Cristal Taylor told The Dallas Morning News that she is pregnant with Mavericks star Dirk Nowitzki's child, that they were engaged and had set a July 18 wedding date.

Then, those dreamlike plans with Nowitzki collapsed with her arrest two weeks ago at his home.

Speaking by telephone from jail in Beaumont, Taylor said she had been unaware of the two outstanding warrants against her. She said Nowitzki knew about her past arrests, nicknaming her his "little jailbird."

She blamed Nowitzki's longtime German coach, Holger Geschwindner, for ordering a prenuptial agreement, an investigation into her past and turning Nowitzki against her.

"I've known Dirk for seven years – and, no, I didn't tell him everything about my past because I was afraid," Taylor said during a series of phone calls in which she sobbed frequently. "But, I mean, now I'm pregnant and alone and broke because he is my only source of income."

Privacy laws prevent officials from releasing medical records that would address whether Taylor is pregnant or whether she was even tested.

Attempts to reach Nowitzki and Geschwindner through the Mavericks on Tuesday were unsuccessful. Team officials declined to comment.

Taylor, 37, contacted a News reporter Monday night with the help of her mother, Shirley, who set up the three-party conversation from her St. Louis-area home. When the 10 p.m. cutoff for prisoners' phone use arrived, Taylor requested the interview continue Tuesday.

Taylor said she wanted to correct "inaccurate" media portrayals of her – in particular, she said she worked in a Beaumont gentleman's club as a waitress, not a stripper. But throughout the hourlong Tuesday interview, she left no doubt about her main motive for telling her side of the story.

"I'm actually hoping that Dirk will step forward and help, once he reads the article," she said, adding that Nowitzki has not contacted her, directly or indirectly, since her arrest. Nor was he present for her two court appearances in Beaumont.

Taylor was asked why she hasn't tried to contact Nowitzki or Mavericks officials. She said that after she was initially taken to Dallas County Jail, she realized Nowitzki had changed his phone numbers.

"Not only that, but they [the Mavericks] pretty much told him, after you guys put out all that crap on me, to just wash his hands of me – and I think he pretty much did," she said.

Team sources previously told The News that Nowitzki's own suspicion led him to question Taylor's past while allowing her to stay in his house. They said Taylor had been a divisive influence between Nowitzki and his teammates and family members.

She had first met Nowitzki by happenstance, Taylor said. Seven years ago, she said, she thought she had dialed her brother's number, but instead got Nowitzki. She said that they had spoken almost daily since, and that she had lived with him for the last two years. But Taylor said she doubts Nowitzki knows about her pregnancy.

"I didn't even know," she said. "Nobody knew until they tested me in Dallas."

She said she was referring to Dallas County Jail, where she was held for one week before her transfer last Wednesday to Beaumont, where she had an outstanding warrant stemming from a 2006 felony theft charge. She also had been wanted since 2001 on a probation violation out of the St. Louis area on felony forgery and stealing.

AP

Cristal Taylor is jailed in Beaumont, Texas.

What compelled her to get a pregnancy test at Dallas County Jail?

"Well, they always give you a test," she said. "They give you a urine test when you walk in and they give you a TB test. And the lady was like, 'Oh, so when are you due?'

"I was like, 'I don't know when the court date is due.' She was like, 'Uh, no, you're pregnant.'

"That was at intake. When I went upstairs, she said, 'I'm going to start you on these prenatal vitamins.' I was like, 'If you could just test me one more time, I just want to make sure.' "

Taylor said that the second test also came back positive, and that she has taken prenatal vitamins ever since. Asked how far along her pregnancy is, Taylor said, "I'm very pregnant, about maybe four to 41/2 weeks."

Dallas County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Kim Leach said electronic records for prisoners reflected "no notation of any special medical needs" for Taylor.

"All I can tell you is, there's no indication," she said. "But you can take that with a grain of salt, because she could be [pregnant] and it could just not be in the system because of privacy."

Staffers at Parkland Memorial Hospital, which provides the jail's health care, would have been responsible for entering the information into the electronic records, Leach said. She wouldn't be able to disclose what the medical needs were, even if they were noted, because of federal rules prohibiting the release of medical information without a patient's consent.

"Most people realize because of HIPAA nobody's really going to be able to check your records," Leach said.

Leach and Sharon Phillips, Parkland's senior vice president in charge of jail health, said pregnancy tests are not automatically given to female prisoners.

When prisoners first arrive, staff members will interview them about their medical history – looking for information on pre-existing conditions and prescriptions they're taking.

If the prisoners cannot post bond after a magistrate sets bail and they remain in custody, staffers then will conduct physical tests, Phillips said. One, detecting tuberculosis, is administered. Others would happen if staffers believed they were necessary, based on information gleaned from the initial prisoner interviews.

"It would have to be something from a history or something that would [make somebody] say, 'Oh, OK, this is the test we need to do,' " Phillips said.

Taylor said that as she and Nowitzki grew close, she had indeed filled in Nowitzki about her past. That included financial crimes that spanned more than a decade and two states. It had been previously unclear what Nowitzki knew.

She said her past did not prevent Nowitzki from buying her a Yorkshire terrier named Luna this past Christmas, or proposing on New Year's Eve.

She said he put on their favorite song, "No Air," and laid a path of rose petals to their master bathroom, where he got down on one knee. She said reports that her engagement ring was worth more than $200,000 were exaggerated.

"Probably over $150,000, though," she said. "It's in a safe-deposit box, and I can't use it or sell it. It doesn't go toward my legal fees. I wish it did."

Regarding her past relationships published in The News, Taylor said she had platonic associations with former NFL quarterback Tony Banks in 1997 and a Beaumont man named Todd Nobles, whose last name she took. She said she never consummated her 1998 to 2001 marriage to James Westerhaus.

"I want you to put this in there, real plain for Dirk," she said. "For seven years, I waited for him. No other men. And I will be happy if one would line up and say I was with them.

"I was not having a pattern of anything, except that I came into the relationship with love. I was about to sign, and would still sign, a prenup that says I get absolutely nothing, and any future children get none of Dirk's money. We get zero. Nothing."

She said she once dated a more high-profile person than Nowitzki, but said she broke it off because she didn't want the type of digging into her private life that has occurred during the last two weeks.

"What I did was not murder," she said. "But they're acting as though I had murdered someone. I am sitting here with a lady who murdered her child. I don't see her on the news.

"I'm being broadcasted [on Beaumont TV stations] like I have murdered someone's children, or they dug up bodies in our backyard or something. What I did was bad, but it was not to the extent where I'm going to lethal injection tomorrow, and that is how people are portraying me out there."

Staff writer Reese Dunklin and staff researcher Molly Motley Blythe contributed to this report.