On this day, March 2, in 1957, Maud Crawford, the first female council member of Camden, Ark., disappeared from her home without a trace.
Because Crawford was a former law partner of U.S. Sen. John McClellan, who was conducting an investigation into Mafia activity, her disappearance attracted national attention.
The police probe reached a stalemate, and in 1969 Crawford was declared dead by “foul play.”
In 1986, the Arkansas Gazette wrote an investigative series implicating a deceased state police commissioner. The story quoted the original investigator who said he told his boss that the evidence pointed to the commissioner. The detective was taken off the case.
Prosecutors reopened the investigation and went to interview the commissioner’s bodyguard who they believed was involved in the disappearance. The bodyguard was dying of cancer and too groggy to talk. He died seven hours later.
The disappearance remains unsolved.
— Scott McCabe
