The Suspicious Death of Krystal Lee Higgins (Maine) Part 2

From the location of her car, to the condition of her body, to the timeline of disappearance until discovery, Krystal Lee Higgins’ sister feels that so much of the case doesn’t quite add up to an accidental death. So, we’re peeling back the layers of this case even further with the help of experts.

If you haven’t already, you’ll want to go back and listen to Part 1 of this story on Dark Downeast.

Questioning Everything

For years after her big sister 17-year old Krystal Lee Higgins died, Jessica struggled to accept the final ruling in the case. The autopsy found that Krystal had no significant trauma to her body and no signs of foul play. With her vehicle and body having been recovered from the Pleasant River just off the boat launch in Addison, Maine, the totality of the circumstances led investigators to rule Krystal’s cause of death as drowning, and the manner of death accidental. Not suicide, not homicide, and undetermined. It was all a tragic accident, they said. Krystal must have fallen asleep in her car as it rolled into the water and managed to escape the car as it sank, but then struggled to safely reach the shore and drowned.

“How she would have sat at the landing with a foot on the break for a couple of hours?” Jessica asked. “She left that house around midnight, shortly after midnight, and then her phone starts randomly calling numbers at around 3:30. So she sat there at the landing from say 12:30 to 3:30 in the morning with a foot just sitting on the break. Like, that alone makes no sense to me. The whole theory didn’t make sense to me.”

Jessica mostly kept her doubts to herself without any proof or evidence to back them up. Several years later, when she was around 19-years old, Jessica found a box of stuff at her dad’s house…Documents upon documents relating to Krystal’s case. The autopsy report, police records, interview summaries, photos, and more. Jessica spent weeks poring over them.

Based on what she’s seen in the case file, Jessica feels she has every valid reason to wonder if investigators got it wrong and if someone out there is sitting on a secret about what really happened during the early morning hours of August 8th, 2004. The flames of her suspicions were stoked ever further by two bizarre letters that surfaced in town in the years following Krystal’s death.

The Letters

Two letters have surfaced since Krystal’s disappearance and death, according to Lorna, the person who found both of them.

Lorna explained, “The first letter showed up shortly after they discovered her body. And I’m going to say shortly within 30 to 45 days. And it was just random. I, that morning, was getting up, went out to the mailbox for something, saw a piece of paper on the ground, went to pick it up ‘cause it was by my mailbox. And said, oh, this writing looks strange and I don’t know why, but I actually picked it up by the corner and I brought it in the house, put it in a plastic bag. Of course, I read it and I can’t remember everything it said, but it was like there’s a murderer among us and this person is going to get loose and somebody knows things and they’re not saying.”

When Lorna found that letter near her mailbox, she knew what she needed to do. She called the police and they picked it up from her at work. That was the last she heard of it.

I’ve looked through stacks of case file documents and I have not seen a record of the first letter in the files I have access to. However, the original detective on the case confirmed there was a letter turned over to police early on.

Now, Lorna was aware of Krystal’s disappearance and death – it was hard not to hear about it in their small town – but her property had also been searched when Krystal was still missing. She lived on Webb District Road in Harrington, the same rural road where Krystal had hung out with those four guys on the night she was last seen alive.

On November 19, 2015, another letter surfaced on Webb District Road in a bizarre way. Lorna found that one, too.

“Another letter showed up on my road, not just in front of my mailbox, but it was like strewn up and down the road like a flier. And again, I picked it up,” Lorna continued. “That letter I believe I brought to Tara Skeate and showed her. And then called the police. And same thing, they took it. That’s the end of, that’s all I heard.”

Tara Skeate was Krystal’s best friend, and Krystal was living with the Skeate family at the time of her disappearance. Jessica has a copy of the second letter and it’s been shared on a Facebook page created in Krystal’s memory. The handwriting could be described as messy but is still legible. Some words are misspelled, even Krystal’s name is incorrect with a C instead of a K. There are extra letters in words, some letters are uppercase where they shouldn’t be and a few words are underlined for apparent emphasis.

It reads: “Krystal Higgins was murdered on the Webb District Road by socio and psychopathic killers. The police passed by her body. There is pre-explosure sex offenderd. Don’t let this predator wait for another murdere. He’s gonna sit and pick. You dumb f***s.”

Jessica felt the letter was confirmation of her suspicions. She told me, “That is exactly what I thought it was all along. That somebody knows more of what happened that night. That somebody else is involved.”

Despite the contents of that letter, the case was not reopened. Jessica did her best to move forward, but the letter never stopped nagging at her.

Death Investigators Weigh In

In the summer of 2023, about 8 years after the second letter appeared on Webb District Road, Jessica and Krystal’s dad passed away. While sorting through her late father’s belongings, Jessica collected all the items he’d kept relating to Krystal’s case. That’s when she allowed herself to dive back down the rabbit hole again.

It has now been 20 years since Krystal died and Jessica wants to feel like she’s done everything she can to learn more about the investigation into her sister’s disappearance and death to either put her concerns to rest or get the case reopened.

“I’ve never been one to jump out and voice my own side of the story,” Jessica explained. “I just figured it’s 20 years, 20 years of myself asking the same questions over and over. Not getting any answers to it. I honestly believe that there’s somebody out there that still knows something that they didn’t share back then.”

These are among Jessica’s biggest questions when it comes to Krystal’s case:

How did the medical examiner reach the conclusion that Krystal died by accidental drowning? Why doesn’t the autopsy explicitly state that water was found in her lungs? What would you expect to see in an autopsy report for someone who died by drowning?

How did investigators determine that she parked her car at the Addison boat launch and fell asleep? How is it possible that Krystal’s car and her body were in the water all along if nobody saw anything for several days?

What about the evidence collected during the search for Krystal, like a reddish hair found on the property of someone police had questioned about supposed sightings of Krystal after she was reported missing? What happened to that evidence and other items collected before foul play was ruled out in her case?

To dig into these questions, I wanted to speak with experts who can explain what is typically done or what should be done when a body is found in water and who can better clarify some of the language in Krystal’s autopsy report.

I spoke with Andrea Zafares, a medicolegal death investigator with the Dutchess County Medical Examiner’s Office specialized in aquatic deaths. She teaches courses on aquatic death and homicidal drowning investigations and consults on body-found-in-water cases. I was referred to Andrea by a former student of hers, Joseph Vazzarri, Deputy Coroner for Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, who also offered his expertise to examine this case.

Krystal’s story continues on Dark Downeast. Press play to hear the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.