Jennifer Crumbley testifies: 'I wish he would have killed us instead'

Pontiac — Jennifer Crumbley, the mother of the Oxford High School shooter, took the stand in her own defense Thursday, saying she wishes her son would've acted differently, but even looking back, she would not have changed her parenting decisions.

"If you could change what happened, would you?" asked Shannon Smith, her attorney.

"Oh, absolutely. I wish he would've killed us instead," Crumbley said of herself and her husband, James.

Jennifer Crumbley, 45, who is on trial in connection with the deaths of four of her son's classmates, testified for more than three hours in Oakland County Circuit Court, appearing nervous at times and matter of fact at others. She delved into her family's life before the shooting and then the aftermath.

The mother said she doesn't want to describe herself as a victim — because she doesn't want to disrespect the families who lost their children — in the aftermath of the shooting but said her family has lost everything.

Prosecutors have maintained Crumbley was grossly negligent for ignoring her son's failing mental health and then buying him a gun. Her attorney, on the other hand, has argued she was a caring mother and there was no way the shooting was foreseeable.

Ethan Crumbley is now serving a life sentence for the deaths of four students who were killed in the Nov. 30, 2021 shooting: Madisyn Baldwin, 17; Tate Myre, 16; Hana St. Juliana, 14; and Justin Shilling, 17. Jennifer Crumbley's trial marks the first time a parent has been tried with manslaughter in connection with a mass shooting.

Crumbley defended her parenting during more than three hours of testimony, saying she didn't feel like a failure and denied her son ever asked for mental health treatment before he opened fire on his classmates. She said the teen was anxious at times about his plans after high school, but that's it, and she dismissed his worries that demons were in the family's house, saying he was "messing around."

Crumbley said parents spend their entire lives trying to protect their children from others, and she never imagined she'd have to protect others from her son.

"That's what blew my mind," Crumbley said. "That's the hardest thing I had to stomach is that my child harmed and killed other people."

'Guns aren't really my thing'

Who knew what about the 9mm gun the shooter used to kill his classmates was a pivotal part of Crumbley's testimony Thursday.

She said her husband, who will be tried separately on the same charges in March, was in charge of storing the family's three guns. She said they kept the gun they bought their son, a 9mm, just days before the Nov. 30, 2021, shooting locked up with a cable lock, with the key hidden in a decorative beer stein and the bullets separate.

Crumbley said: “Guns aren’t really my thing," and she added that she had never taken the cable lock off herself; she did not know which beer stein the key was stored in, she said. She said she had hidden the bullets after she and her son went to the shooting range the weekend before the shooting but left the gun in her car for her husband to deal with.

She said they bought the 9mm handgun to use only at a shooting range, and their son was not allowed to access it without his father around.

No concerns about son's mental health

Prosecutors called 21 witnesses before resting their case Thursday. A large part of their case was that Crumbley and her husband failed to give their son mental health treatment when he asked for it, something their son had told his friend via text in April 2021.

Messages read earlier during the trial said he had asked his parents for mental health treatment but that his mother had laughed at him and his dad told him to "suck it up."

Crumbley denied remembering her son ever asking for mental health treatment, let alone her and her husband laughing it off. 

The shooter also wrote in his journal, later found in the same backpack that he had the gun the day of the shooting, that, “I have zero help for my mental problems and it’s causing me to shoot up the f-----g school. ... I want help but my parents don’t listen to me and I can’t get any help. … My parents won’t listen to me about help or therapists.”

As far as texts the shooter sent about a demon being in the house, Crumbley said she didn't see an issue with them and said she believed "it was just him messing around." She said her son had made jokes for years about the family's house having a ghost. The family had even given the "house ghost" nicknames, such as "Victoria" and "Boris Johnson."

She could tell her son was sad after his friend — whom Crumbley said was the only friend he spent time with outside school — left for a treatment facility shortly before Halloween in 2021, but she maintained she didn't see any reason to get him professional help.

She testified that one of the biggest issues the family fought about before the shooting was her son's grades and missing assignments. She said her son struggled with getting a grasp on his future because of his grades, despite aspirations of designing video games or owning a car shop.

Crumbley testified that at times, the shooter expressed anxiety over school things such as tests, but never to a level that made her think he needed professional treatment. She said he never asked for mental health treatment.

"He expressed those concerns (about his future) to me but not to the level that I thought he needed to see a psychiatrist," she said.

The day of the shooting

Crumbley said seeing the drawings and phrases her son made on his math worksheet on Nov. 30, 2021, which included phrases like "blood everywhere" and "the thoughts won't stop," concerned her. But she initially thought he had drawn all over the empty worksheet to get back at them for an argument they had the night before about his low grades and missing assignments.

Crumbley said she thought her son was going to get in trouble and she was expecting a disciplinary meeting Nov. 30. But the school was nonchalant during the brief meeting, she said.

Her son's counselor said he didn't think her son posed a risk, and gave him the option to stay at school. Crumbley insisted she never would have refused to take him out, as prosecutors have characterized.

“I thought the advice they were giving us was good advice," Crumbley said.

Crumbley said the school never told her about a teacher’s concerns that her son was sleeping all the time in class and was failing, nor did they tell her about an assignment where he had written that he felt terrible and his family was a mistake. She said she “definitely” would have been concerned had she known about this.

Crumbley said that on the day of the meeting with school officials, she had told her husband to start making calls to find mental health treatment for their son once he was done working.

But he would never have the chance, as the shooting took place two hours later.

Crumbley says she trusted her son, didn't read texts

Crumbley testified that she felt like they were pretty close. She didn’t go through his texts — she didn’t feel like she needed to — but would go through his room when she was cleaning, she said.

“We would talk, I mean, we did a lot of things together,” Crumbley said. “I trusted him. I felt like I had an open door, he can come to me about anything. I felt as a family, the three of us were really close."

Smith took Crumbley through dozens of photos she had posted on Facebook: images of camping trips, vacations, holidays, playing games and pets, including her son's cat, Dexter. Just hours after the shooting, one of the only things he said to Crumbley in Oxford sheriff's office substation was “please take care of Dexter.”

Crumbley choked up as Smith showed some of the photos posted on her Facebook page: Her son with his pet chinchilla, a close-up of his smiling face right after he had braces put on, her son and his friend on a beach.

Crumbley described her son before the shooting and his interests, which included bowling, using metal detectors to find old coins or cans and playing video games. She said he also enjoyed shooting BB guns and doing target practice. She said he played soccer up until ninth grade and enjoyed skiing. He loved history, she said.

"He could play me in Trivial Pursuit, and he would get me every single time," she said with a small smile.

The trial resumes Friday when Crumbley will be cross-examined by prosecutors.

kberg@detroitnews.com

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