SAN DIEGO -- Richard Tuite was convicted Wednesday of voluntary manslaughter in the 1998 slaying of a 12-year-old girl who was stabbed to death in her bedroom while her family slept in their home.

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Hear Tuite Verdicts Being Read Crowe Family Speaks Out About Verdicts

After eight days of deliberations, a jury acquitted Tuite, 35, of the more serious charges of first- and second-degree murder in the death of Stephanie Crowe. The trial lasted 3-and-a-half months.

"You people have probably been involved in the most complicated criminal cases I've seen in 37 years... I know this was not an easy case for you," Judge Frederic Link told the jurors after the verdicts were read.

Tuite is scheduled to be sentenced on July 29 at 9 a.m.

Crowe was found slain in her bedroom on the morning of Jan. 21, 1998. She had been stabbed nine times.

Prosecutors initially targeted Stephanie's then-14-year-old brother, Michael, and two of his high school friends. Charges against them were dropped a year later when drops of the girl's blood were found on a shirt Tuite wore the night of the slaying.

Defense attorneys, however, argued the shirt was contaminated by police during their investigation and their strategy was centered on the contention that Michael Crowe and his friends, Joshua Treadway and Aaron Houser, were involved in the slaying.

Defense lawyer Brad Patton said in closing arguments that Crowe hated his sister and was obsessed with violent video games. He also reminded jurors that he and Treadway confessed to the killing, although authorities later ruled that the confessions from the boys had been coerced during lengthy police interrogations.

Assistant Attorney General David Druliner described the defense argument as "utterly ridiculous" and "idiotic." He said the DNA evidence was strong evidence of Tuite's guilt.

Neighbors had reported seeing Tuite in the suburban neighborhood around the time of the slaying. Some said he had knocked on doors asking for a young woman named Tracy Nelson. Escondido police briefly questioned Tuite but released him after deciding the habitual drug user and diagnosed schizophrenic was incapable of committing the crime, which required someone to enter Stephanie's room and kill her while five other people were in the home.

A month later, Tuite was arrested after two Escondido girls said he followed them off a bus. He was arrested again in March 1998 after trying to break into an Oceanside trailer home and was sentenced to three years in prison.

In 2000, he escaped from an Ontario halfway house but was captured and returned to prison. While at a halfway house in 2001, he was returned to prison after being caught with a knife.

Shortly before he was to be released from prison in May 2002, he was charged in the girl's slaying.

As jury selection for his trial got underway in February, Tuite walked away from the courthouse in downtown San Diego after slipping from his handcuffs during a lunch break. He was captured 4 hours later at a pay phone about 10 miles away.