Fear of 13 - They forgot about Mae!

"Nowadays everyone wanna talk like they got something to say"; but they forgot about Linda Mae Craig.

The anniversary of Linda Mae Craig’s unsolved murder is coming up and it still makes me sad.

Despite convicting and later exonerating Nicholas Yarris for the murder and rape of the defenceless shop worker; the actual killers have never been brought to justice.

Linda Mae Craig

Yarris had a lengthy rap sheet for petty crimes and eventually talked himself into a life sentence for murder. He served 21 years in prison before he was released, wrongly convicted. The details of his time in prison is well documented and the story has grown, taking multiple twists and turns as time goes on. He has become a ’une sorte de célébrité’ from the attention it has gained him.

Yarris has been on Joe Rogan, multiple TV appearances, a documentary on Netflix and was portrayed by Adrian Brody in a West-End production. I went to the second performance, it was fantastic.

But sadly, you will be hard-pressed to find any information about the crime or which he was convicted. It’s an unsolved murder from almost 44 years ago.

So here it is…

Linda was a vivacious 33-year-old mother of two who was brutally raped and murdered in late 1981. Police currently have two different unknown male DNA samples on file but have yet to apprehend the culprit(s).

Linda May Craig’s middle name was spelt two ways in court documents and newspapers from the time. The families and most newspaper’s spelling (May) versus the prosecution’s variation (Mae).

She was a tall ‘statuesque’ woman about 5’7, from the Boothwyn section of Upper Chichester Township, Pennsylvania. Between Phili and Wilmington, DE. Her husband described her as a 130lb, beautiful brunette with a ‘fluffy, frosted’ hairstyle that was not uncommon at the time. She was an ‘outgoing woman with a good sense of humour’.

Arthur and Linda Craig were both native South-Philadelphians and new the area extremely well, having lived in the region their entire lives. Arthur was a painter at the Glen Mills School in neighbouring Thornbury. The Craig family moved into a rented house on Chichester Avenue in the autumn of 1980.

The Craig’s had two children (Artie 12 and Linda 11) and an older son from Arthur’s previous relationship. Arthur’s brother, Sam, also lived with the family and often loaned Linda his car so she could get to work safely. Sam loved his 1976 yellow, full-sized luxury Chrysler Cordoba with a brown landau roof.

Linda picked up dayshifts every holiday season at the once thriving Tri-State Mall, just over the state border in Delaware. She started the job about Thanksgiving time for extra income and to make Christmas extra special for the two younger ones at home. Friends and family say this was customary each year and nothing out of the ordinary. She would use different cars to drive the ten minutes from their home and park in the back of mall’s huge parking lot.

Philadelphia Daily News · 17 Dec 1981

Linda told her husband that she had previously been bothered by a ‘slovenly man with long dark hair’ while working at a blown glass figurine stall. They reported it to the Delaware State Police as it was the jurisdiction of the shopping centre. She told the authorities a man had been harassing her and trailed her car when she left for home in the afternoons.

On Tuesday, December 15^th she was working at her kiosk in an upstairs common area of the huge shopping mall. She finished her shift about 4pm and started the long trek out of the building and then through the snow to her car. She was last seen wearing a long blue dress and a short grey fur coat as she left the mall and braced herself for the cold walk to her vehicle.

There did not appear to be any witnesses to say if she was followed, or not, during the ten-minute hike to her car, but she never returned home as expected.

About 5:30pm her husband began worrying that something was wrong and would eventually alert police. About 8:15pm he and his brother flagged down a police car outside their house and formally reported her missing.

He described his wife’s appearance and his brother detailed the unique vehicle to the passing officers. The cops immediately reported it on the county wide police radio network as an APB. Almost within minutes a patrolman replied saying he had noted a similar car on an isolated stretch of Township Line Road about a mile and a half south in Trainer.

The officer’s notes say he spotted the “apparently abandoned” Chrysler Cordoba about 5pm, roughly 60 minutes after Linda left work.

The police quickly drove both Arthur and his brother to the scene. They were able to confirm the vehicle was the one she was driving. The brothers and police could see her handbag through the window and opened the unlocked door. Inside they found the car keys, then spotted bloodstains on the console and between the bucket seats. They stepped back to not disturb the scene pushing away the brothers. Her purse still contained a small amount of cash and looked to be undisturbed.

Most importantly, the police also collected a pair of male gloves from the car. Years and years later detectives were able to extract two sperate DNA samples from the evidence, which would exonerate Yarris. These samples are still in their database, but no arrests have been made.

Police scoured the mall looking for witnesses or foul play of any kind. After an extensive search, authorities were able to find a single woman’s shoe in a snowbank. It was not far from where they believed her car had been parked. It was confirmed as hers.

The next morning about 7:30am, two young boys began building a snow man in the Chester Baptist Temple on Cherry Tree Road. They could not believe their eyes when they stumbled across a fully clothed body in the rear of a church parking lot. As the victim was covered in the recent snow fall but wasn’t under the hard packed snow, the police assumed Linda may have arrived there sometime before the heavy midnight snow fall.

The church was about five miles North of the shopping mall, in the opposite direction from the location of the Chrysler. The culprits would have almost driven directly past her home during the commissioning of the crime.

Linda was sexually attacked and had six stab wounds in her chest. She was pronounced dead at the scene. Police concluded the victim was grabbed and pulled from her shoes in the mall parking lot then driven to church where she was brutally raped and murdered. She was left ‘like an animal’ for someone to find her the next day. They believe the assailant(s) then drove to Trainer and deposited the car on a desolate stretch of roadway.

Detectives collected scrapings from under her fingernails and preserved her clothing. They were put into storage for almost two decades until they were finally tested in the late 1990s. Two unknown male DNA profiles were found on her underpants, one of which matches the sample found in the gloves in the car.

Without a suspect, Police began by questioning her co-workers to see if they had seen anything sinister. They attempted to create a composite drawing of the man Linda said was harassing her. They could only go by what her co-workers recalled her telling them as well as a brief description she had told police. It was not long before they located two people who gave similar descriptions of a man. They would later testify against Yarris, even though there initial descriptions did not match him.

Arthur Criag was shocked to find that local investigators were unaware of the previous report filed by his wife. Local police contacted the Delaware State police in hopes of getting more information about the incident but gained nothing.

A week after the murder, Police Chief Anthony Mastro tells reporters they have their first witness to the murder. A local citizen says they saw a man sitting in Linda’s car about the time of the incident and is working with a sketch artist to get a composite of the suspect. This also came to nothing.

Linda Mae Craig’s Car

Four days later, at 1am on December 20^th, police arrest Nicholas Yarris for assaulting an officer after being pulled over. Yarris had blown through several stop signs and was stopped. Yarris reportedly grabbed the service revolver from the officer’s holster and a fight ensued. The case was acquitted but, over the next 40 days he would become the prime suspect in Linda’s case.

According to the prosecution, Yarris was a 20-year-old drug addict who was well known to the cops. He fabricated a story about the murder in hopes of receiving better treatment for his own conviction, but it backfired. He ended up implicating himself. They claimed Yarris was recently jilted by his lover and took the life of Mrs Craig because of her striking resemblance to his ex.

Yarris had been in a relationship with Theresa Vaughn before she dumped him a few days before the murder. It was alleged that Yarris stalked Mrs Craig over the next few days and eventually took his opportunity to kill her. He was fingered by two witnesses at the shopping mall as the ‘wild looking’ man gawking at women.

He took the stand in his own defence saying, through tears, “I never saw Linda Craig in my life”. Yarris was convicted and told the judge “Go to hell” as he left the court. He served almost 22 years on death row before the Innocent Project orchestrated his release.

Linda Craig’s son said in a 2008 interview that he still thinks Yarris had something to do with the crime. “I believe he was involved,” he said. “Is there anything I can do? No. God will sort him out”.

The District Attorney in Delaware County says he “remain steadfastly in his resolve to solve the homicide” but to date they have been unable to match the two DNA samples to suspects.

Philadelphia police have solved many other cold cases since Yarris’s release. Most notably the Denise Pierson murder from April of the same year. Pierson was an 18-year-old who went missing after she failed to return home.

Her body was found about three years later near railroad track in the area. The evidence collected 40 years prior, finally helped to charge a hapless pair who lived about 300 yards from where the victim was found.

Just so you know, Nick Yarris is a friend of mine. Well… he was. We met after his release from prison and he moved to the UK. It was in the early 2000s. He and I were the only two Americans in our village and we struck up a friendship. We had never spoken about Linda’s murder but after glossing over the subject, it appears that we may never discuss it.

After exhonoration he had pushed extremely hard for the rightful criminals to be brough to justice. He petitioned the courts and made directive statements to the press. He even went as far as standing in front of a courthouse with signs demanding new DNA tests.

Over the summer 2025, I finally asked him about case and he was very unreceptive to the discussion. I had always assumed that he would still want to know who actual perpetrators were. But for whatever reason, he was not interested. In fact he was angry. He told me a friendship is more important than bringing up the past and did I want to risk our relationship over the story. His reaction surprised me.

I guess Yarris had moved on with his life and has done all he can for Linda Mae Craig. He may be right; as the police have DNA samples of the perps and advances in technology should certainly help them to find a match. “If they wanted to”, he said.

Yarris now lives in a van in and around Los Angeles. At the end of the summer, he and I disagreed on a very minor non-political issue. He abruptly accused me of being MAGA, then blocked me on social media. It appears his minor fame and time in California has changed things. I was friends with him for over 20 years and I hope he unblocks me.

The brilliant stage drama, “The Fear of 13” is based on Nick Yarris’s story. I saw it at the Donmar Theatre in London and thought it was beautifully crafted. It opened on Broadway in early 2026. Adrien Brody is superb and grab tickets if you can.

Please remember that there was a victim at the heart of the story. Nick Yarris is enjoying well deserved success but dont forget about Mae. Linda Mae Craig’s family still do not have answers…