Stephanie's window was found unlocked, but a screen was in place and there was no disturbance of accumulated grime and insect traces.
[1] Stephanie's 14-year-old brother, Michael Crowe, was interrogated for hours by police using the Reid method without his parents’ knowledge and without legal representation.
The interrogations were conducted in such an egregious manner, combined with other evidence that pointed to a transient schizophrenic who lived in the area, that the boys were eventually declared to be factually innocent by a judge.
He was singled out by Escondido police because the crime scene seemed to suggest an inside job, and because he seemed "distant and preoccupied" after Stephanie's body was discovered and the rest of the family grieved.
During the interrogations, police falsely informed him that they had found physical evidence implicating him, that he had failed an examination with a so-called "truth verification" device, and that his parents were convinced he had done it.
[3] After an intense 6-hour interrogation, he gave a vague confession to killing his sister, providing no details and saying that he couldn't remember doing it.
Police from Escondido and nearby Oceanside also questioned Joshua Treadway and Aaron Houser, two 15-year-old friends of Michael Crowe.
He did not actually confess and steadfastly denied any involvement, but he did present a "hypothetical" account of how the crime might have happened, under prompting by police interrogators using the Reid technique.
[8] Police questioned Tuite, confiscated his clothing, and noticed scrapes on his body and a cut on his hand.
[10] However, as Treadway's trial was about to begin in January 1999, belated DNA testing found three drops of Stephanie's blood on a shirt belonging to Tuite.
On the first day of jury selection, Tuite walked away from the courtroom holding-tank during the lunch hour after freeing himself from handcuffs; he left the courthouse and boarded a bus.
In 2012, Superior Court Judge Kenneth So made the rare ruling that Michael Crowe, Treadway and Houser were factually innocent of the charges, permanently dismissing the criminal case against them.
The panel stated in its opinion, "Given the lack of evidence tying Tuite to the crime, the problems with the DNA evidence, the jury's deadlock and compromise verdict, and the weight and strategic position of McCrary's testimony, this case is one of those 'unusual' circumstances in which we find ourselves 'in virtual equipoise as to the harmlessness of the error.'
[17][18] In closing arguments, his attorney, Brad Patton, told jurors that Tuite had never been in the Crowe house, and wouldn't have been able to find Stephanie's bedroom in the dark home.
The prosecutor, Deputy Attorney General Alana Butler, said during her closing argument that Tuite was in the area of the Crowe home the night Stephanie was killed.
He was knocking on doors and looking for a woman named Tracy, at whom he was angry because she had turned him away a couple of years earlier.
Once he got in the house, she couldn't tell exactly what happened, but he went into Stephanie's bedroom and stabbed her at least nine times, and her blood was found on two shirts that he was wearing when contacted by police the next day.