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Jennifer Crumbley testified at her manslaughter trial on Feb. 1, 2024. Crumbley is charged with manslaughter in connection with her son’s 2021 attack at Oxford High School, in which he killed four fellow students. (Via Law&Crime.)
The mother of the Michigan teenage mass shooter who killed four of his high school classmates says that she never could have imagined her son could carry out a school shooting — and that she wished he had killed her instead.
Jennifer Crumbley took the stand in her own defense on the sixth day of her manslaughter trial. She and her husband, James Crumbley, are facing manslaughter charges in connection with their son Ethan Crumbley’s murderous attack at Oxford High School on Nov. 30, 2021. On that day, using a gun he had allegedly received as a gift from his parents just days earlier, the then-15-year-old opened fire on his classmates, taking the lives of students Tate Myre, 16 Hana St. Juliana, 14, Madisyn Baldwin, 17, and Justin Shilling, 17.
Arrest warrants were issued for James and Jennifer Crumbley after the shooting. They appeared to have attempted to evade apprehension by the police but were eventually found hiding in a building near downtown Detroit, around 30 minutes away from Oakland.
On Thursday, Jennifer Crumbley said that she would give her life in exchange for the children who were killed by her son.
“If you could change what happened, would you?” her attorney Shannon Smith asked toward the end of her direct examination.
“Oh, absolutely,” Jennifer Crumbley replied. “I wish he would have killed us instead.”
Jennifer Crumbley also testified as to how she ended up appearing to try to evade arrest. She said that after word got out that her son was behind the violence, she began receiving countless threats through social media and email, so she and her husband rented a room at an extended-stay hotel on Dec. 1, a Wednesday, the day after the shooting. She said she and James Crumbley ended up staying at the art studio where they were eventually discovered after being invited to stay there by their friend, the owner of the studio.
According to Jennifer Crumbley, she and her husband planned to turn themselves in the morning of Saturday, Dec. 4, at a courthouse that did weekend arraignments — and they didn’t know that they were the subjects of a manhunt.
Smith asked her client if she was aware that she could have gone to court on Friday afternoon.
“I was not aware we could go into court that afternoon,” the defendant said. “I was waiting on directions from you for what we were going to do the following day to turn ourselves in.”
Jennifer Crumbley said that she and her husband planned to turn themselves in at a courthouse, rather than a local police station, because they feared for their safety.
“We didn’t feel it would be safe,” said Jennifer Crumbley. “The entire community, and Michigan, knew we were expecting to turn ourselves in at the police station, so they would know where to go.”
Jennifer Crumbley said that she and her husband both took sedatives the night before they planned on going to the courthouse — just hours before police raided the art studio where they were sleeping and arrested them.
“I want to say after 11, maybe around 11 when finally went to bed, we both — we each took four Xanax,” she told jurors. “We knew we were going to turn ourselves in the next day and hadn’t slept in four days and needed to sleep.”
That appeared to change when her husband called her and told her the gun was missing. At that point, she said she thought that her son may try to take his own life.
“I yelled at the talk-to-text ‘Ethan, don’t do it’ because I thought he was going to kill himself,” she said.
Earlier, Smith had asked her client to address text messages between mother and son that prosecutors have said show that Jennifer Crumbley wasn’t a responsive parent and that she didn’t take the threat of gun violence seriously.
For example, after a meeting the day before the shooting, where Jennifer Crumbley was told that teachers discovered her son searching for ammunition online during school hours. She testified that school officials had sent her a message that they had discussed the issue with her son and that, to her, the matter appeared resolved.
Smith asked her client to explain the meaning behind a text she sent her son about it, in which she said “next time don’t get caught.”
According to Jennifer Crumbley, that phrasing was an ongoing inside family joke.
“There’s an ongoing thing in our house,” she said, explaining that she was considered a “troublemaker” as a child. “I was the troublemaker because I got caught, [but] all my friends were doing the same thing. I was referencing that.”
“Do you believe you knew or had reason to know your son was a danger to anyone else?” Smith later asked.
“No,” Jennifer Crumbley said. “As a parent, you spend your whole life trying to protect your child from other dangers. You never would think that you have to protect your child from harming somebody else. That’s what blew my mind. That was the hardest thing I had to stomach is that my child harmed and killed other people.”
After more than three hours of testimony, Smith asked her client a final question.
“Do you believe you are the victim here?” she asked Jennifer Crumbley.
“I don’t want to say that I’m a victim because I do not want to disrespect those families that truly are the victims of this,” she replied. “But we did lose a lot.”
“You’ve lost everything?” her lawyer said.
“We did,” Jennifer Crumbley replied.
At that point, Oakland County Circuit Judge Cheryl Matthews stopped the proceedings for the day.
After the jury left the courtroom, prosecutors raised the issue of whether attorney-client privilege had been pierced because Jennifer Crumbley testified that she was following Smith’s instructions regarding turning themselves in.
Assistant Oakland County prosecutor Marc Keast said that Jennifer Crumbley testified that she was following her lawyer’s instructions, and he intends to ask the defendant about that on cross-examination.
Ethan Crumbley, now 17, pleaded guilty in October to all 24 charges against him, including murder and terrorism. He was sentenced to a lifetime in prison without the possibility of parole.
According to prosecutors, however, the Crumbleys knew their son was troubled — and in fact, had been called to the school after teachers discovered disturbing and violent drawings he had made in a math workbook. The parents ultimately left the school after meeting with school officials and their son, while Ethan Crumbley stayed behind.
The Crumbleys have fought the Wolverine State’s criminal case every step of the way. Defense attorneys have said that there is not enough of a causal link between the parents’ actions and their son’s attack on the school, and that holding them criminally responsible would set a dangerous precedent.
Jennifer and James Crumbley face a potential 15 years in prison if they are convicted of manslaughter. James Crumbley’s trial is set to start in March.
