As Crawford's court date neared, Kenzie refused to give a written statement after their three-night foray to Minneapolis, electing a verbal one instead. She spoke so softly that the recorder couldn't decipher her words; the tape had to be sent to an expert.
Crawford was scheduled to appear in a Marshall court in mid-September, but he was granted a continuance. One night that month, two Marshall police officers noticed a Lincoln Continental with Texas tags in a lumberyard near the bike path. They looked up the plates and traced the car to Crawford.
Jason Ryan
Before Mackenzie Foss moved from Minnesota to Flower Mound, she and the missing girl were best friends. Their friendship continued in Texas until Foss' dad, Shelby, unearthed the truth.
Mark Kartarik
Kenzie was staying with her aunt Lisa (above) when she disappeared for the last time.
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The officers informed Kenzie's dad, who had recently installed tracking software on his daughter's cell phone. Kenzie was out that night, supposedly at a friend's house. He pulled up her location and saw that his daughter was on a bike path not far from Crawford's car.
The officers walked until they reached an embankment under some railroad tracks. Crawford and Kenzie were sitting side by side; by now, the entire Marshall police force could recognize his face. He was arrested immediately and charged with violating a restraining order to go with his still-outstanding charge of depriving parental rights. He was released once again, and set off again to Texas, at least until the justice system lured him back.
A couple weeks later, Kenzie was in her room when her dad came in and told her to get dressed. His grandmother had died; her wake was that day. But she refused, he remembers, and that's when he snapped: In a rage, he admits, he picked his scrawny daughter up and slammed her on the bed, his hand wrapped around her throat.
Kenzie later said that Jeremy had threatened to kill her. She called the cops, then Kristopher Crawford's mother, Leslie. When she heard, Leslie says, she called the cops, too. No charges were filed.
Later that month, a police officer called Aunt Lisa with a tip that Crawford was sending Kenzie a "care package": a cell phone and money, ostensibly to buy a bus ticket south. If it ever existed, though, it never came to the house, and Kenzie never ran. A receipt shows that on October 27, Crawford spent $102.94 on a hat and a black light-up tutu from raveready.com, which he shipped to "Kenzy Katt" at Lisa's address in St. Paul.
November came without Crawford facing the justice system; he'd been due in court again but was granted another continuance. One night, as Minnesota started to freeze, Kenzie stepped outside for 45 minutes to smoke. Lisa's boyfriend was concerned, so he walked around the house to the back alley. Kenzie was in their car, smoking cigarettes. She had a cell phone in her hand. She was talking to Crawford.
The boyfriend took the phone, stormed inside and handed it to Lisa, already in bed. Kenzie screamed and attacked Lisa. "I need that phone!" Kenzie screamed. "I need that phone!"
Lisa found pictures of Crawford in his underwear on the phone, and more suggestive photos of Kenzie. She turned over the phone to St. Paul PD.
On December 7, after being granted yet another continuance, Crawford wrote to Kenzie, using the handle agentpacman0007:
"You lost that phone. That phone was practically my life, and didn't even bother to pay attention or delete anything.
"Your lies kill me, bear. ..." He continued. "And as much as I hate them, I still answer you. ... Still talk to you. ... Because I can't be without you..."
Five days later, Kenzie, now 16, walked outside to smoke. She wore a black hoodie and sweatpants, a coat, the hat Crawford bought for her and $78 she stole from her aunt's boyfriend's wallet. She never came back.
Crawford takes a last drag on his Marlboro Red, peering into the darkness through small, ovular lenses, gaunt cheeks collapsing as he pulls. He looks at the butt pinned between his bony fingers, then flicks it into the night and walks into the Starbucks.
He slows, waiting for a hyper young boy to skip past, and chooses a table for two closest to the door.
"I guess you don't smoke," he says. He smiles, revealing two rows of perfect, white teeth. They look out of place. He smells rank, ripe from what must be days without showering. He's sleeping in his car, he says, or crashing with friends and ex-coworkers. His stepdad wouldn't let him near the house, so one time he spent an entire week sleeping in the Walgreens parking lot down the street.
Baggy black sweats sag from his waist, and a ragged, black T-shirt with a mug shot of Family Guy's baby Stewie hangs from frail shoulders. "Quahog's Most Wanted," it reads. A jagged widow's peak is all that remains of his hairline, and a wispy, narrow shock of dark hair flows unchecked from the front all the way back before plunging into a long, greasy rattail draped over one shoulder. He looks perfectly comfortable in the Arlington Starbucks on the corner of West Bardin and Cooper, just minutes from UT-Arlington's main campus.
It's April 25, more than four months after he failed to show in court. There is a national warrant out for his arrest, but no one seems to be looking for him. Police in Minnesota and Texas will say only that Kenzie's disappearance is "an ongoing investigation." Her face is on a few posters online, but due to a combination of jurisdictional confusion, incompetence and blind luck, law enforcement hasn't done much at all to find her or Crawford.
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