June 19, 2024 • 48 mins
What a 15-year-old student unleashed on Oxford High School in 2021, didn’t just land himself in prison, he took his mother and father down with him.
Jennifer and James Crumbley became the first parents convicted in a US mass shooting, each receiving at least 10 years in prison.
Speaking with Sins of the Child podcast creators Jessica Lowther and Cooper Moll, we aim to unpick some of the most complex questions within this story about community, school responsibility and the role parents have in their children’s lives.
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Guest: Creators of Sins of the Child Podcast, Jessica Lowther and Cooper Moll
Host: Gemma Bath
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
You're listening to Amma Mea podcast. Mama Mea acknowledges the
traditional owners of land and waters. This podcast was recorded
on It's November thirty, twenty twenty one, and the twelve
hundred students at Oxford High School in Michigan are filing
(00:32):
back to class after their lunch break. There's chatting and laughing,
kids running up and down the hall, doors being opened
and closed, teachers calling out for order. Everything you would
expect at twelve fifty pm on a Tuesday afternoon. But
the normalcy comes to an end in an instant as
gunshots echo down the halls. A boy armed with a
(00:54):
gun has started shooting his classmates. More than one hundred
nine one one calls are made during the next few minutes.
The two roads leading to the school are blocked as
emergency services swarm. Children. Teenagers lay bleeding and dying as
the shooter, a child himself, goes classroom to classroom, and
(01:17):
as quickly as it starts, it's all over. The fifteen
year old shooter spent just nine minutes hunting down victims
and unloading rounds before being apprehended by police. But in
those nine minutes, he changed the small town of Oxford Forever.
(01:43):
I'm Jemma Bath and this is True Crime Conversations, a
Muma Mere podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by
speaking to the people who know the most about them.
What a fifteen year old student unleashed on his high
school in twenty twenty one didn't just land himself in prison,
He took his parents down with him. Our guests today
have chosen not to name the teenager to deny him
(02:06):
the satisfaction he so desperately craves, so we're following their lead.
School shootings aren't uncommon in America, but this school shooting was.
Jennifer and James Crumbly became the first parents convicted in
a US mass school shooting, and it was no small sentence.
They each received at least ten years in prison. In
(02:27):
handing down their sentences, the judge said the convictions were
not about bad parenting. It was about repeated acts or
lack of acts, that could have halted an oncoming runaway train.
It was about repeatedly ignoring things that would have made
the hair stand up on the back of a reasonable
person's neck. It was about being criminally negligent. Their son
(02:50):
had meticulously planned, talked about, and journaled about his plans
to become the next school shooter on multiple occasions.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
I can't start thinking about him. It's constantly in my
head every conversation I had with someone station about it.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
On the day he followed through, his dad feared the worst.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
What's the location of your emergency? Okay, I'm not really sure.
I'm at my house. There's an active shooter situation going
on at the high school.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
My son goes to the high school.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
I have a missing gun at my house. I need
an officer to come to my house right away, please. Okay,
I'm not going to be able to send anybody to
your house right now, so they're they're on the active
shooter situation right now. I understand that there's a million
I have a missing gun, and my son was at
the school and we had to go meet with the
(03:52):
counselor this morning because of something that he wrote.
Speaker 4 (03:56):
On a test paper.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
And then I was in town and I saw a
whole bunch of cops going somewhere.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
And I made sure that I wanted to get to
the high school to see someone's going on to high school.
And then somebody told me that there with makeet shooter
and then I wait calm just to find out, and
I think my son took the gun.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
If I don't know what's going on, I'm really freaking out.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Jessica Lalba and Cooper Mole are the producers behind Sins
of the Child, a new seven part podcast series investigating
the Oxford High School shooting and the Crumbly family. Their
analysis aims to unpick some of the most complex questions
within this story about community, school responsibility and the role
parents have in their children's lives. To tell us about
(04:44):
the case and their findings, Jessica and Cooper join us now.
I want to start with Oxford the place. From what
I'm gathering, it's quite a small town. Country vibe took
me through it.
Speaker 5 (05:04):
Oxford itself is a town of about four thousand people.
It's a small town and it is quite conservative. It
resides somewhere in the seventy most affluent counties in the country,
so most of the folks there are wealthy. It is
definitely a quaint small town. Everybody knows everybody. It definitely
(05:27):
kind of hearkens back to a twentieth century sitcom like
Leave It to Beaver or one of those more suburban
landscapes with the picket fences and the clapboard houses and
manicured lawns and cul de sacs, and you know, the
kind of place where kids are playing in.
Speaker 6 (05:48):
The neighborhood and feel safe to be there.
Speaker 5 (05:51):
One thing about Oxford is a lot of people come there,
you know, from the Detroit metro area on the weekends
to patronize that got like a town square that is
actually a United States historical site.
Speaker 6 (06:04):
It's very colonial.
Speaker 5 (06:05):
Lots of breweries and pizza parlors and gift shops and
you know, artisanal goods. And two things that are very
big in Oxford are equestrian life, so people are really
into horses there. And another big part of the culture
is guns, and people are very into hunting there and
it is not uncommon certain times of the school year.
(06:27):
I'm not too sure if this is still a thing,
but school will begin later in the day so families
and their children can hunt in the morning before school.
So guns are definitely a big part of the culture there.
It's a much more conservative township. And another thing about
it is if you have kids, everybody goes to Oxford
High School, that is the high school there.
Speaker 7 (06:47):
And one of the things that Cooper found in her
research was that football was really put this area on
the map for Oxford, and if you knew about Oxford,
you knew about them because of their football team. And
you know, Friday night lights is kind of like the
vibe in that town. Everybody goes to the games on
Friday nights. Until this tragedy happened.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
The outside, As an Australian looking into America, school shootings
seem to have some kind of regularity over there. We
don't have that kind of thing happen at all really here,
so when we look over there, we see it as
quite a common thing. But I've seen a lot of
commentary about Oxford saying that that particular place, it was
a surprise for something to happen like that there. Why
(07:32):
is that the case?
Speaker 5 (07:34):
Gosh, I mean, I would imagine, you know, from how
it's been characterized the subjects that we've spoken to and
in my research is that it seems like the type
of place where people really look out for one another.
People have known one another's kids since they were babies.
Teachers there have taught generations of a family. Another thing
(07:54):
about it is people have been in Oxford, have lived
there for a long time. It's not necessarily the type
of place you go and transplant to. From what I understand,
there is a certain type of You grow up there,
you stay there, you raise your family there, your kids
then based family there. So I think that there's not
a lot of stranger danger going on there, and everybody's
(08:19):
kind of keeping tabs on everybody, not in a nefarious way.
It's just there's a palpable community there and.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Like you say, Oxford pies where everyone goes. So take
us there. On November thirty, twenty twenty one, the school
is sent into disarray when someone starts opening fire. Where
do the gunshots start? And what do the next few minutes,
because it really is only minutes, What do they look like?
Speaker 5 (08:46):
So this is essentially what happens on November thirtieth, twenty
twenty one, twelve fifty one pm, just after the lunch
hour for the students, gunshots that many students have now
described as the sound of balloons popping began to come
(09:08):
from the south end of the main hallway where students
have their lockers, et cetera. And within one minute, so
now it's twelve fifty two pm. There have been over
one hundred phone calls to the local nine one one
dispatch center, and the cops are already on their way there.
(09:30):
Reporters and cops have already caught wind of this, so
the nature of this is spotty. Details are emerging. You've
got tons of scared kids calling their parents, calling nine
to one one operators, and they can't really answer questions
as to what they're seeing because they're concerned about barricading themselves,
running away, et cetera. So from the hallway, the shooter
(09:52):
starts to make his way east through the building, indiscriminately
striking students. He is not targeting people he personally knows
or has any personal vendettas against. It is complete indiscriminate killing.
And the first person he shoots is is a young
girl running down the hallway, and then he shoots another
(10:17):
girl in the back of the head. And this is
particularly eerie because in the manifesto, if you will, the
tape he recorded the night before the shooting, and we
can get into that later, clearly states that the first
person he wants to shoot is a pretty girl in
the face, and that is precisely what he did. So
(10:39):
at this point, somehow parents have already caught wait of
what's going on. Worldly About like two three minutes into
this shooting, somebody posts onto an Oxford mom's Facebook group
and certain parents are driving towards the school, but the
streets have been barricaded because law enforcements is shutting down
the roads into the school because they don't know if
(11:01):
the shooter is a student yet, so if the shooter
got there by car, they want to make sure he
or she cannot leave by car.
Speaker 6 (11:08):
Right, So, shooter still moving east down the hallway.
Speaker 5 (11:12):
Students and teachers are barricading themselves in classrooms here in America,
because this is not a super one off event here,
as we just recently talked about, Typically in school you
do active shooter drill, so the teachers and the students
had already been privy on what to do.
Speaker 6 (11:31):
So we're about two three minutes into the shooting.
Speaker 5 (11:33):
The shooter changes magazines and then starts heading north up
the hall He turns around, shoots into a classroom, walks
south again. I can't even imagine what's going on in
the panic these students are feeling inside the classroom at
this time. Then three minutes after the first shots were heard,
the shooter enters the boys' bathroom and encounters two students,
(11:58):
a senior and a freshman. Inside this bathroom, the senior
is instructing the freshman to hide in the stall so
that the shooter cannot see their feet, to get up
and crouch down on the toilet, so the shooter walks in.
Once he leaves, the two boys are left in the
(12:21):
stall hiding, texting their parents what's going on. The shooter
then comes back into the bathroom, orders the senior to
come out of the stall and the freshman to stand
up against the wall. He then shoots the senior right
in front of the freshmen, and that is the last
(12:42):
person he shoots, seventeen year old Justin Schilling before the
gunfire ceases around twelve fifty six PM, when the first
two deputies come into Oxford High School and begin to
search for the shooter with guns drawn at around one PM,
so this is only nine minutes after the first shots
(13:05):
rang out. He steps out of the boy's bathroom and
kneels down puts his hands up, which is somewhat an
anomaly in these circumstances. We hear a lot of times
the assailient will either turn the gun on themselves or
maybe antagonize law enforcements so they can do suicide by police.
We've seen that happen before as well, so law enforcement
(13:29):
that we've spoken to tell us that the whole thing
was really, and this may sound crude, wrapped up in
about thirteen to fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
It's amazing how much damage someone can do in such
a short period of time.
Speaker 7 (13:42):
One of the key interviews that we did for Sins
of the Child was with Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard.
His team was the team that responded to the high
school that day. They had been trained for this. They
found eighteen live rounds left in his gun. They firmly
believe that he planned to shoot every single one of them,
(14:05):
but we know from listening to his manifesto that he
planned to surrender. He did not want to kill himself,
He did not want to do suicide by cop. He
wanted to surrender, and he says it's because he wanted
the notoriety. He wanted people to use his name and
forever associate him with this terrible act. We choose not
(14:26):
to use his name in the podcast. Some of our
contributors do. We're not going to stop them from doing that,
but we don't use his name.
Speaker 5 (14:34):
Yeah, it does become clear he did have this obsession
with notoriety, wanting to be remembered as a school shooter
and stay alive, not kill himself. And there are a
few instances where he references the Parkland school shooter as
his idol.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Before we get into that, I'd like to know a
little bit more about the victims, because we had full
people killed, multiple people injured. Can you tell us a
little bit about some of them and some of the
people that lost their lives that day.
Speaker 5 (15:06):
So by the end of the day it was reported
that three eight teenagers have died, so seventeen year old
Madison Baldwin, sixteen year old Tape Mire, and fourteen year old.
Speaker 6 (15:17):
Hanna Saint Juliana.
Speaker 5 (15:19):
And at the time, I believe that there were seven
other injuries, many of them critical, including one teacher and that.
Speaker 6 (15:30):
Was Mollie Darnell.
Speaker 5 (15:32):
And by the next morning, December one, twenty twenty one,
news had broke that seventeen year old Justin Shilling, who
was the senior in the bathroom with the freshmen, did
not survive his injuries, so in total there were four victims.
Speaker 7 (15:49):
We use a lot of trial audio in the podcast
from multiple hearings, and the parents each had a trial
and so one of the biggest pieces of tape that
we use in our show. We have an entire episode
dedicated to the victim impact statements, and that's because we
want to keep the victims at the forefront of this
(16:10):
and at the victim impact statement or at the sentencing
hearing for the shooter, the victims were invited to give
their victim impact statements and that included Justin Schilling's parents,
Jill Suave and Craig Shilling. Madison Baldwin's mother spoke, Nicole
Bausilet and Hanna Saint Juliana's sister and father spoke Steve
(16:32):
Saint Juliana, and Rayna Saint Juliana. Rayna spoke on behalf
of her mother as well, because I have to imagine
that it was extremely difficult for her mother to face
the idea of standing up in front of her daughter's
killer and reading a statement I know that I could
never and for Tate Muhror, his father really gave one
of the most impactful statements that I've ever heard.
Speaker 8 (16:54):
In my life.
Speaker 7 (16:55):
They spoke about their kid's dreams and what their futures
would have been, and what they imagined their futures to
be for themselves and for their relationships with their children,
but also for their children, you know. Steve Saint Juliana says,
I'm never going to be able to walk my daughter
down the aisle. I'm not even going to be able
to see her graduate high school. She just started high
school three months before this. Her sister says that they
(17:18):
were super close. They shared clothes, like, they talked about everything.
And now her sister doesn't even want to get her
driver's license because what's the point. Her sister's not there
to be with her anymore. And Steve also said that
he found a list of careers that Hannah was considering,
a list of careers in her phone. And so these
kids had such bright, bright lives ahead of them and
(17:42):
they were just snuffed out through the aspirations of a
deranged killer.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
And it's not just those that died, it's the injured,
but also the friends that watched these people die, the
students that were terrorized. So many people are impacted when
something like this happens.
Speaker 5 (18:02):
Yes, I think one of the more compelling moments for
me in Jill Suave, Justin Shilling's mom's testimony, when she
spoke of her son. She talks about her son's heart
and his character and who he was as a person,
and she specifically says that her son, Justin would have
(18:23):
been the shooter's friend had he just asked, And something
about that I think tells you a lot about who
Justin Shilling was as a person. And we had an
opportunity to speak with his father, Craig, and that came
through in our conversation with him as well. But yes,
to your point about you know, all the others affected,
(18:45):
that is really was the impetus for Karen MacDonald charging
the shooter with one kunt of terrorism, which we have
not seen before in.
Speaker 6 (18:55):
A school shooting.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Why is that?
Speaker 1 (18:57):
What difference does that make?
Speaker 5 (18:58):
Well, it doesn't necessarily make a difference, but it makes
a statement. It doesn't bring anyone back, it doesn't heal
anybody's trauma, but it definitely makes a statement that this
affects so many more people than the people killed in
their families, right, I mean additionally, in the shooter sentencing
(19:19):
hearing and the parent sentencing hearings we hear from survivors
who talk about the PTSD. They are now living with
all the little things in their everyday life that they
now think about that they never did before. November thirtieth,
twenty twenty one, being in large crowds going to school
hearing loud noises.
Speaker 7 (19:41):
One of these survivors he said that he can't even
imagine a life as an adult living in a city
where there's a lot of noise, there's a lot of people.
I mean, that just limits their lives so much. And
you can say that their futures were taken from them
as well. I mean they still get to live on
this earth, but not in the same way they were
here before. So some of the most powerful testimony that
(20:04):
we play in our podcast is from Christy Gibson Marshall.
She was next to take mirror as he took his
last breaths, and she had known him since he was
three years old because his mom would bring him to
the school. He had two older brothers, and through tears,
through gut wrenching testimony and tears, she says it took
(20:25):
her a year to get the taste of Tate's blood
out of her mouth because she was trying to resuscitate him.
I guess I've never listened to testimony from a school
shooting like this before, And what really struck me is
just how many people were in that hallway and were
laying next to dead bodies. And one of the girls
(20:49):
that speaks in the victim impact statement says that she
was lying next to Hanna Saint Juliana while she bled out,
and another one says that I saw Madison get killed,
and I just don't understand how you can move forward
from that at such a young age to have something
so serious happen. And that's why I think the terrorism
charge was necessary, because if you really want to ensure
(21:12):
that this person never gets out of prison, that's a
good way to do it.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
You're listening to True Crime Conversations with me Jemma Bath.
We're talking to Jessica Lauba and Cooper Mole about the
Oxford High School shooting. Up next, we talk about how
the parents of a serial killer end up behind bars themselves.
(21:44):
Let's talk a bit more about the shooter.
Speaker 8 (21:46):
Who was he?
Speaker 1 (21:47):
First of all, let's paint the picture of him and
his family.
Speaker 5 (21:51):
The shooter was, from what we understand, not your I
can't believe this is even a noun. You're a typical
high school shooter. He was not a victim of bullying.
He did fairly well in school, didn't stand out with
his appearance.
Speaker 6 (22:12):
He was a loner.
Speaker 5 (22:14):
Other kids who testified even though this is a small
school in a small town, so that they didn't know him.
They recognized him but couldn't put a name to his
face sort of thing. But he was somebody we see
through his social media and texts, etc. Who was very
preoccupied with a fascination with firearms and in his spare time,
(22:39):
it seems that that was his main hobby and a
hobby that he shared with his parents. That they would
go to the shooting range the other they would test
out different guns together. He was well trained and skilled
with guns. One thing that does end up coming out
about him in his Miller hearing and the US we
(22:59):
have if a juvenile is to be eligible for a
sentence of life without parole, they need to go through
a process called a Miller hearing, And in a Miller
hearing is when it's proven whether or not there's a
chance for this individual to be rehabilitated, and in the
case of this shooter, they were not able to prove
that he would be able to be rehabilitated, and testimony
(23:20):
given during this Miller Hearing shared evidence.
Speaker 6 (23:23):
Of violent behavior in his past.
Speaker 5 (23:26):
Including torturing animals, journal entries, and recorded video of him
talking about the pleasure that he experienced well torturing baby
birds specifically, and that he often fantasized about violence. However,
he also often experienced psychological torment.
Speaker 6 (23:50):
There was part of him that we can see.
Speaker 5 (23:53):
In his text messages that this was not always a
comfortable place for him to be in his head, that
he was hearing voices, seeing demons, thought his home was haunted,
having abnormal paranormal experiences, expressed seeing this concern to his
parents that he wanted help, expressing his concern to the
(24:14):
one friend that he had via text message that he
wanted to go to a doctor, that he wanted help,
and those crist for help did go ignored. But he
was definitely somebody who was had an awareness that his
ideations were not normal.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
But his parents, they knew he was struggling, but ignored it.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
Do we know?
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Why? Do we know what that relationship looked like between
the parents and son.
Speaker 5 (24:40):
It looked negligent. That's essentially the crux of this is
that they were held culpable for gross negligence that contributed
to their studying enacting this terrible attack.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Well, one of the nine to one one calls that
comes through when the shooting starts is from the shooter's dad.
Can you talk us through that call and why that
was so significant?
Speaker 7 (25:03):
James Crumbly and Jennifer Crumbley were actually at Oxford High
School just an hour before the shooting takes place. What
ended up happening was they were called to the school
because their son had been drawing guns, bullets, blood and
dead figures on his math assignment. And this is not
(25:27):
the first time something like this has happened. So Jennifer
and James show up to the school, they meet with
the counselor, and they bring in the shooter and they
all discuss what's going on with this worksheet. But by
the time the worksheet got to the office, some things
had been removed, some things had been crossed out, and
(25:48):
from what I understand, they were only there for like
less than twenty minutes I believe, And the counselor asks
them if they would like to bring the shooter home,
bring their son home, and they say they have to
go back to work, and at no point does anyone.
Speaker 8 (26:05):
Check the shooter's backpack.
Speaker 7 (26:08):
There's conflicting reports about whether the back was in the
room with them in the counselor's office, or whether it
was still in his classroom. But from the court testimony,
we hear that the dean of students goes to get
his backpack from the classroom and gives it back to
the shooter, remarking that it seems very heavy and never
even opens it up, and if you would have just
(26:29):
unzipped it, you would have seen the gun right away.
And so it's really mind boggling that this whole thing
goes down with the math assignment.
Speaker 8 (26:40):
Jennifer had been.
Speaker 7 (26:40):
Called days before about him looking at violent videos on
his phone, about looking up bullets on his phone, and
she tells her son, next time, don't get caught. So
there definitely seemed to be this vibe in this family
that they weren't taking his issues seriously. And the main
(27:03):
piece of evidence I believe here is that they bought
him that gun four days beforehand. Now, the shooter says
that this was his Christmas present. This is Black Friday,
he and his father go to ACME shooting Goods in Oxford, Michigan,
and he gives his father money to buy the gun
he wants.
Speaker 8 (27:22):
It's a sig hour nine millimeter.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Can I pause you there? What does that mean for
a non gun person? Is that a big gun?
Speaker 8 (27:31):
It's a handgun. It kind of looks like one a
cop would carry.
Speaker 5 (27:33):
Which I'll say is a bit different from previous mass
shooting events here in the United States that have really
called automatic assault rifles into questions. So you see a
lot of AR fifteen's military weapons, etc.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
This was not that and easy to hide in a
backpack if it's just a little handgun.
Speaker 8 (27:52):
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 7 (27:53):
So the thing about the meeting in the office and
the counselor's office was that they asked their son, you know,
are you okay? Is there anything we need to be
worried about? And he says, no, everything's fine. He doesn't
indicate to them that he has this plan. He's recorded
this video the night before that says he's going to
shoot everyone he possibly can. And he definitely planned to
(28:18):
shoot a lot of people because he brought a lot
of magazines with him, so Jennifer and James leave the school.
Speaker 8 (28:25):
They go back to their work.
Speaker 7 (28:26):
James is a door dash driver, Jennifer works a cubicle style.
Speaker 8 (28:30):
Job, and they go back to work.
Speaker 7 (28:32):
Within the hour, Boomers starts swirling that there is something
going on at the high school. James Crumbly. One of
the first things that he does is call nine to
one one on his way back to his house to say,
I think my son took the gun. I think he's
(28:53):
the shooter. He's not worried that his son has been
shot or that he is unsafe. He's not calling to
report that there's a shooting. He's worried that his son
is the shooter. Now what does that tell you? They
bought this gun four days before, on November twenty, with
the shooter's money, and it was his choice. And you know,
(29:15):
it was just James and the son at the shooting thing,
but he went shooting with his mother the next day.
So she was a participant in this gun culture in
the family too. Now in her testimony, you'll hear that
she says that James was responsible for keeping this gun
locked up in the house. And what the police find
(29:36):
when they get to the Crumbly house is the gun
case open on the bed of the parents' bedroom and
the shooter had gotten it from their dresser. It was
not locked, it was not kept in a safe place whatsoever,
not kept away from their fifteen year old son.
Speaker 8 (29:52):
He had easy access to it.
Speaker 7 (29:54):
This is also a parent in many photos that are
posted to social media and like through text messages that
there are guns out in the background, like on the
dining room table in so many so it's easy to
prove that they weren't safe about locking up their guns
around their mind child. So James Crumbley's in a panic.
You know, it's hard to listen to that night when
(30:15):
one call, because you can tell he knows exactly what happened,
and he sounds terrified, like, oh crap, like what have
we done kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (30:27):
You know.
Speaker 7 (30:27):
I don't know if that's what he was thinking, but
he and Jennifer are texting each other, and Jennifer texts
her son, don't do it.
Speaker 8 (30:36):
They know immediately.
Speaker 7 (30:37):
And so this is why we think that this case
was deserving of a Deep Dive podcast, because yes, this
case is unprecedented for many many reasons, but it was
mostly that they were finally holding parents accountable for their
minor children's actions. Now, when you think about that, just
on the surface level, you're like, man, that's kind of
(30:58):
crazy that, like, my kid can go out and do
something and I can be held accountable. When you really
look at the details of this case, you really start
to see why it's actually not that much of a
precedence that being set because these parents were extremely negligent
when it came to their child. There were reports that
from the age of six years old, the child was
(31:19):
left at home alone without access to his parents. He
would be walking around the neighborhood knocking on people's doors
because he was scared. He was ten years old with
a cell phone, texting his mother asking her to come home,
and she wouldn't answer. He was being ignored.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
How quickly were the parents arrested and actually brought into
the police station as suspects in this case.
Speaker 5 (31:56):
On December third, three days after the shooting, With enough
evidence coming to the surface that the parents could very
well be held culpable in this case prosecuted, Karen McDonald
gives a press conference and announces that they're charging James
(32:16):
and Jennifer Crumbley with four counts of involuntary manslaughter warrants
are put out for their arrests and they're nowhere to
be found. Police show up at their house, they can't
be reached via cell phone. Still no signs of them
by nighttime. So at this point the Oakland County Police
(32:40):
have searched all of Oxford to no avail and they
call in a fugitive Apprehension team and the US Marshall
Service for backup. Around seven pm that night, the US
Marshall Service puts out a tweet with two kind of
classic looking wanted posters for both Jennifer and James Crumbley,
(33:01):
you know, with a reward up to ten thousand dollars.
This also becomes a huge national news story and kind
of Sheriff Mike Bouchard appears in the first segment of
You Know Every Box CNN, NBC and show of that night.
Speaker 6 (33:18):
Right.
Speaker 5 (33:20):
So, at this point, the attorneys of the Crumble's Mary
Olehman and Shannon Smith get in contact with law enforcement
and they assure them, hey, these two are just kind
of getting their affairs together. They felt really concerned for
their own safety. Even in Jennifer Crumpley's testimony, she says
(33:41):
that they had been receiving death threats, they felt unsafe
to stay in Oxford and says the reason they left
was because they just didn't feel safe.
Speaker 6 (33:52):
However, what you find out they.
Speaker 5 (33:54):
Were kind of doing during that time is they had
drained tons of money out of their bank accounts, including
their son's bank account. They get burner phones, turn off
their other cell phones, and.
Speaker 6 (34:10):
Just completely made a run for it, right.
Speaker 5 (34:13):
So finally they were spotted about forty five minutes south
of Oxford in a Detroit area warehouse building. Somebody who
lived in that warehouse building saw their car backed into
a parking lot right, so backed in so that license
plate would be obfuscated. So they knew what they were doing.
(34:35):
They send out a unit in Detroit. They are apprehended
by the Fugitive Response Team and a sworn of police
invade this warehouse area and the Crumplies are immediately taken
into custody.
Speaker 6 (34:49):
So it's really this moment as well.
Speaker 5 (34:51):
I mean, this was a huge moment in this case,
because people don't run unless they have something to hide, right,
and sadly, if you really think about it, and I'm
not too sure that the shooter knew this was going
on at the time, but this really also points to
more evidence of their gross negligence.
Speaker 6 (35:13):
Right here is their son in jail. You know, it's been.
Speaker 5 (35:17):
Charged with terrorism murder in the first degree, and they leave.
What message does that send to a kid who already
feels like and his goes on to express that he
felt like his parents didn't care about him. I'm not
saying this with sympathy for what he did, but if
we are all growing up with this idea that our
(35:38):
parents love us unconditionally, we hope that even when we
royally screw up, our parents are still there for us
and we always have that love to lean on.
Speaker 6 (35:50):
And here they are just leaving.
Speaker 5 (35:54):
So from there they are brought back to Open County
jail and they were initially denied bond because of their
flight risk.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
Well that'd already tried to run, yes.
Speaker 7 (36:10):
Then they were held on a million dollar bond five
hundred k ECH.
Speaker 6 (36:14):
Yes, which they could not come up with the money for.
Speaker 5 (36:18):
And we're not totally out of COVID yet, so the
legal systems are totally backed up. So James and Jennifer Crumbley,
I mean they sat in jail for two years before
they stood trial.
Speaker 7 (36:31):
One thing I just wanted to say, And it kind
of goes with the theme of every time we talk
to each other, Jemma is the bad parenting. I am
not a mother, but I have to think that if
I had a teenager, I'd be really interested in what
they were doing on their phone and what they were
looking at, what they were texting, what they were writing
in their journals, and the fact that nobody was keeping
(36:52):
an eye on this kid who was begging for help.
He was begging for help, and you're not even slightly
curious about what he's telling other people, even about you,
like as his mother, You're not like thinking like I
wonder if he thinks I'm a terrible mother.
Speaker 8 (37:07):
They don't even care.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Does that become the main conversation in America when this
side of the story breaks the parental responsibility side.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (37:17):
I think that this case gained a lot of attention
because of the gross negligence of these parents. But one
thing that we were looking at in our research was
the mother of Dylan Kleebold, one of the Columbine shooters
that was the first big school shooting in American history,
and that was in nineteen ninety nine. I believe the
(37:37):
mother of Dylan Kleebold wrote a book about this experience. Now,
she avoided the media for a few years after the shooting.
You know, her son died by suicide in that shooting.
So she finally came out of this situation going like,
I want to help other people understand like how we
ended up here. And one of the things that she
(37:58):
says is like we were a normal family. We were
a normal upper middle class family. He had everything that
he could have wanted, we were paying attention, and this
still happened.
Speaker 8 (38:10):
And so it's not to say that there is a
perfect way to parent kids.
Speaker 7 (38:14):
Of course, there's not a perfect way to parent teenagers,
especially teenagers that are going through mental anguish. But it's
really important that parents make an attempt to even figure
out what's the difference between normal teenage angst and actual
mental illness and actually root down to the cause of
this because, you know, like Cooper said, we were coming
(38:35):
out of COVID at this time in twenty twenty one,
they had just gone back to school and they were
still doing some days remote at Oxford. Some classes were
still remote. But this was November of twenty twenty one,
so they had just only been in school for about
three months after being out at the end of the
previous year, and when you're that age, that kind of
(38:56):
social isolation really takes a toll, and especially on someone
like the shooter who was already going through so much
mentally and only having one friend probably plays a huge
part in that, because he felt like he couldn't talk
to literally anyone, not even his own parents.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Well, some of the details that were talked about in
the shooter's proceedings showed the true premeditated nature of his offending.
Can you take us through some of those Some of
them are too horrible to actually repeat, but some of
that evidence that stood out to you. The fact that
he had decided not to kill himself ahead of time,
(39:35):
that he'd planned the shooting out in his journal, what
kind of shocked you from hearing and witnessing all of that.
Speaker 5 (39:43):
One of the things that shocked me the most was
not that I would direct anyone to do this, but
comparing his plan, what he envisioned doing, specifically the execution
style he had envisioned killing people in side by side
(40:06):
with the autopsy reports of the murdered teenager, it is
eerily parallel. That to me is what stood out the most,
and it's also was a huge part of his Miller hearing,
which was his defense tried to argue that he was psychotic,
and the counter witness from the prosecution comes up and says, well, psychopaths.
Speaker 6 (40:34):
They act impulsively. They do not plan this out.
Speaker 5 (40:38):
There is not much premeditation here and precision and dedication
to a blueprint. And most people experiencing a level of
psychosis or psychopathy, they're just kind of spraying bullets. There's
no craft to what they're doing. And I know that
(40:59):
sounds crude, but he really was concerned with a certain
vision he had for this.
Speaker 7 (41:08):
He also envisioned very strongly the repercussions the fallout of
this shooting. He wanted the families to be miserable. He
wanted to see their misery. He wanted to witness it
in the courtroom. He even says, when I go to
trial for this, because I know I will, I know
I'm going to go to prison for the rest of
(41:29):
my life. And he's okay with that, and he says,
I just want to see the looks on their faces
when I've shot their child in the head. And one
of the quotes from his manifesto, if we're going to
call it that is. I have the chance to teach
the world to become a better place, and I have
to take that chance. I've missed many opportunities in my life.
(41:51):
I'm not missing this one. I'm going to try to
flee the school for as long as I can until
I get caught. Just the thought of the silly people
who saved their whole life to go to college and
have a great career, a family, grow old, die happily.
They don't know that in less than a day they're
going to die. Their lives will be changed forever. I
understand the constantquence, and says I understand that I could
(42:12):
go to prison for this, and I really say goodbye
to everything. I'm sorry for manipulating you.
Speaker 8 (42:17):
Mom and dad.
Speaker 7 (42:17):
You have trust in me, and make sure that you
have trusted me, and I just owned you. And you
should know that it's for a cause. I'm ruining my life,
not yours. And then he goes on to film another
video just after this. It says, like, fuck, that previous
video I took that was bullshit. I'm going to have
so much fun tomorrow. I have a goal and it's
to kill everyone.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
Thankfully, he received the harshest possible sentence and was given
life with that parole in December twenty twenty three. What
happened to the parents because that trial, well, they had
trials only recently wrapped up.
Speaker 7 (42:50):
Really Yeah, So Jennifer Crumbly went to trial first in
February twenty twenty four, and this is after a lot
of legal hearings and motions to decide whether she and
her husband James would be tried together or separately. They
have the same defense team, they're from the same law office,
(43:12):
and so there's definitely like questionable things going on there.
But ultimately what happens is they are tried separately, and
it's because basically, based on the evidence that they were presenting,
there was different levels of culpability according to their lawyers,
and so they wanted each person to have their fairest
chance at a trial. And at Jennifer's trial, the school
(43:36):
counselor speaks and Dino students speaks. They tell all the
stories that we've told you about today about the meeting
earlier in that school. The ATF agent who reviewed Facebook
messages between James and Jennifer says that they debated whether
to buy this gun for their son. He walked the
(43:57):
court through video he discovered of the sun using guns
at the shooting range with his parents, as we mentioned before,
and the most damning evidence was a video the shooter
had sent his friend that made it undeniable that the
parents were not always in the habit of securing their firearms,
like we said earlier. And there's a gun on the
table in the background of a photo, and so these
(44:20):
are all pretty hard evidence in my opinion, of their
negligence leading up to this. But there's also testimony about
the shooter texting his parents about paranormal experiences seeing demons.
Demons comes up a lot, and this is something that
the Parkland shooter also talked about. And since he idolized
the Parkland shooter, I do wonder about the manipulation of
(44:43):
his parents and using this trigger word almost like to
perhaps get off on a mental illness plea of some sort.
And ultimately, at Jennifer's trial, she ends up taking the stand,
which a lot of people are like, oh, no, oh, no,
what is she going to say, because she's been openly
(45:04):
emotional during this trial, even though she's not supposed to
be they are asked to suppress their emotions, and she
was openly weeping at the beginning when they were showing
the footage of her son going through the school and
indiscriminately shooting people. But she takes the stand, and I'll
never forget the first time I heard this quote was
she was asked if she would have done anything differently,
(45:28):
and she said no. What she says no, And it's
just like you've dug your own grave here, you know, Like,
how can you say that in front of all of
these victims, families and these people who experience it themselves,
in front of the jury, And I mean, okay, she's
telling the truth on the sand, she wouldn't have changed anything.
(45:49):
But one of the things that just has really stuck
with me is, as she said, I wish he would
have killed us instead. And I've sat there and wondered
that many times, is that it seemed like the most
of the issues that this child had were with his parents.
The Sandy Hook shooter killed his mother before going to
the elementary school and killing sixteen children, And so it
(46:11):
does make you wonder what was the motive here, because really,
at the end of the day, no one's really clear
as to why the shooter did any of this, And
of course our podcast is about this bigger question of
paying for the sins of your child and how monumental
this case is when it comes to the parents being
held accountable or their actions and rearing their child poorly,
(46:35):
and it culminating in this.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Event both parents ended up receiving at least ten years
in prison. And lastly, I wanted to ask, do you
think that this case has changed the way that people
think about shootings or violent crimes committed by teens and children.
Has this set a precedent that we can look to
moving forward?
Speaker 7 (46:56):
Personally, I hope that the precedent that's set is that
there's more investigation into the events that lead up to
any of these events. Now, really, my dream is that
this never happens again, But of course I know I
live in the United States. That's a pipe dream. And
I'm going to say, there's not a perfect parent in
this entire world. But there are parents that are completely
(47:19):
blind to what's happening in their children's mind or in
their personal lives, and they go on and do these things.
But I would bet my life that most of the
children who end up doing these mouse shooting events at schools, particularly,
their parents have some inkling that something is wrong with
their child.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
True Crime Conversations is a Mama MEA podcast hosted and
produced by me Jemma Bath, with audio design by Scott Stronik.
Our executive producers on this episode, A gam Moylen and
Live Proud. Thanks so much for listening. I'll be back
next week with another True Crime Conversation
You're listening to Amma Mea podcast. Mama Mea acknowledges the
traditional owners of land and waters. This podcast was recorded
on It's November thirty, twenty twenty one, and the twelve
hundred students at Oxford High School in Michigan are filing
(00:32):
back to class after their lunch break. There's chatting and laughing,
kids running up and down the hall, doors being opened
and closed, teachers calling out for order. Everything you would
expect at twelve fifty pm on a Tuesday afternoon. But
the normalcy comes to an end in an instant as
gunshots echo down the halls. A boy armed with a
(00:54):
gun has started shooting his classmates. More than one hundred
nine one one calls are made during the next few minutes.
The two roads leading to the school are blocked as
emergency services swarm. Children. Teenagers lay bleeding and dying as
the shooter, a child himself, goes classroom to classroom, and
(01:17):
as quickly as it starts, it's all over. The fifteen
year old shooter spent just nine minutes hunting down victims
and unloading rounds before being apprehended by police. But in
those nine minutes, he changed the small town of Oxford Forever.
(01:43):
I'm Jemma Bath and this is True Crime Conversations, a
Muma Mere podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by
speaking to the people who know the most about them.
What a fifteen year old student unleashed on his high
school in twenty twenty one didn't just land himself in prison,
He took his parents down with him. Our guests today
have chosen not to name the teenager to deny him
(02:06):
the satisfaction he so desperately craves, so we're following their lead.
School shootings aren't uncommon in America, but this school shooting was.
Jennifer and James Crumbly became the first parents convicted in
a US mass school shooting, and it was no small sentence.
They each received at least ten years in prison. In
(02:27):
handing down their sentences, the judge said the convictions were
not about bad parenting. It was about repeated acts or
lack of acts, that could have halted an oncoming runaway train.
It was about repeatedly ignoring things that would have made
the hair stand up on the back of a reasonable
person's neck. It was about being criminally negligent. Their son
(02:50):
had meticulously planned, talked about, and journaled about his plans
to become the next school shooter on multiple occasions.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
I can't start thinking about him. It's constantly in my
head every conversation I had with someone station about it.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
On the day he followed through, his dad feared the worst.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
What's the location of your emergency? Okay, I'm not really sure.
I'm at my house. There's an active shooter situation going
on at the high school.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
My son goes to the high school.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
I have a missing gun at my house. I need
an officer to come to my house right away, please. Okay,
I'm not going to be able to send anybody to
your house right now, so they're they're on the active
shooter situation right now. I understand that there's a million
I have a missing gun, and my son was at
the school and we had to go meet with the
(03:52):
counselor this morning because of something that he wrote.
Speaker 4 (03:56):
On a test paper.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
And then I was in town and I saw a
whole bunch of cops going somewhere.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
And I made sure that I wanted to get to
the high school to see someone's going on to high school.
And then somebody told me that there with makeet shooter
and then I wait calm just to find out, and
I think my son took the gun.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
If I don't know what's going on, I'm really freaking out.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Jessica Lalba and Cooper Mole are the producers behind Sins
of the Child, a new seven part podcast series investigating
the Oxford High School shooting and the Crumbly family. Their
analysis aims to unpick some of the most complex questions
within this story about community, school responsibility and the role
parents have in their children's lives. To tell us about
(04:44):
the case and their findings, Jessica and Cooper join us now.
I want to start with Oxford the place. From what
I'm gathering, it's quite a small town. Country vibe took
me through it.
Speaker 5 (05:04):
Oxford itself is a town of about four thousand people.
It's a small town and it is quite conservative. It
resides somewhere in the seventy most affluent counties in the country,
so most of the folks there are wealthy. It is
definitely a quaint small town. Everybody knows everybody. It definitely
(05:27):
kind of hearkens back to a twentieth century sitcom like
Leave It to Beaver or one of those more suburban
landscapes with the picket fences and the clapboard houses and
manicured lawns and cul de sacs, and you know, the
kind of place where kids are playing in.
Speaker 6 (05:48):
The neighborhood and feel safe to be there.
Speaker 5 (05:51):
One thing about Oxford is a lot of people come there,
you know, from the Detroit metro area on the weekends
to patronize that got like a town square that is
actually a United States historical site.
Speaker 6 (06:04):
It's very colonial.
Speaker 5 (06:05):
Lots of breweries and pizza parlors and gift shops and
you know, artisanal goods. And two things that are very
big in Oxford are equestrian life, so people are really
into horses there. And another big part of the culture
is guns, and people are very into hunting there and
it is not uncommon certain times of the school year.
(06:27):
I'm not too sure if this is still a thing,
but school will begin later in the day so families
and their children can hunt in the morning before school.
So guns are definitely a big part of the culture there.
It's a much more conservative township. And another thing about
it is if you have kids, everybody goes to Oxford
High School, that is the high school there.
Speaker 7 (06:47):
And one of the things that Cooper found in her
research was that football was really put this area on
the map for Oxford, and if you knew about Oxford,
you knew about them because of their football team. And
you know, Friday night lights is kind of like the
vibe in that town. Everybody goes to the games on
Friday nights. Until this tragedy happened.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
The outside, As an Australian looking into America, school shootings
seem to have some kind of regularity over there. We
don't have that kind of thing happen at all really here,
so when we look over there, we see it as
quite a common thing. But I've seen a lot of
commentary about Oxford saying that that particular place, it was
a surprise for something to happen like that there. Why
(07:32):
is that the case?
Speaker 5 (07:34):
Gosh, I mean, I would imagine, you know, from how
it's been characterized the subjects that we've spoken to and
in my research is that it seems like the type
of place where people really look out for one another.
People have known one another's kids since they were babies.
Teachers there have taught generations of a family. Another thing
(07:54):
about it is people have been in Oxford, have lived
there for a long time. It's not necessarily the type
of place you go and transplant to. From what I understand,
there is a certain type of You grow up there,
you stay there, you raise your family there, your kids
then based family there. So I think that there's not
a lot of stranger danger going on there, and everybody's
(08:19):
kind of keeping tabs on everybody, not in a nefarious way.
It's just there's a palpable community there and.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Like you say, Oxford pies where everyone goes. So take
us there. On November thirty, twenty twenty one, the school
is sent into disarray when someone starts opening fire. Where
do the gunshots start? And what do the next few minutes,
because it really is only minutes, What do they look like?
Speaker 5 (08:46):
So this is essentially what happens on November thirtieth, twenty
twenty one, twelve fifty one pm, just after the lunch
hour for the students, gunshots that many students have now
described as the sound of balloons popping began to come
(09:08):
from the south end of the main hallway where students
have their lockers, et cetera. And within one minute, so
now it's twelve fifty two pm. There have been over
one hundred phone calls to the local nine one one
dispatch center, and the cops are already on their way there.
(09:30):
Reporters and cops have already caught wind of this, so
the nature of this is spotty. Details are emerging. You've
got tons of scared kids calling their parents, calling nine
to one one operators, and they can't really answer questions
as to what they're seeing because they're concerned about barricading themselves,
running away, et cetera. So from the hallway, the shooter
(09:52):
starts to make his way east through the building, indiscriminately
striking students. He is not targeting people he personally knows
or has any personal vendettas against. It is complete indiscriminate killing.
And the first person he shoots is is a young
girl running down the hallway, and then he shoots another
(10:17):
girl in the back of the head. And this is
particularly eerie because in the manifesto, if you will, the
tape he recorded the night before the shooting, and we
can get into that later, clearly states that the first
person he wants to shoot is a pretty girl in
the face, and that is precisely what he did. So
(10:39):
at this point, somehow parents have already caught wait of
what's going on. Worldly About like two three minutes into
this shooting, somebody posts onto an Oxford mom's Facebook group
and certain parents are driving towards the school, but the
streets have been barricaded because law enforcements is shutting down
the roads into the school because they don't know if
(11:01):
the shooter is a student yet, so if the shooter
got there by car, they want to make sure he
or she cannot leave by car.
Speaker 6 (11:08):
Right, So, shooter still moving east down the hallway.
Speaker 5 (11:12):
Students and teachers are barricading themselves in classrooms here in America,
because this is not a super one off event here,
as we just recently talked about, Typically in school you
do active shooter drill, so the teachers and the students
had already been privy on what to do.
Speaker 6 (11:31):
So we're about two three minutes into the shooting.
Speaker 5 (11:33):
The shooter changes magazines and then starts heading north up
the hall He turns around, shoots into a classroom, walks
south again. I can't even imagine what's going on in
the panic these students are feeling inside the classroom at
this time. Then three minutes after the first shots were heard,
the shooter enters the boys' bathroom and encounters two students,
(11:58):
a senior and a freshman. Inside this bathroom, the senior
is instructing the freshman to hide in the stall so
that the shooter cannot see their feet, to get up
and crouch down on the toilet, so the shooter walks in.
Once he leaves, the two boys are left in the
(12:21):
stall hiding, texting their parents what's going on. The shooter
then comes back into the bathroom, orders the senior to
come out of the stall and the freshman to stand
up against the wall. He then shoots the senior right
in front of the freshmen, and that is the last
(12:42):
person he shoots, seventeen year old Justin Schilling before the
gunfire ceases around twelve fifty six PM, when the first
two deputies come into Oxford High School and begin to
search for the shooter with guns drawn at around one PM,
so this is only nine minutes after the first shots
(13:05):
rang out. He steps out of the boy's bathroom and
kneels down puts his hands up, which is somewhat an
anomaly in these circumstances. We hear a lot of times
the assailient will either turn the gun on themselves or
maybe antagonize law enforcements so they can do suicide by police.
We've seen that happen before as well, so law enforcement
(13:29):
that we've spoken to tell us that the whole thing
was really, and this may sound crude, wrapped up in
about thirteen to fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
It's amazing how much damage someone can do in such
a short period of time.
Speaker 7 (13:42):
One of the key interviews that we did for Sins
of the Child was with Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard.
His team was the team that responded to the high
school that day. They had been trained for this. They
found eighteen live rounds left in his gun. They firmly
believe that he planned to shoot every single one of them,
(14:05):
but we know from listening to his manifesto that he
planned to surrender. He did not want to kill himself,
He did not want to do suicide by cop. He
wanted to surrender, and he says it's because he wanted
the notoriety. He wanted people to use his name and
forever associate him with this terrible act. We choose not
(14:26):
to use his name in the podcast. Some of our
contributors do. We're not going to stop them from doing that,
but we don't use his name.
Speaker 5 (14:34):
Yeah, it does become clear he did have this obsession
with notoriety, wanting to be remembered as a school shooter
and stay alive, not kill himself. And there are a
few instances where he references the Parkland school shooter as
his idol.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Before we get into that, I'd like to know a
little bit more about the victims, because we had full
people killed, multiple people injured. Can you tell us a
little bit about some of them and some of the
people that lost their lives that day.
Speaker 5 (15:06):
So by the end of the day it was reported
that three eight teenagers have died, so seventeen year old
Madison Baldwin, sixteen year old Tape Mire, and fourteen year old.
Speaker 6 (15:17):
Hanna Saint Juliana.
Speaker 5 (15:19):
And at the time, I believe that there were seven
other injuries, many of them critical, including one teacher and that.
Speaker 6 (15:30):
Was Mollie Darnell.
Speaker 5 (15:32):
And by the next morning, December one, twenty twenty one,
news had broke that seventeen year old Justin Shilling, who
was the senior in the bathroom with the freshmen, did
not survive his injuries, so in total there were four victims.
Speaker 7 (15:49):
We use a lot of trial audio in the podcast
from multiple hearings, and the parents each had a trial
and so one of the biggest pieces of tape that
we use in our show. We have an entire episode
dedicated to the victim impact statements, and that's because we
want to keep the victims at the forefront of this
(16:10):
and at the victim impact statement or at the sentencing
hearing for the shooter, the victims were invited to give
their victim impact statements and that included Justin Schilling's parents,
Jill Suave and Craig Shilling. Madison Baldwin's mother spoke, Nicole
Bausilet and Hanna Saint Juliana's sister and father spoke Steve
(16:32):
Saint Juliana, and Rayna Saint Juliana. Rayna spoke on behalf
of her mother as well, because I have to imagine
that it was extremely difficult for her mother to face
the idea of standing up in front of her daughter's
killer and reading a statement I know that I could
never and for Tate Muhror, his father really gave one
of the most impactful statements that I've ever heard.
Speaker 8 (16:54):
In my life.
Speaker 7 (16:55):
They spoke about their kid's dreams and what their futures
would have been, and what they imagined their futures to
be for themselves and for their relationships with their children,
but also for their children, you know. Steve Saint Juliana says,
I'm never going to be able to walk my daughter
down the aisle. I'm not even going to be able
to see her graduate high school. She just started high
school three months before this. Her sister says that they
(17:18):
were super close. They shared clothes, like, they talked about everything.
And now her sister doesn't even want to get her
driver's license because what's the point. Her sister's not there
to be with her anymore. And Steve also said that
he found a list of careers that Hannah was considering,
a list of careers in her phone. And so these
kids had such bright, bright lives ahead of them and
(17:42):
they were just snuffed out through the aspirations of a
deranged killer.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
And it's not just those that died, it's the injured,
but also the friends that watched these people die, the
students that were terrorized. So many people are impacted when
something like this happens.
Speaker 5 (18:02):
Yes, I think one of the more compelling moments for
me in Jill Suave, Justin Shilling's mom's testimony, when she
spoke of her son. She talks about her son's heart
and his character and who he was as a person,
and she specifically says that her son, Justin would have
(18:23):
been the shooter's friend had he just asked, And something
about that I think tells you a lot about who
Justin Shilling was as a person. And we had an
opportunity to speak with his father, Craig, and that came
through in our conversation with him as well. But yes,
to your point about you know, all the others affected,
(18:45):
that is really was the impetus for Karen MacDonald charging
the shooter with one kunt of terrorism, which we have
not seen before in.
Speaker 6 (18:55):
A school shooting.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Why is that?
Speaker 1 (18:57):
What difference does that make?
Speaker 5 (18:58):
Well, it doesn't necessarily make a difference, but it makes
a statement. It doesn't bring anyone back, it doesn't heal
anybody's trauma, but it definitely makes a statement that this
affects so many more people than the people killed in
their families, right, I mean additionally, in the shooter sentencing
(19:19):
hearing and the parent sentencing hearings we hear from survivors
who talk about the PTSD. They are now living with
all the little things in their everyday life that they
now think about that they never did before. November thirtieth,
twenty twenty one, being in large crowds going to school
hearing loud noises.
Speaker 7 (19:41):
One of these survivors he said that he can't even
imagine a life as an adult living in a city
where there's a lot of noise, there's a lot of people.
I mean, that just limits their lives so much. And
you can say that their futures were taken from them
as well. I mean they still get to live on
this earth, but not in the same way they were
here before. So some of the most powerful testimony that
(20:04):
we play in our podcast is from Christy Gibson Marshall.
She was next to take mirror as he took his
last breaths, and she had known him since he was
three years old because his mom would bring him to
the school. He had two older brothers, and through tears,
through gut wrenching testimony and tears, she says it took
(20:25):
her a year to get the taste of Tate's blood
out of her mouth because she was trying to resuscitate him.
I guess I've never listened to testimony from a school
shooting like this before, And what really struck me is
just how many people were in that hallway and were
laying next to dead bodies. And one of the girls
(20:49):
that speaks in the victim impact statement says that she
was lying next to Hanna Saint Juliana while she bled out,
and another one says that I saw Madison get killed,
and I just don't understand how you can move forward
from that at such a young age to have something
so serious happen. And that's why I think the terrorism
charge was necessary, because if you really want to ensure
(21:12):
that this person never gets out of prison, that's a
good way to do it.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
You're listening to True Crime Conversations with me Jemma Bath.
We're talking to Jessica Lauba and Cooper Mole about the
Oxford High School shooting. Up next, we talk about how
the parents of a serial killer end up behind bars themselves.
(21:44):
Let's talk a bit more about the shooter.
Speaker 8 (21:46):
Who was he?
Speaker 1 (21:47):
First of all, let's paint the picture of him and
his family.
Speaker 5 (21:51):
The shooter was, from what we understand, not your I
can't believe this is even a noun. You're a typical
high school shooter. He was not a victim of bullying.
He did fairly well in school, didn't stand out with
his appearance.
Speaker 6 (22:12):
He was a loner.
Speaker 5 (22:14):
Other kids who testified even though this is a small
school in a small town, so that they didn't know him.
They recognized him but couldn't put a name to his
face sort of thing. But he was somebody we see
through his social media and texts, etc. Who was very
preoccupied with a fascination with firearms and in his spare time,
(22:39):
it seems that that was his main hobby and a
hobby that he shared with his parents. That they would
go to the shooting range the other they would test
out different guns together. He was well trained and skilled
with guns. One thing that does end up coming out
about him in his Miller hearing and the US we
(22:59):
have if a juvenile is to be eligible for a
sentence of life without parole, they need to go through
a process called a Miller hearing, And in a Miller
hearing is when it's proven whether or not there's a
chance for this individual to be rehabilitated, and in the
case of this shooter, they were not able to prove
that he would be able to be rehabilitated, and testimony
(23:20):
given during this Miller Hearing shared evidence.
Speaker 6 (23:23):
Of violent behavior in his past.
Speaker 5 (23:26):
Including torturing animals, journal entries, and recorded video of him
talking about the pleasure that he experienced well torturing baby
birds specifically, and that he often fantasized about violence. However,
he also often experienced psychological torment.
Speaker 6 (23:50):
There was part of him that we can see.
Speaker 5 (23:53):
In his text messages that this was not always a
comfortable place for him to be in his head, that
he was hearing voices, seeing demons, thought his home was haunted,
having abnormal paranormal experiences, expressed seeing this concern to his
parents that he wanted help, expressing his concern to the
(24:14):
one friend that he had via text message that he
wanted to go to a doctor, that he wanted help,
and those crist for help did go ignored. But he
was definitely somebody who was had an awareness that his
ideations were not normal.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
But his parents, they knew he was struggling, but ignored it.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
Do we know?
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Why? Do we know what that relationship looked like between
the parents and son.
Speaker 5 (24:40):
It looked negligent. That's essentially the crux of this is
that they were held culpable for gross negligence that contributed
to their studying enacting this terrible attack.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Well, one of the nine to one one calls that
comes through when the shooting starts is from the shooter's dad.
Can you talk us through that call and why that
was so significant?
Speaker 7 (25:03):
James Crumbly and Jennifer Crumbley were actually at Oxford High
School just an hour before the shooting takes place. What
ended up happening was they were called to the school
because their son had been drawing guns, bullets, blood and
dead figures on his math assignment. And this is not
(25:27):
the first time something like this has happened. So Jennifer
and James show up to the school, they meet with
the counselor, and they bring in the shooter and they
all discuss what's going on with this worksheet. But by
the time the worksheet got to the office, some things
had been removed, some things had been crossed out, and
(25:48):
from what I understand, they were only there for like
less than twenty minutes I believe, And the counselor asks
them if they would like to bring the shooter home,
bring their son home, and they say they have to
go back to work, and at no point does anyone.
Speaker 8 (26:05):
Check the shooter's backpack.
Speaker 7 (26:08):
There's conflicting reports about whether the back was in the
room with them in the counselor's office, or whether it
was still in his classroom. But from the court testimony,
we hear that the dean of students goes to get
his backpack from the classroom and gives it back to
the shooter, remarking that it seems very heavy and never
even opens it up, and if you would have just
(26:29):
unzipped it, you would have seen the gun right away.
And so it's really mind boggling that this whole thing
goes down with the math assignment.
Speaker 8 (26:40):
Jennifer had been.
Speaker 7 (26:40):
Called days before about him looking at violent videos on
his phone, about looking up bullets on his phone, and
she tells her son, next time, don't get caught. So
there definitely seemed to be this vibe in this family
that they weren't taking his issues seriously. And the main
(27:03):
piece of evidence I believe here is that they bought
him that gun four days beforehand. Now, the shooter says
that this was his Christmas present. This is Black Friday,
he and his father go to ACME shooting Goods in Oxford, Michigan,
and he gives his father money to buy the gun
he wants.
Speaker 8 (27:22):
It's a sig hour nine millimeter.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Can I pause you there? What does that mean for
a non gun person? Is that a big gun?
Speaker 8 (27:31):
It's a handgun. It kind of looks like one a
cop would carry.
Speaker 5 (27:33):
Which I'll say is a bit different from previous mass
shooting events here in the United States that have really
called automatic assault rifles into questions. So you see a
lot of AR fifteen's military weapons, etc.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
This was not that and easy to hide in a
backpack if it's just a little handgun.
Speaker 8 (27:52):
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 7 (27:53):
So the thing about the meeting in the office and
the counselor's office was that they asked their son, you know,
are you okay? Is there anything we need to be
worried about? And he says, no, everything's fine. He doesn't
indicate to them that he has this plan. He's recorded
this video the night before that says he's going to
shoot everyone he possibly can. And he definitely planned to
(28:18):
shoot a lot of people because he brought a lot
of magazines with him, so Jennifer and James leave the school.
Speaker 8 (28:25):
They go back to their work.
Speaker 7 (28:26):
James is a door dash driver, Jennifer works a cubicle style.
Speaker 8 (28:30):
Job, and they go back to work.
Speaker 7 (28:32):
Within the hour, Boomers starts swirling that there is something
going on at the high school. James Crumbly. One of
the first things that he does is call nine to
one one on his way back to his house to say,
I think my son took the gun. I think he's
(28:53):
the shooter. He's not worried that his son has been
shot or that he is unsafe. He's not calling to
report that there's a shooting. He's worried that his son
is the shooter. Now what does that tell you? They
bought this gun four days before, on November twenty, with
the shooter's money, and it was his choice. And you know,
(29:15):
it was just James and the son at the shooting thing,
but he went shooting with his mother the next day.
So she was a participant in this gun culture in
the family too. Now in her testimony, you'll hear that
she says that James was responsible for keeping this gun
locked up in the house. And what the police find
(29:36):
when they get to the Crumbly house is the gun
case open on the bed of the parents' bedroom and
the shooter had gotten it from their dresser. It was
not locked, it was not kept in a safe place whatsoever,
not kept away from their fifteen year old son.
Speaker 8 (29:52):
He had easy access to it.
Speaker 7 (29:54):
This is also a parent in many photos that are
posted to social media and like through text messages that
there are guns out in the background, like on the
dining room table in so many so it's easy to
prove that they weren't safe about locking up their guns
around their mind child. So James Crumbley's in a panic.
You know, it's hard to listen to that night when
(30:15):
one call, because you can tell he knows exactly what happened,
and he sounds terrified, like, oh crap, like what have
we done kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (30:27):
You know.
Speaker 7 (30:27):
I don't know if that's what he was thinking, but
he and Jennifer are texting each other, and Jennifer texts
her son, don't do it.
Speaker 8 (30:36):
They know immediately.
Speaker 7 (30:37):
And so this is why we think that this case
was deserving of a Deep Dive podcast, because yes, this
case is unprecedented for many many reasons, but it was
mostly that they were finally holding parents accountable for their
minor children's actions. Now, when you think about that, just
on the surface level, you're like, man, that's kind of
(30:58):
crazy that, like, my kid can go out and do
something and I can be held accountable. When you really
look at the details of this case, you really start
to see why it's actually not that much of a
precedence that being set because these parents were extremely negligent
when it came to their child. There were reports that
from the age of six years old, the child was
(31:19):
left at home alone without access to his parents. He
would be walking around the neighborhood knocking on people's doors
because he was scared. He was ten years old with
a cell phone, texting his mother asking her to come home,
and she wouldn't answer. He was being ignored.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
How quickly were the parents arrested and actually brought into
the police station as suspects in this case.
Speaker 5 (31:56):
On December third, three days after the shooting, With enough
evidence coming to the surface that the parents could very
well be held culpable in this case prosecuted, Karen McDonald
gives a press conference and announces that they're charging James
(32:16):
and Jennifer Crumbley with four counts of involuntary manslaughter warrants
are put out for their arrests and they're nowhere to
be found. Police show up at their house, they can't
be reached via cell phone. Still no signs of them
by nighttime. So at this point the Oakland County Police
(32:40):
have searched all of Oxford to no avail and they
call in a fugitive Apprehension team and the US Marshall
Service for backup. Around seven pm that night, the US
Marshall Service puts out a tweet with two kind of
classic looking wanted posters for both Jennifer and James Crumbley,
(33:01):
you know, with a reward up to ten thousand dollars.
This also becomes a huge national news story and kind
of Sheriff Mike Bouchard appears in the first segment of
You Know Every Box CNN, NBC and show of that night.
Speaker 6 (33:18):
Right.
Speaker 5 (33:20):
So, at this point, the attorneys of the Crumble's Mary
Olehman and Shannon Smith get in contact with law enforcement
and they assure them, hey, these two are just kind
of getting their affairs together. They felt really concerned for
their own safety. Even in Jennifer Crumpley's testimony, she says
(33:41):
that they had been receiving death threats, they felt unsafe
to stay in Oxford and says the reason they left
was because they just didn't feel safe.
Speaker 6 (33:52):
However, what you find out they.
Speaker 5 (33:54):
Were kind of doing during that time is they had
drained tons of money out of their bank accounts, including
their son's bank account. They get burner phones, turn off
their other cell phones, and.
Speaker 6 (34:10):
Just completely made a run for it, right.
Speaker 5 (34:13):
So finally they were spotted about forty five minutes south
of Oxford in a Detroit area warehouse building. Somebody who
lived in that warehouse building saw their car backed into
a parking lot right, so backed in so that license
plate would be obfuscated. So they knew what they were doing.
(34:35):
They send out a unit in Detroit. They are apprehended
by the Fugitive Response Team and a sworn of police
invade this warehouse area and the Crumplies are immediately taken
into custody.
Speaker 6 (34:49):
So it's really this moment as well.
Speaker 5 (34:51):
I mean, this was a huge moment in this case,
because people don't run unless they have something to hide, right,
and sadly, if you really think about it, and I'm
not too sure that the shooter knew this was going
on at the time, but this really also points to
more evidence of their gross negligence.
Speaker 6 (35:13):
Right here is their son in jail. You know, it's been.
Speaker 5 (35:17):
Charged with terrorism murder in the first degree, and they leave.
What message does that send to a kid who already
feels like and his goes on to express that he
felt like his parents didn't care about him. I'm not
saying this with sympathy for what he did, but if
we are all growing up with this idea that our
(35:38):
parents love us unconditionally, we hope that even when we
royally screw up, our parents are still there for us
and we always have that love to lean on.
Speaker 6 (35:50):
And here they are just leaving.
Speaker 5 (35:54):
So from there they are brought back to Open County
jail and they were initially denied bond because of their
flight risk.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
Well that'd already tried to run, yes.
Speaker 7 (36:10):
Then they were held on a million dollar bond five
hundred k ECH.
Speaker 6 (36:14):
Yes, which they could not come up with the money for.
Speaker 5 (36:18):
And we're not totally out of COVID yet, so the
legal systems are totally backed up. So James and Jennifer Crumbley,
I mean they sat in jail for two years before
they stood trial.
Speaker 7 (36:31):
One thing I just wanted to say, And it kind
of goes with the theme of every time we talk
to each other, Jemma is the bad parenting. I am
not a mother, but I have to think that if
I had a teenager, I'd be really interested in what
they were doing on their phone and what they were
looking at, what they were texting, what they were writing
in their journals, and the fact that nobody was keeping
(36:52):
an eye on this kid who was begging for help.
He was begging for help, and you're not even slightly
curious about what he's telling other people, even about you,
like as his mother, You're not like thinking like I
wonder if he thinks I'm a terrible mother.
Speaker 8 (37:07):
They don't even care.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Does that become the main conversation in America when this
side of the story breaks the parental responsibility side.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (37:17):
I think that this case gained a lot of attention
because of the gross negligence of these parents. But one
thing that we were looking at in our research was
the mother of Dylan Kleebold, one of the Columbine shooters
that was the first big school shooting in American history,
and that was in nineteen ninety nine. I believe the
(37:37):
mother of Dylan Kleebold wrote a book about this experience. Now,
she avoided the media for a few years after the shooting.
You know, her son died by suicide in that shooting.
So she finally came out of this situation going like,
I want to help other people understand like how we
ended up here. And one of the things that she
(37:58):
says is like we were a normal family. We were
a normal upper middle class family. He had everything that
he could have wanted, we were paying attention, and this
still happened.
Speaker 8 (38:10):
And so it's not to say that there is a
perfect way to parent kids.
Speaker 7 (38:14):
Of course, there's not a perfect way to parent teenagers,
especially teenagers that are going through mental anguish. But it's
really important that parents make an attempt to even figure
out what's the difference between normal teenage angst and actual
mental illness and actually root down to the cause of
this because, you know, like Cooper said, we were coming
(38:35):
out of COVID at this time in twenty twenty one,
they had just gone back to school and they were
still doing some days remote at Oxford. Some classes were
still remote. But this was November of twenty twenty one,
so they had just only been in school for about
three months after being out at the end of the
previous year, and when you're that age, that kind of
(38:56):
social isolation really takes a toll, and especially on someone
like the shooter who was already going through so much
mentally and only having one friend probably plays a huge
part in that, because he felt like he couldn't talk
to literally anyone, not even his own parents.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Well, some of the details that were talked about in
the shooter's proceedings showed the true premeditated nature of his offending.
Can you take us through some of those Some of
them are too horrible to actually repeat, but some of
that evidence that stood out to you. The fact that
he had decided not to kill himself ahead of time,
(39:35):
that he'd planned the shooting out in his journal, what
kind of shocked you from hearing and witnessing all of that.
Speaker 5 (39:43):
One of the things that shocked me the most was
not that I would direct anyone to do this, but
comparing his plan, what he envisioned doing, specifically the execution
style he had envisioned killing people in side by side
(40:06):
with the autopsy reports of the murdered teenager, it is
eerily parallel. That to me is what stood out the most,
and it's also was a huge part of his Miller hearing,
which was his defense tried to argue that he was psychotic,
and the counter witness from the prosecution comes up and says, well, psychopaths.
Speaker 6 (40:34):
They act impulsively. They do not plan this out.
Speaker 5 (40:38):
There is not much premeditation here and precision and dedication
to a blueprint. And most people experiencing a level of
psychosis or psychopathy, they're just kind of spraying bullets. There's
no craft to what they're doing. And I know that
(40:59):
sounds crude, but he really was concerned with a certain
vision he had for this.
Speaker 7 (41:08):
He also envisioned very strongly the repercussions the fallout of
this shooting. He wanted the families to be miserable. He
wanted to see their misery. He wanted to witness it
in the courtroom. He even says, when I go to
trial for this, because I know I will, I know
I'm going to go to prison for the rest of
(41:29):
my life. And he's okay with that, and he says,
I just want to see the looks on their faces
when I've shot their child in the head. And one
of the quotes from his manifesto, if we're going to
call it that is. I have the chance to teach
the world to become a better place, and I have
to take that chance. I've missed many opportunities in my life.
(41:51):
I'm not missing this one. I'm going to try to
flee the school for as long as I can until
I get caught. Just the thought of the silly people
who saved their whole life to go to college and
have a great career, a family, grow old, die happily.
They don't know that in less than a day they're
going to die. Their lives will be changed forever. I
understand the constantquence, and says I understand that I could
(42:12):
go to prison for this, and I really say goodbye
to everything. I'm sorry for manipulating you.
Speaker 8 (42:17):
Mom and dad.
Speaker 7 (42:17):
You have trust in me, and make sure that you
have trusted me, and I just owned you. And you
should know that it's for a cause. I'm ruining my life,
not yours. And then he goes on to film another
video just after this. It says, like, fuck, that previous
video I took that was bullshit. I'm going to have
so much fun tomorrow. I have a goal and it's
to kill everyone.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
Thankfully, he received the harshest possible sentence and was given
life with that parole in December twenty twenty three. What
happened to the parents because that trial, well, they had
trials only recently wrapped up.
Speaker 7 (42:50):
Really Yeah, So Jennifer Crumbly went to trial first in
February twenty twenty four, and this is after a lot
of legal hearings and motions to decide whether she and
her husband James would be tried together or separately. They
have the same defense team, they're from the same law office,
(43:12):
and so there's definitely like questionable things going on there.
But ultimately what happens is they are tried separately, and
it's because basically, based on the evidence that they were presenting,
there was different levels of culpability according to their lawyers,
and so they wanted each person to have their fairest
chance at a trial. And at Jennifer's trial, the school
(43:36):
counselor speaks and Dino students speaks. They tell all the
stories that we've told you about today about the meeting
earlier in that school. The ATF agent who reviewed Facebook
messages between James and Jennifer says that they debated whether
to buy this gun for their son. He walked the
(43:57):
court through video he discovered of the sun using guns
at the shooting range with his parents, as we mentioned before,
and the most damning evidence was a video the shooter
had sent his friend that made it undeniable that the
parents were not always in the habit of securing their firearms,
like we said earlier. And there's a gun on the
table in the background of a photo, and so these
(44:20):
are all pretty hard evidence in my opinion, of their
negligence leading up to this. But there's also testimony about
the shooter texting his parents about paranormal experiences seeing demons.
Demons comes up a lot, and this is something that
the Parkland shooter also talked about. And since he idolized
the Parkland shooter, I do wonder about the manipulation of
(44:43):
his parents and using this trigger word almost like to
perhaps get off on a mental illness plea of some sort.
And ultimately, at Jennifer's trial, she ends up taking the stand,
which a lot of people are like, oh, no, oh, no,
what is she going to say, because she's been openly
(45:04):
emotional during this trial, even though she's not supposed to
be they are asked to suppress their emotions, and she
was openly weeping at the beginning when they were showing
the footage of her son going through the school and
indiscriminately shooting people. But she takes the stand, and I'll
never forget the first time I heard this quote was
she was asked if she would have done anything differently,
(45:28):
and she said no. What she says no, And it's
just like you've dug your own grave here, you know, Like,
how can you say that in front of all of
these victims, families and these people who experience it themselves,
in front of the jury, And I mean, okay, she's
telling the truth on the sand, she wouldn't have changed anything.
(45:49):
But one of the things that just has really stuck
with me is, as she said, I wish he would
have killed us instead. And I've sat there and wondered
that many times, is that it seemed like the most
of the issues that this child had were with his parents.
The Sandy Hook shooter killed his mother before going to
the elementary school and killing sixteen children, And so it
(46:11):
does make you wonder what was the motive here, because really,
at the end of the day, no one's really clear
as to why the shooter did any of this, And
of course our podcast is about this bigger question of
paying for the sins of your child and how monumental
this case is when it comes to the parents being
held accountable or their actions and rearing their child poorly,
(46:35):
and it culminating in this.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Event both parents ended up receiving at least ten years
in prison. And lastly, I wanted to ask, do you
think that this case has changed the way that people
think about shootings or violent crimes committed by teens and children.
Has this set a precedent that we can look to
moving forward?
Speaker 7 (46:56):
Personally, I hope that the precedent that's set is that
there's more investigation into the events that lead up to
any of these events. Now, really, my dream is that
this never happens again, But of course I know I
live in the United States. That's a pipe dream. And
I'm going to say, there's not a perfect parent in
this entire world. But there are parents that are completely
(47:19):
blind to what's happening in their children's mind or in
their personal lives, and they go on and do these things.
But I would bet my life that most of the
children who end up doing these mouse shooting events at schools, particularly,
their parents have some inkling that something is wrong with
their child.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
True Crime Conversations is a Mama MEA podcast hosted and
produced by me Jemma Bath, with audio design by Scott Stronik.
Our executive producers on this episode, A gam Moylen and
Live Proud. Thanks so much for listening. I'll be back
next week with another True Crime Conversation
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