On January 28, 2000, Chicago PD officers arrested Andre Crawford, 37, for seven murders that occurred on the city’s South Side between 1993 and 1999.
The following day, while in custody, Crawford admitted to four more killings that investigators hadn’t yet linked to the others — as well as to having had sex with the resulting dead bodies.
Crawford grew up in the very area where he hunted vulnerable females, largely targeting drug addicts and prostitutes. Born to an addict mother who sold her body to get high and left him unattended for long periods, Crawford went into the foster care system early on, where he suffered years of further abuse.
As an adult, Crawford lived among Chicago’s transient community and ran with the petty criminal underclass around the Englewood and New City neighborhoods. He hustled for cash, self-medicated with drugs and liquor, and split his nights between ratty flophouses and abandoned buildings. And he hated prostitutes.
A resident who occasionally hired Crawford to shovel snow said that when the killer saw streetwalkers, he couldn’t hide his contempt, noting:
“He said they shouldn’t be out there, they should get a job and do something better with their lives.”
Although he had a criminal record dating back to 1985, Crawford is not known to have turned homicidal until eight years later. On September 21, 1993, Crawford lured Patricia Dunn, 24, to a vacant lot where he smashed in her skull. Afterward, he smoked crack cocaine and sexually violated her remains.
Crawford struck again on December 21, 1994, tempting Rhonda King, 36, into an empty house, where he bludgeoned and strangled her to death. Crack and necrophilia again followed, as it would with most of Crawford’s other murders.
After laying low for a while, Crawford then murdered 27-year-old Angel Shateen in 1997. From there, Crawford escalated the frequency of his attacks, ultimately resulting in a total of 11 slayings.
On June 20, 1999, Evandrey Harris, 41, proved to be Crawford’s last known victim.
All the while, beat cops popped Crawford for a variety of violations, including drug possession and attempted sexual abuse. Each time, he walked and worse, each time the authorities failed to take a DNA sample from him.
Finally, in early 2000, tips from women who had had run-ins with Crawford pointed investigators in the proper direction. One tipster said she heard Crawford on a bus discussing the wave of prostitute murders and saying:
“[Drug-addicted sex workers] need to be strangled and have their heads beaten in.”
Chicago PD arrested Crawford and matched his DNA to the seven murders they suspected were the work of a single killer. Over the course of the next three days, Crawford sat in front of a video camera and painted a more complete — and gruesome — picture.
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