Hampton’s cold case

By: 
Nick Pedley

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15 years later, Bobbi Crawford’s murder remains unsolved

 

By all accounts, Roberta "Bobbi" Crawford would have made the perfect grandmother.

     The fun-loving 53-year-old Hampton woman was full of energy, adored children and was a wonderful caretaker. She raised her son, Lee, as a single mother on a secretary's salary from the time he was 8, so she knew a thing or two about raising kids.

     Family wasn't only important for Crawford, it was her main priority.

     "She was probably my closest confidant and best friend,” said Lee. "After my parents divorced, it was just her and I for evening meals and on the weekends. We became very close."

     That close-knit family grew by one when Lee married his wife Jolie in 1995. Crawford welcomed her new daughter-in-law with open arms and accepted her as one of her own. The family was happy and content, but Lee knew his mother had her sights set on something more – she wanted a grandchild.

     “She was really looking forward to being a grandma," said Jolie. "She just radiated warmth and love. She was just very generous, giving and thoughtful.”

     Crawford's dream came true in December 1998 when Lee and Jolie had their first child, Tyler. It didn't take long for the new grandmother to get acquainted with the role – she spent nearly every opportunity she could showering Tyler with love and attention.

     "She loved Tyler with all her heart. When she was around him, it was incredible," Jolie said.

     Crawford was robbed of that joy in mid-November 1999. Sometime between the evening hours of Nov. 16 and the morning hours of Nov. 17, she was brutally murdered inside her small Hampton home. The case remains unsolved 15 years later.

 

"You just have this pit in your stomach"

 

     Retired Hampton Police Chief Bud Nelson and former Officer Ray Beltran conducted a welfare check on Nov. 17 at Crawford's residence after receiving a call from her coworkers. She had failed to show up to work at Ellsworth Community College without notice, which was unusual for the normally punctual secretary.

     When Crawford didn't answer the officers' calls, they entered the garage and discovered a shattered window on a door that led into the house. They immediately entered the home and secured the interior, but Crawford wasn’t located until Beltran reached her main floor bedroom.

     There, he discovered the 53-year-old's lifeless body. The cause of death was apparent blunt force trauma to the head.

     “At that point I pretty much advised the chief that there was a body and that we needed additional emergency personnel," Beltran said.

     The investigation began immediately. Crawford's residence was locked down and the Iowa Department of Criminal Investigation (DCI) was called in. The increased activity at the tiny home started creating a buzz in the quiet neighborhood, but the news had yet to reach Lee and Jolie, who lived three hours south in Sigourney.

     Jolie learned about her mother-in-law's fate before Lee. She worked at the school and was called to the principal's office, where he delivered the heartbreaking news as gentle as possible.

     “I remember him saying, ‘They found Bobbi this morning, and they think it’s suspicious. We’ve gotta find Lee and bring him in to talk to him,' " she recalled. “I just kind of started shaking in the office.”

     Lee was called to the school from his office supply job. He thought he was heading out on a normal customer visit, but Jolie's face hinted at something much more serious when he arrived.

     “It was more like a shock and you go numb. It was like I didn’t know what was happening in this world to me right now,” Lee said. “Your mind starts racing and you don’t know what the heck is going on. That was the most brutal part."

     They picked up Tyler from daycare, packed their bags and started the agonizing three-hour trip back to Hampton. The drive seemed like it took forever, but neither Lee nor Jolie remembers much of it.

     "You just have this pit in your stomach," Lee said. "What happened?”

 

“It was a dark time afterwards"

 

     The next week was a blur of interviews, police briefs and unbearable downtime. Lee credits his aunt and uncle, Fran and Len Foland, for bearing the brunt of the load throughout the early investigation. They dealt with police, made special arrangements and handled a list of other duties following Crawford's murder.

     Lee admitted he simply didn't know how to cope.

     "My aunt did a lot for us. She took it head on," he said. “It was a dark time afterwards.”

     Local law enforcement officers and DCI officials continued gathering evidence and conducted interviews throughout the week. They questioned neighbors, acquaintances, family members and co-workers trying to retrace Crawford's steps that day. The file began to grow, but initial evidence never developed into substantial leads in the immediate aftermath of the murder.

     Jolie tried to find distractions wherever she could that week. Tyler was sick, so she spent a lot of time tending to him. However, Lee was fixated on his mother's death.

     “The downtime was brutal. You’re there with your thoughts and your mind just keeps racing," he said. "Who, what, where, what’s going on? You try to recreate things and think about things in the past, like who she'd been involved with or where she'd been.”

     Crawford was laid to rest five days after her murder, but the family was left with little closure. Her killer, or killers, remained at large, which was both frustrating and terrifying for her family, friends and the entire Hampton community.

 

“We were scared all the time”

 

     Retired Hampton Police Capt. Jim Hilton recalls the terror that gripped the town in the weeks and months following Crawford’s murder. The community waited on baited breath for an arrest or information about a possible suspect, but nothing developed.

     "They had no idea who this person or persons would be or who would commit such a crime,” he said. “Everyone was on edge.”

     That fear wasn’t isolated to Hampton or Franklin County. It gripped Lee and Jolie 150 miles away in Sigourney as they tried to adjust to life following the murder. The couple locked their doors religiously and became attuned to every bump in the night no matter how insignificant.

     Sleepless nights became the norm, according to Jolie.

     “The furnace would kick in and I’d jump, anything like that. We did not feel safe. We were scared all the time,” she said.

     The DCI and other investigators kept working the case back in Hampton. Lee’s aunt called him with updates, but he could barely muster up the motivation to check in himself. He had fallen into a deep depression and was running on autopilot.

     “I call it a fog,” he said. “I was basically going through the motions of things, but my mind was elsewhere. You just pretty much take care of your basic needs.”

     Lee and Jolie returned to Hampton occasionally during the next year, but they only went back to Crawford’s house once to prep it for sale. Lee cleaned out his room in the basement but avoided the main floor; he wanted to steer clear of the spot where his mother was murdered.

     Jolie and other family members removed Crawford’s belongings and cleared out the house. Clothes and other items were strewn about during the investigation, which proved to be yet another reminder of the grim circumstances that brought them there.

     “It looked like it had been ransacked, but it was a controlled ransack because they had looked through every single thing trying to find evidence,” Jolie said. “Going back and walking through there was awful.”

     It was the last time they would see the house. It eventually sold, and Lee and Jolie avoided it at all cost when they returned to visit their families. They rarely ventured into Hampton, instead opting to stay in the country with Jolie’s parents or visit Lee’s aunt and uncle in Geneva.

     “It was a terrible time,” Lee said.

 

“It’s one of those cases you never set aside”

 

     Months transitioned into years and the case gradually turned cold. Lee received occasional updates from investigators, but nothing substantial ever developed.

     “There was things they’d tell me they were working on, but I don’t necessarily think they were significant leads. They were still working the case and following up,” he said. “I know their main priorities were, and still are, to solve that case.”

     As time progressed and the case got older, so too did the officers that originally investigated Crawford’s murder. Nelson, the police chief, retired in 2003, as did other investigators from the DCI.

     Beltran, the Hampton officer that discovered Crawford’s body, was eventually promoted to Chief of Police in 2009. By then the case was 10 years old and needed to be examined again, so Beltran and Capt. Hilton reopened the file and started digging in.

     It was huge. The complete file takes up a two-drawer metal cabinet at the police department, but that doesn’t include the treasure-trove of evidence. Hilton would pour over hundreds of interviews, polygraph reports, telephone records, autopsy findings and other evidence when he had time to try and pick out any clue that may have fallen through the cracks a decade before.

     The extended timeframe wasn’t without its benefits. Criminal forensics had advanced significantly, which allowed the Hampton Police Department and DCI to resubmit evidence for further testing.

     "You just go over and over trying to find some thing that needs to be addressed," Hilton said. “You just never know. Resubmitting wasn’t going to hurt anything, it just gave us some piece of mind that everything had been looked."

     Investigators were able to conduct a few follow-up interviews after re-evaluating the case, but again, nothing substantial developed. Justice for Crawford’s murder was nowhere in sight, which was frustrating for both the law enforcement officers and the family.

     “It’s one of those cases you never set aside until you get closure; until someone gets arrested and convicted of the crime they committed,” Beltran said. “Every day I looked at it an hoped a lead would break to bring justice to the person that did this, and to bring closure to the family.”

     Those sentiments were echoed by Hilton. He hoped all the time and effort that was dedicated to the case would translate into an arrest and eventual conviction, but nothing panned out before he retired in 2013.

     The case now rests in the hands of the DCI and current members of the Hampton Police Department. Chief Bob Schaefer is the only member of the staff that assisted with the investigation in 1999.

     “I think someone knows what happened. Sometimes it takes years for something to happen and someone starts talking. Sometimes these things have taken thirty years,” Hilton said. “But sometimes things go to the grave. After this many years, people move on and become harder to locate."

 

“At some point, someone’s going to slip up”

 

     Lee doesn’t let his mother’s murder dictate his life anymore. After her death, he learned that she always wanted him to go back to school and become a teacher. He followed through and is now the junior high social studies teacher at Sigourney and also serves as the school’s activities director.

     Every now and then Lee sees a little bit of his mother shine through when he’s teaching. He loves working with kids, especially those that come from a troubled home life or have other difficult circumstances.

     “She had a huge heart. I’m gonna bet that if you ask anybody, they’re going to tell you that’s the one thing I got from my mom,” he said. “I wouldn’t be in the situation I’m in today without her. If my mom wouldn’t have wanted me to teach, I probably wouldn’t have taken that risk.”

     Lee and Jolie had another son, Levi, who turns 11 at the end of the month. Tyler is 15 now, and even though he doesn’t remember his grandmother, he still misses her.

     He grew up surrounded by photos of Crawford. He never knew the story behind her death, but that changed when he was in third grade after her photo appeared in a newspaper.

     “I asked my mom one day and she told me about it. I thought it over, and then I kept asking more questions,” Tyler said, holding back tears. “I see pictures of her. I feel like I know her, and I feel like she’s part of me.”

     Her children were robbed of their grandmother, and that’s what pains Jolie the most. She and Lee keep Crawford’s memory alive and try to teach their sons about the kind, loving and caring grandmother only Tyler got to meet for a fleeting moment of his life.

     “She would have been all-in for every part of their lives, and that’s what’s hard for me,” Jolie said. “She was really looking forward to being a grandma. She got it for 11 months.”

     Milestones are always tough for the family. It’s been 15 years since Crawford’s murder, but they still have faith her killer will be brought to justice someday.

     “At some point, someone’s going to slip up or some piece of evidence is going to come out and enlighten somebody,” Lee said. “At this point we don’t let it dictate our lives anymore. We have two boys we have to worry about.”

    

 

     If you have any details or information about Bobbi Crawford’s murder, please contact the Hampton Police Department at (641) 456-2529.

 

Hampton Chronicle

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Hampton, IA 50441
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