Eddy Robert Crane was born on November 9, 1940, to August Crane and Hildegard Mayer Crane. He married Jo Ann Nejedlik in 1969, and they had two daughters, Katy, born in 1975, and Jeanne, born in 1977. By all accounts, Eddy was a loving husband and father who worked hard to support his family.
ESTABLISHED IN 1963, E & M Machinery, Inc. dismantled big rig trucks and sold their parts. Located at 5301 Curtis Ave, Baltimore, William Walter “Augie” Augustin, Jr. owned the company. He recruited Eddy into his business as a partner. They became good friends and as close as brothers until 1986, when Eddy believed Augie was stealing from the multi-million dollar company. According to Eddy’s brother, Bob Crane (not the actor, obviously), Eddy discovered missing invoices and missing cash had become a recurring problem. (Simon, 1992)
Eddy eventually confronted Augie and a shouting match ensued in front of employees.
The friendship was over, and they hated each other. Augue would work days, and Eddy would take charge of nights to avoid one another. Eddy began carrying a gun to work and brought the family Rottweiler, Sherlock.
At one point, Eddy believed the two had come to an agreement and that Augustin was going to sell his share of the company. So, Eddy began stealing money from the business to prevent Augie from getting to that money first. (Simon, 1992)
Then, one night, Eddy and Sherlock went to work and vanished. Only one would be seen alive again.
DISAPPEARANCE OF EDDY ROBERT CRANE
At 9 p.m. on September 10, 1987, Eddy, 46, telephoned home and told Jo Ann he and the dog were leaving work. Jo Ann never spoke to or saw her husband ever again.
When Eddy and their dog failed to return home that night, Jo Ann called the police to report her husband missing.
When police showed up at E & M, they found a bloody scene but no sign of Eddy or the dog. Blood was on a mop and pail used to clean the office. There was a bullet hole in a file cabinet and bullets of two calibers in the cabinet, behind the wallboard, and in the ceiling. There were also scuff marks on the floor. Police later discovered bullet holes in the office desk that someone had filled with wood putty.
There was no sign of forced entry or robbery. Along with Eddy and the dog, a broken office chair and the gun Eddy carried to protect himself were missing, too. Days later, the crime lab identified the blood at the crime scene as the same type as that of Eddy Crane.
On the day he vanished, Eddy wore a white, short-sleeved dress shirt, black trousers, and brown shoes. He stood 6 feet tall, weighed 300 pounds, with brown hair and gray sideburns.
Murder Investigation
Even though investigators had no body, they began a homicide investigation because the evidence at the alleged crime scene showed someone had killed Eddy. They questioned all E & M employees, and before long, one of them became a likely suspect – a 50-year-old night watchman hired by none other than Augie himself.
The night watchman claimed that nothing unusual happened the night Eddy disappeared. However, he said he left the business and had driven around the Inner Harbor for a bit that night. When he returned to the office, he thought he spotted intruders on the company lot and called Augie down to the offices.
Detectives suspected the night watchman was attempting to “create an alibi — “if anyone in Curtis Bay had noticed the cleanup effort at the offices and checked to see which cars and trucks were on the company lot at the time.” (Simon)
Investigators then asked the man what happened to the missing office chair. He gave a flimsy story that the chair had broken and that he had hauled it to Augie’s mother’s house and left it lying outside. Then, someone stole the chair.
A few days later, armed with a search warrant, detectives returned to the E & M offices and gathered additional evidence. They searched the bed of the company pickup truck used by the night watchman and found traces of human blood.
Shortly after, police found Eddy’s tan, four-door 1975 Mercedes parked at a fast food restaurant near the airport in the Glen Burnie shopping center. The day after Eddy and Sherlock disappeared, the Rottweiler showed up about eight miles from the shopping center in the driveway of a residence in the Hanover area of Anne Arundel County.
“The dog was unharmed,” city homicide Detective Donald Kincaid said in late September 1987. “He was laying at the end of the driveway as if he were waiting for someone. This is a very obedient dog. He never would have left the owner. Someone had to take him away.”
Cue the tears. 😭
“The family who found Sherlock asked around the neighborhood for the owner and then placed an ad in the newspaper. A tipster called Metro Crime Stoppers to alert police to the ad, Kincaid said.” (Wentzel and Talbott, 1987)
Weeks later, detectives received a tip and pumped an acid tank near the company lot but found nothing. What’s interesting about that is that Augie, as a young man, worked as an acid worker for a local chemical plant.
A source later told investigators that Eddy’s body was disposed of at a soap plant near E & M.
Investigators tried to question the most likely suspect, Augie, but he referred them to his lawyer. He later denied any involvement in his partner’s disappearance. Augie claimed Eddy left on his own to start a new life somewhere, and the proof, he said, was the money Eddy stole from the company before he disappeared.
But Eddy’s family knew he would never abandon them. Additionally, the police never believed Eddy left his office alive. The evidence found at the office proved otherwise. And the only person who had a motive was Augie. However, detectives never arrested him for Eddy’s disappearance and likely murder. An $11,000 reward for information did not produce any leads or an arrest.
Unfortunately, Augie lived as a free man to the age of 84, dying in 2011. His wife Anna died two years later. E & M Machinery, Inc. is still in operation with Dawn Augustin as President. She is Augie’s daughter and is now 71.
AFTERMATH
Jo Ann believed that police failed her husband and that they had enough evidence to make an arrest. The prosecutor decided not to proceed further because of insufficient evidence.
“I’ve crawled into a shell and tried to keep my family at home. I don’t want to go out anymore,” Jo Ann said in 1992. “When someone dies, you have a funeral, you have a grieving period. We haven’t had that. We are still in mourning.”
Kate Crane became a journalist and wrote an article about her father several years ago, but it is no longer online, and the company is defunct. However, per her website, she has a book coming out this year on her father’s disappearance.
Investigating Agency: Baltimore Police Department, Homicide Unit, 301-396-2721
TCD’s Thoughts
There’s no doubt in my mind that Augie hired someone, maybe the night watchman, to kill his partner. Augustin didn’t look like a man who could hold his own in a fight. In his younger days, he stood 6 feet 5 inches tall but was skinny, weighing 195 pounds. Eddy was a big man standing 6 feet tall and weighing 300 pounds. So, it would take two men to hold him down.
There is little doubt of the night watchman’s involvement in Eddy’s murder. What role he played is unknown. There might have been another man, other than Augie, along with the night watchman.
The evidence points to the men shooting Eddy multiple times. Then they either let Sherlock loose or dropped him off somewhere. Why they did not kill the dog is beyond me.
No other person had the means or motive to kill Eddy. I believe Augie and his minions disposed of Eddy’s body on E & M’s property or his home at 5217 Ballman Avenue.
It appears he owned some property near his business, maybe apartment buildings. But I doubt he would hide the body there.
If the tipster was correct, his body may be somewhere on the grounds of the soap plant. There were two that I could find: Lever Brothers at 5300 Holabird Avenue and Procter & Gamble at Locust Point. P & G is closer to E & M than Lever Brothers. But why would the killers dump his body there? Curtis Bay is near E & M, so wouldn’t it make more sense to dump his body in the bay?
I also do not doubt that Augie’s wife knew what her husband did to Eddy, including the disposal of his body. I think Dawn Augustin also knows. She was 34 in 1987 and already married. She seems to be carrying on the family legacy in more ways than one.
Sources
“A Daughter’s Investigation Into the Disappearance of Her Father.” WBUR, September 22, 2015. https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2015/09/22/daughters-investigation
Simon, David. “Dead or Alive? Businessman Missing for Years.” The Baltimore Sun, May 31, 1992.
Peters, Jeffrey W., and William B. Talbott. “$11,000 for Information on Man.” The Evening Sun (Baltimore, Maryland)., September 22, 1987.