Cruel Death by M. William Phelps (July 2009)

Spoiled Rotten
Review by Kim Cantrell

Erika Elaine Grace was an only child. And, is often the case with only children, Erika always got her way and was given anything she wanted.

Until she met and married Benjamin A. “B.J.” Sifrit, a former Navy SEAL who had trouble with keeping the violence to the battlefield.

Combine his desire to kill with Erika’s sociopathic tendencies and narcissistic personality and you’ve got a couple made in hell, as proven by one night of thrill killing in Ocean City, Maryland.

And a situation in which Daddy’s money would do Erika no good.

Joshua Edward Ford, 32, and Martha M. “Geney” Crutchley, 51, were just looking for a fun weekend getaway. Instead an act of kindness would lead to their brutal deaths.

Lured to Ocean City’s Rainbow Condominiums penthouse suite, Ford and Crutchley would be murdered, dismembered, and their body parts tossed in to various dumpsters. After the motiveless murder, their killers would continue partying and enjoying a Memorial Day weekend vacation. But it just wasn’t enough. They needed something more.

When Erika and BJ decided to burglarize a local Hooter’s, they weren’t counting on getting caught; but a silent alarm alerted Ocean City police to a possible crime occurring at the location. Police had no way of knowing that the crime to which they were responding would end up seeming minute in comparison to the discovery of an even greater, more horrendous crime.

M. William Phelps details the crimes and trials of the Sifrit couple in his 2009 true crime Cruel Death. Readers will be appalled, downright sickened, at what the facts and follies come to be known about the death of two innocents and their killers attempts to justify their deaths.

This 435 page book details a Navy SEAL’s transformation into a cold-blooded killer, a college basketball player’s fall from grace, and a father’s determination to prove his little girl is not the monster everyone else knows her to be. Cruel Death is a book that should be on any true crime readers’ list.

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