that rendered it a ruin? Will we be able to say for sure whether Zach Crystal took his own life in light of the allegations that surrounded him?
I doubt that also.
So what are we doing here – in the Highlands of Scotland, in the shadow of a dead man? We’ve spoken so far to three people who sit in varying places on the vast and complicated Zach Crystal spectrum. What have we learned and where will we go next?
I’ve spoken to people who believe he’s guilty, those who believe he’s innocent, and last time someone who I believe is, to some extent, towing a party line when it comes to his old boss. Why, I am still not sure. Perhaps it is simple loyalty to a former employer, who set Craig Kerr and his family up for life.
Crystal was a bizarre and secretive figure. When he gave interviews, they were heavily scripted, choreographed affairs, especially after the claims against him began to surface. The only one that didn’t seem to be a power play to control the narrative was the Ruby Rendall interview on BBC One. Crystal, on the surface, was philanthropic, generous and charity-minded. Zach Crystal did seem to be making it his life’s work to help troubled young women. A number of these woman, however, are now claiming that they were sexually assaulted by Crystal, up in that mysterious tree house in the depths of the Whispering Wood.
In this episode, thanks to a note placed on my car by persons unknown, we’ll hear how Zach Crystal was able to spend so much time with these young women.
We know that Crystal had created a cabal of power up in Crystal Forest. His increasing paranoia and his need to control everything that went on in his residence went hand in hand with his rise to pop superstardom. We’ve also heard that one thing Zach Crystal desperately wanted control over was whatever it was he believed lived in the Whispering Wood. Was there something deeply wrong with the man, or was there really something there all along?
In this series, I’ve discovered that there’s only so far you can go in investigating Zach Crystal before you hit a brick wall. It’s an elegant and well-presented wall, though, with a neat Zach Crystal logo painted on its surface. Because, you see, with fame, comes power. If someone has a certain amount of power, it allows them access to things others are denied. As we saw in a previous season of this podcast, fame allows someone to be whatever they want to be. It gives them the time and capacity to create a persona. A veneer.
However, we’re not talking about mere fame here – a flash-in-the-pan YouTube star or last month’s bestseller. This is a man who was so famous, so powerful, he had his own decoy on the payroll. When we talk about Zach Crystal, we’re talking about a musical legend, we’re talking fame and power beyond the imagining of us mere humans.
We’re talking about something akin to a god.
Is this too strong a word to use? Perhaps. But you see, for those who worshipped at the temple of Zach Crystal, that was precisely how he was seen.
And it is this status we shall examine in this, episode four of our series.
I have realised that to knock on the door of an ivory tower when you’re wearing cheap shoes is useless. When you’re dealing with this sort of power, you have to rifle through the rubbish instead. Although I wouldn’t call our fourth interviewee rubbish herself. Certainly not.
Many of you will have heard of Marie Owen. You may have seen her name in the press. Many of you will be looking at me askance for even giving Marie a voice on this podcast.
Marie Owen is a remnant, a by-product – someone chewed up and spat out by the Zach Crystal machine. Until now, Marie has never found anyone who really wants to hear her story as she tells it. There are plenty who’ve told it for her, of course. And there are many who will say her story’s irrelevant, that she does not matter.
Yet she mattered enough to someone for them to pass her number on to me. I still don’t know who that someone was. Craig Kerr? It’s certainly possible.
But that’s precisely why I want to talk to her. I’m not going to get anything tangible from the Zach Crystal side of things, so why not look somewhere else instead?
—There are people who hate me. I know that. I still get letters. There are people out there who believe I should be burning in hell for what I did. I want to let those people know that I am burning there. I have been burning in hell for most of my life.
I am in hell now.
Marie Owen lives in the Myrtlefield area of Inverness, perched on the outskirts of the city. There are locked gates and security cameras, and a long, paved driveway lined with tall hedges. My little car looks very much out of place here, the automatic gate closing silently behind me. All around is quiet, with a stunning view over the Moray Firth.
I have to say I’m not surprised by the air of humility in Marie Owen. The sixty-one-year-old smiles at me with her mouth, but her eyes – and she will share this view entirely – hold a fathomless sadness. She carries it in her walk, in her manner. The house, vast as it is inside, is dusty, the ornaments and photograph
s tired, the furniture sun-bleached. The houseplants are clinging on to life. For such a huge house, there is very little in the way of things. The modern, minimalist decor looks barren. The carpet is worn in three distinct tracks, from the kitchen to an easy chair in the living room and up the stairs. An ancient cat sits on the windowsill – scraggy and skinny, it stares out into the empty driveway. It doesn’t even look up when I enter. This house is the saddest place I’ve ever been.
—Can we start at the start? You’ve not always lived here, have you?
—Johnny, Kirsty’s father, left us when she was only a baby, thank God. That’s when we lived in that awful tower block in East Kilbride. I had some problems. Not going to lie here. I’m not going to try and tell you that I was perfect. I was far from it.
—Did Kirsty’s father ever have anything to do with his daughter?
—Aside from nearly killing her, and me, numerous times, no.
—I’m so sorry that you had to endure that, Marie.
—The harshest thing about it was that I blamed myself. Every time he came home drunk, every time he spent all our benefit money on cocaine and gambling, it was my fault. I couldn’t keep a house, I couldn’t get a job, I couldn’t even keep the baby quiet. No wonder I was fat and useless to him. I always felt I deserved it, his fists, that it was always my fault.
The only time he ever got in touch was when he’d seen Kirsty on television with that man, I’m sorry, Mr King, I can’t say his name. He phoned and asked me if she’d managed to get any money, and if she had, that he was entitled to some of it. That was Kirsty’s father.
—After he left, things didn’t get much better, did they?
—No. No they didn’t. In some ways he was right. I wasn’t a fit mother. I didn’t know what I was doing with a little baby. I had no friends, no family, and I couldn’t cope. Pathetic, I was.
Deity Page 15
