Uber Driver Murdered in Pennsylvania

 Christina Spicuzza

Dash Cam Leads Cops to Killer

By Robert A. Waters

On the evening of February 10, 2022, thirty-eight-year-old Christine Spicuzza stopped her Nissan Sentra in front of an apartment complex at 139 Brinton Avenue in Pitcairn, Pennsylvania. Because of covid, the Uber driver wore a white medical-type facemask.  

Calvin Crew, 22, her customer, also wore a mask, one that showed only two dark eyes. A hoodie covered much of his coal-black mask as he entered the back seat on the passenger side. He'd requested a ride to Penn Hills, about 10 miles away.  

Christine had mounted a dash-cam on the dashboard, and it recorded many of the events as they occurred. 

The driver greeted Crew in a friendly manner, but he remained silent. Then, ten minutes into the ride, Crew moved to the middle of the seat and grabbed Christine's pony-tail with his left hand. Using his right hand, he stuck a semi-automatic handgun against the back of Christine's neck.

The dash-cam recorded the following exchange:

Christine: "What are you doing?"

With her right hand, she reached back and felt the weapon. It was indeed a gun, a semiautomatic pistol.

Crew: "This is a gun. Keep driving."

Christine: "No, it's not. Come on, man, I got a family." 

Crew: "I got a family, too. Drive, drive."

Christine: "Come on, I have a family. I'm begging you. I have four kids. Please take that [gun] off me." 

Suddenly, Crew noticed the dash-cam. Reaching up, he snatched it along with Christine's cellphone. He turned off the dash-cam and threw it onto the back seat. Later, at trial, prosecutors said "Crew forced Spicuzza...to ferry him across eastern Allegheny County for nearly an hour before marching her into the woods in Monroeville and finally shooting her."

Christine's fiance, Brandon Marto, reported her missing when she didn't return home within two hours. Marto told investigators that they had communicated with each other via cellphone while she was driving. Then suddenly, her phone went to voicemail.

The missing driver had posted the following bio on Twitter: "Mom of 4 amazing kids. Wife. I love Jesus and my Bible. I love art, journaling, study coloring crafts & camping." She had begun driving for Uber to make extra money for her family.

Crew coerced his girlfriend into using her phone to call Uber and schedule his ride. The company quickly shared that information with detectives. 

The evidence against Crew was overwhelming. At trial, he was convicted of a slew of crimes: first degree murder; kidnapping; robbery; carrying a firearm without a license; inflicting serious bodily injury; theft of a motor vehicle; and tampering with evidence. He was sentenced to life in prison, plus an additional thirteen to twenty-six years.

The trial brought out the fact that Crew scheduled the ride so he could rob the driver. When he found that Christine had no money, he used her phone to attempt a  transfer of money from her bank account to his. He was unsuccessful.

After Crew was convicted, the Allegheny County DA's office released the following statement: "Investigators followed an objective trail of overwhelming digital and video evidence evidence which identified Crew as the robber, kidnapper, and killer. The evidence admitted at trial included 422 individual exhibits submitted to the jury along with testimony from Crew's girlfriend, who had purchased the Uber ride for him and dashcam video from inside Spicuzza's car depicting Crew holding a gun to the back of Spicuzza's head...Further evidence included Crew's fingerprint, cell phone GPS records, Uber records, the bullet casing and license plate readers used to track the movements of the car."

The Pittsburgh Tribune Review reported that Christine's family had asked the DA to take the death penalty off the table due to Christine's religious beliefs.

Brandon Marto told a Review reporter the following story: "She loved her children more than anything, and she loved me. She made me a better person. I was half-lost, out of control, but she saw something in me."

Marto said that when they met, he was an alcoholic, but Christine was patient with him and showed him a better way to live. "I wanted to spend the rest of my life making up for those first four years," he said, "but that has been cut short."

After the conviction of Crew, District Attorney Stephen Zappalla released a statement calling Christine's death a "brutal, senseless execution of a mother of four children."

Calvin Crew currently resides at the State Correctional Institution in Fayette, Pennsylvania, where he can spend a lifetime thinking about the robbery and murder that got him no money at all.