The Buncombe County pretrial services worker assigned to monitor Ryan Ricky Houston, who committed one of western North Carolina’s most horrific crime sprees a year ago, was in a romantic relationship with him, according to the attorneys representing the estate of Houston’s murder victim in a federal lawsuit against the county.

Houston fatally stabbed his girlfriend, Malerie Crisp, on Aug. 1, 2024, and the next day he died in a fiery car crash that also killed the newly retired Marshall police chief. Houston was out on bond in connection with a May 2023 domestic violence episode that culminated in him shooting a Buncombe sheriff’s deputy.

In the 11 months before his deadly spree, Houston’s GPS tracker registered more than 240 alerts of possible violations of his court-ordered release, but none was reported to a judge, according to the wrongful death lawsuit filed in December on behalf of Crisp’s mother, Deborah Cauble, as estate administrator. It alleges “gross negligence” by the county and several of its employees.

Rasnelly Vargas, as Houston’s pretrial case coordinator, was responsible for reporting violations to the courts under the county’s pretrial supervision policy. 

Vargas could not be reached, and her attorney, Patrick Flanagan of Charlotte, declined comment, citing pending litigation. Vargas and the county have each argued in separate court filings that  the alleged failure to monitor Houston did not make them legally responsible for protecting Crisp and that they cannot be held liable for his crimes. 

Vargas and Houston were in a romantic relationship while he was under her supervision, Stephen Cash of Asheville, one of Cauble’s attorneys, told Asheville Watchdog.

“I don’t know how long it lasted,” Cash said. “My understanding is that Vargas would travel to Houston’s home, his residence, and would spend time there with him in a romantic nature.” 

The Watchdog independently confirmed the existence of a sexual relationship between Vargas and Houston.

Buncombe does not “have any information regarding a romantic relationship, so we wouldn’t be able to speak to that,” said county spokeswoman Lillian Govus. 

Buncombe pretrial employees “did not make home visits as a course of county business,” Govus said. “Any face-to-face check-ins were to take place in the office.” 

The county and three of the employees named in the lawsuit declined to comment.

Vargas and her supervisor, Renee Ray, both resigned a week after Crisp’s and the retired police chief’s deaths, Vargas to “pursue another opportunity,” she wrote in her resignation letter. Ray wrote that she had been planning to leave and that the “most recent situation with Ryan Houston was the final straw.”

Ray could not be reached. She should not be held personally liable “because there are no allegations that Ray played any role in Ms. Crisp’s death,” according to a motion to dismiss the case filed on behalf of her, Buncombe County and three other employees. It argues that the county and its staff cannot be held responsible for “the criminal acts of a third party.” 

Vargas is also asking for a dismissal. Her motion states that she “had no such affirmative duty” to prevent Houston’s crimes.

Neither motion directly addresses the allegation that the county failed to report any of the more than 240 GPS alerts to the courts.

The lawsuit does not mention the relationship between Houston and Vargas. “In my mind right now, it doesn’t really make a difference in terms of the county’s misconduct,” Cash said. He said he expects the county to use it as a defense.

“What I anticipate at some point the county is going to do is they’re going to throw their hands up and say, ‘Look, it was her fault. She was having this relationship,’ ” Cash said.

A separate lawsuit has been filed in Yancey County by the estate administrator for Thomas Michael Boone, the former Marshall police chief, that seeks damages for his family from Houston’s estate. 

Boone, 54 and a grandfather, had retired just two days before Houston killed him.

Crisp, 41, was a single mother of two teenage boys, a Buncombe native beloved by her family and friends.

As the one-year anniversary of their deaths approaches, a state criminal investigation of Buncombe’s pretrial services continues, and the county stopped providing electronic monitoring as of May. 

But there has yet to be a public accounting of Buncombe’s pretrial oversight of Houston. 

“We just want the truth,” said Crisp’s father, Rusty Cauble.

“It’s been a nightmare that I don’t wake up from,” said Deborah Cauble. “I don’t think a day’s gone by that I haven’t cried.”

Initially, Houston treated Crisp ‘like a queen’

In their first interview from their home in Inman, South Carolina, the Caubles said Houston and Crisp knew each other as teenagers. Both graduated from North Buncombe High School in 2001.

Crisp, known as Malerie Cauble, played basketball and was a varsity cheerleader. Houston was on the wrestling and football teams.

The two began dating around 2022. Houston had a landscaping business, Lawn-N-Order, and owned a home and several properties north of Weaverville. 

Crisp worked at the Waffle House in Weaverville, where her parents said customers and coworkers loved her. A married couple who worked with her had no car.

“She’d take them home every single afternoon for like a year,” Deborah Cauble said. “She just did things for people because she had a heart of gold.”

Crisp “saw the best in everybody,” her mother said. “Her favorite saying was, ‘Just put it in God’s hands.’ ”

Crisp and Houston were both raising teenage boys. Houston also had two younger children with his estranged second wife.

Crisp was divorced, and Houston “was good to her and treated her like a queen,” Deborah Cauble said.

When the Caubles met Houston, he “just bragged on Malerie, said he couldn’t believe what a beautiful person she was and how she took care of her kids, she didn’t have any help, and that she would work hard, and she was such a good mother,” Deborah Cauble said.

One night in May 2023, Crisp and Houston were at a friend’s house. He had been drinking.

“She said he was trying to get in touch with his kids and couldn’t, and he was upset,” Deborah Cauble said. “He said he was going to go find his kids, and she tried to stop him.”

Houston followed his estranged wife, Laura, to a male friend’s house, where he assaulted the friend, fracturing his face, and attacked a vehicle with Laura and his two children inside, Cauble’s complaint states. The next day, Houston followed Laura to the county magistrate’s office in the Buncombe jail, where she had gone to file a domestic violence complaint.

Houston confronted Laura and shot a sheriff’s deputy who attempted to intervene. The deputy returned fire, hitting Houston, who fled but was later found and arrested at Mission Hospital.

Crisp and her family were shocked at Houston’s violence, and Deborah Cauble said her daughter wanted nothing more to do with him.

But Houston found ways to call Crisp from the hospital and downplayed the shooting, Deborah Cauble said. He told her that deputies jumped him from behind as he walked away, and his gun accidentally fired, Cauble said.

“He just kept calling her and calling,” Cauble said. “Eventually, she just started helping him.”

Her husband, Rusty, said, “He should have never got out, never.”

Free on bond

Houston was charged with multiple felonies, including assault on a law enforcement officer and the attempted murder of his estranged wife.

Buncombe’s pretrial services department conducts risk assessments on arrestees in the jail to assist judges in bond decisions but did not complete one on Houston because he was in the hospital, county spokeswoman Govus said in August 2024. 

Houston’s wives had previously obtained protective orders against him, alleging he beat and threatened them, court records show. But his criminal charges, while serious, were not among those that under North Carolina law at the time required defendants to be held without bond.  A charge of attempted first-degree murder was eligible for pretrial release.

Chief District Court Judge J. Calvin Hill set Houston’s bond at $1.5 million, which was later increased to $1.6 million. Using his property as collateral, Houston was released in August 2023 with an ankle monitor that he was supposed to keep sufficiently charged so it could be tracked by a private company.

He had been out 10 hours when the battery became critically low and ultimately died. The owner of the company was not notified for several hours due to cell phone coverage issues, court documents show.

At an August 2023 bond revocation hearing before Buncombe Superior Court Judge Jacqueline Grant, Ray, Buncombe’s pretrial services supervisor, said the county’s response time was immediate.

“We have a 24-hour provider that’s watching while we’re also watching,” she said. 

Grant told The Watchdog last year she would have revoked Houston’s bond had there been a clear violation, but his device was not holding a charge properly. She allowed Houston to be released to county pretrial services on conditions that included keeping his device charged and staying at least 1,000 feet from his wife.

Over the next 11 months, Houston’s device sent 244 alerts of possible violations, including 20 for a low or critically low battery; 169 for a broken tether, meaning Houston was away from the phone connected to the device that he was required to carry; five for being in the restricted zone near his wife; and one for tampering, “SIM card removed,” according to a spreadsheet provided by the county.

The company providing real-time monitoring for the county contacted Houston when alerts came in “to ascertain compliance,” Govus told The Watchdog in August 2024. “Pretrial does not operate 24/7 so the [case] coordinator would review the situation at the first opportunity and submit a violation report to the court if warranted,” she said. 

Ray, the pretrial services supervisor, filed one violation report on behalf of Vargas in August 2023, stating Houston had been within his restricted zone. Judge Grant told The Watchdog last year that violation was found to be in error. 

Vargas filed only one other violation report, court records show, on Aug. 2, 2024. Houston had disposed of his electronic monitoring phone at 10:03 p.m. the previous night and “has not been tracked since,” the report said.

By then, Crisp was dead.

With “hundreds of violations over a year, there’s no excuse not to report at least one of those things,” said Cash, Cauble’s attorney. 

Houston turned controlling, isolating

Crisp had resumed her relationship with Houston after he was released awaiting trial. He told her his attorneys were arranging a plea deal for him to serve seven years in prison, Deborah Cauble said.

Crisp “helped him clean out his office and sell his stuff so he would have all that done by the time he went to jail,” Cauble said.

Houston also began to isolate Crisp, keeping her from her friends and sometimes preventing her from going to work, her mother said.

A few days before she was killed, a friend saw her with “a busted lip and a bruised face,” Deborah Cauble said. “She told her she was scared to death.”

The friend begged Crisp to leave, and Cauble believes she was trying but that Houston was threatening her family. Around 7:30 p.m. on Aug. 1, Crisp called her son from a convenience store near her north Asheville apartment and said she’d be home momentarily. She never arrived.

Around 10:15 p.m., a state trooper clocked Houston’s Mercedes Benz traveling more than 100 miles per hour on Interstate 40 in McDowell County. Minutes later, the car collided with a truck and landed on its side on an embankment.

An injured Crisp cried out for help, and as the trooper rendered aid, Houston fled. In an ambulance, paramedics discovered Crisp had been stabbed in the chest; she was pronounced dead at a local hospital less than an hour later.

Authorities found empty alcohol bottles and a large knife in Houston’s car, according to Cauble’s lawsuit.

Cauble’s attorneys said Houston stabbed Crisp after the crash. Crisp would not likely have been able to communicate at the scene as she did had she been injured earlier, they said.

“It looks like this accident happened, and either to make her be quiet or whatever’s going on in his mind, he stabbed her and fled,” Cash said.

Houston then broke into a residence in Old Fort, assaulted the homeowner, and stole a vehicle. He stole another vehicle from a boat dealer and traveled to Arden, where he took a Jaguar from a doctor he knew, court records show.

Around 11 p.m. on Aug. 2, Houston was driving the Jaguar 90 mph the wrong way on Interstate 26 near Mars Hill when he collided head-on with a truck driven by Boone, the retired Marshall police chief. Both vehicles burst into flames.

Aftermath: lawsuits, investigations, shattered lives

Cauble’s lawsuit alleges Buncombe County failed to train or supervise its pretrial service workers and that the entire program was “a complete failure.” Besides the county, it individually names Vargas; Ray; Cindy Green, the pretrial program manager; Tiffany Iheanacho, former justice services director; and Avril Pinder, county manager.

The motion to dismiss filed on behalf of the county, Ray, Green, Iheanacho and Pinder states, “Nowhere does the Complaint detail how Buncombe County’s training was deficient.”

Cauble “seeks to hold Defendants liable for Mr. Houston’s criminal acts,” it states. “She believes that because they were charged with monitoring him while he was on pretrial release Defendants had an affirmative duty to control him. That’s wrong.” 

Iheanacho declined to comment, as did Pinder and Green through the county spokeswoman.

The lawsuit seeks damages in excess of $75,000, attorney’s fees and compensation, including for Crisp’s funeral expenses and loss of income.

Boone’s claim, filed in Yancey County where he lived, seeks similar compensation from Houston’s estate for his wife, daughter and son. Cauble has also filed a claim against Houston’s estate, which is asking the court to determine what damages, if any, are owed.

The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation continues to investigate Buncombe’s pretrial services office, said spokesman Chad Flowers. He said Buncombe District Attorney Todd Williams requested the investigation in August.

Williams asked in an April 23 letter for assistance from the North Carolina attorney general regarding “former Buncombe County Pretrial Services Coordinator Rasnelly Vargas amid an ongoing investigation into events involving” her, Houston and Crisp. Williams cited potential conflicts of interest “and the need for an impartial review and potential prosecution in this matter.”

“Given the obvious gravity of the situation and the public interest in ensuring a fair and unbiased investigation, it is imperative to involve an external prosecutor,” Williams wrote.

Attorney General Jeff Jackson’s office has assumed responsibility for the investigation. “We are involved,” said his press secretary, Ben Conroy, who declined further comment because the investigation is ongoing.

In November, another man on pretrial release in Buncombe was charged with killing his girlfriend. Darren Clayton had been arrested on charges that included assaulting the girlfriend a week earlier and was released on $25,000 bond. He should also have had a $70,000 bond for a pretrial violation but “the necessary paperwork did not get forwarded to the magistrate’s office” by the case manager, a judge wrote in a court order.

Buncombe’s pretrial services stopped accepting new defendants Jan. 24 and resumed admissions May 21, Govus said. 

New guidelines for pretrial services took effect that day. The county will no longer provide electronic monitoring. 

Judges can still order monitoring for defendants charged with domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking crimes through a state-funded private contractor. That program will be “solely responsible for handling any noncompliance issues…to include notifying the courts,” according to the Pretrial Support Services Program handbook.

Cauble’s lawsuit alleges pretrial services had been functioning with “no review or oversight provisions to ensure accountability.”

“The lack of meaningful supervision,” the complaint said, “emboldened and encouraged Houston to continue his violent conduct and to believe that he was above the reach of the law.”

In its motion to dismiss, the county said that Cauble’s complaint failed to show “a ‘widespread’ practice of ignoring violations of pretrial conditions.”

“Plaintiff has only alleged that Defendants failed to report the violation alerts from one supervisee’s, Mr. Houston’s, electronic monitoring device,” the motion states. “Simply put, this was an isolated event.” 

Cauble told The Watchdog, “I understand how some things can get overlooked, a few things maybe, we’re all human, but there were so many things that should have never happened that way.”

Crisp’s boys, now 19 and 15, live with their father in Weaverville. “They’re doing okay,” Cauble said. “I know they have their moments.”

Cauble leans on her faith. 

“Malerie was a Christian, and I know she’s with Jesus, and that’s the only thing that gets me through this,” she said through tears. “I just don’t want this to ever happen to anybody else.” 

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Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. Sally Kestin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter. Email skestin@avlwatchdog.org. The Watchdog’s reporting is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.

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