Michael Crowe: 'There was justice, I think'

By: TERI FIGUEROA - Staff Writer | Saturday, May 29, 2004 10:20 PM PDT ∞

ESCONDIDO ---- Vindication has finally arrived for Michael Crowe. Twelve strangers seem to have believed him.

For six years, he has been the target of suspicion and accusations surrounding the slaying of his little sister, 12-year-old Stephanie Crowe.

For six years, he and his family have argued that it was a mentally ill drifter who stabbed the popular brunette as she lie in her bed in the Crowes' Escondido home. Last week, a jury agreed with them, and convicted Richard Raymond Tuite of voluntary manslaughter.

"There was justice, I think," Michael Crowe said Thursday, the day after the verdict. "As much as there can be."

Michael Crowe watched the verdicts on television. He wasn't worried when he heard the verdict of not guilty to first-degree murder, but the next verdict ---- not guilty of second-degree murder ---- did come as a surprise.

But, he said, before he could think too much, on came the next verdict. Guilty of voluntary manslaughter. He'd waited forever to hear it.

A brutal crime

On Thursday night, Crowe relaxed barefoot with his family at their home in Escondido, his demeanor much more at ease than during the three-month trial. He smiles more easily now, and grins as his young wife brings out her pet hamster Rocky.

It's a far cry from the horror of Jan. 21, 1998, when Michael Crowe awoke to screaming. Outside his bedroom door, he saw his mother laying on top of Stephanie on Stephanie's bedroom floor. He got only a glimpse of his sister as his mother pleaded with him to help.

She had been stabbed to death sometime during the night, and her family had just found her.

From the beginning, Escondido police deemed Stephanie's murder an inside job. Within two days, Michael Crowe, a freshman at Orange Glen High School, faced charges for the killing.

And within two weeks, his friends Joshua Treadway and Aaron Houser, both 15 at the time, joined him in Juvenile Hall, based primarily on confessions Crowe and Treadway gave during long, intense police interrogations. The two boys soon recanted.

The Crowe family would come to point the finger at Tuite, who had been seen in the Crowes' neighborhood that night, but who police dismissed as a bumbling prowler incapable of the stealth such a slaying would have required.

The trio was charged with murder, but the charges were dropped after a judge tossed the statements as coerced by police. Then the bombshell: DNA testing revealed specks of Stephanie's blood on Tuite's clothing.

Jurors see boys' confessions

Five more years would pass before Tuite was taken to trial. Tuite's attorneys argued the blood was the result of police contamination. The boys, they said, had killed Stephanie. To bolster that argument, the defense played for the jury more than 30 hours of the boys' interrogations and confessions.

On Wednesday, after Tuite's guilty verdict, one juror said the accusations against the boys played no part in their deliberations, that the jury dismissed them right off the bat.

"It's what I expected," Michael Crowe said. "I didn't believe the jury would buy it and that it would be a part of their decision. Every person who has ever watched all of the tapes has come to the same conclusion."

Michael Crowe has seen the tape of one of the two police interrogations, and that's only because he was forced to watch it during the trial as prosecutors walked him through it in front of the jury.

The young man struggled in court that day, biting his lip, closing his eyes and swallowing hard as the image and voice of himself as a teenager played on the screen. He finally broke into tears that day. The media splayed the image on the front pages and the evening news.

Michael Crowe said Thursday that testifying was tough, but that he and Treadway ---- whose videotaped interrogations had already been played for the jury ---- knew that it was necessary.

"What we did was what had to be done," he said.

Michael Crowe doesn't care to watch the other tape.

"He lived it," his mother, Cheryl Crowe, said.

Public scrutiny

Michael Crowe is 20 now. He was only 14 when his face was made infamous. He still lives in the media glare, and many folks still say he is guilty of Stephanie's vicious stabbing.

People recognize his face, recognize his name when he uses his bank card. Some offer kind words ---- those are the brave ones, Michael Crowe said ---- but some just whisper and stare. He knows what they are thinking.

"Part of me cares," Crowe said, "but the public believes what they want to believe."

He and his wife, Stacey, said strangers often ask them if they really think Tuite killed Stephanie. The couple and the rest of the Crowe family have simply come to accept the questions.

Crowe said he believes people find it easier to think that his sister's slaying came at his hands and not Tuite's for two reasons. First, he said, it's a way for people to say that such a brutal event would never happen to them because "their kids would never do that."

It's too hard to comprehend that a stranger could silently slip in and kill a child while the family slept nearby.

And secondly, he said, nobody wants to think that the police could make such a mistake, could hurt rather than help.

Controversy continues

Still, even with Tuite's guilty verdict, Crowe doesn't think the scrutiny will ever end.

"I think it's a step in the right direction," he said, "but time will tell how much effect it has. Nothing gives me my life back."

The joy of the verdict may be short-lived: News has since hit that the jury relied on evidence that wasn't supposed to be in the deliberation room. Tuite's attorneys have pledged to seek a new trial in light of it.

"Now there's so much confusion," Crowe said. "Obviously, I wasn't happy about it, but they (the defense) had to find something."

The young man brushes off opinions of legal pundits who think the issue will lead to a new trial. Those are the same experts, he said, who predicted a hung jury or Tuite's acquittal.

Michael said his first thought on hearing the manslaughter conviction was of Stephanie.

"The jury's verdict was her voice," Michael Crowe said.

Cheryl Crowe said she has visited Stephanie's grave twice since the verdict was read. She brought home a gift left on the headstone by Joshua Treadway, a teddy bear wearing a Hidden Valley Raiders T-shirt. Stephanie was a seventh-grader at the school when she was killed.

She doesn't talk to Stephanie, though, at the cemetery. "She's not in there. It's just her body. I saw in her eyes she was gone," Cheryl Crowe said.

"She's in all of the rest of us," Shannon Crowe said, motioning to her family.

Shannon, 17, also remarks that Tuite's arrest for the killing came on Shannon's birthday in 2002. Wednesday's guilty verdict came 12 days after her birthday this year. She said it was a belated birthday gift.

Life after the verdict

Michael Crowe and his wife, Stacey, live with his parents. They met when they were in high school, the school he transferred to following the allegations. She knew about the accusations against him.

He has a 4.0 grade point average at Palomar College, where he has been a student for three years. He took the semester off so he could dedicate his time to the trial. Next on his list is a transfer to UC San Diego to major in computer engineering.

The Crowe home is one where laughter comes easily and everyone is fodder for a friendly jab.

On Thursday evening, the family was gabbing in the living room when a local TV station played a clip of Tuite's 2001 interrogation at the hands of the San Diego County Sheriff's Department. When the segment came on, the chatter stopped. The TV volume went up.

On the tape, Tuite tells the lead detective he'd knocked on the door of the Crowe home and admits that he went inside the house. But he denies attacking Stephanie.

The Crowes had long before heard about Tuite's 2001 interrogation, knew the gist of it, but this was the first time they'd actually seen it. The image didn't seem to phase them at all.

"I don't think it amounts to much," Michael Crowe said. "I still don't believe in interrogations as being the primary police tools."

Contact staff writer Teri Figueroa at (760) 740-3517 or tfigueroa@nctimes.com.

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