Rick Chow Acquitted in the Cyrus Carmack-Belton Killing, the 'Tooth in the Ashes' Trial, and a Reality Star's Custody Win

0:03 Caalaroga Shark Media. Good morning and welcome to Daily Crime Injustice. I'm Garrett Fisher and it's Thursday, June fourth, twenty twenty six. Here's where things stand this morning. In Columbia, South Carolina, a jury has found gas station owner Rick Chow not guilty of murder in the shooting death of fourteen year old Cyrus Carmack Belton. In Juno, Wisconsin, Zachariah Rash is standing trial accused of killing his estranged wife, Crystal Rash and burning her body in a pit on their property. And in Salt Lake City, Utah, reality star Taylor Frankie Paul has won back unsupervised time with her young son.

0:47 Three cases. Let's get into them. Look, I'm gonna be honest with you. Every one of today's cases comes down to the same thing. A person who is gone or a child caught in the middle, and a system deciding what that's worth. We start in South. Carolina, where we brought you day one of the Rick Chow trial on Monday. It's over now, the verdict is in and I have some things to say about it. Then we go to Wisconsin to a trial with a name I haven't been able to shake all week. They're calling it the tooth. In the ashes, a wife vanishes, her husband tells a sheriff's deputy she's done this before. And investigators start digging in a burn pit out back.

1:30 And we'll close with an update on a name you'll recognize, reality star Taylor Frankie Paul back in a courtroom, this time over her own little boy. I'm Garrett Fisher. This is Daily Crime in Justice. Let's go. Let me start by reminding you where we were, because we were standing right here in this story. On Monday, Columbia, South Carolina, May twenty eighth, twenty twenty three, a fourteen year old boy named Cyrus Karma Belton walks into a Shell gas station on Park Lane Road. Smart kid, funny kid, quick wit, well liked at Summit Parkway Middle School. He wanted to own a tattoo shop one day. He wanted to be famous.

2:13 He was fourteen years old. The owner's wife asked him to take off his backpack. He does. He picks up four bottles of water, and then, on the store's own surveillance video, he puts each one of them back. Investigators went back and checked the footage afterward. Nothing was stolen. Nothing. He gets confronted. Anyway, there's a chase. The store owner, Rick Chow, sixty one years old and his son go after this boy and it ends with Cyrus Carmack Belton shot in the back, dying in the street, a fourteen year old while a stranger gives him CPR and a man tries to clear. The vomit from his airway. That was the case.

2:54 That's what we laid out for you Monday. Here's what happened since after three days of evidence, this case went to the jury. And it's the closing arguments I want you to hear because they tell you exactly what each side was asking twelve people to believe. The prosecutor, Dale Scott stood up and asked the jury a simple question. Did this boy deserve to die? He pointed out it took investigators about seventeen minutes to confirm that nothing had ever been stolen, seventeen minutes, and he said Rick Chow could have just walked back into his own store and looked at his own surveillance video before any of this. He told them Cyrus would have been a rising senior right now. And he told them the boy died scared, bleeding out, and that the last face he ever saw was the face of the man who shot him. The defense told a completely different story. Their attorney told the jury this was never about water bottles. This was a father who saw a gun pointed at his son and made a decision in a split second. Chow's son testified that Cyrus pulled a gun, that he pointed it at him, and that he was terrified he was about to be shot.

4:04 And here is the fact both sides actually agreed on the one the whole case turned on. Cyrus Carmack Belton did have a gun on him. Even the detectives conceded that what they disputed, what everything hinged on, was whether he ever pointed it and whether any of that justified chasing a fleeing fourteen year old off your property and shooting him in the back. Multiple eyewitnesses testified they never saw a gun in his hands. They described a frightened kid running, holding his pants up with one hand, one shoe flying off as he sprinted away. The jury deliberated for about eight hours and they came back not guilty on all of it. When the verdict was read, there were shouts and there was crying in the gallery. Rick Chow sat there expressionless, next to his attorneys, and he walked out a freeman. Now, I want to be careful here because this is exactly the kind of case where I could just stand on a chair and yell, and that wouldn't honor anybody. So let me be precise. Twelve people sat in that courtroom. They heard testimony I didn't hear, and saw a video I didn't see, and under South Carolina law, including its stand your ground framework, they concluded the state had not proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt.

5:20 That is the system, that is how it is supposed to work. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that jury was corrupt or stupid, because I was not in that room and. Neither were you. But both things can be true. The jury can have followed the law exactly as they understood it, and a fourteen year old can still be dead over four bottles of water that he put back. Both of those are true. At the same time, a man chased a child off his property and shot him in the back, and a jury said that was not murder. You're allowed to sit with that and not feel good about it, because there's a playbook for this, and you've seen it run before. A young black kid gets accused of stealing. Nobody checks the tape first, nobody slows down.

6:03 The accusation becomes a chase, and the chase becomes a shooting, and by the time anybody confirms that nothing was ever actually taken, the kid is already dying on the pavement. Seventeen minutes to confirm the truth. Seventeen minutes that came too late for Cyrus. Cyrus Carmack Belton was fourteen years old. He wanted to open a tattoo shop. He wanted to be somebody. He should be finishing his sophomore year right now, annoying his teachers, texting his friends planning a summer Instead, his name is on a verdict sheet. Somebody has to say his name, so I will Cyrus Carmack Belton when we come back. A missing wife, a fake account with no emojis, and a tooth and a fire pit.

6:47 Stay with me. Welcome back to Daily Crime and Justice. I'm Garrett Fisher, and this next one, I want to give you the name they've given this trial up front because I have not been able to put it down all week. They are calling it the tooth in the Ashes Juno, Wisconsin. Let me introduce you to Crystal Rash, thirty seven years old, a mother by June of twenty twenty four. Her life was hard. She was going through a divorce from her husband, Zachariah Rash, and the state had removed their children and was moving to terminate their parental rights. That is a brutal stretch for anybody. But the prosecutor said something about Crystal that I want you to hold on to. He said she was not a woman phasing out of her own life.

7:48 She was a woman. Still trying to hold onto the parts of it that mattered most. June eleventh, twenty twenty four, Crystal is seen on surveillance video out running errands and getting something to eat with her estranged husband. That is the last time anyone sees her alive. She isn't reported missing until twelve days later, June twenty third, by her stepmother and when a Dodge County Sheriff's deputy drives out to the Rash property to start asking questions. Here is what the body cam played for the jury this week shows. Zachariah Rash comes walking up toward the deputy. Prosecutors say he had been standing near a burn pit, and he tells the deputy flatly that he hasn't seen his wife in weeks.

8:32 She's done this before. He says, she won't talk for a while and then she'll come back. No argument, he says. He just figures she's mad and letting herself cool off. That is the story he is selling. Now Here is the story the evidence tells. Cristel's best friend of twenty four years, a woman named Robin Reels, testified that right around this time, she started getting messages from an account she didn't recognize, claiming to be Crystal, and something was off. The messages didn't sound like her. No emojis, and Crystal always used emojis, and whoever it was would not get on the phone, would not send a photo, would not do the one thing that would prove she was alive.

9:13 Robin put it plainly on the stand. No matter how mad Crystal ever got at her, she would always call. Prosecutors say Crystal never sent those messages at all. They say her husband sent them to buy himself time. It gets worse. While not one living person had laid eyes on Crystal, her debit card was still busy. Surveillance allegedly shows Zachariah Rash using his missing wife's card day after day, location after location, buying cleaning products, including Prosecutors say eight thirty two ounce bottles of drain cleaner and sulfuric acid, along with several cash withdrawals. Then investigators searched the property and they found multiple burn areas and in one of those burn pits, they recovered a tooth and a fragment of skull. The tooth match Crystal rashes dental records. The skull fragment matched her DNA, that is, the tooth in the ashes, that is a human being, a mother reduced to a fragment in a fire pit behind a house.

10:16 And there is a car, a Mitsubishi found at a family property. Detectives say the seat belt, the front passenger seat, and the passenger door were saturated with blood. They said it looked like someone had tried to clean it up, but not nearly well enough. The blood was a match to crystal. And then there are the searches, because there are always the searches. Prosecutors say a dump of Zachariah Rash's phone records showed a progression. Before Crystal disappears, he is allegedly searching things like whether you die instantly from a gunshot to the head and how long you can collect widows benefits after she is gone. He is allegedly searching about cleaning, about bones, about sulphuric acid, about how how quickly police can get a warrant about missing persons alerts.

11:04 People still think the delete key is some kind of confession booth where it all goes away. It is the opposite of that. It is a transcript. Now the defense, because this is a trial and Zachariah Rash is presumed innocent, and his lawyers have a theory and you deserve to hear it straight. His attorney, Zaki Zahawi, told the jury that prosecutors have this all wrong. He says Crystal Rash tragically took her own life while handling Zachariah's nine millimeter handgun in his car, that the gun discharged. He says his client panicked because it was his gun and there was a divorce pending, and he was convinced he would be blamed, so, by the defense's own account, he lied to his friends and family. He raised suspicions he disposed of her body. The defense concedes all of that. They concede that he lied and that he got rid of her remains. What they just scid is whether he killed her.

12:02 So that is the question in front of this Wisconsin jury right now as we record this, not whether Zachariah Rash behaved like an innocent man. Even his own lawyers concede that he did not. The question is narrower and harder. Can the state prove he intentionally killed Crystal? Or was this, as the defense claims, a horrible accident followed by a guilty man's terrible choices. I'm going to let that sit because the trial is still going. There is no verdict yet, and we are going to follow it all the way through. But I'll tell you what I keep coming back to. Crystal Rash was thirty seven years old. She was living through one of the hardest years of her life, and the people who loved her say she was still reaching for the parts of it worth keeping. She had a best friend who knew instantly, from nothing more than the absence of emojis that something was deeply wrong. Because she knew Cristel would always always call. Nobody ever got that phone call. Somebody has to say her name while this jury does its work, Crystal Rash. When we come back, a reality star, a barstool, and a custody fight where both parents say they're the victim. Welcome back to Daily Crime and Justice. I'm Garrett Fisher. Last case today, and

13:34 we are shifting gears out of a courtroom where a life ended and into a family court in Salt Lake City, Utah, where the fight is over a life that's just getting started, a two year old. Some of you will remember this one. Back in March, we covered Taylor Frankie Paul, the reality star from The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives who had been announced as the lead of The Bachelorette before ABC pulled the entire season. The reason it got pulled was a piece of surveillance video from twenty twenty three tied to a criminal case that showed Paul in a violent altercation with her then boyfriend Dakota Mortensen, including picking up a metal barstool. Her young daughter was in the room for it. That was the story in March. Here is the next chapter. Paul and Mortensen share a two year old son and they have spent this spring accusing each other of domestic abuse. At an earlier hearing, a judge ordered the two of them to stay at least one hundred feet apart, gave Mortenson full custody of their son, and ordered Paul, who had previously had most of the custody time, to see the toddler only under supervision. Both parents were ordered to undergo psychological evaluations. This past Monday, June first, they were back in court and Paul's side one around her attorney argued that she has taken ownership, that she has done the evaluation, that she has taken concrete steps, and that Mortenson, in his work words, had not even started the race. Mortensen's attorney pushed right back

15:04 and told the judge his client is the documented victim of domestic violence here and that what he hears coming from Paul's camp online isn't acceptance at all. It is over and over. He's the abuser. And the judge, Judge Russell Menis, said something I thought was the most honest line in the whole transcript. He said, both of them have a sense that they are the victims and not the perpetrators, and in his words, he gets that that is the whole thing, isn't it. And look, I'm going to be honest with you. This is a case where both things can be true. Two people can each be genuinely convinced they are the wrong party, harm can run in more than one direction inside the same relationship, and a court can stare at a mountain of evidence and a pile of social media posts and still have to make a call on behalf of a two year old who cannot say a word for himself. The judge said he favored Baby Steps. He lifted the supervision requirement.

16:02 Paul now gets one weekday and alternating weekends with her son, not the roughly seventy percent of the time she was asking to get back Baby Steps, but unsupervised time with her own child again. The two of them are due back in court on July eighth. Here is where I land. I'm not here to crown a winner in a custody fight. That is the court's job, and the court is clearly trying to move carefully, which is exactly the right instinct when there's a kid in the middle. But I'll say this much. The one person in this entire story who didn't pick any of it, who didn't pick the relationship or the fame, or the cameras or the fight is that two year old him and the eight year old daughter who was in the room for the last one.

16:48 Accountability doesn't have a legal department, and neither does childhood. Whatever these two adults decide they are to each other, those kids are watching, and both of these parents would do well to remember that the real audience here was never the one online. That's Daily Crime and Justice for Thursday, June fourth, twenty twenty six. In South Carolina, gas station owner Rick Chow was found not guilty in the shooting death of fourteen year old Cyrus Carmack Belton. A jury followed the law a child is still gone. In Wisconsin, the trial of Zachariah Rash the Tooth in the Ashes continues, with his wife Crystal's remains found in a burn pit and his own lawyers conceding he lied and disposed of her body while disputing that he killed her. No verdict yet, we will be on it. And in Utah, reality star Taylor Frankie Paul won back unsupervised time with her two year old son. Both parents head back to court July eighth.

17:53 If today's show meant something to you. Do me a favor, Share this episode, tell a friend. Word of mouth is how a show like this one survives, and yours is the recommendation people actually trust. And if you're listening on Spotify, drop a comment. Tell me where you land on that Chow verdict, because I read them and I want to know. Same goes for YouTube and wherever else you're tuning in from. I'm Garrett Fisher, Cyrus Carmack, Belton, Crystal Rash. Somebody has to say your names. We just did do better. A note on today's reporting. The Zachariah Rash trial in Wisconsin is ongoing. As of this recording, no verdict has been reached.

18:35 Mister Rash has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent. The defense's account that Crystal Rash's death was a self inflicted or accidental shooting, and that mister Rash's only wrongdoing was lying to others and concealing her body is the defense's theory, not established facts. The allegations regarding. His purchases, the messages, the physical evidence, and his his online searches are the prosecution's allegations to be proven at trial. Rick Chow was tried and found not guilty. He stands acquitted of all charges. The dispute between Taylor, Frankie Paul and Dakota Mortensen is a family court custody matter, not a criminal case, and both parties have accused the other of domestic abuse. Nothing in this program is a finding against either parent, and their case continues. All details are drawn from Court TV's reporting and from court proceedings, and were accurate as of recording. This program is for information and commentary only and is not legal advice.