http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/c/crawford_maud.html

Maud Crawford


Above: Crawford, circa 1957


Vital Statistics at Time of Disappearance

Missing Since: March 2, 1957 from Camden, Arkansas
Classification: Endangered Missing
Age: 63 years old
Height and Weight: 5'5, 165 pounds
Distinguishing Characteristics: Reddish-gray hair. Maud wears eyeglasses.


Details of Disappearance

Maud was the first female attorney in Camden, Arkansas. United States Senator John McClellan was a partner in the law firm where Maud was employed. A photograph of McClellan is posted below this case summary. She was regarded as one of the top title and abstract attorneys in Ouachita County, and she was also was very skilled in estate management.
Maud was last seen at her residence on Clifton Street during the evening hours of March 2, 1957. Her husband, Clyde Crawford, went to a local movie theater and a liquor store during the night. Maud was sitting on her couch stringing beans when Clyde left their home. At 8:30 p.m., her cousin called and spoke to Maud briefly. This is the last time anyone has heard from her.

Clyde returned home several hours later, at approximately 11:30 p.m. and saw that the lights were on inside the residence and on both porches. Their television set was turned on and Maud's pan of beans sat on a table. Her purse was inside the home and $142 was inside of her wallet. None of Maud's clothing was missing. Several legal files were placed on a table. All of the doors were unlocked and Maud's vehicle was parked in their driveway with the keys in the ignition, the way she normally left the car for the evening. The Crawfords' dog was lying undisturbed on the floor. Nothing seemed amiss near the residence, but there was no sign of Maud at the scene. She has never been heard from again.

Maud was very active in Camden's civic efforts in 1957 and did not have a reason to leave without warning. She was highly respected in the town at the time and there initially seemed to be no evidence to suggest foul play was involved in her case. Maud's disappearance was highly publicized due to her association with Senator McClellan.

Maud's disappearance remained shrouded in mystery until reporter Beth Brickell returned to her hometown of Camden in 1986. She wrote a series of articles for The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that exposed some of the intrigue surrounding Maud's case. Brickell found that many of the people involved were still frightened about the circumstances over 30 years after Maud vanished. Brickell apparently received threats herself while researching the story. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette was threatened with lawsuits from individuals after the first segment of Brickell's story was published. The newspaper ignored the efforts to stop the story and continued to run the entire series of articles.

Brickell learned that Maud was working on the estate of Rose Berg at the time of her disappearance. Rose's husband, Henry Berg, died in 1950 and left her three quarters of his $15 million estate and one quarter to his nephew, Henry Myar Berg, nicknamed Mike. A photo of Mike is posted below this case summary. Henry and Mike's father were partners in a venture called Berg Brothers, which was apparently quite profitable for both of them. According to Brickell's sources, Mike believed that his father was the main contributor to Berg Brothers and thought Henry should have left him the entire interest of the estate. Rose and Henry did not have children and Henry named Rose and their accountant, George Bowers, as co-executors of his estate.

Rose had reportedly shown indications of mental incompetence during the 1940s and was not able to make decisions of her own ability by 1957. Rose depended on Maud, who was her friend and neighbor, to take care of her estate issues. Maud created a will for Rose in 1957 that specified her portion of Henry's estate and her own property, which was valued at $5 million, would be divided among her three nieces. There was no mention of Mike in Rose's will. He was allegedly angered by her decision, as he did not want to lose all rights to Henry's fortune and manage his portion of his uncle's estate with her relatives.

Maud apparently supported Rose's decision and fought Mike's attempts to subvert Rose's wishes. A signed copy of Rose's will was reportedly placed inside of her bank safety deposit box. Other signed copies were allegedly handed to Maud and to Bowers. Bowers told Brickell that he did have one of the signed documents in 1957. Rose's nieces apparently held unsigned documents in their possessions.

Rose required full-time nursing care by 1957 and showed symptoms of what is now regarded as Alzheimer's Disease. Maud was taking Rose's wishes very seriously and was fighting to keep her nieces listed as her beneficiaries. This placed Maud in disagreement with Mike and his attorney, Thomas Gaughan, who was a partner in Maud's firm at the time. A photo of Gaughan is posted below this case summary. Ethics prohibited Maud from taking any action against clients of her firm, which meant that she was forced to tread lightly around Mike. Their disagreement was never made public until the publication of Brickell's articles in 1986.

Brickell's sources told her that Mike moved bonds from Rose's safety deposit box prior to Maud's disappearance. According to the source, Gaughan had to convince Mike to return the items before anyone noticed they were missing and contacted authorities. There were many accusations flying back and forth between Rose's family and Mike's associates.

Three deeds were created for Rose's estate in 1950 but not recorded until 1954. Many people do not believe that Rose could comprehend what she was signing and that the deeds were inaccurate. Rose handed over 21,000 acres of valuable land to Mike in the documents. Maud apparently believed Mike took advantage of Rose and was attempting to make the deeds null and void at the time of her disappearance by allowing Rose's will to stand on its own.

It is theorized that Maud's case is connected to the Berg estate matter. All of the suspected participants and witnesses are deceased and no charges have been filed against anyone. Mike, who was a member of the Arkansas State Police Commission, died in 1975. Maud's remains have never been located and her case remains unsolved.

Senator McClellan

Mike Berg

Gaughan

http://z13.invisionfree.com/PorchlightUSA/...?showtopic=3001

Project in development

Saturday night, March 2, 1957, was cold in Camden, Arkansas, with pouring-down rain and fog so thick people said it was like pea soup.









Crawford Home

Maud Crawford, the only female attorney ever to practice law in the town of some 17,000 people, sat stringing beans in her living room in front of the TV with her vicious Dalmatian that she called Dal on the floor beside her. Her husband, Clyde, had left their stately colonial home on Clifton Street following supper, as he did every night, to drive downtown in the GMC truck Maud had bought him to see a movie at the Malco and to watch the pretty teenage girls neck with their boyfriends on the back row. The townspeople thought Clyde was peculiar, but they had the greatest respect for Maud who was highly intelligent and headed up virtually every civic effort in the community from the Community Chest to serving on the city council.

When Clyde got home later that evening after watching the nightly news and having a few beers at Carter Liquor Store, as he did every night following the movie, the lights were on in the house and on both outside porches, the doors were unlocked as always, the TV was going, the pan of beans was on the dining room table alongside several legal files that Maud had brought home from the office, Dal stretched lazily with no sign of upset, Maud's purse was on the living room couch with $142 cash in it, her car was in the driveway with the keys in the ignition, just as she always left them, and Maud Crawford had disappeared from the face of the earth without a trace, a clue or a motive. No body was ever found.


Sen. John L. McClellan with
Chief Counsel Robert Kennedy


Because Maud Crawford had been an associate of Senator John McClellan before he was elected to the U.S. Senate, her disappearance made front-page headlines in newspapers throughout the world. At the time, the Senator was chairman of a Senate subcommittee conducting high-profile hearings into alleged Mafia ties to organized labor.

Thirty years later, Beth Brickell, who had grown up in the town in the 1950s, returned home to discover that the case had never been properly investigated, that there had been a town cover-up of Maud Crawford's disappearance, and that townspeople were still afraid to talk about it.

Brickell cancelled all other plans in her life to stay on for 16 months to unravel what happened to Maud Crawford. The result was an 18-article series that appeared over a five-month period on the front page of the Pulitzer Prize winning Arkansas Gazette revealing what Brickell learned from an investigation that almost got her killed.

The first article was a bombshell and the newspaper was threatened with a lawsuit in an effort to halt publication of subsequent articles. The newspaper didn't back down and the complete series was published.

NOTE: The following text appeared in the Arkansas Gazette on July 25, 1986:
Mystery at Camden-1

Estate surfaces as issue in Crawford case

By Beth Brickell
SPECIAL TO THE GAZETTE

CAMDEN - The most widely publicized unsolved mystery in Arkansas is the disappearance of Maud Crawford from her Camden home Saturday night, March 2, 1957.

Crawford, 65, was a civic leader and highly respected lawyer for 41 years in a prominent Ouachita County law firm in which United States Senator John L. McClellan was an inactive partner.


Maud Crawford

She was a stable, responsible person and there seemed to be no reason for her to vanish of her own volition. She was well liked in the community, having been the only women ever elected to the Camden City Council. There appeared to be no motive for foul play.

Now, 29 years later, it has been discovered that a multimillion-dollar estate was a hotly contested issue in Crawford's professional and private affairs before she disappeared.

Numerous interviews and records in the Ouachita County courthouse reveal that Crawford was involved in a complex and bitter controversy with Henry Myar (Mike) Berg, now deceased, a member of the Arkansas State Police commission. He was appointed in 1955 by then-Governor Orval E. Faubus and remained a commissioner until shortly before his death in 1975.

Worth $20 million

The dispute arose from an estate that belonged to his aunt, Rose Berg. The estate, consisting of vast land holdings, oil and timber, was worth an estimated $20 million.

Sources who were close to the situation at the time say Berg believed he was entitled to the fortune because his father and uncle were partners in a joint venture called Berg Brothers. Crawford was Rose Berg's legal adviser, close friend and across-the-street neighbor.

Rose Berg and her husband, Henry Lyon Berg, had no children. When Henry Berg died in 1950, he owned thousands of acres of land, city property, millions of dollars worth of blue chip stocks and bonds and interest in oil royalties.

His will, witnessed by Crawford and likely drawn up by her, left a three-quarters interest in his assets to his wife, Rose, and a quarter interest to his nephew, Mike Berg.

The will also named Rose Berg co-executor of the estate with George Bowers, an accountant and protégé of Henry Berg who had managed assets for both Henry Berg and Mike Berg since 1939.

Rose Berg was 70 when her husband died. Since she had no children and was in poor health, the question arose as to who would inherit her interest in her husband's estate, worth about $15 million, as well as assets of an estate in her own name worth $5 million.

Say will left

Several persons say Rose Berg left a will, although it cannot now be found, that named three nieces on her side of the family to inherit her assets. Two of the nieces, Jeanette Simpson and Marion Peltason, lived in California. The third, Lucille Glazer, lived in Michigan.

Rose Berg's only relative living at Camden, Berg, reportedly was not mentioned in the will, even for a nominal gift.

If Rose Berg's will had been allowed to stand, not only would Berg have lost the three-quarter interest in his uncle's estate, but management of his previous inheritance, the one-quarter interest, would have been complicated by having to share ownership with out-of-state relatives.

Sources say the situation was unacceptable to Mike Berg.

Stanley R. Peltason, husband of Marion Peltason, now deceased, recently was interviewed about the will at his home at Santa Barbara, Cal.

Reports assertion



Mike Berg

"You have to go back all the way to the Depression years when Mike's father, Leo Berg, and Henry Berg were partners," Peltason said. "They had holdings all over the state of Arkansas. Mike always contended that it was his father that saved the partnership, and although Mike inherited one quarter of what Henry Berg left when he died, Mike told me, "I think I should be entitled to all of the Uncle Henry's estate, and by God I'm going to get it."

Although Rose Berg's three nieces had unsigned copies of her will, a signed copy was reportedly in her safety deposit box at a bank in Camden. Other signed copies were with George Bowers in the Berg business office and probably with Crawford.

Vanished with lawyer

All signed copies of the will disappeared when Crawford vanished and the nieces were unable to prove that they had existed.

Lucille Glazer, one of the three nieces who was to inherit the estate, recently spoke in a telephone interview from Sarasota, Fla., about the will.

"Aunt Rose had made a will with Maud Crawford. At one time we had a copy of it. Aunt Rose gave it to my mother [Rose Berg's sister]. It left the estate entirely to Jeanette, Marian and me," she said.

Peltason also spoke of the will. "George Bowers had a signed copy in the Berg office and showed it to Jeanette [Simpson, one of the nieces]," Peltason said. "She had left everything to Jeanette, Lucille and my wife. She passed up the other part of the family.

"Another copy was always in Rose Berg's safety deposit box. Then, all of a sudden, there's no will in there."

The existence of the will was confirmed in an interview in December with George Bowers, who was ill at the time in a nursing home in Virginia. Bowers died three weeks after the interview.

Lost mental competence

The will became critically important to the question of the inheritance of Rose Berg's estate because she became mentally incompetent years before her death in 1962.

Several people who were close to Mrs. Berg said she began to show signs of mental incompetence in the 1940s. By 1954, she required round-the-clock nursing care. Dr. Tom J. Meek, a Camden physician who examined her in 1955, said recently that "she just couldn't remember anything. I would say almost like someone with Alzheimer's disease. Of course, we didn't know anything about Alzheimer's disease then."

He said she could not carry on a coherent conversation. "She just couldn't cogitate very well," he said.

In addition to her mental condition, it is said Rose Berg knew little of her husband's business affairs and was not qualified to manage them.

She relied heavily on Maud Crawford.

Evidence indicates that Crawford, widely regarded as the best title and abstract lawyer in Ouachita County as well as an expert in estate administration, considered her responsibilities to include the protection of Rose Berg's nieces' interest in the estate.

Sources say George Bowers, co-executor of Henry Berg's estate, and Thomas Gaughan, a partner in the law firm where Crawford worked, assumed a close working relationship with Mike Berg. Gaughan was a long-time attorney for Berg. The sources say that Gaughan was sympathetic to Berg's desire to acquire his aunt's estate.

Grave complication


Thomas Gaughan

Gaughan's involvement presented a grave complication for Crawford. Not only was he Crawford's employer, but ethics prohibited Crawford from taking action against a client of her firm - Mike Berg - and any informal actions had to be discreet. Thus, the feud was not common knowledge at Camden at the time.

Interviews of the family members and participants in the feud indicate that Crawford was passionately dedicated to the rights of the nieces and that she was actively involved in an attempt to thwart Berg.

Trade accusations

Accusations of thievery flew back and forth. There were reports of negotiable bonds disappearing from Rose Berg's safety deposit box. There were claims of oil royalty checks being cashed by Mrs. Berg and of stocks being taken from her safety deposit box.

A source close to the family, who has asked not to be named, allegedly was told by Thomas Gaughan that Berg removed a number of Rose Berg's bonds from her safety deposit box.

"Mike moved some bonds out of Rose's safety deposit box and told Thomas about it," the source said. "Thomas said, 'My God, Mike, if you don't get those bonds back in the bank by tomorrow morning when the bank opens you're going to go to prison.' It took Thomas two hours to make him realize it," the source said.

Deeds conveyed

Finally, three deeds were drawn up that simply conveyed the bulk of Rose Berg's assets to Mike Berg. One of them, an eight-page deed, was dated 1951 but was not publicly recorded until 1954. With a single signature Rose Berg conveyed 21,211 acres of land, much of it valuable oil properties and city real estate, to Mike Berg. It was notarized by Mike Berg's bookkeeper, Cameron Allen, now deceased.

The question raised by relatives was whether Rose Berg knew what she was doing when she signed the deed.

Shortly afterward the deed was discovered by Sam Schleifer, son-in-law of one of the nieces.

"It came as a shock that time when I checked with the courthouse and found that it had all been transferred," he said recently at his home in Ventura, Cal. "Aunt Rose was incompetent. She did whatever you told her to do."

To help them in their fight, the nieces had only one ally in Camden - Maud Crawford.

http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/746dfar.html

http://www.geocities.com/plastic_napalm.ge...issingpre79.htm

The second site includes a pic of her house





Law Partner
Of McClellaii
CAMDEN. Ark. (INS) — Mrs
Maud Crawford, 53, a prominent
Camden attorney and legal associ
ate of U. S. .Senator John McClel
lan (D) was still missing today
and » nation-wide alert was put
out.
Mrs. Crawford mysteriously disappeared
from her home shortly
before midnight Saturday. Police
thought she might bo a victim of
amnesla.
The missing woman's husband,
Clyde Crawford, 60, told Camden
police that he left home about 8
p.m. to attend a movie. On return-
Ing his wife was missing, he said,
and the television set was on.
Lights were burning In the house
and the family car was still there,
he added.
• • •
POLICE said there was no sign
of any disturbance.
"Mrs. Crawford either left afoot
or In a car with some unknown
person," police said.
Camden was being thoroughly
checked In the search for her as
were nearby streams and wooded
areas. '
Mrs. Crawford owned a Dalmatian
dog. which greeted Mr. Crawford
when he returned from the
movie. He said the dog was very
loyal to his wife and would have
offered her protection In any struggle
Mrs. Crawford, a member of the
law firm of Gaughan. McClellan
and Laney, was the first woman
attorney In Camden She formerly
served on the city council and was
active in civic affairs.

Courtesy of The Hammond Times March 4, 1957



Still Seeking Wife Missing 5 Years
By John Jutton.
CAMDEN, Ark. (AP)—
Exactly five years ago on
a cold and rainy night
Maud Crawford vanished.
That night Mrs. Crawford,
60, an attorney, was
shelling beans in the living
room of her 12-room
Colonial house when her
cousin telephoned at 8:30.
They talked briefly.
Mrs. Crawford has not
been heard from since.
Clyde Crawford, her husband,
r e t u r n e d home
around 11:30. He said he
found the television set on
and light glaring throughout
the house.
But his wife, associated
with a law firm In which
Sen. John McClellan (D.-
Ark.) once held a partnership,
had d i s a p p e a r e d
without a trace.
Her .purse was found in
the house. There still was
$123 in it. Her clothing and
car had not been disturbed.
The house was immaculate.
Authorities questioned
her cabinet-maker husband.
He convinced them
that he was as p u z z l e d
about it as thsy.
Residents of the south
A r k a n s a s city of 15,823
thought of Mrs. Crawford
as a well-to-do, if not
wealthy, woman. She
earned between $6,000 and
$8,000 a year with the law
firm and another $4,500 as
personal guardian of Mrs.
Henry Berg, an invalid
widow whose estate was
valued at $1.5 million.
Crawford, semi-retired,
at 68. says he still believes
his wife is alive.
And the recent reappearance
of Dr. Carl Vernon
Holmberg, a chemist missing
seven year, who was
found at an Illinois paint
factory, renewed Crawford's
hopes. "He had amnesia
. . . and she might
too," Crawford said.
Camden Police Chief G.
B. Cole reports n o t h i n g
new has turned up in recent
months. At first, Cole
said, there were many tips
and telephone calls. But
each proved false.. "It's
still as baffling today as on
the night she left," Cole
said.
A reward poster issued a
the time of her disappear
ance described Maud as
being five feet, five inches
tall, weighing 165 pounds
with reddish-gray hair.
The $1,000 reward
pledged by her friends, still
stands.
In the five years, Cole
says, he has traveled over
20,000 miles f o l l o w i n g
leads, but they all proved
worthless.
C r a w f o r d continues to
live in the house from
which his wife disappeared
"I'm still waiting," he
said

Courtesy of Brainard Daily Dispatch Mar.2 1962

CRIME HISTORY - Senator's law partnervanishes in Arkansas
TAGS: washington examiner
Comments (0) Share Print By: Scott McCabe 03/02/10 4:00 AM
Crime Reporter
.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



Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/crime-...s#ixzz18lC7A4Mf