Who Really Murdered Stephanie Crowe?

👼Stephanie Ann Crowe👼

👼She was born on April 12th, 1985 in San Diego County, California to Cheryl and Steve Crowe. Stephanie was a happy girl involved with her church. She volunteered at the Escondido Library's youth program and she was liked by everyone. No matter where she went, she made friends and was always on the go.

👼On was January 20th, 1998, 12 year old Stephanie knocked on her parent's bedroom door and told them goodnight and that she loved them. That was the last time they would hear Stephanie's voice.

👼The next morning, Stephanie's grandmother went down the hallway to see why Stephanie wasn't up yet. Stephanie's bedroom was open slightly and after the grandmother pushed the door the rest of the way open, she saw a heart dropping sight. Stephanie's lifeless body was lying on the floor. The grandmother screamed and yelled that Stephanie was lying on the floor covered in mud. When Steve picked up Stephanie's head, he noticed that it wasn't mud at all, in fact it was blood that she was covered in. Stephanie had been stabbed 9 times.

👼Steve made an emotional call to 9-1-1.

9-1-1: 9-1-1
Steve: My daughter...
9-1-1: What's the problem?
Steve: She's laying on the floor. She's not breathing!

9-1-1: How old is she?

Steve: What? She's 12. There is blood all over the place. Please. Oh my god. Help her.

👼There was no sign of forced entry. Stephanie's window was found unlocked, but there was a screen in place that didn't seem to be disturbed. Cheryl and Steve's sliding glass door in their bedroom was also unlocked. No knives were found at the scene that seemed consistent with the murder weapon, no bloody clothing or fingerprints were found. The family was questioned, their clothing was confiscated, and their bodies were examined for injuries. 

👼The parents were then put up in a motel and the two surviving children were taken to the county's shelter, and were not allowed to see their parents for two days. Unbeknownst to their parents police interviewed both children. Michael, Stephanie's 14-year-old brother, became the police's main suspect for the murder.

👼Police theorized that Stephanie's murder was committed by a family member,. As the rest of Stephanie's family grieved her death, Michael seemed distant and preoccupied.  His room was also directly across the hall from Stephanie's. Michael claimed that he got up around 4:30 a.m., because he had a headache, and ventured to the kitchen to get a Tylenol and a glass of water before heading back to his room. He said he saw nothing. Allegedly, this is what made the police suspicious of him. Police interrogated Michael multiple times without his parents' knowledge and without an attorney present. During the interrogations, police falsely informed him that they had found physical evidence implicating him, that he had failed an examination with a so-called "truth verification" device, and that his parents were convinced he had done it. After being interrogated for 6 hours, Michael confessed to killing Stephanie. However, he gave no details and said that he couldn't remember doing it. During the interview, which was video taped by police, Michael can be heard saying things 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 also questioned two of Michael's 15-year-old friends, Joshua Treadway and Aaron Houser. Houser had a collection of knives. One of the knives in the collection was reported missing by Houser's parents. The knife turned up at Treadway's house. Treadway said he had taken it from Houser. Police took Treadway to police headquarters and questioned him for 12 hours. The policed told him that they believed his knife was the murder weapon. Two weeks later, they questioned him for 10 hours. During which Treadway gave a detailed confession to participating in the murder with the other two boys. Treadway was then arrested.

👼Aaron Houser was then arrested and questioned. He denied any involvement, but he did present a "hypothetical" account of how the crime might have happened, under prompting by police interrogators. All three boys subsequently recanted their statements claiming coercion. The majority of Michael Crowe's confession was later ruled as coerced by a judge because investigators implied to Michael that they would talk to the district attorney and recommend leniency. Treadway actually confessed twice. The court ruled that the two confessions were redundant and ordered that the first be suppressed. The second Treadway confession remains admissible. Houser's statements to police were suppressed because police did not sufficiently advise him of his Miranda rights.

👼The police had also interviewed Richard Raymond Tuite. He was a 28-year-old transient who had been seen in the Crowe's neighborhood on the night of the murder, knocking on doors and looking in windows, searching for a girl named Tracey. The neighbors said he seemed disoriented. This caused several neighbors to call police reporting a suspicious person. 

👼Tracey turned out to be real and Tuite's ex-girlfriend. When Tracey was younger, she resembled Stephanie. Tuite had a lengthy criminal record, habitually wandered the streets of Escondido, and had been diagnosed as schizophrenic. Tracey said that he was always paranoid and thought that people were following him.

👼Police questioned Tuite, confiscated his clothing, and noticed scrapes on his body and a cut on his hand. However, they considered him incapable of murder and they had already focused on Michael Crowe as their prime suspect.

👼Stephanie's family, on the other hand, suspected Tuite from the beginning. After Stephanie's funeral, her family went back to her grave to make sure everything was done right.  Tuite was a few blocks away walking towards the cemetery. This creeped them out and made Tuite seem even more suspicious to them.

👼Michael and his friends were charged with murder and conspiracy to commit murder. A judge ruled that they should be tried as adults. As they were awaiting trial, the three boys were incarcerated. However, as Treadway's trial was about to begin in January 1999, DNA testing found three drops of Stephanie's blood on a shirt belonging to Tuite, so the charges against the boys were dismissed.

👼When questioned again, Tuite admitted to being in the Crowe house, but denied killing Stephanie.

👼In 2001 the District Attorney and San Diego County Sheriff's Department asked 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. At lunch time, Tuite freed himself from his handcuff's and escaped. He boarded a bus, but was caught hours later. At trial, Tuite's defense team argued that the boys had killed Stephanie, and that Stephanie's blood was found on Tuite's clothes as a result of contamination caused by careless police work. 

👼On May 26, 2004, the jury acquitted Tuite of murder but convicted him of the lesser included offense of voluntary manslaughter. Tuite was sentenced to thirteen years in prison. With four more years added onto the sentence due to his flight attempt.

👼The families of all three boys sued the cities of Escondido and Oceanside. The Crowes reached a settlement of $7.25 million in 2011. 

👼In 2012, Superior Court Judge Kenneth So made the ruling that Michael Crowe, Treadway and Houser were factually innocent of the charges, permanently dismissing the criminal case against them.

👼On September 8, 2011, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit voted 2-1 to overturn Tuite's manslaughter conviction, ruling the trial was unfair because the trial judge limited cross-examination of a prosecution witness. He was granted a retrial.

👼Tuite's retrial began on October 24th, 2013. In closing arguments, his attorney told jurors that Tuite  wouldn't have been able to find Stephanie's bedroom in the dark home. He also said Stephanie must have been held down under a comforter to keep her quiet, while someone else stabbed her.  The prosecutor said during her closing argument that Tuite was in the area of the Crowe home the night Stephanie was killed. He was knocking on doors and looking for a woman named Tracy, at whom he was angry because she had turned him away a couple of years earlier.  She also said that Stephanie's blood was found on two shirts that he was wearing.

👼On December 5th, 2013, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty. The jurors were concerned that the victim's blood might have got onto his shirts through contamination.

Here is documentary about Stephanie's murder.

Will there every be justice for Stephanie?

Who do you think killed her and why?

Personally, i'm confused about it all..

I very much doubt that Stephanie's blood on Tuite's clothes was that of contamination by the police, but it is a possibility. I think he could have been confused and thought that Stephanie was his ex-girlfriend. Tuite also did confess to being in the Crowe's house and he was seen in the neighborhood that night. If he was so delusional, how did he not leave any evidence at the seen? How did he keep Stephanie quiet while killing her? It almost seemed like at least a two person job and that the scene might have been cleaned up a bit.

RIP Stephanie

i hope whomever did this to do never finds a second of peace and it torment them the rest of their life.