Twelve-year-old Stephanie Crowe was found stabbed to death on her bedroom floor Jan. 21, 1998.

But the family's nightmare had only just begun. In the weeks to follow her brother, Michael, then 14, and two of his friends, Joshua Treadway and Aaron Houser, were charged with conspiring to kill her.

Those charges were dropped before trail in February 1999 after last-minute DNA testing found spots of Stephanie's blood on a sweatshirt worn by a transient seen in the neighborhood the night of the killing.

The development forced detectives and prosecutors to start the investigation anew -- and raised questions about the handling of the case.

Part 1 : The night she was killed
Haunting questions: Steve Crowe says he bolts awake every night, tormented by the same dream. He hears his daughter's voice. "Daddy, help me. Please, Daddy."

Part 2: The arrest
Haunting questions: Michael Crowe, like a lot of teen-agers, has an eye for the irreverent. He is a fan of "The Simpsons" TV show. As a freshman at Orange Glen High School, he thought it was funny to eat lunch on the lawn reserved for seniors.

Part 3: The knife
Haunting questions: On the day Stephanie Crowe was buried, Suzie Houser became concerned about a collection of knives that her son, Aaron, kept in a drawer in his bedroom.

Part 4: More arrests
Haunting questions: Back in the familiar 14-by-14-foot interrogation room at Escondido police headquarters, Joshua Treadway remembered what Detective Ralph Claytor had told him during the overnight interrogation 13 days earlier.

Part 5: In court
Haunting Questions: Mary Ellen Attridge watches the TV news before work. On Jan. 21, 1998, she saw a report about Stephanie Crowe's slaying and mused, "I'm going to wind up involved in this somehow."

Part 6: The bombshell
Haunting Questions: By the middle of last October, Deputy District Attorney Summer Stephan felt her case again was moving forward against the three teen-age boys charged with slaying Stephanie Crowe. Two months earlier, a judge who had heard the evidence against Michael Crowe, Joshua Treadway and Aaron Houser had cast doubts about the case. Despite that setback, Stephan was now getting favorable reports from the expert forensic analysts she had hired.

A botched murder case and reader responses: Readers, too, are troubled by the handling of the investigation into the death of the 12-year-old Escondido girl and the tactics used in pressing charges against her brother and two other Escondido teens.

The San Diego Union-Tribune has been covering this case since Stephanie Crowe was killed. The newspaper has published more than 150 articles about it.

Information for John Wilkens and Mark Sauer's May 11-16, 1999, series was gathered from thousands of pages of court transcripts, police reports and other documents; almost 30 hours of videotaped interrogations; news accounts; and dozens of interviews.

The scenes and conversations described were either witnessed firsthand or reconstructed on the basis of documents and interviews.

Police detectives declined to be interviewed because of the ongoing investigation of the killing and because of pending lawsuits. Their comments, thoughts and actions are drawn from official reports and statements made under oath during various court hearings over the past year.

Richard Tuite has declined several requests for an interview. The Houser family also declined to talk at length. As with the police, their comments, thoughts and actions are drawn from reports and transcripts of court hearings.

Both the Crowe and Treadway families participated in lengthy interviews conducted since mid-January. Prosecutor Summer Stephan and defense attorneys Mary Ellen Attridge, Donald McInnis and Paul Blake also were interviewed at various times as the case progressed.