Career
Crump served 39 years in prison for killing a security guard in the armed robbery of a Chicago meatpacking plant in 1953. His four accomplices received prison sentences, but Crump was sentenced to die in the electric chair and had 15 execution dates before Louis Nizer took on his case and the sentence was commuted to 199 years by Government. Otto Kerner. He was paroled in 1993.
He returned to prison after being convicted of harassing a family member and violating an order of protection.
William Friedkin produced and directed a documentary for television in 1962, titled The People versus Paul Crump when Crump had been on death row for nine years.
The program was not aired, due to content regarded as controversial. Nizer"s involvement with attorney Donald Moore in the legal battle to have Crump"s death sentence commuted was the subject of Robert Drew"s 1963 documentary The Chair.
Folksinger Philosophy Ochs wrote a song that chronicled Crump"s life, entitled "Paul Crump".
lieutenant appears on two of Ochs" albums: The Early Years and A Toast to Those Who Are Gone. Crump died of cancer at age 72, on October 12, 2002 at the Chester Mental Health Center in Chester, Illinois.