Mark Crawford Trial: 1999

Then on June 1, 1996, a weight lifter named Kirk Johnson, employed as a bodyguard by Crawford, came to the Aransas County sheriff with a wild story. He said he and another Crawford bodyguard, Michael Beckcom, had helped Crawford murder Nick Brueggan. He led officers to a grave containing Brueggan's body. According to Johnson, they had forced Brueggan into a metal tool box, then attached a hose to a hole in the box and filled it from exhaust from a minivan. When Ingleside police and Texas Rangers went looking for Crawford, he had disappeared. Six weeks later, they found him in Biloxi, Mississippi.

The reason for the murder, Johnson said, was that federal agents were investigating Viking Casualty and a financial network Crawford had built up. It involved insurance companies that never paid claims, corporations that pocketed employees' income taxes, large-scale embezzlement, and marijuana selling. The organization's members referred to it as "the family" and wore gold rings engraved with the Chinese symbol for "family." Crawford's "family" operated illegal enterprises in Texas, Mississippi, Colorado, and California.

The second bodyguard, Mike Beckcom, pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against Crawford in return for a lighter sentence. Texas charged the former mayor with murder. The state prosecutors had two problems, however.