She Was Stabbed To Death In Her Bedroom, And Her Teen Brother Was Coerced Into Confessing

On the morning of January 21st, 1998, 12-year-old Stephanie Crowe was found by her family in a pool of blood on the floor of her own bedroom in Escondido, California.

The night before, Stephanie had done her homework before going to bed. In the middle of the night, someone had stabbed Stephanie nine times.

Her parents, Stephen and Cheryl, her little sister, her grandma, and her 14-year-old brother, Michael, were in the house, but there was no sign of forced entry, and police never found the murder weapon.

Stephanie's loved ones hadn't heard anything and must have slept through what happened in her bedroom. Investigators soon decided it looked like an "inside job."

They did not treat the stranger the neighbors had called about as a suspect and instead assumed someone in Stephanie's family had taken her life.

The night Stephanie died, witnesses told police that a disoriented man was seen in the neighborhood, knocking on doors and looking in windows.

He told one neighbor he was looking for a girl named Tracy, and he had on a red sweatshirt with Stephanie's blood on it. Stephanie's blood was also later found on his undershirt.

The man was Richard Tuite, a 28-year-old transient who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Police picked him up the next day, took his clothes, questioned him for about 20 minutes, and let him go.

Richard maintained that he dug the sweatshirt out of a dumpster, and none of his DNA or hair was found in Stephanie's bedroom.

AnnaStills - stock.adobe.com - illustrative purposes only - pictured above is a girl's bedroom

Suddenly, Michael, a quiet, shy teenager who enjoyed video games, became the main suspect. Investigators found him aloof, and his bedroom was directly across from Stephanie's.

Early that morning, Michael walked past Stepahnie's bedroom and headed to the kitchen so he could get Tylenol and milk for his headache.

Stephanie's bedroom door was open, with her body blocking the doorway, so investigators thought it sounded suspicious that Michael walked right by and didn't notice his sister lying there.

After hours of questioning over two days, Michael said he had done it. He missed his sister's funeral. Police thought Michael killed Stephanie because she had better grades than he did and was far more popular.

Police then turned to two of his 15-year-old friends, Joshua Treadway and Aaron Houser. Joshua was questioned overnight, and in a second interview about two weeks later, which lasted nearly 10 hours, he gave a detailed account of a hypothetical plot to kill Stephanie.

Aaron never confessed, but he offered a hypothetical about how someone could have done it. All three boys later recanted, insisting that the authorities had pressured them, which is why they crafted false narratives.

The stories they all gave didn't even match up with the actual crime itself, and none of them were given lawyers or had their parents with them. Additionally, Michael never technically confessed; he simply told the police what he thought they wanted him to say. The judge who reviewed their statements ruled that most of what they said could not be used at trial.

Michael said afterward that investigators wore him down until he no longer trusted his own memory. Prosecutors pressed on. The three boys were charged with murder and conspiracy and spent six months in custody.

Then, in January 1999, while a jury was being selected, a bombshell hit. Attorney Mary Ellen Attridge, who represented Joshua, had insisted that Richard's clothes be retested. The Escondido police lab had found no blood on his red sweatshirt; however, a Bay Area lab found three drops that matched Stephanie.

The case against the boys fell apart, and the charges were dropped. It took until May 2002 for the California Attorney General's office to charge Richard. At the start of his trial in 2004, he slipped his handcuffs, walked out of the courthouse, and boarded a bus before he was caught hours later.

Prosecutor Jim Dutton called it a "blitz attack" that took only seconds. The defense argued the blood could have been transferred by police, and that the boys killed her. Jurors didn't agree, and on May 26, 2004, they convicted Richard of voluntary manslaughter.

He was sentenced to 13 years, with four more added for the escape. The case wasn't over. In September 2011, the Ninth Circuit overturned the conviction in a 2-1 ruling, finding the trial judge had wrongly limited the defense's cross-examination of a prosecution witness.

In October 2013, a second trial began. Defense attorney Brad Patton argued there was no evidence Richard had ever been inside the house, which he said was locked.

Deputy Attorney General Alana Butler told jurors Richard was obsessed with a woman named Tracy and went in through an open door. After five weeks, on December 6, 2013, the jury found him not guilty.

A juror later told reporters there was no evidence Richard had been in the house, and the jury worried that the blood got onto his shirts through contamination.

Stephanie's mom has never wavered. She told NBC after the verdict, "He’s already killed my daughter. It’s just a matter of time before he does it to someone else’s child."

The Crowes had also sued Escondido police, county prosecutors and others, and in October 2011 they settled for $7.25 million. On May 22, 2012, Superior Court Judge Kenneth So ruled that Michael, Joshua and Aaron were factually innocent, a rare finding that destroyed the records of their arrests and prosecutions.

No one has been convicted of Stephanie's murder.