Andre Crawford: The 'invisible' serial killer? 6-YEAR SPREE

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http://www.suntimes.com/news/24-7/1931711,CST-NWS-serial10.article

Andre 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.

 
RELATED STORIESAccused killer's alleged victim tells of brutal rape, beating

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

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the victims story, a little grapic


http://www.suntimes.com/news/24-7/1901612,CST-NWS-crawford24.article

Accused killer's alleged victim tells of brutal rape, beating
 

November 24, 2009

BY RUMMANA HUSSAIN Criminal Courts Reporter/rhussain@suntimes.com
A 54-year-old woman allegedly attacked by accused serial killer Andre Crawford testified Monday, describing
how her hooded assailant savagely raped, stabbed and repeatedly struck her with a two-by-four, then left her
under a mattress in an abandoned South Side building.

"I played like I was dead," the woman testified, describing the aftermath of the horrendous beating on
Thanksgiving night 12 years ago.


The woman never identified her attacker, but DNA evidence taken from the victim linked Crawford, 47, to the
Nov. 27, 1997, crime, according to Cook County prosecutors.

"I was fighting for myself. I don't know if he was shorter than me or taller than me. I just know he was there,
" the thin, 6-foot victim said in a low voice.

Crawford is on trial for her rape and the sexual assault and murders of 11 other women. Between 1993 and 1999,
 he allegedly targeted prostitutes and drug addicts in the New City neighborhood, stabbing, strangling and
bludgeoning them. Often, he would have sex with the women's corpses, prosecutors said.

The woman testifying Monday said she was "never a whore" but had been using crack cocaine at the time of her
 assault. She had been walking to a bus stop at 51st and Halsted when she noticed a man had been following her.

The woman said her assailant lured her by telling her he had a "bag" of drugs and then forced her at knifepoint
into a dark building at 51st and Peoria.

When she tried fighting the man off by slapping him with one of her black leather boots, he stabbed her in
the back and pushed a freezer on her.

The man continued to rape the woman, holding a knife at her throat. He choked her with a telephone cord until
she passed out, and when she regained consciousness he pummeled her with a two-by-four, bashing her head, hands
 and leg, she said.

The man left her for dead, covering her body with a mattress. After he left, the woman said, she "scooted out
 on" her back naked and screamed for help. She suffered lacerations and broken bones.

During the woman's testimony, Assistant State's Attorney James McKay asked her to identify photographs of
herself as she lay in the hospital, her face full of blood. The woman said she had been hospitalized for nearly
four months and had to relearn how to walk.