'People Magazine Investigates': Who Wanted a Vacationing Couple Dead?

When a couple didn't show up to their jobs after going to the beach for a holiday weekend, their friends and family went on high alert

Geney Crutchley and Joshua Ford. Photo: Fairfax City Police Department

On May 28, 2002, as everyone returned to work after celebrating Memorial Day Weekend, colleagues of Josh Ford and Geney Crutchley were concerned when the pair didn't show up to their jobs.

Ford, then 32, and Crutchley, 51, left Fairfax, Va., for a fun-filled weekend in the resort town of Ocean City, Md.

Anyone who had ever met the vacationing couple described them as kind and generous, but these same traits possibly made them the perfect target for another couple's deadly game.

The unsettling case is the subject of the new episode of People Magazine Investigates. Titled "Natural Born Killers," the episode airs Monday, Aug. 22, at 9 p.m. ET on Investigation Discovery and also streams on discovery+. (An exclusive clip is shown below.)

After the couple were reported missing, detectives from Ocean City Police conducted a welfare check at the condominium where they were staying.

"When I walked into that unit, it was as if someone had picked up and left. Everything was there: computers, cameras, clothing. Her wallet was there, his wallet, cash, credit cards," retired Det. Scott Bernal says in the episode. "Everything except their driver licenses. That's the only thing we couldn't find."

It would take four days before investigators got a break in the case.

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Detectives responded to a burglary in progress at a Hooters restaurant where they encountered Benjamin "BJ" Sifrit and his wife Erika, a young married couple from Altoona, Penn.

As they were detained, Erika began having a panic attack and asked officers to grab her purse so she could find her medicine. Instead, officers searched through her purse and found a gun — along with Ford and Crutchley's driver licenses.

"I knew in my gut, something bad had happened to Geney and Josh — we just didn't know how or why and we were determined to find that out," said Det. Bernal.

See more on the murders of Joshua Ford and Geney Crutchley on People Magazine Investigates, "Natural Born Killers," airing Monday at 9 p.m. ET on Investigation Discovery and also streaming on discovery+.