The parents of mass shooter Ethan Crumbley—who killed four of his classmates at Oxford High School in 2021—were sentenced Tuesday to 10 to 15 years in prison after they were found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for their roles in the attack.
Ahead of the sentencing in Oakland County, Michigan, prosecutors asked the judge to put away Jennifer and James Crumbley for at least 10 years. Attorneys for the couple countered that they each deserved less than five years locked up, with credit for the time they served ahead of trial.
On Tuesday, Circuit Court Judge Cheryl Matthews allowed them to receive credit for 858 days served, but grilled them for their inaction. They are the first parents of a school shooter to be held criminally responsible for their child’s crime.
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“Opportunity knocked over and over again, louder and louder, and was ignored. No one answered and these two people should have and sure didn’t,” she said. “These convictions confirm repeated acts or lack of acts that could have halted an oncoming runaway train.”
The decision came after loved ones of the slain high schoolers gave emotional victim impact statements in court, skewering the Crumbleys for failing as parents.
Nicole Beausoleil, the mother of 17-year-old victim Madisyn Baldwin, gave a heart-wrenching statement through tears. She detailed how her experience of that tragic day compared to that of the Crumbleys, as she frantically called and searched for her daughter in hospitals, while they bought booze and burner phones before checking into a motel.
Beausoleil said she wished she could have “taken the bullet that day” so her daughter, an honors student in the process of writing college essays, “could live the life she deserved.”
“Not only did your son kill my daughter, but you did as well,” she told the Crumbleys, who sat stoic in the courtroom. “The words involuntary should not be a part of your offense. Everything you did that day, months prior, and days afterward were voluntary acts of your son to commit a murder.”
In her statement, Beausoleil recalled the nightly screams of agony from Baldwin’s 11-year-old sister, adding that she can’t stop thinking about her daughter’s lifeless body lying for hours in a pool of blood inside the school. Baldwin had been “executed,” Beausoleil said, shot in the head by Ethan at point-blank range.
Beausoleil asked that the judge sentence the couple to the maximum possible sentence, saying it was nothing compared to the “life sentence I was given.”
The father of Hana St. Juliana, another victim, testified that the the Crumbleys chose to “stay quiet” and “avoid the warning signs.” Now that the act is done, he said their action in court proves “they continue to choose to blame everyone but themselves.”
Steve St. Juliana testified that the loss of his daughter “destroyed a large portion of my very soul.”
“I will never think back fondly on her high school and college graduations,” he said. “I will never walk her down the aisle as she begins the journey of starting her own family. I am forever denied the chance to hold her or her future children in my arms.”
Reina St. Juliana, Hana’s older sister, testified that their brother, then 10, had to learn how to write a eulogy before he learned how to write an essay—placing that blame on the Crumbley family.
“I met up with Hana and a friend during school that day. When we split ways to go back to class, I just looked back and smiled. I didn’t say goodbye. I never got to say goodbye,” she said, recounting the day of the shooting. “I never got to remind her that I love her, that she’s my everything. The person I want to walk through life with side-by-side.”
Reina said the maximum sentence of 15 years was “too short” for the Crumbley parents, especially since her sister “didn’t even have 15 years to live.”
Prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo for Jennifer Crumbley that it was her “gross negligence” and failure “to exercise even the smallest measure of ordinary” that allowed her son to carry out the mass slaying.
Her attorneys claimed Jennifer Crumbley was herself a victim, saying she had no idea her 15-year-old son would carry out such a horrific crime, despite being the one who made a gun accessible to him. Her attorney asked that she be sentenced to house arrest.
The couple was tried separately but were sentenced together in Oakland County, just north of Detroit. They’ve already been in custody for over two years after they were arrested in a warehouse days after the shooting.
Both Crumbleys were criticized by prosecutors in sentencing memos for showing a “chilling lack of remorse” for their son’s actions and for their failure to spot red flags that preceded the shooting.
Jennifer Crumbley infamously testified in her trial that she wouldn’t have done anything different if she could go back to before the shooting.
“I’ve asked myself if I would have done anything differently, and I wouldn’t have,” she said, much to the ire of jurors and the slain students’ loved ones.
In a sentencing memo for James Crumbley, prosecutors claimed “his jail calls show a total lack of remorse, he blames everyone but himself.” That memo also noted the he’s repeatedly referred to himself as a “martyr” and that he’s threatened prosecutors and claimed “there will be retribution.”
On Tuesday, however, James Crumbley had a different tone while testifying. He named each of his son’s victims in court and apologized to their loved ones.
“I really want the families of Madisyn Baldwin, Hana St Juliana, Tate Myre and Justin Shilling to know how truly sorry I am, and how devastated I was when I heard what happened to them,” he said.
“I want to say I can’t imagine the pain and agony ... for the families that have lost their children and what they are experiencing and what they are going through,” he added. “As a parent, our biggest fear is losing our child or our children, and to lose a child is unimaginable. My heart is really broken for everybody involved.”
Ethan pleaded guilty in December for the shooting and is already serving a lifetime sentence without the possibility of parole. It’s been a rocky start to his life-long sentence, as he’s already found himself at the center of a pair of prison brawls.
Prosecutors successfully argued that the Crumbley parents were criminally responsible for their son’s actions, saying they neglected his “downward spiral” while leaving his eventual murder weapon in their home unsecured.
“It’s a rare case that takes some really egregious facts,” the prosecutor Karen McDonald said at Jennifer Crumbley’s trial. “It takes the unthinkable, and she has done the unthinkable, and because of that, four kids have died.”
