Crystal McDowell, a 37-year-old Texas mother of two, disappeared from Baytown just before Hurricane Harvey struck the Gulf Coast in August 2017, setting off a search that lasted more than two weeks.
Crystal and Steven “Steve” McDowell married in 2007. Friends said the early years of the marriage were difficult, and one year later, in 2008, Crystal filed for divorce. She did not go through with it at the time, in part because Steve made comments suggesting he might hurt himself if she left him.
The couple stayed together and had two children, a son named Madden and a daughter named Maui. As the years passed, friends said Crystal grew more confident and successful in her career, while Steve became more focused on staying home with the children.
Family bail bondsman and longtime friend LJ Adams said Steve became increasingly controlling as time went on, often reacting poorly whenever things did not go his way.
Crystal filed for divorce again in February 2017. On March 20, 2017, she called police after Steve made threats to harm himself and the children, according to Baytown Police Lieutenant Steve Dorris.
Around this same period, Crystal’s daughter from Steve’s earlier relationship, Krysta McDowell, noticed her father behaving strangely online, changing his Facebook profile picture several times within a few days, including images of a grave and a grim reaper.
The divorce was finalized in June 2017. Even after the divorce, Crystal kept living in the Mont Belvieu home she had shared with Steve, because her own townhouse in Baytown was still being remodeled.
Their children mainly stayed with Steve during this stretch, which gave Crystal more freedom to focus on her real estate career while remaining close to Madden and Maui.
Steve reportedly hoped the divorce might not be permanent. Relatives said he had planned to propose to Crystal again during an upcoming family cruise, even buying matching white outfits for the occasion.
Around the same time, Crystal decided to stop covering some of Steve’s expenses, a decision friends said frustrated him. By August 2017, Crystal had also started dating a local jeweler named Paul Hargrave.
She invited Paul to join the family cruise but asked Steve not to come, since Paul would be there. Steve was reportedly upset about being left off the trip.
On August 23, 2017, two days before she disappeared, Crystal posted on Facebook that she had never been happier in her life. She and Paul had also been discussing a trip to Belgium together the following month.
On the morning of August 25, 2017, Crystal left Paul Hargrave’s home in her black Mercedes. Security cameras at the house recorded her walking through the living room at 7:09 a.m. and driving away from the property around 7:10 a.m.
It was the last confirmed sighting of her. Steve told investigators he received a text message from Crystal that morning saying she was on her way to his house and asking if he had water for the coming storm.
He said a second text arrived later saying she had changed her mind and planned to take the children to Dallas instead. That same morning, Tropical Storm Harvey was strengthening into a hurricane, and warnings had already been issued along the Texas coast.
Grocery store shelves across the region were emptying as residents rushed to prepare. Crystal never arrived to collect her children, and no one heard from her again that day.
On August 26, Crystal’s uncle, Jeff Walters, who had helped raise her, could not reach her and reported her missing to the Chambers County Sheriff’s Office. He made the call from near Waco, where he had evacuated with elderly relatives ahead of the storm.
He told authorities Crystal was one of the most reliable people he knew and always stayed in touch with family, which made her silence alarming. Hours later, Hurricane Harvey made landfall on the Texas coast, and the Houston area began to flood.
Baytown alone received nearly 33 inches of rain over the following days. Homes and roads across the region went underwater, making it difficult for search teams to move through the county.
Several investigators assigned to the case had their own homes flooded during the search, and some deputies still reported for duty despite losing their own belongings.
Crystal’s family did not wait on law enforcement alone. Relatives brought in the volunteer group Texas EquiSearch to comb wooded and flooded areas for signs of her, and both her uncle and her boyfriend separately offered cash rewards for information, Walters offering ten thousand dollars and Hargrave offering five thousand.
Investigators focused on three men connected to Crystal: her ex-husband Steve, her boyfriend Paul Hargrave, and her uncle Jeff Walters.
Sheriff Brian Hawthorne said Walters had complicated the investigation early on by entering Crystal’s townhouse with other relatives before deputies could process it, and by hiring a private investigator to search on his own.
Paul Hargrave drew suspicion after he shared home security footage of Crystal’s last known movements with the media before turning copies over to investigators.
He also gave a national television interview describing his concern for Crystal, though he stopped short of saying what he believed had happened to her. Both Steve and Paul agreed to polygraph examinations. Hawthorne said Steve failed his test, while Paul did not.
Nearly three weeks after Crystal vanished, a friend of the family found her black Mercedes sitting in the parking lot of a Motel 6. The car was unlocked, and the keys had been left on the center console.
Hawthorne said the scene looked as though it had been arranged for someone else to find and drive away. Before deputies could process the vehicle, floodwater from Harvey rose high enough to trap it in the parking lot, delaying forensic testing for days.
Houston’s crime lab was also dealing with flood damage of its own, which slowed the processing of evidence once the car was finally towed for examination.
Investigators gathered surveillance footage from businesses near the motel. Video from a Shell gas station next to the Motel 6 showed a man matching Steve McDowell’s build getting out of a car and pushing something deep into a trash can before glancing back toward the vehicle he had left behind.
Deputies later recovered the trash can, but its contents had washed away in the flooding. A separate recording from a nearby Walmart showed a man buying a bicycle and riding it along the access road next to Interstate 10, close to where the Mercedes had been left.
Investigators believed this showed how Steve got home after leaving the car at the motel. The footage shifted the investigation’s focus toward him, and for the first time, the team of detectives, deputies, and Texas Rangers working the case agreed on a single direction.
Chambers County investigators brought Steve in for questioning on repeated occasions over several days. District Attorney Cheryl Lieck said he remained calm at first and denied any involvement each time, behaving as though he believed he could outlast the investigators.
Over the course of the daily interviews, Lieck said his composure began to break down; he stopped eating and sleeping normally, and his appearance changed noticeably.
Because Steve still had custody of the two children during this period, and because investigators had learned he had once threatened a murder-suicide, Lieck contacted Texas Child Protective Services and had Madden and Maui removed from his home and placed with their aunt, Cindy Seratte.
Hawthorne said losing the children appeared to be the turning point for Steve emotionally. He was allowed to go home that evening, on the condition that he return the next morning ready to talk.
On September 8, 2017, Steve’s older daughter, Krysta McDowell, drove through the night from Texas A&M University after he asked her to come home.
At his house, Steve gave her financial paperwork, photo albums, and other belongings, telling her that Texas Rangers were coming for him at 10 a.m.
He maintained his innocence to her throughout their conversation, but he also told her that investigators had said his punishment could be reduced if he revealed where Crystal’s body was located.
When Krysta asked him directly whether he was guilty, she said he looked away and began to cry without answering in words. Rangers arrived shortly afterward and brought him back to the sheriff’s office.
The next morning, September 9, Steve McDowell met again with Sheriff Hawthorne and gave a full account of what happened. He said that after Crystal came home that morning following a night at Paul Hargrave’s house, the two argued, and he strangled her from behind, catching her off guard.
He told investigators he still loved her and had not meant for her to die. He said he wrapped her body and placed it in the trunk of her own Mercedes, then drove to leave the car at the Motel 6 early the next morning while the children were still asleep at home.
He led detectives to a densely wooded, marshy area near his house, where he said he had left her remains. Search teams worked through heavy brush and fallen trees to reach the site. Crystal’s body was recovered that afternoon, more than two weeks after she went missing.
Steven Wayne McDowell, 44, was arrested and charged with murder. He was held on five hundred thousand dollars bond at the Chambers County jail and was assigned a court-appointed attorney at his first hearing, where he said little and appeared subdued.
Records showed he had no prior criminal record or history of domestic violence in Texas. An autopsy was conducted the following day, and results later confirmed that Crystal had died from strangulation, matching what Steve had already told investigators.
News of the case spread well beyond Chambers County. The unusual combination of a natural disaster and an unsolved disappearance drew coverage from national outlets, and the investigation was later featured on CBS News’ “48 Hours” and NBC’s “Dateline.”
Sheriff Hawthorne said the media attention added pressure to a department already stretched thin by hurricane recovery, but he credited his investigators and Texas Rangers for continuing to work even as some dealt with flood damage at their own homes.
McDowell’s trial began in June 2019, nearly two years after Crystal’s death. He pleaded not guilty. His attorneys argued that Crystal’s death resulted from a sudden, unplanned struggle after she told him she no longer loved him, a legal claim in Texas known as sudden passion, which can significantly lower a murder sentence.
Cindy Seratte testified about the intensity of Steve’s devotion to Crystal during the marriage, describing how he would tend to her every request, though she said the couple grew apart as Crystal became more independent.
Prosecutors countered that the killing was planned, pointing to Steve’s continued feelings for Crystal, his resentment over the divorce, and his anger at being excluded from the family cruise because of her new relationship with Hargrave.
During the trial, the couple’s daughter gave a videotaped statement describing an argument between her parents about Crystal seeing another man, during which Steve pushed her to the ground before strangling her.
After five days of testimony, the jury deliberated for roughly three and a half hours before finding Steven McDowell guilty of murder, rejecting the sudden passion defense. The following day, the same jury sentenced him to 50 years in prison.
Under Texas law, he must serve at least 25 years before he becomes eligible for parole. Crystal’s uncle, Jeff Walters, shouted out in anger from the courtroom gallery when the sentence was read, and other relatives and friends in attendance reacted with visible emotion.
Madden and Maui, who were 8 and 5 years old at the time of their mother’s death, were placed in the long-term care of a family friend following their father’s conviction, with the friend working to gain full legal custody.
Their older half-sister, Krysta, has said she intends to remain involved in their lives going forward. Steve McDowell is serving his sentence at the H. H. Coffield Unit in Tennessee Colony, Texas, with parole eligibility expected around 2042.
Crystal Ann Seratte McDowell was born on October 26, 1979, in Baytown, Texas, to Anthony “Tony” Walters and Pamela Seratte Walters. Both of her parents struggled with drug addiction and died six months apart when Crystal was 11 years old, leaving her to be raised by extended family, including her uncle Jeff Walters.
She grew into an outgoing, independent woman whom friends and coworkers remembered as full of energy and light. She spent about ten years working as a flight attendant, a career that fed her love of travel and adventure, before building a successful second career as a real estate agent in the Baytown area.
Coworkers from her flight attendant years described her as a playful, self-deprecating presence who liked to call herself a dork at heart.
Those closest to her remembered a woman who knew exactly what she wanted out of life, cared deeply for her children, and pursued her goals without hesitation, right up until the final weeks of her life.
