Michigan school shooter's mom held sex parties while ignoring son's pleas for mental health support: Report

The mother of the 2021 Michigan school shooter and her lover held sex parties while ignoring her son's pleas for mental health treatment, the New York Post reported on Friday (Feb 2) citing prosecutors. During cross-examination of 45-year-old Jennifer Crumbley at her trial in theOakland County Court, prosecutors said that she and her lover Brian Meloche (who is married to another woman)would often find strangers in Adult Friend Finder- a swinger's app- and arrange meet-ups at a local hotel after work.

Crumbley's son Ethan, a student of the Oxford High School near Detroit, shot dead his four classmates on Nov 30, 2021. He was 15 at the time of committing the crime. During her trial, Crumbley said that she only met Meloche during work hours and admitted to using Adult Friend Finder to “arrange for other people to meet us there” but claimed she was going to hotels after work “on business.”

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Crumbley was the marketing director of a real estate company while her lover was a local firefighter chief.

'Ethan expressed anxiety, but...'

During the trial, Crumbley was asked by a lawyer whether her son needed mental health treatment or counselling. The 45-year-old woman said, "No. I mean, there were a couple of times where Ethan had expressed anxiety over taking tests, anxiety about what he was going to do after high school, whether it was college or military. So he expressed those, those concerns to me, but not, not to a level where I felt he needed to go see a psychiatrist or a mental health professional right away, no."

Upon being questioned whether she denied such help, Crumbley added, "No. One time when he was talking about what he wanted to do for his future, I don't know, he was feeling really down about it and stressed. We did. We did, my husband did call his school counsellor to try to talk to him because they do a lot of future academic planning with the Tuck School."

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"Was that a mental health issue?" the lawyer further asked. "No, it was more or less addressing what was upsetting my son at that time," the shooter's mother said.

Crumbley and her husband James Crumbley, 47, were charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter for their son’s deadly high school rampage.

Ethan was mentally in a 'downward spiral'

Prosecutors alleged on Friday that Jennifer and James Crumbley knew their son was mentally in a "downward spiral" and posed a danger to others, yet allowed him to have access to firearms, including the 9mm pistol he used to kill his four classmates.

Ethan, now aged 17, pleaded guilty in 2022 to two dozen counts, including four of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole in December.

(With inputs from agencies)