Criminology - The Murder of Stephanie Crowe

Episode Date: February 20, 2021

On January 21, 1998, 12-year-old Stephanie Crowe was found dead in her bedroom. She had been fatally stabbed multiple times while her family slept. Multiple people would eventually be charged with her murder, including members of Stephanie's own family. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the mysterious murder of Stephanie Crowe. Police initially suspected Stephanie's brother and some of his friends. The tactics used by investigators against these young boys were ruthless and caused them to say what they had to after hours of food and sleep deprivation. They should have been looking at a 28-year-old man named Richard Tuite who was in the Crowe neighborhood that night. Blood evidence would later send Tuite to trial for Stephanie's murder. But, could prosecutors make a case against Richard Tuite stick? You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology   An Emash Digital Production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom-style humor, moms and mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey guys, I'm Mandy. And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for moms and mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well-researched true crime stories. Each week, we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from heist to whodunit.

We're your go-to podcast for Mysteries with a Motherly Touch. Subscribe now to moms and mysteries wherever you get your podcast. Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 147 of the Criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Morford, what is going on with you today? I'm doing good. I'm just hanging in there, doing work, and getting more episodes out. What are you up to?

That same. And that's what we do. We put in the work. We try to get these episodes out. you know, I call it work. It is work, but it's fun too. We get to research and and kind of get into the things that we're most interested in. Yeah, we're lucky to be able to do this stuff that we enjoy doing and so many people tell us they enjoy it as well. So that's really rewarding. Yeah, no, it is great. Now, if we could find some more advertising, that wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. You know, still advertising is hard to come by, but that's the world that we're living in right now. I'm hoping that we're seeing some light at the end of the tunnel and things are moving

forward. Yeah, we definitely love bringing episodes to people, but at the same time, we have to figure out a way to bring in some sponsors, and hopefully that does perk up. Thankfully, we have our Patreon folks who help keep the ship righted. We have some new shoutouts to give. We had Kim, Anita Dunn. and Jennifer Gray. So not a lot of names, but, you know, that's great support and we really appreciate it. Yeah, our Patreon supporters are very awesome. We can't thank you enough. If there's anyone that would

like to help support the show, they can do that by going to Patreon.com slash criminology. And more if I'm going to tease it, but, you know, in a couple of weeks, we're going to have some big news for the criminology podcast. I just can't give it away right now, but kind of priming every for that news coming a couple of weeks down the road. Yeah, that's something I've been excited for weeks for and I, um, biting my tongue, but I'm with you. I want to, I want to tell people and we'll be able to do that soon. All right, buddy.

Let's get into this case. We're talking about the murder of Stephanie Crow. It was on January 21st, 1998. That 12 year old Stephanie Crow was found dead in her bedroom. She had been fatally staffed. multiple times while the rest of her family slept. And no one heard a thing. There were no signs of forced entry in the home.

Multiple people would later be charged with her murder, including members of her own family. A suspect would be convicted eventually, but his conviction was overturned and a jury was unable to reconvict him. So more than 20 years later, the question remains who killed Stephanie Crowe, And why? In January 1998, Stephanie Crowe lived with her family in Escondido, California. The crows were a close-knit typical family consisting of Stephanie, her 14-year-old brother Michael, their 10-year-old sister Shannon, and their parents, Cheryl and Steve Crow. The kid's grandmother, Judith Kennedy, was also visiting from Florida and staying with the family. By all accounts, Stephanie was an outgoing and well-like child, a typical 12-year-old,

There seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary in the Crow family's lives that would indicate the horrible tragedy that would befall them early in 1998. At that time, Escondido, which is about 30 miles north of San Diego, had just over 133,000 residents. Just 15 miles from the Pacific Ocean, Escondido is a semi-wealthy area, not necessarily known for violent crime, although it's not unheard. heard of, the police department there was not completely inexperienced with murder cases, some of which included stabbing cases. In 1995, a woman named Elizabeth Carroll was fatally stabbed in Escondido by her 16-year-old grandson and his 15-year-old girlfriend 61 times. Despite the lack of steady violent crimes in the area, the Escondido Police Department

aggressively investigated any serious crimes that came their way. And the department was also very technology driven using lie detector tests and getting results as early adopters of fluorine testing, which we will talk about more a little bit later in the episode. Tuesday, January 20th, the last night of Stephanie's life seemed completely normal. At 9 p.m., Stephanie watched home improvement with her siblings, Michael and Shannon. Stephanie and Michael giggled so much they annoyed their younger sister Shannon, so much so that she went into a different room to watch the show uninterrupted. The kid's grandmother, Judith, would later recall that around 9.25 p.m., Stephanie knocked on her

bedroom door to say goodnight. She also said goodnight to her parents. Her father, Stephen, was already asleep, and her mom, Cheryl, was in bed watching television, but she was asleep by 10 p.m. Early the next morning on the 21st at around 4.30 a.m. Michael puttered to the kitchen to get some medicine for a headache and quickly went back to bed, not noticing anything unusual. At 6 a.m. Stephanie's alarm went off just like it did on any other day. But today the alarm continued. She should have been getting out of bed, ready for a day of 7th grade. But instead, her alarm just blared. Judith decided to check on her granddaughter to see why Stephanie wasn't responding to her alarm. When she entered Stephanie's room, she saw Stephanie on the bedroom floor, and at first, Judith thought the 12-year-old was covered in mud.

She yelled for someone to come help her. Stephanie's father, Stephen, came into the room and saw that Stephanie was actually covered in blood, not mud. Stephanie's mom Cheryl rushed in to see what was wrong, followed by Michael and Shannon. So very quickly, the entire family was in Stephanie's room and it was a moment of chaos. 911 was called for help at 637 a.m. And first responders arrived quickly to the Crow residents. They determined that 12-year-old Stephanie was dead. Cheryl had to be physically removed because she refused to leave. her daughter's body. Stephanie was still wearing the jeans and purple shirt she had worn the day before.

She hadn't changed into her pajamas as she normally did. The MTs noted that Stephanie's body was already cold and stiff, showing signs of rigor. Stephanie's body was taken from the home and sent to the medical examiner's office. It was determined she had been stabbed nine times. Her time of death was indicated to be around 10.30 p.m. the night before on January 20th. Police were called to the home to investigate what turned out to be a crime scene. Investigators first examined Stephanie's bedroom. They believe that Stephanie was killed in bed and that because of her clothing being on and the time she was estimated to have died at around 1030, that she hadn't gotten ready

for bed when she was killed. They believe that after her attacker left, Stephanie got up to get help but collapsed at her doorway and only managed to get the door open before losing consciousness and falling to the floor. Her bloody fingerprints were at the very bottom of the door. There was no sign of a murder weapon, which was thought to be some sort of knife. Police questioned each family member closely. And Stephanie's parents indicated that they did recall hearing some noise during the night, but it wasn't so out of the ordinary that either of them thought to get up and check on the noise. Cheryl remembered hearing the door of her bedroom, being pushed open a few times. And

but she thought it was just her cats. Their bedroom had a sliding glass door that led to the backyard. The sliding screen was unlocked in a jar, and the sliding glass door itself was unlocked but closed. And the blinds on the door were closed and undisturbed. The blinds were plastic vertical blinds, and some of the panels were stuck on the handle, which the crow said happened when people went in and out of the door. door, it seemed most likely to police that the killer, if not already inside the home, entered through the home's laundry room door, closed Stephanie's door after attacking her,

and left through the sliding glass door in the master bedroom while Stephen and Cheryl slept. Police examined the rest of the home closely and found Stephanie's bedroom window was unlocked. The screen had been bent so that a phone cable could be run into a. her room for her phone. She had been given a phone to use in her room and a phone number of her own for Christmas. The window was unlocked so the cord could be in the window, but it was found to be extremely unlikely that anyone had entered through her window. Other window screens around the home were bent as well, but the dust and cobwebs around the window screens made it clear that none of them were the entry point, and that they probably hadn't been bent recently. The crows

told police that they always tried to keep their doors locked, but that they sometimes left the laundry room door unlocked. The morning they found Stephanie. Everyone ran around in a panic, and no one could remember which doors they'd used or not. So which doors were locked or unlocked, other than the siding last door is unknown. It's important to note that this was less than two years after the high-profile investigation into the murder of John Bonae Ramsey, which was famously considered a bungled investigation from the moment it started, one often cited mistake in that case is that the Ramsey family was never separated for questioning, and they were never even taken to a police station during the initial investigation.

Investigators in Stephanie's case were aware of the blowback and shortcomings in the Ramsey case, and they wanted to ensure that they handled Stephanie's case properly. That meant taking a very close look at the people known to be in the Crow home, The night Stephanie was killed. While investigators combed the home for clues, the Crow family were asked to leave, and they were taken to the police station for further questioning. Once there, the family was separated and interrogated one at a time. Each member of the Crow family had their clothes confiscated,

and their bodies were searched for injuries and documented with photographs as they undressed. When Stephanie's brother Michael was interrogated, the investigators who questioned him use something called the Reed Tech. A method of interrogation developed in the 1950s, and it was used to get information from uncooperative subjects. The read technique has been criticized as flawed due to the high number of false confessions resulting from the use of this method, especially when used to question minors. The police for some reason decided that it was in the best interest of everyone if Michael and Shannon were kept away from the rest of the family. Michael spent the night at the Polinsky Children's Center under a protective order. The day after his sister was found dead, just across the hall from his room,

14-year-old Michael Crow was interrogated for hours. Investigators went hard at Michael, and they didn't let up. Investigators found him suspicious. If, like he claimed, Michael had gotten up around 4.30 to get headache medication from the kitchen, they believed he should have seen Stephanie's body in the doorway of her room. But Michael insisted he didn't see her and that he would not hurt his sister. Detectives told him they wanted to believe what he was saying and that he should trust them and help them get to the truth. To try and prove his claims, Michael took a type of lie detector test that uses a computer voice stress analyzer or CVSA.

a side note on the CVSA. It is just as controversial and contested as a polygraph test. The manufacturer of the CVSA didn't even claim that it had been proven to be effective. And the detective who performed the test had only used it on adults. Michael was told multiple times that his test showed deception specifically around questions about his innocence or around who killed Stephanie. Detectives hinted to Michael that maybe they had evidence against him, perhaps that it could be his hair in his dead sister's hands,

which he disputed as impossible. They also told him that they found her blood in his room. While it's not illegal for police to lie to suspects, we have to remember, this is a 14-year-old boy who didn't have a parent or attorney with him, and I think we have seen countless cases like this. The detectives told Michael that doing something, bad doesn't make someone a bad person and that they would help him get through this ordeal. After an emotional three and a half hour interview, Michael was taken back to the Plinsky Children's

Center. So exhausted, he could hardly walk. He was still unable to see his parents before he was interrogated again for another six hours. And more if I think you nailed it, right? We have seen countless cases like this. Every time that I see it, I'm floored. The very intense questioning of a 14-year-old boy with no parent, no attorney, it just seems as though that's not the right way to go, in my opinion. I think you can look back at a case like Brendan Dassey. And I'm sure, you know, so many people have seen that documentary making a murderer. You wonder when you're watching that documentary, what would have been different had Brendan Dassey had, some type of representation, whether it was an attorney, it was his mother.

If there was someone there to say, hey, you don't have to talk. You don't have to answer that. You don't need to do this or that. 14 years old. And let's not forget, this boy had just found out that his sister was dead. What kind of emotions are going through his mind? It just seems to me more of like that's a recipe for disaster. I think it's a prime reason why attorneys tell clients, you know, whether it's for themselves or for their children, if you're ever in that situation and you're being questioned about a crime by police, the first thing you do is lawyer up because it's the smart thing to do, especially if you're innocent and it seems like they're taking you down a road where you are feeling like you're the bad guy.

or they think you're the bad guy. Yeah, and I definitely get that from the standpoint of an adult. I guess what bothered me so much about this is that I've always been under the impression that you can't just do this to a 14-year-old, a minor, without the parents' consent, a parent being there. Maybe I'm wrong about that. The two detectives handling Michael's interrogation, detectives, Clater and Rizley, painted a picture of a Michael Crow with two sides, almost like a Jekyll and Hyde.

They appealed to Michael to just help everyone understand what they referred to as bad Michael. Detective Clayter told him that at age 14, he would get help for the bad side of him in what he had done. He would not be treated the same as every other criminal. Michael was asked to write an apology letter to Stephanie, which included him apologizing for not remembering what he did to her. And that the only reason he even knew he hurt her was because he was told he did. He was also told to ask her to forgive him for what they said he had done to her. Detectives continued to tell Michael that they were certain and could prove that no one else had entered the home, that his sister's murder was an inside job.

They gave him another chance to come clean about what happened that night and to get help. Or he could stay silent and end up in jail. Exhausted and scared, Michael began to confess to investigators, all the while acknowledging that what he was saying was a lie. In his quote-unquote confession, Michael detailed stabbing Stephanie just three times, quite shy of the nine actual stab wounds she had suffered. He told detectives that the reason he was lying and giving a confession is that he was afraid of going to jail. Eventually, police got frustrated that Michael didn't have any answers, and Michael was frustrated that police kept asking him accusatory questions.

Eventually, Michael asked to be taken back to the Children's Center. And Morph, this is exactly what I think the danger is. You know, whether it's a young person or it's an adult with, a very low IQ, some type of intellectual disability, I think oftentimes what you see is that, you know, this person so badly wants to get out of this situation that they're in. And when I say this situation, I mean being bombarded with questions, being accused, being told that they had done something that they don't believe they had done. they're just so ready to get out of that room that a lot of times it seems to me that,

you know, they'll say anything, whatever they think detectives want to hear that will get them out of that room and out of that situation. And I think a lot of us are taught to respect police and their authority. So to a young person that's scared in this situation, he might be thinking, I have to do what they say. I have to say what they want me to say and not know what their rights are and that they can say, I want my parents, I want an attorney. Yeah, because he's only 14 years old. I mean, hell, some adults don't even know what their rights are. At this point, the camera in the interview room showed police taking Michael out of the room and the empty room is filmed for about 13 minutes. When police brought Michael back into the room, he spoke of,

resentment and jealousy towards his sister and how he felt that he was always in her shadow. For about an hour, he spilled to detectives about why he split his personality and created this bad part of himself, which killed Stephanie. He admitted that he still didn't remember how he killed her, but he was now sure that it was him because the evidence proved it. So, So, you know, you have a lot of questions here, more. What happened during those 13 minutes or so that Michael was off camera? Was he coached by detectives? What happened?

You know, to me, and I've seen a lot of documentaries. I've researched a lot of cases involving wrongful convictions, bad confessions. I'm always leery when either the tape is. turned on and off multiple times. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency? We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators

to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, Blood and Water. Listen now, wherever you get. your podcasts. Or there are these long gaps in the tape where you don't see the person. What happens in that time period where they're not in front of the camera or the tape is not on? I think sometimes it's things that you don't want to happen on the part of police detectives. And unfortunately, it often leads to some. bad things happening. What we do know is during this time off camera, Michael was informed that he was

under arrest for the murder of his sister. He would later claim that detectives told him his family knew he did it and would never want to see him again. But Detective Risley has refuted that claim saying that while he wouldn't have told Michael his parents didn't want to see him, he could have told him that they believed he had killed his sister. And that statement alone to me, I would think, is extremely powerful in the mind of a 14-year-old kid. Either one of those, you know, your parents don't want to see you again or your parents think you killed your sister. Imagine being 14 years old and hearing that just on the heels of finding out that your sister was dead. I don't know, I I don't know how you react.

I don't know how your brain processes that and what that information would cause you to do. Yeah, and you couple that with him being exhausted and being tired after all this questioning. I wouldn't even want to be in his shoes to know who was thinking. Michael was taking a juvenile hall and his sister Shannon was returned to the care of Cheryl and Stephen Crow, who were absolutely devastated upon hearing the news that their son had been arrested. They had no idea that while they had been separated from Michael, that police had been questioning him relentlessly. They didn't want to believe that their son could have done something like this,

but the police continued to insist that Michael did it, and the evidence proved it. The Crows felt there was no reason not to believe the police, and reluctantly began to accept what they were told. They were finally able to see Michael for the first time since the murder, the day after he was taken to juvenile hall. Once Cheryl and Stephen finally got to talk to Michael, they came out of that visit believing that Michael

had simply succumbed the pressure during the interrogation and given a false confession. They were convinced their son hadn't killed his own sister. Michael was so tired and traumatized that for almost a week, he remained convinced he killed his sister without any recollection of the night. But investigators weren't finished with Michael. They were convinced that he didn't act alone, and they soon began the search for potential accomplices. They started looking closely at Michael Crowe,

circle of friends. The day after Stephanie was found dead, detectives visited the home of one of Michael's friends, 15-year-old Joshua Treadway. Joshua and his brother Zachary were home alone. When detectives spoke to them, detectives pointed to a table with a wood carving project and a knife on it, and they asked Joshua, who it belonged to. The wood carving was for Zachary's school project. and the knife was being used to carve the wood. Detective Clayter, who was questioning Joshua, felt that the teenager was anxious and nervous and might be hiding something. And again, Morph, if you're a 14, 15 year old kid, are you not going to be nervous when

detectives come to your house and you're alone and they're asking you all of these strange questions? I don't know who wouldn't be. I would have been at that age. And I'd like to know maybe we have a detective or police officer out there listening that can tell us what the criteria is. When you show up at someone's home to question a minor and they say my mom's not home, what are you supposed to do? Do you go in and question them anyway? Or do you say, I'll come back?

What's the protocol? I'd like to know that. Yeah, and maybe it's changed over time. A lot of things do. I guess the one thing that keeps sticking in my mom. is that I always thought you were required to get parental consent to question a minor. And maybe I'm just absolutely wrong about that. Police also talked to another acquaintance of Michael's 15-year-old Aaron Hauser.

Michael and Aaron had been best friends until recent falling out a few months earlier over missing money in computer games. After hearing of Stephanie's murder, Aaron's mother, Susie asked Aaron to check his knife collection, and he found a knife missing. The knife was unique. It was called a best defense knife with a finger grip, a notched hilt, and a five-and-one-quarter-inch stainless steel blade. Susie Hauser informed authorities immediately about the missing knife. Since Joshua Treadway had spent time at Aaron's house just before the knife went missing, the detective felt this was the missing piece of the puzzle. Detective Clater obtained a search warrant for Joshua Treadway's home,

to look for Aaron's knife, which he believed to be the murder weapon. On January 27th, a week after Stephanie's murder, the Treadways received a call from Detective Clayter during a somber celebration of Joshua's 15th birthday, asking them to immediately bring him to the Escondido Police Department. Once he arrived there, police began to ask him about his friend, Aaron Hauser's missing knife. Joshua admitted,

He liked the best defense knife so much that he stole it from Aaron one day and kept it hidden underneath his bed. The theft happened on January 15th prior to Stephanie's murder. According to Joshua, the treadways were warned by detectives that they expected to find the knife that killed Stephanie Crow in their home and a search warrant was executed. The best defense knife was found under. under Joshua's bed, as he said it would be. It was obvious to detectives that the knife they had asked about earlier,

this knife that had been used for wood carving was not the murder weapon. But this knife, the best defense knife, detectives thought most likely was the murder weapon. They took the best defense knife to Aaron Hauser, who confirmed that it was indeed his missing knife. After Aaron's knife was found under Joshua Treadway's bed, Joshua was taken in for questioning. Joshua's interrogation lasted from 9.45 p.m. all through the night until 8 a.m. the next morning. Joshua told police that he knew that the knife he stole wasn't the murder weapon because it had been under his bed the entire time since he stole it from Aaron. Detective Claytor told Joshua that he knew he was lying and told him there was definitive proof.

This information sent Joshua into a panic attack. Detective Claytor switched gears and asked Joshua what he was supposed to do with the knife. Again, Joshua claimed that this knife wasn't the murder weapon. Joshua asked to speak to his parents, but that didn't happen. Instead, Detective Clayter suggested first that ending the interrogation meant Joshua would no longer be able to tell his side of, quote, the truth, the truth about why he was the one in possession of the murder weapon. Joshua then broke down crying and immediately stated that he was given the knife. He didn't steal it.

Detective Clayter kept at him and implied that it wouldn't be fair for Joshua to take the blame when other people were responsible for Stephanie's murder. At around 12.30 a.m., Joshua's dad was finally allowed into the room to speak to his son, but he never asked for a lawyer for his son, something that he would later come to regret. Joshua's father, after talking to his son and police, came away believing that two teens, Michael Crow and Aaron Houser, were trying to frame his son by giving him a murder weapon and that the police were trying to help him get to the truth. It was then that Sergeant Phil Anderson popped into the interview room with news.

The test for blood had come back and Aaron Houser was at the station. The test results showed that the best defense knife didn't have any blood on it, but detectives neglected to share that part of the information with the scared, exhausted teen Joshua Treadway or with his parents. At around 4 a.m., Joshua Treadway took the CVSA test. He was told the officer performing the test was a neutral third party there to verify the truth. Joshua repeated his original story. He stole the knife from Aaron.

Officer McDonough, who was operating the CVSA, told Joshua he wasn't being truthful. He couldn't be. Exhausted, Joshua asked if he would be able to sleep soon, but the interview continued. By 8 o'clock the next morning, Joshua had told investigators that Aaron gave him the knife because Michael told him to. This time, he claimed that it was January 25th, Super Bowl Sunday, after Stephanie was murdered when he received the knife. According to him, it was because Michael told Aaron to get rid of it. After the CVSA test, Joshua asked detectives if he passed it, as they promised him they would let him know. Joshua was so tired and upset, he was actually thankful to the detectives for helping him when he was finally able to get sleep after his 10-hour interview.

Following the interrogation, detectives felt confident they would quickly be able to build a case against the boys, and they let Joshua go home. So again, more, if I think anyone listening to this is up in arms, right, at this point in time, I mean, this is some stuff that you think happens by, you know, some clandestine group trying to get information out of a terrorist. I mean, we're really getting into a serious area of sleep deprivation, lying, misleading, getting a kid to the point where, again, he would do anything. He would say anything just to be allowed to go home and go to bed. And I think what's really bad is that this isn't a one-time accidental, you know, misjudgment by police making a mistake one time.

It seems to be a pattern here that they're doing this to these teenage boys. Oh, I absolutely think this was calculation. They knew what they were doing. They knew what these techniques were going to result in. There's no doubt in my mind. 13 days later, on February 10th, Joshua was interrogated again. This time, he believed that if he changed his story, even to the truth, he would be sent to jail. Videotape of his interrogation shows that he had begun to suffer from a facial

tick that wasn't present before. He explained that four days after Stephanie was murdered, Aaron Houser gave him the best defense knife that was used in her murder. Joshua was adamant that he had received the weapon after the fact and he had nothing to do with the murder itself. He noted how hard it would have been for him to silently sneak out of the house since he shared a room with his brother. and their door was just past their parents' bedroom.

He was confident that the CVSA test he had taken would show that he was telling the truth. Joshua claimed that Aaron told him he helped Michael kill Stephanie. A detective asked Joshua what he would say if he knew that Aaron was claiming the same thing about him. His reply was that the CVSA would tell police the truth. He had faith that the test was accurate. and would prove his story. And I think this tells you a lot about Joshua's mindset during this period of time. His thought process was that this CVSA was going to indicate that he was being truthful,

even though in his mind he knew he wasn't telling the truth. But I think it all goes back to how traumatized. And we mentioned the facial tick. I mean, this must have been a very, traumatizing experience for him. Detectives left Joshua alone for 10 minutes. When they came back, Joshua began to tell them a story about the planning of the murder. A detective interrupted Joshua and told him that he knew he had helped the other two boys plan the murder.

He encouraged Joshua to be honest, since he had been nothing but honest to Joshua. Joshua said he would be honest, and more of the story began to emerge. Joshua claimed that Michael didn't like Stephanie, and that he and Aaron planned her murder during breaks at school. He began to panic about the story he was telling, and a detective told him he was going to make sure that the DA didn't charge him with murder. Four hours later, detectives administered three more CSVA tests. Joshua had complete faith in the test by this point in time and insisted he wasn't trying to beat it, but detectives told him that he had failed. After crying, being grilled,

and insisting he wasn't lying. Joshua offered up a new part of the story. He said that Aaron threatened that if he said anything, he'd kill him and his family. Detectives continued to play the role of being supportive and helpful and told Joshua that his friends could be telling them he was responsible. So after a lot of back and forth, Joshua agreed that he had been the lookout that night, standing outside the crow home. According to him, he had crept past his brother after receiving calls from both Aaron and Michael

earlier in the day. Then he walked almost three miles to Aaron's house and then another two miles to the crow residence. On the way, Aaron told him he would be killed if he didn't help. He then waited outside for around 30 minutes before walking five miles home and going to sleep. It sounds like Joshua's story just kept expanding like he was just trying to say what the investigators wanted to hear, just keep on spinning stories until it got to where they were accepting of him and he could finally get some rest. Yeah, I think by this point more,

they had him so scared by, you know, talking about the fact that he might be charged with murder. He might, you know, have this happened to him or that happened to him. So as a kid might do, you just keep telling new stories until you get to the point where you think you've said what the person on the other side of the desk wants to hear. Joshua began asking when he would be allowed to go home. Detectives told Joshua he wouldn't be in any more trouble if he had actually seen what had happened inside the house and was able to tell them the truth about it. Joshua then claimed he had gone into the kitchen, but no further, and was then reminded that Michael had already told investigators his account of the night.

They were strongly hinting that Michael had implicated Joshua. Joshua then offered that he had seen something in the kitchen. Michael washed the blood off the best defense knife in the kitchen sink. He couldn't explain why they kept the knife. After almost 10 hours, Joshua was arrested and then interrogated for another two hours. Detective Rizzley, questioned Joshua about what he thought Aaron's possible motives were. The detective mentioned that Michael obviously didn't like his sister,

but why would Aaron help him kill her? Joshua guessed that there might be some sort of violence fantasy involved. Because he said Aaron often read violent war books where people killed each other. He said his own motivation was fear because of Aaron's threats against him. and about what would happen to his family if he didn't participate. Joshua even added that he was less afraid of Michael than he was of Aaron, adding more validity to his story that Aaron had specifically threatened him into serving as the lookout.

Before ending the interrogation, Detective Risley secured from Joshua the statement that there had been no abuse at the hands of investigators leading to a quarrelation. leading to a coerced confession. Joshua even added that they were nice. They had let him use the bathroom. Sounds like a case of CYA. Well, and I think more if it's also something that you see in a lot of these

videotapes, audio tapes, where it later comes out that it was a coerced confession. There is a lot of stuff done at the very end to, really get the person being interviewed to say, I was well treated, they gave me coke, they allowed me to smoke my cigarettes, and I'm giving this of my own free will. On February 11th, Aaron Hauser was arrested in the principal's office of Orange Glen High School. Besides a missing knife, he had a sword collection, and authorities felt he was suspicious. After Joshua's first interrogation. Detectives had him call Aaron to tell him they needed a plan because they were in trouble.

But Aaron told him that no plan was needed because even if Michael was guilty, they weren't. This was tape recorded by police and it didn't yield any incriminating information. Aaron's calm tone, which his mother says is typical of him, speaking to emotional people, was suspicious to detectives. Aaron Hauser, with the consent of his father, took a CVSA test, confident he had nothing to hide. He became angry when he was accused of helping to kill Stephanie Crow. He would never confess. Unlike his friends Michael and Joshua, he believed that Michael would not torture Stephanie and that Joshua was a very peaceful person. Eventually, detectives asked Aaron to give a.

hypothetical version of what happened to Stephanie. Aaron described killing Stephanie from behind, hand over her mouth to stifle her screams and slitting her throat. But the autopsy showed no evidence that Stephanie's mouth had been covered when she was killed and her throat wasn't cut. Stephanie died from stab wounds inflicted on her chest and back, not her throat. Nothing about Aaron's story matched Michael.

or Joshua's, but psychologist Lawrence Blum, who watched his interrogation on a TV screen, concluded that Aaron was clearly a sociopath. The first visits to the boys in Juvenile Hall were awkward as the three families visited their boys during the same visiting hours, and they all tried to act like the other families weren't there. Finally, Cheryl Crowe asked a friend to send a message to the other families that basically said, the crows believe Joshua and Aaron were innocent.

That message apparently cleared the air, and afterwards, the three families began meeting together to discuss the case and what a twisted mess it was. None of the parents of the three boys wanted to see any of them get locked up for Stephanie's murder. They believed that all of the boys were innocent, and the real killer was out there walking around. Stephanie Crow was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery, just one week after her murder, on January 27, 1998. The crows were unable to bury her in the dress they wanted to select because police considered it evidence. Michael Crow was not allowed to attend his little sister's funeral as he was already in custody at the time.

Three days after Stephanie's funeral, the crows were allowed back into their home for the first time. The home which the crows rented monthly was damaged. due to the police search. In Stephanie's room, sections of the wall and the carpet had been removed. All of Stephanie's personal belongings, her clothes, stuffed animals, everything had been taken as evidence. Michael's clothes, computer and games, and the crow's family computer were taken as evidence as well. Cabinets, electronics, houseplants, a handcrafted mask made by Stephanie, ornaments, decorations, and souvenirs were broken throughout the house. Things that had been pinned to a bulletin board in the master bedroom were found in their pool.

The crows prepared to move out of their house quickly, not wanting to be in the home Stephanie was murdered in, or in a house that reminded them of what Michael was enduring. While the crows were surveying the damage to their home, their neighbor, Gary West, approached them and asked them if the police had ruled out the man knocking on his door the night Stephanie was murdered. They had no idea what he was talking about, but it would send the entire case in a whole new direction. And it was this information that caused the crows to lose all faith in the investigation that was done by the Escondido Police Department. A 28-year-old man named Richard Toot was close to the crow's home the night of the murder, even at their next-door neighbor's house. Multiple people reported seeing him in the Crow's neighborhood looking in windows, knocking on doors, and asking for a woman named Tracy.

Neighbors said he seemed restless that night. Police interviewed him the day Stephanie was found dead, but he maintained his innocence and he was let go. To it was a transient born in nearby San Diego. He was addicted to meth and was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He had a criminal record that included drug charges, car theft, vandalism, and just a few years before Stephanie's murder, a stabbing. In 1993, he was arrested after stabbing another man who sustained injuries to his head, his back, and his hand. Just three weeks after Stephanie was murdered, Tewitt was arrested for following two girls home from the bus and telling him that he wanted to have sex with him. They were 12 and 13.

His charge for this was, annoying the two young girls. Just one month after that arrest, he was arrested and eventually sentenced to three years in prison for attempted burglary. The difference between how police pursued a case against three teenage boys and how they treated Richard Toott is astonishing.

While the boys were forced to endure hours of interrogation, Toitt's 20-minute interview wasn't even recorded. He was never fingerprinted, but police did take some of his clothing. from him, and it sat around without being tested for Stephanie's blood for months, despite the appearance of blood on his clothing. He had been trying to enter homes and turning door handles while looking for a girl named Tracy as early as a month before Stephanie's murder. Just a month after Stephanie's murder, when he was in a mental health facility for something unrelated,

he would often yell, Tracy, you whore, I'm going to kill you. He had a cut on his hand and noticeable scrapes on parts of his body. But detectives overlooked to it. because of his struggles with addiction and mental illness. They reasoned that there was no way he could sneak into a house and carry out a murder quietly and sneak away undetected. But more of some 14, 15 year old boys could. So, I mean, you know, I don't mean to laugh. But it's laughable.

The logic that seems to have been employed by police in this case. I don't know how to look at it any other way. I think they got a serious case of tunnel vision and went down that route. Nothing was going to sway them. Defense attorney Mary Ellen Atridge was assigned Joshua Treadway's case. After meeting with Joshua, she believed he was innocent. She was approached with an offer for a lighter sentence for her client if he cooperated with the prosecution and testified against Michael and Aaron. And I think that only strengthened her belief in Josh.

was innocence, and I think it didn't take long for the lawyers hired for the other boys to also come to believe in their innocence, and each boy's lawyer felt a prosecution had a weak case. But prosecutors disagree. They had two confessions and a hypothetical scenario that painted a deviant mind, which they thought was their proof of a conspiracy. They also had information that Michael Crow had told fellow inmates in juvenile hall that he was, quote, in for killing his sister. I think they took that as evidence that or proof that he had done it.

I don't really see it that way more. I mean, he technically was in there because they thought he had killed his sister. prosecutors were confident due to the sheer amount of evidence at the scene. Eventually, the Escondido Police Department had to obtain a cargo container for all of the items collected. 90 fingerprints were taken for analysis from the bedroom, kitchen, garage, and the family car. Stephanie had hair in her hands when she was discovered and her room was covered in blood, including pools on both the bed and floor, indicating Stephanie had tried to crawl to the hallway.

Investigators used fluorine to test for blood that couldn't be seen. Tests in the hallway showed what appeared to possibly be footprints in the carpet between the master bedroom in the kitchen. The test found stains on Michael's shoes where his hands would have touched them as he put them on. Stains were also detected on Aaron's glove, his shoe, and his rope. The fluorine testing on the best defense knife showed something on and underneath its handle, though previous tests found no blood at all. A total of 37 items, including the hair in Stephanie's hands, clothing, and swabs were sent in for testing at the Serological Research Institute lab,

and detectives worked on finding fingerprint matches. Their biggest smoking gun for premeditation was the words kill, kill found written in pencil on Stephanie's window so. But no reports found mentioned which direction the words were written in, which would indicate whether someone was inside or outside of Stephanie's room when it was written. Defense attorney Atrich visited the container where all the evidence was held, and she knew that the temperature was way too high to properly store the evidence they had saved. By March, the only Prince of Michaels that came back from the lab as a match were found in his own bedroom.

All of the bloody prints in Stephanie's room were her own as well. Most other prints couldn't be identified, including one bloody palm print on the master bedroom's doorframe. Only Joshua's prints were found on the best defense knife. Richard Tewitt's prints were also unable to be matched to any of the unidentified prints. So I think more if we have to go back to this fluorescent testing for blood. We talked about a lot of stains that were found. None of them turned out to be blood. So investigators knew there was no DNA and no blood on the best defense knife,

no blood on Aaron's glove, robe, or shoe. the hair in Stephanie's hands couldn't be identified. And DNA testing on Aaron's glove was inconclusive. Now, to police, they believed that this was because the boys had so carefully planned the murder. They had carried it out in a way that essentially left no DNA or blood on any of their stuff. It wasn't because they were innocent. But no doubt, the evidence. The evidence against the three teens seemed very weak. But that didn't stop the witch hunt against these three boys. But you have to ask a number of questions. How did these three teenage boys manage to plan a murder, carry it out, and leave no evidence of themselves at what was really a very messy

scene? How did they manage to stay clean during a crime that covered an entire room in blood. But prosecutors had an answer for this. They said one boy held Stephanie's comforter over her head and body as Michael and Aaron stabbed her. Prosecutors argued that the crime was so vicious, so heinous that the three boys should be tried as adults. And the judge presiding over the case agreed. In October 1998, renowned forensic pathologist Werner Spitz gave prosecuting attorney Summers Stephan his report, which found that Aaron's best defense knife, the one found under Joshua's bed, or one exactly like it, killed Stephanie Crow. Spitz didn't photograph or preserve any of the paper or model in clay he stabbed in his experiments and recreations.

John I. Thornton, a forensic scientist at the private analytical specialties laboratory, gave his report that disagreed with Spitz. Thornton preserved his clay molds and noted that its unique hilt did not leave a mark on Stephanie, as would be expected of the best defense knife, and some of her injuries were deeper than the blade of that knife. The prosecution believed that one person could not have straddled Stephanie, held the comforter down, and killed her by themselves. But consultants defense attorney Atrich hired proved that one person could indeed have committed the murder of Stephanie Crow. But despite holes in the prosecution's theory, the trial moved forward. Atrich was prepared to prove that it was plausible that one suspect could have killed Stephanie with an elaborate demonstration, including her 13-year-old daughter and fake blood packs.

In January 1999, retesting was finished on the clothes to it was wearing when he was arrested the day Stephanie was found. Stephanie's blood was found on both the sweatshirt and the T-shirt he was photographed wearing that day. When this information came to the attention of prosecutors, the district attorney's office dropped the charges against the boys without prejudice, meaning that they could be tried again at any time, but they offered no public apology or acknowledgement of any mistakes. And I think more if that's something else that you often see in a lot of cases. We're hard charging towards trying to say that you killed someone, even though our case is very weak. And then all of a sudden information comes to light that, you know, really casts a lot of doubt about someone's guilt. So we're going to drop the charges.

But we can't apologize. and we can't admit to any wrongdoing, right? No one in authority is going to come out and say, eh, maybe we shouldn't have pressured these boys, interrogated them the way that we did, none of that. I get it.

They were out to find Stephanie's killer, and they went down a certain path to get there because they were so held down on going down that path. but when they found out they were wrong, I think the very least they owed these families was an apology. But I also understand the reason why they don't give it, right? To apologize, to admit mistakes would open themselves up for some type of civil case. And then you're talking about having to probably pay out millions of dollars, not that they wouldn't be open to it anyway, just kind of, you know, the mere fact that you come out and admit mistakes really

give someone a lot of ammunition to go after you. And I think it's important to remember, too, that they drop the charges without prejudice. And that means they could be tried again at any time. So they wanted to leave that door open. So that might be one more reason for not apologizing. Armed with the new damning evidence against Richard Toot, the prosecutor said, set out to make a case against him. In 2004, Richard Toot was tried and convicted for the murder of Stephanie Crowe and sentenced to 16 years in prison. At a court date for jury selection during this

trial, Tewitt was able to escape from custody in San Diego and he made it to Claremont about 15 minutes north, I think a lot of people would make the argument that if Richard Tewitt was able to get his handcuffs off, slip out of a holding cell in a courthouse without really any problems, he could probably make it into a house full of sleeping people through an unlocked door and commit this murder. It was also revealed that the night of Stephanie's murder between 928 and 10 p.m. a police officer named Gary West drove up to the Crow House looking for the person who had been knocking on doors because it had been reported by a number of neighbors. The motion detector light above the garage went on when he pulled up and he saw the laundry room door shut. He didn't investigate any further and left the scene and reported that the suspect was gone prior to his arrival.

Stephen Crow later remembered that when he ran to the end of his driveway to flag down paramedics early the next morning, he noticed that the laundry room was both locked and deadbolted, which was unusual. Despite the blood evidence on his clothing, in September 2011, to its conviction was overturned by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals because the defense failed to cross-examine a witness, and it was considered a Sixth Amendment violation. Stephen and Cheryl Crow filed a lawsuit against the Escondido Sheriff's Department, the prosecutors, the city of Oceanside, and others involved in targeting and violating their son Michael Crow's civil rights.

The lawsuit was settled in October 2011, with the Crows being awarded $7.25 million. A separate suit by the Crows against a psychologist settled for about $1 million. Aaron Houser sued multiple Escondido officers, an Oceanside police officer, and a psychologist. Those suits were also settled in 2011. And that's what I was kind of talking about earlier, right? Opening yourself up for some type of civil litigation, which often happens in these types of cases. I was surprised more that we couldn't find anything about Joshua Treadway or his family.

because it seemed as though as we went through what happened to him, it was pretty rough. I think it's clear that while all three of those boys were really put through the ringer, he seemed to get the worst of it and spent the most amount of time being grilled. In May 2012, Judge Kenneth Soe declared Michael Crow, Aaron Hauser, and Joshua Treadway factually innocent, 14 years after Stephanie's murder. There was no physical evidence that any of the boys were in Stephanie's room. Even if the hair in her hands had been identified as Michaels, he lived in the home. And she could have gotten the hair tangled in her fingers as she crawled on the

carpet of her bedroom floor. The hair has never been identified. The judge pointed out that long hours without food or sleep have proven to make people more susceptible to giving false confessions. And when the boys were interrogated, they didn't have attorneys or guardians present. Their confessions were ruled as being coerced. This factual innocence meant no one could bring charges against the boys for the murder again. And the case against them was finally officially closed. In 2013, prosecutors once again brought Richard Toot to it to

trial, this time trying to convict him on voluntary manslaughter, but in December that year, Toot was acquitted of the charges. Jurors who voted not guilty believed that his clothing had been contaminated with Stephanie's blood somehow at the lab. No other physical evidence tied to it to Stephanie's murder. Technically, Stephanie Crow's murder is still unsolved, but her parents believe that Richard Toot is the man responsible, and they fear that jurors will regret letting him free if he kills another person. So morph as we wrap up this case, no doubt. It's a very tough one. I mean, you're talking about the murder of a 12-year-old girl. And I think anytime you're discussing that subject, it's going to be rough. But then you look at these three boys who were also young,

14, 15 years old, what they went through, being accused of the murder, going long hours, without food or sleep and essentially being, you know, browbeaten into saying things that they knew were not correct. That's a situation that no parent would want their children to be in. And I also think that it's tough, that it took 14 years to officially clear them of suspicion. So you think about, you know, they were almost 30 years old. By the time this happened, that's a lot of time to live under a cloud of suspicion. Now, not from your family. I think the family of all three of these boys knew that they didn't have anything to do

with Stephanie's murder. But there's still a cloud of suspicion. I'm sure there were other people that thought, well, maybe they did it. We don't know. it'd be rough to live that way. Yeah, because that stigma never really goes away. And even if they're innocent, there's still those people that might say, hey, isn't that the boy that killed that girl, Stephanie, you might have some of that going on.

For me, this whole case, I applaud good police work when I see it, but I've got to call out bad police work when I see it. And I feel in this case, there was an early rush to judgment tunnel vision. They locked on to a theory and didn't follow the evidence. they followed their theory, it led them down a road where there was no turning back. They were held bent on making their theory fit the facts versus the other way around. I come away with a case like this telling my kids, hey, respect law enforcement. But at the same time, I'm going to tell my kids, if they ever find themselves in a position like this,

where they're being questioned about something, I'm going to tell them to not say a thing and ask for an attorney. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. And I think we've seen through all of the cases that we've researched, you know, some people go in and they want to talk to the cops because they think, okay, as long as I tell the truth, I'm okay. Well, that's the way it should be. Unfortunately, we've seen time and time again where things have gone awry. Now, you can, make the case that this was malicious on the part of the police. I don't think it always is. You know, I think they're trying to do their job. I think they're trying to catch a killer and solve a murder. And like you said, sometimes they get tunnel vision. But at the same time,

it's been proven that sometimes they go down a path that they know is wrong. And, you know, that ends up getting them in trouble. And it's not right. We know it's not right. But I think at the end of the day, it's heartbreaking that Stephanie's murder has not been solved. And I think you have to ask the question. Would it have been solved if the police,

if the detectives and investigators had not gone down the path that they did? If they had followed other leads or tried to develop, other leads, you know, you always have to look at that in a case where we know police get tunnel vision and they kind of exclude everybody else. Well, somebody in that everybody else category is the killer. The fact that there's still lingering questions here is pretty troubling. The boys didn't match physical evidence at the scene. Richard Tewitt on the surface seems like the perfect suspect, but some things excluded him as well. Is there another person out there that's gotten away with this murder?

That's really scary. I think if you look at the online sentiment about this case, there's a lot of people that think Richard to it is the most likely person. But I also think there's a very good chance that it's someone else completely. And police have never figured out who that is. is, I go back to my statement. You know, would they have had a better chance if they had not been so laser focused in on this theory of 14, 15 year old boys conspiring to kill a young girl?

And I think the answer is definitely yes. Thanks goes out to Sunny Lannon for writing and research assistants in this episode. As always, if you love the show and haven't done so yet, go out, give us a five-star rating. Leave us a review, but keep telling your friends. That word of mouth about the podcast really goes a long way. If you'd like to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Criminology Podcast or by joining our Facebook discussion group, Criminology Podcast, Discussion and Fans.

So more if that is it for another episode of Criminology. But we'll be back with everyone next Saturday night with a brand new episode. So for Mike and Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.