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
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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.
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ICYMI: Jennifer Crumbley's lawyer makes bizarre defence mentioning shower habits
Why is Jennifer Crumbley on trial?
The parents face four counts of involuntary manslaughter, accused of ignoring his mental health condition and making the gun accessible at home. They have both pleaded not guilty.
Four days before the shooting on 30 November 2021, James bought his son a gun, which Ethan described on Instagram as his “new beauty”.
Jennifer then took her son to a shooting range.
A few days later, a teacher noticed the high school sophomore searching online for ammunition, sparking concerned school administrators to contact his parents.
Instead of responding to the school, his mother allegedly texted her son: “Lol. I’m not mad at you. You have to learn not to get caught.”
On the day of the shooting, a teacher found a disturbing drawing on Ethan’s desk depicting a school massacre, featuring a semi-automatic handgun pointing at the words “the thoughts won’t stop help me”, prosecutors said.
The school staff then met with Ethan and his parents.
Although the school staff urged Ethan to seek psychiatric help that day and to go home early, his parents rejected the idea and the school didn’t require him to leave.
Later that day, their son opened fire, taking the lives of four classmates: Madisyn Baldwin, 17, Hana St. Juliana, 14, Tate Myre, 16, and Justin Shilling, 17.
‘Bad Blood'
The trial got off to an interesting start when Ms Crumbley’s attorney Shannon Smith quoted Taylor Swift’s song “Bad Blood” in her opening statement. Ms Smith said this case was about the prosecution “attempting to put a Band-Aid on problems that can’t be fixed with a Band-Aid”.
“A Band-Aid will never bring back the lives that were lost,” she added.
The defence attorney also insisted that Ethan’s mental condition was “not on her radar”, yet also described her as a “hypervigilant” mother. Ms Smith also emphasised Mr Crumbley’s love of guns and placed blame on the school.
The prosecution, by contrast, argued in its opening statement that Ms Crumbley was well aware of her son’s “deteriorating mental health”.
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Key revelations from Jennifer Crumbley’s trial
The defence attorney quoted Taylor Swift’s song ‘Bad Blood’ in her opening statements
The Crumbley’s ‘hiding,’ explained
The jury heard how, in the days following the massacre, the Crumbleys came under scrutiny for their strange behaviour.
Reports showed the couple drained their son’s bank account, withdrew cash, sold their horses, and bought four burner phones in the hours after learning that their son was behind the school shooting.
The pair also checked into a hotel before landing at Ms Crumbley’s friend’s artist studio.
Ms Crumbley’s attorney told the jury on 25 January that the Crumbleys had been receiving “death threats” at their home, so they decided to stay at a hotel – as the defence pushes back on the claim that they were on the run.
The pair also bought burner phones – twice – because police had seized their normal phones and then they weren’t able to do two-factor authentication to access their bank accounts with their original burner phones, the defence claimed.
The defence attorney told jurors that the couple “weren’t hiding,” but were “waiting for instructions” and were “waiting to turn themselves in first thing Saturday morning, when arraignments take place”.
They were arrested at the artist studio on 4 December, 2021.
Jennifer Crumbley’s defence attorney gets personal in closing arguments
Shannon Smith said she and her client have a lot in common.
“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.
The lawyer said that she doesn’t own a gun, but has a “butcher block” of big knives.
“My kids could easily grab a knife without me knowing it…and walk out the door of my house and go play with the other kids…and my son could kill somebody,” she said. “And I never would have expected it to happen.”
She added other hypotheticals of why she believes this case is too extreme. “Am I going to be held responsible if my son sends a picture of his penis over to some girl?” Ms Smith asked.
“Can parents really be responsible for everything their children do? Especially when it’s not foreseeable?” the lawyer added.
“It was unforeseeable. No one expected this. No one could have expected this — including Mrs Crumbley,” the attorney said.
Jury deliberations still underway
The jury is still out in the case of Jennifer Crumbley.
The 12 jurors were handed the case on Monday morning after hearing nearly two weeks of testimony from a variety of witnesses: school administrators, law enforcement officials, friends of Ms Crumbley and the defendant herself.
Several alternate jurors were told they could sequester at home starting on Tuesday.
The timeline in question
Spring 2021:
- An affair between Ms Crumbley and Brian Meloche – a fire department captain — began in spring of 2021. It lasted roughly six months, Mr Meloche testified.
- Ethan’s grandmother passed away and he began missing school, as he was in Florida to be with his family.
- Ms Crumbley texted her friend that she thought her son seemed “kind of depressed.”
Fall 2021:
- Ethan Crumbley’s best friend leaves the state for OCD treatment.
- His parents go to Halloween parties while Ethan is home alone.
- James Crumbley buy a 9mm gun for Ethan to use.
- His mother takes him to a shooting range.
- Hours before the shooting, his teacher discovered a disturbing drawing and called his parents to arrange a meeting.
- Ethan opened fire on his high school.
ICYMI: Jennifer Crumbley addresses texting about horses more than her son
Last week while she took the stand, Ms Crumbley’s defence attorney also brought up text messages between her and her husband which focused a lot on horses.
Ms Crumbley admitted that she talked “a lot more about the horses” than her son in these text exchanges because Mr Crumbley didn’t know horses like she did – so she would explain to her husband how to take care of them while she was at work.
“Horses can’t talk,” she said, but she could talk to her son after school.
The 45-year-old was also asked about her former job. She testified that she had worked as a marketing director at a real estate acquisition company for five years, a job that she said she cared about “a lot”.
Who are the Crumbleys?
Jennifer, 45, worked in marketing at a real estate firm and James, 47, worked for DoorDash, according to court documents.
During the meeting with Ethan and school administrators who suggested he leave school early hours before the shooting, filings suggest that Jennifer cited their jobs as reasons why he couldn’t come home.
The pair initially came under scrutiny for their strange behaviour in the aftermath of the shooting. Reports showed the couple drained their son’s bank account.
They withdrew cash, sold their horses, and bought four burner phones in the hours after finding out that their son had opened fire.
When they were arrested four days after the shooting, the couple reportedly had $6,600 in cash, credit cards, gift cards and four phones.
At the time, the Oakland County prosecutor Karen McDonald said that “they started making plans”.
Jennifer texted someone that “she needed to sell her horses fast” and the couple “drained their son’s bank account” later that day, taking out $3,000 and leaving a mere 99 cents, Ms McDonald said.
The pair also checked into a hotel. The defence attorney told the jury on 25 January that the Crumbleys had been receiving “death threats” at their home, so they went to a hotel to seek refuge.
Fearful, the pair bought burner phones. The defence lawyer also explained to jurors that they bought two pairs of burner phones because they couldn’t access their bank accounts with their original burners, since they weren’t able to do the necessary two-factor authentication.
The Crumbleys then stayed at an artist studio, belonging to Jennifer’s friend, where they were arrested the next day, on 4 December. They were supposed to have turned themselves in on the afternoon of 3 December, but failed to do so, resulting in a manhunt.
The defence attorney told the court that the couple “weren’t hiding,” but “waiting for instructions” and they were “waiting to turn themselves in first thing Saturday morning, when arraignments take place”.