Cruel Death
Page 34
Erika (right) and a team-mate give a thumb’s up during what can be described as Erika’s glory days of AAU basketball.
(Courtesy of Kristen Heinbaugh)
Erika, as a teenager, was happy and vivacious.
(Courtesy of Kristen Heinbaugh)
Heading into college, Erika Grace showed promise and excellence on the basketball court.
(Courtesy Hollidaysburg High School yearbook)
As a youngster, Erika (center) was a prominent player on her local AAU traveling basketball team.
She was away from her home a lot, yet never got into any trouble.
(Courtesy of Kristen Heinbaugh)
When Martha “Geney” Crutchley and Joshua Ford failed to show up for work after the long 2002 Memorial Day holiday weekend, friends and coworkers became concerned and reported the couple missing.
(Courtesy of the Ocean City Police Department)
After leaving college with a history degree and running away to Las Vegas to marry a man she had known for three weeks, the newly wed Erika Sifrit, now calling herself “Bonnie,” was arrested with her husband—”Clyde”—on May 31, 2002, while breaking into an Ocean City, Maryland Hooters restaurant.
(Courtesy of the Ocean City Police Department)
Wearing his trademark shoulder holster, staying true to his Navy SEAL training, Benjamin “BJ” Sifrit refused to speak to police after his arrest on the night of May 31, 2002.
(Courtesy of the Ocean City Police Department)
Nearly 160 candidates entered Benjamin Sifrit’s Navy SEAL training class, but only 17 graduated, with BJ as honor man.
(Courtesy of the United States Navy public record)
After their arrest on May 31, 2002, Erika and Benjamin Sifrit took different sides regarding the incriminating evidence found in their Jeep Cherokee, which tied both of them to the missing persons case of Geney Crutchley and Joshua Ford.
(Courtesy of the Ocean City Police Department)
These photo ID driver’s licenses of Geney Crutchley and Joshua Ford were found inside Erika Sifrit’s purse on the night of May 31, 2002, after she and BJ were caught in the act of burgling an Ocean City Hooters restaurant gift shop.
(Courtesy of the Ocean City Police Department)
On the bottom curve of this ring—which belonged to Joshua Ford and was found in Erika Sifrit’s possession on the night of her arrest—there is a small blood spatter mark that was later proven by DNA testing to match Joshua Ford.
(Courtesy of the Ocean City Police Department)
Here is a photo the Ocean City Police Department took of Joshua Ford’s ring, attached to a necklace owned by Erika Sifrit.
(Courtesy of the Ocean City Police Department)
These plastic flex cuffs, along with ski masks, adhesive tape and several weapons, were found inside Erika and BJ Sifrit’s Jeep Cherokee, leading Ocean City PD detectives to believe that Crutchley and Ford were being held hostage somewhere.
(Courtesy of the Ocean City Police Department)
Here is the inside of Erika and Benjamin’s Jeep Cherokee, showing how detectives found Erika’s Coach handbag, where the gun used to kill Crutchley and Ford was located with other incriminating evidence.
(Courtesy of the Ocean City Police Department)
Ocean City PD detectives found a serrated knife on Erika, clipped to the side pocket of her jeans. The knife was later found to contain bits of human flesh and blood.
(Courtesy of the Ocean City Police Department)
These two close-up photos proved that Erika Sifrit was wearing Joshua Ford’s bloodied ring around her neck after Ford and Crutchley were reported missing.
(Courtesy of the Ocean City Police Department)
In the crook of Erika’s back, tucked into her pants, police uncovered a fully loaded .357 Magnum revolver that was later proved to be the weapon used to kill Joshua Ford; and inside Erika’s Coach purse, police located this .45 caliber handgun, along with four spent shell casings and one live round of ammunition.
(Courtesy of the Ocean City Police Department)
Here are Geney Crutchley and Joshua Ford in photos taken hours before they were murdered and dismembered by Erika and Benjamin Sifrit.
(Courtesy of the Ocean City Police Department)
After Erika turned on BJ and started talking to Ocean City PD detectives, cutting a deal with prosecutors, she explained where she and BJ dumped the body parts of Ford and Crutchley. In this Delaware landfill, police found one of Crutchley’s legs and Ford’s torso, both his arms and one leg.
(Courtesy of the Ocean City Police Department)
Here Erika holds one of her prize possessions—a python snake.
(Courtesy of the Worcester County State’s Attorney’s Office, Maryland)
After Erika and BJ murdered Ford and Crutchley, dismembered their bodies, placed the body parts in plastic bags and a Navy SEAL duffle bag, and tossed them into several different Dumpsters in Delaware, they began what these photos prove to be a fun-filled vacation in Ocean City, asking passersby to snap their photo as they smiled and hammed it up for the camera.
(Courtesy of the Ocean City Police Department)
After finding Ford and Crutchley’s IDs in Erika’s purse, police searched their condominium, where they immediately uncovered blood, hairs, and pieces of a human scalp inside this sink and a washing machine.
(Courtesy of the Ocean City Police Department)
This photo shows Erika’s python, but she and BJ also owned a cobra.
(Courtesy of the Ocean City Police Department)
This blood stain on Erika and BJ’s mattress is likely where BJ, naked and fully painted with Ford and Crutchley’s blood, sat and explained to Erika that he had masturbated over their bodies before dismembering them.
(Courtesy of the Ocean City Police Department)
This bullet, found inside Erika and BJ’s room, contained flesh, hair fibers and blood belonging to both Ford and Crutchley. Erika was said to be saving it for a necklace she wanted to make.
(Courtesy of the Ocean City Police Department)
Joshua Ford, 32, and Geney Crutchley, 51, were said to be building a life together in Fairfax City, Virginia, when they met up with Erika and BJ Sifrit on an Ocean City, Maryland bus.
(Courtesy of the Ocean City Police Department)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Crime writer, serial killer expert, and investigative journalist M. William Phelps is the author of twenty-four nonfiction books. Winner of the 2008 New England Book Festival Award for I’ll Be Watching You, Phelps has appeared on nearly one hundred television shows, including CBS’s Early Show, ABC’s Good Morning America and The View, NBC’s Today Show, TLC, BIO Channel, and History Channel. Phelps also created, produces, and stars in the hit Investigation Discovery series Dark Minds, which is in its third season, and is one of the stars of ID’s Deadly Women. Radio America calls him “the nation’s leading authority on the mind of the female murderer.”
Profiled in such noted publications as Writer’s Digest, Connecticut Magazine, New York Daily News, New York Post, Newsday, Suspense Magazine, and the Hartford Courant, Phelps has also consulted for the Showtime cable television series Dexter and written for Connecticut Magazine. Touched by tragedy himself, due to the unsolved murder of his sister-in-law, Phelps is able to enter the hearts and minds of his subjects like no one else. He lives in a small Connecticut farming community and can be reached at his author website, www.mwilliamphelps.com.
Some names have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals connected to this story.
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ISBN: 978-0-7860-3419-2
eISBN-13: 978-0-7860-3420-8
eISBN-10: 0-7860-3420-3
Kensington Electronic Edition: February 2014