The 22-year-old son of a Vermont town official has been charged with the murders of his father, stepmother, and 13-year-old stepbrother.
Brian Crossman Jr. faces life in prison without parole if found guilty on three counts of aggravated murder, the Brattleboro Reformer reported.
He is charged in the weekend deaths of 46-year-old Brian Crossman Sr., his 41-year-old wife Erica Crossman, and her son Colin Taft at their home in Pawlet, Vermont, where Crossman Sr., a lineman for Green Mountain Power, was serving his first term as a town select board member. All three were shot to death, as CrimeOnline reported.
Police said at the time they were alerted to the incident by someone who called 911 early Sunday and met police at a nearby school wearing bloody clothing. Vermont State Police told the Reformer that it was Crossman Jr. who had alerted police, saying that he had gone for a long walk after dark and that when he returned he found his father and his family dead.
As the investigation continued on Sunday, investigators seized Crossman Jr’s cell phone. He refused to speak further with officers without a lawyer present, and he was eventually released into the custody of his mother, Crystal Bassett. He was admitted to Glens Falls Hospital in New York Sunday night for psychiatric issues and was arrested on his release on Friday by New York State Police.
Bassett later told investigators that she and her husband had gone to Buffalo, New York, for the weekend and that her ex-husband, Crossman Sr., had agreed their son could stay in Pawlet while they were gone. She admitted that the young man and his father did not have a good relationship and that it “depended on the day.”
AT about 4:30 a.m. on Sunday morning, her son texted her “that something bad had happened, that he loved her, that she would eventually hear about what happened later.” He said he was at the Wells Village School being questioned by police.
Another family member told police she’d received a Facebook message from him about 15 minutes earlier than his mother saying “I love you.” She asked how he was doing, and Crossman Jr. replied he was “not doing well,” that she “can’t help fix this,” and that “dad is dead.”
Police said they met Crossman Jr. outside the school, where he told them “he had located his family deceased at their residence” and seen “several shotguns on the floor of the residence covered in blood.” His clothes were bloody, he said, because he tried to drag his father outside.
A crime scene team responded to the Pawlet home and found Crossman Sr. “lying on his back directly in front of the mudroom entrance door” with a utility vehicle backed up to the door. Blood was on the tailgate, the driver’s side, and the steering wheel. He had a gunshot wound to the head “an other gunshot injuries to his body,” an affidavit said.
Guns and ammunition were found in several locations in the house, along with a chainsaw on the kitchen counter. Significant amounts of blood were found.
Erica Crossman’s body was found “laying nude on a bed” in the master bedroom. The bed sheets and comforter had been removed, and investigators believe those linens were found in the mudroom.
The teenager was found dead on the floor in an upstairs bedroom.
Crossman Jr.’s mother told investigators that her son had long “mental health disabilities,” including a “mental breakdown in New Jersey about a month earlier. He was scheduled to meet with his doctor on October 9, she said.
Bassett said his behavior had begun to escalate beginning about two years earlier, but he was not taking any prescribed medications and was drinking alcohol and “was believed to smoke marijuana.”
Another relative said Crossman tortured frogs and kittens in his youth. A friend told police that Erica Crossman had said she was afraid to be alone with her husband’s son, especially if Crossman Sr. wasn’t there. Crossman Sr. was on call for Green Mountain Power over the weekend and was called out several times, the last call coming at about 12:30 Sunday morning.
Crossman Jr. is being held in New York while the extradition process is under way to bring him back to Vermont.
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[Featured image: Erica and Brian Crossman Sr. and Brian Crossman Jr./Facebook]
