Army Sgt. Crystal Ragin, who was stationed at Fort Eustis and was killed along with three of her children in a 2011 quadruple homicide
e challenged herself as a mother, wife and soldier in the U.S. Army. Just before her life was brutally cut short in 2011, she had been selected to attend drill sergeant school.
"She went into the service when she came out school," Crystal's mother, Linda Wilson Franklin, told the Daily Press in 2012. "I was crying. I was begging her not to go. But she said, 'I'm going to make a better way for all of us.'"
Franklin, who died in late February, added: "I never understood what she meant by that. But I think I do today."
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Growing up in modest means in Bishopville, S.C., Crystal saw the Army as a way to attain a good life for her family. Fellow soldiers at Fort Eustis called her a natural leader who was at once motherly, stern and fair. Friends say she loved her family, and would challenge herself to improve.
"Crystal was always concerned about her kids, always making sure they were learning what they needed to learn, and being who they needed to be," said Army Staff Sgt. Willie Hillman Jr., a friend, supervisor and fellow soldier. "She was always trying to make her family a better family."
Crystal and her children moved to Newport News in 2005, when Crystal was stationed at Fort Eustis.
By August 2011, Crystal's daughter, Sierra, 15, had finished Dozier Middle School, and was entering Woodside High School.
La'Kwan, 11 — who enjoyed playing video games — had just completed Greenwood Elementary School and was entering Dozier. Rasheed, 6, had just completed first grade at Greenwood and was entering the second.
I'Kaos, then 5, was the only biological child between Crystal and the man she married in 2006, John Moses Ragin.
The family lived for a time in an apartment on Lafayette Drive, and later moved to the Forrest Pines Apartments & Town Homes, off Warwick Boulevard in Denbigh.
John Ragin took care of the kids while Crystal was deployed twice to Iraq — one of those stints for 15 months. And he paid her close attention.
She fibbed about how she and John met. Friends said Crystal told them she met John when they were both correctional officers in a South Carolina prison. In fact, Ragin was a prison inmate, serving a 15-year manslaughter sentence for killing his childhood best friend.
But at times, Hillman said, Ragin's attentiveness crossed the line into being "jealous and controlling," particularly when it came to Crystal's male co-workers in the Army. Ragin, he said, didn't understand the Army "is like a family."
On Aug. 19, 2011, Crystal, 32, and Sierra, La'Kwan and Rasheed were found dead in the family's town home, stabbed a total of 74 times, with the home then set on fire. I'Kaos was with his father when he was arrested in South Carolina the next day.
On Thursday, a jury convicted Ragin, 38, of nine offenses, including three counts of capital murder. A jury will now decide whether he should get the death penalty.
The early years
Crystal Delaine Wilson, as she was then known, moved with her mother from Michigan to South Carolina when she was entering kindergarten.
Shamva Wright, 34, of New York, was a lifelong friend, having grown up with Crystal in Bishopville. Their mothers also became good friends. Wright's mother, a seamstress, recruited Crystal's mother to be a seamstress, too.
At Bishopville High School, Crystal joined the Army ROTC program, was in the drama club, and loved to read. "She loved school," Wright said. "She was a very quiet and reserved, very humbled, and she was just sweet."
They had fun times, Wright said. "We would drive around, go to the beach, and do things that kids do," Wright said. Crystal had a boyfriend, Mike Burton, and gave birth to her first child, Sierra, when she was 17. "That was her baby," Wright said of Sierra.
After high school graduation, Crystal married Burton and joined the Army Reserves, while Wright went to college. "But I could always call her, and she would be there," Wright said. "We would talk about girl stuff, problems with boyfriends all the time."
Later, Crystal got a job as a corrections officer at a South Carolina prison, where she met John Ragin.
Joining the Army
After about seven years as an Army reservist, Crystal moved to active duty in 2004 and was sent to Fort Eustis in early 2005. Meantime, the Burtons had two more children, La'Kwan and Rasheed, before their marriage fell apart.
John got out of prison in 2005, with Crystal going to pick him up. They got married in June 2006, with their Ragin tattooing "Crystal" and their wedding date on his arm. And at Fort Eustis, soldiers said Crystal was an exceptional leader.
Staff Sgt. Gregory Zysk said that if Crystal had an issue with a soldier under her, she would find a way to handle the issue herself. "She had a natural ability to lead soldiers," Zysk said. "She truly cared about the soldiers and their families."
She also seemed to have "a perfect balance" between work and family, Zysk said. "She said the love for her family made her a better leader, and the drive at work made her a better mother."
Sgt. Robert Hendricks said he'd sometimes talk to Crystal about his personal goals, such as getting an education, and she was always encouraging. "She was stern but fair," he said. "She mothered her soldiers. That's what stands out …She was good at balancing both the nurturing and leading parts of what the job requires."
Hillman added: "She was never late to work. You didn't have to check behind her to make sure she was doing what she was supposed to be doing … If I could have 10 Crystals on my team, I had a good team."
Tours of duty
She served two tours of duty in Iraq. The first tour, for 15 months, began in 2006, when her youngest son, I'Kaos, was only 7 months old. Her second tour was for nine months in 2009 to 2010. In Iraq, Crystal worked at a shipping container yard, keeping track of the steel boxes transferring in and out.
For both tours, John stayed home with the kids.
For the first tour, Crystal would "be on the phone with Mr. Ragin every day of the week" from Iraq, Hillman said. If people questioned her on why her husband wasn't working, she would respond that his staying home made sense for the family because of the high cost of day care.
Early in the marriage, Hillman said, Crystal liked the close attention from Ragin, which was different from her prior relationship.
"At first it was cool," he said. "Here's someone who wants to go with you everywhere, to be with you … It seemed like he was a guy who wanted to be around his wife, someone who did what a husband should do for a wife."
On one of Crystal's returns from deployment, John welcomed her "with a big poster and a vase of flowers."
She'd call him often, saying he'd get "mad" if she didn't, Hillman said. She made some changes for him, such as swearing off meat. And if there was a problem in the marriage, she'd look inward and think of ways to do things differently, Hillman said.
She did that with her kids, too. When Sierra was held back in the second grade, Hillman said, she blamed herself, and made some changes.
Jealousy
But it soon became clear, Hillman said, that Ragin couldn't contain his jealousy about other men.
"She could not go anywhere by herself," he said. "Not one time would you see them apart. At first, it was cool. After a while, that can be very stressful. After a while, it was like, hold on now … He was a very jealous, controlling type of individual."
Over the years, Hillman said, Ragin confronted several men about suspected relationships with Crystal. He would often answer her cell phone. Once, Hillman said, Ragin confronted Hillman at a store on the military base and knocked the sunglasses off his face. Ragin apologized when the men ran into each other about a year later.
Hillman said he and Crystal were close friends, but only friends. They worked together closely, he said, and Crystal introduced him to reading. "She loved to read," he said. "Before I met her, I wasn't a true believer about reading. I would say, 'Why are you reading all the time?' She started me reading. We would read and we would share."
But Ragin "didn't like our closeness," Hillman said. "He felt that me and her had a relationship going that we didn't." Ragin even went to the base commanders and lodged a complaint about him, and they ended up making a shift in supervisors to keep the peace.
The second deployment to Iraq, Hillman said, became for Crystal a break from that jealousy.
Meantime, the Ragins' relationship was rocky in other ways, court records show. Ragin and Crystal both lodged various assault complaints about each other to police or at the magistrate's office. They also had both taken out protective orders on each other, including one Crystal was granted the day before she was found dead.
Ragin was nothing if not persistent, Hillman said. "If anything was wrong with Crystal," he said, Ragin wasn't afraid to go to Army higher-ups.
When the Army got her a flight out the day after she completed an out-of-state training course, Ragin saw to it that the Army changed her flight so she could fly out the same day.
On a rare four-day break in a deployment, a group of soldiers were given a pass to relax in Qatar. But Crystal didn't want to go, Hillman said. So Ragin "called generals, he called sergeant majors, and guess what? She didn't have to go," Hillman said.
Weeks before the family was slain, Wright, Crystal's childhood friend, spoke with her about coming to Newport News for a visit. During the discussion, Crystal didn't mention anything unusual about her husband, she said.
Hillman said he found John Ragin's reaction when told his family was found dead — calling police from South Carolina rather than racing back to Newport News — was out of character, Hillman said. The normal Ragin, he said, "would have been back on 95 North, burning that road up."
Ragin didn't return to Virginia until police arrested him the next day and had him extradited back to Newport News. The family's youngest son, I'Kaos, is living with his maternal relatives in South Carolina.
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