THE FOLLOWING IS A REPORT FROM THE STATE PORT PILOT

PATRICK CRAWFORD

Wednesday, January 5, 2005 • Southport, N. C.
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Family searches for answers to death
Closed too quickly?
By Terry Calhoun
News Editor
Editor’s Note: In May of 1999, the body of 25-year-old Patrick Michael Crawford of Castle Hayne was found floating in the water of the Cape Fear River just north of Southport. In late 2004, Crawford’s father contacted The State Port Pilot and requested a review of the circumstances of his death from the point of view of this side of the river. Crawford subsequently visited Southport and supplied the documentation he had accumulated during the more than five years since his son’s death.
John Crawford believes his son was murdered in May 0f 1999, his body dumped into the Cape Fear River. He has no hard evidence to back up his belief. It’s a hunch, with just a single, admittedly circumstantial incident reinforcing the idea.
Crawford, whose 25-year-old son Patrick’s body was found on May 21, 1999, floating face up in the Cape Fear River near the ADM pier just north of Southport, admits he is guessing. He might be a grieving father in denial that his son’s death was lifestyle-related or, even more difficult to accept, the result of suicide.
But following five years of anguish, five years of investigations and five years of self-reflection, Crawford believes the State of North Carolina failed in its duty to properly investigate the death of one of its citizens.
He believes the authorities were guessing, too, when they ruled his son’s death an accidental drowning, and he believes he has a right to more than just a guess.
After driving from Brevard to spend four hours laying out his accumulated evidence, including a report from a respected private investigator, Crawford repeatedly asked, “What do you think?”
He follows with more questions, one after another.
“Am I wrong to want to know what really happened? Am I being unreasonable? What would you do if it was your child? What if they had found your child’s body in Transylvania County? What if it had been a prominent person’s son? What can I do now?”
John Crawford understands there were jurisdictional questions involved when a vacationing fisherman reported finding Patrick’s body. He had been reported missing four days earlier in New Hanover County, his abandoned car discovered by a Fort Fisher park ranger on the ocean side of Pleasure Island. When the investigating New Hanover County detective waved off Brunswick County deputies with an “I’ve got it,” there was little reason to argue.
By statute, the jurisdiction from a medical examiner’s point of view clearly belonged to Brunswick County. The body was taken to Dosher Memorial Hospital for a preliminary examination before being transported to Chapel Hill, accompanied by a Brunswick County sheriff’s deputy.
But despite what John Crawford thinks now are clear red flags, the state medical examiner apparently performed an incomplete autopsy. Not thinking clearly and with no single reason at the time to conclude otherwise, the grief-stricken family accepted the preliminary finding of “unknown causes” and chose cremation. No family member viewed the body.
Now the larger red flags can be seen more clearly.
First, Brunswick County medical examiner Dr. Douglas Hiltz noted in his preliminary report, with a double underline for emphasis, that the body was found floating face up. An authoritative University of Dundee forensic medicine Web site Crawford references says, “Corpses in water always lie with the face down and with the head hanging.”
Crawford has underlined in red, “always.” Many other of the “immersion artifacts” listed in the university’s summary are equivocal, using words and phrases such as “may occur,” “characteristically” and “usually.”
“’Always’ means just what it says,” said Crawford. “’Always’ means always.”
Dr. Hiltz, who has been medical examiner in Brunswick County for more than ten years and has viewed a number of bodies pulled from the river, raised another flag in his report.
“No evidence of fish bites using (usually) noted on victims in this river,” Dr. Hiltz wrote on May 25, 1999, after the body had presumably been in the water four days.
State medical examiner notes mental health ‘history’
The state medical examiner’s autopsy report indicates, “He has a history (of) schizophrenia and had apparently experienced some delusions regarding the ocean.”
Crawford said his son had absolutely no history of treatment for, or a diagnosis of, mental illness and profoundly questions the appropriateness of the word “history.” Private investigator Terry Peters found no medical treatment at all except for emergency room treatment for an injury Patrick Crawford sustained during a comedy routine he performed in Wilmington and for an impacted wisdom tooth.
The only recorded indications of delusions were statements from Patrick Crawford’s girlfriend and his male roommate that he had been describing fantasy scenarios and other friends’ conversations that he had been acting “weird” since seeing the movie “The Matrix.”
Among his other creative pursuits, Crawford was a science fiction writer. He also wrote and performed for a Wilmington comedy troupe named Changing Channels and dabbled in visual arts.
Finally — although the fact has not yet been independently confirmed — Crawford received a bill months after the funeral for resuscitation services from a local rescue squad. County emergency management director Randy Thompson has promised to research that bill when he returns from holiday time-off.
Crawford is a respiratory technician in Transylvania County whose job it is to help keep hospital patients struggling to breathe alive. Nevertheless, he says, “I have seen many, many dead bodies.” As a matter of both professional knowledge and common sense, he knows that no one would attempt resuscitation on a four-day-old corpse.
“Why would you try to resuscitate someone who had been dead in the water four days?” asks Crawford. “The body would stink.”
Crawford said Brunswick County detective Roger Harrington was at the scene when the nude body was recovered, and it was he who accompanied the body to Dosher Memorial Hospital for examination and to Chapel Hill for autopsy.
Crawford quotes Harrington as saying of the body at the time, “It was okay; it was all right.”
Harrington says now the body was not badly damaged, but it did look as if it had been in the water for some time.
Harrington is not talkative in any case. Was he trying to spare the father the gruesome details?
Autopsy fails to find typical drowning signs
According to the state autopsy report, the body was in stages of early decomposition.
“This is the decomposed, unclothed body of a normally developed and appearing white male,” the narrative officially filed June 11, 1999, begins. “There is generalized greenish discoloration, skin slippage and venous marbling over all body surfaces. Hair is present on the head and beginning to separate. There is some reddening around the right eye and some medial conjunctival hemorrhage on the left. There is generalized increased congestion of the right side of the face versus the left.”
The state examiner did note a small tissue loss, apparently unnoticed by the local medical examiner.
“There is a small area of tissue loss noted on the dorsal surface of the left foot, approximately one-quarter inch in maximal dimension,” Dr. John D. Butts, the state’s chief medical examiner, wrote.
“There is no evidence of significant internal trauma,” he said.
The stomach contained a small amount of fluid. No water was noted in the lungs, but autolysis (self-digestion) was described as marked. Pulmonary congestion and edema (bodily fluid presence) was also noted on the autopsy report. Small amounts of decompositional fluid was found in body cavities and “the larynx shows a small amount of sandy materials.” The trachea and bronchi were clear. The bladder contained 50 cc’s of urine. There was congestion of the meningeal vessels.
Despite the lack of at least some of the usual characteristics of death by drowning, the cause of death was described as drowning.
Crawford said he was originally told there were no pictures of the corpse because of a subsequent fire at U. S. Coast Guard Station Oak Island, but after some follow-up questioning in November the sheriff’s department located photos and offered to show them to Crawford. He declined.
Private detective Terry D. Peters of Hampstead, whom John Crawford said is a retired FBI agent and who is described as an excellent investigator by Brunswick County chief detective David Crocker, talked with the team leader of divers who inspect bridges for the N. C. Department of Transportation. DOT underwater inspector Allen Hancock has provided assistance to numerous state and local law enforcement agencies and rescue units in rescue and recovery of bodies, Peters reported.
Peters asked Hancock about tides, marine life and drowning pathology. Hancock would not render an opinion on the likelihood of the body being washed across the Cape Fear River to Southport, but he confirmed for Peters that water should have been found in Crawford’s body if a drowning occurred. Hancock said it would not be unusual for a body to be stripped of its clothing by tides in the ocean or tidal rivers and streams.
But what he did find unusual was the absence of any significant damage to the body from fish bites.
“The time of year the accident occurred and the water temperature would have been conducive to marine life being in the area and attempting to attack the body,” Peters summarized from his conversation with Hancock.
Peters concluded, “It is not unusual that a body carried by ocean or tidal currents could show significant bruising or swelling from coming in contact with underwater objects such as rocks or trees or from surface water obstructions such as floating logs, docks, piers or boats.”
However, N. C. Wildlife Resource Commission officer Bill Lester, whose job it is to investigate boating-related accidental deaths, has seen examples of bodies severely damaged by fish bites, but other examples of bodies which were left alone by marine life. Lester wasn’t familiar with the Crawford case but agreed to be interviewed for background.
Lester knows of bodies pulled from the water being covered with crabs. Often ears, eyes and noses show damage from marine animals. Sometimes the findings are much worse.
“Sometimes there’s a whole lot of damage,” said Lester. “You never know what you’ll see.”
Answers to questions posed to experts are not conclusive, but Crawford is convinced there would be damage from both incidental contact and from marine bites had his son’s body been in the ocean or river around the mouth of the Cape Fear River for four days.
How could body have ended up at ADM?
Any number of scenarios are possible to explain how a victim’s body could go into the river or the ocean at Fort Fisher and end up at Southport, but none of those scenarios ring true for Crawford.
Patrick Crawford might have parked on the ocean side, yet ventured to the marsh side of Pleasure Island on foot before going into the water. Within the realm of possibilities, his body might have washed across the island further south at Corncake Inlet.
Crawford draws a rough sketch on a Manila folder, however, to illustrate his disbelief that the body could have floated down the coast, past Bald Head Island and into the river current before coming near shore north of Southport.
Could the body have been snagged by a fisherman’s net?
“Anything is possible,” answered Crawford. “But really, that just doesn’t seem probable.”
Did Patrick Crawford commit suicide?
John Crawford jumps from one piece of “evidence” to another as he tries to present an organized summary of all those things he has been told. He resists interruption as he plows through minutiae, secondary reports and conjecture. He is aware that at times his story is difficult to follow. He repeats himself on key points, and repeatedly asks, “Does that make sense?”
When he leaves his “script,” Crawford presents the human face of a father who doesn’t believe his son’s death was accidental, but who worries he isn’t fully rational as a result of his heartbreak.
“He was a good swimmer. We have a swimming pool in our backyard,” said Crawford. “Somebody told detectives he wasn’t a good swimmer.”
If it was not an accident, was it suicide, perhaps driven by delusions?
That’s not an acceptable explanation to Crawford either. He and his wife and Patrick’s brother all talked with him by telephone the Sunday before his disappearance. There was no indication of distress. There was no history of instability, other than the fact that Patrick left behind his supposed ambition to become an FBI agent, dropping out of the University of North Carolina at Asheville to pursue a movie career in Wilmington.
No suicide note has been found, but Crawford reportedly gave away some of his belongings shortly before his death because he would no longer need them.
Crawford’s girlfriend, Sarah Williams, told Peters that when she arrived at Fort Fisher the car was not being treated by the police as a crime scene.
“When the police saw Crawford’s art, they immediately thought that he was suicidal,” Williams told Peters.
Peters compiled a CD with a collection of Crawford’s art. Some of it is comic, some is sweet with depictions of cartoon dogs and bunnies, some is adolescent-seeming sketch art of superheroes and mythical creatures. Some is obvious self-portrait, revealing multiple faces. There are some religious allusions and depictions of violence and death. Out of dozens, one sketch shows a character stabbing himself in the breast.
There is one work representing a waterscape with a large sun dominating the image.
A professional psychologist, and certainly an amateur psychologist, would be hard-pressed to draw character conclusions from such a mixed bag of samples, agreed one psychiatric social worker asked to view the work.
Friends doubt suicide
Friend Matt Mizell of Wilmington also talked with Peters. Mizell first met Crawford on the set of “Dawson’s Creek,” a television series filmed in Wilmington and Southport. When Peters talked with Mizell he was sharing an apartment with fiancee Sarah Williams, Crawford’s former girlfriend. The couple later married.
Mizell, an actor, said he knew Crawford for about two years prior to his death. He and Crawford were talking about making a movie.
“They ‘hung out’ together for a short period of time, and then about six months later met again,” Peters reported.
About two to three weeks before Crawford’s death Crawford called him and told him he was writing a script. He saw Crawford again about a week later at a film festival in downtown Wilmington, and afterwards he called Crawford at his home. On the Friday night before Crawford’s disappearance he said he saw Crawford again and later got together at a party.
“From his contact with Crawford, he feels certain that Crawford was not suicidal. However, in his opinion, (Crawford) was acting a little ‘weird,’ seemed very excitable and was more or less trying to do a lot of things at the same time,” according to Peters.
Mizell, as everyone else Peters talked with agreed, said Crawford had no enemies he knew of. Those people he considered closest to Crawford included Kaufman, who was last known to be living either in Greensboro or Greenville, Megan Foulke, another roommate now in Denver, Colorado, and a man who ran an independent film studio and lives in the Orton Plantation area.
Foulke told Peters that Crawford had been influenced by “The Matrix,” a science fiction drama dealing with artificial intelligence and the nature of reality, and was acting strange, but she wasn’t certain whether he was serious or “playing around.” She was concerned about his mental health, she said, but “does not believe that Crawford committed suicide.”
She also mentioned the actor Mizell and the independent film producer as known associates.
An impromptu “wake” held in Wilmington at Bessie’s, a nightclub where Patrick had worked and where he performed on stage in Changing Channels, was the site.
A letter signed “Friends of Patrick” and headed “from all of his friends in Wilmington” was sent to the Crawford family on May 25, 1999.
“We felt that we should share with you how much Patrick touched all of our lives, from his best friends, to total strangers who came into the coffee shop where he worked. His enthusiasm and lust for life was contagious. When you talked with Patrick about your hopes and dreams, he made you feel like they were valid and worth living for.”
More than 100 people attended the wake. A microphone was set up on stage and the houselights were dimmed.
“Immediately, one by one, people took to that stage and for the next hour told their stories of Patrick. Roommates told of his inability to wash a dish, yet he could stay up for three days and nights writing a science fiction screenplay,” the letter continued.
Drug-related delusions; sleep deprivation?
“Parents don’t always know what their kids are doing,” said John Crawford. Peters’ report indicates alcohol and marijuana use, and there is mention of a one-time dalliance with psychedelic mushrooms, but no reports from his friends of any other drug use.
Crawford, who also owns a medical equipment company and whose wife is a nurse, knows only the lifestyle of the middle classes. He is not in tune with the alternative lifestyles of the coffee house, show business and nightlife scene in Wilmington. He admits to having lived a “sheltered” life.
He also admits he wonders about what effect, if any, drug use had on his son’s ending.
But that takes John Crawford back to his original problem. He doesn’t know, because the state medical examiner did not order a full toxicological autopsy.
Dr. Hiltz said last week he did not know the state examiner, Dr. Butts, had not ordered the full drug work-up, rather simply checked for blood alcohol level, which was negligible, consistent with natural alcohol production as a byproduct of decomposition.
During a telephone interview Dr. Hiltz was read some of the autopsy results and the toxicology report.
“He just checked for alcohol?” Dr. Hiltz reacted, and then fell silent.
Blood was drawn only from the heart, according to the autopsy report.
According to the state medical examiner’s own Web site, a sample of blood for toxicology is to be taken by the pathologist in cases where an autopsy is performed and cardiac blood should be taken only as a last resort.
Dr. Butts has not yet returned calls placed to his Chapel Hill office. The person who answered the phone on the final attempt last week was given file case numbers for reference to facilitate a callback. After a five-minute wait, she returned to “take a message.”
Dr. Hiltz said he believed blood samples are retained for five years. If there is an orderly disposal system, that sample would no longer exist. Exhumation might be a solution, he said, until told the body had been cremated.
“Uh-oh,” reacted Dr. Hiltz.
Asked about what remedy Crawford could turn to if he believed an incorrect determination had been reached, Dr. Hiltz said Crawford could have the autopsy results examined by an independent pathologist.
Clear and well-ground protocols
Crawford has copied the Chief Medical Examiner guidelines and has underlined: “His/her primary purpose is to detect, analyze and document the medical aspects of certain types of deaths so that deaths can be better understood scientifically, legally and socially.”
He also has a copy of a paper published by the National Institute of Justice on the subject:
“The sudden or unexplained death of an individual has a profound impact on families and friends of the deceased and places significant responsibility on the agencies tasked with determining the cause of death. Increasingly, science and technology play a key role in death investigations. One of the hallmarks of science is adherence to clear and well-ground protocols.”
Crawford will listen with patience to all the speculation of what might have happened to his son. Perhaps he overdosed with friends using drugs, they panicked and concocted the drowning drama. Perhaps he was accidentally killed in a fight with an acquaintance who followed a similar script. One person with whom John Crawford came in contact following his son’s death was very aggressive in discussing Patrick’s property.
“I told my wife, ‘He was going to hit me,” Crawford said after he ordered his son’s former friend off his property.
That sort of physical aggression led Crawford to surmise the man could have exhibited similar behavior in the past, leading him to speculate about a possible murder scheme. Is that possible, or did Crawford overreact to someone who doesn’t share his own sense of decorum and proper behavior?
Crawford isn’t sure what he wants now. According to previously published reports, the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Department has found no grounds for reopening its investigation.
Most of all, the father asks for answers as a sort of basic human right, an expectation that the death of a young man with no local family ties would be investigated rigorously.
“I bet it would be if it was the governor’s son,” said Crawford.
He feels that because his son’s life wasn’t seen as significant to investigators, they were all too quick to assume that anecdotal reports of mental illness were true, and quickly categorized the case as just one more unfortunate event.
Sheriff Ron Hewett of Brunswick County said his department stands ready to investigate if anyone provides any information linking Crawford to Brunswick County in the days before his death.
“We find nothing in the medical examiner’s report to indicate foul play; there has not been one witness come forward in five years who stated they had seen Crawford in Brunswick County under any suspicious circumstances,” said sheriff Hewett.
Hewett responded to a request for information by setting a meeting with Crocker, Harrington, chief deputy Tony Cummings and himself.
“We will help a father any way we can. We understand his frustration
,” said sheriff Hewett.
Later, Lt. Crocker contacted John Crawford to ask what it would take to satisfy him that the Brunswick County department had done all it could do, according to Crawford.
Circular information flow?
Hewett acknowledged that in reaching his own personal conclusion that no foul play was involved he was heavily influenced by the medical examiner’s schizophrenia notation, information the medical examiner said came to him from police.
Dr. Hiltz said he routinely entered any information on the medical examination which came his way. As an example, he referred to a recent traffic death, one in which he had entered the information that cell phone use had played a part. After telephone records showed that not to be the case, investigating officers were able to ignore that notation.
District attorney Rex Gore also expresses his sympathy and understanding of a grieving father, but agrees with the sheriff that jurisdiction belongs in New Hanover County in the absence of material evidence that a crime occurred in Brunswick County.
“We would certainly want to open the case here if there was new and substantial evidence that the boy was killed,” said Gore.
A gunshot wound or a similar clear sign of mayhem would have overridden the decision to leave the case in the hands of New Hanover County investigators, Gore explained.
Gore said he was sure everyone involved thought they had done their jobs, but in this case, and in others he had seen, “The system has left open the possibility those questions will never be answered.”
Meanwhile, Crawford asks:
“What if it was your child whose body had been found in Transylvania County? Would you be satisfied with what they’ve told me?”