CA CA - Stephanie Crowe, 12, Escondido, 21 January 1998

[LovelyPigeon]

I can't help but wonder--if the 3 teens had gone to trial, would there be believeable expert testimony that the knife didn't match the cuts on the comforter, etc? Would the defense and any of their experts have been derided by posters?

If I were juror, I would vote guilty for Tuite.

 

[Love_Mama]

Believe me all of you, this is a very strange case. I live in San Diego and watched this from the beginning. I honestly at this point don't know what to think.....Know this link has been posted....but thought I'd just copy this part of it. I'm going to print this one out!
xxxxxxxxo
mama

Evidence: Tuite's red sweat shirt.
In CSI's hands: Using state-of-the art technology, investigators examine it closely right away, find any bloodstains and test it for DNA. Reality check: Escondido police put the shirt in a paper bag and don't examine it until three months after the slaying. They see no blood on the shirt and spray it with fluorescein, an uncommon blood-detection technique. Still nothing. Months later, an independent lab finds stains on the shirt, determines they are blood and does DNA profiling that links the drops to Stephanie.

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Evidence: Tuite's white T-shirt.
In CSI's hands: Immediate examination, location of all bloodstains, DNA testing. Reality check: Examining it three months after the slaying, detectives see blood stains on the front of the shirt, circle them with black pen, and send the garment to another lab for DNA testing. That lab identifies circled stains as Tuite's blood, and does no further examination. Five years later, a third lab looks at the entire shirt and finds more bloodstains by the bottom hem; DNA testing links them to Stephanie.

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Evidence: Blood-stain interpretation.
In CSI's hands: Technicians determine from the size, shape and pattern of the stains how they got on the shirts. This helps tell them how the stabbing happened. Reality check: Experts agree that the stains on the white T-shirt are smears, but they disagree about the red sweat shirt. Prosecution witnesses say the stains appear to be spatter, as would be seen when blood is cast off a knife during a stabbing, and a defense consultant says it could be dried blood that was rehydrated – as in flecks falling off a tripod and then being sprayed with fluorescein.

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Evidence: Best Defense Knife.
In CSI's hands: Knife, found under Treadway's bed, is tested for blood, compared to Stephanie's wounds and conclusively ruled in or out as the murder weapon. Reality check: Police spray fluorescein on knife, think there might be blood, send it to another lab. No blood is found. Medical examiner says knife is consistent with some of the wounds, inconsistent with others – as would be an untold number of other knives.

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Evidence: Items found in Tuite's pockets.
In CSI's hands: Technicians examine Snickers wrapper, cough-drop wrapper, matchbooks and coins to see if they can be linked to the Crowe house by fingerprints or other evidence. Items are saved. Reality check: Police take photographs of the items but don't fingerprint them and give them back to Tuite when he is released after brief questioning.

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Evidence: Fingerprints at the Crowe house.
In CSI's hands: If the suspected killer left fingerprints, technicians find them, lift them cleanly, positively identify them. Reality check: Police lift approximately 90 fingerprints but are able to positively identify less than half of them because of "insufficient ridge characteristics." None match Tuite (or Treadway or Houser).

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Evidence: Bloody shoe print.
In CSI's hands: The print, found on a piece of paper on the floor of Stephanie's bedroom, is compared to shoes worn by the suspected killer in an attempt to link him to the house. Reality check: The shoe belonged to a police evidence technician, who accidentally stepped in the blood.

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Evidence: Hairs in Stephanie's hands.
In CSI's hands: Hair is linked through DNA to a suspect. In a flashback, viewers see Stephanie pulling it from the killer's head during a struggle.
Reality check: Hairs are not positively identified. Some appear to belong to animals. Police eventually conclude she probably got them in her hand as she crawled along the floor after she was stabbed.

 

[Babcat]

Well... one place she did not get those hairs was from her brother's head, or anyone else's head, in the process of being killed. Hairs retrieved in that fashion would have been forcibly pulled from the scalp and most likely contain enough NUCLEAR DNA to match conclusively to one person. Hairs that lay on carpet for even the short period of time of 24 hrs appear under a microscope as in the first phases of drying out, and beginning to become brittle to some degree. Hairs pulled during a defensive attempt on the part of Stephanie would be still moist and appear recently shed. Even if they could say through Mitochondrial DNA that the hairs belong to a child in the home or to Cheryl or Cheryl's mother (which is the best profile MDNA can give) it means nothing since they all lived there at the time of the crime. With MDNA only Stephanie's father could be ruled out in the family. If nuclear DNA existed on the hairs, such as skin fragments from the scalp, a definitive match to a certain family member could be made. And yet since that member would live there... there would still be wiggle room... but not enough to convince a jury it is unrelated IMO. If there is any nuclear DNA present clinging to the hairs then it has been horribly irresponsible of the police if they haven't had a profile made.

As far as Tuite's sweatshirt... some of the greatest blood spatter experts in the nation have firmly taken the stand of this being a spatter pattern, not a chance contamination.

We could make this into a Westerfield convoluted explanation about Stephanie playing truth or dare with Richard Tuite at an earlier time and coincidentally getting a nosebleed. And then coincidentally blowing her nose without the aid of a tissue, therefore spraying blood on the poor unsuspecting fellow, who would coincidentally surface as a suspect despite the railroad job done on three young teen boys.

Tuite killed Stephanie. There is no reasonable doubt.

 

[Doyle]

Urging the jurors to use their common sense and reason, a state prosecutor argued yesterday that "dynamite" DNA evidence in the case against Richard Tuite proves he killed Stephanie Crowe.

"There is no other reason for the blood on his clothing," Assistant Attorney General David Druliner said as closing arguments in the trial began in San Diego Superior Court.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/crowe/20040511-9999-1m11tuite.html

 

[Up2theminute]

Love Mama, that is a very interesting comparison of how things should of or would have happened had they been in the hands of a skilled CSI Team in comparison to how the Escondido police handled it. So true too!

 

[Ghostwheel]

Evidence: Blood-stain interpretation.
In CSI's hands: Technicians determine from the size, shape and pattern of the stains how they got on the shirts. This helps tell them how the stabbing happened. Reality check: Experts agree that the stains on the white T-shirt are smears, but they disagree about the red sweat shirt. Prosecution witnesses say the stains appear to be spatter, as would be seen when blood is cast off a knife during a stabbing, and a defense consultant says it could be dried blood that was rehydrated – as in flecks falling off a tripod and then being sprayed with fluorescein.

Flecks falling off a tridpod, then sprayed with fluorescein? Wow, they are reaching. Try taking some dried blood, putting it on a piece of sweatshirt, and "re-hydrating" it. The pattern is not even similar to blood spatter. (Remember, I make stained glass. I've cut myself, spattered myself, dried blood on myself, smeared blood on myself, "re-hydrated" blood on myself and done the same to everything around me-you should have seen the time a very pointed piece of glass hit the vein in the top of my foot)

 

[Doyle]

Pointing to the lack of fingerprint, hair or fiber evidence, a defense attorney told jurors yesterday that prosecutors have failed to prove Richard Tuite killed Stephanie Crowe.

"We're not talking about innocence here – nobody is innocent," Bill Fletcher said on the second day of closing arguments in the San Diego Superior Court trial. "We're talking about whether the state has proven its case."
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/crowe/20040512-9999-1mi12tuite.html

 

[Doyle]

Both sides traded closing-argument volleys in the Richard Tuite murder trial yesterday, offering now-familiar and sharply conflicting versions of who killed Stephanie Crowe.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/crowe/20040513-9999-1mi13tuite.html

The eight women and four men deciding the fate of murder defendant Richard Tuite spent five hours deliberating without reaching a verdict yesterday after getting the case shortly before 10 a.m.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/crowe/20040514-9999-1mi14tuite.html

 

[LovelyPigeon]

Tuite was not a neighbor of the Crowe's. He was never known to the Crowes at all, and vice versa. There is no known incidence that he was ever invited inside the Crowe home. No contact with any of the Crowes. No comparison to the Van Dam/Westerfield case.

 

[Babcat]

LP,

Are you answering a post of mine? I'm confused.

But whether you are or aren't... In the Crowe case:

Richard Tuite's sister went to school with Sheryl Crowe and they did know each other. There is, however, no evidence that the Crowes knew Richard, who was much younger than his sister. There is no evidence he was ever in the Crowe home by invitation.

Though Tuite was not a neighbor in the sense that he did not live in that neighborhood, he was not a transient either. And he wasn't homeless. He had lived right there in that area his entire life, and he did have "friends" (most likely drug associates) that lived in that neighborhood at one time. Whether the elusive Tracy did drugs or just hung around with people who did, she lived in that neighborhood at one time with a relative, I believe her grandparents.

In the Westerfield case:

David Westerfield was obviously a neighbor of the Van Dams and lived only a couple of doors away. However, there is no evidence they "knew" him, other than to wave in a friendly manner (as anyone would to a neighbor), or to sell Girl Scout cookies since they visited every neighbor door to door on their block. There is no evidence he was ever in the Van Dam home by invitation, just like Tuite was never in the Crowe home. In fact, Westerfield himself claimed he had "never been invited."


In both cases:

In both the Tuite case and the Westerfield case, no fingerprints or other evidence was found to prove conclusively that either had been in the "crime scene home" of either person's particular case.

In both cases DNA blood evidence belonging to the little girl victim was found on clothing belonging to the defendants with no reasonable explanation other than involvement in the victim's demise. Though both defendants had attorneys that attempted to present a convoluted set of circumstances to explain such evidence away... neither met the criteria of "reasonable". In the Tuite case there was no evidence of any prior contact with the victim at all, and in the Westerfield case there was no evidence of the victim's contact with that item of clothing, and certainly not while bleeding in any manner. In fact there was no evidence the victim ever physically touched the defendant, or his clothing, at all!

In both cases family members were openly accused in the press of being involved. In the Tuite case, Michael Crowe was first accused in the press because the police had supposedly obtained a confession, later proven to be coerced. In the Westerfield case the parents were accused because the press always accuses the parents with no basis, as we have seen time after time in case after case.

In both cases the defendants were under the influence... in Tuite's case, drugs, in Westerfield's case, alcohol.

Richard Tuite actually makes a more sympathetic defendant. He was previously diagnosed as mentally ill (schizophrenic), and the MO of leaving the victim right where she was killed and calmly walking away, tends to point to that very diagnosis. I believe it is not clear whether or not Tuite even realized, or remembered, he had murdered Stephanie Crowe. Though, on the flip side, it is clear that he was full of rage and did have the intent to kill Tracy, so it really doesn't matter who his victim ultimately was (except perhaps to Tracy herself whom I'm sure has thanked God often... and the Crowes who have to wonder how their daughter ended up the wildcard, and I'm sure often ask God "why.")

Westerfield is completely unsympathetic. He is not mentally ill. He knew exactly what he was doing as is evidenced by his extreme attempts to elude detection by use of the local cleaners, his own washer and dryer, and the remote location he chose for the dumping of the victim's body... like a piece of used up trash.

The same location he was willing to map when he thought he could make a deal to spare his life. :loser:

 

[Doyle]

A mistrial looms in the Richard Tuite murder case after jurors said yesterday afternoon that they were deadlocked and unlikely to reach a verdict.

The conflict apparently centers on the critical question of how drops of Stephanie Crowe's blood got on two of Tuite's shirts – through the act of stabbing her to death or through accidental police contamination.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/crowe/20040520-9999-1mi20tuite.html

 

[Ghostwheel]

Though Tuite was not a neighbor in the sense that he did not live in that neighborhood, he was not a transient either. And he wasn't homeless.

Just an FYI-
"Although Tuite was homeless at the time of the January 1998 killing, he is a longtime San Diego County resident with family ties in the community, the defense attorney said.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/crowe/20020517-889-transien.html

And he was at least a partial transient. He lived in North County, but that consists of Escondido, Oceanside, Carlsbad, etc. (North County is HUGE) These areas are miles and miles apart, and he was spotted in at least those three. Thereby making him a transient, at least in the Oceanside and Carlsbad areas, since he didn't stay there long.

 

[BirdieBoo]

Tuite himself has proven that he can be sneaky and slip in and out of builings and situations unnoticed. He did after all sneak right out of the courthouse during his own highly publicized murder trial.

 

[Doyle]

A jury trying to decide the fate of a former transient accused of killing a 12-year-old Escondido girl in 1998 deliberated for a sixth day today without reaching a verdict.

About mid-afternoon, jurors in the Richard Tuite murder trial sent a note to Judge Frederic Link asking for some testimony to be read back to them
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/crowe/20040524-1715-tuite.html

 

[Babcat]

Does this guy have to have one eye in the center of his forehead and long spiked teeth before people are likely to believe he is a killer? What does it take to convince some people that a psychotic meth addict is more likely to commit this crime than a 14-year-old gifted student with no prior history?

"I'm not really close to anyone," Tuite told a doctor. "I just kind of drift around."

Tuite has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and psychotic disorders. One psychologist wrote, "His desires to meet his own needs are unfettered by the complications of society's norms and standards, resulting in his behaving in an unacceptable fashion frequently."

His criminal record includes convictions for attempted burglary, auto theft, drug use, vandalism and annoying children. He has been arrested several other times, including once in 1993 on suspicion of stabbing another transient with a steak knife. That charge was dropped.

On Jan. 20, 1998, the night before 12-year-old Stephanie Crowe was found dead, Tuite was in the neighborhood, knocking on doors and peering in windows while searching for a friend named Tracy. Police were called but didn't find him.

Police stopped Tuite three times on the day the killing was reported, including once after he followed two women to their apartment doors. Just before 7 p.m., he was located panhandling near a supermarket and taken in for questioning. Tuite denied any involvement in the killing. His clothes were confiscated, he was photographed, hair and fingernail samples were taken, and then he was released.

Detectives and prosecutors later said they considered Tuite a bull in a china shop, incapable of killing Stephanie without waking others in the house and leaving any obvious traces behind.

Five days after the slaying, police were called to a Best Western hotel in Escondido and found Tuite looking for "the family of the kid who got killed." He was told to leave.

The next month, he was arrested after following two girls, ages 12 and 13, while they rode a bus home from a nearby mall. He tracked them to an Escondido apartment complex, where they quoted him as saying, "Tracy, all I want to do is have sex with you." He was convicted of a misdemeanor.

In March 1998, he was arrested for attempted burglary. He was convicted and sent to prison for three years. Released in February 2000 to the first in a series of halfway houses, he violated his parole five times, officials said. Once he escaped and made it 90 miles from Ontario to Escondido before he was caught. In November, he was found in possession of a knife.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/crowe/20020515-056-crowesla.html

This guy loves knives... doesn't mind using them... and REALLY wanted to get at Tracy.

 

[Babcat]

Sad, sorry excuse for a cop. :sick: And now the jerk lives here in Oklahoma.

At Tuite's preliminary hearing last year, Treadway testified that Claytor also told him off camera that if he went to prison he would be beaten, raped and traded among inmates for cartons of cigarettes. Treadway said the conversation took place as he was being processed at the police crime lab.

He testified that it was to avoid prison at any cost that he finally told Claytor and other detectives an elaborate tale of conspiracy and murder using the only tool available – his imagination.

Patton yesterday tried to head off that testimony. Under the defense attorney's questioning, the retired detective said he shied away from talking to Treadway while he was being processed. "I wanted to make sure anything he said was on camera," Claytor said.

He said he never made any threats or inducements to Treadway at the crime lab, adding that he was gone part of the time buying the teen a soda at a downstairs vending machine. "It was a very congenial time," Claytor said.

Yeah... real congenial... as he lied to a 15-year-old child, denied him food, bathroom breaks, and told him horror stories about adult prisons and rape of young inmates. Are we suppose to believe that Joshua Treadway came up with passing around an inmate for sex in trade for cigarettes all by himself off the top of his head? My 14-year-old would have told them whatever they wanted to hear at that point... including her participation in the JFK assassination, Manson murders, and her abduction by aliens!~

But Claytor admitted collaborating on a book about the Crowe slaying in which he and Chris McDonough, an Oceanside police detective involved in the interrogations, concluded that the three teens, not Tuite, killed Stephanie.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/crowe/20040325-9999-news_1mc25tuite.html

How quaint. Well, I'm just glad Stephanie can serve as supplemental income for ex detective Claytor, since he worked so hard to railroad her brother and friends, against all logic. I wonder if book sales would hinge at all on the outcome of Tuite's trial... :waitasec: Claytor can join the morally questionable ranks of Steve Thomas, the "homicide detective wannabe" (you know the kind... "As a homicide detective, Steve, you make a great meter reader!" ...) , who also sought to profit from a fantasy book fraught with convoluted, embarassingly amateurish reasoning, about another dead child.

 

[Babcat]

Just an FYI-
"Although Tuite was homeless at the time of the January 1998 killing, he is a longtime San Diego County resident with family ties in the community, the defense attorney said.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/...9-transien.html


And he was at least a partial transient. He lived in North County, but that consists of Escondido, Oceanside, Carlsbad, etc. (North County is HUGE) These areas are miles and miles apart, and he was spotted in at least those three. Thereby making him a transient, at least in the Oceanside and Carlsbad areas, since he didn't stay there long.

Just FYI back attcha Ghostwheel. ... (teasing here... using sarcasm but not meant to be nasty.)

http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/2829226/detail.html
The accused child killer's sister, Kerri, and mother, Linda, said that he was an innocent man with a family who has done all they can to deal with his illness, working within a system that is ill-equipped to deal with such problems. They also said he has been mistakenly portrayed by prosecutors and the press as a transient.

"He always had a home; he always had a place to come," said Kerri. "We always made sure he had money, clothes, things. He's the baby of the four of us. It's just the system -- they don't do anything for our mentally ill."

So the system is responsible as far as his family is concerned, because "the system" just doesn't do enough for the mentally ill. I have to wonder why his family didn't do more for him. If they thought their hands were tied and there was only so much they could do, what did they expect of "the system"?

And is Richard Tuite really afflicted with Paranoid Schizophrenia? I seriously doubt it.

Among meth users who smoke the drug, lung problems are common. And long-term users often suffer a host of complications as a result of poor nutrition related to the drug's appetite-suppressing quality. At drug treatment centers, counselors say, you can identify the meth users by their terrible teeth, which are either rotted away or ground down.

But meth's most profound and disturbing effects are on the brain. When used heavily, the drug can produce psychotic symptoms that are all but indistinguishable from paranoid schizophrenia. "We sometimes see similar symptoms with crack cocaine users, but it's much more prominent with methamphetamine," observes Christine Cloak, a neuroscientist at Brookhaven National Laboratories. So much so, in fact, that researchers like Cloak are hoping further study of methamphetamine abuse might shed some light on the mysteries of schizophrenia.
http://www.citypages.com/databank/24/1171/article11254.asp

Richard Tuite has very normal parents and siblings who probably don't carry a gene for schizophrenia at all... as is usually required for triggering the actual mental illness. Instead, Tuite has fried his brain on meth for so long that his "schizophrenia" is actually drug induced brain damage.

 

[Ghostwheel]

I read that article, but I take no stock in what the family says because if his family's house was his home, why wasn't he living there? How can you call that a home if you don't live there, and it is not your permanent residence? Besides, just because your family says you can come and live with them does not mean you are not a transient. Transient means you do not stay in one place for long periods of time. A person who travels a lot is a transient.

It also doesn't matter if his family says he was welcome to be home, it does not mean he lived there, wanted to or ever did at any time. The man was homeless because he chose to be. As an example, your sister can tell you that you are welcome to stay at her house, and if you don't stay there, it isn't your home.

May be a semantics thing, but I still go by the dictionary definitions of transient: passing through or by a place with only a brief stay and homeless:having no home or permanent place of residence.

 

[Babcat]

It's just that I have a hard time picturing a "transient" who wanders in circles around and around the same area... the very area in which he was born and raised. And I have a hard time picturing a homeless man who can get money, clean clothes, a shower, and food, anytime he would care to, simply by going to his parents' home or his siblings' homes. And he is always in the position to do that, since he never really leaves the general area during his transient roaming. Do you see what I mean now?

I take no stock in what the family says because if his family's house was his home, why wasn't he living there?

Simple! He didn't live there because he was a drug addict. Most family members love their kin enough to give them the shirt off their back... but it is unlikely they will sit complacently and watch him do drugs. It would be pretty hard to do the amount of drugs he was doing and remain secretive about it, so as to keep the family "in the dark"... so to speak. Methamphetamines cost a great deal of money. Tuite wasn't working a regular job with steady income for any significant amount of time. Where do you suppose he got the cash to support that habit? Possibly some of it came from burglaries... (a skill that would make him most adept at getting in and out of homes quietly unnoticed, BTW.) But it is a good bet that some of that money came from well meaning family members who opted to remain ignorant to the severity of his drug use... choosing instead to believe his behavior could be explained away as "mental illness".

 

[Love_Mama]

Jury is in...........

Tuite guilty of manslaughter!
Mama
xxxxxo

Tuite Jury Gives Mixed Verdicts
Tuite Not Guilty Of Murder, Guilty Of Voluntary Manslaughter

POSTED: 11:18 am PDT May 26, 2004
UPDATED: 1:04 pm PDT May 26, 2004

SAN DIEGO -- Richard Tuite was convicted Wednesday of voluntary manslaughter in the 1998 slaying of a 12-year-old girl who was stabbed to death in her bedroom while her family slept in their home.

After eight days of deliberations, a jury acquitted Tuite, 35, of the more serious charges of first- and second-degree murder in the death of Stephanie Crowe. The trial lasted 3-and-a-half months.

"You people have probably been involved in the most complicated criminal cases I've seen in 37 years... I know this was not an easy case for you," Judge William Link told the jurors after the verdicts were read.

Tuite is scheduled to be sentenced on July 29 at 9 a.m.

Crowe was found slain in her bedroom on the morning of Jan. 21, 1998. She had been stabbed nine times.

Prosecutors initially targeted Stephanie's then-14-year-old brother, Michael, and two of his high school friends. Charges against them were dropped a year later when drops of the girl's blood were found on a shirt Tuite wore the night of the slaying.

Defense attorneys, however, argued the shirt was contaminated by police during their investigation and their strategy was centered on the contention that Michael Crowe and his friends, Joshua Treadway and Aaron Houser, were involved in the slaying.

Defense lawyer Brad Patton said in closing arguments that Crowe hated his sister and was obsessed with violent video games. He also reminded jurors that he and Treadway confessed to the killing, although authorities later ruled that the confessions from the boys had been coerced during lengthy police interrogations.

Assistant Attorney General David Druliner described the defense argument as "utterly ridiculous" and "idiotic." He said the DNA evidence was strong evidence of Tuite's guilt.

Neighbors had reported seeing Tuite in the suburban neighborhood around the time of the slaying. Some said he had knocked on doors asking for a young woman named Tracy Nelson. Escondido police briefly questioned Tuite but released him after deciding the habitual drug user and diagnosed schizophrenic was incapable of committing the crime, which required someone to enter Stephanie's room and kill her while five other people were in the home.

A month later, Tuite was arrested after two Escondido girls said he followed them off a bus. He was arrested again in March 1998 after trying to break into an Oceanside trailer home and was sentenced to three years in prison.

In 2000, he escaped from an Ontario halfway house but was captured and returned to prison. While at a halfway house in 2001, he was returned to prison after being caught with a knife.

Shortly before he was to be released from prison in May 2002, he was charged in the girl's slaying.

As jury selection for his trial got underway in February, Tuite walked away from the courthouse in downtown San Diego after slipping from his handcuffs during a lunch break. He was captured 4 hours later at a pay phone about 10 miles away.