The shooting death of Crystal Dejuanna Taylor inside her Kornblum Avenue apartment complex on September 25, 2001, truly rocked the state of California to its core.
After all, the 27-year-old was about 22 weeks pregnant, and it finally turned out that her ex-boyfriend had planned her murder, as was detailed in NBC’s “Dateline: One Moment” article.
Therefore, we now have the information you need to discover more about Derek Paul Smyer, with an emphasis on his history, motivations, and current situation.
Who is Derek Smyer?
Derek first saw Crystal in the late spring of 2001 at Anderson Park, which is close to both of their places of employment. This encounter resulted in an unplanned talk between the two of them, which later turned into a liaison.
The term “fling” refers to their brief, intimate relationship, which lasted about a month or so before they permanently split ways and the young man became pregnant with his child. But rumors have it that although the former wanted her to get an abortion as soon as possible, the latter had made the decision to carry the pregnancy to term without any help from him.
Derek was among the first people to be carefully questioned after Crystal and her unborn son Jeremiah Johnson Taylor were fatally shot on that awful day, which was nearly five months later. In actuality, he denied any wrongdoing at all and answered all questions without ever requesting the assistance of a public attorney.
However, he did claim that during their brief relationship, his former partner had been unfaithful. Put another way, he supposedly attempted to raise the possibility that the infant wasn’t even his in an attempt to distance himself from the whole thing, but this was unsuccessful due to other significant pieces of information.
Even though a formal check of Derek’s house and car turned up nothing significant, it was indisputable that he looked a lot like the suspicious man that a number of witnesses had observed running from the scene.
More significantly, it turned out that Traci Williamson, his high school sweetheart, had suffered from similar horrific attacks from him when she was younger, during both of her pregnancies. Fortunately, she and the two kids survived.
In one instance, an unknown man attempted to slit her throat with a knife, and in another, she took a strong kick to the stomach.
Unfortunately, though, Derek was still at large because there was insufficient proof to link him to any of these incidents—that is, until Skyler Moore acknowledged in late 2011 that he had hired Derek to get Crystal out.
The two men had seemingly crossed paths at the basketball courts in Anderson Park, where the latter was keen to pitch in and take on the grunt work since he was already trying to establish his name. According to documents, Derek was arrested on November 3, 2011, because he was a proud member of the East Coast Branch of a Southern California gang and new to the area.
Derek Smyer Is Still Imprisoned
It took ten years not only for Derek to be found in relation to the killings of his ex-girlfriend and their unborn sons, but an additional six years were needed for justice to be done.
After several weeks of in-depth testimony, a jury comprised of six men and six women found him guilty as charged on October 21, 2017, despite the fact that his first trial in 2016 actually ended in a hung verdict.
He was charged with one case of first-degree murder with special circumstances pertaining to several deaths and financial gain, one count of second-degree murder, and two charges of soliciting murder.
It was eventually concluded, according to official court records, that Derek wanted Crystal dead in order to guarantee the baby would die as well since he didn’t want to pay child support.
His life sentence without the possibility of release was imposed due to the extraordinary circumstances surrounding his first-degree murder accusations, which were prompted by the heinousness of his motivations.
As a result, he is currently serving a lengthy sentence at the medium-maximum security California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility in the Kings County city of Corcoran, where he is 42 years old.
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