SAN DIEGO -- A drifter long considered a suspect in the slaying of a North County girl more than four years ago will be charged for her murder San Diego Sheriff Bill Kolender announced Wednesday.

Richard Raymond Tuite was moved to downtown's County Jail from Donovan State Prison in South Bay Tuesday night after a judge signed a warrant for his arrest in the January 1998 slaying of 12-year-old Stephanie Crowe(pictured, left), the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

Tuite had been scheduled for release from the prison Friday after serving a three-year term for an attempted burglary unrelated to the Crowe case.

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The 33-year-old man was charged with Crowe's murder by state Attorney General Bill Lockyer's office. He will be arraigned Thursday afternoon in San Diego Superior Court.

A lawyer who represents Stephanie's parents told reporters that when the case "shakes out" in court, the proof of Tuite's guilt will "be the same evidence that there was from day one."

Attorney Milt Silverman was referring to tiny "spatters" of the slain 7th-grader's blood that turned up on a sweatshirt Tuite was wearing in the hours before her death.

"And the witness against him (who) shows that he is the killer of Stephanie Crowe, because she branded her killer with her own blood," Silverman said outside his Golden Hill office.

Flanking the attorney were Cheryl and Steve Crowe, their surviving daughter Shannon, and their son, Michael, a one-time co-defendant in the case.

The family members made no statements to reporters.

The parents and their son told the Union-Tribune, however, that they were cautiously optimistic by the decision to prosecute Tuite for their daughter's murder.

Michael Crowe told the newspaper that the prospect of Tuite being charged was like "having some stones removed from this ton of weight on our backs."

"Seeing Mr. Tuite in a courtroom -- now that will be a big step for us," he added.

Stephanie's grandmother found Stephanie's bloodied body in her bedroom at the Crowe family home in northeast Escondido the morning of Jan. 21, 1998. The child had been stabbed nine times.

Within weeks, authorities had charged Michael Crowe, who was 14 at the time, with her murder, along with two of his high school classmates.

The alleged motive was intense sibling rivalry and a morbid fascination with violent role-playing video games. During protracted police interviews, two of the boys, including Michael, confessed to the slaying.

Charges against the boys were dismissed, however, when belated DNA testing revealed traces of the girl's blood on Tuite's grimy shirt.

A judge also threw out most of the boys' admissions, ruling they were illegally coerced.

Witnesses had reported seeing Tuite wandering near the Crowe home, banging on doors and looking in windows, hours before Stephanie's murder, but authorities soon dismissed him as a suspect.

Detectives contended the transient had been too mentally ill and impaired by drug abuse to have been able to sneak into the Crowes' home undetected, kill the girl quietly and vanish without leaving any clues behind.

In the three years since a defense attorney ferreted out the incriminating blood evidence against Tuite, the case has been under review, with sheriff's homicide detectives taking it over from Escondido police in early 2000.

Last June, District Attorney Paul Pfingst asked the state Attorney General's Office to take over the investigation. At that time, Pfingst and Kolender said the transfer was a logical step in the investigative process, but refused to comment further on the reason.

Sources close to the investigation told the Union-Tribune at the time that the move signaled a split between sheriff's detectives, who wanted to charge Tuite, and local prosecutors, who remained convinced that Stephanie's brother and the other teens were responsible for her murder.