Game Over | The Noah Crooks Case

0:06 Welcome to Unspeakable, a true crime podcast where I tell stories of real crimes with real victims whose cases are so shocking that many are left wondering how is this even real? I use my experiences in law enforcement corrections, and combined with my years as a criminal justice educator, dig deep into complex cases of evil acts, some so evil many feel they are unspeakable. Warning. Unspeakable as intended for mature audiences. If you are easily offended, then I'm not your girl. Listening discretion is advised. Hey, y'all, Kelly Jenning's here.

0:59 I'm back for another episode of Unspeakable, a true crime podcast by yours truly, So welcome back. I'm so glad to have you here. I want to remind you that you need to follow, like in share right, go on Facebook. I'm now on Twitter and some other platforms I'm working on, so Facebook is the main one that I like, really push a lot of the pictures and things out on. But go check it out, y'all. Go like, follow, share, tell somebody about it, and I'd love to have more people join along. Also, if you go to Unspeakable the podcast dot com, there you can find all the episodes. But also there's a tab that says unspeakable merch. You can click that I've got new stuff coming out constantly, coffee cups, t shirts, stickers, all sorts of things I'm going to be adding, So go there. You can also join it become a patron member. So if you want to get your ad free early episode bonus releases that I'm going to be adding in there all that good stuff, you can go do that. And you can pick your tier.

1:53 You can be a vigilante, you can be a gang member, crime family member, whatever it is that you want to do. You get to choose. It's up to you. So go on there, check it out. And I'm so happy for all the people that are finding me and messaging me. Thank you so much. And it's personally me reaching out to you, so keep talking to me. Also, people are telling me that they really like what they're keep calling kelly Ism, So I guess that some of the things I say that are just natural things I say. They love it and they want it on a T shirt. So hey, is that you do you have anything that you'd like to have on a T shirt or on a coffee cup or whatever. Send me a message I'm always open to new things and creating new stuff for you. So I'm not too good for that. Send it to me, send it my way, and I'll and I'm gonna check it out for you. So I was actually in the bathtub.

2:38 I do take baths, believe it or not. But I was scrolling through my phone and I came across this case. It's the Noah Crooks case, and I said, oh my god, I gotta do this one. The people need to hear this, So let's get started. This case is gonna be in two twelve when this all blew up. Okay. March twenty fourth, twenty twelve, in O Sage, Iowa, the police receive a phone call from a young boy and he tells them I just killed my mom. So who is his mom. Her name is Gretchen Crooks. She's thirty seven years old and they live in a rural home at Cameo Avenue, like I said, in O Sage, Iowa, and she is married. She has a husband. His name is William William Crooks, and he works at Cargill Kitchen Solutions in Mason City. So you can kind of see these are just average average people right living their life paying their bills. They had been married for seventeen years and they shared one son named Noah. He is thirteen years old, and Noah is the one that called nine one one. Now.

3:38 Everyone has said that he was a good kid for all intents and purposes, and he had the typical issues I guess you would say teens had. That he did have some anxiety and that he was hyperactive. So they did put him one medication for ADHD, but other than that, there were no red flags really that said he would kill his mom. He performed well in school, and you know, they kind of looked into his social history there and they said, look, he did well in school. I think he had two write ups for something that happened on the bus when he was younger, but nothing big. And he was a big video game player. He liked to play his video games. So kind of a normal family. Gretchen was a graduate of Mason City High School back in nineteen ninety two, and after that she went to college and she got a four year nursing degree from the University of Iowa College and she was working as a nurse at Mercy Medical Center in North Iowa. So people described her, you know what kind of woman was she because her son killed her right and everyone described this woman as kind, compassionate, helpful, caring, someone who genuinely cared about others and what they were feeling and what they were going through. You know. For example, in two thousand and five, she traveled my direction right to the Gulf coast and she was aiding people that were displaced by Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita.

5:04 And you know that was big for us. Hurricane Katrina. Everyone knows about New Orleans and how it basically went underwater, and Katrina hit us too. Where we are in Rita and gustav Hurricanes are a big deal down here. You know, we may chug our our Margharita's and how at the moon and watch the wind blow, but they cause a lot of damage. She wanted to come help, and a local paper actually spoke to her about her mission when she came down here, and her response wasn't I quote, I wanted to help. I wanted to do something to contribute. She was a go getter and she was a hard worker too. She there was no laziness about this woman. She worked hard. She got additional trainings too. On the job. She was a skilled nurse, and this allowed her to work in multiple areas of nursing and that included the emergency room. She also worked in critical care and she did cardiovascular recovery. So the woman was good at her job. She was very much dedicated to the nursing field, as you can tell, and it was very important to her, even though she had obtained her nursing degree, that she wanted to keep going in her profession.

6:18 She was dedicated to this nursing profession and she decided, you know what, I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go from my master's degree. And that's about the time in twenty twelve where this all went down. So she was in the process of pursuing a master's degree in nursing administration and was just all around doing your everyday stuff, run of the mill family. She would work, she paid her bills, she cooked supper. They were a loving family. They did love one another, happy marriage, just like the rest of us, just trying to make it through life. Well, about seven thirty pm on March twenty fourth is when that nine one one call was placed from the Crook's home and the police answered. The dispatcher that day was named Barbe Michael, and when she took the call, she quickly, you know, found out that this was the son Noah on the other end of the phone, and when questioned, his demeanor was described as cool and calm when he was talking to her. This is a direct quote. I just shot my mom.

7:25 I'm not joking at all. She's dead. I'm scared. I killed my mom with a twenty two. I don't know why I did it. I just he says he shot her twenty rounds. Maybe. He then adds after that, I did try to rape her. I tried to rape her, but I just couldn't do it. What did he tried to rape his own mother? Wow? He went on a little further, and then he apologized and then updated the dispatcher to tell the police that his weapon was empty. I wish it was just a dream so I could wake up and kiss and hug her. Okay, you shot her and then you wanted to rape her, but it was just a bad dream, and you wish you could kiss her and hug her, all right. He then said something just came over me. I'm gonna have to move away. Then he doesn't mourn the loss of his mother or the fact that she's bleeding out all over the couch.

8:33 But instead he just continues on his sadness, his sadness over what he is going to lose now as a result of his actions. He starts complaining he's not going to get to marry his eighth grade girlfriend. Now, he's not even going to get into a good college. He said, that goes down the drain. Now I'm gonna have to move, I'm gonna have to go to jail. How about we put aside the reality that you just killed your mom in cold blooded murder, and look at how out of touch you are with what you've just done. Son, You're not gonna get to marry your eighth grade girlfriend, and you won't get to go to college. What in the hell is going through your head right now that that is your mom is laying on a couch bleeding and dying, and you're worried about your eighth grade girlfriend in college. Okay, you know, a little selfish prick.

9:31 So he goes further. He says, I'm never gonna be able to get a good job now because this is gonna be on my resume. I'll barely be able to get a job like McDonald's. I mean, I had plans of going to Michigan State University to get an engineering job and making my own car company, and that's all down the drain. Now, really your resume. You're worried about your resume? Look, I can write it for you. It's gonna be three it is long. Here, here you go, I'll write it for you. Noah Crooks born nineteen ninety nine, two thousand and twenty and twelve. Mommy took care of me twenty twelve to current, I'm in prison for murdering her. Like, that's your freaking resume? What are you talking about? So the dispatcher tells, Noah, look, deputies are on the way to your family home. You know, just stay there.

10:24 And what is he concerned with? What do you think his next concern would be? I mean, obviously he's not gonna get to marry his girlfriend and his resume screwed. But when she says the police are on the way to the home, he says, they're not gonna shoot me, are they? Why? Noah, why are you afraid it might hurt? Is it scary? Or you know your mom she can go through it, but you you shouldn't, right, that's that's too much. That's too much to ask. You can shoot your mom, but you don't want to be shot. Give me a break, man. So while he's waiting for the police to get there, he sends a text to his dad okay, and he's supposedly expressing his remorse, and he texted his dad, Dad, this is Noah.

11:07 I killed mom accidentally. I regret it. Come home now please all right. Well, this obviously does not age well, But in the moment, the dad thought Noah was joking, and so he replied and said, okay, just throw her in the grove. We'll take care of her later. I know that does not age well, but he was totally not aware that his son was telling the truth. It literally wasn't apparent that it was. It wasn't a joke until the police called him and said, no, you know your wife is dead. Your son shot her. Now. When the deputies arrived at the home, it was Deputy Jeff Hufftelin that knocked on the front door, and Noah answered the door and he still was on the phone with the dispatcher. So the deputy asked him to come outside and sit on the porch while some other deputies were going to walk into the home.

12:07 So at that point that's when huffed Len asked Noah where his mom was, and Noah told him that she was in the living room and that the gun was on a chair. So he said, okay, you sit on the porch. I'm gonna go ahead and go inside. And when Hufftlen, you know, got inside and found Gretchen, she was slouched over the couch and he could clearly see multiple bullet holes in her chest. Now, what was just even more disheartening or disconcerting or whatever, is that Gretchen's pajama top was unbuttoned and she was naked from the waist down. I cannot even relate to what was going through his head. I can't fathom. It's bad enough you shot and killed your mom, but then you undressed her and you wanted to look at her naked. There's a lot wrong with that. Without saying but that's like even a that's weird. So he runs up and checks her, and he says it was readily apparent that she was deceased, that she was not going to be saved. And in the dining room they found a twenty two caliber rifle like Noah had said there would be, and it was at that point that they handcuffed Noah and they put him in the backseat of the patrol car. Now, once the police were at the station, Noah started talking and he made an absolute, full and detailed confession of what had happened.

13:30 And you know, people want to know, you know, not that it's going to bring her back, but what had happened, Like, why would you go shoot your mom? You've got to explain this to us where it makes sense. And so what happened was that night, Gretchen was making dinner for her son, and Noah said that he decided while she was making supper he was up in his room he was going to kill his mom. He just made the decision. So he decided he would go downstairs to shoot. But when he got downstairs, her back was to him because she was, I guess at the counter, cooking or doing whatever. And he decided that that wasn't an honorable enough way to shoot someone. You don't shoot someone in the back. Wow, I'm good thing you're thinking about honor, right, So he went back upstairs to his room a little while later, she got finished with dinner and so she called him to come down. Noah, come down, Supper is ready, and then she sat down on the couch in the living room to continue working on her laptop because she was doing her nursing master's work. So shortly before nine thirty pm, that's when Noah entered the room, and without saying you're doing anything, he just took a vantage point about fifteen feet away from his mother, and he had the twenty two caliber weapon, and he lifted the weapon and took aim and shot Gretchen twenty one times as she sat on the couch twenty one times. I don't know

15:05 about you. Seems like a bit of overkill that you would just make the decision to shoot your mom twenty one times. Now you might be saying, well, where did he get the gun? Some people are curious about that. How did he get it? Well, his mom actually had purchased it for him as a gift. I will not sit here on this podcast and victim blame this poor woman for buying that weapon. Based on everything that was said to this point, she didn't really have any reason to think that he was homicidal. Okay, he was typical teenagers, you know, gets an attitude every now and then fighting whatever, but nothing that would ever suggest that he wanted to kill her. She had no evidence of that. And maybe you're from a different part of the country and that's not normative, but where I'm from, it's very normal. Parents buy their kids, you know, weapons to hunt. And you know, we're a big game state. You know, we like our hunting and fishing and partying and parading and it's just part of our culture. So after he shot at the twenty one times, in all of his lack of horror, he then decided to undress his mother and an attempt to rape her, like rape her, rape her. I guess if you want to give him any pad on the back, at least he had like a hair of a snippet of moral compass, because then he

16:37 just said he told the police, but I just couldn't do it. Okay, Well, I mean, I guess, good, good job. I don't know if he wants to be thought of his um, you know, a pad on the back for that, But he just he couldn't rape her, so he got her naked. He just couldn't raper Now. Gretchen's autopsy, the report did show that she was shot a toll of twenty one times. She had two wounds to the head, four to the neck, and fifteen to the chest. And it was a doctor Jonathan Thompson, who had performed the autopsy, and based on his investigation of it, he couldn't definitively determine which shot was the fatal shot. But I mean, twenty one shots in any fashion is a lot, and you know, her chances of survival were not very high, to say the least. So I don't know if you think like me. But my next question, like the biggest question, is why? Why? What could make you the woman who gave you life, who fed you, who nurtured you, who took care of you, who didn't show any signs of ill behavior or abuse or anything. Why why would you kill this woman? I mean, there's no reason that's going to be good enough for the normal person who tries to understand this. You know why? But don't you want to know? Like, give me an ounce, give me something to go off of that I might in some way could say, okay, all right, you know, maybe you mishandled some anger

18:11 or something like that. Now, as if any explanation to this point would be a worthy cause, it's not but Noah explained that the reason he shot his mother twenty one times was because she had taken away his Call of Duty video game because he had bad grades. His grades had started slipping over a video game. He assassinated his own mother. Now, in my opinion, it's important to understand the video game that she took away. I think, hey, she did what a good mom does, right. Your grades are slipping, You're not doing what you're supposed to be doing. You're spending too much time playing your video games. Grades are important. I'm taking way the game until you bring your grades up. I would do that in my house.

19:02 I think any other mother worth her assault would say no, no, no, no, Now, we're going to fix and correct this behavior. Call of Duty. Though, if you're not familiar with that game, I actually used to play it back in the day, so I'm familiar with this game. So I thought i'd give you just a little insight to it. Now. Again, I'm an adult, okay, I was playing this game in my twenties, and it's, you know, a grandiose, violent game with an objective, and the objective is to get the most kills. Now, I know that sounds morbid and you're like, what the hell. But to a well adjusted older team or young adult, you know, the thought process behind the game is that you are fighting like like war, okay, and you're the good guys and you're protecting your military base or you're protecting you're you know, you're just fighting the bad guys. That's the premise, that's the understanding, and we like that right in this world. That's why we watch action movies is we want good to win, so we represent the good guys. Here come the bad guys trying to kill us. And so you know, it's a game, and the bad guys in the game, it's like war. They're nameless, they're emotionless. They're just casualties and they don't mean anything, kind of like in a movie. I like to put it this way. You know, when you watch a movie and you want the good guy to win and then there's like a big explosion scene and like you see all these people are dead on the ground, and you don't think sec a second about it because they're nameless. They're nobodies. Nobody knows who they are. They're just extras in the film. You know, it's kind of

20:36 the same concept when you're playing this game. You're not out to kill a specific person. You're just out to win the objective. Whether you're a gamer or not. The game is fun, it's high stress, and you know you're just trying to win the game. Now back to the whole why question. There's a lot of talk and there has been for years, ever since video games became so violent. I mean, I grew up on Mario Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do do? Right, remember the old gray console and you have the games, and right, you have to blow out the game if it stopped working, and then you put it in and you press the button and we're squishing, you know, um mushroom men and you're just trying to go save the princess.

21:17 Like that's old school video games. And that's what a lot of people, you know, thirty and older, that's what we played. The games today are straight up violence, a lot of them really, like even Grand Theft Auto if you've never looked that up. The objective is to like steal cars, and you're like, you know, you can be a pump and you're hurting prostitutes and you can beat people up, and you know, maybe we've gone a little wild on video games in society, or maybe it's something that needs to be monitored better. And a lot of people jump to that conclusion. They say, well, you know, clearly she mom must have played some role in this, because she's letting her young sump. First, she bought him a gun, Secondly, she's letting him play these violent video games.

22:00 Well, I'm someone who I just don't want to throw that on someone. I want to like, look it up. I want to do some research. I want to say, Okay, is there anything that validates that thought process, because if not, then I'm barking up the wrong treat. And I don't about know about you, but I want to live in fact and truth, and maybe you know, some basis not just an opinion because it's my opinion, and that's what I think. I want to I'm willing to learn. I'm willing to be wrong. I don't know about you. But if you're wondering if violent video games could have played a role in his aggression towards his mom, that was a specific bit of research that I did for you so that you could know this while you're driving, or you're working out, or whatever it is you're doing, and I got this information from a website called Frontiers in Psychology. I felt like this was a good site and that it wasn't just somebody just running their mouth about what they thought.

22:56 They cited a whole lot of studies in this and I won't try to are you with the minutia of the entire study, but this was the overall findings of this so to assess the effect of normative beliefs about aggression and family environment on exposure to violent video games and adolescent aggression. Basically saying, you know, normative beliefs about aggression are the ones that you know, what do you think is normal in terms of violence? And the way that they did this study was the first thing was they had everyone who did the study who was a participant self reported their exposure to violent video games, their family environment, and then their normative beliefs about aggression and aggressive behavior. So this is not someone asking and interpreting it. They literally were self reporting their answers and the results showed that there was a significant positive correlation between exposure to violent video games and adolescent aggression. So there is a link there. If the games are very violent, the kids may become more have more aggression about them. Now, something about that is to mention is that normative beliefs about aggression had an effect on exposure to violent video games and adolescent aggression. So if violence doesn't bother you, then you may be more likely to play the violent games.

24:29 I guess in a way, it's not something that would like horrify you and have you turn it off. It's just that's the way that things go. So while family environment moderated that first part of that process of information, for individuals with a good family environment, exposure to video games or violent video games had only a direct effect on aggression. Okay, so if they have a good family, you know, there was only a direct effect on their aggression level. But for people who self reported from a poor family environment, it had both direct and indirect effects of their normative beliefs about aggression. So they looked at these other models and I'm not, like I said, I'm not gonna get into it, but this general aggression model and this catalyst model, and they basically we're trying to say, we want to shed some light on the complex mechanism of violent video games influencing adolescent aggression. So I hope you're following me here that overall, they said, Okay, there is a link between violent video games exposure to them, but your level of how bad it affects you is more in tune with what do you think is normal in terms of aggression. So, for example, if your mom is beat by your dad and you see that a lot, then you're desensitized to how horrible that is because it's normative to your level of violence lens. Whereas if you come

26:00 from a home where there's zero violence, you're not allowed to watch our rated movies. You know, you go to church on Sundays and Monday through Saturday, and you know you stay home and you're sheltered, then violence of that level would be just unbelievable to you because you've never experienced it. You've never been there, you've never had that in your face. So when they keep talking about normative beliefs about aggression, they said that what you have as a concept of what is normative aggression is the most important cognitive factor that influences adolescent aggression. So you can have general beliefs and retaliatory beliefs. And I hope I'm not boring you with this, but don't you want to get into it, like how could this have possibly happened? And you can't just say, oh, it just did. I mean, let's look at a little deeper.

26:52 So general normative beliefs mean your general view about aggression, like I just told you, And if a young person will tell you that aggression is something that they see as normal, it is a very strong predictor of physical, verbal, and indirect aggression in kids they emulate what they've seen. The studies found that retaliatory beliefs, which means aggressive behaviors in provocative situations, meaning how will you respond physically? Then in aggressive situations, retaliatory normative beliefs about aggression can anticipate adolescent retaliation behavior after one year. So if they if you watch violence after a year, I mean, the chances are that your violence level will go up as an adolescent. So why would I mention these beliefs to you? And like I told you, it's because that's whatever you're willing to accept as normative is going to be what you might put out there to the world from yourself. So another thing that was interesting is teenagers that have high normative beliefs about aggression are highly likely or more likely to become bullies of others and cyber bullying. They'll take it to the next level. If they see

28:23 the violence and it's normative to them and they get you used to it, it ups their level and they're more likely to go bully others and to feel that bravado of going out and dominating other people in some fashion. So basically, the more kids are accepting of violent behaviors as normal, the more likely they are to follow that model of acceptability in their lives. And this makes total sense to me too, And I kind of talk to my students about this in class. Think about it. Kids who grew up in homes where parents smoke weed and it's like a daily thing, Like parents smoke weed in the car and at home and they're rolling joints on the table and things. It's not a big deal to these kids. You know, we're disciplining kids in school now for weed on campus and they laugh at us, like, really, parents don't care. The parents who smoke weed do not care if their kids get in trouble for weed. It's normative to them. That's normal.

29:18 On the flip side, if you've ever seen the movie The blind Side, I really liked that movie. Right, If you remember, Michael says to Leanne Tooey, hey, this is the first time that I've ever had one of these, and she goes, what a room? Your own room? And he goes, Noah bed, and it's like shocking. Right, That's the point in the film is it's shocking. That's the flip side. It's normative to not have a bed, So when you see one in a house, it's shocking to you. Well, in your parents smoke weed and do dope, Well then it's not a shocking to you to see it, and it's less negatively looked on, I guess by the kids that are around it. But I want to point out again the study indicates that you cannot victim blame Noah's mom because they looked into parental monitoring of video games and they found that even if parents are monitoring the video games, the usage, and how long they're on it, that monitoring did not influence the adolescent in their behaviors. So if they're seeing the violence and it's getting worse, if the parents take the video games away or if they say you're not going to play it all the time, it does not adversely affect that meaning, don't let them play the violent video games. And all I'm someone who played to myself, I just think you know your kid, and I don't tell people how to live their lives or raise their kids. But if your child is already

30:48 anger issues, if your child is already fighting in school and doing all these up the violence, it doesn't make sense to let them keep playing the video games. But again, gretchen And did not see that before she let him start playing the video games. So Noah was arrested and charged with first degree murder and assault with the attent with the intent to commit sexual abuse. Now here's a kicker. He was only thirteen, you remember that. But laws vary state by state. I'll give you an example. In Louisiana, we will light that ass up if you were ten years old or older. I'm serious, it's not common. But if you are ten years old and you do something egregious enough Louisiana, I'll say, all right, you wanna play big Boy games, You're gonna win big Boy prizes. But you know in other you know, some states, life means life. In Louisiana, if you get a life sentence, you will die in prison. But other states life means twenty five years and then you're released. Some states have juvenile life, which means you're incarcerated until you age out legally and then you're released.

31:56 Some states don't well. Under Iowa law, where this ac heard, a juvenile needed to be at least fourteen years old to be charged in an adult court. He was thirteen, but the investigators filed for a waiver of youthful offender status and so if granted, that meant that Noah could be held under supervision you know of the judicial system, even after he turned eighteen, and basically meaning he'll be in a juvenile facility, which those have their pros and cons too. If you don't know much about juvenile facilities, I would challenge you to look it up, or maybe I can do another episode where I explain what happens in these facilities. But this isn't like little kids you know who you know skip school. This is these facilities have kids that have done horrible things. I mean everything from you know, armed robbery to murder, drug charges and things like that. But you can become a better criminal in these facilities. These young kids, maybe they they effed up and they did something really bad. For real, or they were a part of it, but maybe they really weren't going to become these lifelong criminals. But you put them in these juvenile facilities, which I mean, we have to do something.

33:07 But depending on the kid, you know, they can be hardened there. And in this situation, you would go to the juvenile facility until you turn eighteen and then you move up to big boy prison where you can test your luck there. So in the court proceedings, this is where the real games are played. If you don't realize that who can show the jury the best show, who can put on the song and dance? I e. Remember Casey Anthony and how she was found not guilty of murdering her kid when O J, God and everybody else knows it. I mean, Ray Charles could have seen her guilt, but she walked. And it's because the defense put on the better show. They put that reasonable doubt in there. So remember there's beyond a reasonable doubt versus a preponderance of evidence. So I'll explain again real quick for you. The higher the stakes in court, the higher the necessary proof to prove guilt. So, for example, if he was going to face a death penalty, which he wasn't, but if he was going to face the death penalty, that is super high stakes. He has a lot to lose. So that means that the prosecutors are going to have to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt. Beyond a reasonable doubt, So if I had to quantify that for you, the jurors need to be ninety five percent sure that he did this case, that he did it. Now, in other courts, for example, like civil court, you know, the stakes are much lower, so the necessary proof is going to be lower

34:42 to prove guilt. So like if you you know, someone says you owe him five hundred dollars and they sue you in the people's court, right, shout out, Judge Judy, that woman is the real MVP. By the way, I loved Judge Judy. I wish you would come get ahold of my youngest kid and teach her a thing or two about a thing or two. But I digress. But you know, if you're gonna lose five d dollars and that's all that's at stake, then a preponderance of evidence, which means more likely than not, is all that's required because there's not a lot at stake, it's five hundred bucks. So if I had to quantify that for you, fifty one percent likelihood. So kind of keep that in mind. In this instance, higher stakes, we're going to be looking for beyond a reasonable doubt. So the game here is going to be played. Noah's defense team goes to court and argues that they were going to do an insanity defense and a diminished responsibility of defense for their client. And you know the judge, his name was Judge Greg Rosenblatt. He determined that Noah could be tried as a youthful offender, and that means that if he was convicted, he would remain incarcerated until his eighteenth birthday. And then he said that they would do evaluations. They would conduct those on Noah and kind of see where he was at that point. So that's exactly what happened. They did incarcerate him, and they did do these evaluations on him, and according to the

36:14 judge, they found that Noah was and I quote, logical, coherent, and goal directed before, during, and after the shooting. So what that tells you is he's not crazy. He knew exactly what he was doing. He still had goals that he wanted to achieve. He just basically didn't give a crap about his mom because he was mad about the video games, and so he planned and he executed. That's what he did well. To make sure of that, he was evaluated by two different people. More than two, but the two I'm about to talk about a psychiatrist and a psychologist.

37:00 Now, if you don't know the difference, Mama j is here to teach you. For a second. A psychiatrist is an MD and has a lot more power over you know, prescriptions and and things that will affect medicinally. I guess if you will um someone with a with a psychiatric issue, Whereas the psychologist is a PhD level and they do a lot of the same in their studies. But the goal of the psychologist is to more help with things like trauma, factors that bring up trauma or that you know, cause mental health distress and things of that nature. So I hope I explained that well, and I'm just trying to give you an overview. For example, in Louisiana, a psychologist can write prescriptions, but in other states they cannot.

37:45 So again, just a national average here, so you can have some understanding of that. So back to a psychiatrist, doctor Michael Taylor, was who interviewed Noah, and he found that Noah's actions were part of deeply ingrand personality traits which have been present for years despite his relative youth, and will continue to be present for the foreseeable future. He then added, with a strong degree of medical certainty, I can state that the prospects for rehabilitating Noah Crooks prior to his eighteenth birthday are nil. He has no psychiatric illness which had any impact on his actions, which might be treated same thing. He's not crazy, he's mean as hell. He's evil, but you know, we don't legislate morality, you know. And so he's saying, you know, we can lock him up, but we're not going to change his train of thought. We're not going to fix that. Doctor an assaulter, who is the psychologist who studied him, agreed and her statement was, it is not done or it was not done in a heat of passion or a heat of the moment. And there are no indications that he was psychotic or even upset at the time of the shooting. And finally, he has a series of personality traits that are very difficult to treat. I do not believe that at present, there is any way to treat a lack of conscience, a lack of empathy, and extreme callousness. I am pessimistic about the chance that any

39:19 treatment program can claim to successfully treat these traits, even with a much longer frame of time. Both of them are saying, this dude ain't fixable. He's evil. He showed no remorse, he didn't care. It was all about him. What is he going to gain from it? He can get his video games back, and he can marry his eighth grade girlfriend. But mom believes she's out of the picture and she's not going to bother me anymore. That considered his murder trial. Noah' murder trial began in April of twenty thirteen, and during those opening statements, the defense attorney, his name was William Kitemus. He said that Noah was suffering from intermittent explosive disorder, a behavioral disorder that is characterized by repeated episodes of impulsive, aggressive, or violent behavior, and he said that his violent outburst was caused by Gretchen taken away Noah's game. Okay, two doctors haven't said that the people who I don't know studied this for a living. And the second thing is this pisses me off as a mama and as a human being, because if you're going to get there and stand up in a court of law and say that the reason that this little prick of a kid got a gun loaded, it went downstairs, didn't want to shoot her in the back because he's more honorable than that, then came back downstairs after she finished cooking his dinner shot her twenty one times. If you're going to say that that all was caused because a video game was taken away you, sir, I hopefully don't become a parent,

40:52 because what are you trying to say here that any type of discipline will result in your death? If if your kid's angry, no, that dog doesn't hunt with me. Kids get angry, and then I'm gonna tear that ass up more. You shut your mouth, You get in your room and you can sit quietly, or you can clean it. And that's not changing. And Gretchen did the right thing. Gretchen is a victim. She is not a willing participant in her demise. She was parenting one of the hardest jobs there is in today's world, it's hardest hell to parent people kids, and it's hard enough then when you get murdered by one that's a psychopath, and then someone's gonna try to stand up and say, yeah, well, if you wouldn't take taking his video game away, then he wouldn't have had a violent outburst. Yeah, okay. Sure. The dad was brought to testify on the stand. William the dad, and during the trial, he did say that Gretchen was the disciplinarian of the family and that it did lead to fights between mother and son. And he said that Noah and Gretchen and had a loving relationship. She loved her son, but you know it could get stormy, and you know, Gretchen would say that they'd had their issues, but then the next time they'd be playing games together. It sounds like a mother son relationship. It's not all butterflies. Love does not always mean you're getting along, Like, in what world is that even a thought? He did reveal though, that on one occasion, Noah once told him that he

42:27 wanted to kill his mom, but again he didn't take it seriously. He said, I just didn't think he was a threat at the time. I thought it was just a kid kind of you know, mouthing off. I guess sometimes people do mean it when they're evil, when they're hateful, and they're self absorbed in their own wants. Now, the defense brought three of Noah's friends into testify. These were young kids too, you know, fourteen in age, and I don't know that these kids necessarily did a lot of good. But one of the fourteen year old boys that testified said that he played Hall of Duty with Noah online a lot, and that in twenty twelve, Noah had shifted and become aggressive and violent and had even begun stabbing classmates that they had with pencils. To me, that sounds like he was it was a normal relationship. But he hit that fourteen years old and he started, you know, he was playing those video games, and again it had that effect on him, and no matter what Gretchen did, at that point, that violence became normative in his mind, and thus he acted on it.

43:29 That same witness testified that the incidences happened once or twice every couple of weeks, but then it wouldn't happen again for months. So to say that he was constantly being aggressive really didn't didn't pan out there. It just seemed like he would have flashes of it. He then further testified that Noah had threatened to kill other students and his mother to that kid, but again it was like he was just talking big violence, and no one thought that he really meant it. So a different fourteen year old came in to testify, and she this was a female, told the court that she had become friends with Noah in seventh grade and that in March he had started talking about suicide, which was new, and his behavior began to change, and she said that he got angry quicker, and that even in Pe they had that class together, that he started getting mad at things that he normally wouldn't get mad at. So you can kind of see there was a shift at that fourteen years kind of Mason wandered, did puberty play a role in this too?

44:30 In testosterone and all that. Now the jury would hear the testimony from various doctors, and when doctor Michael Taylor testified that Noah was not suffering from any type of diagnosable mental illness when the shooting occurred, he said that he did not think that Noah felt any remorse he felt absolutely no remorse for the murder, nor did he accept responsibility. And his direct statement was Noah was able to calmly and without any change in his demeanor whatsoever, described to me the hours in which he decided to shoot his mother, and that he did not feel bad for his mother. He said he didn't. He felt he didn't need his mother. She was expendable, he could, he didn't need her.

45:16 He was good without her. It was fine. And then again, like I said. His assessment was backed up by doctor Annassaulter, who said that she, through all of her investigation and study of him, felt that Noah absolutely new right from wrong. Stated that she believed Noah suffered from a conduct disorder that involved a repetitive pattern of behavior in which the basic rights of other people were violated. Please don't take the word disorder here and feel sorry for him. This is not a disorder like he can't you know, like like um, I don't know, losing losing an example here, But this is not something that a normal person couldn't overcome. You don't violate the rights of other people. Their rights begin where your rights end, and vice versa.

46:01 Your rights end where their rights begin. This means he just did whatever the hell he wanted, regardless of whether it hurt other people. And she highlighted the fact that when Noah called nine one one, he was more concerned with what it was going to happen to him than the fact that his mother was bleeding out on the couch with twenty one gunshot wounds to the chest. So you do get favorable witness, which I've mentioned before, You can hire people. The defense can hire their own psychologists and psychiatrists to testify on their behalf. And so they had a doctor, Donnard Doudney, who was hired by the defense, and he kind of countered this and said that Noah suffered from a disorder that resulted in periods of rage and violence. And he testified that Noah had told him he felt a command to pick up the rifle and shoot while in a fit of rage, and he stated when he started shooting, he just couldn't stop. I mean, I'm from the South, honey, we called that a hissy fit. My mama would say, stop throwing a hissy fit, not stopped throwing a fit of rage with bursts of violence for contemper tantrum. So, after all the testimony was presented, it was time for closing arguments and prosecutor Denise Timmins referred to Noah as a cold blooded killer who was not insane when he shot and killed his mother, and she stated, the last thing she saw before she died was her own son raising a gun to her and pulling the trigger. He wanted to see his mother's face when she died. And I agree with that, because remember, it's

47:35 not honorable to shoot him in the back. The defense got up and when he was given his statement, he referred to Noah as a sick boy. He stated, in this little boy's background, common sense would tell you that this was a very sick boy. He had the idea to have sexual intercourse with his own mother. Yeah, so if it was just a fit of rage and anger, why did he want to sexually assault his mother. It's a whole different ball game. There's a difference between mad and violent and mad violent and wanting to sexually arouse yourself. Get out of here with that.

48:17 So they deliberated. The jury deliberated for more than seventeen hours. They gave it good thought, and they returned with a verdict. They found Noah Crooks was guilty of the lesser charge of second degree murder. The jury rejected his claims of insanity. They didn't think he was crazy, but they opted for the less severe verdict. He was sentenced up to fifty years in prison, and he was ordered to be held at the State Training School in Eldora until he turned eighteen. They do review his case annually, but he is still behind bars. And like I always do, I looked up some pictures for you. I have some then and now that I'm going to show you.

48:59 So get on you know, on Facebook, and you can look up these pictures now if you fast forward. Noah was in the news for some other comments that he made, and he's quoted now as saying he didn't think anything would happen. He just thought that he should have gotten grounded for it. Okay, you think grounding is an acceptable response to murder. But like we said, he got the fifty years in prison. Now he was nineteen and eligible for parole, and he did challenge the district court's handling of the case. His argument was basically that the prosecutors shouldn't have prosecuted him under the States Youthful Offender Statutes, which would have allowed the juvenile court to transfer the case to an adult court, and he said that what's happened to him, the sentence is cruel and unusual punishment, right, your little eighth Amendment violation.

49:54 So the Supreme Court looked at it and was like, yeah, no, the laws, the laws you know, allowed them to court, the court to track his progress before the deciding that prison sentence, and so they had about five years to track him at this point. And the court ruled that it had acted in its discretion by imposing that fifty year term. And they noted that the psychologist had said he wasn't capable of experiencing guilt and remorse and that no treatment was going to help him even when he turned eighteen. During the time that he was he's been in Eldora, he has avoided addressing the reasons for why he killed his mom. At this point, he's not saying anything more. But before the sentencing, and this one kind of made me sit back and think. Before the sentencing, his father confronted him during some meetings with the counselors, and Crooks responded that he quote thought he would be better off without her, And that's a direct quote from the court record, and in May of twenty sixteen, at that sentencing hearing, Krooks's father, William Crooks, got up and spoke and he said, I have visited you several times at Eldorra, pushing you to talk about your mother, and in the past four years you have never once spoken about your mother. You have

51:24 shown no remorse. If this is not a husband honoring his wife, this next statement, it means something. This man was a good man and is a good man. I feel he said, four years is not enough to pay for taking your mother's life. I'm sorry. I love you, Noah, but to let you out would ruin so many more lives. I think Dad gets it. I think the courts get it. His mother, Gretchen, is a beautiful woman, or was a beautiful woman on my post pictures for you, and Dad just looks like a nice guy. I can't say that much. For Noah. There's an updated picture of him, and he looks like a trashy Karen that you would see in the Dollar General. And he's got that wide eyed stare of crazy people that you see. He just makes me sick. I feel such terror, terrible weight in my heart for his father, who lost not only his son but his wife. But you know, I don't know what's worse Noah's existence or his freaking hairline.