Many saw husband as ‘logical suspect’
Mystery at Camden – IX
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, Aug. 22, 1986
“There’s no doubt in my mind that there was foul play,”
G. B. Cole, former Camden police chief, said recently about the Maud Crawford case.
There were two “foul play” theories when the Ouachita County lawyer disappeared from her home March 2, 1957—either her husband killed her, or “she knew too much” about somebody’s business and they got rid of her.
An FBI report of March 6 stated that Cole considered Clyde Crawford, the husband, “the most logical suspect.”
Many people at Camden agreed. Crawford, 62, a quiet, easy-going man, was suspected of killing his wife because he had the opportunity and he was “peculiar.”
State Police investigator Buck Halsell of Dumas said in a March 13 report after the disappearance on March 2 that the “missing link in the case” might be the fact that there was “a period between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. that we only have Clyde Crawford’s word as to where he was.”
Ralph D. Scott, of Conway, was an FBI resident agent at Camden at the time. He did not investigate the disappearance because the FBI did not enter the case, a decision that Scott maintains was “proper” as there was “no legal justification for entry.” However, he was kept informed of developments.
Scott recently speculated about the opportunity Crawford had to kill his wife.
“That night was about as sorry a night as you can visualize—winter, fog, mist so heavy you could hardly see 50 feet. It was like pea soup. He had a pickup truck. There was an unaccounted-for time when he was driving around. He had the opportunity to dispose of the body without being detected. He could have pitched her in the river. Anybody could have.”
Other people suspected Crawford because he was considered unusual in many respects.
For one thing, he wasn’t the breadwinner of his family. Crawford had worked as a foreman for Camden Furniture Company in earlier years, and was fired for being unable to get satisfactory results from people who worked under him. Matthew Rothert, his employer, said recently, “He was very smart and could handle tools well, but not people.”
BECAME SELF-EMPLOYED
Thereafter, Crawford was self-employed as a floor finisher and cabinetmaker working out of a woodworking shop in a garage at the back of his home. Although his work was regarded in the Camden community as exceptional in quality, his typical income before his wife’s disappearance was less than $500 a year, according to tax returns found in personal effects inherited by Clyde Crawford’s nephew, James A. (Jimmy) Crawford, of Grapevine.
“Clyde told me that he only paid the payments on his pickup and the utilities. Maud paid all the rest,” former Sheriff Grover Linebarier, another investigator on the case, said recently.
KEPT NIGHTLY ROUTINE
Crawford also was considered unusual because he had a nightly routine that people said they could “set their watches by.” The routine included attending a movie at a local theater, the Malco, Rialto or Strand, then drinking beer and watching the late news on TV at a favorite liquor store. He would return home with a six-pack of beer to drink while he read magazines or books until he fell asleep.
The amount of beer Crawford drank raised eyebrows.
Investigator Odis A. Henley, of El Dorado, noted in a State Police report of March 15, “He drinks seven cans of beer each night before going to bed. This Saturday night, March 2, 1957, he only drank five cans.”
SEX ANGLES NOTED
The nature of the magazines and books Clyde Crawford read were considered suspect.
“Clyde had about three stacks of detective magazines with sex angles and nude pictures,” Linebarier said.
After his wife disappeared, it has been learned that Crawford asked a neighbor to keep a large framed nude photograph of Marilyn Monroe out of fear that the picture would cast him in a negative light.
Crawford’s interest in “sex angles” and nudes extended to voyeurism, according to several sources.
Mattie (Mrs. Herbert C.) Garner, who kept the Marilyn Monroe picture for Crawford said, “He knew what people hung out on their clothesline. He knew what kind of panties a woman wore.”
Many young women lived in the Crawford house over the years. During World War II, there was a shortage of furnished rooms at Camden for workingwomen, and Maud Crawford began renting upstairs bedrooms to young women. Also, she helped rear several female cousins, and they lived from time to time in the house.
One of these women said recently that she became frightened of Crawford and moved out when he became enamored of her and began “following” her everywhere she went. Another woman who lived in the house as a young girl said, “When we had all those telephone girls there, he’d stand at the bottom of the stairs and look up their dresses.”
However, a half-dozen other women who roomed at the house have said they found him “a very jovial, friendly person” and “always very nice.”
Overall, it seemed to many people that Clyde was “weird” and had likely killed his wife. On the other hand, there were reasons to discount the theory.
Investigators found that Crawford had no motive for killing his wife.
An FBI report of March 7, five days after the disappearance, said, “Clyde Crawford is still receiving attention as the prime suspect, but according to Odis A. Henley, Arkansas State Police, he would not receive substantial benefit should death be established as she only carried about $15,000 in life insurance. Crawford is the beneficiary. Henley is not aware of substantial additional assets of Mrs. Crawford… He personally does not consider Crawford a good suspect ‘because she bought him everything he wanted, and why would he kill the goose that laid the golden egg?’”
Maud and Clyde Crawford were married in 1925 when they were both in their early 30s. He had a nervous breakdown several years after the marriage, and it is said that after that she “took care of him like a baby.”
EARNED MODEST SALARY
Maud Crawford was a lawyer for the firm of Gaughan, McClellan and Laney, specializing in title opinions and estate administration. She earned only a modest salary as a lawyer—not enough for investments or savings of any consequence. Her life insurance policies were being held as collateral against personal loans, one a $7,000 loan made six months before her disappearance for restoration and refurbishing of the Crawford’s 50-year-old home.
D. W. Harrell, now deceased, owned an insurance agency and a savings and loan company and was asked by Clyde Crawford to handle his wife’s estate. An employee of Harrell said, “Maud didn’t have a nickel. We sold the boat she had given to Clyde, and sold the Mercury [her car].”
GENEROUS WITH EARNINGS
Maud Crawford was generous to her husband with what she earned.
Nine months before her disappearance, she purchased for him a large outboard motorboat with twin 30-horsepower engines.
Clyde Crawford was quoted in a newspaper, “She was always mighty good to me. I wanted a boat awful bad, and I said something about it. I had seen this boat. But I said of course we couldn’t afford it. She said, ‘I don’t know, maybe you can have the boat.’ And she figured around, and about a week later she said I could buy it.”
She also bought a GMC pickup truck for him.
Jack W. Newton sold the truck to the Crawfords. “Maud came down and looked it over. She said, ‘Would you like to have this one?’ He said ‘yes,’ and she said, ‘Go on and take it.’ She supplied the money.” Newton added, “He was harmless. Nervous. Came out of the service that way.”
FRIENDLY THOUGH DIFFERENT
It was learned that the Crawfords had a very friendly relationship despite the fact that they had few compatible interests and rarely socialized together in public.
“I never saw them do anything together, but there never seemed to be any disagreement between them,” Hazel (Mrs. Sam) Redding, a next-door neighbor to the Crawfords, said recently.
All four women who were living in the home at the time of the disappearance have been asked about the Crawfords’ relationship. Although husband and wife had slept in separate bedrooms for many years, all four women said no disagreement was ever observed during the five years one or more of them lived in the Crawford home.
Jimmy Crawford said of his uncle, “He could go fishing, drink beer whenever he wanted. She was good to him. And he loved Maud.”
A lifelong acquaintance said, “He never was a big success in the business world, but he was a good, honest person. He wouldn’t harm a fly.”
WORKED TO FIND HER
Crawford made every possible effort to find his wife.
Chief Cole said recently, “He worked as hard, I reckon, as a man could in trying to help us.”
Marjorie Laney recently recalled Crawford contacting her husband, Walter, who was a partner in the law firm where Maud Crawford worked. “Clyde called Laney Sunday morning to ask if he knew of any case she was working on that would have made her leave home.”
A next-door neighbor, Jean Dodson, was a teenager at the time. “I remember Mr. Crawford coming over the next morning about 10 or 11 o’clock and asking my father to look in the two storage buildings we had in the back.”
FBI reports indicate that Crawford made every attempt to encourage vigorous investigation of the case. March 5, three days after the disappearance, he requested that the FBI place a missing person’s notice on record and asked Walter Laney of the law firm Gaughan, McClellan and Laney that Senator John L. McClellan be called “to see if he could get the federal government to be of assistance.” Numerous references in subsequent reports reveal that Crawford maintained constant contact with all investigators and expressed “extreme interest” long after they had stopped active investigation.
QUESTIONED, EXAMINED
Crawford was questioned many times by the police, county sheriff and state detectives. He was examined by Dr. Anderson Nettleship, the state medical examiner, and was found to be “most cooperative and completely normal.”
Crawford asked to be given a lie detector test.
Henley remembers, “We gave Clyde a couple of lie detector tests, and he checked out. We checked Clyde in every way.”
CONVINCED OF INNOCENCE
All investigators who worked on the case became convinced that Clyde Crawford had nothing to do with his wife’s disappearance.
Chief Cole recalls, “At first I thought Clyde might have done it. He had all those detective stories. Those stories almost always show how the killer gets caught. I thought he might try to pull the perfect crime. But I don’t think he did it. He had everything to lose. That night [of the disappearance] my boys saw him out looking for her.”
J. T. Vaughan, one of two patrolmen who saw Clyde searching for his wife, said recently, “At first I thought Clyde might’ve done it. But I talked to him a lot of times, and he was always so upset about her being gone. I don’t think he had anything to do with it. She was so good to him. She did everything for him.”
Paul Parish, the other patrolman, stated flatly, “I know Clyde Crawford didn’t have anything to do with it. A lot of times I’d see Mr. Crawford up there at the station. He’d hear about someone and say, ‘I guess that’s my Maud.’ He always expected her to come back.”
Buck Halsell, State Police investigator who raised questions in the beginning of the case about time unaccounted for, now says, “I was convinced that Clyde didn’t do it. I don’t believe he was that kind of man. He had no history of violence.”
Sheriff Linebarier was also convinced. “To satisfy myself about Clyde, I gave a list of questions to several people. If a criminal commits a crime, he’ll mess up if questioned enough. Clyde never missed a question.” He added, “I don’t blame him for waiting to give Maud a chance to come home that night.”
‘PEOPLE WERE AFRAID’
Clyde Crawford was unable to support himself after his wife disappeared.
Mattie (Mrs. Herbert C.) Garner, who owned the Corner Grocery Store a half block from the Crawford home, said recently, “People were afraid of him, and nobody would let him in their house.”
Marie (Mrs. Lloyd R.) Good, a neighbor, recalled, “He would do floors, and he’d say that the women wouldn’t stay around unless their husbands were there. He said, ‘They think I did it.’”
A confidential source recalled a conversation Crawford had with Emmet Gaughan, a partner in his wife’s law firm. “Clyde went to Emmet’s office and broke down and cried, ‘What’s going to happen to me? I can’t work any more.’ Emmet said it was a terrible thing to happen to a person.’”
An FBI report of July 16, four and a half months after the disappearance, stated, “Clyde Crawford, husband of the missing person, obviously becomes more unstable, physically, emotionally, and mentally, with passage of time.”
ATTEMPTS CORRESPONDENCE
An FBI report two weeks later said, “Clyde Crawford is attempting to correspond with the missing person through the local Social Security Administration office. This office has advised him it will, for a $3.00 fee, attempt to cause the delivery of a letter to any person having a Social Security number. But it has been made clear to him that he will never know whether it was possible to deliver the letter.”
The letter Crawford wrote to his wife has been found in the Crawford personal effects. It was attached to an envelope with Clyde Crawford’s return address in the upper left corner, stamps not canceled in the upper right corner, and a blank space where Maud Crawford’s name and address normally would have been.
The carefully handwritten letter reads:
“Dear Maud, “Please come home. We love you and miss you so much.
“Every day someone wants to know if I have heard from you. Everyone wants you to come home.
“I have walked Dal [her dalmatian] every day as you always did up to about two weeks ago. It has been so hot he couldn’t take it. He has begun to show his age.
“I drive your car every Sunday morning to keep the battery up. The car sure drives good. Uses so little gas.
“Sam Redding is a Grandpa now. Sarah has a little girl. Kathy a little boy.
“The floor business has not been too good.
“Maud, we are all looking forward to the day you come home. Please make it soon. “Love, Clyde.”
Clyde Crawford believed his wife would come back.
‘HE KEPT WAITING’
Mattie Garner said, “He kept waiting for her to come home. He wouldn’t change the locks. He would leave the back door open. He didn’t have any money, and when he got low, he would sell off something in his shop. We bought some furniture from him. But he never changed anything in the house. The hair in her brush was still there. Her washcloth on the tub stayed there. The table cloth on the table rotted.”
Sheriff Linebarier said, “A year before Clyde died, he said to me, ‘I’ve about come to the conclusion that something did happen to Maud.’”
Clyde Crawford died June 18, 1969.
Next: “She knew too much.”
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.