“My wife’s been shot. I need someone here, please.” It was just after 11 p.m. on May 2, 2017, when 37-year-old Jason Crawford called 911 from outside his home in Cullman, Alabama, to report that his wife, Tiffany, had been shot in the head.
In an exclusive interview for this Saturday’s “48 Hours” report, “The Mysterious Death of Tiffany Crawford,” airing Saturday, March 25 at 10/9c on CBS and streaming on Paramount+, Jason Crawford told “CBS Mornings” chief correspondent David Begnaud He remembers that night. “It felt like someone was taking longer to get there,” he said.
Tiffany Crawford/Facebook
Lead investigator Joseph Parrish told Begnaud that when he first heard the recording of that 911 call, Crawford’s tone caught his ear. “It was very cold,” Parrish said. “No one seemed to care about his wife.” But Parrish said he was more concerned that Jason refused to answer a question the 911 operator asked repeatedly.
“He asked you, ‘Who shot him,’ and you didn’t answer. Why not?” Begnaud asked Crawford. “Yes,” replied Crawford, “I thought it would be true if I spoke it into existence.” Crawford said he couldn’t tell the 911 operator that his wife of 32-two years, Tiffiny, had shot herself.
Body camera footage shows what Cullman County Sheriff’s deputies found when they arrived at the scene. Tiffany Crawford was slumped over in the driver’s seat of her van. He had a pink revolver in his left hand. Jason Crawford said his wife put the gun in the driver’s side door of his car for protection. In the bodycam footage, a deputy can be heard asking Jason, “What happened tonight?” “Uh, I—we were arguing,” Crawford replied, “I didn’t let him in the house … and the last thing I remember was … I was going home, and I heard a gunshot, a scream, and then another gunshot.” Tiffini’s head. was shot twice. That night, at least one sheriff’s deputy believed he had taken his own life.
Cullman County Sheriff Matt Gentry Begnaude said that the morning after the shooting, he decided to turn the case over to the Alabama State Bureau of Investigation. Gentry felt there was a potential conflict of interest because Jason’s mother, Rhonda Crawford, worked for him as an office manager. “I could tell our guys to work it out,” Gentry told Begnoud, but “I want complete transparency.” That’s when state investigator Joe Parrish was assigned to the case and began examining the evidence.
With the gun out for testing, the first thing Parrish wanted to see was the van Tiffiny had been shot at. But on the night of her death, the car was photographed and handed over to Jason and his family. The next morning – with the sheriff’s permission – the van was cleaned by two family members. “It was strange that they would clean it up so soon after something like that,” Parish told Begnaud.
There was something else that struck Parish as odd. Tiffany Crawford was shot once in the left side of her chin and a second time in her left temple. The gun was found in his left hand, but Tiffini’s was in his right hand. Parrish said two shots to the head are rare in a suicide attempt, but two shots using a nondominant hand to pull the trigger seemed almost impossible to the longtime investigator.
A week after the shooting, Parrish brought in Jason Crawford for questioning. For the first time, Crawford spoke in detail about a discovery made the night his wife died. He told Parrish that Tiffiny was having an affair and that was what they were arguing about. “I said, you’ve ruined our home. I was like, you’re not a part of it anymore,” Crawford told Parrish. Crawford said they argued for about an hour, then he went inside to get Tiffany her work uniform so she could leave. According to Crawford, as soon as they entered the house, he “heard a gunshot, a scream and another gunshot.”
When the gun was finally DNA tested, only trace amounts were detected. Two specimens were identified as males but could not be matched to an individual. A third sample was so small that there was no way to tell whether it was male or female. Parrish thought the gun might have been cleaned and placed in Tiffini’s hands.
A backlog at the state ballistics lab will delay Tiffany Crawford’s autopsy report for a year, but State Medical Examiner Dr. Valerie Greene told Begnaud that she had doubts about Jason Crawford’s story from the beginning. “I think the thing that made me think there might be something else going on with this case was the gunshot wound to the left side of Mrs. Crawford’s head,” he said.
Green said that based on the absence of gunpowder particles and abrasion around the wound on Tiffini’s left temple, he concluded that the bullet was fired from at least 10 inches away. “It’s indicating that, you know, he’s holding his arm out 10 inches and trying to shoot himself…not saying it’s impossible. But it’s not possible.” It was especially unlikely, Greene said, because Crawford reported that when he got Tiffiny into his van, the door was closed. “It was for me,” Greene says. “You’re able to hold on. Pick up a gun and shoot him in the head… That would be hard to do, and it’s such a small place.”
On March 8, 2018, Green released his findings and declared Tiffini’s death a homicide. More than two months later, the Cullman County District Attorney’s Office presented their case to a grand jury. Jason Crawford was accused of murdering his wife. In an interview with Begnaud, Assistant District Attorney Jeff Roberts said, “I couldn’t see who did it. He was the only one who had a motive to do it, for one thing.”
“We don’t believe Jason is guilty of this at all,” Crawford’s attorney Robert Tuten told Begnaud. Tuten said the state’s case was entirely circumstantial and that investigators found no physical evidence Crawford killed his wife. “They didn’t see any blood on him or anything. They didn’t find anything that indicated he had fired a firearm recently.” Tuten said it was clear to him that Tiffany Crawford took her own life because her marriage was ending. “I think he gave up… I think he just fell apart and decided to end it.”
Jason Crawford will spend the next four years out on bond, awaiting trial. He said that everyone supported him including his mother-in-law. “All of my circle of people, like my family and friends and stuff, they never questioned it … they never questioned that I wouldn’t kill my wife.”
The trial began in November 2022 Juror No. 19, Megan Brock, would later tell Begnaud that when the jury finally got the case, they deliberated for hours without reaching a verdict. They then requested access to those 911 recordings.
About 30 minutes later, they announced that they had reached a decision. “So, the 911 call sealed the deal,” Begnaud asked Brock. “That was it,” he insisted.