Messages app glitching and crashing after deleting large conversation

Hello, I have a very large conversation, almost 3 years worth of texts everyday, that I would like to delete. Whenever I delete it, It works fine, but then i go to check "recently deleted messages" and it is not there. After that I swipe out of the app and It does not allow me to reopen the messages app, I press the app and it just shows a black screen. The only way i found to fix this is restarting my phone, but when I restart it and open messages, the chat reappears there, undeleted. Any way to fix this and delete the chat? It takes up sooo much storage.