A drifter with a mental disorder and long arrest record is scheduled to appear in a San Diego courtroom Wednesday as prosecutors present evidence they say links him to the 1998 stabbing death of 12-year-old Stephanie Crowe.

But defendant Richard Raymond Tuite, 34, wasn't the first person suspected of the crime. In fact, he is the fourth suspect charged with killing Stephanie, who was attacked in her Escondido, Calif., bedroom while five family members slept down the hall.

Escondido police originally surmised that Stephanie's brother, Michael Crowe, then 14, and friends Joshua Treadway and Aaron Houser killed the girl because of Michael's jealousy of his sister and the trio's alleged fascination with role-playing and medieval weapons.

Although police obtained confessions from both Crowe and Treadway, the boys' statements were either thrown out of court or severely restricted, and the interrogation tactics police used came under judicial fire and became the subject of numerous investigations and a 2002 Court TV movie, "The Interrogation of Michael Crowe."

Lawyers for Crowe and Treadway claimed, in interviews and in a pending federal civil rights lawsuit in which they are joined by Houser, that the teens' statements belied the facts and were the result of a rush to judgment by overzealous police officers.

Jury selection was under way in Treadway's trial in January 1999 when a bombshell revelation halted prosecution of all three boys and turned suspicion back on Tuite, who was reported to be knocking on doors in the Crowes' neighborhood asking incoherently for a woman named Tracy.

Richard Tuite

New lab tests on a filthy, red turtleneck shirt police seized from Tuite on the morning the body was discovered revealed three drops of Stephanie's blood on the right sleeve.

When Tuite was charged with murder in May 2002, state prosecutors officially cleared the boys of the crime.

Tuite's odd behavior the night of the murder, his presence in the neighborhood and the existence of Stephanie's blood on his shirt should be sufficient for San Diego Superior Court Judge Gale Kaneshiro to order Tuite to face trial on charges that could get him 27 years in prison if convicted.

But Wednesday's probable cause hearing is also expected to be a preview of Tuite's defense: Reasonable doubt generated by the confessions of Michael Crowe and Treadway. Their statements cannot be used in court against them, but Tuite has a right to argue that police believed — and may still believe — that Stephanie's brother and his friends were the only ones with motive and opportunity to end her life.

Michael Crowe, seen on police video, cries during 1998 interrogation.

"We do intend to put on an affirmative defense, but it won't be full-blown by any means," Tuite's lawyer, Brad Patton, told Courttv.com this week.

By "affirmative defense," Patton means he will suggest that someone other than Tuite snuck into Stephanie's bedroom and stabbed her nine times in the head and shoulder areas.

If the case goes to trial, the defense will argue that the most damning evidence against Tuite — the blood — most likely got there through cross-contamination from poor handling of evidence by police.

Patton can also be expected to tell jurors that police had the shirt from the day of the murder, that the shirt had only specks of blood on it, and that an initial test of the shirt failed to find the blood.

Tuite, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, has a conviction record that includes charges stemming from a break-in and bothering pre-teen girls.

The probable cause hearing is expected to take about two weeks. Patton has requested that both Michael Crowe and Joshua Treadway be present.