monday, the morning michelle saw a suspicious man on the stairs of the apartment building. she warned crystal who went a different way to the garage which might have saved her life for 24 hours. what they didn t learn until much later was that crystal left work crying on that last day of her life. she didn t say anything to her family that night, but she did act differently. she went around the room and she hugged everyone. and she never did that. i think she just didn t wanna worry anyone, and i think she kind of just hoped that everything would work out. what was the matter with crystal taylor? they rewound their mental tape a little further, and there it was. a moment. it happened during their car trip back from texas. she was on her phone listening to something. and she put her phone down, and she said, if anything happens to me, it was derek. reporter: derek smyer, the father of her unborn child. did she go into any detail about what he had said to her to make her say
verdict on all counts. thank you very much. reporter: crystal s family was worried. they could only hope the jury believed c-styles video confession, and not his recantation of it. the wait for a verdict was agonizing. that was painful. reporter: one day passed. then two. three days in. i m nervous. i don t want to do this again. i can t do this again. it s not easy. reporter: then it was a week. then one week turned into two. i m like i m just praying. i just keep praying, no matter what i see or what i hear. i keep praying. reporter: every day the waiting was harder. that was true for derek s family too. i started getting nervous. i was there every day, anxiously waiting so that we could hear that verdict. so we could hear that derek was not guilty. i would see the jurors come out of there, red in the face. almost like they re arguing back there.
as a young child, he was my best friend. we went to high school, he was more of a protector for me. i was really quiet in school, but everyone knew who derek smyer was. he had your back? he had my back. and there is no doubt that if anything happened, they would be there to take care of me. so when she heard police were interviewing her brother about a murder, she questioned him herself. and i asked derek, what is this? he said, i don t know. i said, what happened? he said, i don t know what happened. he didn t say that he knew anything about crystal taylor s death? nothing about crystal taylor s death. it sounds to me like you were pretty fixated on derek pretty early. well, he was he was one of our our top three. because remember, we re looking at the son s father, we re looking at her love interest, on and off guy, dino. and we re looking at now derek. how did javonte s father react when you told him crystal had been murdered? his reaction was shock. he was s
reporter: that, said the prosecution, fit a pattern. they called derek s old girlfriend traci williamson, who repeated her story that the first time she was pregnant with derek s child, she was attacked by a man she didn t know. he put a knife to my throat. did he cut you with the knife? yes. reporter: and then, during her second pregnancy, a second attack. somebody came and socked me in the face. and i went on the side of the car, and somebody stomped me on my stomach and my face. reporter: then, derek s own daughter took the stand against him. she didn t testify in the first trial, but she told this jury that derek seemed to hate being a father. he would come during major occasions, um, birthdays and things like that. he was very ill-tempered. he didn t spend much time with
they re alleging multiple conversations, planning, without any proof of where, when, how. there s no emails between moore and smyer. there s no text messages. there s no phone calls. reporter: the defense portrayed derek as a man who loved his children. not one who would try to have them murdered. there s mr. smyer again in the hospital holding his baby. and i think it s important when you re looking at this case that you evaluate his expression on his face in these photos. proud father or killer? reporter: not only was derek smyer innocent of crystal s murder, said the defense. maybe c-styles was too. there was no physical evidence placing him in that parking garage. maybe, they said, this wasn t a hit after all. several of the witnesses testify to hearing an argument. and then all of a sudden the argument ended, there was a