Jury hears taped confession in Chestnuthill fatal stabbing case

Matthew Crothers

By Andrew Scott Pocono Record Writer

Matthew Crothers told police that brother David Crothers' girlfriend created the circumstances leading to the brothers fighting and David being stabbed in their Chestnuthill Township home in June 2014.

The jury heard Matthew Crothers' taped confession Friday, the second day of his trial on a murder charge in David Crothers' death.

The knife wounds to David Crothers' right leg caused massive blood loss, cutting off the oxygen supply to his brain and sending him into a vegetative state from which he likely would never recover, a Pocono Medical Center trauma surgeon testified. He was pronounced dead, following his family's decision to have him taken off life support, four days after the stabbing.

David Crothers

Matthew Crothers said he was only trying to defend himself when his brother accidentally fell onto the knife.

The prosecution intends to prove he meant to kill David Crothers. At the very least, Matthew Crothers knew his brother could die when stabbing him, but didn't care, the prosecution alleges.

"I was scared for my family's safety," a sighing, tense Matthew Crothers told police at the start of an interview taped June 9, 2014, hours after the stabbing, and played in court Friday for the jury. "It was an accident."

At the time of the interview, Crothers had just been brought to the state police barracks from treatment at Pocono Medical Center for a knife injury to his right hand and bite marks on his left forearm. His brother meanwhile was undergoing life-saving surgical and blood transfusion efforts in the emergency room prior to being placed on life support at Lehigh Valley Hospital.

"I'm sorry, but I don't trust any of you people," he told police, fearing to say anything without an attorney present and incriminate himself. "I know I didn't do anything wrong. I was the one being attacked. I don't know if my brother's dead. It's not my fault."

After police assured Crothers they didn't intend to "railroad" him and suggested it was in his best interests to be honest with them, he gave his account of what had happened, at times lapsing into profanity and struggling with tears. At the time of the stabbing, Crothers, then 18, shared a home with brother David Crothers, then 19, sister August Crothers, then 15, mother Gabrielle Crothers, then separated from the children's father, David's girlfriend Christina Collins, then 24, and the family's pets.

Admitting his family is humanly flawed like any other and has had struggles, Matthew Crothers said it didn't help when Collins moved into their home and got David Crothers into drugs.

While the rest of the family viewed Collins as a selfish, lazy, thieving leech making David increasingly more like her, David foolishly thought he was helping someone who herself had experienced a hard life, Matthew told police.

"We just can't understand why David won't wise up and see what we see," he said. "Tina's just got him so whipped. I was on drugs myself, but I'm trying to get my life back together and have a job. I want to help my brother do the same, but I can't as long as she's around."

Collins' presence caused ongoing tension in the family. The final straw came Monday morning, June 9, 2014, when Matthew awoke to find Collins and David had smoked almost all of his cigarettes without his permission.

Matthew confronted David and Collins in David's bedroom, telling Collins to leave their home and never return.

"She just kept lying there on the bed and grinned like it was a joke," Matthew told police. "That made me even angrier. I told her again to get up, take her things and leave."

This started an argument between the brothers that woke their mother and sister, who came down from their upstairs rooms and then sided with Matthew against Collins. David aggressively approached sister August Crothers, who was standing on the steps, pushed her and began yelling in her face, telling her she was just a child who knew nothing and should mind her own business.

"Seeing David do that to August just bothered me," Matthew told police. "I've always been protective of my little sister."

Sitting behind her son in court and listening to him on tape, a tearful Gabrielle Crothers nodded silently in agreement.

Fearing for his sister's safety in light of his brother's violent temper, Matthew, standing at the bottom of the steps, grabbed David by his legs and pulled him to get him away from August. This caused David to fall down the steps and land on top of Matthew.

A physical scuffle then ensued, with David punching Matthew and their mother yelling at David to "get off of him." Matthew kicked at David to get him off and the two then separated.

"David was so angry," Matthew told police in a trembling voice, recalling how he had always been scared to fight his bigger, stronger brother. "He was losing it. He looked like my father used to."

Listening to himself on tape as he sat with his attorney, Matthew lowered his head, his face breaking apart in tears as his chest hitched. Sitting behind him, August laid her head on the shoulder of their father, who had tears in his own eyes.

"I pulled out my (Smith & Wesson) folding pocket knife," Matthew told police. "David kept yelling, 'I'll kick your ass.' I told him, 'I'm not scared of you.'"

Gabrielle Crothers got between her sons, backed Matthew into his bedroom, closed the door behind her and tried keeping him in his room until he calmed down. Not wanting to leave August alone with David, whom he could still hear yelling, Matthew got past his mother and went back out into the living room to make sure David wasn't going after August again.

Seeing August nowhere in the living room, Matthew again went to David's room and confronted Collins. She had remained lying on the bed, seemingly without a care, throughout all of the commotion.

Matthew again started yelling at her, blaming her for tearing his family apart and again telling her to leave.

"I later felt bad about screaming at her like that," he told police. "I shouldn't have done it because I know she's been abused herself, but at that point I was just so fed up."

This got the brothers yelling at each other again. When Matthew went back out into the living room, David followed and hit him in the back of the head, knocking him to the floor.

"He was swinging at me," Matthew told police. "I took my knife out again and told him he had to leave. He came at me and we started wrestling around. He bit me on my arm and shoulder. I kept holding onto my knife because I didn't want to get stabbed. He was pinning me down with his legs and punching me in the head.

"I must've still had the knife in my hand when I tried to grab him by his legs and flip him up off of me," Matthew said. "The next thing I knew, he was off me and screaming, 'He stabbed me, he stabbed me!' I stood up and saw all this blood. Everybody was screaming and freaking out. I dropped the knife and ran out of the house. It was all so quick and so crazy."

According to prior testimony, Collins was the first to call 911 at about 6:30 a.m. August Crothers ran to a nearby neighbor, with Matthew walking along behind her and holding his bloody right hand, and had the neighbor call 911.

The prosecution suggests there was no fight, alleging Matthew held David from behind with his left arm while using the knife in his right hand to stab him and cutting himself in the process.

This is supported by no objects being found knocked over or disturbed, as would be the case during a physical altercation, in the narrow area where the stabbing occurred. This is supported also by no bruises visible on Matthew's head or anywhere else on his body, other than the bite marks on his forearm and the knife injury to his right hand, when he was photographed at the state police barracks after the stabbing.

The prosecution believes David bit Matthew on the left forearm as Matthew held him from behind while stabbing him, noting one bite mark near Matthew's elbow and another near his shoulder.

A forensic dentist, who matched the bite marks on Matthew's forearm to David's teeth, testified to this for the prosecution. However, under defense cross-examination, he said he wouldn't be able to tell from the bite marks exactly how or where each brother was positioned when those bites were inflicted.

The trial is scheduled to resume Monday at 9 a.m.

Story from the Pocono Record. Photos added by The West End Reporter's staff.