The prime suspect in a 1974 ritualistic church murder reportedly shot himself Thursday after detectives tried to serve him a search warrant for his apartment.
Authorities said Steve Crawford, who had been linked to the murder by DNA evidence, died in his apartment after staving off detectives with a handgun, according to the Associated Press. Detectives spoke with Crawford through the closed apartment door, entered the apartment and then backed out when they saw Crawford with a handgun. They reportedly heard a gunshot afterward and reentered the apartment to find Crawford dead of a gunshot wound. (RELATED: Mississippi Man Pleads Guilty To Killing And Raping Nuns)
“During the execution of the search warrant, Sheriff’s deputies made verbal contact at a closed front door with an occupant in the apartment,” San Jose Police Sgt. Enrique Garcia said in a statement, according to 5KPIX. “As deputies made entry, they observed an adult male with a handgun and the deputies immediately backed away. A short time later a gunshot was heard. No deputies discharged their weapons.”
Crawford, who worked as a security guard, claimed in 1974 he had found the body of 19-year-old Arlis Perry in Stanford Memorial Church on Stanford University’s campus. Perry reportedly came to the chapel to pray after arguing with her new husband. Authorities found Perry near the altar, naked below the waist with an ice pick in the back of her head and an altar candle between her breasts. They determined that she had also been molested with a 3-foot altar candle.
“Crawford had been a person of interest since the beginning of the investigation,” said Sheriff Laurie Smith, according to 5KPIX. “Our detectives continued to piece together additional information to this tragic puzzle and we were able recently to link Crawford’s DNA to the crime scene.”
The two pieces of evidence that detectives found, linking Crawford to the crime, were a palm print on one of the candles and semen recovered from near the body.
Crawford told police at the time of the murder not to search the chapel, claiming that he had already locked it for the night. He then claimed to have found the body the next morning, saying the chapel’s side door looked like it had been forced open from the inside.
Retired Mercury News columnist Scott Herhold, who followed Perry’s case since the beginning, said that from his perspective, given the way the body was found, nothing about the method of Perry’s murder was accidental or haphazard.
“The way her jeans were laid, the way the candles were used. I think none of this was an accident,” said Herhold, according to 5KPIX. “I don’t think it was a decoy, I think it was somebody trying to make a statement.”
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