NY NY - Lucius Crawford, serial stabber

A serial stabber who has spent more than half his life behind bars was convicted Thursday of killing his girlfriend in 2012, but jurors had still not reached a verdict in the death of a Yonkers prostitute stabbed almost two decades earlier.

Lucius Crawford, 61, faces at least 15 years to life in prison after he was found guilty of second-degree murder in the knifing of Tonya Simmons in his Mount Vernon apartment. He also stands accused of killing Laronda Shealy in Yonkers in 1993.

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"I have a demon inside me and I just snap," Crawford said in police transcripts made public at his trial. "You stab one, stab 'em all"... Crawford started using knives to deal with women when he was a 21-year-old living in North Charleston. He was arrested in 1973 after a stabbing spree that wounded five women over five days near his house on Echo Avenue in the Union Heights area of North Charleston. He spent three years in prison. Then he stabbed another five women over five days in 1977... Crawford was given a 24-year prison sentence after his second wave of stabbings in 1977. He was released in 1991 and moved to New York...

He was also accused of killing Nella West, 38, in the Bronx on Oct. 20, 1993. She was stabbed multiple times and also had fractures to her skull, according to investigators. He is awaiting trial on a charge of second-degree murder in her death...

Crawford also stabbed a 31-year-old coworker 13 times around 1995. He spent 13 years in prison for that attack and was released on parole in 2008.

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While there hasn't been a murder conviction in her daughter's 1993 killing, Arlene Perkins left court satisfied that the man responsible will likely spend the rest of his life in prison. Just moments earlier, Perkins watched as a judge sentenced serial stabber Lucius Crawford to the maximum possible — 25 years to life — for the 2012 killing of his girlfriend in Mount Vernon.

Crawford, 61, was also accused of murdering Perkins' daughter, Laronda Shealy, a 23-year-old who was fatally stabbed in Yonkers. But a jury — the same one that found Crawford guilty in the Mount Vernon murder — couldn't reach a verdict in Shealy's case, leading to a mistrial...

The Westchester County District Attorney does not expect to retry Crawford for the death of Shealy, saying his punishment is effectively a life sentence.

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The daughter of a woman whose brutally stabbed body was dumped off the side of a Bronx road 22 years ago told her killer Friday she can finally sleep knowing that he'll likely spend the rest of his life locked up.

“Lucius, you no longer linger in my head, you no longer linger in my dreams,” Latoyia Towns told Lucius Crawford, 62, Friday before he was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

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