On Jan. 17, 2015, a neighbor found the decomposing bodies of 29-year-old Army veteran and screenwriter David T. Crowley, his wife Komel and their 5-year-old daughter Rani in their Apple Valley, Minnesota home. Police say the bodies had been there for up to four weeks, as the Crowleys had not been seen since Christmas.
l to r: Rani, David, and Komel Crowley
David Crowley was the script writer of Gray State, an independent (i.e., non-Hollywood) movie that depicts the dystopic future that many of us fear for America — one of government conspiracy and militarization, societal breakdown, martial law, FEMA camps, and civil war. (See “Script writer of movie on America in martial law found dead in murder-suicide”.)
Pat Pheifer reports for the Minnesota Star Tribune, Jan. 22, 2015, that Crowley had shot his wife and daughter in the head before shooting himself, according to a report from the Hennepin County medical examiner’s office released Wednesday.
Yet Jason Allen, a producer based in Los Angeles, said that Crowley’s words and actions when the two had met in September and in an e-mail Crowley sent him on Dec. 17, seem contradictory to a man who was about to kill his family and himself.
Crowley and Allen had met in Los Angeles, when Crowley asked Allen to consider signing on to the Gray State project as an executive producer.
Allen, a first assistant director who has worked on independent films, music videos and commercials, said, “David had this consistency and this very steady way about him. In many ways it felt very contradictory to the actions of a murder-suicide. I truly saw an optimism to it.”
Crowley talked in the two-page e-mail to Allen about being “almost completely abandoned” by his original film partners and being “at the end of a tunnel all alone.” But he said, “Gray State fans are growing at a rate of 100-200 per day even now, and when I get started I can only expect they’ll keep coming. I have no idea who much money is going to come together when this [Gray State] kicks off here in a few weeks, but it might be enough to get started on a series, then independent feature(s) running a common story line.”
Allen was out of town over the holidays and didn’t respond to Crowley’s e-mail until Jan. 8. By then the family was dead.
Here is the rough, uncut version of Gray State: The Rise, written and directed by David Crowley.
Although the medical examiner says the Crowleys’ deaths were a murder-suicide, David’s friends, family and co-workers have said they do not believe it. They describe the Crowleys as a “gorgeous” and “happy” couple and that David had a promising career and an extremely happy home life. They believe he was murdered.
Crowley’s friends and brother, Dan, have started a fund for Komel Crowley’s family in Texas who are struggling with her mother’s terminal cancer and medical bills. The fund is set up at http://www.gofundme.com/kjrrqw. As of 6 p.m. Wednesday, donations totaled $1,320.
H/t FOTM’s MomOfIV and Forbidden Knowledge TV
~Éowyn
