John Martin Crawford, serial killer
I was told, at work today, that I sounded like
a serial killer.
This was a statement that
came from my boss.
And without any hint of
irony or humor.
* * *
The origin of this response
was in a casual conversation where myself and a co-worker commented, with
compliment, on how well she wears the color orange.
Orange being a very
difficult color to pull off on most skin-tones.
She egged on the
conversation with comments about how easily she tans/burns; how she frequently
shelters her children from the sun to prevent their burning fleshing being a
marked memory of unpleasantness with regards to the sun.
I offered up a minor,
Proustian memory of sunburns and my childhood:
I remember all the times
spent at the beach, where my grandparents lived, and laying about in the sun,
or the waves, without suntan lotion (it was the 80s) and almost enjoying being
burned, if only to enjoy the innocent pleasure of the feel of the burn,
combined with the lotion, combined with the cold Oregon sheets of my grandma’s bed.
It was something that
relaxed me. It was a pain that I found to be comforting, in the effort to
combat it.
And it was reliable.
* * *
The woman in question (my
boss) responded, with a confused look on her face, with the following:
“That sounds like something
a serial killer would say…”
She quickly retreated from
the conversation, leaving my co-worker and I with only our own subjective opinions on the topic left us:
“What the fuck?”
“Yeah. That seemed really
inappropriate. Even if she thought that, she shouldn’t have said it.”
* * *
My co-worker and I decided
upon, as an inside joke, to refer to me as “SK” (or, “serial killer”).
We made a rush of jokes
regarding the topic, putting the phrase into normal conversation:
“You just described a
detailed account of why what happened was wrong. That was some real “SK”
behavior!”
“You know you just exhibited
some perfect “SK”…”
We did this for the
remainder of the day. Something private, something special; shared and
understood.
* * *
JOHN MARTIN CRAWFORD- Crawford
committed his first murder in 1981 two days before Christmas after meeting a
woman at the bar. He was convicted of that murder and was sentenced to jail
until 1989 after being paroled. Only 3 years after being released John Crawford
went on to kill 3 more Aboriginal women in Saskatchewan. He was finally caught
and convicted in 1996 of the 3 murders and got 3 concurrent life sentences and
is serving his time in Saskatchewan Penitentiary. His trial was at the same
time as the "BERNARDO" trial. John Crawford is also suspected of 3
other murders that happened in Saskatoon.
