Crawford pleads guilty to additional rapes
Former Memphis football star Xavier Crawford, currently serving a 37-year sentence with no parole for rape, pleaded guilty Tuesday to five additional felonies, including the rapes of a schoolteacher and a pregnant teenage family member.
A trial was set for Monday, and Crawford wavered when Criminal Court Judge W. Mark Ward asked him if he was pleading guilty freely and voluntarily.
“I’m being forced,” he told the judge, adding that prosecutors and “the system” were to blame. “I was put in this predicament where this (plea) would be in my best interest.”
When Ward told him he could have a trial and that he would not accept a plea that was not voluntary, Crawford, 42, said he wanted to enter his Alford plea, or best-interests plea, which allows a defendant to plead guilty while maintain- ing innocence.
“I wish to be done with the system,” said the husky Crawford, who wore a state prison blue-jean jacket and pants.
State prosecutors Karen Cook and Reginald Henderson said the plea agreement means the victims will not have to go
through trials. They said DNA evidence tied Crawford to all three rape cases.
Public defender Michael Johnson said he advised Crawford that, by agreement with prosecutors, pleading guilty would mean the new sentences — totaling 69 years — would run concurrently with the sentence he now is serving for beating and raping a 67-year-old Raleigh woman in 2009 in the 3200 block of Lakewood.
On Tuesday, Crawford pleaded guilty to aggravated rape and aggravated kidnapping in an early-morning attack on a 43-year-old schoolteacher on Nov. 4, 2004, as she entered her apartment in the 1300 block of Mossbrook Lane near Macon and Whitten.
Crawford, who has more than two dozen prior criminal convictions, also pleaded guilty to aggravated rape, aggravated robbery and aggravated burglary in an incident at the Raleigh- area condominium of former Memphis City Council member Pat Vander Schaaf, with whom he lived for a period during a stormy relationship.
On Feb. 17, 2009, Crawford raped a pregnant teenage relative, held her captive for nearly five hours and threatened to kill her with a barbecue fork, authorities said. Shortly after leaving that scene, authorities said, Crawford beat and raped the elderly woman on nearby Lakewood and then stole her car.
Crawford said in court papers last year he had used cocaine and marijuana for 10 years and that he viewed his prison sentence as “an appointment with God.” He has nine children by eight different women.
During his football career at Trezevant High School, Crawford established a Memphis record with 6,784 rushing yards, a mark later surpassed. He scored more than 500 points and was named Class 2A’s Mr. Football in 1987. He later played for the University of Memphis.