Jurak;
That sounds more like the weight bug than being due to item editing.
weight bug and disappearing chests


Stoney;
Another workaround could be to kill the two guards with an area effect spell which does not need a target (so you do not loose reputation), such as Poison Cloud.

I'm not sure what the problem is... maybe a corrupt dialog file? Do you have any recent or older saves you can re-load and see if the problem exists there as well?

Did you re-set the configuration at least once after crashing? With the 1.34 patch that would delete the files in the dynamics folder, eliminating one possible (though not common) source of strange glitches.

Troubleshooting Tips (& manual install procedure)