Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Early theories of suicide, kidnapping, amnesia rejected 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 - Monday, Aug. 11, 1986
Because no clues were found when Maud Crawford disappeared from her stately colonial home on a rainy Saturday night in 1957, law enforcement officers and Camden towns-people were forced to turn to logic in an attempt to deduce what might have happened to her.
Sherlock Holmes never faced a greater challenge.
The St. Louis Post- Dispatch mused, “How could a middle-aged, respected and respectable woman, who had worked for years in a town where virtually everyone knew her and where she was universally liked and admired, suddenly vanish as though she had never existed?”
The Camden News concurred, “It is the most baffling case in Camden history. If there was foul play, then some evidence must be found. If it had been abduction, then some note or telephone call or message would have come by now, officers said. If it is an amnesia case, then it may be days or even weeks before any word may be heard, they contended.”
Based on the intriguing circumstances of Crawford’s disappearance and her last known actions, six main theories were put forth: Amnesia, suicide, kidnap, she walked away voluntarily, her husband killed her, or she “knew too much” about somebody’s business, and they got rid of her.
The first three theories were early considerations.
AMNESIA
A State Police report of March 29, three weeks after Crawford’s disappearance, stated that Walter Laney, a partner in the Gaughan, McClellan and Laney law firm where Crawford was an associate, was “unable to give any logical reason for Mrs. Crawford’s disappearance unless she was in a confused state of mind. He also stated that this was extremely possible due to the fact that Mrs. Crawford had always been considered a brilliant woman and this type of illness does take place in a person with a mind of this type.”
“Laney really thought she had amnesia,” his widow, Marjorie Laney, said recently. “For a long time he wouldn’t give up that they would find her. He spent a lot of time and effort and calls for years trying to get some kind of lead.”
Wide publicity was given to the case, and Maud Crawford’s picture was circulated throughout the country. Crawford, 65, was 5 feet, 4 inches tall, stout and had distinctive features. She was not a person who could be mistaken easily for someone else. Nevertheless, there were several mistaken identity reports after the disappearance.
In a hotel coffee shop at Pine Bluff, a woman approached a man who previously had seen Maud Crawford but didn’t know her. The woman asked about a train to Memphis. When the man learned of the disappearance, he reported the incident and stated that he was quite certain the woman who approached him was Crawford.
The lead was checked out at Memphis, and a train conductor and the managers of two different hotels identified a photograph of Maud Crawford as a woman they had seen. Moreover, it was said that the woman wore glasses, a brown coat of the type that had been reported missing from Crawford’s house when she disappeared, and a shoulder bag of the type Crawford was known to carry. When the woman was found, however, she was a transient prostitute and not Maud Crawford.
A United Press telephoto appeared in the Arkansas Gazette showing a woman with a build and resemblance similar to that of Maud Crawford. The woman was shown in the photograph dropping a World Series ticket order into a Milwaukee mailbox. Many people at Camden were convinced the woman in the picture was Maud Crawford. Clyde Crawford agreed and confirmed that his wife was an avid World Series fan. However, the woman called the Milwaukee police and identified herself. She was not Maud Crawford.
After time passed and there was no substance to any report of Crawford’s whereabouts, the amnesia theory was dismissed.
SUICIDE
Crawford’s physician, Dr. R. B. Robins, now deceased, said he didn’t believe she could have committed suicide. “She was a very stable woman. There were no signs of a breakdown. I knew her to be in good health. She was a little heavy, so I gave her a diet list and prescribed some pills to cut her appetite down.”
Her friends and associates concurred that it was extremely unlikely Crawford would have taken her life through despondency. “She was not the type,” everyone agreed. She was a highly efficient lawyer, the first woman lawyer in southeastern Arkansas. She was the first woman to be elected to the Camden City Council. She had been president of every organization at Camden to which she was eligible for membership.
Sheriff Grover Linebarier, one of the three investigators who worked on the original case, had known Crawford since she first came to Camden in 1916. He was quoted as saying at the time, “If you knew Maud like I do, you couldn’t find any reason for suicide. Besides, it would be pretty hard to kill yourself, and then dispose of your body so it wouldn’t be found.”
Nevertheless, some promoted the suicide theory.
An FBI report of March 9, one week after Crawford’s disappearance, stated, “Deputy Prosecuting Attorney J. Bruce Streett held a conference. It was decided to concentrate on a suicide angle. Facts developed by Streett indicate that Mrs. Crawford may have been in financial strain. Her financial affairs will be analyzed.”
Crawford’s financial situation was thoroughly investigated. Her annual income from Gaughan, McClellan and Laney was $7,500. Her fees as Rose Berg’s personal guardian totaled $4,000 a year. She received some $1,500 annually in oil and gas royalties. Her income was surprisingly low for a lawyer, even by 1950s standards. Her husband, Clyde Crawford, earned less than $500 a year as a floor finisher and cabinetmaker.
However, it also was learned that the Crawfords didn’t spend money excessively. October 3, 1956, six months before her disappearance, Maud secured a $7,000 loan from People’s Savings and Loan Association at Little Rock for the purpose of remodeling and redecorating the Crawford’s 50-year-old colonial home. The payments on the loan were a mere $78 a month, and it was found that the Crawfords had no other outstanding debts or bills.
After no motive for suicide could be established, the theory was discarded.
KIDNAPPED
When Crawford disappeared, an immediate thought by many was that she might have been seized as a hostage by mobsters under attack by the Senate Labor Rackets Committee headed by Senator John L. McClellan, an inactive partner in the law firm for which Crawford had worked for 41 years.
March 5, three days after the disappearance, McClellan told reporters he knew of no reason to suppose Crawford’s disappearance was connected with his Committee’s investigation.
Sheriff Linebarier recently talked about the McClellan angle. “Senator McClellan said nobody would have gotten her to get at him because they couldn’t get to him. ‘They wouldn’t dare touch her or me either,’ he told me.”
“Some thought gangsters took her because he had stepped on their toes,” G. B. Cole recalls. Cole was Camden’s police chief at the time of the disappearance and lead investigator on the case. He added, “It was never verified that Maud was working on anything for McClellan.”
NO COMMUNICATION FOUND
A recent examination of McClellan’s correspondence for five years before Crawford’s disappearance, found in the McClellan Research Collection at Ouachita Baptist University at Arkadelphia, revealed no communication of any kind between Crawford and McClellan.
Federal Judge Oren Harris of El Dorado, who at the time was a United States congressman and a close friend of McClellan, discussed the case recently. “I’m sure he had no contact with Maud Crawford after he went to Washington because it developed in the campaign of 1942 that he was a partner of that law firm [Gaughan, McClellan and Laney]. Then the press took it up. They were trying to make an issue that he was passing on legislation in Washington that might affect that law firm. They tried to make an issue that he was still a member of the law firm and was receiving benefits. He went out of his way to avoid anything that would feed that rumor.”
That Crawford was doing no work for McClellan before her disappearance has been verified recently by Margie Nicholson of Arlington, Va., McClellan’s executive secretary from 1943 until his death in 1977. The senator’s widow, Norma McClellan, of Goldsboro, N.C, has also verified it.
Abduction was ruled out when no connection could be found between McClellan’s work and Maud Crawford, and time passed without a ransom note or telephone call.
Next: Left Voluntarily?
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.