Cold Case Files - The Interrogation

Episode Date: February 16, 2021

After a young girl is murdered in her home while the rest of her family slept, the police investigation zeroes in on the girl's teenage brother. But by focusing so closely on the brother, did investigators miss another suspect? Don't miss the NEW Amazon Original Series TELL ME YOUR SECRETS premiering February 19th on Amazon Prime Video!

Thank you for listening to this Podcast One production, available on Apple Podcasts and Podcast One. On January 22nd, 1998, 12-year-old Stephanie Crowe was found stabbed to death in her suburban San Diego home. Her mother, Cheryl, was experiencing the most horrific nightmare any parent could face. It turns out that Stephanie's senseless murder was only the beginning of Cheryl's suffering. The heartbreak she thought couldn't get any worse did just that, when her 14-year-old son Michael was charged with Stephanie's murder. One third of all murder cases in America remain open. Each one is called a cold case, and only 1% are ever solved.

This was thought to be one of those rare cases, until it wasn't anymore. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files, the podcast. At 6.30 a.m., Stephanie Crowe's morning alarm switched on and signaled that it was time to wake up. Stephanie didn't turn the alarm off or even hit snooze, and the alarm continued to buzz. Stephanie's grandmother, Judith, was sleeping nearby, and she was awoken by the noise. She figured that her granddaughter had overslept. Not wanting Stephanie to be late for school, Judith decided to go wake up the 12-year-old girl. Stephanie didn't wake up. When Judith got to her room, she found the young girl on the floor, just inside the doorway. Stephanie just laid there, in a pool of her own blood, not moving. Judith screamed for help, and Stephanie's parents jumped from their

bed and ran to their daughter's room. Her father, Stephen, looked for the phone in Stephanie's room, but he couldn't find it. So he ran back to his own room and called 911. Here's a clip from that call. My daughter is dead on the floor. She's blood all over the place. Please, someone's got to help her. Meanwhile, Stephanie's mother had gone to the kitchen,

also with the intention of calling emergency services. Though they didn't have cell phones, the house was equipped with two separate landlines, allowing them to both make outgoing calls at the same time. Here's a clip from Cheryl's call to 911. When she hung up, Cheryl went back to her daughter and covered the unmoving child with her own body, trying, in her own words, to keep Stephanie warm. She was hysterical when the paramedics arrived and had to be physically persuaded to move aside and allow access to the girl. It was too late though. Stephanie was dead.

During the course of the investigation into her murder, it was established that Stephanie had been stabbed nine times. She'd tried to crawl out of her room, likely to get help, but her injuries were too severe. The time of death was said to be between 10 and 11 p.m. the night before. Everyone in the family had been there, but none of them knew what happened to Stephanie just down the hall. There were no indications that the house had been broken into. The window in Stephanie's room was unlocked, but the screen and the dust that had settled on the window frame didn't show any signs of being disturbed. Because police found no evidence of forced entry, they concluded that the murder must have been committed by one of the family members.

They were separated and questioned. The police briefly focused on Stephanie's father, Stephen. He told them that the family always left the door next to their garage unlocked. It opened into the laundry room. Stephanie's mother told the police that she and Stephen had gone to bed around 9.30. She'd heard some thumping noises, but at the time, she didn't think they were a cause for alarm.

Judith, Stephanie's grandmother, hadn't heard anything unusual. She did mention that it was possible that the TV program she was watching could have drowned out any sounds coming from Stephanie's room. Shannon, Stephanie's little sister, had spent most of her evening watching TV with her grandmother, and then she slept soundly until she heard the commotion of the morning's events. Michael, Stephanie's 14-year-old brother,

mentioned that he had gotten up around 4.30 a.m. with a headache. He went to the kitchen for a painkiller and then back to his own room and once again fell asleep. He didn't notice anything suspicious. Shannon and Michael were separated from their parents and sent to an emergency home for children. The investigators wanted to keep Stephanie's siblings safe while ruling out the possibility that an adult in the household had committed the murder. The news of the murder spread like wildfire, and the pressure for the police to make an arrest was tremendous.

It was all that anyone could talk about, and the TV news did little to reassure the people in the community of their safety. Investigators say 12-year-old Stephanie Crow was stabbed to death in her own home as her parents, siblings, and grandmother slept. With no witnesses, no weapon, and no signs of forced entry, solving this crime will not come easy. I've spent more than a year researching and interviewing people who were wrongly convicted, and I've noticed a trend. When law enforcement personnel are under a large amount of pressure from the community to solve a case, they're far more likely to make an error, even if it's not intentional.

They rush the investigation process, in the interest of making those they have sworn to protect feel safe. After three days of being separated from their children, Stephen and Cheryl were reunited with their daughter Shannon. However, instead of returning to his home, Michael was being detained in a juvenile detention center. The teenager had become law enforcement's target in their search for Stephanie's killer. The police brought 14-year-old Michael in for questioning, without a parent, attorney, or any adult looking out for his best interest. Here's part of that interrogation.

The good part of Michael didn't do it. The part of Michael that helps his sister. Are you telling me I didn't do it? The part, the Michael that helps her with her math. I didn't. I didn't do them. There's blood in your room. How could that blood get there? How could it conceivably get there? How am I supposed to tell you an answer that I don't have? blood get there? How could it conceivably get there?

I'm not supposed to tell you an answer that I don't have. It's not possible to tell you something that I don't know. The reason Michael couldn't explain why his sister's blood was found in his room is because it wasn't. The police are allowed to lie to a suspect about factual evidence to help elicit a confession. Michael was brought in for questioning four times, each time without any kind of legal representation. As the number of interrogation sessions increased, the amount of time the team was bombarded with questions, false information, and accusations also grew. The fourth time Michael was interrogated lasted more than six hours and included the use of a computer voice stress analyzer, referred to as the CVSA. The CVSA measures a person's voice patterns and makes predictions on their truthfulness based on

changes in those patterns. Studies have shown the results to be less accurate than a polygraph test, which is also an unreliable indicator of deception. Studies have also shown that the CVSA is less accurate in determining truth from deceit than flipping a coin. After multiple days of being interrogated by detectives using increasingly devious tactics, Michael made a confession. Here's more tape from his interrogation.

The 11th hour is rapidly approaching. All this evidence is going to be in. We put a rush on some things that, quite frankly, is going to bury you, my friend. Tell us. If I tell you a story, the evidence is going to be completely... Well, then tell us the story. But it won't... I'll lie. I'll have to make it up.

Tell us the story, Michael. You want me to tell you a little story? Tell me the story. What happened that night? Okay, I'm just going to warn you right now. It's a complete lie. Tell us the story. What happened that night? Okay, I'm just gonna warn you right now. It's a complete lie. Tell us the story, okay? You let me know when you get the lie part. Okay, here's the part where I'll start lying. That night...

I pissed off at her. She couldn't take it anymore, okay? So... I... I'm gonna give you went and got a knife. Went into a room. And I stabbed him. The police had accomplished their goal. They got a confession out of Michael.

And they made an arrest. They had relieved themselves from the pressure they were under to solve the case. Even though Michael confessed, the investigation didn't stop. The police began to talk with some of Michael's friends. Aaron Hauser had just turned 15, and he was home alone when the police knocked on his door. The lack of parental permission didn't deter the investigators from questioning Aaron. They questioned him about his relationship with Michael for 30 to 45 minutes in his own home.

A few days later, they questioned him again at the police station for several hours. A week later, Aaron was picked up while at school and his locker and house were searched. He was taken to the station and interrogated for nine and a half hours under similar circumstances as Michael. Aaron didn't confess to anything, but he was still arrested and read his rights after the interrogation was over. Joshua Treadway was also just barely 15. He was home alone when detectives arrived. They questioned him for an hour in his own living room. While at Joshua's house, the police pointed out a knife on the couch and asked about its origins. Joshua said it was his brother's. A few days later, Joshua was taken to the police station and interrogated again.

He wasn't read his rights before or even during his 13 hours of interrogation. The same tactics of deceit and manipulation used on Michael and Aaron were also used on Joshua. The interrogator threatened the 15-year-old boy and then promised to help him out. He begged to be allowed to sleep, but they wouldn't let him. Ultimately, they let Joshua go home, but not for long. A week later, Joshua was brought back into the police station and interrogated again, this time for 12 hours. Joshua broke and told the police what they wanted to hear. He just wanted to go home. On that day, Joshua was arrested and read his rights for the first time. The news once again spread throughout the community.

We have evidence to indicate that all three were at the scene and that there was participatory acts by all three individuals. They thought that the boys were deeply into video games and to almost a cult status into dressing in dark clothing. They thought that these boys had taken the violence from these games to such an extreme that they actually would plan and carry out a murder. Instead of inciting panic in the community, this time, the news was accompanied by a wave of relief. The human brain is wired to make sense of things.

We use logic and reason to feel safe in our surroundings. A boy killing his sister because he was jealous isn't an acceptable behavior. But, despite the moral shortcomings of the situation, our brains are able to process the relationship between jealousy and murder in someone else's family. We're reassured by the fact that the murder is confined to someone else's family. Think about it though. What if the news had reported that Stephanie had been murdered by a stranger? Our brains can't use logic to explain a murder without cause. There's no conceivable reason for that type of crime to occur. It creates chaos in our logic-seeking brains,

and the results are fear and anxiety. Cheryl now not only had to cope with the loss of her daughter, but she also had to find the strength to support her son after he'd been charged with Stephanie's murder. Losing one of her children had been devastating, but now the state was threatening to take away her son as well. This is Mrs. Crowe. Watching your child just be ripped apart right in front of your eyes.

Then we knew absolutely that he didn't do it. Mary Ellen Attridge was the public defender assigned to defend Michael. Public defenders are sometimes stereotyped as inadequate and ineffective. But in actuality, there are a lot of skilled attorneys and good people who are employed as public defenders. Frequently, though, they're under-resourced and overworked, preventing even the most skilled among them from spending extra time on any given case. After researching this case, it's clear that Mary Attridge went above and beyond what was required in the pursuit of justice for Michael Crow. She started by dissecting the interrogation of 14-year-old Michael. Here's a clip of a statement made by the interrogator,

and then Mary's explanation of how it violated Michael's rights. You have my personal guarantee that the help you need to accept this is going to be forthcoming. That is a per se violation of the law. That right there rendered this whole thing unusable. He's guaranteeing him an outcome as if he is the judge, the jury, and apparently the executioner of Michael Crow. While Michael was being interrogated after making a false confession, the police suggested that he write a letter to his sister apologizing for her murder. Exhausted, scared, and manipulated by law enforcement personnel, the people who we are conditioned to trust from a young age, Michael wrote the letter. This is what it said. Dear Stephanie, I'm so sorry that I can't even remember what I did to you.

I feel that it is almost like I'm more being convinced of this than really knowing it. That letter was presented as part of Michael's confession. This is Mary Outridge again with her opinion on the letter. It's not a confession. That's an equivocation. Specifically because he can't say that he knew he did it. There never was a confession by Michael Crow. What there was is there was a fiction invented by the Escondido Police Department. Mary believed that Michael, her client, was innocent, which isn't always the case. She also knew that his coerced false confession was going to be difficult to overcome.

False confessions are not an infrequent occurrence, and their harmful effects are well documented. The average juror, though, doesn't always have the insight to distinguish between a real and coerced confession. Most people don't believe that they would confess to something they didn't do, so it's really difficult to convince a jury that this is a false confession, and so I knew that we had to do more. I knew that I had to prove that somebody else did it. As Mary dug deeper into the case files and investigated the events surrounding Stephanie's murder,

she made a discovery that would eventually be the key to Michael's freedom. The night that Stephanie was murdered, two calls had been placed to 911 by neighbors of the Crow family. They had seen a suspicious character wandering around in the neighborhood. The man was identified as Richard Tewitt. Tewitt was a transient,

diagnosed with schizophrenia and unmedicated at the time. He knocked on doors and pressed his face against the neighbor's windows. He appeared to be searching for an unknown woman. He referred to her as Tracy. An officer responded to the 911 call made by the Crow's neighbors, and although he didn't see the man in question, he had noticed someone close a door that led into the Crow's home. Likely, it was the killer. The day after Stephanie's murder, another woman had called

the police and reported that a seemingly mentally unwell man was following her and making her feel uncomfortable. It was to it, and he was picked up by the police and taken to the station. His clothes were confiscated, and he was questioned extensively by the police. But ultimately, they let him go. It wasn't until Mary Attridge was appointed to the case that a connection between Stephanie Crow and Richard Tewitt was discovered. We did a lot of work with witnesses who saw him in the area both before, during, and after the homicide. And we developed his tendencies to sort of, I don't want to say stalk,

but harass young girls of a similar appearance to Stephanie Crow. Marriott Ridge was especially interested in the clothing that had been taken from Tuitt, less than 24 hours after Stephanie's murder. As a transient individual, it was unlikely that he was able to wash or even change his clothes in that short amount of time. Surely, if he was connected to the crime, they would find traces of Stephanie's DNA on the confiscated articles of clothing. The shirt itself, it looked like a big old sponge of biological material. There was definitely something to be had here, and so that's when my antenna pretty much went up, stayed up,

and from there on, I started making demands about the shirt being tested. There were bloodstains discovered on the sleeve of Tewitt's shirt. Mary Atridge filed a motion requesting that the DNA from the blood on the shirt be compared to Stephanie Crowe's DNA. The motion was granted, the evidence was tested, and there was a strong indication that the blood on the man's shirt belonged to Stephanie. This is Mary Atridge again. Basically, what it boiled down to is that there was nobody who ever walked the earth

who could have been that donor except for Stephanie Crow. It was an extremely strong DNA head. Meanwhile, three teenage boys that were waiting for a trial, charged with the murder they didn't commit, were released from custody and the charges were dropped. It stands to reason that if a coerced confession is enough to charge someone with murder, then finding the victim's blood on a suspect's clothing would also be sufficient. It turns out that wasn't the case. This is Mrs. Crow again. I thought he would be charged right away. I thought the DA would, of course, you know, want to charge the murderer, but it didn't happen. No. The Crow family, along with the families of Aaron and Joshua,

believe that law enforcement was simply trying to bury the case of Stephanie's murder. To them, it felt like law enforcement was more concerned with protecting their own reputations than solving a murder. Here's a local news clip from the time. This crime is not going to be solved by the police or the district attorney because they are invested with the delusion that these three boys conspired to commit this murder. We had a quote in the paper from a former DA. We asked him about the position that the district attorney was in and the police, and he said, well, they're in a very tough spot.

It's like trying to pick up a turd by the clean end. The family had almost given up on Stephanie's killer ever being brought to justice. They had lost faith in the police, and it seemed like they had nowhere left to turn. That is, until Vic Koloka, a cold case detective, volunteered to take Stephanie's case. This is Detective Koloka. I'm pretty well known for if there's something wrong, I voice my opinion. I don't care how many stripes you've got on your shirt or on your bars, and I'll tell you how the truth is. So I think it's kind of why I fit the case, because if it wasn't going to be those kind of cases, I was going to have to go

against probably the disc attorney himself. The family was unsure what to do at first. Cooperating with the police in the past had only caused them grief. Detective Koloka was different, though. He empathized with the family. I wouldn't trust me either. Just another cop. Detective Koloka was on a mission to uncover the truth. He started at the beginning with the interrogations that ultimately led to Michael's confession.

Even though he was an experienced detective, Koloka was shocked as the tapes revealed the tactics used to elicit Michael's confession. This is Detective Koloka again. My feeling has always been as a cop is that we're here to help people. You know, we're here to help the innocent people. And what I saw was the opposite of what I was taught. We're hurting somebody. We're very, very badly. Michael had given up. Michael was going to tell him whatever he wanted. That to me was the most critical part of the statement from Michael. And I knew that Michael admitted to something that we could prove never happened.

Holding the belief that Michael was innocent, Detective Koloka turned his attention to a more plausible suspect, Richard Tuitt, the owner of the shirt that tested positive for Stephanie's blood. The district attorney for San Diego County, still unwilling to admit that charging Michael, Joshua, and Aaron was a mistake, shared his own theory about the shirt. He claimed that because Tewitt frequently rummaged through dumpsters, it was possible that one of the boys had discarded the shirt and Tewitt had salvaged it. Detective Koloka continues to look into Tewitt, despite the resistance from the district attorney and even his fellow officers. Eventually,

he gets the break he's been looking for. I get a call from a deputy up in North County here and said, hey, I've got a photograph of a guy named Richard Tuyet. He'd misspelled the name. I said, do you want it? He said, yeah, let me take a look at it. He sent it to me, and lo and behold, there's Richard Tuyet in a Polaroid, wearing the same shirt about a week or so before the murder. So the fact that he found a dumpster, that was totally done away with. It was totally dismissed. In the eyes of Detective Koloka, all the evidence is pointing to Richard Tuitt, making the next logical step in the legal process to bring the information to the district attorney. Normally, the DA then files

charges against the suspect. In this case, though, the district attorney refused to charge Toit. His fixation on the guilt of the three teens biased him against any other possible culprits. This is Vic Koloka again. What am I missing? Am I making a mistake? What am I doing wrong here? And I just kept going over and over again, coming back to the same conclusion. Richard Toot killed this little girl. Then the battle started is trying to convince other people

how it was that the boys didn't do it. Detective Koloka finally found some allies in his search for the truth. Prosecutors from the Attorney General's office, Jim Dutton and Gary Shantz, shared Koloka's opinion. The San Diego County DA was compromised. This is Gary Shantz. Vic asked them to charge to it and they simply wouldn't do it because they were too invested in the guilt of the boys. I think it's probably the best way to describe it. After examining the interrogation tape of the three teens and then comparing them to the evidence against Tuitt, Shons and Dutton became even more convinced that Koloka was on the right

track. On May 14, 2002, the California Attorney General takes the case away from the District Attorney of San Diego County. Then, they issue a warrant for the arrest of Richard Tuitt. This is Gary Shons again. But what was amazing about the case against Tuitt was that everything fit. And what was also amazing is it seems as if, and this is rare in a criminal investigation, particularly a homicide investigation, but the case actually got better over time. Using the bloodstained sweatshirt as their key piece of evidence, Richard Tewitt is brought to trial. The defense team tries to discredit the bloody sweatshirt and proposes its own theory

of how Stephanie's blood was transferred to the shirt. Here's Jim Dutton to explain. They said that he may have been sitting on the floor in this particular cell or holding area and that some of the police officers who were at the scene earlier that morning that had gone through the bedroom could have picked up blood on their soles of their shoes and those same officers are then tramping through this area where he is, and therefore if he had sat down on the floor because there was no benches, then the blood could have transferred from there to the shirts. The evidence is sent to the crime lab,

where Faye Springer, a criminalist, analyzes the bloodstained shirt. The goal is to understand what method of transfer caused the blood to come into contact with the shirt. The goal is to understand what method of transfer caused the blood to come into contact with the shirt. Here's Facebringer. They wanted me to look at those to see if I could tell the manner in which they were deposited. So are they transfer stains or are they spatter patterns or, you know, what is it I could say about those kinds of stains? When she examined the stains more closely, she discovered that the blood had soaked into the fibers of the shirt and beaded up around them.

That is an indicator that the blood was wet when it came in contact with the shirt. Blood only takes about an hour to dry in average temperatures. So the likelihood of an officer walking around with wet blood on his shoes from a stabbing that occurred the night before is pretty slim. This is Detective Koloka again. We spent a lot of time trying to trying to shore up how that blood got there and every time we'd look at it was always came back the same thing that happened during the time that it was airborne when Stephanie was being stabbed. Another criminalist, Connie Milton, noticed three small blood stains on another article of clothing belonging to Richard Tuitt, his white undershirt. She extracts samples of human DNA and compares them to Stephanie and the other suspects.

Here's Connie Milton. It was actually mixtures in all three stains, mixtures of DNA from at least two people, and all three were slightly different in their composition, but they did indicate that they were mixtures of DNA of Richard Tewitt and Stephanie Crow. The likelihood of two separate articles of clothing, one of which was an undershirt, both having secondary transfer, is small. The prosecutors were optimistic about the discovery, but all too aware of the challenges that were still to come. This is Jim Dutton again.

Not only do we have to prove that another person did it, Richard Tewitt, beyond a reasonable doubt, we essentially have to disprove that the three boys did it. And if somebody just looks at that first glance, that's built in reasonable doubt. Dutton was right. Almost immediately, Michael Crow's behavior was presented as suspicious by Tewitt's defense. He was described by a police officer as removed and not emotionally engaged in the situation. A police officer is not qualified to assess a person's mental health. Removed and not engaged might be the words I would use

to describe the symptoms of shock after a traumatic experience. The jury was shown hours of film for Michael's interrogation, including this. You want me to tell you a little story? Tell me the story. What happened that night? OK, I'm just going to warn you right little story? Tell me the story. What happened that night? Okay, I'm just going to warn you right now. It's a complete lie.

Tell us the story. Okay. Michael had been declared factually innocent, but it feels like he was unofficially being tried once again. Finally, the prosecution gets their turn to present the evidence against the man who's actually being tried, the defendant, Richard Tuitt. Both sides stipulated to the fact that Stephanie was murdered around 10 p.m. The prosecution was able to form a timeline that placed Tuitt near the Crow residence during that time frame.

Here's Detective Kaloka. He starts out first down here. Mrs. Thomas sees him down here at the Lutheran Church. He's next seen again over here at the Mogolinski residence, knocked at the door. She says, come in. Next thing we know is he moves down here to the Homo residence. Mr. Homo looks out his bedroom window and sees his face, and he jumps, startled, grabs an axe. He's last seen, according to the reverend, walking, you can't really see too well, walking back down the road in this direction. After a six-week trial, the fate of Richard Tewitt was handed to the jury.

And after one day of deliberations, they had made their decision. We, the jury, in the above entitled cause, find the defendant, Richard Raymond Tewitt, guilty of the crime of voluntary manslaughter. Taking his mental illness into consideration, the jury chose manslaughter over murder and a 13-year sentence over life. This is what Michael's mother, Cheryl, had to say after the trial was completed. I'm just glad that it's a conviction. I mean, he did it. Everyone knows he did it. I kind of fear for the community when he gets out. I just hope that everybody learns to lock their doors. Did Richard Tewitt kill Stephanie Crowe?

On September 9, 2011, a three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted Tewitt a new trial. Appeals aren't based on innocence or guilt. They examine legal procedure. In this case, the court determined that there was an improper relationship between opposing medical experts, causing Tewitt to be denied a fair trial. In November of 2013, after already having served a majority of his sentence, Richard Tewitt once again was tried for the murder of Stephanie Crowe. On December 6, 2013, the jury reached a verdict.

They found Richard Tewitt not guilty of voluntary manslaughter. When Stephanie was murdered, her parents, though devastated, were forced to trudge onward. They had to put the pieces of their shattered lives back together, not just for their own benefit, but also for the benefit of their other children. Sometimes we refer to a conviction as justice, as a way for a family to gain closure, acting as a springboard propelling them into an optimistic future. In Stephanie's case, all of the charges and all of the convictions had been overturned, and instead of answers, we're only left with the question, who killed Stephanie Crowe? I don't buy this closure thing. It's a really neat social worker term.

Great. You think Michael has closure? Michael's just moving on with his life. I wouldn't call it closure. Mrs. Crowe. Never over for her. I can't imagine anything worse than losing a child. Thank you. more cold case files at aetv.com and by downloading the A&E app. If you want to discuss more about this case or any other cases from the podcast, you can connect with me on Twitter at Brooke Giddings, B-R-O-O-K-E-G-I-T-T-I-N-G-S.