Listen: James Crumbley's threatening jail phone calls released

Jail calls from James Crumbley to family and friends released by the Oakland County Sheriff's Office after his sentencing this week paint a fuller picture of his feelings toward Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald, calling her expletives over and over and saying he was on a "rampage."

Audio files of eight phone calls were released by the sheriff's office. All of them are laced with expletives in which he almost taunts jail officials, often referring to McDonald by her first and last name.

"You know what? F------ three months from now s---'s f------ going down. I mean it's going f------ down," Crumbley said Jan. 3. "When I get out of here, I am f------ on a rampage, Karen. Yes Karen McDonald, your a-s is going down and you better be f------ scared."

Crumbley's attorney, Mariell Lehman, said Crumbley was just venting his frustrations — not threatening McDonald.

"Any statements made by Mr. Crumbley to his loved ones were done to vent his frustrations, not to interfere with the administration of justice or the rendering of emergency services," Lehman wrote in a sentencing memorandum before Crumbley was sentenced Tuesday. "In reviewing the phone calls which are alleged to contain threats of physical harm, it is clear that Mr. Crumbley is venting to loved ones about his frustrations related to the lack of investigation done by the prosecution prior to authorizing charges against him and his wife."

The phone calls span 15 months, from September 2022 through January. His anger is noticeable as he calls McDonald multiple slurs.

While prosecutors characterized the phone calls as physical threats to McDonald, the Oakland County Sheriff's Office, in their report about the calls, noted that most of the messages appeared to be Crumbley "complaining about court proceedings and courtroom tactics and Mr. Crumbley making comments about winning in court and making Karen Mcdonald look bad to the public."

The calls were released after The Detroit News filed a Freedom of Information Act request to the Oakland County Sheriff's Office and appealed their original decision to decline to release the calls because of Crumbley's privacy rights.

Crumbley and his wife, Jennifer Crumbley, were the first parents in the country to be convicted of involuntary manslaughter in connection with their child's mass school shooting. Their son, Ethan Crumbley, killed four students — Hana St. Juliana, 14; Madisyn Baldwin, 17; Tate Myre, 16; and Justin Shilling, 17 — Nov. 30, 2021, at Oxford High School and injured six others and a teacher.

They couple was both were sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison Tuesday, the maximum sentence they could receive by law. They will receive credit for the nearly two and a half years they have spent in jail already awaiting trial.

Both James and Jennifer asked to be sentenced to time served. Prosecutors asked for 10 to 15 years.

Prosecutors first eluded to the calls during James Crumbley's trial, the first day of his trial, despite having some of the calls since September 2022, Lehman wrote in her sentencing memorandum. The court did not hear arguments about the threats to keep the information out of the media, she wrote.

But prosecutors were unsatisfied with this, Lehman wrote, and they attempted to raise the issue on the record March 7, in front of the public and media. She and Crumbley agreed to the communications ban so the information about the threats would not become public, but the Oakland County Sheriff's Office told media, including The Detroit News, that night that Crumbley had been making threats on jail phone calls.

In the phone calls, Crumbley called McDonald many expletives and said she would be "f------ sucking on a f------ hot rock down in hell soon."

As prosecutors read the threats into the record Tuesday at the Crumbleys' sentencing, Jennifer appeared to glare at James and roll her eyes. James refused to look at her.

In October, Crumbley taunted jail officials, telling them to go ahead and report the call to the prosecutor's office and McDonald. The woman he is on the phone with tells him to "stop it" and laughs.

"Tell her how James Crumbley is going to f------ take her down," he said. "She will not have a law license when I get done with her. Like I said earlier, Karen McDonald will be working at a f------ McDonald's because she won't be able to get a job anywhere else."

In September 2022, the earliest of the flagged jail calls, Crumbley said: "None of this should have happened." He said prosecutors were trying to blame the shooting on them when it was the school's fault, not theirs.

A year later, he called himself and his wife martyrs "without the whole dying aspect."

"We're going to fight the good battle for everybody else," Crumbley said Sept. 24. "I feel like I joined the military, and I'm going to fight for my country. I kind of am. I'm going to fight for everyone else's freedom."

kberg@detroitnews.com