Grubb family remembers murdered daughter Crystal in memorial walk

Across the street from Kilroy’s Bar & Grill, where there was the usual rowdy laughter, friends and family gathered at People’s Park on Kirkwood Avenue to remember Crystal Grubb on Saturday.

A poster with the words “Walk for Crystal Grubb” hung on a concession table in the middle of the park. The years of Crystal’s life, 1981 through 2010, were written on the opposite sides of Crystal smiling in a picture.

The people there were gathered for a memorial walk for Crystal on the one-year anniversary of when her body was found in a cornfield by a farmer north of Bloomington.

She was last seen alive Sept. 18, 2010.

On that night, Crystal, then 29, reportedly got angry at her friends and walked away. A couple of weeks later, an autopsy of her body confirmed that the death was a homicide.

“She’s got two little girls that are going to be raised without a mom,” Janice Grubb, Crystal’s mother, said. “It’s worse when somebody takes your kid away from you, and you don’t know why. And that’s why I want justice done.”

Three men, one of them Crystal’s boyfriend at the time of her death, are currently being held in the Monroe County Jail for methamphetamine charges. They have been labeled as persons of interests in the case.

Preparations for the memorial walk began just a few a weeks ago, about one year after Crystal’s disappearance. Bloomington resident Melinda Herald contacted Janice through Facebook after seeing widespread publicity for the disappearance of IU student Lauren Spierer.

Herald said she knew some people by the last name of Grubb but did not have any direct relations with the family.

“It started with posters, and it turned into this,” she said. “There hadn’t been anything for Crystal — nothing — and I just decided to do it.”

Susan Norris, Crystal’s aunt, as well as Crystal’s friend Colleen Moore, helped coordinate the walk. Diane Daily, the executive assistant of Bloomington Mayor Mark Kruzan and Crystal’s former big sister in the Big Brothers Big Sisters mentoring program, helped donate more than 200 T-shirts for Saturday’s event.

Guitarist Bob Jones stood atop one of the park’s picnic tables and started strumming the chords for “Amazing Grace.”  

In addition to the posters made for Crystal, several people held up signs created in honor of Lauren Spierer. Private Investigator

Tim Mullis, who manages his own investigation company in King Mills, Ohio, said the attention Lauren’s case brought to Bloomington led him to contact Janice about Crystal’s case.

“Everybody, regardless of how much they have or don’t have, should have somebody who’s helping them,” he said.

Mullis said he is investigating Crystal’s murder on his own time. A Bloomington native, he comes back every two or three weeks. When Janice and Mullis began talking about Crystal, they discovered that they were distant cousins.

“That kind of sealed it for me,” Mullis said. “It’s not family that knew Crystal directly, but it’s close enough.”

Before the crowd began walking opposite of campus on Kirkwood, Herald handed out blue ribbons for people to pin on their shirts. Finally everyone walked in unison, led by Janice Grubb holding up a poster.

“She was a good person,” said Carri Harris-Spiras, who knew Crystal through Tony Williams, the father of Crytal’s two daughters, Abby and Rose. “She didn’t have a lot, but if you needed something, she’d give it to you.”

The memorial walk, about a mile long, wound down Walnut and Ninth streets and in front of Kilroy’s Sports Bar, the establishment that was cited with two alcohol-related charges in relation to the Spierer case. The walk purposefully went past Smallwood Plaza apartments, where Spierer lived, and past the Monroe County Courthouse.

Amy Stewart, who was a close friend of Crystal, said the walk is going to take place on the same date every year “until we get the justice the family deserves. We actually want justice for both Crystal and Lauren.”

Everyone cheered after returning to People’s Park at the end of the walk. Posters rested on a picnic table where walkers wrote down their memories of Crystal.

“I wouldn’t want any parents to go through this at all,” Janice said. “I don’t want to see them go through what we’ve just gone through.”