Estate surfaces as issue in Crawford case
Editor’s Note: Camden attorney and civic leader Maud Crawford vanished March 2, 1957. Her disappearance has been researched for decades by Beth Brickell, a filmmaker and former reporter who grew up in the Ouachita County city.
From July to December 1986, the Arkansas Gazette ran “Mystery at Camden,” an 18-part series by Brickell about the mystery. The series was slightly edited and compiled into a book, “The Disappearance of Maud Crawford.” Its chapters are reprinted with permission starting June 19 on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
ARKANSAS GAZETTE Friday, July 25, 1986
CAMDEN – The most widely publicized mystery in the state of Arkansas is the disappearance of Maud Crawford from her Camden home Saturday night, March 2, 1957.
Crawford, 65, was a civic leader and highly respected lawyer for 41 years in a prominent Ouachita County law firm in which U.S. Senator John L. McClellan was an inactive partner.
She was a stable, responsible person and there seemed to be no reason for her to vanish of her own volition. She was well liked in the community, having been the only woman ever elected to the Camden City Council. There appeared to be no motive for foul play.
Now, 29 years later, it has been discovered that a multimillion-dollar estate was a hotly contested issue in Crawford’s professional and private affairs prior to her disappearance.
Numerous interviews and records in the Ouachita County Courthouse reveal that Crawford was involved in a complex and bitter controversy with Henry Myar (Mike) Berg, now deceased, a member of the Arkansas State Police commission at the time. He was appointed in 1955 by then-Governor Orval E. Faubus and remained a commissioner until shortly before his death in 1975.
WORTH $20 MILLION
The dispute arose from an estate that belonged to his aunt, Rose Berg. The estate, consisting of vast land holdings, oil and timber, stocks and bonds, was worth an estimated $20 million ($164 million in 2012 dollars).
Sources who were close to the situation at the time say Berg believed he was entitled to the fortune because his father and uncle were partners in a joint venture, called Berg Brothers. Crawford was Rose Berg’s legal adviser, close friend and across-the-street neighbor.
Rose Berg and her husband Henry Lyon Berg had no children. When Henry died in 1950, he owned thousands of acres of land, city properties, millions of dollars worth of blue chip stocks and bonds, and interest in over 150 producing oil wells.
His will, witnessed by Crawford and reportedly drawn up by her, left three-quarters interest in his assets to his wife, Rose, and one-quarter interest to his nephew, Mike Berg.
The will named Rose Berg co-executor of the estate with George Bowers, an accountant and protégé of Henry Berg who had managed assets for both Henry Berg and Mike Berg since 1939.
Rose Berg was 70 when her husband died. Since she had no children and was in poor health, the question arose as to who would inherit her interest in her husband’s estate, worth about $15 million, as well as assets of an estate in her own name, worth $5 million.
SAY WILL LEFT
Several sources say Rose Berg left a will, although it cannot now be found, that named three nieces on her side of the family to inherit her assets. Two of the nieces, Jeanette Simpson and Marian Peltason, lived in California. The third, Lucille Glazer, lived in Michigan at the time.
Rose Berg’s only relative living at Camden, Mike Berg, reportedly was not mentioned in the will, even for a nominal gift. Apparently Rose and Henry intended for their nephew to receive a one-quarter share when Henry died, and the three nieces to receive a one quarter each when Rose died.
If Rose Berg’s will had been allowed to stand, not only would Mike Berg have lost the three-quarter interest in his uncle’s estate that would go to Rose Berg’s nieces, but management of his previous inheritance, the one-quarter interest when his uncle died, would have been complicated by having to share ownership with outof-state relatives.
Sources say the situation was unacceptable to Mike Berg.
Stanley R. Peltason, husband of Marian Peltason, now deceased, recently was interviewed about the will at his home at Santa Barbara, Calif.
“You have to go back all the way to the Depression years when Mike’s father, Leo Berg, and Henry Berg were partners,” Peltason said. “They had holdings all over the state of Arkansas. Mike always contended that it was his father that saved the partnership, and although Mike inherited one quarter of what Henry Berg left when he died, Mike told me, ‘I think I should be entitled to all of Henry’s estate and by God I’m going to get it.”
Rose Berg’s three nieces had unsigned copies of her will. Signed copies were reportedly in Rose’s safety deposit box at a bank at Camden, with George Bowers in the Berg business office, and with Maud Crawford.
VANISHED WITH LAWYER
All signed copies of the will disappeared when Crawford vanished, and the nieces were unable to prove that one had ever existed.
Lucille Glazer, one of the three nieces who were to have inherited the estate, recently spoke in a phone interview from Sarasota, Fla., about the will.
“Aunt Rose had made a will with Maud Crawford. At one time, we had a copy of it. Aunt Rose gave it to my mother [Rose Berg’s sister]. It left the estate entirely to Jeanette, Marian and me,” she said.
Peltason also spoke of the will. “George Bowers had a signed copy in the Berg office and showed it to Jeanette. She had left everything to Jeanette, Lucille, and my wife. She passed up the other part of the family.”
He added, “Another copy was always in Rose Berg’s safety deposit box. Then, all of a sudden, there’s no will in there.”
The existence of a will leaving the estate to the nieces was confirmed in an interview in December with George Bowers, Mike Berg’s accountant and co-executor with Rose Berg of Henry Berg’s estate. Bowers, who was ill at the time in a nursing home in Virginia, died three weeks after the interview.
LOST MENTAL COMPETENCE
The will became critically important to the question of the inheritance of Rose Berg’s estate because she became mentally incompetent years before her death in 1962.
Several people who were close to Mrs. Berg said she began to show signs of mental incompetence in the 1940s. By 1954, she required round-the-clock nursing care. Dr. Tom J. Meek, a Camden physician who examined her in 1955, said recently, “She just couldn’t remember anything, I would say almost like someone with Alzheimer’s disease. Of course, we didn’t know anything about Alzheimer’s disease then.”
He said she could not carry on a coherent conversation. “She just couldn’t cogitate very well.”
In addition to her mental condition, it is said Rose Berg knew little of her husband’s business affairs and was not qualified to manage them. She relied heavily on Maud Crawford.
Evidence indicates that Crawford, widely regarded as the best title and abstract lawyer in Ouachita County, as well as an expert in estate administration, considered her responsibilities to include the protection of Rose Berg’s nieces’ interest in the estate.
Sources say George Bowers, co-executor of Henry Berg’s estate, and Thomas Gaughan, a partner in the law firm where Crawford worked had a close working relationship with Mike Berg. Gaughan was a long-time attorney for Berg and Bowers a long-time accountant for Berg. The sources say both Gaughan and Bowers were sympathetic to Berg’s desire to acquire his aunt’s estate.
GRAVE COMPLICATION
Gaughan’s involvement presented a grave complication for Crawford. Not only was he Crawford’s employer, but ethics prohibited Crawford from taking action against a client of her firm—Mike Berg—and any informal actions had to be discreet. Thus, the feud was not common knowledge in Camden at the time.
Interviews of family members and participants in the feud indicate that Crawford was passionately dedicated to the rights of the nieces and that she was actively involved in an attempt to thwart Berg. The nieces were former residents of Camden and Crawford knew them well.
TRADE ACCUSATIONS
Accusations of thievery flew back and forth. There were reports of negotiable bonds disappearing from Rose Berg’s safety deposit box. There were claims of Mrs. Berg’s oil royalty checks being cashed, and of stocks being taken from her safety deposit box.
Louise Gaughan, widow of Thomas Gaughan, was told by her husband that Berg removed a number of Rose Berg’s bonds from her safety deposit box.
“Mike moved some bonds out of Rose’s safety deposit box and told Thomas about it,” Gaughan said. “Thomas said, ‘My God, Mike, if you don’t get those bonds back in the bank by tomorrow morning when the bank opens you’re going to go to prison.’ It took Thomas two hours to make him realize it,” she said.
DEEDS CONVEYED
Finally, three deeds were drawn up that simply conveyed the bulk of Rose Berg’s assets to Mike Berg. One deed was dated 1951 but was not publicly recorded until 1954. With a single shaky signature, Rose Berg conveyed 21,211 acres of land, much of it valuable oil properties and city real estate, to Mike Berg. It was notarized by Mike Berg’s bookkeeper, Cameron Allen, now deceased.
The question raised by relatives was whether Rose Berg knew what she was doing when she signed the deed. Shortly after the deed was made public, Sam Schleifer, son-in-law one of the nieces, discovered the deed.
“It came as a shock that time when I checked with the courthouse and found that it had all been transferred,” he said recently at his home at Ventura, Cal. “Aunt Rose was incompetent. She did whatever you told her to do.”
To help them in their fight, the nieces had only one ally in Camden—Maud Crawford.
Next: The battle escalates.
Beth Brickell recently published “Solving the Maud Crawford Puzzle,” her fourth work on the mystery.The other titles are “The Disappearance of Maud Crawford,” “In Their Own Voice: Interviews from the Maud Crawford Investigation,” and “Most Credible Conclusions from the Maud Crawford Interviews.” The books are available at luminousfilms.net.