State prosecutors charged Richard Raymond Tuite yesterday with the murder of Stephanie Crowe, amid the disclosure of new blood evidence linking him to the slaying four years ago in Escondido.
The 33-year-old transient, arrested early yesterday after an interrogation lasting several hours, is expected to be arraigned this afternoon in San Diego Superior Court on a charge of murdering the popular seventh-grader in her bedroom.
He is being held in County Jail without bail.
Tuite, a San Diego native with a history of mental illness, drug abuse and mostly non-violent arrests, will plead not guilty, said his newly appointed attorney, Brad Patton.
Tuite has been the main suspect since January 1999, a year after the slaying, when DNA tests by Bay Area DNA expert Ed Blake found the 12-year-old victim's blood in three areas on Tuite's red sweat shirt.
That discovery derailed the case against Michael Crowe and two of his high school classmates, Joshua Treadway and Aaron Houser. Escondido police and the District Attorney's Office had accused them of killing the girl because of sibling rivalry and a fascination with violent role-playing video games.
In an arrest-warrant affidavit released yesterday, a sheriff's detective said further testing, never before disclosed publicly, found six additional "small stains" that were linked by DNA to Stephanie.
As part of the re-investigation of the case, the District Attorney's Office had the additional testing done at the Cellmark Diagnostics lab in Maryland in October 1999, eight months after charges against the teens were dropped.
David P. Druliner, a Sacramento-based deputy attorney general in charge of the case, said his office had not decided whether to seek the death penalty against Tuite.
In announcing the arrest yesterday, Sheriff Bill Kolender and state Attorney General Bill Lockyer did something that no law officer involved in the case had ever done publicly. They declared that three teens previously charged in the case, including Stephanie's brother, Michael, were innocent.
The evidence gathered by sheriff's homicide detectives and state prosecutors shows that "Tuite acted alone," Kolender said.
"When they made those statements, it was probably the happiest I've ever been while hearing someone talking about our case," said Michael Crowe, who watched part of the news conference on television.
Tuite's sweat shirt figures to be the key piece of evidence at trial. Escondido criminalists, who missed the blood when testing the shirt in April 1998, have suggested the stains got there through contamination, perhaps via a camera tripod used at the stabbing scene and in the lab when Tuite's shirt was photographed.
But in his affidavit, San Diego County sheriff's Detective Victor Caloca said a microscopic examination done by experts in the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department disproves the contamination theory. That examination also has never been publicly disclosed.
"The stains extended down into the fibers rather than just along the surface," Caloca wrote. "It was (the experts') opinion that the size of the spots was consistent with airborne bloodspatter rather than transfer stains."
In the world of forensic science, a spatter stain means the blood was projected onto the shirt by force, such as in a stabbing, and not by accidental contact.
Caloca also outlined what he called Tuite's propensity "to carry and use a knife," referring to two incidents: an August 1993 stabbing of another transient in a homeless camp in Oceanside; and a January 1996 stop by a Carlsbad police officer, who reported seeing Tuite toss a knife with a 6-inch blade into the bushes.
Tuite was arrested early yesterday after an interrogation by sheriff's detectives and state prosecutors. The questioning, which was videotaped, lasted much of the previous day, Druliner said.
In response to reporters' questions about the propriety of interrogating a man diagnosed as mentally ill, Druliner said Tuite waived his right to an attorney and was "fully aware of who we were, why we were there and what we were asking."
He declined to reveal what Tuite said. And prosecutors and detectives said they would not reveal what other new evidence, if any, has been uncovered linking Tuite to the crime.
Gary Schons, the senior deputy attorney general for San Diego who will assist Druliner at Tuite's trial, said the case will be complicated by the district attorney's aborted prosecution of the three teens.
The state prosecutors will have to put that original case before the jury and show, in Lockyer's words, "why it was faulty."
Lockyer and Kolender were careful not to criticize either the Escondido police or the District Attorney's Office for their handling of the Crowe case.
In his affidavit, however, Caloca challenged what had been the heart of that earlier prosecution, a disputed confession by Treadway. "Based on my experience as a detective," he said, "I believe that Joshua's incriminating statements were coerced and false."
Patton, the veteran criminal defense attorney named to represent Tuite yesterday, said he will need a great deal of time to come up to speed.
"I'm only familiar with the case to the degree that most people are. I've read about it in the paper," said Patton, whose office is in Carlsbad.
A certified criminal specialist, Patton is highly regarded by colleagues in the defense bar and prosecutors alike. He has won Trial Attorney of the Year and Criminal Defense Attorney of the Year honors during his 26-year career.
Patton, who met briefly with Tuite yesterday and will represent him at today's arraignment, has been involved in several high-profile cases in recent years.
Asked to estimate how long it will take him to prepare for Tuite's trial, Patton replied, "Ask me that again in a couple of months." He added that he may "end up making a request to get additional counsel on the case to make sure we have adequate resources to defend Mr. Tuite."
Druliner expects it will take a year or more for the trial to commence, and that it could last as long as six months.
