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Man With Dead Woman In His Bed Investigated In Gilgo Beach Murders


By

Garth Johnston

Published Dec 5, 2012

Modified Dec 5, 2012


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Police searching the Gilgo Beach area for more bodies last year

 

AP


By

Garth Johnston

Published Dec 5, 2012

Modified Dec 5, 2012


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[Update Below] Almost two years after the first set of dead sex workers were discovered on Long Island's Gilgo State Beach an interesting lead has turned up: a 60-year-old ex-con is being investigated regarding two 19-year-old murders. The first clue that Lucius Crawford was a person of interest? When police arrived at his Yonkers home yesterday they found a 41-year-old woman stabbed to death in his bed with the convicted killer's tracking anklet near by.

Police were looking to talk to Lucius Crawford regarding two murders that took place in Yonkers and Riverdale in 1993. According to the NYPD:

Upon entering the apartment at 7-9 Beekman Avenue, the detectives discovered under a sheet on the suspect’s bed the body of a 41-year woman, who had been stabbed nine times in the chest. The suspect’s parole tracking ankle bracelet had been removed and was found in the apartment. The NYPD detectives notified the Mount Vernon police, and through joint efforts by the three police departments, local authorities captured the suspect, Lucius Crawford, M/B/60, three hours later at 4:05 p.m. at Hussey Road and East Grand Street in Mount Vernon.

Crawford subsequently confessed to detectives of three jurisdictions to the murders of the Mount Vernon woman; a Yonkers woman, Laronda Shealy, stabbed to death September 13, 1993; and to the October 20, 1993 murder of Nella West, 38, in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. She had been stabbed multiple times in the head, face, and torso, a sustained a broken eye socket and crushed skull. Crawford has been charged with murder by Westchester authorities.

Because of Crawford's long rap sheet (which dates back to 1973 and includes numerous examples of him stabbing women in South Carolina and New York), the police notified Suffolk County of the arrest. And cops there are already very interested in talking with him about the still unsolved Gilgo Beach murders. If Crawford is involved, however, it will lead credence to the two killers theory as Crawford was in police custody for murdering another woman from 1995 through 2008 and some of the remains discovered in the brambles have been dated to 1996, 2000 and 2003. All in all police found decomposed remains of eight women, one man and a female toddler alongside Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach, Oak Beach and extending west toward Jones Beach. The five bodies that have been identified all worked as prostitutes.

Update:Never mind. Though Crawford is still facing charges for the three women he has admitted to killing he "does not appear to have had 'any involvement' with the Gilgo Beach murders, Suffolk police said Wednesday afternoon."

Tagged

gilgo beach

gilgo state beach

long island

long island serial killer

lucius crawford

nypd

suffolk county


Garth Johnston

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