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- Herausgeber: Orenda Books
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Sprache: Englisch
Online investigative journalist Scott King investigates the death of a pop megastar, the subject of multiple accusations of sexual abuse and murder before his untimely demise in a fire … another episode of the startlingly original, award-winning Six Stories series. 'A captivating, genre-defying book with hypnotic storytelling' Rosamund Lupton 'A chilling, wholly original and quite brilliant story. Deity is utterly compelling, and Matt Wesolowski is a wonderful writer' Chris Whitaker 'Matt Wesolowski taking the crime novel to places it's never been before. Filled with dread, in the best possible way' Joseph Knox _______________ A shamed pop star A devastating fire Six witnesses Six stories Which one is true? When pop megastar Zach Crystal dies in a fire at his remote mansion, his mysterious demise rips open the bitter divide between those who adored his music and his endless charity work, and those who viewed him as a despicable predator, who manipulated and abused young and vulnerable girls. Online journalist, Scott King, whose Six Stories podcasts have become an internet sensation, investigates the accusations of sexual abuse and murder that were levelled at Crystal before he died. But as Scott begins to ask questions and rake over old graves, some startling inconsistencies emerge: Was the fire at Crystal's remote home really an accident? Are reports of a haunting really true? Why was he never officially charged? Dark, chillingly topical and deeply thought-provoking, Deity is both an explosive thriller and a startling look at how heroes can fall from grace and why we turn a blind eye to even the most heinous of crimes… _______________ Praise for the Six Stories series 'A gripping exposure of the underbelly of celebrity and obsessive fandom with lashings of supernatural horror – Daisy Jones and the Six gone to the dark side. I couldn't put it down' Harriet Tyce 'Matt Wesolowski is boldly carving his own uniquely dark niche in fiction' Benjamin Myers 'Dark, twisty and incredibly clever ... an author to watch!' C L Taylor 'A dark, twisting rabbit hole of a novel. You won't be able to put it down' Francine Toon 'First-class plotting' S Magazine 'A dazzling fictional mystery' Foreword Reviews 'Readers of Kathleen Barber's Are You Sleeping and fans of Ruth Ware will enjoy this slim but compelling novel' Booklist 'An exceptional storyteller' Andrew Michael Hurley 'Beautifully written, smart, compassionate – and scary as hell. Matt Wesolowski is one of the most exciting and original voices in crime fiction' Alex North 'Insidiously terrifying, with possibly the creepiest woods since The Blair Witch Project … a genuine chiller with a whammy of an ending' C J Tudor 'Frighteningly wonderful … one of the best books I've read in years' Khurrum Rahman 'Disturbing, compelling and atmospheric, it will terrify and enthral you in equal measure' M W Craven 'Bold, clever and genuinely chilling with a terrific' Sunday Mirror 'A genuine genre-bending debut' Daily Mail 'Impeccably crafted and gripping from start to finish' Big Issue 'The very epitome of a must-read' Heat 'Wonderfully horrifying … the suspense crackles' James Oswald 'Original, inventive and dazzlingly clever' Fiona Cummins 'Haunting, horrifying, and heartrending. Fans of Arthur Machen will want to check this one out' Publishers Weekly
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Seitenzahl: 456
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
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When pop megastar Zach Crystal dies in a fire at his remote mansion, his mysterious demise rips open the bitter divide between those who adored his music and his endless charity work, and those who viewed him as a despicable predator, who manipulated and abused young and vulnerable girls.
Online journalist, Scott King, whose Six Stories podcasts have become an internet sensation, investigates the accusations of sexual abuse and murder that were levelled at Crystal before he died. But as Scott begins to ask questions and rake over old graves, some startling inconsistencies emerge: Was the fire at Crystal’s remote home really an accident? Are reports of a haunting really true? Why was he never officially charged?
Dark, chillingly topical and deeply thought-provoking, Deity is both an explosive thriller and a startling look at how heroes can fall from grace and why we turn a blind eye to even the most heinous of crimes…
Deity
MATT WESOLOWSKI
4
‘Frontmen embody a kind of divine charisma, strutting across the stage and mesmerising the crowd with their god-like powers, like preachers who can open up the kingdom of heaven for you. They are the ones front and centre, their hearts on their sleeve, spreading their arms up and out and singing the lines that will lift everyone into the sky.’
—Johanna Hedva, They’re Really Close To My Body: A Hagiography of Nine Inch Nails and Their Resident Mystic, Robin Finck
‘Occasionally, something will happen that will change your opinion of someone irrevocably, that will shatter the ideal you’ve built up around a person and force you to see them for the fallible and human creature they really are.’
—Marilyn Manson, The Long Hard Road out of Hell
7
Where were you when Zach Crystal died?
Contents
7
RUBYEpisode 246: Zach Crystal
Legendary presenter Ruby Rendall’s exclusive interview with pop megastar Zach Crystal. More >
1 hr 45 • 9.00pm 20th July 2019 • Available for 28 days
RUBY RENDALL: This. Is. It. This is the moment you’ve all been waiting for. It’s finally here. It’s finally happening.
Good evening, I’m Ruby Rendall. This is live.
Tonight, my guest is an extraordinary man.
I can’t quite believe it.
As you can see, we’ve dimmed the studio lights, given everything a bit of a spring clean in preparation for tonight’s guest. His fans have been lining up around the studio all day. In fact, can we cut to have a look? There we go. Look at that. I’ve never seen anything like it before in my life. Can we get some audio? Yes. Listen, you can hear them chanting his name. This has been going on since six this morning…
Can we get some footage from earlier today? Yes? Let’s just have a look shall we? Audio too? Wow, look at that. Look at the crowds. Can you hear the chanting too? I’ve not seen anything like it since The Beatles!
[Cut to footage of a vast crowd outside the BBC studios, holding banners and cheering.]
Security is tighter than it has ever been on the show. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a truly momentous occasion. You see, my next guest famously does very, very few interviews. For this to happen is incredibly rare. We have so much to discuss: his music, his disappearance, his reappearance, his amazing house up in the Scottish wilderness. Everything.
My guest informs me that tonight nothing is off limits. He’s here to spill it all.
Yes. We are live and we are about to welcome onstage to 8sit opposite me, the most fascinating, the most spellbinding guest we’ve ever had on the show. I have to say, growing up with this guy’s music makes me a rather biased fan, but why on earth did I get a job on TV if not to interview the best?
Because, ladies and gentlemen, he is the best. Unequivocally. The king. The sultan of song-writing himself. His first album spent twenty weeks on the Billboard 200 in the States and went triple platinum within a few weeks of release. He was twenty-one years old.
Sold-out arena tours across the world followed. His second album sold twenty million copies worldwide in its first month … I could go on…
This man represents so much more than music though. To some he represents the dream of every child who wants to grow up and be someone. To others, his is a classic rags-to-riches story, a fairy tale – a man whose voice, whose talent, fuelled his meteoric rise to the very top.
Here he is, in all his glory, the man, the legend … Zach Crystal.
[Applause as Zach Crystal walks onto the set. He is dressed in black leather trousers and knee-high boots. His long, blond hair is coiffed and hangs over his shoulders. He wears an elaborate crown made from deer antlers, and his face is heavily made up. Medallions made from sticks and bone hang around his neck. Crystal stands before his chair and bows to the studio audience.]
RR: Welcome … welcome…
[The applause becomes screams.]
RR: Wow. Wow. Here he is. Zach Crystal, everyone. Thank you so much for coming. Please, sit down.
ZACH CRYSTAL: Thank you, Ruby. Thank you, everyone.
[The screams from the audience get higher, longer. Ruby winces. Crystal eventually sits down, crossing his legs.]
RR: Please … please … I know, I know, Zach Crystal … I know…
[A shot of the audience. They’re mostly women in their late twenties. They are all sat still in their seats, but their eyes are wild and their mouths are open, screaming.] 9
RR: Are you nervous at all, right now? I certainly am, I’ll level with you!
ZC:[laughs] No … I’m OK, Ruby. I’m OK. And you should be OK too. Please?
[Zach Crystal raises his hand to the audience and the screaming halts abruptly.]
RR: I am, thank you. I won’t lie, this is a little overwhelming. I just can’t believe … Is that even really you?
[Laughter]
ZC:[laughs] No! I’m an imposter!
RR: I mean, it’s so rare for you to do interviews. This is your first full-length one is it not? On television and we’re live. I don’t think I even know what your speaking voice sounds like.
ZC: [laughs] I don’t do things by halves, Ruby.
[Cheering]
RR: Zach, where do I start? I was watching some of your very early performances on YouTube earlier today. When you were still performing with your twin sister in bars around the UK.
ZC: When we were The Crystal Twins. They are some very happy memories. Very happy ones indeed. We were so young.
RR: Twelve years old when you began. You’re now…
ZC: Forty-five, Ruby [laughs]. But I still feel it, you know? In my heart, I’m still that nervous little boy.
RR: The two of you looked so … It just looked like you were born to be on stage.
ZC: You know, I think we were. I certainly always felt at home on stage. I’m a very shy person, you see. I always have been. It was Naomi who was the extrovert, not me.
RR: We’ve hardly ever got to see your face until now, Zach. You’ve always worn a veil or a mask when you’ve spoken on camera, haven’t you?
ZC: It was shyness, always shyness. I feel so exposed now, Ruby.
[Cheering]
RR: Zach, I think you look wonderful and so does everyone here.
[Cheering]
ZC: Thank you Ruby, thank you. That means a lot.
RR: You and Naomi grew up without much money, on the 10Hopesprings Estate in Barlheath. That’s up in the Midlands, isn’t it?
ZC: Life on the Hopesprings Estate wasn’t easy. Our parents didn’t have much money and we were always scraping around. We shared everything. All the toys, books and clothes were all second-hand; all of them worn and dented, dog-eared and used, but I didn’t mind. That’s just how it was for a family as poor as us. The only thing I was ever bought new was my underwear.
[Laughter]
RR: Your parents both worked, didn’t they?
ZC: That’s where my work ethic comes from, I think. To this day, I’m always busy. I never stop working, because I remember where I’m from. I still have the attitude that was instilled in me by my parents. I had a paper round from the age of seven and I had to get up at 5.30 every morning and work until 4.30 after school, a little ghost with a giant, fluorescent-orange sack of newspapers around his neck, walking the streets of that estate. ‘The devil makes hands for idle work,’ my mother used to tell us, and we believed her.
RR: Your parents were quite strict, weren’t they? Religious.
ZC: They were. We used to have to go to church in our best clothes every Sunday morning, and we tried to live our lives according to the teachings of Jesus. We must have looked like something else with our tatty shirts and hair slicked down with water, all waiting at the bus stop at 7.00am.
RR: I was talking with Naomi earlier, and she says you eventually found your own way, your own spiritual path.
ZC: I’ve been all over the world, I’ve talked to many people and seen a great many things. There’s a lot of power out there, a lot of different ways of seeing things. I don’t believe that there’s any one right way to live your life.
RR: You and Naomi, The Crystal Twins, performed covers and your own, original material right up until ninety-four, ninety-five, when you decided to go solo. You were, what, twenty by then?
ZC: That’s right. Naomi and I had performed together since we were twelve. Eight years is a long time. 11
RR: And that’s when things really changed for Zach Crystal. You began to write solo material.
ZC: Right, right. I released my debut album Yearn in ninety-five. I had no idea – no idea – how huge it would become.
RR: To date, Yearn has sold over fifty million copies worldwide, so it didn’t do badly.
ZC:[laughs] It’s a blessing, such a blessing. I remember I was on a break from my Asia tour in ninety-nine. I’d been to Kuala Lumpur, Seoul, Taipei and I just … These were places on a map, pictures in a textbook, you know? I just lay down and cried. I cried for that little boy, that shy little boy delivering newspapers in the rain, you know? I wish I could have told him.
RR: How big was music to you when you were growing up in Barlheath?
ZC: My father was always listening to music, all the time, all these jazz records. Music was always on in our house, but I’d never really listened before, you know? Then, when I was about six or seven, my father, I don’t know, he just sort of decided to start playing his records to me. Really playing them.
RS: Never would I have imagined that this was the childhood of Zach Crystal. It just sounds so beautiful.
ZC: It was. It was a beautiful time, really. On Sunday afternoons, when my mother was ironing the school uniforms and making sandwiches for packed lunch, my father and I would listen to music in the living room. That hour or so was what I looked forward to all week. I had no idea what was ‘cool’ at the time. My parents didn’t approve of modern music. A lot of the themes in the pop songs upset them and we were forbidden to watch things like Top of the Pops. Naomi would sometimes watch them at her friend’s house and tell me about them like they were this big secret.
RR: But not you?
ZC: No. I was the well-behaved twin.
[Laughter]
RR: Zach, I just … This is so surreal. You’re coming off as just so normal…
[Laughter] 12
RR: I don’t mean that in a bad way, I promise. I was just worried – after all your years of hiding behind a mask, of being so shy, this interview might have been sort of … difficult, but here we are, just having a conversation.
ZC: Maybe it’s time for me to grow up?
RR: I have to be honest with you, Zach, I wondered if you’d even answer my questions.
ZC: Oh Ruby, of course. It’s an honour, it really is, and now we’re talking about music … I mean, it is my favourite subject after all.
[Laughter and cheering]
RR: Please, keep going, this is music to my ears.
ZC: The only music played in our house when I was a kid was my father’s records. He liked jazz piano and that’s what he played me on those Sunday afternoons. It was in those hours that I discovered Dave Grusin and John Lewis but perhaps my favourite of all, Mary Lou Williams. My father told me all about her, how she had taught herself to play the piano in the 1920s and became a mentor to greats like Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie. He told me about Art Tatum too; he learned to play piano by touch. ‘He was blessed,’ my father always said, ‘with perfect pitch.’ And that look on his face, that pride stirred something in me. It made me want to see that look in my father’s eyes when he saw me drinking in that sound, those chords. ‘Night and Day’ was my favourite; the way the music danced up and down the scale, the flourish of it, gave me such a tingle in my soul. I think my father treasured those afternoons too.
RR: You can certainly hear that in your own music, that early influence. But you and Naomi, you brought a distinct pop element to your own music, right?
ZC: That’s right. You see, even though modern music was mostly forbidden in our house, my sister loved it. She had a Walkman and headphones and she listened to Wham!, Duran Duran, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, the Thompson Twins. She played them to me too and, you know, as much as I loved Dad’s jazz piano music, I loved these bands too. Those pop 13hooks and the catchy lyrics stirred something else in me, just like the piano. I didn’t know I needed it until I began to listen to them too. I listened to how the music was created, why it appealed to so many people.
RR: That’s when you started writing songs?
ZC: It was after a month or so of listening to music on a Sunday afternoon that my father came home from a car boot sale with a battered Casio keyboard. The day my fingers first floated over those keys and I began to learn that I could dictate sound, could control the rhythm and the flow of the music, was the day that everything changed. I used to sit in that living room with these great big headphones on, plugged into that keyboard, tapping away at the keys, teaching myself how to play. I never read one single note of music. I still can’t today. I learned it all by ear. I began to make little tunes, little songs, learned how harmonies and rhythms worked. I must have looked a real sight, this little kid sat there, humming and muttering away to himself, hunched over the keys. My father said I was a regular Sugar Chile Robinson.
RR: You still have that keyboard, don’t you?
ZC: I do, I do. I write all my songs on it, still.
RR: That’s amazing. Zach Crystal, with your five-hundred acre property in the Highlands, recording studio, treehouse – still writing songs on that thing.
ZC:[laughs] I don’t forget my roots, Ruby.
RR: Can we talk about your house for a moment? It’s truly a wonder, isn’t it? Up in the Scottish wilderness, miles from anything.
ZC: It’s my place of refuge, Ruby. It’s where I go to learn, to create. Up in the forests, away from everything and everyone. It’s where I wrote all of Damage, my second record, which came out in 2007.
RR:Damage really is close to being a perfect record, I think. I mean, every song on it, every single one is a work of art. Now you’re telling me about your influences, it really starts to make sense, the place that album came from.
ZC:Damage was the record I always wanted to make, you know? 14Just me, without the – you know – the label people telling me what to do. I was thirty-three when I wrote that album. I’d matured, as a person, as a song-writer. Writing that album reminded me of being a kid again, you see. Making other people happy with music.
RR: What are your earliest memories of entertaining?
ZC: Before I knew it, I was playing that keyboard for the whole family, putting those tinny drum tracks behind the songs. Our whole house was singing along to ‘Numbers Boogie’ or ‘The Donkey Song’. I never forgot that feeling. Making people happy with music. That’s what brought us together back then; our family, sitting in the living room, with the smell of cooking in the air mixed with washing powder from the clothes hung up in the kitchen, everyone smiling and singing. When I’m sat there under the spotlight at a sold-out arena in Tokyo or London, Stockholm or Las Vegas, I still remember those old days in our house on the Hopesprings Estate. I think it’s important never to forget where you came from, and never to forget the people who helped you on your way.
RR: We’re going to play a video from Damage in a moment, but am I right in thinking you have some exciting music news for everyone tonight?
ZC:Exclusive news, Ruby. No one knows this until now, right now.
RR: I’m so excited and I don’t even know what this news is…
ZC: I wonder what you’d say if I told you a new record was coming, Ruby, and a world tour?
RR: Oh my God, really?
ZC: Where do you think I was for the year I ‘disappeared’? What did you think I was doing? Like I’ve told you, I never stop. I never stop working.
[Cheering, getting louder]
RR: Really? Really?
ZC: You heard it here first.
[Cheering]
RR: We’re going to go to a short break, ladies and gentlemen. Enjoy the video of ‘Starfall’ by Zach Crystal, and we’ll be right back.
Episode One: Monster-Busters
Extract from: BBC News at Ten (22/03/2018)
—Concern is growing for the pop superstar, Zach Crystal, who has now been missing from his home for more than a week. The star’s twin sister, Naomi Crystal, reported her sibling missing to Police Scotland earlier this month just after she and her daughter Bonnie, thirteen, moved into the five-hundred-acre property, Crystal Forest, which is situated in the remote Colliecrith National Park, west of the Cairngorm Mountains.
Crystal, who is forty-four, and whose last album Damage, was released eleven years ago, has been the focus of recent controversy, after the body of his longest-serving aide and close personal friend, James Cryer, was found in the vast forest that surrounds the property by special constables working on wildlife crime in the area. Zach Crystal has not been questioned with regards to the discovery and Cryer’s death appears to have been an accident. Naomi Crystal has made a brief statement, explaining that the recent media focus on the death of Cryer caused the singer significant sadness and distress. She urges him to get in touch and asks that anyone who has sighted the star contacts the police. A tearful Bonnie Crystal also urged her uncle to please get in touch with his family.’ 16
Extract From: ITV News at Ten. (04/05/2019) 10:00pm
—Tonight: enigmatic superstar, Zach Crystal, missing for over a year, is finally home.
Zach Crystal fans around the globe have tonight been in raptures at the return of their idol. The singer, who seemingly vanished without trace in March 2018, is thought to be safe and well, and recovering at his property in Colliecrith National Park, Scotland. It is not known, as yet, where Crystal has spent the past year, but that doesn’t seem to matter to the thousands of fans who have taken to the streets of Aviemore to welcome home their idol.
This news comes alongside accusations about Zach Crystal’s personal life. Police Scotland have refused to comment on these claims. What is clear, however, is that the controversy that has been raging for some time now on the internet and social media has soured what should have been a day of celebration for Crystal’s legions of loyal fans.
Extract from Sky News (13/09/2019) 11:44pm
—Sorry, yes, we’re just getting word that … yes … a fire has broken out at Crystal Forest, the home of reclusive musician, Zach Crystal. We can confirm that fire crews from Aviemore, Kingussie, Ballater and Newtonmore are currently battling a blaze in Colliecrith National Park, west of the Cairngorms. Right now it has not been confirmed if Crystal himself is present at the property, which is said to be engulfed in a hundred-metre-high blaze.
More as we get it… 17
Extract from: BBC Radio Five Live – the Gordon Cantwell Show (14/09/2019) 3.30am
—One story that has opened up overnight is that the home of controversial musician, Zach Crystal, has been destroyed by fire. Crystal Forest, as it’s better known, was reported ablaze a few hours ago, and due to its remote location in the middle of the Colliecrith National Park, was more or less destroyed before fire services could reach it and tackle the blaze.
Oh, my word, what a story. We’ll be taking your texts and calls throughout the night on what appears to be a real tragedy. It’s not confirmed, but what I’m hearing is that Zach Crystal himself has perished in the blaze. That’s what’s coming through right now.
Oh, my God. Oh, my word.
Zach Crystal had just announced the release of a brand new album, and tickets for his Forever tour were already selling out across the world.
This is a real tragedy. A tragedy for the world of music.
Extract from: TalkSport – the Boswell and Murphy Breakfast Show (14/09/2019) 7.26am
—We’re taking your calls, this morning, on Zach Crystal. Yes, that’s right, the Zach Crystal, who, I’m sad to say, was confirmed dead at 5.00am this morning. Fire-scene investigators up at Colliecrith National Park in the Scottish Highlands have confirmed the remains of the superstar were found among the ruins of his five-hundred-acre property. What a tragedy.
—Well I don’t think it’s a tragedy, Morris.
—Here we go, we’ve got Martha on the line. Not a tragedy, you say, Martha. 18
—Not at all, the bloke was a bloody weirdo, wasn’t he? There were all sorts of rumours … those two poor girls what were found in his forest. Awful business wasn’t it?
—Martha, these are unsubstantiated rumours. None of it was proved.
—Lived in a tree house, didn’t he, with a load of teenage girls. That’s true, innit? Good bloody riddance, I say.
—Thanks Martha. What do you think, Neil?
—I mean, the guy was a musical legend wasn’t he? You can’t be a legend without being a bit odd. He lived in a haunted wood, didn’t he?
—True, true. He did spend a lot of time with teenage girls as well though, didn’t he? The guy was in his forties for God’s sake!
—I know, I know, but this is Zach Crystal we’re talking about. Think of all the work he did for charity. It wasn’t his fault that some silly teenagers got themselves lost in the Scottish Highlands, was it? They knew the dangers going in. There’s wild cats and all sorts of things in there aren’t there?
—We’d love to hear what you think here on Boswell and Murphy in the morning, so text or tweet us. Better still, give us a call. Zach Crystal – what legacy will his death leave behind?
Extract from: BBC News (15/09/2019)
—The crowds of mourners paying tribute to their fallen idol have not been deterred by the rain here on the Chelsea Embankment. Piles of flowers have been laid outside the gates to Chelsea Physic Garden. Yesterday, it was confirmed that pop superstar, Zach Crystal, was found dead at the age of forty-five at his home in Colliecrith National Park, Scotland. 19Crystal is thought to have died of smoke inhalation during a fire that broke out at his remote, five-hundred-acre property known as Crystal Forest. The secluded mansion, which also contained guest suites and a recording studio, as well as Crystal’s personal chambers in a vast, luxury tree house overlooking the property, is said to have been completely destroyed by fire.
This once little-known botanical garden in London was reportedly one of Crystal’s favourite places to visit when in the capital. Huge crowds, not unlike those here now, would wait outside the garden when Crystal would spend upward of four hours here, alone.
There are tears and spontaneous outbursts of song from Zach Crystal fans the world over, who are gathering in towns and cities to mark the passing of a musical legend.
—I can’t believe he’s gone. I can’t believe it. He was everything to me … he meant everything.
—I’ve been here since I heard. I’ve not slept. It’s not sunk in. It’s just … I can’t believe it’s happened, he can’t just be gone … not like that…
Extract from: LBC – the Verity Moss Show (17/09/2019)
—It’s being reported all over the world, the ‘tragic’ death of Zach Crystal. I’m sorry but what? Zach Crystal? The guy’s dodgy.
—Of course he isn’t dodgy. How can you even say that?
—Look, you’ve got this forty-year-old bloke inviting twelve-year-old girls up into his tree house. He had them running round the woods in the middle of the night. Those two young women, Lulu and Jessica, found dead, then his closest advisor has a fatal accident in the very same woods and now this. 20Surely you can’t come on here and defend Zach Crystal, can you?
—Verity, it’s all lies. All of it. It’s all a media conspiracy against Zach. It always has been. Did they ever find any evidence that any of those girls had been abused? No. Did Zach Crystal ever get arrested for murder? No. I tell you what, if this was anyone else—
—If it was anyone other than a middle-aged bloke inviting young girls to come and stay with him, he wouldn’t get away with it!
—You don’t get it, you lot in the media. Just because he wasn’t at your beck and call.
—That’s right, actually. He wasn’t. The biggest pop superstar in the world decided to hide away in a remote wood, spouting rubbish about evil spirits, while young, vulnerable girls were disappearing.
—Honestly, Zach Crystal was the one helping young, vulnerable girls, he was actually the one doing some good in the world. You people will never understand. Now he’s gone, now he can’t defend himself, all you can do is peddle the same old lies. It’s pathetic!
Welcome to Six Stories.
I’m Scott King.
Over the next six weeks, we’ll be looking back at one of the most polarising scandals of recent times, one that should have opened up the floodgates, made a giant crack in the zeitgeist, made us question ourselves and each other and perhaps galvanised us into questioning how we look at things.
Yet somehow it didn’t.
This was the biggest thing that never happened.
For those of you who are new to the podcast, this series is a glitch in the matrix, an anomaly; one unlike all the others. We’re still doing what we always do here – listening to six different sides of the same story. Raking over old graves. 21
Six episodes, six interviews, six stories about one case. In this series we look back at a crime through six different pairs of eyes. We’re looking six ways at one man.
Is ‘man’ even the right way to describe Zach Crystal?
I once said that I wasn’t scared anymore, that on this podcast I’d meet monsters face to face and eye to eye. When you take the paths I take with Six Stories, monsters are what you should expect to meet.
The person we’re going to hear from in this, our first episode of this series, has many supporters, both here in the UK and internationally. He also has his critics, his haters. ‘Haters’ is perhaps too mild a term.
Ian Julius is an interesting figure. He went from folk hero to figure of hate within the space of a week. Trial by media. Trial by social media. Trial by spin. Search #Freejuli on Twitter and you’ll see what I mean.
Also, #killjuli if you want to see some of the darker sides of social media.
That’s if you’ve been living in a cave and have no idea what I’m talking about.
—It’s about fifty-fifty, the messages, the letters. People who support me and people who hate me. There’s one – a proper fan, like, mental, if you know what I mean? Tattoo of his face, his signature, everything, on his chest. Wherever I go, this fucker manages to find me, doxxes me and it all starts up again.
I read all of them, you know. All the threats from the fans, telling me what they want to do to me. It’s funny really. It’s laughable. Then I get messages from some saying they want to shake my hand, you know? They say ‘well done mate’. They know I did the right thing.
Then someone sends me a dried-up dead rat in a box. Swings and roundabouts, innit?
Ian Julius chases monsters. Or at least he did. Ian and his girlfriend used to call themselves the Monster-Busters. Their YouTube channel had more than fifty thousand subscribers. Good Morning Britain interviewed them at the peak of their internet fame.
I’m speaking to Ian via Zoom. I don’t even know where he is and I don’t ask. He appears against a plain-white background. 22
Monster-Busters was a simple concept – Ian, with assistance from his girlfriend, created fake profiles on social-media sites such as Boopy and Gabble, posing as twelve- or thirteen-year-old girls. That’s where they waited, ensnaring much older men who would send them inappropriate messages and photographs, and try to arrange to meet them for sex. The two would turn up at the meeting point, which would be in a public area – usually a train station – and confront the predator, before informing the police. The concept is not an original one; groups like Dark Justice and Guardians of the North do similar. Monster-Busters are no more, however, and their remaining videos have been swarmed with negative comments and downvotes by Zach Crystal fans.
—We must have busted over a hundred paedophiles; most of them got convictions too. We worked with the police, you know? We were good at what we did. Some of the stuff we had to read, it turned your stomach. I’ll never forget it. And blokes in their seventies turning up with bags of booze and condoms to meet a thirteen-year-old girl. Scum.
Ian and his girlfriend became heroes of sorts, at least online, even before they appeared on the mainstream media. Their reputation spread from their undisclosed location in the UK as far as 60 Minutes Australia, along with countless guest appearances on LBC Radio, BBC Radio 2 and Sky News. In each interview Ian conducted himself calmly and sensibly, never raising his voice or allowing presenters to antagonise him. There was a rash of copy-cat hunter groups online in the wake of Monster-Busters – not all of whom conducted themselves as professionally as Ian.
—We were always as professional as we could be when we did a sting. We never screamed and shouted when we caught one, or grabbed them and knocked them about, but my God, I would have liked to sometimes. We were always transparent with the police too, always handed everything over and backed off when they asked us to. 23
Countless police spokespersons attempted to dissuade the Monster-Busters from their activities – attempting to explain that what they were doing could potentially damage the cases against the predators they were trying to catch. This reasoning was met with derision from Ian’s supporters and the general public. And the figures do not lie. Due to the Monster-Busters group, a significant amount of online predators were handed over to the police. It’s an undeniable fact that the police would not have been able to convict them without the help of Ian and his team.
—Everyone knew it. Everyone knew I was in the right, that we were doing the right thing. All of them: the police, the government. I was just some bloke in his living room; I didn’t have a degree or training, but I knew how to get them, I knew how to catch monsters. But then it all fell to bits didn’t it?
Now, Ian’s location changes every few months; every time he’s doxxed online, every time his windows are broken or something unpleasant is pushed through his letterbox. Ian won’t tell me the whereabouts of his girlfriend. Or even if they’re still together. What we do know is that the Monster-Busters online paedophile-hunting duo has disbanded.
—It took slightly longer to catch this one than usual, that’s for sure. This one was a slow burner. There’s a lot of them out there who’ll start with the dirty stuff almost immediately. They’re the common sort and they’re easy to catch. They spend all day trawling those sites for young girls, hundreds of thousands of dick-pics at the ready. Desperate, older men.
This one was in it for the long game, though, and we knew from experience that ones like him are the worst. They’re the ones with a bit of brains. They’re the charmers; they’ve got the chat. They’re drip-drip, insidious predators – they get under the skin and burrow deeper. When we started talking to him, that became clear very quickly.
—How were you able to tell that so fast?
—So, when you’re talking to these people, you have to realise something. These guys are full of lies. Everything they say is a lie. 24Every single line they write is a seduction – it’s telling someone what they think they want to hear. The end game is total control.
—But later, you noticed something amiss. Something else, right?
—A few things stood out. We’d been messaging with him, back and forth, for about a month. It was intense – constant, long-winded, deep conversations. It became apparent he was very isolated, very lonely. Most of them are, but the amount of messages we were getting from him was … it was odd. That was the first thing. The second was when he began to let things slip.
—Like what?
—Like where he was. That was a big one. They usually tell us where they live early on, angling for a meet-up, you know? He didn’t. He was very cagey about where he was, until he said something about a … ghost … or something.
—A ghost?
—Yeah … he seemed to be alluding to something very specific. He said that where he was, was ‘haunted’ by some kind of spirit, some animal.
—That’s rather niche, isn’t it?
—It is – when people talk about ghosts they mean humans, don’t they? Not him. He was going on about it for ages, describing it, this great rotten stag, its blackened flesh all hanging off it, its horns all tangled together on top of its head, which was a skull. Glowing red eyes. He said it was like the Mothman – it only showed up when something terrible was going to happen. I believe he was trying to scare us – trying to scare who he thought was a vulnerable young girl. Sicko. He kept asking if we were brave enough to try and find it with him, to face it. It was like a challenge. Only the ‘special girls’ were brave enough he said. His story rang a bell – I’d heard of it before. That’s when I thought he wasn’t just anyone, you know?
— There must have been more though – more clues that he was who you claimed he was.
—The thing was, we never thought it could really be Crystal. The actual Zach Crystal. It was him who convinced us in the end. When we accidentally said his name. 25
There you have it. That was their claim. There came a point in the conversation when Ian and his girlfriend claim to have been utterly convinced that they had ensnared Zach Crystal himself.
Zach Crystal, who had slipped off the face of the earth for nearly a year, and at that point – April 2019, according to Ian – was yet to reappear.
—We’d been talking to the guy for a few weeks. He was telling us about his life; he was slipping in little things – how he’d grown up, this poor, lonely boy who had to work all hours. Anyone could have done it really – impersonated him online – if they had enough knowledge. But the thing was … he was so out of touch with reality. Not in an insane way, but in a way that shows you someone who’s not lived a normal life. That’s when we began to turn it around, when we started to ask our own questions. We wanted to be subtle – we didn’t want to scare him off. We started small, like he had started with us and as the time went by, it started to become more and more obvious.
—What was the turning point? What was the one thing that made you realise – the moment when you were certain.
—There were a few big pointers. He talked about how his parents were dead, how his best friend had died, how he felt anyone who got close to him, something bad happened to them. I mean these were all big things, but not quite enough. The moment we realised for sure was when we accidentally used his name, as I said before.
—Really?
—Yeah, it was me that did it. Just typed it in a reply. My missus looked at me, white as a sheet. My heart just sort of sank. I thought I’d wrecked it, spoiled the whole thing. I’d typed in what we were both thinking. But the thing was, he didn’t notice. He let it go. And that’s when we knew.
We’d found him.
Us, sat in our living room, catching paedophiles online. We’d caught someone who should have been put in prison a long time ago. But, you know, the weirdest thing about it all was that back in the day, I loved him too. Just like you did, just like everyone did. 26
Like a great deal of you listening, I first became aware of Zach Crystal after his debut solo, TV performance on The Word, in 1995.
It’s become iconic, that performance of ‘Burning Eyes’. For many, many Zach Crystal fans, that moment was a communion of sorts.
For anyone who is young and not English, The Word was a controversial late-night television magazine show on Channel 4 in the mid-1990s. The show was hosted by radio presenter Terry Christian and comedian Mark Lamarr. It boasted the notorious television débuts of Nirvana in 1991 and Oasis in 1994. Ask anyone of a certain age if they saw nineteen-year-old Zach Crystal’s performance following a rendition of ‘Delicious’ by pop duo Shampoo, and they’ll tell you they did. About half of them will be telling the truth. Zach Crystal was, to be fair, a surprise guest on the show. I was aware of him, as were most of you, as a smarmy-looking, precocious Christian-pop brat. Think the early days of Justin Beiber, but nowhere near as famous. Zach Crystal was looked upon with scorn by most. He and his sister Naomi were known as The Crystal Twins and were popular with the elderly and on Christian music stations.
So when Mark Lamarr announced Zach Crystal onstage, with a single raised eyebrow, that said it all.
Zach Crystal had no edge. He was that kid with the piano wasn’t he? A Crystal twin?
But Zach Crystal had changed.
Zach Crystal had grown up.
Zach Crystal had become something beyond – he had become a force.
Zach Crystal had reinvented himself.
And what a reinvention it was.
Extract from I Loved the Nineties (Resonance Productions, 2010): Talking head – Danny Zade, presenter, BBC Radio 1
—And Zach Crystal of course … I mean, he came onstage on The Word and it was like, whoa! The guy had grown about ten feet and he looked like … a man. This goofy little kid we all knew and loved … well, I say loved but we tolerated him, didn’t we? 27
But now … now he was back and he was just … I mean it was before he got weird, wasn’t it? He was just amazing.
[‘Burning Eyes’ plays in the background]
He was like … it was like he’d been abducted by aliens, who’d reinvented him and plonked him back down on earth.
[Sings] Ooh, burning eyes! Get out of my head…
I mean, it became an instant anthem. Who’d have thought it? Little Zach Crystal? The thing was everyone loved it. All the indie kids and the metalheads and your teeny-boppers. Man, even your nan. It was amazing. That song never left rotation, never. Not since it was released. The guy was a multi-millionaire on that song alone.
I was one of those people, blown away by that performance. So were many of you. It’s hard to put a finger on exactly what it was about Zach Crystal that seemed to appeal to everyone.
There was a humility to him. I remember liking that. But also mixed with an other-worldliness. Like Danny Zade says, Zach was from another planet.
Zach Crystal was around six feet tall, ‘unexpectedly tall’ as many described him. He was rake thin and dressed in greens and browns – forest colours – with a crown of what looked like gold antlers atop his head.
Crystal’s long, blond hair spilled over his shoulders. It should have been ridiculous, but Crystal looked elegant and mysterious at the same time. He was a stark contrast to the anoraks of the indie scene and the torn, matted clothes of the grunge musicians. Crystal wasn’t like anything anyone had ever seen before.
It wasn’t just the costume. It was his voice – it was the way he poured his soul, his heart into playing that piano decorated with branches and leaves. He was a lone, elfin bard from some mystical forest, his call some siren song – a style that no one had heard before. In part, the wail of Björk mixed with the melancholy of Sigur Rós, backed by an astonishingly melodic pop hook. 28
It shouldn’t have worked, none of it. It was showmanship, it was extravagance, but it was something else too, it called to somewhere deep inside, some childhood place where magic was still real. It was an antidote to the austerity of modern music.
And we fell in love with it.
And him.
All of us.
Even Ian Julius.
—I was a bit older when he was on The Word that time. I was in my twenties, but I remember it, yeah. I think I was looking more at the girls he had with him. That’s irony, innit? I’ll admit it, though. I thought he was class. Just like everyone else.
Zach Crystal was accompanied by dancers onstage. Four of them. Female. They were all thin, pale, other-worldly. They too were donned in elegant forest-coloured attire, with glass-like tiaras and smaller antlers, plus long silk cloaks.
—They all looked like witches or something, didn’t they? Like something that had climbed out of a storybook. All dancing. It was a bit weird. I think that’s why it worked. It wasn’t daft. It should have looked daft but it wasn’t. It … I dunno, it looked good and it sounded good too.
This performance of ‘Burning Eyes’ began my and the world’s obsession with Zach Crystal. From then on, Crystal was a superstar. More than that, he became a global megastar. His subsequent album, Yearn, spent twenty weeks on the Billboard 200 in the States and went triple platinum. The video for ‘Burning Eyes’ debuted on Top of the Pops in the UK in April and remained number one on the singles chart until it was usurped by ‘Northward Bound’, Crystal’s Christmas single.
These were the early days of Zach Crystal, the ones I remember fondly. These were the days when many children’s parents slaved away over a sewing machine to try and replicate those clothes, those cloaks.
Let’s go back to Ian. 29
—And you actually managed to arrange a meet-up?
