Courtesy photo WHO-TV Channel 13
UPDATE
Nov. 27, 2024 — Hampton police say they have asked Iowa’s new Cold Case Unit to take a look at Bobbi Crawford’s case. The unit of three investigators and one prosecutor is currently combing through cases to decide which ones are solvable. Iowa currently has more than 400 unsolved cases.
“If we could solve one case, that would be amazing,” Steve Ponsetto said.
Steve Ponsetto is the lead investigator of the Cold Case Unit that Attorney General Brenna Bird announced last summer. Longtime Assistant Attorney General Scott Brown serves as the lead prosecutor of the unit.
Read the Full Story at KCCI.com.
If you have any information about this case, please email coldcase@ag.iowa.gov or call 800-242-5100. All tips will remain anonymous.
Roberta “Bobbi” Crawford was a fireball. She worked as the registrar at Ellsworth Community College and raised her son as a single mom. The 53-year-old also loved racquetball, skydiving, and being a grandmother. To her son, Lee, she was more than a mother — she was a friend.
Franklin County in Iowa
Hampton in Franklin County
All that disappeared in an instant when, sometime between late Tuesday night, November 16, 1999, and early Wednesday morning, November 17, Bobbi Crawford was murdered inside the small Hampton, Iowa home where she lived alone.
Police found Crawford’s body Wednesday after co-workers contacted authorities when she failed to show up for work. Crawford had worked as an administrative assistant at the college for nearly 25 years.
Someone had cut what they thought were the phone lines and then broke in, killing her in her bedroom. Burglary didn’t seem to be the motive. Nor had Crawford been sexually assaulted.
Dr. Dale Andres performed the autopsy Nov. 17 at North Iowa Mercy Health Center in Mason City.
On Nov. 30, Franklin County Medical Examiner Keith Hansen said Crawford died from blunt trauma to the head. Roberta “Bobbi” Crawford’s trauma to the head led to hemorrhaging and death, he said.
Courtesy photo WHO-TVLee Crawford, who lives in Sigourney with his wife, Jolie, and the couple’s two sons, told Channel 13’s Aaron Brilbeck he remembers getting the news and then having to make the three-hour drive to his mother’s home.
“Not knowing,” Lee Crawford said in an interview WHO-TV aired on January 27, 2011. “Basically the whole way. Not knowing what’s going on at home. What’s happened. Hoping someone’s been caught.”
Lee described the trip as the “three-hour drive from hell.”
He spent the next few days in a fog, not knowing what had happened or why someone would want to do such a horrible thing to his mom. None of it made any sense.
“It’s like that missing jigsaw puzzle of…you know…the big question is why. And who? And you don’t know,” he said.
Growing up, it had been just the two of them.
Courtesy photo WHO-TV“It was me and her together. All my trials and tribulations and all my emotions kind of went through her,” he told Brilbeck. “So the way I react to things kinda comes from her. I kind of wear my heart on my sleeve and that’s kind of where she was. Everything was my heart on my sleeve.”
Even after Lee grew up, got married, and started his own family, the two remained close. After all, she’d been his sounding board while growing up and all through junior high school.
“If I was having problems she was the first one I’d talk to. It’s just one of those things you don’t have now,” Lee said.
Two years after her murder, authorities offered a $19,500 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction. The reward included $14,500 in local funds and $5,000 from The Carole Sund/Carrington Memorial Reward Foundation, an organization established in memory of Sund, who was found murdered in Yosemite National Park. The foundation has provided reward money in 100 murder cases in 27 states.
Courtesy photo WHO-TVIn a Globe Gazette article dated Nov. 14, 2004, Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) Special Agent Bill Basler said he could not comment on specifics but said the case was still being investigated.
Hampton Police Chief Ray Beltran told Channel 13 he keeps a picture of Bobbi Crawford on his office wall — right above a filing cabinet dedicated to her case. The case haunts him, he says, and he takes it very personally.
“I was the first officer to arrive on the scene, and the contact that we’ve been having over the years with the family — with her son Lee — I just can’t imagine not having closure,” Beltran said in the 2011 interview with WHO-TV’s Brilbeck.
Over the past eleven years, the Hampton police and state investigators have tracked hundreds of leads — some across state lines — but still can’t make sense of such a senseless crime.
“It kind of confuses you,” said Hampton Police Captain Jim Hilton. “You work on it. You try your best to go forward and get some resolve. And it is frustrating.”
Courtesy photo WHO-TVLee Crawford said he credited his wife, Jolie, with helping him through the first years after his mother’s death and remained hopeful the crime would be solved.
“There’s probably not a day that goes by I don’t think about it,” Crawford, who teaches reading and writing to students with learning disabilities at Sigourney Junior-Senior High School, told the Waterloo/Cedar Falls Courier in an earlier interview. “I have two sons, and it’s a bitter reminder this time of year when they don’t have a grandma. They’ve missed out on her and what she could have brought to them, spoiling them.”
Crawford said he’s had to use other things to replace that. In addition to his teaching, he’s also coached football, basketball, and baseball. His mother, he said, used to “truck him around” to Little League baseball games, Boy Scout meetings and other events.
Courtesy photo WHO-TVIn June 2005, a private investigator from South Dakota said he believed Bobbi Crawford was killed by a serial killer — the same one he believes killed Mason City television reporter Jodi Huisentruit. The detective said the suspect was a Newton native who then moved to Arizona, where he and another member of the Aryan Nation allegedly beat a man to death.
Despite the leads, no one has ever been charged in Bobbi Crawford’s homicide.
Both the family and police say there will be no rest for them until the killer is caught — and they get some answers.
It’s hard for Lee and Jolie to watch their sons grow up knowing they’ve been robbed of a grandmother to spoil them.
Courtesy photo Dick Johnson/The Globe Gazette“Yeah, yeah. It’s hard,” Lee says. “I hope you can tell it’s hard to talk about. But yeah, it still hurts.”
Roberta “Bobbi” Crawford was born July 26, 1946.
In addition to her son and his family, Bobbi was survived by her sister, Fran Foland of Geneva, and her mother, Kay Whitesell of Hampton.
Bobbie was laid to rest at Hampton Cemetery. Her headstone features an image of her and Lee walking home from one of Lee’s baseball games, headed toward a golden sunset.
Anyone with information regarding Bobbi Crawford’s unsolved murder is urged to contact any of the following agencies:
WHO-TV’s Aaron Brilbeck reports on the unsolved 1999 murder of Roberta “Bobbi” Crawford of Hampton.
Air Date: January 27, 2011
I’m guessing the private investor in South Dakota who thinks it was the same killer as Jodi Huisentruit’s was Jim Feldhaus?
yes, according to this article he thought it was a serial killer who was a Newton native and moved to Arizona. That sounds like John Vancise but he wasnt a serial killer
Yeah, not sure if I would subscribe to JV being a serial killer, but I would be interested in knowing if he had any sort of connection to Bobbi Crawford. Did he or any of his friends or acquaintances ever date her? I guess her son could answer questions about her social life and who she dated in the past. I can’t quite place my finger on it, but I feel like Bobbi and Jodi have some similar facial features.
Wasn’t there a thin connection between Vancise and the Copper Dollar ranch murders? I think it was mentioned in Beth Bednar’s book about Jodi H’s disappearance. Vancise either worked on the ranch or knew the owner at the time/around the time of the killings, something like that.
Yeah, I remember he has some sort of connection to it. If I recall correctly someone said it was a talking point for him to mention being close to it in some way. That whole case and trial got botched, but that’s a whole other topic of conversation.
I don’t think the copper dollar ranch was JV. I think it was a drug connection.
I think that a case like this and a few others, the crime scene should not have been contaminated. It’s not like a crime scene from 30 or 40 years ago. If need be you request assistance from the next higher agency.
I would think with advances that this case be looked at again. The resources from the FBI and forensics can provide more answers. The cutting of the what they thought was the phone lines, is also interesting. So what kind of lines were cut. Also, if the details of the crime have been entered into the FBI’ VICAP system. This way it could be linked to other similar crimes around the country.
It appears she was targeted for some reason.
Yes Ray Beltron was the first officer on the scene and he contaminated the crime scene to the point there was nothing much of any use. Hampton is a small town where everyone knows everyone elses business. Ask anyone who lives there ‘ Who murdered Bobbi Crawford’ and the answer will be the same. They should’ve taken a closer look at the Ex-chief of police!
I know nothing of any Hampton officers. However I will say, it’s pretty much the same personality profile. Serial killer/ cop. It’s a matter of choices that’s makes the difference. But in general the traits are the same.
Who was the serial killer the private detective mentioned?
The serial killer possibly is newton native John Vansice… not sure if he’s a serial killer, but was linked to Jodi huesentruit, and has been a person of interest from day one…. moved to Arizona a while back cause he knew the cops where closing in on him…. just last year his name came up again with the husentruit case….I wish these cops would quit pussy footing around, question this fuck about the huisenrtruit and Crawford case, and others….. Been long enough, these families need closer…. who fucking cares about his rights and all that shit, he knows something…. cops need to start doing there job and solve this!!!!!
I pray someone can help.