© St. Petersburg Times, published June 11, 2000

SEMINOLE -- Paula Crouch rocks gently in her velvety recliner, flipping through the pages of Snake Tattoo, the latest mystery novel she borrowed from the gulf beaches library. A ceiling fan whirs noisily above her head.

The breezy Florida room, with its pale green walls and row of plants, is where she comes to escape, with her novels, her computer games and her needlepoint. Relaxed in her chair, her feet up on a covered footstool, she has burned through 30 mysteries in the past three months.

In a spare bedroom across their home, her husband, Jake, is planted in front of his tiny computer, rapping out yet another letter to yet another judge, pleading for help. Mishmashed stacks of papers and boxes leave no place to step. A model helicopter hangs from the ceiling -- one of many he and their youngest son, John, built side by side over the years.

After 45 years of marriage, Jake, 72, and Paula, 69, are living the retired life, comfortable in the mortgage-free home they raised their five children in, and still very much in love.

Though they live under the same roof, Jake and Paula live disconnected lives, rarely even eating their meals together. Their house is split, each with rooms they spend their time in.

What divides them is their grief. He does everything he can to remember. She does everything she can to forget.

It wasn't always like this. Everything changed nearly a decade ago, when sheriff's deputies woke them with a knock at their door in the middle of the night.

They met in the Army. Jake flew helicopters; Paula was an air traffic controller. They lived vagabond Army lives before settling 30 years ago in their cozy home in Seminole, with its huge yard and a lake down the block for fishing.

Jake worked in the appliance section of Kmart, ran his own ceramics store and tried his hand at writing novels (one was going to be called Apples, Pears and Teddy Bear Hairs). Paula had her hands full raising their kids, feeling blessed that they never got into any serious trouble.

Their oldest son, Jacob, was getting married, and it was going to be a big church wedding. Dad was replacing the aging wooden fence around the house, and their youngest, John, stopped by and volunteered to help. They puttered around together, talking over plans for their next trip to fly model airplanes.

Two nights before the wedding, Aug. 15, 1991, the Crouch brothers threw a party for Jacob that ended up at Joe Dugan's, a restaurant off Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard in Clearwater. When they left, just before closing, Jacob was drunk and primed for a fight. He got into it with a stranger outside.

Clearwater police Officer Robert Milliron happened by. He radioed for backup and waded into the crowd, about 100 strong, a freshly lit cigarette dangling from his mouth.

Friends had already separated Jacob and the stranger. As Milliron sorted out what had happened, someone in a black T-shirt struck the officer across his chest and he lost his balance, stumbling backward into a clump of bushes. He brushed himself off and headed for his car.

John, the designated driver that night, followed with his hands at shoulder height in the surrender position. He was unarmed.

"Stop, back off," the officer called out to John. Milliron backed up until he felt his car behind him. John, wearing a black Guns N' Roses T-shirt, was a few feet away.

The officer dropped his flashlight, drew his 9mm handgun and held it with both arms outstretched. Without a word of warning, he fired one time.

The bullet struck John in the chest, in the third "S" of his Guns N' Roses T-shirt. "He shot me. I can't believe he shot me," John cried, grabbing his chest. Others hurried over and helped him lie down.

Backup officers arrived. "The guy hit me and I told him to stop," Milliron told them, sobbing and throwing up. "I told him to freeze and he said he was gonna kill me and I shot him."

Only 63 seconds had elapsed from the moment Milliron noticed the fight until he fired his gun.

John bled to death in a matter of minutes.

[Photo courtesy the Crouch family ] Jake and Paula developed a roll of film after John’s death and found this photo of their youngest son with the family dog, Domino.

Jake glanced at the clock beside his bed, saw it read 4 a.m. and knew the knock at the front door could not be good news.

Two sheriff's deputies asked Jake if Jody Crouch was his son. Jake nodded. They wouldn't tell him anything, handing him a piece of paper with a phone number on it.

Jake dialed and was relieved when Jody answered -- until Jody broke the news:

"Daddy, John is not with us anymore."

The funeral came and went in a blur, and John's ashes came home with Jake and Paula.

Their youngest had been 25, an assistant manager at a Winn-Dixie in Gulfport, in a training program that would have made him a store manager within two years. He was never arrested for anything.

"It's the most hurtful, most painful thing in the world," Jake said. "I've never ached that bad before. . . . Even now, I don't know how I got through that."

Two days after the killing, the Crouches hired an attorney to pressure prosecutors not to let Milliron walk.

Jake testified before the grand jury that would decide whether Milliron should be charged with a crime, and he tried to explain what it's like, out of nowhere, to lose a child. Milliron was charged with manslaughter.

At his trial, Jake and Paula sat in the back of the courtroom. Jake, in his white beard and glasses, cried silently while willing himself not to stand up and scream, "Milliron is a murderer!" He took meticulous notes, counting 83 times that Milliron's attorney interrupted someone during the trial. Paula, a small, quiet woman with a head of thick, white hair, ran to the bathroom every few minutes to calm herself.

The jurors decided that the officer had reason to fear for his life, so the shooting was justified. Not guilty.

"Sometimes you have to wait a long time for vindication," Milliron said as he left the courtroom. "This year has been devastating for my family. . . . I feel vindicated."

Still, his police career was over. A police review board determined that his use of deadly force wasn't justified because, though he said he saw a "wild look" in John Crouch's eyes, Milliron didn't have reason to believe he faced death or even serious injury. After eight years on the force, Milliron was fired.

Like Ron Goldman's family after O.J. Simpson was acquitted of murder, the Crouches filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Milliron, Clearwater police Chief Sid Klein and the department.

Few such lawsuits go to trial. Most are settled, resolved by court-ordered mediation or thrown out. Even those few that do get before a jury are typically resolved in two to three years.

It's coming up on seven years for Jake and Paula's lawsuit, with no end in sight.

The Crouches refuse to settle or even talk about that possibility. They made a pact: They will push for a jury trial until they die, because that's the only way the world will know their son did nothing wrong. Paula signed on to the pact, but she would be willing to drop things and move on. It's Jake who can't let go.

"I've never hurt so bad in my life, but I know what happened was wrong," he said, breaking into tears. "And it's worth all the hurt in the world to get the truth out."

Jake is the kind of guy who doesn't just write his congressman. He has written all 535 members of Congress, more than once.

He paid $5,000 to run for state insurance commissioner in 1980, knowing he had no chance to win. He sends letters to newspaper publishers across the nation -- 93 of them during his run for office -- on topics from abortion to taxes to the federal siege in Waco, Texas.

So, his decade-long crusade to exonerate John has come naturally. Jake spends hour after hour in front of his computer, printing letters and setting up mailing lists. He wrote President Clinton, the late Gov. Lawton Chiles and Sen. Connie Mack -- anyone who might listen, even those he knew would not.

He complained to the Florida Bar about his attorneys, pleaded with judges for advice they could not give and demanded that state regulators revoke Milliron's police certification.

Jake rarely gets a response, storing those he does receive in a meticulously kept filing cabinet, along with depositions and transcripts from Milliron's criminal trial.

Years of effort have accomplished little but to help him pass the time, and family members worry that Jake's passion has evolved into obsession. Paula says her husband has become depressed, even paranoid.

"I think it's the only thing keeping him alive, actually," said Jessica Mebert, their oldest child. "I don't know what's going to happen when it's over."

Jake rarely leaves home. He cares for his pet hens and pheasants (among their names: Cinnamon, Faith, Hope) in huge cages he built in the side yard next to the powerboat he hasn't taken out in five years. He watches the History Channel and listens to Rush Limbaugh on the radio.

No matter what he's doing, Jake's mind always circles back to John. He says he doesn't try to stop his thoughts; he couldn't if he tried.

"When you hear people say time heals all wounds, they don't know what they are talking about," he said. "It's something you never, never get over."

But Paula is trying to do just that.

She found that talking about John didn't help. Nor did going to church, or trying to remember the good times. Now when her mind starts to drift to her youngest son, she says she pushes those thoughts aside. She doesn't want to remember. She won't talk about it and refuses to cry over it.

She retreated into her own world, a world her husband cannot understand. She took scuba diving lessons and traveled to Hawaii, the Bahamas and Key West while Jake stayed home. She signed up for water aerobics class. She spends hours surfing the Internet, deciphering puzzles and working on needlepoint.

"My way of dealing with it is to think of something else," said Paula, who took up smoking again after the shooting. "I run and hide in my books, my computer."

She has been so successful at pushing away the awful thoughts that she pronounces herself happy these days, though she knows her husband, a few feet away, is consumed with hurt and anger.

How do Jake and Paula live together when they deal with the most meaningful thing in their lives so differently?

Jake offers an answer: "Maybe that's what love is."

Jake, no surprise, has taken the lead role with the lawyers in the civil case. But even Paula has done her part: proofreading Jake's correspondence, sometimes reading as many as 18 versions of the same letter, and talking strategy with her husband until she couldn't stomach it.

"There are times deep down that I wish we could settle this," she said, "but we have a duty to do this. We know he (John) was not doing anything wrong, and we want the world to know this."

No one knows for certain whether it was John who pushed Milliron; Jake and Paula believe it was somebody else. They think that John walked toward Milliron only to ask the officer to go easy on Jacob, because he was about to get married.

In their lawsuit, the Crouches allege that excessive force was widespread in the Clearwater Police Department and that Chief Sid Klein did nothing to stop it. They say Milliron had exhibited warning signs, including accusations of lying to a supervisor, stealing from the victim of a car accident he was investigating and getting into his own drunken scuffle at Joe Dugan's.

After his acquittal in the criminal case, Milliron moved to Pennsylvania and worked maintenance at an apartment building. Now he runs a mobile home park in Tarpon Springs. He chose not to comment for this story, as did Klein.

The Crouches say that despite their quest for a jury trial, attorneys keep trying to get them to accept a settlement. They think it's because if they go to trial and lose, their lawyer would get nothing, but a settlement would be a guaranteed payday.

Their first attorney closed his practice. They fired their second attorney after they say he tried to orchestrate a settlement, and they say they have not spoken with their current attorney, Clay Rood, in two years. Instead, they correspond every month or so, in formal letters copied to the judge assigned to their case, Catherine Harlan, as well as the chief justice of the state Supreme Court and, occasionally, even the Florida Bar.

Rood says he does not want to defend himself in public and that it is "insane" for the Crouches to air their frustrations in the media. He says he has too much time and money invested in the case to abandon it, and that the Crouches could not make him leave.

"They're not going to scare me off," he said. "I'm not going to get off the case."

The Crouches say they won't fire Rood because he may expect them to pay for the expenses he has incurred. Besides, they don't think anyone else would take their case after so many years.

There have been hearings and motions, depositions and interrogatories and a $75,000 settlement offer by the city. The case has been at a virtual standstill for years.

"I think I would be shocked if we did get a court date after so many years," Paula said. "I don't have much confidence."

The judge expects the two sides to try to work out a deal before walking into the courtroom, a typical practice, but one the Crouches refuse to participate in.

"I still haven't been able to get justice. I may never," Jake said. "Someone is trying to determine the worth of my son's life, but I'm not going to sign a piece of paper absolving the city."

When the family gathers at Christmas, nobody mentions John. Or at Thanksgiving. His birthday, May 26, passes each year without acknowledgment.

The four remaining children -- Jessica, Jacob, Jody and Joel -- visit their parents' house less and less, though three of them live less than an hour away. Jake and Paula asked their kids to stay away, because, as Paula puts it, it's just easier for everybody that way.

Everyone remembers John as the quiet one, the peacemaker, the one who resolved family disputes. He was named the outstanding senior art student the year he graduated from Dixie Hollins High School. He would spend hours crafting tiny wax figures with extraordinary detail and loved to work out with his brother and go on fishing trips. He didn't go out for a year, saving money to buy his prized possession -- a black Camaro.

"It's just not the same," said his brother Jacob, a 37-year-old counselor at a high school in Pasco County. "We're getting used to him not being there, but we always want what we had back."

Jacob ended up postponing his wedding for three months after his brother was killed. When the ceremony finally took place, both his parents stayed away.

Now the children are divided about whether their parents should keep pursuing their lawsuit.

Jessica Mebert, a 39-year-old mother of two teenage girls, and a veterinarian's secretary, thinks her dad should have settled out of court and donated any award for police training. But Joel Crouch, who says the lawyers are just "waiting for Dad to die," thinks his father should stick it out.

"My dad is pretty stubborn when it comes to this," said Joel, a 36-year-old engineer in Largo. "He figures Milliron had his day in court and John should, too. The whole thing has been treated as if John is the criminal and Milliron the helpless victim."

Jake spends his days in two bedrooms, his letter typing room and the other, the one he calls "John's room." It is filled with John's model airplanes and boats, his guitar and the black plastic box that John's ashes came home in. Sometimes Jake watches TV or sleeps there, the box at his side. Nobody goes in the room but Jake.

He is reluctant to admit it, because a parent is not supposed to have a favorite, but he felt something special for John.

"It's hard not to show impartiality," he said. "I spent more time with him than the other kids. It just worked out that way."

John used to show up at his parents' house a couple of nights a week for dinner and to work on model airplanes. Jake clings to the memories, including the time John stopped by to help fix the fence, the last time they talked.

Jake survived two tours in Vietnam without shedding a tear, but he cries freely when he talks about his son. "Although many, many years have gone by, there's not one day I don't think about it," he said. "The hurt won't go away, not until I draw my last breath."

Years ago, Jake instructed Paula to mix his ashes with John's, and he repeatedly brings up what will happen "after I'm gone." Paula doesn't talk about that.

She tries to keep a smile on her face, laughing nervously the few times she talks about the worst night in her life. "I'll never get over what happened," she said. "But you do what you have to do."

With tears in her eyes, Paula asks if she can change the subject.

-- Times researchers Caryn Baird and Cathy Wos contributed to this report.

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