Recap Day 7: Messages to friend show Jennifer Crumbley blamed school officials for being 'nonchalant'

Editor's Note: Some of the text below is graphic. Discretion is advised.

Pontiac — In the days after her son opened fire on his classmates at Oxford High School, killing four, Jennifer Crumbley blamed school officials for not doing more, accusing them of being "nonchalant" in letting the shooter go back to class after a meeting with his parents and school officials.

Dozens, if not hundreds, of messages were shared in Oakland County Circuit Court Wednesday between Crumbley and Brian Meloche, a man she'd known since high school and with whom she was also having a romantic relationship at the time of the 2021 shooting. They show Crumbley was distraught after the shooting, saying she wasn't sure life was still worth living and the teen who shot his classmates wasn't her son.

Still, she said the shooting could've been prevented.

“His f-----g backpack was with him why didn’t they search it?" Crumbley wrote to Meloche in a message on Facebook messenger in early December before she and James Crumbley, her husband, were arrested.

Referring to a meeting she had with her son's school counselor and the school's dean of students, who handled discipline, just hours before the shooting, she told Meloche: "They should of never blown it off and made it seem of no concern and gave him the option to go back to class. It could of been prevented."

Crumbley, now on trial for four counts of involuntary manslaughter, described the Nov. 30, 2021 conversation with school officials as "very nonchalant."

"Oh here’s a list of counselors, but we don’t see him as a threat…and we just agreed because he’s NEVER DONE ANYTHING WRONG!!" Crumbley wrote Meloche.

Still, she said she felt sick seeing the shooter be arraigned as an adult on murder charges.

"We will never be the same," she wrote Meloche. "It's like mourning the death of my child."

Threats, details on affair

Prosecutors and Crumbley's attorney, Shannon Smith, went back and forth in court Wednesday over whether Meloche, who met with law enforcement three times after the shooting, was threatened over disclosure of his affair with Crumbley. Meloche said he was always truthful with police about the affair.

Oakland Circuit Judge Cheryl Matthews said she'd gotten inconsistent testimony or “vibes” from Meloche, noting he said earlier in the day that he felt like there were veiled threats from police. Meloche said an officer got more aggressive during the interview and was threatening that his personal information about the affair would be released to the public.

“The investigator was pushing it and inferring that this would all get out, which it has now,” Meloche said. “He didn’t threaten my job.”

'Do something dumb'

A few days after she met with staff at her son's school about violent drawings he'd drawn on a math worksheet, Crumbley lied to Meloch about what school employees showed her, telling him the markings had been scratched out by the time she saw it.

She messaged Meloche the day of the Nov. 30, 2021 meeting, the same day the shooting happened, that she was worried her son would "do something dumb."

Meloche, who has known Crumbley since high school and is a fire captain in Dearborn, testified on Wednesday in Oakland Circuit Court about his messages with Crumbley. He said Crumbley also sent him a message after the shooting that she would "never be OK."

“I lost my son," she wrote. "And he’s a murderer and I’ll forever have to live with the guilt of that. I’m not even sure life is worth living anymore. I have nothing left to live for he was it.”

Meloche knew the Crumbleys had bought their son a gun a few days before and asked where it was before Crumbley's meeting with school officials. Crumbley told him the gun was in her vehicle, and Meloche said he told her that was not a good place to keep it, he testified.

“With my background and everything, I know that was just, if something was going to occur, that (the gun) would produce immediate irreparable damage,” Meloche said.

Crumbley told Meloche she had the “string lock” – referring to the cable that goes through the gun’s slide and magazine, making it impossible to load a magazine — was on the gun she and her husband had just bought their son, that it was secured, unloaded and the bullets were stored separately.

Rough arrests after a manhunt

Closing in on Jennifer and James Crumbley after a statewide manhunt in December of 2021, law enforcement officers burst into the door of an art studio in Detroit with their rifles drawn and pointed them at the couple, who lay apparently asleep on a mattress, according to body-worn camera footage played in court Wednesday during Jennifer's manslaughter trial for the Oxford High School shooting.

Officers ordered Jennifer Crumbley to roll onto her stomach. They used expletives several times as they shouted at the couple to show them their hands. James Crumbley yelled in pain as the officers arrested him. 

Jennifer Crumbley wiped away tears, holding her hands to her mouth, as she watched the footage from Detroit police Cpl. David Shaw’s body cam.

'I can't believe it, they're here'

The man who found the couple's car outside an industrial building on Detroit's east side, four days after the 2021 Oxford High School shooting, said he recognized the vehicle from a "wanted" poster he saw earlier that day.

Luke Kirtley, who runs a coffee roasting business near the building where the couple was found, said he saw a person sitting next to the car in the building's lot.

He used his phone's flashlight to check the license plate, and the person he saw did not react, Kirtley said.

“I turned the flashlight off and very calmly walked back into building and didn’t see anybody,” Kirtley said. “I assumed it was somebody related to the incident (the Oxford shooting).”

He said he felt “quite tense” after seeing the car. He immediately went into his office and called 911, saying Jennifer Crumbley was sitting next to the vehicle.

“The people who, the parents of the shooter that are running away, they’re here,” Kirtley said on the 911 call, which prosecutors in court. "I can't believe it, they're here."

Police hoped for a 'safe' surrender by Crumbleys

A former detective with the Oakland County Sheriff's Office described how police found Jennifer Crumbley and her husband hiding in an industrial building on Detroit's east side, five days after the shooting at Oxford High School in 2021.

Police found the couple in a building near Belle Isle at about 1 a.m. Dec. 4, 2021, said Sgt. David Hendrick, a former detective with the Oakland County Sheriff's Office as he testified Wednesday in Oakland County Circuit Court.

One of their acquaintances had a studio in the building, where they were staying. Detroit police had found their vehicle outside the building and police broke into teams to search the building, floor by floor. 

Hendrick, who was a member of the fugitive apprehension team, said law enforcement found one of the Crumbleys' vehicles Dec. 3 at an extended-stay hotel in Auburn Hills. The Crumbleys had already left the hotel. Later that day, police found their other vehicle in Detroit.

Hendrick said he went to their attorney’s office to introduce himself as the person looking for the Crumbleys and to make sure she knew a warrant had been issued for their arrest.

“I wanted to try to broker a safe, event-free surrender,” Hendrick said. 

More:Oxford shooting suspect's parents apprehended on Detroit's east side following manhunt

Jennifer Crumbley as search warrant executed

Another Oakland County detective said the Oxford High School shooter's mother seemed "irritated and frustrated" when he told her, within a few hours of the Nov. 30, 2021, shooting, that police had a search warrant allowing them to take her phone.

“She told me ‘lives were lost today and he’s going to have to suffer,'" said Lt. Sam Marzban, who works for the Oakland County Sheriff's Office, the first person to testify Wednesday in Jennifer Crumbley's manslaughter trial.

"I found that odd, the way she said it.” 

Text messages on home screen of shooter's phone

Police found three text messages on the Oxford High School shooter's lock screen when they first looked at it after his arrest the day of the shooting.

One from his mom, Jennifer Crumbley, saying: “Ethan don’t do it.” Another from his dad: “Ethan call me now.” There also was a text from an unsaved number asking if he had gotten shot. 

The texts were read as part of testimony from Oakland County Sheriff’s Office Detective Lt. Sam Marzban, one of the first wave of officers who responded to Oxford High School on the day of the Nov. 30 shooting.

“It was kind of surreal with it being in a school, a place where kids are supposed to be safe,” Marzban said. 

Marzban identified one of the victims, Hana St. Juliana, based on her school photo and another victim, Madisyn Baldwin, based on her driver’s license. He had to move some of Madisyn’s bloody hair – she had been shot in the head at close range – away from her face in order to identify her, he said.

Crumbley, 45, is charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the deaths of four students ― Baldwin, 17; St. Juliana, 14; Tate Myre, 16; and Justin Shilling, 17 ― at Oxford High School in November 2021. Her trial marks the first time a parent has been charged with manslaughter in connection to a mass shooting.

Her husband, James Crumbley, will be tried March 5.

Come back to The Detroit News for more on this developing story.

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