Man now missing four years

The last time his family saw him, David “Bubba” Crawley was very much afraid.
Of what, they’re not sure, but something propelled him to leave his sister’s home running on April 5, 2004.
His sister, Tammy Allen, said at the time that he appeared to be afraid that someone was after him. That last disturbing image of him sprinting into the woods lingers in his sister’s memory and in his mother’s tortured imagination.
Sandy Crawley wasn’t at her daughter’s home in Cypress that day, but in her mind’s eye she can summon a terrifying vision of her son’s panicked disappearance four years ago. As the anniversary of his vanishing nears, she’s hoping someone will come forward with information about where he is and what has happened to him.
For a time, she tried to believe that he’d simply slipped out of sight to lay low in the face of whatever made him run in the first place. But when Mother’s Day passed that year without word from her son – the first time he’d let that important day go by without giving her a hug – that fragile hope started to crumble.
On a flier posted by authorities some time after he went missing, Jackson County sheriff’s investigators wrote that foul play is suspected in his disappearance.
His mother agrees and wholeheartedly believes that someone out there knows exactly what happened.
She’s hoping whoever holds the key to the truth will hand it over to sheriff’s investigator Joey Rabon and other members of the investigative team working on the case. All it will take, she believes, is a person with a conscience.
She’s convinced that, somewhere, a decent person   carries a frightening secret that they need to shed, not only for the high cause of justice but for their own mental and emotional health as well.
Perhaps it is a person whose life circumstances may have sent them into the path of evil to witness the events that have left her feeling, for all practical purposes, like a grieving mother.
“Somebody knows something,” Crawley said. “I don’t know if they want to die with it or what, but one day, even if it’s in the hereafter, they will answer for their silence. If they have kids, I want them to think about that, about how it would be for them if their child just disappeared off the face of the Earth. Every part of my being wants and needs to know what happened to him, so I can lay him to rest if he’s dead, and lay my heart to rest.”
She imagines all kinds of scenarios, and said she has come to grips with the possibilities.
She said she knows her son was not perfect and acknowledges that he may have dabbled in substance abuse. If that’s so, she fears it could have something to do with the case.
Whatever his “sins” might be, though, she said, he doesn’t deserve the fate she most fears.
“He wasn’t a saint,” she said, “but that didn’t given anyone a right to take his life, either. That’s why the Lord died on the cross, to forgive us of our sins. I just hope and pray there’s one person out there who knows the truth and will really think about what they’re doing by keeping quiet. Maybe somebody wants to get something off their minds so they can feel better.”
She said her son is a loving, caring person, no matter what his shortcomings might be. Her memories of him point toward a man who enjoyed the simple pleasures and used his considerable and varied skills to improve his station in life and to help others.
“Give him a cork and a string and he could fix anything; that’s what we used to say,” Crawley said with a laugh. “My neighbor needed a ceiling fan hung, and he’d never done that but he figured it out.”
He did that work for no pay, she said, and often helped the neighbor and others with projects and didn’t charge for his help. His main source of income came from helping move trailers for a number of different companies, and he also did mechanical work on automobiles.
When he wasn’t working, he was happy to spend a lot of his time at home, his mother said.
He lived off Hollister Road at the time of his disappearance, but the trailer he resided in has since been moved.
He loved his one biological daughter and his adopted daughter equally she said, and liked to have them around when he tinkered with lawn mowers or other equipment outside.
“He’d ask me to help him watch them while he worked,” Crawley said. “He liked to see them out there playing in the dirt or, when they were babies, just sitting in a car seat nearby. He loves babies, anyway, loved holding them, loved being around kids.”
He also enjoyed cooking, she said.
“Just a few days before he disappeared, I went over to his place and he was out grilling ribs. He could also make a mean pan of lasagna. He’d always come over here for my fried chicken and mashed potatoes, but he loved to cook, too.”
His pastimes included a bit of hunting, fishing and some gardening.
But perhaps his favorite hobby at the time he disappeared was a labor of love in honor of his father, David Milton Crawley II.
The senior Crawley died about 18 months before his son disappeared. He’d been working to restore a 1958 Ford truck when he succumbed to cancer in 2003.
Much loved as a husband and father, his death inspired in son “Bubba” a deep determination to finish what his father started. His mother has all but lost hope that he will someday return and fulfill that mission.
Even so, she hopes that he will one day at least come home to rest beside his beloved father. She’s reaching out for help from anyone who might have information that could make that possible.
The sheriff’s office can be reached at 482-9664. The CrimeStoppers anonymous tips line can be reached at 526-5000.
Crawley, 5-feet, 9-inches tall, was last seen near Honeypot Lane in Cypress on April 5, 2004. He was wearing a gray shirt, camoflauge pants and white Nike tennis shoes with a yellow “swoosh” mark.
He weighed approximately 170 pounds at the time.
Born July 2,1977, he was 26 when he disappeared.