Canada's Little Known Serial Killer - John Martin Crawford

 

John Martin Crawford

John Martin Crawford is a little different than other serial killers that you read about. While the stereotype of a serial killer is that of a person with above-average intelligence, smart enough to stay one step ahead of the police. Craving attention or fame, often they will send letters to media or police accepting responsibility for their crimes. Ted Bundy and The BTK Killer Dennis Rader come to mind.

The truth isn't in line with the stereotype though. Ed Kemper is said to have an IQ of around 140+, but this is actually abnormal for a serial killer. According to the Serial Killer Information Center, the average IQ of a serial killer is 94, putting them on the lower side of average. John's parents sent him to see psychologists at Vancouver General Hospital because of his behavioral problems and poor performance in school. 

John himself never really seemed to crave the attention that other serial killers did. Consistently he has refused interviews with various news outlets and only seems to talk when required with the court-appointed psychiatrist. Not that they can get anything useful out of him, he consistently changes his story, and it's hard to tell if he is telling the truth or is making up more lies.

As a boy, John Martin Crawford burned himself pretty badly when he was playing with a lighter, leaving him with scars on his upper chest, neck, and arms. This became a focus of bullying with the other children his age. He was also molested by various babysitters at least twice. It is no wonder that as a child he was afraid of the dark.

By 12 years old, John was turning into a bear of a man and now bullied the smaller children. He starts sniffing glue and talking to himself. His glue sniffing was like a ritual for him. He would go out into the woods, sniff glue out of a paper bag and talk to himself or some inanimate object nearby. Often discussing his expectations with himself or some object near him. John once told an addictions counselor that his most meaningful religious beliefs were traditional First Nations ones.

"I don't feel so alone when I offer up a token to the Indian's god," Crawford said in 1992.

The glue-sniffing lead to harder drugs including marijuana, LSD, magic mushrooms, and prescription drugs like Valium, Ritalin, and Talwin.

He shared his first sexual experience at 13 with two other boys and an 11-year-old girl that the boys paid $5 to have sex with. As he got older he would visit "sex booths" and watch "sex shows". He started to equate sex to something that women provide for a fee.

He was about 16 when John said that he started to hear voices tormenting him. Mostly only hearing voices in his head, sometimes he would have visual hallucinations as well. One brief hallucination was of two green ladies naked from the waist up. John believes that the two ladies were the source of the voices, yet at another interview, for some reason not really clear, John said he believes the voices came from UFOs or other planets.

This volatile man exploded in violence when he was 19. In 1981, John Martin Crawford sexually assaulted and murdered 35-year-old Mary Jane Serloin after they met in a bar in Lethbridge, Alberta. Mary Jane's body was found on Christmas day, her breasts mutilated with bite marks.

John was originally charged with 1st-degree murder, but made a plea deal. By pleading guilty to manslaughter he was only sentenced to 10 years. He was released in 1989, only 8 years later.

Almost immediately on his release, John was back huffing glue and doing drugs. Drinking as much as a 24 pack of beer and a 26oz of hard liquor, he would cruise town looking for prostitutes. In May of 1992, Janet Sylvestre told police that John has raped her. The Police found John half dead laying on a beach, suffering from heatstroke and high on drugs. They took him into custody, but shockingly he was allowed to be released to his mother's custody after she paid his bail.

Janet Sylvestre

While on bail, John and one of his former inmates raped and murdered 16-year-old Shelley Napope. After the two men had raped the girl, John dragged her off into the nearby bushes and stabbed her to death. But John's rampage wasn't over yet.

On September 20, John Martin Crawford murdered Eva Taysup. He raped, strangled, and then sawed off one of Eva's arms, before burying her body. The next day, John murdered 22-year-old Calinda Waterhen, although he left her body intact.

Eva Taysup

In October 1992, Crawford took part in the beating death of a man is Saskatoon. He spent most of 1993 in the Saskatoon Correctional Centre, on another assault charge.

In 1994, a hunter discovered human remains southwest of Saskatoon. When John Crawford became a suspect, Police put him under surveillance. During that time, he picked up Theresa Kematch, brutally beat, raped, then dumped her on the street. Police picked her up and arrested her.

Janet Sylvestre was murdered in 1994. Her case remains unsolved.

In 1995, when John was finally arrested by the police, more women came forward saying that John and his inmate buddy raped and choked them. Police believe that he probably raped and killed more women than they know about. In May 1996, John Martin Crawford was convicted of the murders of Eva Taysup, Shelley Napope, and Calinda Waterhen and is currently serving 3 concurrent life sentences.

Shelley Napope, Calinda Waterhen, and Eva Taysup

John's case is intriguing because he is relatively unknown. You would think that a serial killer that killed 3 of his 4 official victims after being released on bail in Canada would be a case that would be slammed all over the Canadian news. That the Police arrested one of John's victims after he beat and raped her is absolutely sickening.

At the same time John's news story hit, there was another case that gripped the Canadian media. The serial rapist/murderer couple Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka were all over the news. That particular case seriously pissed off a lot of Canadians because Karla was offered a sweat plea deal to testify against Paul and it was found out after the fact that the defense team withheld evidence that, if known, the prosecutors never would have offered the plea deal in the first place.

So the murderer John Martin Crawford's case was overshadowed by this massive media spectacle that was Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, but was it something else? Warren Goulding, in his book "Just Another Indian: A Serial Killer and Canada's Indifference" suggests that John's crimes didn't get the media attention that they deserved because all of John's victims were First Nation's women.

This is far from the first time or the last time that Canada has been criticized over the treatment of First Nation's people. Canadian Residential schools, that separated First Nation's children from their families, where many subjected to horrible physical, mental and sexual abuse, was still in operation till 1996. Even more recently you can look to the June 2020 death of Chantel Moore, who was shot and killed by Edmundston, New Brunswick police, after being called to perform a wellness check on her.

So there may be some weight to that argument. Canada does have a long road to reconciliation with the First Nation's people.

As for John Martin Crawford; this lesser-known serial killer remains behind bars in the Saskatchewan Federal Penitentiary.