UNSOLVED - A True Crime Podcast · Kristy Kramer

Episode 21 The Murder of Erik Cross

·57 min·3 clips
Autopsy evidence showed Eric was tied to a car, dragged, and run over multiple times.
Christy Kramer opens by greeting listeners and talking about her weekend plans, including a trip to the Tulip Festival in Holland with her brother. She folds that into the way Michigan Unsolved usually begins, with a local voice centered on unsolved cases in Michigan. Before the main story, she comes back to the ALS awareness conversation from last week and to her dad’s battle with ALS. Then she turns to Eric. She frames his death around a graduation party where underage drinking was heavy and the parents of the graduate were on site and aware of it. She does not soften that part. She calls it heartbreaking and says it goes well beyond casual permissiveness. From there, she starts piecing together the night from conflicting accounts. One version says Eric and Bill were supposed to go to the party together. Another says Eric rode his motorbike toward a corner store, where friends saw him and offered him a ride. She keeps saying she does not know which version is true. That uncertainty is the point. Different witnesses are said to have given different stories. She keeps reminding listeners that stories are not the same as proof. She says there is no written proof, no video proof, and no clean factual record to fall back on for those hours. Instead, there is speculation. The names that keep surfacing are Brenton Spaulding, Amber Thomas, Bill Cook, Tim Martin, and Maybrit Spaulding. She does not treat speculation as certainty. Even so, she says it still circles those people and that Eric deserves justice. The episode ends by turning back to Eric himself and what kind of boy he was. Christy describes him as a sweet, 16-year-old boy who loved to hunt, fish, hike, be out and about, listen to music, and love his little sister. She closes by saying she hopes one day she can come back with news of arrests, because for now the case still feels open and unresolved.

As heard by us

A murky, grief-anchored account that keeps uncertainty and loss in view.

Christy Kramer keeps the episode fixed on Eric's death and the uncertainty around that night. She lays out underage drinking, shifting witness accounts, and a timeline that never quite locks into place, while still saying plainly that much of it rests on rumor or theory.

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Why you'd press play

You want Eric's case laid out with the facts, the doubt, and the human cost intact.

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