Jennifer Crumbley verdict: Parents of school shooting victims react as killer’s mother is found guilty

Jennifer Crumbley is scheduled to be sentenced on 9 April

Moment Jennifer Crumbley found guilty of manslaughter

A Michigan jury found Jennifer Crumbley, the mother of the Oxford High School shooter, guilty of four counts of involuntary manslaughter.

The jury reached its unanimous verdict after 10 hours of deliberation. Ms Crumbley sat in court, unemotionally, as the verdict was read.

She had pleaded not guilty. The 45-year-old’s husband, James Crumbley, is being tried separately in March.

In December, Ethan Crumbley was convicted of killing four of his classmates and injuring seven others on 30 November 2021.

The prosecution has accused her of neglecting her son’s “downward spiral” and making a gun accessible in their home.

The defence rested its case on Friday after the defendant took the stand. Ms Crumbley’s attorney delivered strange closing arguments, in which she compared herself to Ms Crumbley as “messy” working moms.

The prosecution argued that Ms Crumbley could have taken “tragically small” steps that could have prevented her son from shooting up his school. The prosecutors mentioned that the mother bought her son a gun days before the shooting, recognized that he was “acting depressed” and spent a lot of time alone.

The trial has been chock-full of revelations: an extramarital affair, a shocking admission, and a Taylor Swift reference.

She will be sentenced on 9 April.

Key Points

• Jury finds Jennifer Crumbley guilty
• Why is Jennifer Crumbley on trial?
• Jennifer Crumbley takes the stand: 'I wish he killed us instead’
• Prosecution argues ‘tragically small’ steps could have prevented shooting
• Defence lawyer starts trial with a Taylor Swift quote

[6 February 2024 04:00 · Kelly Rissman]

Jennifer Crumbley: Jury deliberation underway

[6 February 2024 05:00 · Kelly Rissman]

Crumbley’s attorney compares herself to her client in bizarre defence

In closing arguments, defence attorney Shannon Smith detailed a series of snapshots into her own personal life as a “messy” working mother-of-four in an effort to relate to her client and suggest that she easily could have ended up in “Mrs Crumbley’s shoes”.

“I say ‘sorry’ a lot,” Ms Smith said, and referred to a TikTok video that apparently shows the attorney apologising throughout the trial.

The attorney told the court that she messes up a lot because “I’m human — and so is Mrs Crumbley”.

The defendant is “not a perfect person or a perfect parent,” she said, and neither is she.

Ms Smith said that as a working mother, she sometimes doesn’t have time to take a “true shower” but has to “just grab a handful of wipes and scrub off the best I can”.

“I realised I am Jennifer Crumbley,” Ms Smith said, outlining similarities between the two women.

“Calling your child an oopsie baby was designed to try to make her look bad with no context,” Ms Smith argued, adding that she calls her son an “oopsie baby” all the time.

Ms Smith said that she has called her child a “psycho” or a “nutcase,” just as Ms Crumbley called her son “weird” in texts to her friend.

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[6 February 2024 06:00 · Kelly Rissman]

‘Tragically small' steps

In the prosecution’s closing argument, Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald stressed Ms Crumbley’s role in the lead-up to the mass shooting saying she could have done a few small things that may have changed the course of what happened.

But instead Ms Crumbley “has done the unthinkable and because of that four kids have died”, she said.

“She is not somebody that used ordinary care to prevent what was reasonably foreseeable,” she said.

Jurors were shown a slide, titled “What Jennifer Didn’t Say,” which listed all of the potential warning signs about her son, starting six months before the shooting.

The list included that the gun was accessible to him, that he had asked for help to go to a doctor, and that he had mentioned seeing demons.

Ms McDonald said there were “tragically small” things Ms Crumbley could have done to have prevented the shooting.

On the morning of the shooting, the Crumbley parents had been called in for a meeting with school staff after a teacher found a disturbing drawing of a gun.

Ms Crumbley “didn’t engage with her son at all in the entire 11 minutes she was there,” Ms McDonald said. “She did not hug him goodbye.”

The prosecutor argued that Ms Crumbley could have stopped by their home to check the gun was where it should have been following the meeting at the high school.

She could have locked the gun away out of reach of her son, she could have taken him home from school, she could have taken him to work, she could have told the school that they had gifted him a gun, Ms McDonald said.

She could have simply told her son at the meeting: “I care about you, I love you.”

The prosecutor also alluded to Ms Crumbley’s testimony earlier in the day, in which she said that she had told her boss that she would be back in “about an hour” after getting the call from school administrators.

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[6 February 2024 07:00 · Kelly Rissman]

ICYMI: The prosecution’s argument

The prosecution argued that she was well aware of her son’s “deteriorating mental health” and despite this, she and her husband bought him a gun and took him to a gun range.

“They weren’t in a car crash. They weren’t sick. They were murdered in an act of terror committed by Jennifer Crumbley’s 15-year-old son,” Oakland County assistant prosecutor Marc Keast said in opening statements.

“Jennifer Crumbley didn’t pull the trigger that day. But she’s responsible for their deaths,” he added.

Ethan Crumbley was in a “downward spiral” when the gun was purchased, and his mother knew that the prosecutor said. Still, “this gun was gifted”, he added.

“They didn’t do any number of tragically small and easy things that would have prevented all this from happening,” the attorney said of the parents, calling the tragedy “senseless”.

He also accused Ms Crumbley of trying to “downplay and downright lie” about her knowledge of what was going on with her son. Her “first instinct was to lie, second was to run”, he said.

This trial is about her “willful disregard of the danger that she knew of”, he said.

[6 February 2024 09:00 · Kelly Rissman]

The Crumbleys’ relationship questioned

Throughout the trial, the defence has portrayed her husband as being in charge of guns and Ms Crumbley as knowing little about firearms.

“It was a surprise to me that they went to the gun store that day. It was not a surprise that they bought a gun,” she said, referring to James Crumbley going to a gun store with Ethan.

Mr Keast then argued that Ms Crumbley didn’t “trust” her husband with many things around the house or to hold down a job – but did trust him “with a deadly weapon”.

“I did,” she replied.

Ms Crumbley was also forced to answer questions about her extramarital affair with a longtime friend — and her use of a dating website.

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[6 February 2024 11:00 · Kelly Rissman]

Crumbley’s parents first police interview after school shooting

[6 February 2024 13:00 · Kelly Rissman]

Defence deflects blame

During her closing arguments, defence attorney Shannon Smith deflected blame from her client and onto Ethan Crumbley, the school, and another witness.

Nothing could have stopped him that day and Ethan had pleaded guilty to his crimes, she argued.

Ms Smith also described Ethan as a “skilled manipulator” although he never showed his parents signs of mental illness. “No parent would purchase a weapon if they believed their child had mental illnesses,” she said, adding that the Crumbleys had two other firearms in the house and nothing had ever happened prior to the mass shooting.

The lawyer also argued that there was a “lack of evidence” to show that Ms Crumbley found her son weird or acting depressed. “There are not texts [between the Crumbley parents] that their son was exhibiting anything close to a mental health concern,” she said.

Ms Smith also characterised a voicemail left by a school counsellor for Ms Crumbley as “very nonchalant.” She added that the voicemail didn’t require a call back.

The lawyer also sought to place the blame for the shooting on the school.

She brought up the school meeting between the parents and the school staff on the morning of the shooting, after Ethan was found with disturbing drawings.

The school reportedly gave the Crumbleys a choice of whether to take Ethan home or keep him in class.

They chose to keep him in school — which he shot up hours later. “Reasonable doubt can be found in the fact that trained professionals told Ms Crumbley that her son was not a risk,” Ms Smith said, emphasising that the school did not force the parents to take the high school sophomore home.

The defence also brought up the prosecution’s claim that Ms Crumbley did not tell the school that she and her husband had just bought a gun for their son. Experts testified that students are known to go to the gun ranges often and know that it’s a “gun community”.

Earlier this week, Ms Crumbley’s lover Brian Meloche testified that the pair had a six-month affair starting in the spring of 2021. They haven’t talked since Ms Crumbley was arrested in December 2021, he said.

Ms Smith claimed that Mr Meloche was “inconsistent” and called him a “terrible witness”.

“He’s just an idiot and has no clue,” she said, referring to him claiming that Ms Crumbley told him the 9mm handgun was in her car on the day of the shooting.

[6 February 2024 14:00 · Kelly Rissman]

‘Wish he would’ve killed us instead’

Ms Crumbley took the stand to testify in her own defence last week.

Her voice quivered as she talked about the day of the shooting.

“I couldn’t believe he had actually shot anybody in the school,” she said, adding that the whole situation felt “surreal.”

“That was the hardest thing I had to stomach – that my child harmed and killed other people,” Ms Crumbley said, stumbling over the last few words and uttering them quietly.

Although she spent most of her time on the stand on Thursday making direct eye contact either with her attorney or the jury box, when she mentioned her son’s shooting, she looked down, avoiding eye contact with anyone.

Her attorney also asked whether Ms Crumbley thought her son was a danger to others, she said: “As a parent you spend your whole life trying to protect your child from other dangers. You never would think you’d have to protect your child from harming somebody else.”

The 45-year-old was then asked whether she considered herself a victim. She said no because she didn’t want to “disrespect those families that truly are the victims”. She then added: “We did lose a lot.”

In the last few moments of the defence’s questioning on Thursday, she was asked whether she could change what had happened if she could. Ms Crumbley said, “Oh absolutely. I wish he would’ve killed us instead.”

[6 February 2024 14:22 · Kelly Rissman]

Second day of jury deliberations begin

After the jury did not reach a verdict on Monday in the case of Jennifer Crumbley , their deliberations continued into Tuesday.

The 12 jurors were handed the case on Monday morning after hearing two weeks of testimony from school administrators, friends — and one lover — of Ms Crumbley, and the defendant herself.

The judge told several alternate jurors that they could sequester at home on Tuesday.

She acknowledged that this was “boring” experience for them and said that she saw one of them sleeping while others were doing sudokus and crosswords, sparking laughter among the alternates.

[6 February 2024 14:40 · Kelly Rissman]

Recap: The police interview admission

In court, the jurors watched a videotaped interview with police, during which they discussed a meeting wit school administrators.

On the morning of the shooting, school staff had grown increasingly concerned after finding Ethan’s drawing, depicting a semiautomatic handgun pointing at the words “the thoughts won’t stop help me”.

The Crumbley parents were called in to meet with school staff and their son to discuss it.

While given the choice of whether to keep Ethan in school or take him home, the parents opted for him to return to class. He shot up his school hours later.

A videotaped interview in the hours after the shooting shows investigators asking the parents about this meeting.

Mr Crumbley says their son was “doodling on a test or a practice test,” seemingly referring to the disturbing drawing, when Ms Crumbley interrupts: “I think we probably should have a lawyer.”

Mr Crumbley then says: “I think we can speak to the cops.”

Later in the interview, Ms Crumbley is seen telling police that the school counsellor “didn’t seem worried” about the drawing and that Ethan could either stay at school or his parents could take him home.

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