(Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune) Craig Crawford, speaks with defense lawyer Jim Bradshaw in 3rd District Judge James Blanch's courtroom during a three-day sentencing hearing Monday August 28 in Salt Lake City. Crawford has admitted that he trapped his 72-year-old estranged husband, well-known restaurateur John Williams, inside his home and then set it ablaze last year. He pleaded guilty in June to first-degree felony counts of aggravated murder and aggravated arson. The judge will decide whether Crawford will serve life in prison with or without the possibility of parole.
In the early morning hours of May 22 of last year, a security camera captured Craig Crawford, shirtless and wearing no shoes, rushing in and out of the East Capitol Street home where his husband, John Williams, lived.
The silent grainy black-and-white video depicts 48-year-old Crawford bringing stacks of papers and boxes into the home, and rushing back outside. Soon, a flicker of light pulses from inside of the home.
Crawford dashes back into the home, holding an oil can, and leaves once more empty-handed as smoke begins to billow out of the house.
This oil can, former Salt Lake City police investigator Marcos Garaycochea testified Tuesday, was found by police in a hallway near a stairwell where police believe Crawford started a fire, trapping Williams inside. The well-known Salt Lake City restaurateur died from smoke inhalation in his fourth-floor bedroom.
The video was played by prosecutors in 3rd District Court as part of a multi-day sentencing hearing for Crawford, who has pleaded guilty to first-degree felony counts of aggravated murder and aggravated arson.
Judge James Blanch, who is hearing aggravating and mitigating evidence this week, will sentence Crawford in September to either life in prison without the possibility of parole, or a 25-year-to-life sentence. Testimony is expected to resume Thursday.
Crawford’s attorneys have presented expert testimony this week indicating that their client was suffering from psychosis and the effects of a traumatic brain injury when he lit the fatal fire.
Prosecutors have brought in their own experts who say that even if Crawford was mentally ill, he showed the ability to plan and take the necessary steps to kill his husband, who had filed for divorce earlier that month.
On Tuesday, Garaycochea also testified about another video shown in court, which showed Crawford in a police interview room on the morning of the deadly fire.
The defendant talked to himself and made odd gestures. Garaycochea testified that he believed Crawford muttered at one point, “My street cred just went up,” and later, “I could have saved ‘em.”
Craig Crawford
Defense attorney Mark Moffat pointed out during cross-examination that his client’s odd behavior showed that he was suffering from psychosis.
Much of Tuesday’s testimony centered around whether a bad fall Crawford took while skiing in 2012 caused a brain injury that would affect him years later. Defense experts say abnormalities on a scan of Crawford’s brain shows there was damage, probably caused by the ski crash, while experts for the prosecution said they couldn’t draw that conclusion. They said it is possible Crawford’s illicit drug use or years of having HIV may have caused the damage — not a ski accident.
Attorneys on Tuesday also brought in witnesses to testify about Williams’ fear of Crawford during the last months of his life, and Crawford’s increasing paranoia and delusions.
Melanie Semlacher, a friend of Crawford’s he met while living in Vancouver, testified that when she first met him in 2014, Crawford was nice, honest and funny.
But as she grew closer to Crawford over the next two years, she said she realized he was mentally ill and was growing more delusional. He told her there were worms in his food, voices coming from the walls and gremlins doing things to make him crazy.
When she heard of the fatal fire, Semlacher said, she wrote a timeline of Crawford’s delusions and sent it to police.
“He was just so delusional,” she testified. “And so psychotic.”
In the weeks before the fatal fire, Williams expressed a fear of Crawford and asked his company’s IT manager, Mike Higgins, to help him change the locks on his home and install the security camera. It was this camera which caught Crawford setting fire to the house.
Williams said he wanted to change the locks in an effort to keep Crawford out, Higgins testified Tuesday. He was also in the process of evicting Crawford from the home, according to charges.
Just hours before Crawford set the fatal fire, Williams expressed fear to two friends during a late dinner at one of his restaurants. Vicki Williams, who is not related to the restaurateur, testified Tuesday that her friend confided in her and her husband about his pending divorce and Crawford’s drug use.
“He looked really sad,” the woman recalled. “A few times, he looked really upset, because he didn’t care for the behavior. He said he had tried to put a lot of energy into his marriage and it hadn’t worked out … He actually said he was afraid.”
Crawford initially faced the potential of the death penalty for his crimes, but prosecutors agreed to take that option off the table in exchange for his guilty pleas last month.
The defendant admitted setting the couple’s Capitol Hill home on fire shortly after Williams, 72, filed for divorce and sought a restraining order. That order was never signed, according to Garaycochea, because there were no judges available due to a legal conference.
The couple had been together about 20 years.
Williams was a well-known LGBT pioneer in Utah who owned the popular Market Street Grill and other restaurants.
Tribune file photo Gastronomy co-owner John Williams. Ê
At about 1:20 a.m. on May 22, 2016, a neighbor called 911 to report that Williams’ house, near 600 North and East Capitol Street (200 East), was on fire.
Salt Lake City firefighter Justin LaMarr testified Tuesday that when he arrived at the home, he heard a voice yelling for help from inside. Firefighters could not reach Williams, however, because the staircase between the third and fourth floor had burned and collapsed.
LaMarr said there was a lot of second-guessing afterward among firefighters about whether something different could have been done to save Williams.
“It was hard, especially hard for my crew,” LaMarr testified. “We were the first ones to the fire. [The] biggest thing that the fire department can do is save a life. And to know there was somebody there that we could have helped, and weren’t able to get to them, it was hard for a long time after.”