In July 1983 video games were still in their infancy and the industry was suffering a crash it was that year that the Mario Bros. was first released as a Nintendo arcade game in Japan as a platform style game with phases. The Mario Bros. game featured the now iconic characters of Mario and his brother Luigi, two plumbers who battled sewer creatures in New York. The game was not initially successful until the release of Super Mario Bros. in 1985 for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) gaming console.
in the UK on 17th December 1983 the Harrods bombing took place when Provisional Irish Republican Army, Provisional IRA members detonated a car bomb at Harrods Department Store in Knightsbridge London. Three police officers and three civilians are killed.
Mobile phones were a thing of the future to most people so landlines and messages either by family members or on scraps of paper were normal if the family needed to know your whereabouts. There was no such thing as Alexa and most people got their music via a Transistor radio.
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In Philadelphia Pennsylvania in the United States, the Smith family had a turbulent year, Kathleen Smith and her husband David had separated. To add to the stress the home was having some renovation work been done and originally this had been started by Kathleen's half brother Dewitt Crawley, Kathleen and Dewitt had the same Father but different Mothers. However due to Dewitt Crawley often not turning up to work Kathleen had decided she was going to sack her own brother and employ a different carpenter to finish the job. Kathleen's other brother Milton Crawley had also had to sack Dewitt when he had hired him to do work at his home, for the same reason, this was obviously a cause of family tension particularly as when Milton had sacked Dewitt, he had made threats against his brother and his brother's family.
Kathleen along with the children, including daughters Terri aged 18 and Leslie aged 16 remained in the family home whilst all the work was being done. Although David had moved out following the separation he remained close by and had regular contact with their daughters and Kathleen had support from her Mother, Mary Elizabeth Crawley, who was Dewitt's step mother. Mary only lived a few doors away from her Kathleen who was a regular visitor to her Mother,
On 19th December of 1983 Kathleen had a busy day at work ahead of her and had arranged to go shopping after work for Christmas presents for the girls. However, that morning Terri was not feeling well and decided to remain home from school and Kathleen promised to check in on her by telephone during the day. The she left the house for work.
At around 2pm that afternoon Terri called her mother at work to tell her that that her Uncle Dewitt had arrived at the house unannounced. Kathleen asked Terri if she knew why Dewitt was there, Terri said he had come to pick up his carpentry tools. Kathleen was worried that her half- brother may be angry for being replaced and did not like the idea of her daughter having to deal with that, particularly as she was unwell and Dewitt was known to be threatening when sacked, So she asked if her daughter thought Dewitt was mad, but Terri was crying, so Kathleen asked her daughter to call her when Dewitt had left.
Kathleen had cause to worry about her half-brother he had a history of violence and had served a term in prison in his youth for manslaughter. during his time working at the house he had been unreliable and was prone to inappropriate outbursts.
However not long after Terri called her Mother and reassured her that Dewitt had left so she was able to get along with her plans for the rest of the day.
After work, Kathleen went Christmas shopping and had arranged to drop the presents off at her Mother Mary's house to hide them from her daughters. She arrived there at about 8:30pm. Mary told her that Terri had spoken to her grandmother and told her she was feeling much better so had decided she would go Christmas shopping herself.
Mary also told her that Leslie her 16 year old granddaughter had popped by and Mary had asked Leslie to go home and turn out the basement light as the light was visibly shining and could be seen from outside. Leslie had done what her Grandmother had asked but not returned so Mary had assumed she had either stayed home or gone to a friends house.
After the brief catch up, when Kathleen had been at her Mothers about half an hour, Dewitt appeared at Mary's house. He told Kathleen that he had popped around there on the off chance of Kathleen being with her Mother as he had just been over to her place as he wanted to collect his tools but no one was in.
Kathleen was surprised, she asked Dewitt why he needed to collect his tools now when she had spoken to Terri in the middle of the afternoon and been told he was collecting them then. Dewitt claimed he had not collected them earlier, having chatted with Terri he had left them by the door to collect later. Dewitt seemed to be behaving strangely, he was nervous and reluctant to go back to the house. so Kathleen said she would go with him.
Kathleen and Dewitt arrived at the house and she unlocked her front door, and Leslie must have been home as the basement light, which could be seen from the basement windows when it was on, was now off. However the house was mostly in darkness.
Kathleen noticed some things had been moved around. Due to the renovation work, the sofa and table normally in the living area had been put into the enclosed front porch and usually when she opened the front door, it would not fully swing open because they were in the way. However, they had been moved and the door swung back freely and the furniture appeared to be pushed back. They entered the porch of the house which was dark except for the glow of light coming from the living room lamp. The tools had been placed on the floor, near the door ready for Dewitt to collect as he had said.
Dewitt gathered up his tools from near the door and quickly left and as the house was clearly empty, Kathleen decided that she would go back to her Mothers for a while and locked up and left, she did not fully enter the home.
At about ten o'clock, Kathleen left Mary's house and went home, expecting her girls to be back by then. On opening the door she heard a faint voice, At this point she thought at least one of the girls was back so she went in. However the voice was in fact a radio she she walked around looking for the source. She found the source of the voice which was Terri's transistor radio, which was odd as it never left Terri's room
The radio was on top of the sofa which was as previously mentioned was being stored in the enclosed porch and had been pushed back out of it's usual place. Stranger still sheet rock had been positioned across the sofa blocking her actual view of the radio and the sofa itself
Kathleen remembered that when she had left the house that morning the sheet rock was propped against the sofa. Moving further into the house she began to notice many more unusual things such as a misplaced ceiling tile, there were clothes hung over the edge of steps leading upstairs, and a sewing machine had been moved to the hallway floor. Also the lights were not working.
Kathleen went straight upstairs and into Terri's room and saw that all of the dresser drawers were pulled out and clothes were strewn everywhere, whereas Leslie's room was as it had been left, except that a bed looked as though it had been knocked down.
She went next to her own room, but could not open the door because it was blocked by something heavy which was on the floor directly behind the door. Trying the bathroom door she found that room was also blocked by something behind the door.
The lights were not working and due to the ransacked nature of the house she thought they had been burgled, There was smudges of something on the bathroom door and she could not get into two of the rooms, at this point she decided to ring her Mother and asked she come straight over and bring a torch.
Mary arrived with a flashlight and suggested that they go down to the basement and check the fuse box to get the lights back on. Both women went down the stairs to the basement. There they found immediately that the light-bulb was loose in the socket and once it was tightened the lights came on.
The illumination from the light in the basement showed even further ransacking in the property. Camping equipment had been pulled out and seemed to have been arranged in the corner to create a semi-circle. in that circle one of her daughter's quilts from her bedroom was piled in the middle and Kathleen reached down to pick it up, but fearing the worse, just could not do it.
However, knowing she had to, she began shoving all the rest of the piles of equipment out of the way and she yanked it quickly back and to her horror, she found a naked body underneath.
Duct tape had been wrapped completely around the head of the body making it totally unrecognisable, all that was uncovered was one eye. Kathleen knew that her Mother had sent Leslie home to turn out the basement light so Kathleen thought she had found her 16 year old daughter Leslie murdered. An electrical cord was wrapped around the body's neck and hands, and the hands had been bound close to the neck.
Hearing a moan from the body Kathleen turned the body towards her. Kathleen realised there was blood everywhere, she frantically tugged at the tape to get it off the face. Unable to remove it, she ran upstairs to get a knife. She gave it to her mother who cut the wire around the hands. The women managed to get the tape off the face and at this point Kathleen realised this was Terri's body and the moan she heard was only in her imagination. Terri was clearly dead and had been some time.
Kathleen ran out of the basement again this time to ring an ambulance. So struck with shock and grief she could not even dial and sought out the help of a neighbour to call 911.
Whilst her daughter Kathleen was at the neighbours, Mary had managed to find a phone and had also called 911, Two Police officers were immediately dispatched to the scene but when they arrived due to Kathleen's call coming through from the neighbours, they were sent to her first.
Officers Louis Ricci and Ronald Byrne accompanied Kathleen back to her home and asked her to stay in her living room whilst Officer Byrne went to the basement Officer Ricci went upstairs to check the upper floor. Kathleen looked around her home and saw further signs it was trashed.
Meanwhile down in the basement Officer Byrne checked Terri's body for vital signs, and made an initial assessment of the body, noting that rigor mortis had already started. He saw bruising on her leg and a gaping wound in her cheek. Leaving the basement, he went upstairs and joined Officer Ricci where the bedrooms and bathroom were situated.
Pushing open the blocked bathroom door they found a partially submerged dead body in a bathtub full of bloody water, this body was found to be Kathleen's 16 year old daughter Leslie. Leslie's legs, had been bound by electrical cord, and were hanging over the side of the bath causing the blocking of the door.
.The Officers found blood on the floor and door of the bathroom, which were the smudges that Kathleen had seen in the dark, they followed the trial of more blood in the hallway.
Whilst Officer Ricci made an assessment of Leslie, Officer Byrne proceeded downstairs. when he reached the enclosed porch area where the sofa had been moved and the sheet rock placed over it he then saw legs jutting out from behind the boards. Officer Byrne moved the boards and found the body of Kathleen's estranged husband David Smith.
Kathleen was called over and asked to identify the man's body, but his injuries were horrific and he was lying face down so she did not recognise him. A pair of scissors were stuck in the back of his head and an awl was imbedded into him, Officer Byrne turned him over so Kathleen could see his face and a nail had been driven into his face through his mouth. Kathleen probably through shock and the fact he no longer lived at the family home still did not identify David at that time.
Kathleen had earlier seen some ceiling tiles were out of place and Officer Byrne noticed also that several ceiling tiles appeared to be missing, and that the some of the missing tiles where on the floor and appeared to be smeared with blood as though someone had removed the tiles as blood had splattered on the ceiling and attempted to wipe this evidence away.
At this stage the property was designated a crime scene and the on duty Forensic Pathologist Dr. Halbert Fillinger, was called to the house.
(please note injuries and post mortem information will be discussed in the next section so reader discretion should be used)
Dr Fillinger's observations included
1. On Terri's body a grooved pattern around her neck indicative of a ligature being placed around the throat and pressure being applied,
2. Directly above the area where Terri's body had been found there was a nail in the rafters which was bent downward.
3. following the post-mortem of Terri's body he noted bruising and tearing of the scalp due to multiple blunt impacts, facial stabs wounds and bruises, strangulation, and vaginal tearing.
4. Terri's caused of death was established as being hung by electrical cord from the rafters via the nail causing strangulation and the injuries made peri-mortem had not been the actual cause of death and she would have been alive when strung up.
5. On his initial examination of David Smith at the scene Dr Fillinger noted those injuries noted by Officer Byrne along with 13 blunt trauma impact wounds to the head alongside extensive tearing and shattering of the skull, and multiple deep stab wounds of the neck and back.
6. Following the post-mortem cause of death for David was established to be multiple injuries to the head, along with stab wounds which had impacted into deep tissue to the trunk and neck.
7. Leslie Smith's cause of death was drowning, however prior to death she had suffered multiple blunt force trauma head injuries he skull was fractured and she also sustained a jaw fracture.
8. All three victims have blood type B, on Leslie's clothing type A blood was discovered which the investigators believed belonged to the perpetrator.
9. As Terri had been raped but Leslie had not, it was thought that Leslie's death was because she had witnessed the attack on her sister and had therefore, been drowned to stop her from raising the alarm.
Following the Police designating the crime scene the neighbours and locals began to gather around the property and the police decided to take Kathleen and Mary to the police station so they could take statements
Dewitt Crawley was hanging around close to the scene and was also offered a lift to the police Station with his Step-Mother and half Sister. Officer McGrath was tasked with escorting them and noted that Mary turned to him as Dewitt walked towards the car and gestured to where her step son was and told Officer McGrath straight away that Dewitt was the killer they were looking for.
On Further questioning Mary about her suspicions she told Police that when Dewitt arrived at the scene he had recently showered and changed and covered himself in a lot talc which was unusual and that his behaviour earlier in the day when he came to collect his tools had been nervous and odd. Later when she had tried to speak to him about the events of the day Dewitt continued to be evasive and nervous and the families suspicions were aroused.
Police appealed for witnesses and three local people came forward all also pointing the finger at Kathleen's half brother Dewitt Crawley.
Two neighbours of Kathleen stated they had seen Dewitt at the property. Obviously Dewitt was known to have visited the house twice that day, once earlier in the day at around 2pm when Terri had called her mother and later called her Mother and confirmed he had left, but that was well before 5pm and the second time when he accompanied Kathleen to collect his tools at around 9pm.
However all of the witnesses were sure he was there between 5pm and 7pm, different times entirely, which would suggest a third visit.
In fact one of those witnesses, Angela Davis said she had seen him visiting twice, the first time earlier in the day about 2pm and later at about 5pm and she could differentiate the second visit as when she walked past the house she had noticed him poking the ceiling tiles in the porch with something long.
The third witness was Jessie Lee Brown, III. Mr. Brown knew Dewitt and in fact knew Terri Smith as Dewitt had introduced his niece to Mr Brown.
Mr Brown was working at a house in the neighbourhood and had seen Dewitt at about 5pm walking towards Kathleen's house carrying what looked like a metal pole. Glancing across the street he saw Terri answer the door and saw Dewitt going into Kathleen's house.
A few minutes later he heard arguing between a man and a woman coming from the direction of the house and he watched through the window and could see Dewitt hit Terri across the side of her head with the metal pipe he had seen him carrying earlier.
Mr Brown was worried about whether he should get involved, but whilst considering his next move, he saw Terri's father David pull up in his car and go into the house, so he no longer worried. However, he later saw Dewitt driving his brother in law David's car whilst out and about later that evening he thought strange as it was well known that David would not let anyone else drive his car.
Dewitt was arrested and charged with murdering his Brother in law David, his 16 year old niece Leslie and raping and murdering his 18 year old niece Terri. along with three counts of robbery, one count of burglary and one count of possession of an instrument of crime (namely the pipe).
At trial during testimony Milton spoke of his sacking his brother and the threats that Dewitt had subsequently made against him and his family and this was used to establish his motive for hurting Kathleen's children and estranged husband.
The Prosecutors mused that Dewitt Crawley had left his tools to establish a reason to return to the house and had taken a weapon to attack Terri. However, Leslie was home and David popped by unannounced to check on his girls and he had to kill all of them.
The jury also heard of Dewitt's previous manslaughter conviction, when he served only a few years for stabbing 16 times and killing a young black man in 1971 and how the Judge had been extremely lenient on him following that killing.
In his closing statement the prosecutor attacked that earlier lenient decision and concluded that had the previous Judge been tougher on Dewitt at that time and imposed a correct sentence that David and his daughters would still be alive. He also eluded to the previous victim being black as a factor in Dewitt only receiving a 5 year prison sentence.
"Ladies and gentlemen, isn't it ironic and, yes, sad that some judge listening at how a sixteen year old was brutally stabbed sixteen times all he could come up with in his mind was that there was just an intention to hurt him; there was not an intention to kill him. Therefore, it is less of a crime to kill a sixteen year old negro male in West Philadelphia than it would be his counterpart in another part of the city. That's what that judge said. Let's give Mr. Crawley that body. Let's say that there was mercy shown by that judge; there was compassion. And I hope you I know I will send this judge a message that had you done your job back in 1971 David Smith would be here today, Terri Smith would be here today, Leslie Smith would be here today.
Dewitt Crawley was found guilty by the jury and sentences of death were returned by the jury on each of the three murder charges.
Dewitt Crawley was also found guilty of three counts of robbery, and one count each of rape and possession of instruments of crime. He was acquitted of the burglary charge, presumably as Mr Brown had seen Terri let him into the house.
Following the denial of post-trial motions, consecutive sentences of imprisonment of 10 to 20 years on each count of robbery and rape and of 2½ to 5 years on the weapons offense were imposed
in 1986 Dewitt Crawley appealed against his sentences and made other appeals including a mistrial on numerous grounds, including that some of the witness testimony which his lawyer's claimed were unnecessarily prejudicial and inflammatory, such as photos from the crime scene and the playing of the hysterical 911 tape of his step-mother Mary.
There was also the point made that the remarks of the Prosecutor in relation to the previous crime was prejudicial as the crimes were unrelated and as he had been convicted, had served his sentence and was a free man it was prejudicial in the sentencing phase as it could amount to the Prosecutor emotionally blackmailing the jury into giving a death sentence then he previously served a very lenient sentance for killing someone.
However, given that all three murders occurred during a felony offence of Robbery and one victim was raped, another felony and there was no mitigating factors in relation to the crimes the Appeal Court upheld the previous sentences.
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