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- [00:00]
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- [00:38]
Paul Wagner
your destination for sports right now. The NBA is heating up, March Madness is here and MLB is almost back. Every day there's a new headline, a new highlight, a new moment you've got to see for yourself. That's why I stay locked in with the Bleacher Report app. For me, it's about staying connected to my sports.
- [00:56]
Darren Crandall
I can follow the teams I care
- [00:58]
Paul Wagner
about, get real time scores, breaking news and highlights all in one place. Download the Bleacher Report app today so you never miss a moment. After my first podcast episode came out in the winter of 2021, Sherry's three children wanted to meet with me. They wanted to thank me for the time I put into telling their mother's story. And as I sat in a Bethesda, Maryland restaurant with Tiffany, Darren, and Luke, I was surprised when Tiffany handed me a gift bag. Inside was a card and a figurine, a small statue of a guardian angel. Over the years, victims families have thanked me for telling their stories, but I had never received anything like this. From that day on, that angel has lived on my desk. And I've prayed every day that Detective Bernie Nelson would solve the case. When I got the call From Bernie on November 8, 2025, I felt a wave of emotions for Bernie. I felt a sense of relief. The burden he had carried for more than 27 years was now off his shoulders. Job well done for the three Crandall kids, I felt. Finally they have an answer to that question. Who? Who did this to Mom? The unknowing is an altogether different burden. After all these years, my prayers had been answered. And so had theirs, as you'll hear in just a bit. As I came down from that adrenaline rush, I had so many questions. But key among them was who was Barry Shabazz and what brought him to the hospital that awful night 28 years ago? I'm Paul Wagner and this is episode eight answered prayers, the conclusion of season two of the American Nightmares podcast series Murder in a Safe Place. When Luke Crandall and his sister Tiffany walked into the news conference where police would be announcing the closure of what was widely known as the hospital case, neither of them had seen a picture of the man who police say killed their mom.
- [03:24]
Luke Crandall
So I hadn't seen the picture of Edward at all up until the point of the presser at the PG police headquarters. So that was the first time I had seen his photo.
- [03:42]
Paul Wagner
So you're sitting there next to your brother and sister, and there's all these police officials and FBI officials and cameras and reporters there, and all of a sudden, that picture flashes up on the screen along with your mother's photograph, the really lovely photograph of her in her nursing outfit. What did you think
- [04:10]
Luke Crandall
I was in? I was kind of shocked at first. I was like, who is that? And then, because it was shocking, I mean, obviously at that point, I was like, that's him. And then I thought, I think I know that guy from somewhere. Then I thought back to that sketch, and I was like, I think that's the guy from the sketch.
- [04:32]
Tiffany Crandall
When Darren was telling us everything he knew, I said, well, do you have a photo? And that was another one of those moments. He kind of had to collect himself. You know, he paused, and he was like, I do. And, you know, we were on zoom. I could see his reaction, and we were on FaceTime, and he just said, I have it. He's like, I'm not gonna, you know, keep it from you. He's like, but I think you need to think about if you want to see this picture. So I thought about it. I said, well, you know, the next day, I said, can you just at least send me his name? And I never asked for the photo. I think I didn't want to see it. You know, I tried to do my own investigative Googling, and, you know, my friends were telling me, oh, this guy's got a Facebook page. I can't believe it. And I did find the Facebook page prior to the press conference, but I just glanced at it briefly. But it was. It wasn't really until that moment in the press conference that we saw the photo that I saw who it was.
- [05:43]
Paul Wagner
When Darren Crandall first learned the name of the man police say killed his mother, he was more than curious to know what he could find out about him.
- [05:52]
Darren Crandall
You know, I did a little bit of, you know, amateur sleuthing around to see what I could find out, and I found some interesting things that I thought. I'm not sure if it really helped Anything or just. I was just curious to actually look at the face of the man that did this. And eventually, you know, I found a picture of him that was more recent and a picture of him at the around the time of this crime.
- [06:18]
Detective Bernie Nelson
And,
- [06:20]
Darren Crandall
you know, I didn't know what to expect. But looking at the picture, it reminded me of the description that we had heard from Edna, which is the housekeeper, the cleaning person. And I said, that looks very similar in terms of what I recall from her description. And she had some limitations as well.
- [06:38]
Paul Wagner
You'll remember in episode two, we told you about Edna Brown. Police described her as a woman with intellectual disabilities. She was doing janitorial work the night Sherry was murdered. When police interviewed her, she told them she saw a man with Sherry. She wasn't sure if he was hurting her or trying to help her. Edna described him as a black man in his early 40s with black hair on the side and gray hair on top. She also said he was wearing a white lab jacket. Understandably, police weren't sure at the time how credible her story was. But looking at the photo myself, it was one of the first things I noticed too. Edna Brown had gotten it right. I wish she were alive today to know that.
- [07:36]
Darren Crandall
I had hoped that I was going to look at that picture and feel some sort of way about it, like either, okay, now I've seen his face, now I can kind of let this go. And now I know it was, but I just think just became like a picture of like a monster to me, you know, someone that had lived among the community, lived in the world all these years, you know, with his own family and other friends and people that he encountered. And they really just had no idea of this monster that they living among or with. And maybe they did know. But it made me worried that he had done other things after this that were he wasn't either you know, found for or it hadn't been determined that he had committed or maybe committed something and got away with stuff. And there could be other crimes that he committed that could be equally as violent or worse. So he really made me wonder, like what he had been up to for all these years. What kind of life did he live? Because my mom didn't have a life to live. So I doubt his life was one of purpose. So certainly there's no trade there that was ever feel equitable.
- [08:56]
Paul Wagner
Barry Abdul Akbar Shabazz was born Edward Barry Watts on January 27, 1950, and according to a Prince George's county police Dossier, lived at 1027 Cathedral street in Baltimore, Maryland. He started getting into trouble in his early teens. And In August of 1965, when he was just 15 years old, Shabazz was convicted of carrying a concealed weapon in Howard County, Maryland. That's just south of Baltimore. He was sentenced to six months in presumably a juvenile detention center. But that's unclear. Many records from the 60s have either been destroyed or are very difficult to find. On top of that, what is contained in these records is minimal. Nothing much more than the crime itself, the conviction and the sentence. In fact, the full multi page police dossier I was given on Shabazz includes just the very basics of his criminal history. A year after he was convicted of the concealed weapons charge in Howard County, Shabazz was arrested in Baltimore and charged with assault and battery. He was just 16 years old. About two months after that, Baltimore police charged the teen with robbery with a deadly weapon. Shabazz was sent to the Maryland Department of Corrections for a maximum of 10 years. For that, two years later, on April 8, 1968, Shabazz was charged by Maryland State Police with intent to maim and inciting a riot while in prison. By April of 1972, when he was 22 years old, Shabazz was arrested for attempting to rape a pregnant woman in the restroom of a downtown Baltimore parking garage. An article in a local paper at the time of his conviction says Shabazz was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Now, at some point, it's unclear when, Shabazz was transferred to the Patuxent Institution for an indefinite period after the police dossier says, quote, subject was found to be defective and delinquent. The Patuxent institution is a maximum security prison in Jessup, Maryland, that incarcerates inmates with, quote, severe character disorders who typically have a history of substance dependency. On May 15, 1979, Shabazz was out of prison. We know this because he was interviewed for an article in the Baltimore Sun. The article was about a prison writing program that he was involved in at the Community College of Baltimore. In the article, he talked about his background. Quoting from the article the author wrote, he calls himself simply Shabazz, although when pressed, he gives his full name, Barry Abdul Akbar Shabazz. And he explains he was christened and raised as Edward Watts before he assumed the faith of Islam while he was in prison. That was in the 60s, he says. There was a lot of Islam inside then. My father was a Muslim, he tells the writer. So it wasn't hard for me to take it up. That's what straightened me out when I took up Religion. I developed a moral conscience. I began to see how wrong the life was that I was leading. If it was morally wrong, it was unproductive, too. The article goes on to say, at 16 in 1966, young Edward, then known as the Terror of East Baltimore around the Lafayette Courts housing projects where he lived, dropped down to the seventh grade and was convicted of robbery with a deadly weapon. He was sent to the reformatory at Hagerstown, but before he completed his term, it was extended for his complicity in the riots. Following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. He was transferred to the Maryland Penitentiary, where he did two years in isolation, then to the House of Correction and finally to Patuxent, where he stayed until his release in January. That made a total of eight years behind bars. How does a man go straight when he spent one third of his life, nearly every day of his adult life, behind prison walls? Something's got to happen to you, he says. That makes you say to yourself, I'm not just going to get out of this jail. I'm going to stay out. I'm going to make something of my life. Religion was the beginning of the urge. Education and writing was the spur that kept it going. He tells the writer, I always like to read. I'd read history, especially black history and science and magazines while I was inside. I studied for my ged, the high school equivalency certificate, and then I took courses at the University of Maryland in psychology and sociology. I began to see that what I had been doing was to try to prove my manhood by striking back at the system. I felt that because people had crippled my chance to make something of myself, it was my duty to get even. That's what I was taught in the community I came from. To fight back, to use dope, to engage in crime, to have a lot of women. By now I was seeing that you can't fight the system with your fists. You need better techniques than that. It was at Patuxent that he enrolled in a writing course taught by Harvey Alexander. Shabazz says he encouraged me to express my true feelings. I had never done that before. Before, all my writing had been about black history, the black community. I found that putting my own feelings down was an exercise in self discovery. As I wrote what I felt, I began to see myself as an individual person. I began to have pride in myself. I began to have an identity of my own. Strange as it sounds, while I was locked up for the first time, I found a kind of freedom. Since he's been out, the writer says his work for the University Without Walls brings him into contact with prisoners in state institutions, helping them to pursue their collegiate studies. But the project that is closest to his heart is Oysters, the Prisoner Poet's public.
- [15:30]
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- [17:30]
Paul Wagner
After the news conference in November, I started to search the Internet to see what else I could learn about Barry Shabazz. Newspapers.com was a good resource and I found his name mentioned several times in the Baltimore Sun. Not long after that 1979 article was published, I found a reference to a poetry reading featuring Shabazz. It was a notice in the Town Crier section of the Baltimore Evening sun published on May 13, 1980 with the headline Readings by Barry Shabazz at CCB. And it goes on to say the final program of poetry reading sponsored by the Community College of Baltimore will feature Barry Shabazz at 8pm Tuesday, May 20. Donation $1 Despite his attempts to re acclimate into society with poetry, the police dossier says Shabazz was rearrested by Baltimore police just a few months after that reading in 1980 and charged with assault and strong armed robbery on September 22nd. By 1982, Shabazz was back in prison. I found an article in the Howard county edition of the Baltimore Evening sun in which Barry Shabazz is interviewed. The article, written by Elizabeth hoffman and published July 7, 1982, features a photo of Shabazz with the caption Patuxent Institution inmate Barry Shabazz says the Council on Volunteers in Corrections can help prisoners adjust to freedom. In the article, Shabazz tells the writer, people in prison have a great failure record. When success comes, it scares the hell out of them. I wasn't prepared for success. I was proud of the things I was accomplishing, but the pride got out of control. I stopped getting help. I wanted to be more and more independent, but I needed the dependence people depends on. Turn to the same article says Shabazz admitted he couldn't adjust to life outside prison and after being rearrested for violating parole, he was back in Patuxent Institution awaiting a hearing on his release. Shabazz told the writer, you don't get a full picture of what is really going on. When we get out. We have to get back in touch with what is really going on. That in itself is a struggle. Prison, he says, leaves the ex inmate an emotional misfit. Hoffman, the writer, describes Shabazz as an articulate, thoughtful man, largely self taught while in prison who had a stack of poems looking for a publisher. At this point, Shabazz was just 32 years old. In all the articles I've found on Shabazz, there's no mention of him being married. However, court records show a divorce case was filed on September 21, 1983 in Baltimore City. Titled Shabazz vs Shabazz, the record lists Barry Shabazz as the defendant who's also known as Edward Watts. The record simply says absolute divorce case closed. I thought finding two articles about this man was a victory, but finding a third was astonishing. On June 24, 1987, Kevin Coward, a columnist working for the sun, published a story titled Teaching Writers Behind Bars. It features a narrative about a woman named Claudia Harris Lott who taught creative writing to inmates at the Cut, an infamous prison in Jessup that closed in 2007. In the column, Lott describes meeting Barry Shabazz at a Fells Point bar called the angel, where he would read his poetry. She described him as a thoughtful, sensitive fellow, capable of moving and mellifluous writings. The only thing he wasn't good at, Lott says, was crime. She says Shabazz encouraged her to teach a course at the Cut for a writer's club he had founded. And so once a week or so, she would travel to Jessup and spend about two and a half hours working with the inmates. Lot says Shabazz wrote a poem that won a prize for the club in a local contest. I had hoped to speak to Shabazz's family for this podcast to help me fill in the gaps about his personal life. I traded text messages with a niece who told me after thinking about it she didn't want to talk to me initially. After learning about her uncle's crime, Detective Nelson told me she and her family members had also discussed potentially meeting with Sherry's children.
- [22:17]
Detective Bernie Nelson
They wanted to talk to the family and apologize because they felt bad that. They even said they felt bad that the kids had to grow up without their mother. So they wanted to apologize directly to
- [22:31]
Paul Wagner
them and that family. How close is the relationship between that family and Barry Shabazz?
- [22:39]
Detective Bernie Nelson
Barry Shabazz's sister and nieces.
- [22:44]
Paul Wagner
Wow. And only Greg has spoken with them?
- [22:48]
Detective Bernie Nelson
Yes.
- [22:49]
Paul Wagner
Greg is Sergeant Greg McDonald, the supervisor in the Cold Case unit for Prince George's County Police. His team led the investigation into Sherry's murder. Ultimately, Barry Shabazz's niece decided against meeting with the Crandalls as well. She wrote me a text that said, I hope you understand, and please send them my condolences, prayers, and apologies. In all my conversations with Detective Nelson, I've never heard him call Shabazz the terror of East Baltimore. That's what Shabazz told that writer with the Baltimore Sun. He was known as that in his neighborhood. Was that a description he gave himself, or did it really come from the streets? Well, that's unclear. But Detective Nelson did tell me Shabazz was feared, even by his own family.
- [23:42]
Detective Bernie Nelson
I would call him a career criminal. His family even indicated to other investigators who talked to them that he was always up to no good. And some of the females in the family didn't even feel comfortable being alone with him. So that tells you a lot as well.
- [23:59]
Paul Wagner
Without the help of family members or court files, it's been difficult to learn what Shabazz was doing between the late 80s and 1998, the year Sherry was murdered. But there are some clues from court records which show he was living in a single family home in Hyattsville, Maryland at the time of the murder. Here's FBI genealogist Stephanie Mellinger.
- [24:22]
Darren Crandall
He had a geographical connection to the hospital closer than anybody else we had before that point. He had criminal history in his past and we started to be cautiously optimistic that we were on the right track.
- [24:37]
Paul Wagner
According to Google Maps, the brick single family one story house on 57th Place was a 41 minute walk or a 7 minute drive to the hospital. Online court records show a foreclosure notice for the house in December of 1996, as well as one in August of 1998. Did Shabazz own the home? Online real estate tax records just don't go back that far. So it's unclear. One of the nagging questions Detective Nelson had been wrestling with all these years is whether the suspect had a connection to the hospital. Had Sherry's killer gone to the hospital to visit someone or to be treated for an illness or injury? Now that he had a name, Detective Nelson dug in a little deeper.
- [25:27]
Detective Bernie Nelson
We did check the employees list. I also asked the human resources from the hospital. As you know, they had already shut down that hospital and moved on, but they still had a human resources that could check into their databases as far as to see if he was an employee or a contractor or an employee of some of the contractors that worked in the hospital. And we could not establish any connection between him and Prince George's hospital.
- [25:58]
Paul Wagner
So nothing comes back. But you must have some curiosity as to why he would have gone to the hospital that day. And I don't know where you've gotten with that or if you're going to continue to work on it. What do you know about that?
- [26:14]
Detective Bernie Nelson
Well, we had already checked the inpatient and outpatient that that were at the hospital that day to see if he may be related to any of them, to see if that's the reason why he came to the hospital that day. We did find someone with a similar last name, a 15 year old teenager who was an outpatient on that particular day. And we ran that down and verified that it was a totally different family,
- [26:42]
Paul Wagner
which confirmed Detective Nelson's initial theory.
- [26:47]
Detective Bernie Nelson
We still have no idea why he was there. However, as I'VE said before, one of our theories in this murder was that it was someone who came off of the streets to steal from the hospital because it was easy pickings back then. Security was very lax, if at all they had any. And this guy fits the bill. He's a thief. He was not far from the hospital, so it was easy. And he may have gone there multiple times, but it was easy for him to just go into the hospital and steal and that he came across the victim, who wasn't actually supposed to be there that night. She was there preparing for a meeting that she was having the next day. So she was working late, which was unusual for her. So we feel that he was in there to steal and came across her and was an opportunist and took advantage of the situation and ended up assaulting her, raping her, and then murdering her.
- [27:52]
Paul Wagner
And it would have been easy for him to walk in, right? He could have gone in through the garage, taken an elevator up to that floor, and then just walked down a hallway. And there were no security cameras that would have caught his image as he was walking by, right?
- [28:07]
Detective Bernie Nelson
That's correct.
- [28:09]
Paul Wagner
You'll remember in the weeks before Sherry was killed, she had sent an email to hospital security and her supervisors in which she complained about thefts from the area of the hospital where she was working, including a recent incident in which a man stole a television from the waiting room. She was concerned about the safety of her staff and herself. In the email, she wrote, quote, I want to go on the record and voice my fear that the next incident may involve a personal assault. This was too close. Was Barry Shabazz one of the people who'd been stealing things from the hospital? We'll never know.
- [29:01]
Darren Crandall
Sam.
- [29:31]
Paul Wagner
Knowing the answer to a question you've had for 27 years can really knock you back a step. That's what I learned when I interviewed Sherry's three children. In the weeks after the link to Shabazz was made official, I met Luke near his home in Southern Maryland. I caught up with Darren at his workplace, and Tiffany and I spoke over zoom from her home in South Carolina.
- [29:54]
Tiffany Crandall
So I was not surprised to learn that he was deceased. That part I think the three of us had come to terms with. It's been so long. So I think initially I was very surprised because it really. Even with the podcast and the news that it created, and we heard about more genealogists working on the case and seemed hopeful, but then nothing. So we've learned over the years to not get our hopes up. So I Think I was just in shock, like, you know, asking a lot of questions like, how do they know and are they sure? And, you know, if he's deceased, how can they go on the news and claim that it's a person who can't defend themselves? And, you know, Darren, in his own way, tried to explain all of the reasons why and the facts that they had that lead to the match of, like, parts per million and all of that. So I think it was probably similar to when I found out that night that she died. It was just a lot of disbelief and, like, are they sure? And questions and, you know, you just never thought you were going to get that call when Darren said that, hey, over the years, you know, Bernie's called me, and the way he's talked about it has been like, there's a guy we're looking into. You know, we're going to run it down. I don't feel very confident. You know, it was kind of a lot of that. And Darren told me this time it was different. This is the guy. And, you know, Darren's not going to make a statement like that unless he knows for sure that he's vetted everything. And, of course, you know, Bernie's not going to say that either. He's had many opportunities over the years to say, you know, to get us excited, and he never has. He's been very, you know, this is either something we're looking into, but we're not, you know, too excited about it. So. So, yeah, so then it just, you know, of course, brings you back to that moment, you know, and I think a lot of questions were like, oh, he was so close to the hospital. Just a lot of questions onto how. How it was missed.
- [32:11]
Paul Wagner
Luke told me he's glad Shabazz is dead.
- [32:25]
Luke Crandall
For a long time, I had a dark place that he belonged in. And over the years, after having my own family, I feel. Not that. Not that I don't want to know about him, but I definitely, at this time in my life, feel that it's better for him to be where he is now. I mean, he's obviously terrorized other people's families, and then you have friends of families where they're, you know, affected by these monsters doing these kind of things to people. So as far as wanting to know more about him, I don't think I do. Obviously, that could change. I think where it is now is for me where it's going to stay for a while.
- [33:47]
Paul Wagner
When I sat down with Darren, he had clearly put quite a bit of thought into into whether it was better for all involved that Shabazz was deceased.
- [33:57]
Darren Crandall
I spoke to my brother and sister about it, and we discussed, like, how they felt and how I felt. And I was picking their brain, like, trying to figure out, like, do I feel differently from them? Should they feel differently from me? Kind of, where. Where are we with this? And I told him, I said, I think even though he is dead, this is probably the best outcome we could hope for, given the details of the circumstances and everything involved. Because, you know, you find somebody that did something, you decide, you know, they're gonna get arrested, there's a trial, and everyone is, you know, gets that due process and everything involved in that. But, you know, then what's the outcome of that? There's another outcome that comes. Is the person found guilty? Are they not found guilty? Is the jury hung? Is there, you know, all kinds of complexities involved in, you know, the adversarial nature of, you know, court systems? And then what's the outcome of that? Let's. Let's say we. We believe he did it, but then he's found not guilty by a jury for some technicality or whatever. Then how does that feel? How do we have to wrestle with that and understand that someone that we now think or believe did something is going to get away with it, Even worse off than not being found? Now they're getting away with it. You know, we know who they are, but now they're getting away with it. So I talked to my family about it. I said, you know, I think this is best the way it is that, you know, the. The science, the genealogy, everything points towards this person. The information about where he lived at the time points towards this. His criminal background points towards this. There's very little that anyone could say at this point that would convince me otherwise. So, you know, it. It provides that level of closure where it's, you know, like. I think like Detective Nelson said, this is the closure he gets, and he has to accept it because he has no choice. And that's the way I feel. I feel very, very much like that. That it's the closure we're getting is the one we have to accept. And honestly, I think it might be the best one in terms of closure for emotional closure for my family now, in terms of judicial and law enforcement closure, there's a lot of left there because of the fact that he is dead. But I did tell Bernie and I did tell the FBI folks that I met with that we did have closure. We did appreciate what they had done, and they could rest assured that our family has the closure that we need to move on. Obviously, multiple levels of closure that can exist for different people for different reasons. But I. I think I spoke with my brother and sister and my whole family that we did appreciate everything they did. We still do. And the closure they brought us was enough for us. It's not going to leave us empty handed. And we are greatly appreciative of their other efforts.
- [36:43]
Paul Wagner
In January of 1998, when Sherri was killed, Barry Shabazz would have been 48 years old. Did he rape other women? Did he kill them? What we do know is that the DNA found during Sherry Crandall's autopsy was in the FBI's CODIS database. And from 1998 until 2017, that's the database detectives across the country used to share DNA from crime scenes to help solve cases. Now, initially, when investigators ran the DNA through codis, they came back with zero matches, meaning whoever had killed Sherry wasn't already in the database. Even though Shabazz had previously been convicted of violent crimes, they all occurred before Maryland law required convicted felons to give law enforcement a sample of their DNA. Which means his DNA never made it into CODIS for any of those crimes he committed in the 1980s. You may be wondering why the FBI removed the DNA in 2017. Well, by that point, the FBI had changed its protocols. The DNA no longer had enough markers, known as loci, to remain in the database. With the case now closed, Sherry's children, Tiffany, Darren, and Luke all say they are in awe of the work that Tina, Bernie and the FBI genealogy team did in finding the man who killed their mom.
- [38:14]
Tiffany Crandall
I just continue to have so much respect and, and just I'm in awe of what these people do for a living. So I think that's just. My reaction is just. Just appreciation and, you know, thinking about what they do every day, and it's just. I'm just amazed. I. I just feel, again, just so appreciative and I thankful that they do what they do, that they had an interest in their life, to make this a career and, you know, change a whole family's, you know, life. Like to give us an answer. It's just. It's incredible.
- [38:55]
Darren Crandall
Yeah. I think I'd be remiss to speculate as to the amount of work that they did day to day, because I think it's kind of like someone who does a menial task over and over and over again, and they just keep doing it over and over and over again, and all they do is that every day, all day, and there's never any real success until the very end. And that's kind of what they had to do every day is this mind numbing work of going through death certificates, going through data, going through family trees, going through different DNA hits, sending people out to get samples, try to get samples, with some people having very limited interest in cooperating. I can only imagine how frustrating that can be knowing that you're trying to do something good, you're trying to find a bad guy, a violent person, and just over and over again you're hitting all these walls. It takes a special person to do that. And those genealogists and the folks at the FBI and Bernie and everyone involved, I mean, you can't say enough about this, folks.
- [39:59]
Luke Crandall
The amount of dedication and work by the genealogists and Bernie and like Bernie said at the presser, it's, I mean it's hundreds of other people, officers and such that they were with the DNA dragnet and stuff like that is amazing. I mean, I'm speechless really. On where somebody like the, the genealogists have the forethought to just start digging and looking for, for just random names. And on top of that, for a, you know, a cold case that's, you know, extremely old and to have the, the extra effort to just keep going and going. And I guess for them, when they come through like they did, I think that that is the, the light for them when they can put their finger on somebody's name and it is that person. And it was only on a hunch or saliva, an old drink, a telephone cord, a fingerprint. And that's how they catch him. I think for them, I think that's their payoff where they look back and they say, we're glad we didn't stop there. We're glad we didn't stop here when it looked like there was nothing going on for them.
- [42:13]
Paul Wagner
Although I don't know where Shabazz was or what he was doing during periods of, of his life, I do know he was very active on Facebook from 2010 up until just before his death in 2019. In fact, he had three Facebook pages. On one of them, he writes that he's worked at McDonald's, FedEx, Shoney's restaurants and a hotel in Arlington, Virginia. The Arlington connection is interesting because in the police dossier prepared by the Prince George's county police, it says Shabazz was arrested in Arlington in February of 1999 for receiving stolen property and was sentenced to six months of supervised probation. Then in May of 2002, Arlington police charged him with illegally entering a motor vehicle. And again, Shabazz was given six months supervised probation. I won't go into all the things Shabazz posted on Facebook. If you're curious, you can look for yourself. But I did find one post in which he boasted about one of his crimes. Shabazz wrote, life is ironic with strange twists that God plans. In 1968, I started a prison riot when Dr. M.L. king was killed. I will be going back to that same prison as a speaker. This is another example of karma, but also a testimony about how revolution has changed that starts with one's self and ends with impacts about other creation outside self. In several posts he says that he's married and going to a variety of poetry readings. Detective Nelson told me Shabazz had HIV and died from complications of the disease. In 2019, you may recall hearing at Sherry's grave site in a Catholic Church cemetery in Bowie, Maryland, was a place where all three Crandall kids would go, sometimes together and sometimes on their own. It was a place where they could talk to their mom when they were troubled or needed inspiration. Tina, the genealogist, went there as well. Once when she was stuck and hit a brick wall in the investigation and once when the case was solved. And if you'll remember, I went there in the winter of 2021 and offered a prayer at Sherry's grave as we were about to launch the podcast. I also found out the Crandalls, their relatives and friends, went there after the news conference in November to visit with their mom.
- [44:54]
Darren Crandall
The place where my mom is buried is a very small church in our hometown. I don't want to say it's exclusive because it's hard to be exclusive once you're. Once you're dead. But it's kind of exclusive church area where it's not a lot of gravesite areas. It's a very old church as well. We grew up Catholic, you know, family and children, and my mom really had a really strong connection with that church and the, the priest there and everything. She would bake them bread, you know, several times a year and holidays and stuff like that. We went through communion there, confirmation there, you know, all that stuff. So very connected to that church. And I went there many times over the years as well to kind of find some guidance, whether it be having trouble, personal troubles or work troubles, or just being nearby and wanting to come in and just stop in and be there. So I'm not surprised that someone could go there or Want to go there and try to find an answer to something or find some support in her way. She was very much like that. Her whole life is giving to others, helping others. People always thought of her as a great friend and a great support network.
- [46:15]
Paul Wagner
The Crandall case, the hospital case, whatever you want to call it, has had a profound impact on my life as a journalist. It showed me that producing murder in a safe place was well worth the days and hours we put into it. The podcast did have an impact. It didn't solve the case, but I now know it helped. And as I write these last words on New Year's Eve with that guardian angel from the Crandall kids sitting on my desk, I want you to hear from Darren again, and he will have the last word. I told Darren that I was struck by something he said during his statement at the news conference. At one point while he was reading, he looked up and said, thoughts and prayers did not solve this case. It struck me because he was right. You can say thoughts and prayers and mean it, but that's not what ultimately solves a case.
- [47:17]
Darren Crandall
It sounds nice, but it does it really get the job done. It feels nice. It sounds nice. You know, when someone says, hey, thoughts and prayers are with you. Like, some people really do mean that. Other people just kind of say it, you know, So I thought about, I said, you know, I really feel like without this hard work they did, without the day to day work that we just discussed, this doesn't happen. Someone could put this on the shelf and walk away from it and we never find out anything about this. But that's not what happened here. No one said thoughts and prayers and put it on the shelf. So in a. In a kind of a moment of. I don't know if it was clarity or not, but I kind of added that in, like right in there. And I know Tiffany and Luke kind of, you know, kind of laughed at me afterward. They said, you know, we didn't approve that version of the statement. But I said, you know, I think. I think it kind of resonates with the right people to hear that.
- [48:11]
Paul Wagner
Yeah.
- [48:12]
Darren Crandall
And, you know, the statement we gave, we did come from the heart. It was. It was a difficult statement. And I was, you know, in the, in the green room, as I mentioned. We were discussing stuff and like, I was pretty upset about different things. I was, you know, I was thinking to myself, like, man, am I gonna be able to make this statement when I get up there? Because I'm so upset, because we were discussing different elements of the case and we're talking to the FBI, and, like, you know, I just felt. I don't know why I felt so, like, taken over emotionally at that moment, but then when I got up there, I looked back and saw my brother and sister, and I said, I gave the introduction and started. Just felt like a certain amount of calm that came over me from, you know, their support and our family there and other friends and stuff that were there. And I just realized, you know, this is our time to show the, you know, show the world, show the public, you know, Sherry's children, what they've done with their lives. And they're not train wrecks. They're here, and they're here ready to, you know, show the world that they've moved on, they've made something of themselves and, you know, in her. In her honor, you know, speak in a manner that she'd be, you know, appreciative of and. And proud of. And I feel like we. I'm hoping we accomplish that. And I think watching the video multiple times afterward, I feel like we did the best job we could. And quite honestly, the speaker that I listened to probably a dozen times or more was Bernie. I listened to his speech front to back, at least since then, at least 12, 15 times. At this point, just listening to him speak, I mean, just such a professional, such a master at what he does. And then, you know, you could see his frustration, but you could also see his. His. There was kind of a little bit of happiness behind all this, but also, like, some regret that. That it took so long. And he really spoke from the heart. That's the way he's always been as long as I've known him, always, you know, from the heart, always up front, but also, you know, with some reservations about how this. How this ended. And I think he does feel a little bit cheated in this. I. I think I could feel that in his discussion. But he also said, you know, this is the outcome he has to accept. He has no choice. But again, like, if he is listening to his podcast or he does hear his podcast, like Bernie, we are very appreciative of the outcome. We were happy with what you've done. You know, there. You may think there's more that we need, but, you know, we are more than satisfied everything you've done and what you've accomplished to this point, and we're greatly, you know, appreciative of that.
- [51:03]
Paul Wagner
I'm Paul Wagner, host of American Nightmares, Murder in a Safe Place, produced by the Gamut Podcast Network. This episode was written by me. My content advisor is Julia Ziegler. Theme music is Runway 47 by Immersive Music and Flum Flum by Up North Music.