http://www.suntimes.com/news/24-7/1931711,CST-NWS-serial10.articleAndre Crawford: The 'invisible' serial killer?
6-YEAR SPREE 'Turned New City to his city,' prosecutors say
December 10, 2009
BY RUMMANA HUSSAIN Criminal Courts Reporter
rhussain@suntimes.com Andre Crawford preyed on some of most vulnerable women: prostitutes and desperate drug addicts looking for
a fix, Cook County prosecutors said.
Eleven of his victims, they said, were mercilessly raped, strangled, stabbed and bludgeoned to death. A 12th
woman who "played dead" following a brutal beating in 1997 was lucky enough to escape.
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And for years, Crawford got away, too, prosecutors said during their closing arguments in the alleged
serial killer's trial Wednesday.
"He turned New City into his city," Assistant State's Attorney George Canellis said of the six-year terror
spree Crawford allegedly unleashed in the South Side neighborhood until his 2000 arrest.
"As the years passed, and as the young ladies disappeared, it almost seemed as if the defendant was invisible.
It was as if he was able to murder and rape without detection. We now know that the defendant is visible.
We now know what the defendant's presence has clearly shown."
Jurors, who were sequestered after four hours of deliberation late Wednesday, will continue weighing
Crawford's fate today. If convicted, Crawford could be sentenced to death.
Crawford, 47, mostly scribbled notes and stared pensively during closing arguments.
His attorney, Debra Seaton, insinuated that he was coerced by police to admit his role in the crimes and
said given the women's lifestyle, there should have been more male DNA culled from their bodies.
Seaton mostly focused on how serial killer Hubert Geralds originally was convicted of murdering Rhonda King,
now believed to be a victim of Crawford.
"He [Geralds] saw her face [from a picture ID] and said, 'This is the woman I strangled,' " Seaton said.
But Assistant State's Attorney James McKay told jurors when Crawford voluntarily confessed to King's 1994
slaying, he provided more startling details than Geralds had. Crawford even remembered a single tear sloping
down King's cheek after he choked and stabbed her, McKay said.
"Who brought up Rhonda? He did," McKay said, his voice booming as he pointed to a spectacled,
bald and burly Crawford.
Crawford, who agreed to exchange drugs for sex with his victims, mostly killed the women out of anger when
they expressed they wanted to get high before getting intimate, prosecutors said.
Often, Crawford killed his victims, smoked crack cocaine and returned to have sex with their corpses in
abandoned, dilapidated buildings where some of the decomposing, maggot-infested remains were discovered
months later, according to authorities. DNA evidence from eight of the victims was linked to Crawford.
"He [Crawford] has ice in his veins," McKay said. "You either play by his rules, or people die."
Victims' relatives seated across four benches in Judge Evelyn B. Clay's courtroom silently sobbed Wednesday
when Canellis presented grisly pictures of the women's lifeless bodies. Some of the victims, who were murdered
between 1993 and 1999, were barely recognizable compared to their smiling portraits.
Canellis played snippets of Crawford's videotaped confessions where the alleged killer is seen admitting to
murdering the women because of their "trickery."
"I told her, 'I just want to rape you and teach you a lesson,' " Crawford said on a recording, describing
what he told the surviving victim.
Crawford was mostly a vagrant but sometimes helped unload newspapers from Sun-Times delivery trucks --
a job he got through a temp agency, according to prosecutors.
In addition to King, the other murdered victims include Patricia Dunn, Angela Shateen, Shaguanta Langley,
Tommie Davis, Sheryl Johnson, Constance Bailey, Sonji Brandon, Nicole Townsend, Evandre Harris and Cheryl Cross. wonder how many of these monsters are out there
seems the only way they get caught is when a victim
gets away