The Terrifying Ocean City Vacation Murderers
A fall from grace for the “thrill of the kill”
Ocean City, Maryland, 2002. Memorial Day Weekend ushers in the beginning of high tourist season. Among the summer crowds splashing in the Atlantic Ocean, the families enjoying the Jolly Roger Amusement Park, and the scores of young partiers, a murderous couple lurked. According to former Ocean City detective Scott Bernal, most crimes in the seaside town involve petty theft or alcohol. The police force anticipated weekend DUIs but not murder.
Even now, eighteen years later, Bernal and his colleague remember the murders of Joshua Ford and Martha “Geney” Crutchley as the most disturbing case of their careers. Ford and Crutchley were brutally murdered and then dismembered in the wee hours of Saturday, May 25, 2002. The couple was in Ocean City from Fairfax, VA for the holiday weekend. Friends reported them missing on Tuesday, May 28, 2002, when they both failed to show up for work. By the following Friday, their killers were behind bars.
Benjamin “BJ” Sifrit and his wife, Erika — both twenty-three years old — were arrested on Friday, May 31, 2002, after attempting to steal $5k worth of memorabilia from a Hooters restaurant on the outskirts of Ocean City. Emboldened by the murders they committed six days before, the couple thought they’d…
