Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Few hold theory Crawford dropped out of sight voluntarily
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 - Wednesday, Aug. 13, 1986
When time passed following Maud Crawford’s mysterious disappearance March 2, 1957, and theories of amnesia, suicide and kidnapping for ransom were ruled out, one of the remaining three theories given serious consideration was that she had left Camden voluntarily.
“My first instinct was that Maud left the money in her purse as a decoy and that she left Clyde [her husband] and Camden,” Sarah (Mrs. F. W.) Yawn recently recalled. Yawn was an eighth-grade English teacher at the time and an acquaintance of Maud Crawford.
RECALLS CONVERSATION
Yawn spoke of a conversation she had with Crawford Thursday afternoon before Crawford disappeared Saturday night.
“She was walking the dog, and I stood on the other side of the street and talked to her for a few minutes. I was scared of the dog, so I didn’t cross to the other side,” Yawn said. “She seemed real discouraged. I always felt she was disappointed with Martha [Maud Crawford’s cousin]. She told me, ‘No one appreciates what you do.’ I said to her, ‘You’ve done so much for so many.’ She said, ‘I don’t think anybody cares.’”
CALLED BY COUSIN
There has been much debate over the years about a brief telephone conversation Maud Crawford had with her cousin, Martha Robins (Mrs. Howard) Carver, at 8:30 p.m. the night she disappeared. Carver, now of Naples, Tex., was the last person known to have talked to Crawford.
Crawford helped rear Carver and was her legal guardian. Carver, her husband, Howard, and their young son drove from DeQueen to Camden that evening and were expected by Crawford. Instead, Carver stopped at the home of a friend and telephoned Crawford to say she wouldn’t be seeing her until the next morning.
Carver recently spoke of her last conversation with Crawford. “She was expecting us that evening. I told her that we were already over there [at the home of a friend, Edna Hardin] and we were going to spend the night and come on over to her house the next morning. She sounded kind of funny to me, and I made the remark afterwards that cuddin [cousin] Maud was peeved with me because we weren’t coming over there.”
ANGER, DEPRESSION THEORIZED
Since Crawford vanished after the phone conversation, there was speculation by some that perhaps Crawford left Camden out of depression or anger in reaction to the phone call.
Clyde Crawford espoused that theory for many years. He said he believed his wife was “disappointed” by Carver, had left “in a huff,” and would return one day. He also said she was overworked and needed a rest. Too, he offered that his wife was reducing and was somewhat difficult when dieting.
SCOFFS AT NOTION
Crawford’s best friend, Ida Sullenberger, now deceased, scoffed at the notion that Maud Crawford left Camden because her feelings had been hurt by Martha Carver or for any other voluntary reason. A newspaper at the time quoted Sullenberger as saying that she couldn’t believe Crawford would want to get even with anybody or would want to worry anybody. “Maud always worried about getting home. She’d say, ‘I’m afraid Clyde will be worried about me.’”
Carver also rejected the idea. “I don’t think she would leave. She was a much more stable person than that.”
Others who knew Crawford agreed with Sullenberger and Carver.
“She wouldn’t have reacted that way,” Ida Lou Dunn (Mrs. Joe B.) Johnson said recently. Johnson was one of four young women renting rooms in the Crawford home at the time of the disappearance. “She had completely remodeled her bedroom. And she had put carpet in the hallway and in the two living rooms. She had just finished it that weekend and had hung her last two pictures. She seemed to be real pleased.”
“She didn’t leave of her own accord,” former Camden Police Chief G. B. Cole said bluntly. “There’s no doubt in my mind. She didn’t have a reason to leave Camden.” Cole said that before her disappearance Crawford invited about 30 women, including his wife, to tea at her home. “She had invited everyone to come over for a tea just after her disappearance. Nobody would ever make me believe she just up and left.”
Cole was the lead investigator on the original case.
“There is nothing to show that she planned to go away, and she wouldn’t run away from anything,” Sheriff Grover Linebarier, another investigator on the case, said in a newspaper at the time.
OTHERS NOTE HER PLANS
Others have spoken of plans that Crawford had made.
Alice Faucett (Mrs. Curtis) Nichols, a cousin of Crawford and sister of Martha Carver, was recently reached by telephone at her home at Springhill, LA. “I was there three weeks before she disappeared. She seemed happy. She was always happy with us and around the children. She was making plans for one of my daughters to come visit after school was out.”
U.S. Senator David Pryor, who grew up at Camden, recently spoke of plans his mother, Susie, had with Crawford. “Mother and Maud were going to Little Rock on Monday,” he said. “Mother called Maud on Sunday to find out if everything was set for Monday morning, and that’s when she learned that Maud was missing.”
Susie Pryor, now deceased, was concerned for many years about the disappearance of Maud Crawford. She wrote several articles about the mystery for The Ouachita County Citizen, a newspaper that Senator Pryor published before beginning his political career.
Crawford also intended to host a regional meeting of the Pilot Club, professional women’s equivalent of the Rotary Club. Several delegates were to stay at her home. Crawford had been president of the local chapter the previous year.
NOT WIDELY HELD
Nevertheless, the theory that Crawford left Camden voluntarily has persisted to the present time—although it is not widely held.
Ralph D. Scott, of Conway, a Camden FBI resident agent who did not participate in the Crawford investigation but was kept informed about the case, recently said, “It’s possible that Clyde Crawford was right all the time. She might have been shelling beans and said, “I think I will just leave… I certainly admit that it is remote in this case, but it’s possible. She could also have gotten a considerable amount of money from Rose Berg. This was one hypothesis.”
SAY BERG PUSHED MONEY THEORY
Confidential sources have said that the theft hypothesis was promoted by Mike Berg, local multi-millionaire and State Police commissioner. It has been disclosed in this series of articles that Berg was involved in a bitter controversy with Crawford over a $20 million estate belonging to his aunt, Rose Berg. Crawford was the court-appointed personal guardian for Rose Berg, as well as her friend and legal adviser.
Mike Berg, who died in 1975, reportedly raised questions about a locked metal box found in a closet at the Crawford home that belonged to Rose Berg.
Herbert C. Garner, who owned the Corner Grocery Store down the street from both Rose Berg and Maud Crawford, spoke recently about the box. “After Maud disappeared, we heard about a black box with money in it. The black box was found when Maud disappeared, but there was no money in it. The impression they [Berg] tried to leave was that money was taken by Maud because it was not in the black box.”
Chief Cole recently spoke of the box. “My first information was that it was Mrs. Berg’s, yet it was found over at Maud’s house. She was Mrs. Berg’s guardian. Some people thought Maud stole money from Mrs. Berg and left. Ed Pace would give Maud so much a month [$1,000] to take care of Mrs. Berg, and she would staple all the checks she wrote to the receipts. If there was ever such a thing as an honest person, it was Maud Crawford.”
Pace, guardian of Rose Berg’s estate, was asked about the metal box by a newspaper six months after the disappearance. “I don’t think there was any money in that box. I’ve been dealing with Mrs. Crawford a long time, and I think she was completely honest,” he said.
Pace explained that Crawford had found the box in Rose Berg’s bedroom in September 1955, and had told Pace that she was going to take it to her house and have a key made. About two weeks later, she phoned Pace that there was “just a bunch of nothing” in the box. Pace said that Crawford opened the box in the presence of the man who made the key, Ryan Condray, and that a list of its contents had been filed in court.
OTHER MIKE BERG ALLEGATIONS
Mike Berg also raised questions about another financial matter involving Crawford.
The Camden News reported April 19, a month and a half after Crawford’s disappearance that financial records once handled by Maud Crawford for a street improvement district were being audited. “The audit was requested by interests which hold bonds issued by the district,” the paper said.
According to an FBI report of April 6, “The Bergs were the bondholders.” The same FBI report indicated that the paving bond issue had a history prior to Crawford’s disappearance.
The report stated, “J. Bruce Streett, Deputy Prosecuting Attorney, in checking title on some property in this paving district, talked to Mrs. Crawford two or three weeks before her disappearance and asked her to determine the obligation of a property owner, if any, on the paving bond issue. She told him she would check the matter and advise him, but had not done so at the time of her disappearance. Streett advised that if all property owners had paid all of their bond obligations in full, the bond account should have a balance of about $5,000 plus interest, whereas the actual bank balance is only about $1,700… If recent discrepancies are found, Streett is of the opinion that this would be a good motive for planned disappearance or suicide.”
Streett had been appointed a lawyer for the Rose Berg Estate [by Mike Berg] after Maud Crawford disappeared.
When the audit was completed by W. T. Reynolds, a certified public accountant at Camden, an FBI report of June 1 said that Reynolds “told Chief Cole he had not made a report on the audit of the paving district account, but could tell him the work was completed and that the audit would not reflect a shortage.”
A subsequent FBI report of August 28 stated, “Considerable inquiry was made into financial affairs handled by Mrs. Crawford, and no reason for her disappearance could be found.”
A newspaper stated, “Mr. Pace said he was asked to have her accounts audited, including the street improvement district fund she handled, and he found no shortage anywhere.”
Pace, who was appointed guardian of Rose Berg’s estate by the Ouachita County court in 1955, was quoted as saying, “I can’t tell you what happened to Mrs. Crawford, but it was not dishonesty that caused it—I’ll say that on my dying bed. The money she spent for Mrs. Berg checked to the penny.”
Next: “Foul Play.”
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.