The Text Message That Solved A Murder: The Death of Taylor Escontrias
REDRUM true crime
redrumpodcast
4.6 • 532 Ratings
🗓️ 13 November 2025
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In March 2024, police in Davenport, Iowa, discovered the brutal murder of 31-year-old mother of two, Taylor Escontrias. Hours earlier, she’d sent a text message that read: “If I get killed, it was Chris.”
Her boyfriend, Christopher Behal, had met Taylor during rehab at Country Oaks Recovery Center, where both were fighting addiction. But once outside those walls, sobriety slipped — and their relationship turned deadly.
This episode of REDRUM True Crime explores the devastating chain of events that led to Taylor’s murder, the chilling details of the crime scene, and the shocking confession that followed.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before midnight on March 13th, 2024, Taylor S. Contraea sent a text that would become the key piece of evidence in her murder case. |
| 0:10.8 | If I get killed, it was Chris. Don't reply right now. He's nuts. By the time anyone saw the messages, she had already been dead for nearly eight hours. This is Red Rum, |
| 0:23.9 | stories about the true victims of crime. I upload a video version on Mondays and a podcast |
| 0:28.9 | exclusive on Thursdays. Make sure you're subscribed so you never miss an episode. |
| 0:54.3 | It's the early hours of March 14th, 2024, 14, to be precise, and we're in Mount Joy, Iowa, as a car screeches to a devastating halt, as it crashes into a light pole near the Davenport Municipal Airport. |
| 1:02.3 | A 911 call comes in at 147 a.m. and police respond and are on scene by 155 a.m. |
| 1:07.8 | The officer who arrives first is Lieutenant Thomas Leonard. He pulls up to the crash site, |
| 1:10.8 | gets out of his car and into the pouring rain. |
| 1:17.2 | The silver impala had sustained some pretty bad damage to the front hood of the car, |
| 1:20.8 | and there was one person inside in the driver's side. |
| 1:27.2 | The man looked up towards Lieutenant Leonard as he approached, but he was a bit all over the place. It seemed maybe he'd just |
| 1:28.9 | come out of unconsciousness and had suffered some injuries to his head, so perhaps he was disorientated |
| 1:34.4 | or needed a moment to figure out what had just happened. The speed limit on this stretch of road |
| 1:40.6 | was 45 miles per hour, and if he'd been going at speed or maybe even a little |
| 1:45.0 | faster, then the impact of the crash would have been brutal, and it did seem as though |
| 1:50.3 | the man was in a very bad way. |
| 1:54.3 | Lieutenant Leonard asked what the driver's name was, and he said it was Chris. He didn't |
| 1:59.2 | give a last name, at least not initially, but the officer's looked up details of the car and said it was Chris. He didn't give a last name, at least not initially, but the officers |
| 2:02.7 | looked up details of the car and found it was registered to Mr. Behal, not Chris, but it would |
| 2:08.8 | turn out it was his dad's. But, as the officer was speaking with Chris, he began to become |
| 2:15.2 | suspicious. At first, we know he'd assumed Chris was disoriented |
| 2:19.4 | from the crash, but it began to become more and more clear that he was actually acting, |
... |
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