Chicago serial-killing trial: Jury selection begins in Andre Crawford case

As the bald, bespectacled Andre Crawford sat at the defense table wearing a sage-colored Oxford shirt and jotting notes on a legal pad, Lemott assumed he was a lawyer.

She had no idea Crawford -- the Navy veteran accused of raping and killing 11 women on the South Side during the 1990s -- would look so normal.

"I didn't expect him to look like everyone else," Lemott said. "I thought he would look like evil."

Jury selection in Crawford's 11 murder cases began Monday, more than a decade after a serial killer terrorized the Englewood and New City neighborhoods, two of the city's most impoverished and crime-ridden areas. If convicted, he could face the death penalty.

Crawford, 47, also is standing trial in the attempted murder and rape of a 12th South Side woman.

He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The hunt by Chicago police for an Englewood-area serial killer made headlines in the late 1990s but quickly disappeared from public consciousness after Crawford's arrest in January 2000. Little has been written about the case since then, and few, if any, of the 100 prospective jurors seemed to recognize his name as the charges against him were read in court.

With scores of pretrial motions and a dozen victims, the case has inched through the justice system over the last 10 years. Crawford has been awaiting trial longer than any other inmate in Cook County Jail.

"Too much time has gone by," said Glenford Lemott, whose sister Evandrey Harris was strangled in 1998. "People forget this happened, but not our family. We have waited more than 10 years for this day."

Just as Crawford's everyman appearance made it difficult for Harris' family to recognize him in court, authorities and old acquaintances said his ordinary demeanor allowed him to blend easily into his community. A friendly sort who never turned down good barbecue or Coqui malt liquor, Crawford participated in neighborhood watch programs and helped police pass out fliers seeking information on the serial killings.

"He was a mild-mannered guy," said Larry Crawford, a former friend who is not related to the accused. "He never degraded women or said anything that would make you think he was violent. He was a nice guy."

Authorities, however, painted a much darker picture of Andre Crawford after charging him with the brutal deaths of Harris, Patricia Dunn, Rhonda King, Angel Shatteen, Shaquanta Langley, Sonja Brandon, Nicole Townsend, Cheryl Cross, Tommie Dennis, Sheryl Johnson and Constance Bailey. Police say he confessed to all 11 killings and that his DNA physically linked him to seven of those crimes.

Crawford killed the South Side women after luring them to secluded areas with deals to swap drugs for sex, law enforcement officials said. Most of the victims were strangled, and many of the alleged sexual assaults took place after the victims were dead, according to court records.

Police said Crawford routinely took his victims' shoes and sold them on an Englewood street corner. He allegedly told officials that he kept one pair of designer shoes worn by Brandon, 31, after strangling her and resold them for $20.

Crawford, a transient who occasionally worked for the Chicago Sun-Times delivery operations, lived in two of the abandoned buildings where two victims were discovered, authorities said. He allegedly told police that he placed a victim's body in one building's flooded basement hoping the water would destroy the DNA evidence.

His defense team declined to comment, citing a gag order imposed by Judge Evelyn Clay, who is presiding over the case. In court documents, however, Crawford's lawyers maintain he made the statements after police threatened to place him in a jail cell with rival gang members, provided him with drugs and allowed him to get high.

The victims were all African-American women who authorities said engaged in "high-risk activities" such as prostitution and drug use. These women are common prey for serial killers, experts say.

"Serial killers pick on those who are vulnerable," said Steven Egger, a criminology professor at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. "They pick on those who don't fight back, and they pick on those who won't be missed."

Both Harris' and Johnson's families deny their relatives engaged in illicit activities, but even if the allegations were true, they say it would not make the women's lives less meaningful. "That does not give you license to kill somebody," Glenford Lemott said. "You don't deserve to die just because you have a sickness or a weakness."