Constance Bailey was a 41-year-old Black/African American woman whose killing is documented in online court and investigative records as occurring in Chicago in 1999, not on August 22, 1990. Her body was discovered in June 1999 in a building in the Englewood area during a period when investigators were confronting a series of killings on Chicago’s South Side.
The location where Bailey was found initially appeared to be the murder scene, but a later forensic examination showed that the place where her body had been left was actually a secondary scene.
Bailey was found positioned on the floor of a third-floor walk-in attic. Investigators noted evidence that the left side of her face had been beaten and that a black butterfly earring had been torn from her left ear. The absence of expected blood evidence around the attic led investigators to conclude that Bailey had been killed elsewhere in the building and then carried upstairs. Approximately two or three weeks after the initial search, investigators conducting a more detailed examination located the missing butterfly earring on the floor of a second-floor bedroom closet. Bloodstain evidence was also discovered inside that closet. Subsequent testing determined that the blood was associated with both Bailey and Andre Crawford, leading investigators to identify the closet area as the actual site of the attack rather than the attic where her body had been left.
The investigation eventually connected Bailey's death to Crawford, a Chicago serial killer responsible for a string of killings in Englewood and nearby South Side neighborhoods. According to Crawford's videotaped statements later presented to a jury, he and Bailey had arranged an exchange involving cocaine and sex. Crawford said Bailey wanted to use his cocaine first, something he claimed angered him. He admitted killing her and described sexually assaulting her after the attack. He also said that in Bailey's case and several similar killings he would leave the body, smoke crack cocaine, and then return to the scene and sexually assault the body again.
Physical evidence independently reinforced the confession. An Illinois State Police forensic scientist testified that semen recovered from vaginal swabs taken from Bailey was subjected to PCR-STR DNA testing and matched Crawford's DNA profile. The DNA findings, together with the blood evidence recovered from the closet and Crawford's detailed statements about the killing, gave prosecutors substantial forensic corroboration linking him directly to Bailey.
By 1999, Chicago police and the FBI had formed a joint task force to investigate the connected South Side murders. Crawford was arrested on January 28, 2000, initially in connection with an unrelated matter, and was brought in for questioning. He agreed to provide a DNA sample and subsequently gave extensive videotaped confessions. Investigators had already been using DNA evidence to connect a number of the killings to the same offender, and Crawford's statements allowed authorities to attribute additional deaths to him. Bailey became one of the cases formally prosecuted against him.
Prosecutors charged Crawford in Bailey's case under Cook County case number 00 CR 5463. The prosecution initially filed more than 200 counts covering Crawford's killings and sexual assaults, although many counts were later dismissed before trial as the case was streamlined. For Bailey, prosecutors proceeded with three counts of first-degree murder and four counts of aggravated criminal sexual assault. Her case was tried together with the other murder and sexual-assault cases attributed to Crawford.
After a lengthy trial, jurors deliberated for about 10 hours over portions of two days before finding Crawford guilty in December 2009. He was convicted of first-degree murder and aggravated criminal sexual assault in Bailey's death, along with the murders of ten other victims and the attempted murder of a surviving victim. The prosecution relied heavily on DNA evidence, crime-scene evidence and Crawford's own recorded confessions. The jury ultimately found him guilty on all of the counts submitted for its consideration.
Crawford was also found eligible for the death penalty, and prosecutors sought that punishment because of the number and circumstances of the killings. The jury ultimately declined to sentence him to death and instead directed that he receive natural life imprisonment. The trial court imposed natural life for the murders, along with additional 30-year prison terms for aggravated criminal sexual assault convictions. Crawford's convictions were later reviewed by the Illinois Appellate Court, which affirmed the judgment, leaving his convictions for Bailey's murder and the other crimes intact.
