When Crutchley was born, his mother was disappointed by his sex because she had intended to have another daughter, so she began dressing him as a girl for the first six years of his life.

In addition to being forced to wear a dress, Crutchley also claimed his parents subjected him to severe child abuse, which included beating him until he lost consciousness.

He graduated from Upper St. Clair High School in Upper St. Clair Township, Pennsylvania and eventually, Crutchley graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from Defiance College in Ohio in 1970, and earned a Master of Engineering degree in Engineering Administration at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Crutchley had previously worked at General Motors' Central Foundry Division in Defiance, Ohio, where he was responsible for the installation of a new plant security system.

At the time of his arrest, Crutchley was found to be in possession of a great deal of highly classified information regarding naval weaponry and communications.

[6] Crutchley's employer, Harris Corporation, was highly involved with not only the NASA research and launch facilities at Cape Canaveral, but also with other naval contractors and subcontractors.

On the evening of November 22, 1985, in Malabar, Florida, a nude teenaged girl later identified as 19-year-old Laura Murphy, handcuffed at both feet and ankles, was found crawling along the side of the road.

Once in his driveway, Crutchley invited her in but she refused, at which time he tied a ligature around the teenager's neck, choked her into unconsciousness, and dragged her into his house.

Crutchley then raped her and inserted needles into her arm and wrist and carefully extracted blood and began to drink it, telling her that he was a vampire.

[6] The following morning, after a third round, Crutchley handcuffed Murphy and left her in the bathroom, saying that he would be back later for further assaults, and that if she tried to escape in the interim, his brother would come and kill her.

[6] During the second search in relation to the Malabar case, police discovered a stack of seventy-two index cards on which Crutchley had recorded the names of multiple women and some men along with their described sexual performances.

[6] After being contacted by local authorities for his input, FBI profiler Robert Ressler was convinced that Crutchley had almost certainly killed before, identifying him as a "serial killer of the organized type".

After serving eleven years of his sentence, Crutchley was released on August 8, 1996, from Union Correctional Institution in Rainford for good behavior.

Crutchley was placed in solitary confinement when it was discovered that he had thirteen body piercings on his genitals, which was in violation of prison rules.

[17] On October 30, 2010, the cable channel Investigation Discovery broadcast a twenty-minute summary of the Brevard County incident which led to Crutchley's incarceration.