| “ | None of this would have happened if I had just got Tom to the river. | „ |
| ~ Abby Crawford's ominous words to Christy. |
Abby Crawford is the main antagonist of Season One of ABC's Secrets and Lies.
She is the younger daughter of Christy and Ben Crawford. Although she seems not much of a killer or a bad guy, just a scared kid, it is ultimately revealed that she killed Tom deliberately and showed no remorse.
She was played by Belle Shouse.
History[]
After hearing her parents argue over Ben's extra-marital affair with next-door neighbor Jess Murphy, which resulted in the birth of her half-brother Tom Murphy, Abby snuck out of the house, put on her blue jacket, grabbed her father's flashlight and headed next door to grab Tom, with the plan to run away so Scott, Jess' boyfriend and the man who raised Tom, would come back. Once they were deep into the woods, Abby bashed Tom with the flashlight, killing him. To cover her tracks, Abby placed her bloody shoes in the air vent and put the flashlight back in the garage. Because of this, Detective Andrea Cornell suspected Ben of the murder and had been pursuing him relentlessly. After Ben found the jacket (not knowing it was Abby's), Abby retrieved it and placed it in Jess' bedroom, planning to frame her for the murder.
Abby is revealed as the killer in the Season One finale, "The Lie," when Ben finds Abby's bloody shoes. When he returns home and confronts her, Abby confesses to the murder, but she insists that it was an accident. Ben decides to take the rap and confess to protect Abby, despite Cornell, after learning the truth, trying to tell him otherwise. During Crawford's confession, Cornell reveals to him that Tom was killed with six strikes to the head despite Abby telling Ben that it was just an accident. She also tries to convince him that Abby deliberately planned to kill Tom and that she's a cold and calculated murderer, an act Cornell witnessed personally when Abby threw a temper tantrum and showed pure hatred at the carnival when she saw Jess and Ben together. Despite this, Ben goes through with protecting Abby and pleads guilty to killing Tom. Before Ben is led away, Cornell tells him that he should not protect Abby because she would just continue murdering. Although unable to stop Ben from testifying, Cornell promises herself that she will put Abby behind bars.
Later in the finale, while Christy is driving with Abby, she hears Abby mutter that she was sure that Jess would move away. When Christy inquires her daughter, Abby ominously states that she planned to get Tom into the river, suggesting that she would drown him and it would appear to be an accident due to the fact that Tom couldn't swim.
In that week's "Cornell Confidential," taking place 14 months later, Abby is shown being confronted by Cornell, with the assumption that she's being charged and arrested for killing Tom off-screen.