I had a problem where one of my models would cause a crash. Removing the model solved the problem, but the model opened in MED just fine, and it did not cause a crash when running the game through WED. So could this be a symptom of another problem, like memory leak, or some other corrupted file?

Do the damaged textures work in WED? Or is what you're describing only a problem in the published version?

See my games here: https://www.indiedb.com/company/michael-klaus-schmidt