Andrew Crawford

A Cody man who just finished serving prison time for repeatedly exposing himself to local women was rearrested last week, after he allegedly exposed himself to a half-dozen teenagers.

Court records indicate it’s at least the eighth time that 37-year-old Andrew C. Crawford has been accused of indecent exposure in Cody.

The offense is typically a misdemeanor, but because it’s the second time that Crawford is alleged to have victimized children, the Park County Attorney’s Office has charged last week’s offense as a felony.

In addition to exposing himself to a half-dozen baristas in Cody in the fall of 2022, Crawford was also caught with child pornography in 2009.

“There’s a very serious community safety risk here, a very, very long history of this type of act,” Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Marina Tucker said at a Monday court hearing. “And Mr. Crawford certainly poses a danger to the community, to children.”

Tucker recommended a $100,000 bond and, with no objection from Crawford, Park County Circuit Court Judge Joey Darrah adopted the recommendation.

Crawford remained in custody on Wednesday.

‘Emotional distress and shock’

Charging documents composed by Cody police say the incident occurred around 4:30 p.m. on Friday. They say the victims were a group of teens and a couple adult supervisors who were traveling through Cody as part of a trip with an out-of-state summer camp.

The group’s van was headed down Yellowstone Avenue, near the Cody Walmart, when a man in a blue Chevy Impala pulled up next to their vehicle, charging documents say. Officer Tanner Wichern said the six teens and the two counselors looked over and saw the man was wearing no pants and openly masturbating; according to the group, the man looked into the van and made eye contact with the occupants while he touched himself.

“All of the juvenile campers as well as the counselors witnessed the obscene act,” Cody Police Officer Tanner Wichern wrote.

The counselors later submitted written statements that “corroborate the emotional distress and shock of the juvenile campers,” Wichern added.

The driver of the Impala allegedly sped away, but the campers wrote down the plate number of his vehicle, which was registered to Crawford. Further, when presented with a photo lineup, the counselors quickly identified Crawford as the man who’d exposed himself, Wichern wrote.

A Park County Sheriff’s deputy arrested Crawford late Saturday afternoon.

A lengthy history

Crawford was serving in the U.S. Air Force in Arizona in 2009 when he was caught possessing at least 10 sexually explicit images featuring children. He was discharged from the military in 2010 and served four months of confinement before returning to Cody, charging documents say. He eventually would receive a 72-month federal prison sentence for possessing child pornography, but while the investigation was pending, he exposed himself to two girls and their mother in the Walmart parking lot, according to past reporting by the Billings Gazette.

Crawford got out of prison in 2017, but ran into further trouble — reportedly exposing himself to two teenage girls in Cody in 2019 and repeatedly exposing himself in the parking lot of his Powell workplace in 2020, court records say.

Crawford then was caught exposing himself to workers at some Cody coffee kiosks in the fall of 2022. In the final incident, a barista recognized Crawford as he pulled up, dumped hot water on his exposed genitals, and “yelled at him to get out of there and never come back,” a Cody police detective recounted at the time.

Crawford received four misdemeanor convictions of indecent exposure.

Authorities also determined that the registered sex offender had failed to notify the sheriff’s office that he’d bought another vehicle. That failure led to a felony conviction and a 30- to 48-month prison sentence in the spring of 2023.

Out of custody

Crawford wound up being released from the Wyoming Department of Corrections’ custody in early October 2024, but was then ordered to serve another year in federal prison; that’s because the crimes he’d committed in Park County also violated the supervised release he was serving for the prior child pornography conviction.

In a November 2024 order, U.S. District Judge Alan Johnson recommended that Crawford serve the 12 months and one day at a medium security facility in Marion, Illinois. Judge Johnson said he picked that site because Crawford “was previously incarcerated at this facility and previously addressed his sex offender and mental health issues.”

Federal records indicate Crawford was released from the Bureau of Prisons’ custody in February, and he began 20 years of federal supervision.

If proven in court, Crawford’s actions on Friday violated several terms of his release, including a condition that requires him to “maintain an appropriate appearance at all times which includes the wearing of undergarments, and appropriate outer clothing in the home or places where another person may reasonably expect to view the defendant.”

Crawford faces up to five-and-a-half years of prison time for his pending charges, which include a felony count of committing an indecent or obscene act in a child’s presence for a second or subsequent time and a misdemeanor count of public indecency.

A preliminary hearing in the case is tentatively set for July 22.