NOTE: I was given a review copy of the book She’s So Cold by Donald McInnis. However, all opinions are my own. Also, this is a book for grandmothers to read — and not al all for young children.
In January of 1998, Stephanie Crowe was brutally stabbed to death in her bedroom while her family slept nearby.
(I can’t even imagine how devastated her family must have felt when they discovered her dead body in the morning.)
There were no signs of a home break-in. There wasn’t any physical evidence indicating who committed the crime.
FBI training manuals strongly emphasize that the first suspect in the killing of a young girl is always the father or stepfather, then the mother, and then anyone else living in the house.
One detective in particular had a gut feeling that Michael, Stephanie’s brother, was involved. So he zeroed in on Michale — and then on two of his friends.
Michael was bright. He had a high IQ. Even though he was only 14 years old, he had a vocabulary of someone much older. He wore black clothing all of the time. He didn’t play sports. He was a loner, didn’t belong to Boy Scouts, didn’t attend church very often.
And, he had an insatiable appetite for violent video games.
The detectives interrogated Michael for hours refusing him water, food, a bathroom break, and sleep.
Michael made repeated requests to speak to his parents. (Under juvenile law, that is the equivalent of invoking his Fifth Amendment right.) Those requests were denied.
Michael’s friends, Joshua and Aaron, experienced the same interrogation techniques.
At one point, police lied to Joshua’s father and convinced him to allow Joshua to take a truth verification test. (Now just how ethical is that? I ask.)
That test was used to pressure Joshua into falsely confessing.
And into police convincing Michael that he took part in the murder. (Police told Michael that he had a split personality, a ‘dark’ side, and that the dark side of him killed his sister.)
(At one point, a police officer took Michael out of the interrogation room and away from the camera. He told Michael that his parents believed he killed Stephanie and that they never wanted to see him again. This was NOT true but Michael believed him! After all, Michael believed that policemen were good and could be trusted.)
Sadly, Michael and Joshua made their confessions without the benefit of having legal counsel present.
Even more sadly, detectives ignored the fact that a homeless man in the area was found to have Stephanie’s blood on his sweatshirt and t-shirt. (Her blood was never found on any of the boys or their belongings.) Police ignored this man because they were so sure that Michael and his friends were the true murderers. (Which they weren’t.)
Donald McInnis, the author, was the lawyer for Aaron Houser, the third boy accused of murdering Stephanie. So McInnis was intimately aware of all of the details of the investigation, the trial, and the outcome.
However, he still read thousands of pages of police and physical evidence reports. He read reports from the crime lab. He watched hours of the videotaped interrogations. He read pages and pages and pages of court transcriptions.
He used some of the exact transcriptions in his book so that the reader could get an accurate view of what was exactly said and done during the interrogation of those three boys and exactly what was said at their trials.
This is one of the most authentic — and hard to read — true crime books that I’ve ever read.
I was infuriated by how the police treated these boys. Infuriated how the police were so sure that the boys were the killers. Infuriated that the real killer freely roamed the streets. Infuriated how the district attorney had public image and re-election as priorities instead of seeking true justice.
But most of all, I’m infuriated that these three boys and their families went through such a horrific ordeal while Stephanie’s murderer is a free man today.
Even though the events of this book are highly maddening, I recommend this book. It is extremely interesting to read about all of the things surrounding Stephanie’s death, the investigation, the trial, and the outcome.
But I recommend it most of all so that adults can become aware of the children’s Miranda warning which is discussed at the end of the book.
Because children and adolescents’ frontal lobe of their brain is not fully developed, they do not have the ability to really comprehend the language of the current Miranda rights that are read to adults. They don’t truly understand their constitutional rights and what it means to waive them.
Please. Read this book so that you can become informed about those rights.
Who knows but one day you may need to know them to help protect a child.
You can get a copy of She’s So Cold on Amazon for $18.
