ESCONDIDO -- Stephanie Crowe would have been 19 years old Monday. Instead, she will forever be a 12-year-old girl with a radiant smile.

Her mother will spend Stephanie's birthday doing what she has done most weekdays in recent memory: Cheryl Crowe will be in court, at the trial of the man accused of murdering her daughter.

Stephanie was stabbed and slashed to death six years ago in her Escondido bedroom. Her horrified family found her in a pool of blood early the following morning.

With all the issues that swirl around Stephanie's death -- her brother Michael and his buddies were once charged with the murder, now those charges have been leveled against a transient -- the Crowe family worries that Stephanie's life has been forgotten.

"She's not just a murdered child," her sister Shannon, 16, said Friday. "She's a person."

'She would have made a difference'

Stephanie was born April 12, 1985. Her family sometimes called her "Stephie."

Her first word was 'Dada.' Her favorite color was purple, even though many folks think it was light blue, her family said.

"Titanic" topped her choice of favorite movies. She saw it twice: The day it was released in December 1997 and again the day before she died.

A seventh-grader at Hidden Valley Middle School, Stephanie wanted to be a lot of things when she grew up, but most of all she wanted to be a teacher.

"She would have done something that made a difference," her mother said.

One photo of Stephanie -- the one the family displays in the living room, surrounded with little angels -- shows the radiant child holding a philanthropy award. The philanthropy council of the Escondido Library Endowment Foundation dubbed her Volunteer of the Year in 1997. She died a few months later, in January 1998.

That same photo is the one jurors in her murder trial often see, on the few occasions during the trial when attention is paid to her life, not her death.

The jury may not get a chance to hear that Stephanie was the president of chorus at school, or that she had been a Girl Scout. They might not hear about her eagerness to volunteer, her desire to lend a hand.

'Nicest person ever'

Cheryl remembers the day that her popular daughter noticed a disabled child waiting for the bus after school. Stephanie decided that she would go over and talk with the boy as he waited, simply because everyone else had ignored him.

Even in first grade, when an Iranian girl who spoke limited English joined her class, Stephanie took the girl under her wing.

"Not many kids want to be the one to take the 'different' person with them," Cheryl said. "She was always more than willing to do that."

Ask Shannon for three words to describe Stephanie, and she quickly shoots back "nicest person ever."

Skipping recess

Stephanie knew her grandmother was fighting cancer, a battle she lost after Stephanie died. At the end of 1994, when the kids in her class were asked to write down a wish for the coming year, a fourth-grade Stephanie asked for a cure for cancer.

Her teacher at the time, Madelyn Sheets, took note, and suggested Stephanie be invited to attend an annual awards event hosted by the Women's International Center.

In the letter Sheets penned to the organization's president, Sheets described Stephanie with words such as "dynamic" and "great leadership qualities," and "open-minded." And then there's that mention of volunteerism, ever-present in any characterization of the little girl.

Stephanie, Sheets wrote, skipped the playground at recess, opting instead to rush to a second-grade classroom to help the younger children.

Cheryl keeps the letter preserved in plastic.

'Stephmart' cards

"Every time we do anything as a family, it feels like something is missing," her brother Michael, now 20, said. The family said they always feel the void.

Oh, Stephanie could be bossy, Cheryl said. Whenever she and her little sister Shannon played with Barbie dolls, Stephanie would tell Shannon what Shannon's doll was supposed to say and do.

And she was clear about what she wanted. Her letters to Santa included photos of her asked-for item, cut out from the store ads.

Stephanie's favorite holiday was, well, all of them. "If it was on the calendar, she celebrated," her dad, Stephen, said.

And, holiday or not, any occasion was a good reason for Stephanie to make a card. And not just one card, her dad said. Stephanie would often make two or three for the person to have that day, and always tried to have one card waiting for them first thing in the morning.

One such Father's Day card is in a stack of mementos at the Crowe home. On the back, where the brand name is stamped on store-bought cards, Stephanie had written the name of her personal brand: Lovemart. As she got a little older, she started changing it to Stephmart.

Always on the go

Stephanie was also very creative and loved to do crafts. Cheryl said. She sewed. She cross-stitched. At least once, she won "crazy hair day" at school.

"From the moment she woke up to the moment she went to bed, she was busy," Cheryl said. "She'd move from project to project."

And Stephanie made sure that it was a family affair whenever she got the inspiration for a craft or a project, often volunteering her family to help out.

"She was a handful," her father said, shaking his head and smiling. "And she was a perfectionist."

On her last Halloween, Stephanie got the bright idea to be the Bride of Frankenstein, and asked her mom to help wrap her long brown hair around a wicker basket, to create a beehive.

Ever-present smile

On Friday, Cheryl flipped through the dozens and dozens of family photos. For a moment, Cheryl caught her breath, then sighed.

The photos of the little girl with the radiant smile are plentiful. There she is in diapers. There she is with her little sister in the pool. Numerous shots of her in Halloween costumes. Darling pictures of her dressed as the angel in a Christmas pageant at church.

Farther down the stack are a few shots of Stephanie, flanked by her siblings, opening presents on Christmas morning. There also is a shot of Stephanie at her 12th birthday party.

Always, her eyes are sparkling. Always, she was smiling.

"I miss her," she said. "What a blessing she was to have."

A murder mystery

Six years have passed since Stephanie died.

Prosecutors say that Richard Tuite, now 34, slipped into Stephanie's room and killed her. Tuite suffers from schizophrenia, according to a doctor who testified this past week.

Defense attorneys point to her brother Michael and his friends as the killers. The trio was first charged with the murder, based largely on statements they made to police, including a confession. The charges were dropped after a judge tossed out most of the statements and Stephanie's blood was found on Tuite's clothing.

The jury is left to sort it out. They have sat through seven weeks of testimony, and still have much more to hear. The trial is expected to last up to four months.

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