Michigan prosecutor on warning signs: Ethan Crumbley had bird head in jar, mom had affair

Michigan prosecutor on warning signs: Ethan Crumbley had bird head in jar, mom had affair

By THE DETROIT NEWS

PUBLISHED: December 24, 2021

By James David Dickson | The Detroit News

Rochester Hills — In the weeks leading up to the Oxford school shooting, suspect Ethan Crumbley’s dog died, his only friend moved and he carried a baby bird’s head in a jar to school, prosecutors said.

Despite signs of sadness and disturbing text messages, his mom engaged in an extramarital affair and both parents spent hours each week tending to the family’s horses, prosecutors claim.

“Instead of paying attention to their son and getting him help, they bought him a gun,” Oakland County prosecutors wrote in a court filing Thursday.

Prosecutors filed a pointed rebuke of James and Jennifer Crumbley, who are seeking to have their $500,000 bond lowered at a Jan. 7 hearing. They remain jailed on charges of involuntary manslaughter after their son was accused of killing four classmates at Oxford High School on Nov. 30.

Prosecutors also for the first time released troubling drawings that officials say caused teachers to remove Ethan from class hours before the shooting.

Attorneys for the couple, Shannon Smith and Mariell Lehman of Bloomfield Hills, have asked a judge to reduce their individual bonds from $500,000 to $100,000 and release them on an electronic tether.

This is exhibit one of filing from Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald showing an image of the picture Ethan Crumbley allegedly drew the day of the shooting at Oxford High School. (Provide by Office of Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald) 

Prosecutor Karen McDonald’s office argued in the filing that the $500,000 bonds should not be lowered and the couple is “a greater risk of flight now than they were at the time of arraignment.”

Assistant Prosecutor Mark Keast argued in the 35-page response Thursday that the motion earlier this week to reduce their bonds left out important details.

“As of October 18 2021, they were over $11,000 behind on their house payments. Their house is currently for sale. They have sold their horses,” Keast wrote. “They have already shown that they will flee if given the opportunity.”

Earlier this week, the couple’s attorneys contended in a court filing that the gun was properly locked away and they had no reason to believe Ethan Crumbley was a threat to himself or others.

The Crumbleys’ attorneys, Smith and Lehman, didn’t immediately respond Thursday evening to requests for comment.

All three Crumbleys face criminal charges in the shooting at Oxford High School in which Ethan Crumbley is accused of killing four people and wounding seven.

Ethan Crumbley, 15, faces 24 counts of first-degree murder, terrorism and felony firearm charges; his parents face four counts each of involuntary manslaughter.

Their son was denied bond.

This is exhibit two of a filing from Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald showing an image of the picture Ethan Crumbley allegedly drew the day of the shooting at Oxford High School. Exhibit two shows that some images and words have been crosseds out and other positive messages have been added, such as “I love my life so much!!!” and “We’re all friends here.” (Provide by Office of Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald) 

Judge Julie Nicholson at 52-3 District Court in Rochester Hills is expected to consider the issue of the couple’s bonds at the Jan. 7 hearing.

James and Jennifer Crumbley are due before Nicholson on Feb. 8 for preliminary examinations that would determine if they will stand trial.

Hana St. Juliana, 14; Madisyn Baldwin, 17; Tate Myre, 16; and Justin Shilling, 17, were killed in the shooting.

Two versions

Oxford High School shooting defendant Ethan Crumbley appears at his probable cause hearing via remote video conference on Dec. 13, 2021. The conference was adjourned and rescheduled for Jan. 7, 2022. 

In exhibits one and two, the filing shows two versions of the drawings that landed Ethan Crumbley in the high school office on Nov. 30. The first is how the drawing initially appeared when a teacher captured a screenshot and alerted a counselor to her concerns.

The second is how the drawing appeared in the school office, after the teen allegedly had modified it.

In the original, a math homework sheet is overwritten with a drawing. There is a gun, a bullet and a bleeding shooting victim. At different points, hand-written additions to the page read: “My life is useless,” “Blood everywhere” and “The thoughts won’t stop, help me.”

In the version allegedly changed, the shooting victim, the gun and the bullet are crossed out, as is “blood everywhere,” “help me” and “my life is useless.”

A crying-laughing emoji appears, along with “video game this is,” “we’re all friends here,” “harmless act,” “I love my life so much!!!!” and “OHS rocks!”

The Thursday filing portrays James and Jennifer Crumbley as preoccupied with financial woes, horses and affairs of the heart as their son spiraled.

The month before the shooting, Ethan Crumbley’s “only” friend moved away, the prosecution wrote.

The family dog recently died. And Jennifer Crumbley was involved in an affair with another man and was in communication with that man in the midst of the turmoil on Nov. 30, according to the filing. He is not identified.

Prosecutors argue Ethan Crumbley had been “sending his mother disturbing texts about his state of mind,” and his parents “were made aware, in graphic form, of the serious risk posed by their son prior to the shooting.”

“This is not a case of hindsight, where parents later wish they could have done something,” they wrote.

Jennifer Crumbley is escorted into court for a probable cause hearing in Rochester Hills on Dec. 14, 2021. She and husband James Crumbley are seeking to have their bond reduced from $500,000 to $100,000. (AP File) 

McDonald has acknowledged that it’s unusual to charge parents in a school shooting.

But in the filing, her office argued it’s also unusual for parents to play contributing roles to the shooting, by providing a weapon, not disclosing it to school officials and ignoring warning signs they were in the best position to read.

One of the warning signs, prosecutors said, is a jar Ethan Crumbley kept in his bedroom, containing the head of a baby bird. He later brought the jar to school and left it in a bathroom, they said.

The couple had also learned their son was “seen watching violent video of shootings” the morning of Nov. 30, the same day they allegedly ignored school officials describing his drawings.

“All they had to do was tell the school that they had recently purchased a gun for their son, asked him where the gun was, opened his backpack or just take him home,” the prosecution argued. “…Defendants were in a better position than anyone else in the world to prevent this tragedy, but they failed to do so.”

The filing includes a mid-November statement from Flagstar Bank to Jennifer Crumbley, showing her as $11,358 in arrears and 443 days delinquent on the mortgage on their Oxford home as of mid October. Year-to-date, only $785 had been paid on the mortgage, and $1,733 had been paid in property taxes.

It includes a Dec. 17 letter from Lehman, one of the defense attorneys, to the prosecutor’s office, disclosing that the Crumbleys were listing their Oxford home for sale.

Dispute over manhunt

James Crumbley is escorted into court for a probable cause hearing in Rochester Hills on Dec. 14, 2021. (AP File) 

The Crumbleys were the subject of a manhunt by local and federal authorities when they failed to show for an arraignment on charges on Dec. 3. Smith and Lehman argued in their filing that McDonald did not return messages from the lawyers and held a press conference on Dec. 3 knowing that Smith was in a trial and Lehman was traveling back to Michigan from Florida.

The Crumbleys’ attorneys stress neither parent is a flight risk, police have taken all their weapons and they can’t have contact with their son because he is jailed.

The prosecution argued that it was no miscommunication that led to the manhunt for the Crumbleys, but a deliberate attempt to flee, down to parking in Detroit in a way meant to hide their license plate number.

They were found with four phones and allegedly attempted to destroy one when police found them, according to the filing. Two were “burner” phones meant to evade law enforcement, the prosecution says.

Adding to their flight risk, the prosecution argued, “both defendants have substantial contacts in Florida.”

LINK

Parents knew Ethan Crumbley kept baby bird head in jar, ignored other warning signs before Oxford High School shooting: prosecutors

By JESSICA SCHLADEBECK

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |

DEC 24, 2021

Amid mounting depression and other personal issues, Ethan Crumbley placed a baby bird’s head inside a jar and brought it into school — one of several warning signs prosecutors said his parents failed to recognize in the weeks leading up to the massacre at his Michigan high school last month.

Despite the recent death of the family dog, and Ethan’s best friend moving away, James and Jennifer Crumbley allegedly brushed aside his “troubling” texts and other red flags to instead focus on their own lives. Rather than seek out help for their son, the couple, also burdened with financial trouble, spent hours on end every week tending to the family horses. His mother also allegedly engaged in an extra-marital affair with a man she continued to text, even as violence unfolded inside Oxford High School.

Oakland prosecutors made the claims on Thursday in court documents filed as a rebuke to the couple’s request that their bail be lowered to $100,000. Both James and Jennifer Crumbley are currently being held in lieu of $500,000 bond. They were each charged with involuntary manslaughter after Ethan opened fire inside the halls of his high school the afternoon of Nov. 30.

The 15-year-old allegedly shot and killed four students that day, just hours after his parents were called in to the school for a meeting with administrators about violent writings and doodles tucked between the math problems on Ethan’s homework. Prosecutors, for the first time on Thursday, released the disturbing drawings that allegedly prompted teachers to pull Ethan from class.

On an assignment about congruent triangles, Ethan scribbled a handgun, a bullet and a person seemingly lying in a pool of his own blood. Phrases including “My life is useless,” “The world is dead,” and “blood everywhere” were also written across the math worksheet.

Prosecutors said that when Ethan was confronted about the drawings, he scribbled out most of the doodles and words — replacing them with phrases like “I love my life so much!!!!” “OHS Rocks!” and “Harmless Act.”

Words written at the bottom of the page also read: “Were (sic) all friends here.”

Prosecutors said a teacher was able to snap a photo of the initial doodles before they were drawn over.

Even after being presented with the sketches, the Crumbleys refused to take Ethan home from school. Prosecutors said the decision is particularly egregious because they’d just purchased their teen son a firearm days earlier as an early Christmas present.

“Instead of paying attention to their son and getting him help, they bought him a gun,” Oakland County prosecutors wrote in the court filing, further accusing them of “willfully ignoring the needs and well-being of their son and the threat he posed to others.”

Earlier this week, the couple’s attorneys in a court filing said they believed the gun was properly locked away and that they had no reason to suspect Ethan was a threat to himself or anyone else.

Oakland Prosecutor Karen MacDonald previously acknowledged that it is unusual to charge parents in such instances, but her office noted on Thursday that the couple “were made aware, in graphic form, of the serious risk posed by their son prior to the shooting.”

“This is not a case of hindsight, where parents later wish they could have done something,” the filing continued. “These parents could have done something.”

Prosecutors also emphasized there were additional signs in the weeks leading up to the school shooting at Oxford.

“They knew that their son was depressed, that he was fascinated with guns ... that he had been researching ammunition while at a school and that he was seen watching violent videos of shootings that morning,” according to court documents.

James Crumbley, right, looks towards his wife Jennifer Crumbley during a hearing in Rochester Hills, Mich., Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2021. The parents of accused Oxford High School shooter Ethan Crumbley on Tuesday agreed to adjourn their preliminary examination on charges tied to their alleged roles in the rampage to February. James and Jennifer Crumbley are charged with four counts each of involuntary manslaughter in the Nov. 30 shooting that left four high school students dead and injured seven other people. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio) (Carlos Osorio/AP)

“Their son was torturing animals, even leaving a baby bird’s head in a jar on his bedroom floor, which he later took and placed in a school bathroom.”

Ethan is facing 24 counts in connection with the shooting, including four counts of first-degree murder and one count of terrorism causing death. He has pleaded not guilty.

A hearing to reconsider his parents’ bail amounts has been set for Jan. 7.

LINK

 

A Mother’s Love for Son, Gun and Country.

“LOL — I’m not mad. You have to learn not to get caught.”

Michael Moore Dec 6

The gun store in Oxford, Michigan where James Crumbley brought his son Ethan on Black Friday and purchased the 9mm Sig Sauer he used to kill 4 classmates.

In a nation born and built on violence, where there are now more guns in homes than there are people, a parent buys the son a gun as a gift. A Sig Sauer 9mm.

But the son is disturbed. Nonetheless, she takes him to the gun range. She wants him to be a good shot. She wants to spend time with him. She loves these mom-and-son days shooting guns. 

Then he wakes up one December morning, walks into his mother’s bedroom and blows her head off. He has four of her guns including the Sig Sauer 9mm she gave him as a gift. 

That did not happen this past week in Oxford, Michigan (about 19 miles as the crow flies from where I went to high school). It’s what took place on December 14, 2012, when the 20-year-old Adam Lanza took those guns his mother gave him to use when they went to the gun range together in Newtown, Connecticut — and after he killed her, he took them to Sandy Hook Elementary School, where he murdered 20 first-graders and 6 teachers and staff before he killed himself. The only gun he didn’t use in this bloody massacre was the Sig Sauer 9mm.

15-year old Ethan Crumbley of Oxford, MI was given his Sig Sauer as an early Christmas gift on Black Friday, 10 days ago. So exciting — why wait until the Lord’s birthday to open it ! The next day mom took Ethan to the gun range shooting all those happy bullets. Mom Jennifer Crumbley posted on Instagram: “mom and son day testing out his new Christmas present.” It wasn’t Christmas. It was November 27. 

Two days later, on Monday, November 29, Mom got a call on her voice mail from the school. She was told that Ethan was looking for ammo to buy on his mobile phone. They asked that she call them about this disturbing incident. She didn’t bother to call them back. Instead, she texted young Ethan with the excitement of a 16-year old girl: “LOL! I’m not mad. [But] You have to learn not to get caught!”

Oooh. They had a secret together! He got away with it from the school authorities! Be more careful next time when you’re looking for ammo to order, Silly you! 

The next day, on November 30, Mom Jennifer and Dad James got another call from the school to come here right now. They did. There was a teacher and a school counselor and Ethan sitting there in the high school office. Ethan had his “Christmas present” with him, but no one knew it because it was in his backpack sitting there on the floor beside him (Oxford High has no lockers due to Covid, the other pandemic). The teacher showed the Crumbleys what Ethan had drawn at his desk. A depiction of a dead person, shot twice, bleeding out. “Blood everywhere!” read the caption beside a laughing emoji. Then a drawing of his new gun pointed at these four lines:

"My life is useless. 

The world is dead. 

The thoughts won’t stop. 

Help me."

The parents were asked to take Ethan home. They refused and left. “Help me” would be his last words before Madisyn, Justin, Tate and Hana’s lives would soon end. Help me. Neither the parents nor the school would, even though he had put his request, his plea, in writing for them.  Rather, the Adults amazingly sent Ethan back to his class. Maybe they did so with their thoughts and prayers but more than likely he was just one more nuisance to Mom, Dad and a school that had a hundred other things to do that day. A couple hours later he would use his “Christmas gift” to kill four students and wound seven others, including one teacher.

Some of the students who survived by running outside were there when the media arrived to tell certain truths the school’s PR flack probably would rather they not have shared. 

“There’s been talk since last month of something eventually going down here,” said one teenager. Another said school officials were warned about Ethan the week before Thanksgiving. 

People noticed something wasn’t right. His parents must’ve too. Was their solution to cheer him up by giving him a gun? Taking him shooting? Ignoring all his distress signals? And then once he’s in jail, they flee town, abandoning their only son, because deciding to run means they may never see him again. “What parent would do that?” Everyone has asked this over the last few days since their capture. 

Who would do that? After some minimal research, I can offer you one possible explanation. On November 11, 2016, three days after Trump’s victory in Michigan and elsewhere, Ethan’s mom, Jennifer, wrote a love letter to Donald Trump. Here is the part where the mother helps us understand:

November 11, 2016 

Dear President Elect, Mr. Trump:

Feels funny to even be writing your name like that, but you made history on Tuesday. I’m not going to lie. I was scared shitless to circle your name on my ballot. I have been back and forth on whether to vote for you, or not vote at all […]

Mr. Trump, I actually love that you are a bad public speaker because that showed sincerity, and humility. You changed your mind, and you said “so what”. You made the famous “grab them in the pussy” comment, did it offend me? No. I say things all the time that people take the wrong way, do I mean them, not always. Do I agree that you should of shown your tax returns? No. I don’t care what you do or maybe don’t pay in taxes, I think those are personal and if the Gov’t can lock someone up over $10,000 of unpaid taxes and you slipped on by, then that shows the corruption. I like that you have failed. I love it even more that those failures taught lessons and made you one of the most successful Business Men in my history. I’m not scared of your big personality and quick temper. There is a whole house of representatives that still have to approve if you decide to get pissed at China and blow them up.

The Wall. The famous Wall. See Mr. Trump, I support that wall. I am not racist. In fact my grandfather came straight off the boat in Italy. Fought, struggled and had to prove his way to be an American Citizen. He went through the great depression, he then started a successful coil company here in MI where he employed other hard working Americans and paid them a good wage. I want every non-American that wants to live in this great country to have to go through the same process. I don’t even know where we went wrong with that, but if you want to be here, work here, live here damnit, fucking earn it and prove it.

As a female and a Realtor, thank you for allowing my right to bear arms. Allowing me to be protected if I show a home to someone with bad intentions. Thank you for respecting that Amendment […]

We bust our ass Mr. Trump. I pay taxes, my husband pays his child support, I donate to charities. We are good fucking Americans that cannot get ahead. And what makes me sick, is people that come over here from other countries and get free everything.

You see Mr. Trump, I need you to stop common core. My son struggles daily, and his teachers tell me they hate teaching it but the HAVE to. Their pay depends on these stupid fucking test scores.  I have to pay for a Tutor, why? Because I can’t figure out 4th grade math. I used to be good at math. I can’t afford a Tutor, in fact I sacrifice car insurance to make sure my son gets a good education and hopefully succeeds in life. My parents teach at a school where the kids come from illegal immigrant parents. Most of their parents are locked up. They don’t care about learning and threaten to kill my mom for caring about their grades. Do you realize Mr. Trump that they get free tutors, free tablets from our Government so they can succeed? Why cant my son get those things, do we as hard working Americans not deserve that too?

My husband suffered a stroke and a broken back and we were with just my income. Do you know how hard it is to support a family on only $40,000 a year? I couldn’t qualify for State Aid. I made to much.

Mr. Trump, this is why I voted for you. I see the change that we so desperately need. I see jobs coming back, people having to (work) for their handouts, money going to who really deserve it… Jobs given back to our American workers. I believe YOU are the President who will make these things happen. I have NEVER had this much belief in one person, and you are it.

If this blog even makes it to your eyes…thank you. From the bottom of my heart.

Yours Truly,

A hard working Middle Class Law Abiding Citizen who is sick of getting fucked in the ass and would rather be grabbed by the pussy.

---

Does that help? There are millions like her. 53% of White women and 63% of White men voted for Trump in 2016 according to exit polls.

But a 15-year-old is still a child, right? What kind of world have we created for our children? What is the way out of this? I’m in my third decade of asking that question (since Bowling for Columbine).  And I’m tired of asking it. I’ve been silent since last Tuesday, because if I have nothing new to add to this recurring tragedy, my soul asks: what’s the point?

But this one's closer to home. My grandfather worked at a printing press in Oxford during the Great Depression. One night, driving home to Flint, his car skidded off an icy road and he almost died. My great-great grandparents and their families settled in an area between Lapeer and Oxford in the 1830s. Canada, the closest we get in this world to a pacifist country, is just 43 miles away. At the high school between mine in Davison and the one in Oxford is Lapeer High School, where Oklahoma City bomber/helper Terry Nichols went to school. On a farm north of Lapeer, Timothy McVeigh and Nichols built their practice bombs before they blew up the federal building. Violence, everywhere. The Michigan militia looking to kidnap and kill the Governor. Can you and I put an end to this madness?

I have an idea. I’ll share it with you in the coming weeks.

(Cartoon by Clay Jones via Claytoonz.com)

Hana St. Juliana, Madisyn Baldwin, Tate Myre and Justin Shilling.