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Hey everybody, welcome back to our podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Peyton Moreland. And I'm Garrett Moreland. And he's the husband. And I'm the husband. You guys, you know what? If you're listening to this podcast right now and you love it, or even if you just like it, please go leave us a review. It helps us out so much. We haven't said that in a while, so I thought I'd throw it in there. Okay, you guys, we have something that we finally are able to share with you and we've been so excited. We have something that we finally are able to share with you.
we have launched something called Worlds, and it's basically a Murder With My Husband online world that you can get on with your avatar and hang out with other listeners. Peyton and I are actually going to be jumping in there, here and there, saying hi to everyone, talking to everybody, and it's been really fun. It was such a long process building the world. We were so picky about how we did it. We wanted it to encompass all of everything Murder With My Husband is, and I think we were able to achieve it.
We're going to leave the link below in the description. Please, if you want to just go and sign up, go and check it out, go and see what it's all about. We're really excited to get this going. We really just wanted a place for all of our community to go and actually meet virtually and be friends. And so that's kind of why we created this. We're actually going to be in there at 7 p.m. Mountain Standard Time, 6 p.m. Pacific Time and 9 p.m. Eastern Time.
So join, come in and hang out. It's going to be so fun. We're going to hop right into the case. Real quick for my 10 seconds. Peyton and I just were in Idaho for Halloween. Other than that, I don't have too much going on. So let's get right into it. All right. Our case sources are Just Another Indian, A Serial Killer, and Canada's Indifference, a book by Warren Golding, Saskatoon Star Phoenix, EagleFeatherNews.com, Edmontonsun.com, Murderpedia.com, SerialKillerCalendar.com, TheGlobeAndMail.com, and Wikipedia.
Today we are beginning our bonus case in a different way. I want to start way back in 1962 when the suspect in our crimes today was born. His name, John Martin Crawford, was born on March 29th, 1962 in Manitoba, Canada to 21-year-old single mother Victoria Crawford. To
Two years later, his mother married his stepfather, Al Crawford, and together the couple had a son who would be Crawford's stepbrother. The Crawford family moved to Vancouver, and they had a daughter in 1967 when Crawford, our suspect, was just five years old. The father, Al Crawford, was an alcoholic gambling taxi driver, and mother, Victoria Crawford, was reportedly addicted to playing bingo, which, I mean...
Of all addictions, bingo is not too bad. You know, I've always thought about if I'm going to be that person when I hit a certain age, I'm just going to be playing bingo all day. Are you? I don't know. We'll see when we get there. We'll find out.
John Crawford's home life was reportedly abusive and an unstable home. Crawford was badly injured when he was just four years old. He suffered burns on his body from playing with a cigarette lighter. Burns bad enough that he had to spend several days in the hospital. After this, he was teased by other children for the resulting scarring on his body. He was also reportedly molested when he was four years old and at seven years old again, but I don't know who the perpetrator was. This was just reported in multiple sources. Crawford was also reportedly molested
Crawford was labeled as a child with low intelligence and was shuffled around to different schools and psychologists. He failed out of the first grade, which honestly I didn't even know was possible. His academic problems persisted as he got older and he also had behavioral problems at school.
Crawford reportedly ran away repeatedly, starting when he was three years old. And law enforcement was called out to the house many times to deal with domestic issues. How do you run away at three years old? I actually got on my bike once, and apparently I asked my parent at three. I don't remember this. And apparently I...
asked my parents if I could ride my bike and they said yes it was a little tricycle you know I rode it all the way to my friend's house who lived like a mile away at three years old and my parents didn't know where I was but then one of the neighbors saw me riding out alone at three they called my parents and were like hey do you know this so I mean I think it's possible for a three-year-old to run away yeah but I guess running away to me is like a different definition like he's trying to get away from his parents well if there's domestic abuse going on at home I could definitely see why
What? What?
As Crawford got older, he started getting into trouble with the law. He developed a serious drug problem which became more pronounced, involving glue, LSD, mushrooms, and various prescription medications. He also stole cars and scuffled with the police. According to Warren Golding's book on this case, "...in a secluded place in a park or in the country, he would settle down to a ritualistic, almost spiritual session of substance abuse."
John would talk to himself, to the glue, to the bag he was going to squirt the glue into, and to any other paraphernalia he might find necessary as the occasion demanded. Yeah, he was hallucinating, I assume. Yes. Crawford was raised as a Catholic, but he wasn't practicing. Quote,
As Crawford got older, he viewed sexual encounters as a paid activity. Sex, he came to understand, was something women provided to him for a fee. He paid to go to peep shows and he became an extremely heavy user of sex workers. Crawford later acknowledged that he started hearing voices when he was just 16 and that they would sometimes tell him to hurt people. He believed the voices came from outer space or UFOs. But I do want to clarify here, after he was 16,
After Crawford would go on to commit his crimes, he would later clarify that these voices were not the reason he committed his crimes, just that he heard them. Also, this entire time, it sounds like he's on drugs, correct? Yes. Okay. So this is where we are by 1981. John Crawford is 19 years old and extremely troubled, spending most of his time drunk, high, and searching for women.
And although Crawford had had his run in with the law, it's all nothing compared to what he's about to do. The date is December 23rd, 1981. John Crawford has spent the holiday night out in town drinking.
This night, he's chosen a bar at the Bridge Inn in Lethbridge, Alberta. So basically a hotel bar. Lethbridge is a small city in the province of Alberta, southwest of Saskatoon, which is located in the province of Saskatchewan. And again, here, there are a lot of names of places that I've done my research to try to figure out how to pronounce. I've actually listened to multiple podcasts that use these words. But again, I might slip up here and there.
So Crawford is drinking in the bar when he meets 35-year-old Mary Jane Sirloin, a native woman from the Native Reserve.
Now, Mary Jane had grown up with tragedy. Her mother died when Mary Jane was still young, and as a result, she was sent to live with relatives on the reserve. Her father and sister continued to live together without Mary Jane. In her early 20s, Mary Jane married an older white man named Norman Sirloin. Together, they had a son, but their marriage was very unhappy, and they eventually split up in 1979 or 1980.
Because of this, it wasn't uncommon that by 1981, Mary Jane would frequently go out and often would go to the bar at the Bridge Inn for company. This December night, Mary Jane was intoxicated as she consumed alcohol most of the day. Now to state here, many people drink over the holidays and on days off. So this is in no way shaming her for drinking all day.
John Crawford ends up next to Mary Jane and they begin drinking together and talking. It was around 10 p.m. when they eventually ended up leaving the bar together. No one ever saw Mary Jane alive again. Two hours later, John Crawford returned to the bar, this time alone, right before midnight and ordered pizza and some more beer. Something awful had happened during those two hours that he was gone with Mary Jane.
The next morning, Christmas Eve, Mary Jane's naked, dead body was found on a beach near Bridge Inn. She was battered and bruised with deep bite marks on her breasts and cheeks. Bite marks? Okay. Without going into too much detail, Mary Jane had been tortured the night before, a brick slammed into her chest, and eventually died by drowning on her own vomit. So when you say tortured, obviously a lot comes to mind, but this must have been planned, right?
Well, and just brutal. I mean, like she died by drowning on her own vomit. Yeah. So you can't really plan that. That just means that you've been basically beating someone to death so much that they eventually die. Yeah.
Yeah.
Crawford was quickly arrested within eight hours of Mary Jane's body being found. He admitted to being on the beach with Mary Jane the night before. He claimed that Mary Jane started choking and that he had pounded on her chest with the brick just to help her with choking. This was obviously a lie. The police took teeth impressions from the bite marks, which matched Crawford's unique teeth.
Crawford was charged with first-degree murder. However, he was given a plea deal that allowed him to plead guilty to the lesser offense of manslaughter. He
He pled guilty to this in June of 1982, and he received a 10-year sentence for the crime of manslaughter despite the sadistic and sexual nature of the murder. How did he get away with that? What happened? Just wanting to save money, not taking him to trial. So they decide to plead to a lesser offense. That's so crazy. He literally tortured and killed someone, gets 10 years in prison, and can get out. Sad. Sad.
The judge was particularly troubled that Crawford had calmly returned to the bar to consume beer and pizza after committing this crime, but that didn't really matter. Crawford was sent to Saskatchewan Penitentiary at Prince Albert. Now, during this time, Crawford's mother, Victoria Crawford, who had recently divorced his stepfather, moved from Lethbridge to Saskatoon so she could more easily visit her son in prison.
After only about five years, Crawford was given something called day parole in 1987. And I'm not sure if this means he was out on parole or only that he was allowed to leave prison during the day. Whichever it was, Crawford violated the terms of this day parole and was forced to return back to prison. So it doesn't really matter much.
During this prison sentence, Crawford was in and out of the Regional Psychiatric Center in Saskatoon as a result of his anxiety, self-mutilations, and bizarre behavior. He slashed his own wrists in order to go to solitary and to get away from other prisoners.
One psychiatrist noted that Crawford had difficulty reading and spelling and incredibly wrote that Crawford denied raping Mary Jane, concluding that, quote, I do not see him as a sex offender. So one psychiatrist says he's not a sex offender.
Now, as Golding wrote, this is the man who wrote the book on this case, quote, the psychiatrist presumably had some difficulty reading as well. Otherwise, he could not have failed to note that Mary Jane's breasts had been mutilated by deep bite marks.
indisputably inflicted by Crawford during an event that the police immediately labeled a sexual attack. So how is he not a sexual predator? I'm so confused. I don't know the guy and I'm not a psychiatrist, but I feel like it's obvious. So a different psychiatrist warned that there was a high probability that Crawford would continue committing crimes. Crawford was diagnosed with various mental illnesses, including schizophrenia.
In 1988, Crawford met with a prison psychiatrist who noted that Crawford had taken up to sewing. This psychiatrist found, quote, no evidence of any major psychiatric disorder.
In November 1988, a different staff psychiatrist expressed, quote, grave reservations about John's ability to return successfully to the community. Now, I include all of these different evaluations because one thing I have learned while researching over the past two years is that all doctors believe different things. Diagnosis is not a one-size-fits-all. It's complicated, hard, and mental illness is difficult to understand even for experts.
In 1989, Crawford is released from prison under mandatory supervision after serving seven of his 10 years. I still am mind blown that he killed someone. Brutally. And he's getting out of prison. Seven years later. He was released from prison.
He moves in with his mother in Saskatoon, but he's not the only young man living there. Victoria Crawford, the mother, had recently opened up her home as housing for some psychiatric patients in the area, promising to take care of them.
Victoria was now excited for her son Crawford to get out of prison and move in with her in her home. And this was part of the reason Crawford was released early. They figured if Victoria, his mother, had been taking care of all of these psychiatric patients and keeping them out of trouble, she could surely do the same for her own son. Ironically, their home is just a short distance from where the sex workers in the area operate.
Clearly this is giving him easy access to women that he has targeted since he was a teenager.
As Golding writes, by the late 1980s, it was clear that John Crawford was evolving into a monster. But no one, including his mother and a score of mental health professionals, was able to intervene and prevent the tragedies that were to follow. In 1990, Crawford got into trouble with the law and was fined $250 for trying to hire a sex worker. There's no other record of any major trouble until 1992. So maybe for those two years...
she did a good job of keeping her son out of trouble. I don't understand how he got in trouble for trying to hire a sex worker. Like he wasn't allowed to. It's illegal. Oh, where he is, it's illegal. Yes. Got it. Okay. Actually, sex work is actually illegal in a lot of places. There's very few places that it is legal. By 1992, Crawford was shooting drugs and sniffing glue daily. He drank 24 beers and 26 ounces of hard liquor a day and
and cruised the rundown areas of town almost every night looking for sex workers. Crawford was known to rip off workers by failing to pay or failing to pay them for the full amount. Word got out and many sex workers who heard about his reputation wouldn't go off with him.
Crawford mostly targeted native women and often preyed on the especially vulnerable, such as women who were intoxicated. He likely had sex with hundreds of sex workers and other vulnerable women between 1989 and 1995. Hola. ¿Cómo está? Hola, ¿cómo estamos? Want to learn a new language? Well, the best way is to uproot your entire life, move to Spain, and live there for the rest of your...
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On May 9th, 1992, a woman named Janet Sylvester accused Crawford of raping her in a house on Avenue Q, which was across the street from Victoria's group home. The charge had been stayed when Janet failed to show up for court.
but John spent a month in jail before his mother put up $4,000 in bail. So he rapes this girl. She comes forward. He gets charged with it, but then she doesn't actually show up for court. Again, very common with rape victims because it is hard to get an actual conviction. And so this charge basically gets dropped.
On August 4th, 1992, after days of sniffing paint thinner and taking various other substances, Crawford ends up at the Royal University Hospital. Then he was sent to Larson House, which is a facility to treat alcoholics. He went in and out of the psychiatric facility and the substance abuse facility during this time.
A short while later, Crawford gets out entirely and ends up being found in a beach area in the south of Saskatoon, literally naked, wearing only socks and a t-shirt. He was badly sunburned and running a fever of 110 degrees. He nearly died, but the emergency crew at the hospital saved him. Crawford continued going in and out of treatment facilities during this time period. And I'm including all of this so you can understand why.
how bad things had gotten in his personal life like he he is clearly not well i mean to me it's just a huge recipe for disaster like i can't even imagine what's going to happen next right a
A doctor then wrote, quote, it is my feeling at this stage that John would probably not be best to return to his mom since she is overprotective and has had a longstanding severe problem in dealing with John, who is a very serious problem. And it may not be the best for John to return home since his mom is quite unknowledgeable in how to help him. I mean, he's clearly...
spiraling out of control under her care. That was the court's judgment. On August 27th, 1992, as part of his bail supervision program, there's a random curfew check at their home. Crawford isn't there and his mother doesn't know where he was. Despite the
fact that Crawford was up to no good on his own at this point. He wasn't always alone. Like this guy is just going out spiraling drinking all on his own looking for sex workers. He had friends who encouraged this awful behavior. Bill Corrigan was born around 1950 making him about 10 years older than Crawford. The two first met in prison at the Saskatchewan Penitentiary in Prince Albert Canada. Corrigan
Corrigan was serving a 10-year sentence for a botched armed robbery he committed while Crawford was serving his own 10-year sentence for the murder of Mary Jane. According to Golding's book, Corrigan was a low-level, ineffectual criminal, although he did commit violent crimes such as the armed robbery.
Corrigan was released from prison in 1991, and he then settled at the Albany Hotel where he worked odd jobs. The Albany, which was in the 20th Street area of Saskatoon, was known for its strip with sex workers, had a bar, and was the type of place that criminals liked to hang out.
Crawford, who'd gotten out of prison in 1989, would visit Corrigan here. The two prison buddies, now reunited on the outside, would then drive around in Crawford's car—it's actually his mother's car—drinking and cruising around looking for sex workers. And Corrigan was about to become Crawford's actual partner in crime.
In the summer of 1992, John Crawford met a teenage girl who had become involved in the wrong crowd. Oh no. Her name was Shelley Napope. Shelley Napope was a native woman born into the One Arrow First Nation. When she was younger, her family's home on the reserve's property was vandalized and then ultimately demolished as being beyond repair. So they moved to Saskatoon.
The family's kids, including Shelly, were sent to foster homes on and off at this point because the parents were often drunk and unable to take care of them.
As a youngster, Shelly was good at music, art, and PE, but she started skipping school as she got older. Shelly used drugs and alcohol and as a result had some scrapes with the law as a teenager. She was sent away to a facility for young offenders where she wrote to her family how much she missed them. When she came back, Shelly sadly fell back into her ways with a rough crowd, and pretty soon friends and family were going to notice that Shelly wasn't coming around anymore. Shelly
Shelly had been, quote, a pretty girl and popular among the 20th Street crowd, which is where Corrigan and Crawford tend to roam around looking for sex workers. She first met Crawford in a bar, and then she happened to see him again, accompanied by Corrigan, in the Albany Hotel's downtown parking lot in the summer or in late September of 1992. She asked them for a ride to a different neighborhood so that she could go see some people, and they agreed.
So 16-year-old Shelly sat up front next to Crawford and Corrigan sat in the back. Crawford was under the influence at the time. Again, Crawford was driving his mother's car and was supposed to have it home by 9 p.m. because that was his curfew for getting out of prison, although he consistently broke this curfew. At this point, Crawford and Corrigan drove Shelly to the house she was requesting to visit.
Wow.
Jeez. Jeez.
Crawford continued to punch Shelly now in the abdomen. When her screaming stopped, Corrigan went to go take a look. He saw Shelly with a knife sticking out of her stomach and she was dead. She's 16 years old. No reason. According to Golding's book, Corrigan was shocked and demanded to know why his prison buddy Crawford had killed Shelly, who I need to clarify. They seem to think her name is Angie. Okay. So they are referring to her as Angie. Her name is Shelly. We know it's Shelly. Okay.
Quote,
Crawford threw Shelly's clothes in a dumpster, burned his own clothes, and threw the knife into the river. Shelly's body wasn't found until more than two years later in October of 1994, which we'll get to. The last summer her parents saw her alive was that summer, July 1992. They became worried about her that summer when no one had seen her. They reported her missing. However, according to Golding's book, the police issued no missing persons reports, and so the media was unaware of the girl's disappearance.
I feel like her body as well really wasn't in an extremely difficult spot to find. Exactly. And this will become a common theme in Native women disappearances and murders in Canada. Despite the fact that Crawford had been in prison for one murder already and
and now had murdered another girl, his reign of terror in the Saskatchewan area was far from over. Sometime in 1992, 30-year-old Eva Taysip disappeared. She had been born into a family of 11 children. Eva was a mother of four children once she got older, and she was from Rose Valley in Saskatchewan. She came from the Quill First Nation. Eva had been married. However, the marriage split up and her children were sent to live with other relatives.
Yeah.
Eva called her parents in January of 1992, crying and scared, asking her parents to pick her up in Saskatoon. It took her parents two weeks to get together enough money to make the trip, but they finally did. And when they got there, they couldn't find Eva. They filed missing persons reports, but like Shelly, no public announcements were ever made as to her disappearance.
Think of how helpful the public can be in missing person cases and then realize what this means if the public never even heard someone was missing. I mean, two native women have now gone missing. It seems like the same exact MO and no one even knows they're missing except police.
John Crawford would later state in an affidavit that he met Eva in the Berry Hotel in September 1992, but the Taysip family believes that she actually went missing much earlier, so the timeline's kind of different. Either way, after John met Eva, she was never seen again.
After this, sometime in 1992, Crawford then murdered Kalinda Waterhen. This was reported to have been in September 1992, but was likely earlier in the year. She was 22 years old when she disappeared. Kalinda had a daughter named Amber who was born on October 1st, 1991, just the year before, at the Pine Grove Correctional Prison for Women, where Kalinda was serving time.
Kalinda was then released in November of 1991, and she left her baby in the care of her father and stepmother. They never saw Kalinda again after this. It's so sad. In later 1992, her family became worried about her, and this fear increased in April 1993 when Kalinda failed to show up for two family funerals.
Her father reported her missing to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or the RCMP, but they assured him that Kalinda was alive and well. Apparently, someone was using her health care card. So when her family calls police and says, hey, you know,
She just dropped her daughter off. We haven't heard from her. It's been a really long time. Police were like, ah, we looked into it. Someone's using her health care card, so she must be alive. Yeah, they don't care at all. No. Despite this news, Kalinda's family still wouldn't hear from her. Two years later, in 1994, Kalinda's father heard about the remains of three young women being found. And despite the fact RCMP insisted Kalinda was fine, he wondered if one of the women found were his daughter.
One year later, Kalinda's father would find out that one of those three women were in fact Kalinda's remains. One year later? And he had been ignored. What?
So police knew and never followed up and never told him. And he ended up finding out a year later that his daughter had actually been found. Her body had been found for a year. On October 2nd, after Kalinda goes missing, Crawford is charged with attempted murder for attacking and beating a man named Derek who wouldn't give Crawford a cigarette. In November, the court finds insufficient evidence for a charge of attempted murder, but enough for charge of aggravated assault.
And also around this time, sometime in 1993, Corrigan becomes a paid informant for law enforcement. Crawford gets charged with this aggravated assault and his main buddy, who he hadn't hung out with for a while, Corrigan, now comes forward as a paid informant for police. Corrigan first approached the police with information about illegal cigarette sales that were happening in the 20th Street area. And it kind of just escalated from there.
Yeah. Yeah.
Just one month later, in July 1993, Corrigan informed law enforcement that he had information about a murder, and he told a vague story, blaming Crawford and a fictitious man named John Potter for the murder that took place in a grove. Obviously, he was changing his rollout of this mysterious man named John Potter, and we know the murder he's talking about is Shelley's murder, who they are referring to as Angie.
Corrigan pointed out the location. The police searched and used a search dog, but didn't find any evidence at this time. However, the location turned out to be extremely close to where Shelly's remains would later be found. Corrigan mistakenly identified the girl as Angie, a name that he and Crawford both thought Shelly went by. This made it hard for police to identify the victim as missing Shelly. So they think this girl, Angie, has been murdered.
but it's really Shelly who they know is missing. In October of 1994, after Crawford had been released for his one-year stint for aggravated assault, a man named Brian Reichert, who's hunting with a friend outside of Saskatoon along the South Saskatchewan River, makes the discovery of human remains. He finds a human skull, it's Shelly's, in the brush and notifies the police.
Constable Terry Sterling responds to the scene and finds many other human bones, the rest of her body. He in turn calls Dr. Ernie Walker, an anthropology professor at the University of Saskatchewan, who frequently helps identify bones for the police. Dr. Walker isn't able to go out to the scene for a couple of days, but when he gets there and examines the bones, he determines that this isn't an archaeological site or an ancient burial site. Keep in mind, we're on native land.
Rather, these bones still have soft tissue and are of a much more recent origin. Again, it's murdered Shelly. The police further investigate the scene and set about trying to identify the female's body. And less than a week after this discovery of human remains, the police already have Crawford in their sights. This is because the bones were found very close to where informant Corrigan had told the police that Crawford and Potter had committed a murder.
Now that a skull and bones have actually been found, the police grill Corrigan about his story. And this is when they realized that Potter is actually Corrigan, who was trying to tell the story without making himself a party to her murder. Which is weird because you would think he would just say, I'm going to tell you the story, but I want immunity. I mean, I guess it's hard to like say beforehand. Right. Give me immunity if I tell you the story, but I don't know. It's also like if he has all that detail, police are,
Pretty soon going to realize that he's Potter. Yeah, that's true. That's true. It's apparent at this point that Corrigan is already somewhat afraid of Crawford. I mean, he hasn't hung out with him for a while. He thinks that he's a pretty bad guy. I mean, he didn't kill anyone.
I'm not saying what he did was okay, but he didn't kill anybody. Corrigan. Yes, Corrigan. And Corrigan is nervous that if Crawford finds out that he's working with police, that Crawford's going to come after him. Oh, 100%. Okay, let me guess. Your medicine cabinet is crammed with stuff that does not work. You still aren't sleeping, you still hurt, and you're stressed out. That's what you're saying.
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By now Crawford is driving his mother's new car, which is a gray Mercury Cougar. Apparently Crawford likes having a buddy with him when he goes cruising through the red light district, which is the same area we've been talking about with Corrigan out of the picture. Crawford is now cruising around looking for sex workers with a different guy.
On October 11th, 1994, their very first night of having Crawford under surveillance, Crawford convinced Teresa Kamich, a dark haired woman of native ancestry to get into his car. And I want to clarify here, they are only looking at Crawford for Shelly's murder at this point. They haven't connected all of the other murders we've previously talked about. While police are watching, surveilling him,
Crawford assaults Teresa and rapes her in his car before dumping her in a secluded parking lot. The police are nearby the entire time and they do nothing to stop it. This guy's insane. Well, but also police are watching him rape someone and they don't jump in. Why? Why would they not? Is there a reason they wouldn't? Doesn't make sense.
Well, don't they like have to stop it? I mean, yes, you would think so, but I'll tell you what Golding writes in his book about this quote. Admittedly, the RCMP was trying to build a case against a possible serial killer and
and Teresa had entered the car of her own free will. But the question must be raised. Had she been, say, a white woman, would the police have permitted John Crawford to take her to such a place and subject her to potential danger? It feels like no one cares about these victims, including the police. Also, what's interesting is if she had died in there, like they're lucky that he didn't kill her, right? Right. He raped her, which is horrible. But if he would have killed her, I mean...
Then she'd be dead. On police watch. On police watch. That's, I don't even know. Okay, so this is about to get even a little bit worse. The police are nearby, remember? So once he dumps her, they go over to her and they find her sobbing. It's obvious from her swollen nose and her swollen mouth that she had been beaten up in the face.
and her open pants obviously suggested rape as well. The police don't arrest Crawford or stop him at all after this. Rather, they arrest Teresa and hold her in a cell overnight. After holding her in jail for 13 hours, they release her a block away from her parents' house. They arrest her because they say she was a sex worker and that that's illegal. Were they trying to protect her, though, for any reason? Hmm.
They just probably needed to hold her, needed to get her story because it helped them in the investigation. But they arrest her after she literally was just raped and dumped. Yeah.
Teresa later decides not to proceed with an assault charge. And I don't blame her. The police don't even take her seriously the first time they arrest her. Why would they now charge him for an assault on her? On October 12th, 1994, Janet Sylvester, who'd previously accused Crawford of rape at the beginning of our story, remember she was the woman who said he raped me in this home, is now a 37-year-old mother of two still living in the area. She is part of the White Bear First Nation.
And coincidentally, the police's second night of surveillance coincides with the last night that Janet Sylvester is ever seen alive. So the second night they're watching him, Janet Sylvester goes missing. She goes by the name of Smiley at this point. And I need to note, this is only a possible victim of Crawford's. This is not substantiated like all of the other victims I've talked about.
The surveillance team saw Crawford go home early that night at 9 p.m. to his mother's house only a couple of blocks from the red light district.
several people saw janet in the bars in the area later that night at least one saw her leave with a large man around midnight and this was the last time she was ever seen so police claim crawford was home when one of his past rape victims smiley disappears and is never seen again do you not think that the mom knows that her son is killing people
He's already went to prison for seven years for brutally murdering and biting. She just, I don't know how involved she gets in this in the case, but it just seems like you would know, right? I think you would know that he's up to no good. Yeah. So although police are like, okay, well, we think he was home and then one of his past victims goes missing right in the time that he's an active serial killer. Again, they don't know that, but we do. There is a chance that once they left surveillance,
They stopped surveilling him after he went home. There's maybe a chance he left again and went and found her, but we will never know. On October 13th, 1994, a man is out walking in the outskirts of Saskatoon and thinks he sees the body of a deer near some trees. Quote, coming closer, he gaped with horror at the sight of a young woman nude with a plastic bag over her head. She was Janet Sylvester or Smiley. So she was found the next day.
The police are able to quickly identify Janet. However, the police can't tie Janet's murder to Crawford because, according to them, was in house that night. And in fact, many in the law enforcement become convinced that Crawford didn't do this. The witness who saw Janet leave the bar with a man can't identify the man as Crawford either.
And even though it was possible that Crawford had left his house after the surveillance team stopped watching him, the police could not find any proof that he did it, even though he had the motive of revenge for having spent time in prison based on Janet's accusation that he raped her.
Further, her body had been found dumped several miles away from where the other three bodies will ultimately be found. So it does not feel like he did this. But then again, you now have another person targeting Native women. Some members of law enforcement believe Crawford did kill Janet. However, no one has ever been charged with her murder and it remains unsolved to this day.
On October 21st, 1994, a couple of retired officers are curious to see the scene of the Willow Grove where Shelly's still unidentified remains had been found. So they go out, this case is still open, they go out to look around. About 30 to 40 meters from where Shelly's remains were found, the two see a white object sticking out of the ground. It's another human skull. We know that these are the other two women, police don't.
A search team is brought in to see if this is area the fourth woman to have been murdered, including Janet. Now, aside from Janet Sylvester, the police don't know who any of these women are, and they still aren't convinced that Janet Sylvester is connected to these three murders.
On October 22nd, police bring Corrigan to the Willow Grove where the unidentified remains were found. Corrigan tells them exactly what happened to Shelly once again, the woman that he knew as Angie. I don't get why it's taking so long. I feel like you have a solid case against it now, correct? Well, they're looking for... Like hard evidence? Yes.
So, yes, it doesn't make sense that it's taking so long for them to charge Crawford with this because Corrigan's clearly come forward and said, hey, this happened and this is one of the bodies. He could be lying. He could be lying. It is taking a long time for them to identify the three women because they're looking for Angie, not Shelly. And then the other two, they don't even know who those possibly could be. OK. At this time, Corrigan.
like I said, is a paid informant and is given $300 for being brought to Saskatoon from Winnipeg and providing this information. A few days later, the police offer Corrigan $15,000 to be paid in installments plus travel expenses to come to Saskatoon whenever they needed him to plus to testify in court as needed. So he's like, this is a full-time job at this point. Yeah.
Despite the public's and even sex workers' lack of concern about the disappearances and bodies being found, the police at this point believe they have a serial killer on their hands. Three bodies are found in the same area. However, others thought that the bones all found in the same vicinity could be the work of different people, as it was a popular part. No way. I only include this detail because why is it so hard?
hard to just admit that there's a serial killer like there's something going on here people just don't want to admit it police are still trying to identify the remains at this point begin going through public records because of this an investigation begins into missing native women around the area because they want to identify these three women as written by golding quote in the end the
The search turned up nearly 500 women reported missing in the previous three years who matched the general criteria of age and background of the Saskatoon victims. 500? So is a lot of them like relocation? Is there explanations for a lot of this? Are a lot of them actually missing or what's going on? Garrett obviously doesn't know this, but if you're in the true crime community, you might have an idea of this.
There is a serious epidemic and problem with missing and murdered indigenous women, native women who are missing and come showing up murdered and have been for years. And so 500 women, this is pretty on par with what we've seen as far as what's going on over in Canada. Okay. Are majority of them sex workers or just from all different? From all different. And I think the issue is, is because, um,
police just aren't taking it seriously and haven't for years. We've seen that happen here in America with sex workers or transient people, their murders or their missing person. It's, they just aren't taken as seriously. It's gotten better. Um,
over here, but it's still an issue. So officials will later dispute this number 500, but the number itself was almost irrelevant. Whether it was 100 or 500 women, it was clear that something like an epidemic was raging virtually unchecked in Western Canada. Like something is happening here. Even a hundred women in three years that are all native women. Yeah. It's, it's a bad sign.
Whether by accident or design, choice or foul play, the whereabouts of an enormous number of Native women were officially unknown. Of the approximately 470 missing women on the list, more than half were quickly eliminated as potential victims. And this is all according to Golding from his book. Now using a sketch artist who was able to attempt to draw faces from the remains, the
third woman was identified as Eva Taysip. So she finally gets identified. Her remains had been found wrapped up in a blanket and tied up with an orange electrical cord and buried in a shallow grave under just a few inches of dirt. This is at the point where remember back I said her dad suspected that she was one of three women. Well now police have identified her as one of the three women but they had told him no. They later conclude it's her and they don't tell him and he doesn't find out until a year later that she was one.
On December 14th, 1994, the police are also able to identify Shelly Napope based on someone recognizing her sketch and by confirming the identification with dental records. So they've now identified who they thought was Angie as Shelly. Two years earlier in 1992, her parents had reported her missing.
On December 21st, 1994, authorities obtain a wiretap order signed by a judge authorizing the wiretap and recording on conversations involving Crawford, Corrigan, and the third man that he's been driving around with.
On January 12th, 1995, police get Corrigan set up in a motel just a few blocks from downtown Saskatoon. The room itself is wired and Corrigan is wearing various recording and transmitting devices. A police constable is waiting nearby in a vehicle with monitoring equipment. So Crawford shows up and Corrigan compliments Crawford on his new car because he hasn't seen him in a bit.
Crawford as usual wants junk food and also a movie on the motel tv after some time Corrigan gets Crawford talking about the murders they had been committed two years earlier per Golding's book Crawford says quote there's only three that I did there's another one he's referring to Janet you know the girl that testified against me she's dead but it wasn't me someone else did that
Crawford then begins discussing details of the murders, mentioning that he thought Angie was at least 22, not 16, and discussing how the one murder he was the most worried about was the one with the blanket and the cord, which would have been Eva. So he just admitted it like it was no problem. Admitted it, no problem, but only to the three. Seems weird. So this further proves that he probably didn't do Janice. I would assume so because I assume at this point,
Why would he not right to doing it to someone else after discussing the murders? Crawford and Corrigan get into Crawford's car and begin to cruise the usual red light strip that they had done many years earlier Despite having the confession police decide to send Corrigan back out with Crawford again the next night. They want more evidence
Again, Crawford denies killing Janet Sylvester and says he was home that night. He leaves before 9 p.m. so he can get the car back for his curfew. Around January 14th, police identify the last unknown remains as Kalinda Waterhen. The police publish Kalinda's identification in the Star Phoenix. Corrigan and Crawford at this point discuss Waterhen's murder on tape and Crawford says, "'Don't worry, this one was on me. Don't you worry, just keep your mouth shut.'"
Wow. Wow.
Corrigan then seeks to get additional incriminating information out of Crawford's mouth. Is this all just for money or? Yes. At this point, I assume, right? He's getting paid and police want evidence. He asks Crawford why he always took his victims to the same place. Like why always dump them at the same place? Crawford admits that he dragged all the bodies into the bushes because it seemed like a safe place. Crawford admits killing Eva Taysip by choking her to death. I don't know. I'm also not convinced that he hasn't done this to other people.
And it's just not saying anything. Right. Because it seems like he's been, I don't know, he's had this behavior his entire life. How do we know he hasn't done this to 10, 20, 30 people? Right. Crawford also admits to killing Kalinda Waterhand by hitting her over the head. And then finally admits to killing Shelly by using Corrigan's knife, which we knew.
Five days after Corrigan gets the detailed confession out of serial killer Crawford, the police finally arrest Crawford on January 19th, 1995. That same night, Crawford's mother, Victoria, came up with $25,000 to hire attorney Mark Braford to represent her son for these three murders.
Victoria then hired an additional private attorney for an additional several thousand dollars. She ends up spending almost 80 grand in legal fees and expenses for her son's defense for these murders. What is she thinking? I will never understand this. Okay, so we talked about this a lot. Like why parents sticking with their children. My son kills... I don't have kids. This is why. Four women in total. But if my son kills...
anybody or does anything like that, I'm out. I don't know. I don't know what else to say it without being rude, but I'm out. Well, Golding actually writes about this. So I thought I wanted to include it because we have talked about this before. Okay.
According to psychiatrists familiar with the case, quote, it is natural for parents to defend their children, to blame someone else if they get in trouble in school or with the law, to search for bad influences that might be leading them to act out certain behaviors that seem out of character. But Victoria Crawford has taken this natural inclination to a point far beyond this.
One psychiatrist described their mother-son relationship as abnormal and that, quote, she is taking it to an extreme. In an interview with a psychiatrist relating to her son's case, Victoria Crawford describes her son as being respectful towards women and says although he used the services of sex workers, he didn't look down on them. She insists he had no violent nature about him. She blames Corrigan.
for being a bad influence on him. That's mind-blowing to me. After he was just in prison for biting somebody and murdering somebody. Right. So this is what bothers me about this.
We've disagreed on the fact that I think I understand standing by your child. I understand going to the trial. I understand talking to them. I understand paying for their legal fees. No way. What I don't understand is denying the fact that they even did it. How disrespectful can you be to the victims? You can still love your child. You can still stand by your child. It doesn't mean you support what your child did or make excuses for
For it. Like even if it's mental illness, you still can understand that they have harmed someone. She won't even acknowledge it. She says he's not violent. He respects women. No, he clearly doesn't. You can still love him and admit that. Yeah, she's out of her mind. Once Crawford is arrested, other women come forward describing how Crawford and Corrigan attacked and raped them too. So this is what you were saying. He clearly has attacked other women and hurt other women. I don't know about murdered.
but women come forward saying that he has assaulted them. In May 1996, Crawford is convicted of the first-degree murder of Shelley Napope. He is also convicted of the second-degree murders of Kalinda Waterhen and Eva Tasip. John Martin Crawford is sentenced to three concurrent life sentences for being a serial killer of Native women.
Warren Golding's book on the case comes out in 2001. It's titled Just Another Indian, A Serial Killer and Canada's Indifference. Golding was a former Star Phoenix reporter. Crawford was the second most murderous serial killer in Canada, and yet there's been very little coverage of his crimes or interest in the victims, despite people's fascination with crime and particularly with serial killers.
As Golding writes,
So he's basically saying, why isn't he a Ted Bundy? Why isn't he a Jeffrey Dahmer? Like, why don't we know John Crawford as a household name? I mean, I don't think it's a bad thing because I think that...
Maybe this is a conversation for another time, but maybe it's good sometimes not to know the names, just know the names all the time. Just the victims. Correct. Right. Golding notes that Crawford shares many traits with other serial sex killers, including being abused as a child, coming from families with histories involving alcohol, criminal or psychiatric problems. And he did add a little thing in here. Over 90% of serial sex killers are white males, which is a pretty insane statistic. Wow.
Crawford dies on December 16th, 2020 at the age of 58 at Regional Psychiatric Center in Saskatoon. And I included that because although he's in prison, just like his first stint in prison, he is constantly needing psychiatric care. I think it's pretty clear to say that there were some serious psychiatric problems happening in John Martin Crawford's life.
There were two other women who disappeared in late 1991 or in 1992 named Shirley Lone Thunder and Cynthia Baldhead. Now, according to the book, Crawford may have killed these women as well, but he never testified or admitted to it. He only admitted to the three who were found all buried together. And that was the murders of Shelley Napope, Eva Taysip, and Kalinda Waterhen.
All right, you guys. Well, that was our episode and we will see you next week with another one. I love it. I hate it. Goodbye.