The First Missing Person: Norma Crawford
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Now look, I know you may be wondering what's so special about two disappearances. Two people go missing from a city, and hardly anyone bats an eye. But you know how many people have gone missing from Fair River over the past decade? Seven. Seven people from this tiny little town in the middle of nowhere.
Norma Crawford was the first. She was reported missing by her husband on June 11, 2010. The news clipping I have here on her disappearance says she was, "An avid churchgoer and sixteen-time winner of Fair River's Fourth of July pie contest." Happily married to her high school sweetheart Ned, who told the paper, "Norma is my everything. I don't know how I'll go on without her." Age sixty-seven at the time of her disappearance.
Gone in broad daylight. According to the police report, she was hanging up the wash when her husband Ned left to pick up some milk and eggs from a neighbor down the road, Lenny Kirkland. Ned said he was gone maybe half an hour, but he's never been any good with time. Lenny said Ned was there not quite an hour, and that's probably closer to the truth.
When Ned came back, there was the laundry, half of it hanging up on the clothesline, swaying in the breeze, half still in the plastic basket he had lugged outside for her. She wasn't inside, and she wasn't outside, although he did find her bifocals skirting the edge of the woods that ran behind their house. The woods are everywhere in Fair River, flanking the houses, the church, the corner store. You can't throw a stone without hitting a tree. But her bifocals, they were resting right at the base of a big old oak, one lens cracked.
The sheriff said it was dementia, that she had gotten confused where she was and wandered out into the woods. Went too far, maybe fell into the river, which, despite the town's name, is not especially calm, or perhaps she'd stumbled into a ravine. But Doc Everett had given her a check up that spring and said she was as lucid as ever, no warning signs that anything was wrong with her mind.
So the sheriff said maybe it was a domestic issue. Maybe she had done something that had set Ned off. The broken glasses, well, those could be signs of a struggle. He didn't say that too loud though, just loud enough to get under Ned's skin. While there are plenty of men who seem upstanding in public and then go home and murder their wives, that isn't Ned. As generic as his statement to the paper may have come across, he meant every word of it. Norma was his world, and he hasn't been right since.
The sheriff made a show of sending out his deputy to comb the woods. Ned didn't care much for the sheriff's way of handling things, so he got some of his buddies together to form a search party. Neither the deputy nor the search party found any sign of her.
The town grieved a while and then moved on. Except for Ned. Two days after Norma's disappearance, he suffered a stroke, which left him partially paralyzed on his left side. Ask anyone and they'll say it was the stress that caused it.
These days you'll find him in Norma's rocking chair on the back porch of the home they shared for forty-seven years, muttering to himself as he stares out at the woods. If you ask him what he's doing, he'll say he's waiting for his wife.
Now look, I know you may be wondering what's so special about two disappearances. Two people go missing from a city, and hardly anyone bats an eye. But you know how many people have gone missing from Fair River over the past decade? Seven. Seven people from this tiny little town in the middle of nowhere.
Norma Crawford was the first. She was reported missing by her husband on June 11, 2010. The news clipping I have here on her disappearance says she was, "An avid churchgoer and sixteen-time winner of Fair River's Fourth of July pie contest." Happily married to her high school sweetheart Ned, who told the paper, "Norma is my everything. I don't know how I'll go on without her." Age sixty-seven at the time of her disappearance.
Scan of the newspaper article.
Gone in broad daylight. According to the police report, she was hanging up the wash when her husband Ned left to pick up some milk and eggs from a neighbor down the road, Lenny Kirkland. Ned said he was gone maybe half an hour, but he's never been any good with time. Lenny said Ned was there not quite an hour, and that's probably closer to the truth.
When Ned came back, there was the laundry, half of it hanging up on the clothesline, swaying in the breeze, half still in the plastic basket he had lugged outside for her. She wasn't inside, and she wasn't outside, although he did find her bifocals skirting the edge of the woods that ran behind their house. The woods are everywhere in Fair River, flanking the houses, the church, the corner store. You can't throw a stone without hitting a tree. But her bifocals, they were resting right at the base of a big old oak, one lens cracked.
Crime scene photograph of Norma Crawford's glasses.
The sheriff said it was dementia, that she had gotten confused where she was and wandered out into the woods. Went too far, maybe fell into the river, which, despite the town's name, is not especially calm, or perhaps she'd stumbled into a ravine. But Doc Everett had given her a check up that spring and said she was as lucid as ever, no warning signs that anything was wrong with her mind.
So the sheriff said maybe it was a domestic issue. Maybe she had done something that had set Ned off. The broken glasses, well, those could be signs of a struggle. He didn't say that too loud though, just loud enough to get under Ned's skin. While there are plenty of men who seem upstanding in public and then go home and murder their wives, that isn't Ned. As generic as his statement to the paper may have come across, he meant every word of it. Norma was his world, and he hasn't been right since.
The sheriff made a show of sending out his deputy to comb the woods. Ned didn't care much for the sheriff's way of handling things, so he got some of his buddies together to form a search party. Neither the deputy nor the search party found any sign of her.
The town grieved a while and then moved on. Except for Ned. Two days after Norma's disappearance, he suffered a stroke, which left him partially paralyzed on his left side. Ask anyone and they'll say it was the stress that caused it.
These days you'll find him in Norma's rocking chair on the back porch of the home they shared for forty-seven years, muttering to himself as he stares out at the woods. If you ask him what he's doing, he'll say he's waiting for his wife.
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