(In-Person) Beth Brickell: Solving the Maud Crawford Puzzle

Beth Brickell, author, film director, and former actress from Los Angeles, will give a talk at the Garland County Library in Hot Springs at 6:00 P.M. on Friday, June 10 about the Maud Crawford mystery that occurred in Camden in 1957.  

“All that is left unfinished is to excavate Maud’s remains and bury them next to her husband in the Camden cemetery,” Brickell said.  

Maud Crawford’s disappearance in Camden on March 2, 1957 is the most widely-publicized mystery in Arkansas history. Crawford was an attorney and prominent civic leader in Camden who had been an associate of U.S. Senator John McClellen before he was elected to the Senate in 1942. She disappeared from her home on a cold, rainy, foggy Saturday night for no apparent reason. No body, clue, trace, or motive was found in the original police investigation.  

At the time of Crawford’s disappearance, Senator McClellan was the number one news story in newspapers and television screens throughout the world as chairman of a senate committee investigating alleged mob ties to organized labor. Senator McClellan and his general counsel, Robert Kennedy, were grilling labor leaders such as Jimmy Hoffa on a daily basis. The initial theory in the Maud Crawford case was that the Mafia had kidnapped Senator McClellan’s former associate to intimidate him into backing off his investigation. But when no ransom note appeared, and Senator McClellan assured law enforcement officers that the Mafia wouldn’t dare try to intimidate him, the theory was dropped.  

Other theories about her disappearance were developed, but none were proved, and the case was declared “at a dead end” after two weeks.  

Brickell has written four books about the case and will offer her newest book, “Solving the Maud Crawford Puzzle,” at the talk.