September 18, 1998: In Florida, murder suspect Willie Crain is arrested on suspicion of raping two young girls.
This case is unusual to say the least. In 1985, Crain pleaded guilty to five counts of sexually abusing young girls between July 1982 and May 1984. He was given a twenty year sentence but was free after just six years.
In September 1998, he groomed a young, divorced mother, drugged her with Valium, then kidnapped her seven year old daughter. Amanda Brown was never seen alive again, and her body was never found, but forensic evidence suggested she had been murdered in Crain’s bathroom.
During the course of what was initially an extremely high profile missing child investigation which focused largely on him, two women came forward and claimed Crain had raped them between 1965 and 1971. Crain was arrested. He would later be charged with Amanda Brown’s murder, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. At the time of writing – May 2021 – he is still on death row.
The documentary Defenseless Victim covers the Amanda Brown case in depth.
In August 2000, The Tampa Tribune reported that all the outstanding rape charges had been dropped as part of a plea deal in which Crain pleaded guilty to possessing marijuana which was found on his property during the search for Amanda Brown.
As by this time he was on death row, this was academic, but the two faux child rape victims had zero credibility. They were said to have been between eight and ten years old at the material time. Crain was only nineteen in 1965.
It is possible these women were confabulating or delusional, but they were probably simply lying for the same reason Shaneice Barksdale would lie sixteen years later.
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