The Confession

(CBS)  Stephanie Crowe had a bright future. By all accounts, she was good student, had a lot of friends, and got along well with her parents and two siblings. at the age of twelve, she was already winning awards for her volunteer work. But in January of 1998, all that came to an end when she was brutally murdered, stabbed nine times while she slept in her bedroom.

Stephanie's parents were beside themselves with grief. But it got worse. Days later, their 15-year-old son Michael and two of his friends were arrested for the crime. Police explained Michael and one of his friends had confessed and implicated the third.

But then Michael and his friend recanted, saying they had been pressured into confessing by an overzealous police department.

Did the three boys kill Stephanie Crowe? Or did the police overstep their bounds while rushing to make an arrest?

48 Hours takes an in-depth look at this tale of murder, family solidarity, and the limits of police interrogation techniques.

In many respects, the Crowes were an unremarkable family. They lived in Escondido, California, a suburb north of San Diego. Steve was a mechanic, his wife Cheryl a homemaker.

But one January night in 1998, their lives changed forever. That night, Michael then 15, helped Stephanie with her homework. Afterwards, they watched TV and then said good night. Sometime later that night, someone went to Stephanie's room, held her down, and stabbed her nine times.

In the morning, Stephanie's grandmother, Judy Kennedy, who had been visiting with the Crowes, discovered the girl's body in the doorway of her room. She had died trying to crawl into the hall.

Says Kennedy: "It looked like she had mud all over her, and I couldn't understand that and I couldn't wake her up, and so I immediately screamed for Cheryl and Steve." What Kennedy thought was mud was blood.

The police began looking for the killer immediately, but were stymied by a frustrating lack of physical evidence. They found no signs of forced entry, either. The phrase "Kill, Kill" had been written on Stephanie's window sill.

Police interviewed a transient who had been seen knocking on neighbors' doors that night but dismissed him as a suspect because, they said, he would have been incapable of sneaking into the house quietly.

With no sign of forced entry, police turned their attention to the family. That morning, the Crowes were taken to the police station, separated and questioned. Each member of the family was photographed naked, even Shannon, who was 9 years old. Police thought that the killer might have been scratched during the crime.

After 15 hours, they had found no evidence against Steve, so they let him go. But they continued to question Michael. Two days after the murder, police arrested him and accused him of plotting and carrying out the murder of his younger sister. His parents, who didn't know he was being questioned as a suspect, were shocked and confused.

After two days of questioning - alone, without parents or a lawyer - Michael had given the police a videotaped confession. Police said they had first become suspicious when, in the hours after the murder, they noticed that Michael seemed unconcerned and played a handheld game while the rest of the family seemed more upset.

They also saw a big hole in his alibi. Michael told police that he had awakened at 4:30 a.m. with a headache, had gone to the kitchen for some milk and Tylenol, and had walked back to his room, which was across from Stephanie's.

By that time, police said, Stephanie was lying dead in her doorway, and he would have seen her.

He said he had not, and that her door was closed.

The motive, police said, was jealousy. Their theory: Michael, a shy, quiet kid, resented his younger sister's popularity and better grades. Police also charged two of Michael's friends - Josh Treadway and Aaron Hauser - saying that they had helped commit the crime.

After being interrogated alone for 12 straight hours, through the night, Josh, too, confessed. He had been the lookout, he said, while Aaron had actually stabbed Stephanie through a comforter to minimize the blood.

Soon though, the boys recanted their confessions, saying that the police had pressured them into making up lies. "There is absolutely no physical evidence in this case that shows any of these three kids had anything to do with this at all," says Mary Ellen Attridge, the lead defense attorney for the boys. The prosecution's case rested completely on these counterfeit confessions, Attridge says: "They're not confessions. They're false. They're lies. And they were manufactured out of whole and coercive cloth by the police department."

In fact, the police had told the boys a series of lies - that there was evidence they committed the crime, that their friends had fingered them. These techniques are legal and are used by police all over the country.

Michael's family believed him, and said that the police wore him down to the point that he would say anything to please them. Says Steve: "Michael never actually confessed. All he said was that you tell me I did, therefore I must have did this, but I don't remember doing it. That's all he said."

What happens? To find out, go on to Telltale Stains.