Murder of Stephanie Crowe

2022-04-20 21:37:42 Written by Alex

Stephanie Crowe.

 

The crime

 

Stephanie's parents and grandmother found her body on the floor of her bedroom on the morning of January 21, 1998. She had been stabbed nine times. There was no trace of forced entry. Stephanie's window was found unlocked, but a screen was in place and there was no disturbance of accumulated dust and insect traces. A sliding glass door in her parents' bedroom was also unfastened. No knives were found at the scene that seemed consistent with the murder weapon, and no bloody clothing was located despite a thorough search.

The investigation

 

All of the Crowe family members were questioned, their clothing was collected, and their bodies were checked for injuries. The parents were subsequently put up in a motel, while the two surviving children were brought to the county's shelter for children, and were not allowed to see their parents for two days. During that time, authorities interviewed both youngsters, unknowing to their parents. They brought Michael Crowe, Stephanie's 14-year-old brother, away to the police station for questioning on many occasions.

 

Michael Crowe became the police's major suspect for the murder. He was singled out by Escondido police because the crime scene looked to reflect an inside job, and because he seemed "detached and busy" after Stephanie's death was discovered while the rest of the family grieved. Police interrogated him many times without his parents' knowledge and without an attorney present. During the interrogations, police erroneously informed him that they had uncovered physical evidence implicating him, that he had failed an assessment with a so-called "truth verification" gadget, and that his parents were certain he had done it. After a rigorous 6-hour questioning, he provided a vague confession to killing his sister, providing no details and claimed that he couldn't remember committing it. The interview was videotaped by police; at times Michael is heard saying statements to the effect of, "I'm only saying this because it's what you want to hear." He was arrested and charged with murdering his sister.

 

Police from Escondido and nearby Oceanside also questioned Joshua Treadway and Aaron Houser, two 15-year-old acquaintances of Michael Crowe. Houser possessed a collection of knives; one of them was reported missing by Houser's parents. It popped up at Treadway's residence; he said he had taken it from Houser. Police brought Treadway to police headquarters and questioned him constantly from 9 evening until 8 the following morning, telling him that they believed his knife was the murder weapon. They interrogated him again two weeks later, a 10-hour encounter during which Treadway delivered a detailed confession to participation in the murder with the other two lads. Treadway was later arrested.

 

Aaron Houser was then arrested and questioned. He did not truly confess and resolutely denied any involvement, but he did provide a "hypothetical" description of how the crime might have transpired, under urging by police interrogators employing the Reid approach. All three guys then recanted their statements claiming coercion. The majority of Michael Crowe's confession was later ruled as coerced by a judge because Escondido investigators implied to Michael that they would talk to the district attorney and recommend leniency. Treadway actually confessed twice, the first to Oceanside detectives and a second, similar confession, to Escondido officers. The court found that the two confessions were redundant and ordered that the first be suppressed. The second Treadway confession remains admissible. Houser's remarks to police were suppressed because officers did not fully warn him of his Miranda rights.

 

On the day the body was recovered, the police also interviewed Richard Raymond Tuite, a 28-year-old vagabond who had been observed in the Crowe's neighbourhood on the night of the murder, banging on doors and peeking through windows, causing numerous neighbours to phone police reporting a suspicious individual. Tuite had a lengthy criminal record, routinely walked the streets of Escondido, and had been labelled as schizophrenia. Police questioned Tuite, took his clothing, and noted scrapes on his body and a cut on his hand. However, they did not consider him a suspect, since they deemed him incapable of murder and they had already concentrated on Michael Crowe as their major suspect.

Legal proceedings

 

The three teenage males were charged with murder and conspiracy to commit murder. A judge ordered that they should be tried as adults. They were detained for six months as prosecutors prepared to try them. However, as Treadway's trial was about to begin in January 1999, tardy DNA testing uncovered three droplets of Stephanie's blood on a blouse belonging to Tuite. Based on the new evidence, the charges against the boys were dismissed without prejudice (which would allow charges to be reopened against the boys at a later date).

 

Embarrassed by the reversal, the Escondido police and the San Diego County District Attorney let the case sit without charges for two years. In 2001 the District Attorney and San Diego County Sheriff's Department sought that the case be taken over by the California Department of Justice. In May 2002 the Attorney General charged Tuite with murdering Stephanie. The trial began in February 2004. On the first day of jury selection, Tuite walked away from the courtroom holding-tank during the lunch hour after releasing himself from handcuffs; he left the courthouse and caught a bus. He was apprehended hours later. At trial, the prosecution linked Tuite to Stephanie's homicide by presenting both circumstantial and physical evidence, including evidence that Stephanie's blood was on his clothes. Tuite's defence team maintained that the boys had killed Stephanie, and that Stephanie's blood was found on Tuite's clothes as a consequence of contamination caused by negligent police work. On May 26, 2004, the jury acquitted Tuite of murder but convicted him on the lesser included offence of voluntary manslaughter. The jury also found that he employed a dangerous weapon, a knife. The trial court sentenced Tuite to thirteen years in jail. He subsequently had four extra years put onto the sentence due to his flight attempt.

 

The family of all three boys sued the cities of Escondido and Oceanside. The Crowes obtained a settlement of $7.25 million in 2011. In 2012, Superior Court Judge Kenneth So made the uncommon finding that Michael Crowe, Treadway and Houser were factually innocent of the accusations, permanently dismissing the criminal case against them.

 

Tuite appealed his conviction to the California Court of Appeal and filed many allegations, including a claim that his Sixth Amendment rights were violated because he was barred from completely cross-examining a prosecution witness. On December 14, 2006, the Court of Appeal confirmed in a lengthy unpublished ruling. The court ruled that the trial judge had committed constitutional error in limiting the cross-examination, but held the error to be harmless and confirmed the conviction. The Supreme Court of California refused review. The federal district court refused Tuite's petition for habeas corpus. On September 8, 2011, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit voted 2-1 to reverse Tuite's manslaughter conviction, stating the trial was unfair because the trial judge limited cross-examination of a prosecution witness. The panel stated in its opinion, "Given the lack of evidence tying Tuite to the crime, the problems with the DNA evidence, the jury's deadlock and compromise verdict, and the weight and strategic position of McCrary's testimony, this case is one of those 'unusual' circumstances in which we find ourselves 'in virtual equipose as to the harmlessness of the error.' O'Neil v. McAninch, 513 U.S. 432, 435 (1995). We must treat the error as influencing the verdict, and we are constrained to grant the writ." Tuite v. Martel, No. 09-56267. [ It was noted that during the trial the prosecution could not produce any trace evidence of the house on the defendant's clothing or person nor was any trace evidence of the defendant's person or clothing found in the house, facts that the Court of Appeals cited which led to the Court's determination of lack of evidence.

 

Tuite was given a retrial, which began on October 24, 2013. In closing arguments, his attorney, Brad Patton, told jurors that Tuite had never been in the Crowe house, and wouldn't have been able to identify Stephanie's bedroom in the dark home. In addition, investigators did not find his fingerprints or DNA in the residence. Patton said Stephanie must have been held down under a cover to keep her quiet, while someone else stabbed her. He also added that experts testified that the blood stains on Tuite's clothing were not there when those shirts were originally analyzed, and got there through contamination during the crime scene study. The prosecutor, Deputy Attorney General Alana Butler, stated during her final argument that Tuite was in the area of the Crowe residence the night Stephanie was killed. He was knocking on doors and looking for a woman named Tracy, at whom he was unhappy since she had turned him away a couple of years previously. He was "obsessed and delusional". Butler said Tuite walked inside the Crowe home at about 10 p.m. through an open door. Once he got in the house, she couldn't tell exactly what happened, but he proceeded into Stephanie's bedroom and stabbed her at least nine times, and her blood was found on two clothes that he was wearing when contacted by police the next day.

 

On December 5, 2013, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty. Afterwards, a jury claimed there was no evidence that Tuite was ever in the Crowe residence that night, and that the jurors were concerned that the victim's blood might have got onto his clothing by contamination, so they looked hard at that possibility.

 

In April of 2021, the now 51-year-old Richard Tuite pleaded guilty to possession of methamphetamine. He was credited for time served as he had spent 150 days in jail the year prior.

The Crowe family still believes Richard Tuite is guilty of killing their daughter. Cheryl Crowe, Stephanie’s mother, told NBC, “It’s just a matter of time before he does it to someone else’s child.” Stephanie died afraid and alone that awful night, bleeding out onto her bedroom floor. Four persons were prosecuted and acquitted of her murder. She deserves justice.