First murder

From that point on, Crews’ life began to go downhill. By 1986, he was in Bartow where he worked as a fruit picker. One night, Clemmie Arnold gave him a ride from a bar. A few hours later, Clemmie’s body was found naked near railroad tracks some 1,000 yards from where Crews was living. Her throat had been slit, but authorities couldn’t determine whether she had been raped.

The change in his identity

The next day, the police were on a high-speed car chase with Crews after spotting him in Clemmie’s car in Polkville, North Carolina. But Crews managed to escape into the woods. By 1987, he was in Loris, South Carolina, where he managed to get employment at a tobacco farm for three years. Later, he married Karen. But in 1989, for unexplained reasons, he boarded a bus headed north and never returned. Karen was called in to testify on Crews’ prosecution.