On Halloween in 2017, I got an email from a woman named Sheila Wysocki who said she was a private investigator. Her email address used the handle “scrappymom.” She wrote:
I am hoping to talk to you regarding a case in Dallas, Texas. Please give me a call at your convenience. Thank you for your time in advance.
She included a phone number with a Los Angeles area code.
These are the sorts of emails that, to be honest, I normally delete without much thought, just as I trash letters from prisoners claiming their innocence. Yes, there are innocent people in prison. And, sure, there are PIs in this world who have leads on great stories. But both those animals are so rare that it doesn’t make sense to chase them.
That Halloween, though, I answered Wysocki’s email, which is how I learned about the death of Jonathan Crews. Crews was living in Coppell and dating a woman named Brenda Lazaro when he was shot while lying in his bed. Lazaro says that Crews committed suicide in front of her, but there are a lot of questions about what, exactly, happened that night. Mike Mooney brought it all together for a story in the April issue of D Magazine titled “Killer or Victim.” It went online today.
