His mother paid little attention to him, leading to her being prosecuted in the late 1960s for inappropriate parenting, and both Crawford and his sister being placed in a foster family with four other children.

While most of his acquaintances spoke only positively of him, between March 1993 and November 1999, Crawford was repeatedly arrested and prosecuted on charges of theft and drug possession.

[8] As victims, Crawford chose Black girls and women who engaged in prostitution or were drug addicts, most of them being casual acquaintances whom he lured to abandoned houses or wastelands, ostensibly to share crack cocaine or have sex in exchange for money.

After committing the murders, Crawford left the corpses at the crime scenes, returning later in the day to perform sexual acts on them.

[9] His victims were Evandrey Harris, Patricia Dunn, Rhonda King, Angel Shatteen, Shaquanta Langley, Sonja Brandon, Nicole Townsend, Cheryl Cross, Tommie Dennis, Sheryl Johnson and Constance Bailey.

After his arrest, during the initial interrogations, Andre admitted his guilt and told the investigators that he was responsible for an additional three killings, as well as several other attacks, the victims of whom survived.

[13] During his confessions, Crawford admitted to killing Rhonda King, but another serial killer, Hubert Geralds, had already been convicted of that crime.

In response, the Cook County Prosecutor's Office announced that they would overturn Geralds' conviction, as his testimony was considered questionable from the start.