Posted on 06/29/2003 12:04:21 PM PDT by Theodore R.
'Karaoke killer' lived it up on lam Fugitive vacation
By Lawrence Buser buser@gomemphis.com June 29, 2003
Joseph Leroy Crouch Jr.'s 21-month Florida vacation filled with gambling, golf and karaoke came to a dramatic and abrupt end this year after a series of armed robberies.
Just before midnight on March 16, the FBI and several SWAT teams burst into his third-floor condo in Daytona Beach Shores and arrested him in the killing of his wife in Memphis two years ago.
The 61-year-old former mortgage broker knew his secret life under the alias Jay Nelson was over and that he likely had played his last round of golf.
Crouch told one officer, "At least I parred my last hole."
Although Crouch sits in the Shelby County Jail awaiting prosecution on a first-degree murder charge, a detailed account of his double life emerges from interviews with family, friends and police.
Those who knew him as a kind-hearted, sociable widower in Florida remain stunned that he could be something much different.
"When we first met him, he told us his loving wife of 40 years had died of cancer and how much he loved her and that he would never marry again," recalled Lloyd Eaton of Ormond Beach, Fla., who met Crouch last summer in a karaoke bar. "He always was the perfect gentleman, the perfect nice guy. He'd do anything for you."
But authorities contend a very different view of Crouch emerged from his own pen. They seized a detailed, handwritten log of an alleged string of armed robberies.
Crouch's attorney, public defender Michael Johnson, said he could not comment on the pending case.
Two years ago this month, Betsy Crouch was found dead at the couple's home on Oakland Hills near the Fox Meadows Golf Course. The retired medical receptionist, who was 56, had been shot three times in the head and once in the chest. Police say her husband has admitted responsibility.
Family and friends here say the Crouches, parents of two grown children, were outgoing and friendly and that much of their social life was built around karaoke and golf. But his company was in steep financial trouble, and Crouch was about to face bad check charges.
"It would be a shock anyway, but it was just a real tragedy to know he and Mother had just celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary and things seemed to be going so well," said their daughter, Teresa Wampler. "Of course Daddy kept his financial problems under wraps."
She said much of the problem stemmed from his gambling habits: "He could lose $2,000 on the golf course on a Sunday afternoon."
After the shooting, Crouch put his golf clubs in the trunk of his wife's silver 2000 Mercury Sable - after first removing her clubs - and began life as Jay Nelson.
But he had to finance his new life somehow. Credit cards leave a trail. He needed cash.
'That's the last thing they expected'
Had it been a driver in his hand rather than a pistol, the casually attired gentleman could have been a golfer looking for his tee shot.
When it was his turn at the counter, though, the graying man in the slacks, sport shirt and golf cap showed his gun, hopped the counter and helped himself to the money. He sometimes locked employees or customers in rest rooms.
"He didn't do too much to disguise himself," said Lt. Mark Nealon of the Daytona Beach Shores Department of Public Safety. "The clerks were all surprised because they'd see him walk up there and that's the last thing they expected. But no doubt about it, he meant business."
According to Crouch's own handwritten notes, he meant business with clerks or customers at 34 small businesses and a half-dozen banks in Florida and Mississippi. The bank robberies alone netted him an estimated $88,400.
The two legal-size sheets found in his condo list the dates, businesses, cities and victims of his armed robberies, which apparently began within days of his wife's killing.
The crimes he's charged with, which sometimes involved tying up the victim, included a $17 robbery from two women on Sept. 10, 2001, at the Tobacco Depot in Clearwater, Fla., and a $36,000 robbery on Aug. 28, 2002, at Crown Bank in Dunedin, Fla.
"He identified himself in several photographs that were obtained from bank surveillance cameras," according to a Daytona Beach Shores police report, which termed his estimates of amounts taken as being fairly accurate. "When asked why the notes were written, J. Crouch said it was so that he would not return to the same business and possibly be identified by an employee."
In his rented condo, police also found marijuana, rope, latex gloves, license plates from Florida and Tennessee, several women's credit cards, a .22-caliber pistol and a .25-caliber pistol believed to be the murder weapon.
In his wife's car, which had Florida tags, police found a loaded .357-caliber pistol and identification cards from the Sun Cruise Casino ship in the name of Jay Nelson. In the trunk were Betsy Crouch's purse and identification papers, a purple rain poncho with the words "The place to go TUPELO," and Crouch's golf clubs.
Also in the trunk was a pack of $20 bills with the center missing, a bundle Crouch told police probably was from the CNB Bank of Orlando, which he said he robbed of $9,000 on Dec. 5, 2001.
According to the police report, Crouch said he discarded the bundle after exiting the interstate when he realized it could be a dye pack or a GPS device. Several weeks later, when he was running low on cash, he went back for it.
"J. Crouch retrieved the pack of money and said it only had two $20 bills in the pack and the rest was the dye pack and cut-out $20 bills," the report says. "He did not realize he had placed the empty pack into his trunk."
'Just for You and Maybe Just for Me'
Lloyd and Debbie Eaton put on karaoke shows several nights a week in the Daytona Beach area where they estimate more than two dozen bars and clubs cater to singers in search of an audience.
Last August a man came to one of their Class Act Entertainment and Karaoke shows, sat at a table by himself and eventually approached the stage and introduced himself as Jay Nelson. It was the start of an eight-month friendship.
"He never missed a show hardly," said Eaton, a k-jay who provides vocal-less music of popular songs for 60 to 70 amateur singers on karaoke nights. "Jay was very good at it. He was an avid karaoke person. There were a lot of people he shied away from, but he just became like part of the family."
When Thanksgiving came around, the Eatons invited the widower to spend the holiday with their family. Jay Nelson accepted and even brought a ham. He bounced their granddaughter on his knee.
"He and I even discussed opening a karaoke bar, which was a longtime dream of mine," recalled Eaton, 52, a former Florida corrections officer. "He had offered to finance me. We even looked at a few potential locations."
In Eaton's mobile home is a small recording studio where around Christmas last year he helped Jay Nelson make a 10-song CD that included Amazing Grace, You Were Always On My Mind and You Never Even Called Me By My Name.
"He told me this is for his kids to remember him by," Eaton said. "He called the CD 'Just for You and Maybe Just for Me.' During the time he was singing there was emotion. . . . The guy could sing."
Crouch then drove to New Orleans and mailed the CD to his children along with a letter.
"He said, 'Y'all will probably throw it away, but that's OK,' " said Wampler, his daughter. "He said, 'Just doing it and sending it to you made me feel closer to you.' I never listened to it."
Meanwhile, as the months passed, the search for Joseph Leroy Crouch Jr. continued, and in February it was featured on America's Most Wanted, a national TV program. He was dubbed "the Karaoke Killer."
"That was his hobby, and that's what got him caught," said Memphis police Lt. Mickey Williams, who took telephone tips on the program in Washington. "He wasn't going to change his lifestyle."
If the man who called himself Jay Nelson was worried about being discovered, he didn't show it. He led a leisurely, sociable life and was never shy about being photographed at parties or videotaped on the karaoke stage.
He was, however, careful to rob only locations outside the Daytona Beach area so his crimes or his picture would not appear in the local media.
But Crouch never knew that he was featured on America's Most Wanted because, as Eaton recalled, he watched only golf, basketball and football. Word traveled fast through the rest of the karaoke community.
"One evening this k-jay comes running up to us and says, 'Did you hear about Jay? Did you hear about Jay?' " Eaton recounted. "At first we thought it was a joke, and then he showed us a wanted poster. My mouth dropped to my feet."
Eaton phoned the authorities through America's Most Wanted the next morning and told them where they could find the man they wanted. Several hours later, Jay Nelson called a very nervous Eaton, who did not know if the fugitive knew he had turned him in.
"I had to pretend like nothing was going on, and while I had him on the line, I got his whole itinerary for the rest of the day," said Eaton, who slept with a loaded shotgun next to his bed that night. "When the FBI called that night, I knew his complete schedule."
The next morning he learned on the news that the man he knew as Jay Nelson was in custody. Eaton received no reward for his efforts, but America's Most Wanted sent him two pens, two key chains and two personalized pictures of host John Walsh.
"They didn't even send me a hat, and I collect hats," Eaton said. "They were out."
- Lawrence Buser: 529-2385
dep
You Are Always On My Mind
You Never Even Call Me By My Name
You Never Even Call Me By My Name was written by Steve Goodman; David Alan Coe did the definitive version...
That one and "I Wanna Go Home With the Armadillos" sound better and better with each cold, longneck beer you drink. Especially when everyone is singing along all drunkenly off-key. :)
Maybe I didn't love you
Quite as often as I could have
And maybe I didn't treat you
Quite as good as I should have
If I made you feel second best
Girl I'm sorry I was blind
You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
And maybe I didn't hold you
All those lonely.. lonely times
And I guess I never told you
I'm so happy that you're mine
Little things I should have said and done
I just never took the time
You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
Tell me..
Tell me that your sweet love hasn't died
Give me..
Give me one more chance to keep you satisfied
I'll keep you satisfied
Little things I should have said and done
I just never took the time
You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind..
I don't know that one...can you hum a few bars?
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