How could a Black girl from Wisconsin wind up being charged in the murder of a white man, one whom she considered to be the only person to care for her?
Chrystul Kizer’s nearly seven-year-long battle in the court system stems from a horrifying case of a young Black girl swept into the cycle of sexual abuse and trafficking. After seemingly coming close to freedom, she’s now facing new charges on top of murder.
This latest development is a dagger to the heart for the hundreds of thousands of supporters who see Kizer as a sex-trafficking victim who was looking for a way out of a frightening, abusive situation.
Her “Only Friend”
When Kizer was just 16-years-old, she met a white man twice her age named Randall Volar on a prostitution website called Backpage. She had been in an abusive relationship and sought everything Volar was offering: love and affection, according to a 2019 interview with The Washington Post. Unbeknownst to her, Volar was already on the radar of Kenosha investigators who launched a probe into allegations of him sexually abusing a Black girl in his home. Unfortunately, that child was only one of the few Black girls who were swept into his vile pattern of abuse prior to and during his relations with Kizer.
Kizer told The Post in exchange for sex, she was paid in hundreds of dollars, meals and gifts - all of which qualifies as child sex trafficking under Wisconsin law, according to experts.
“He was the only friend that I actually had,” she told The Post.
However, as time progressed, Volar’s gifts graduated from cupcakes and bracelets to drugs and hallucinogens. Kizer said sometimes she would respond to Volar’s Backpage ads and be driven by him to a hotel where he or other older men would perform sexual acts with her for money.
Her boyfriend, at the time, didn’t know where she’d disappear to those nights, she said.
Volar Exposed
Volar’s schemes weren’t discovered until 2018, when a 15-year-old called the police from Volar’s home saying he drugged her and tried to kill her. The cops found the girl in the street in nothing but a bra and jacket, and with dilated pupils from being pumped full of LSD. She told investigators Volar paid her for sex since she was 14, according to the Post’s report.
This prompted officers to raid his home where they found hundreds of photos and home videos showing Volar abusing Kizer and the other girls. Police say he was arrested on charges of child enticement, second-degree sexual assault of a child, and using a computer to facilitate a child sex crime. However, he was released the same day without bail.
Just over a week after his arrest, the night of June 5, 2018, he bought Kizer a cab to come to his house. She told investigators she had reached her breaking point with him. She confessed she arrived at his home with a firearm her in her purse, the same piece her boyfriend bought her. Kizer said Volar got on top of her and tried to take her jeans off but she refused.
“I told him that I never wanted to do that. He said that I had to owe him that,” Kizer told The Post.
She then reached for the gun and shot him twice in the head. Afterwards, she told the police she set his house on fire and fled in his BMW which she claimed he planned on gifting to her for her 18th birthday, per The Post.
Kizer’s Arrest
The following morning, she was arrested for Volar’s murder, theft of his car and arson of his home and charged as an adult. She was handed a bail bond set at a whopping $1 million, court records show. The case drew a national debate over what constitutes self-defense in the case of sex trafficking and sex abuse. When Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of charges in Kenosha on the basis of self-defense after firing into a crowd of Black Lives Matter demonstrators, critics questioned why Kizer wasn’t shown the same grace under the law.
A judge actually tried to silence her by barring her from raising the affirmative defense argument during trial and muzzling her from speaking about her experience being sex trafficked in front of the jury, per WISN. A state appeals court overturned the ruling but still, the case dragged on.
After two years of being in jail and tons of pressure from the public during the Black Lives Matter uprising, Kenosha County Circuit Court Judge David Wilk reduced Kizer’s bond to $400,000. By the help of local organizations and activists, she made bail and returned home with her family to wait for her next court date, per The Kenosha News. Authorities said there were conditions to her release including a requirement that she does not commit any other crimes.
However, The AP reports Kizer was charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct in a domestic violence case in Milwaukee last month. Plus, she was slammed with additional bail jumping charges from that incident.
Police say she was on the run for two weeks until they caught up to her in Louisiana this week.
Read more from The Kenosha News:
U.S. Marshal authorities arrested Chrystul Kizer, 23, in Louisiana on Monday where she was taken into custody and was being held on four counts of extradition in the Lafayette Parish Correctional Center, according to jail records. Kizer was booked at the correctional center shortly before noon Central Time Monday after spending several weeks on the run from Kenosha and Milwaukee county authorities.
Sheriff David Zoerner said late Monday that Kizer is expected to be extradited to Kenosha County to face local charges first.
In addition to murder, Kizer faces charges of taking and driving a vehicle without consent, arson of a building without the owner’s consent, bail jumping and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Her new counts include misdemeanor disorderly conduct in a domestic violence case in Milwaukee, according to court records.
Her next court appearance is scheduled for March 15. Her murder trial is scheduled for June. She’s now held in Lafayette Parish Correctional Center.