A thirteen year old girl testified to haveing had sex as a twelve year old with a man ten years her senior both before and after he killed her family. She also testified to knifing her younger brother, and listening as her boyfriend cut his throat.
Canadian law forbids naming the child. Apparently, she also agreed to marry the boyfriend in the year awaiting trial. Her involvement in such crime is not unique, as juvenile crime goes. Some years ago, in Sydney, a 15 yo girl had sex with her boyfriend immediately following his killing his new playfriend.
Normal social conditioning is resistant to such behaviour in people. What price does the public pay for equating freedom and choice with poverty and abuse?
JAMES STEVENSON of Canadian Press
ReplyDelete‘I was like a zombie — I could barely function,' girl tells court
MEDICINE HAT, Alta. — A girl accused of killing her parents and younger brother says she was still traumatized by their vicious deaths when she accepted a jailhouse marriage proposal from the much-older man she blames for the murders.
The 13-year-old, on the witness stand at her trial Wednesday for the second straight day, was grilled repeatedly about her actions in the hours and days after her family members were slaughtered in their Medicine Hat home.
Crown prosecutor Stephanie Cleary asked during her cross-examination why the girl would agree to marry her boyfriend Jeremy Steinke, 23 at the time, if she was as horrified by her family's deaths as she testified she was.
“My psychologist says it's post-traumatic stress disorder,” the girl practically whispered to the court.
Mr. Steinke, now 24, also faces three first-degree murder charges, but has not yet entered a plea. No trial date has been set.
The girl — the only witness called by the defence — first took the stand Tuesday. She told the jury her side of the story about how her parents and eight-year-old brother were repeatedly stabbed and slashed by Mr. Steinke in the family home in April 2006. She wept repeatedly when relating the details of her brother's final moments.
But on Wednesday she kept her composure and appeared to glare often at the Crown prosecutor. She was repeatedly told to speak up by both the judge and the Crown and often answered questions in just a few words.
The girl denied the Crown's theory that she had planned the attack and said she didn't call police or go for help because she was in a dream-like state.
“I was like a zombie — I could barely function,” she said. “It didn't even enter my mind to call 911.”
Clad in a high-cut brown top with her brown hair flowing over her right shoulder, the young teen remained stony-faced as she again recalled how her brother died.
She admitted she had wanted her brother to go to sleep and “to not remember this” when she started choking him with one arm, but he fought back and screamed at his sister to stop. She then pushed him into a bedroom.
She testified that when Mr. Steinke came upstairs after stabbing her parents repeatedly in the basement, he told her to kill her brother. But after stabbing him once in the upper body, she couldn't do it.
“I thought he was going to kill me ... because I couldn't do it,” she said of Mr. Steinke.
She said he fled the house after her parents and brother appeared to be dead. Despite being alone in a home literally soaked with blood, she didn't bother to check if anyone was still alive or needed help.
“I wasn't thinking if they were dead for sure,” she told court. “I was practically sleepwalking.”
Ms. Cleary pointed out the girl had plenty of opportunities to ask for help. She stole her mother's purse, called for a cab, withdrew money from a nearby 7-11 bank machine with her mother's card and then headed to Mr. Steinke's trailer.
She didn't ask for help from the neighbours, the convenience store clerk or the cab driver, Ms. Cleary said.
On Tuesday, the accused testified that she and Mr. Steinke had “hypothetical” conversations about killing her parents and her brother. She said she would vent to Mr. Steinke because her parents didn't approve of their relationship.
But she reiterated Wednesday that she was just joking and didn't mean any of it.
The Crown's cross-examination took little more than 1 1/2 hours. The defence rested its case immediately afterwards.
The girl can't be identified under provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act because she was 12 at the time of the slayings.
Closing arguments are scheduled for Friday. Jurors will then be sent home for the weekend before hearing the judge's charge Monday. They will then be sequestered to deliberate over a verdict.
News.com.au, from a Canadian correspondant
ReplyDeleteA CANADIAN teen accused of murdering her family has told a hushed courtroom she stabbed her eight-year-old brother, but her much older boyfriend slit the child's throat.
The girl, who cannot be identified under Canadian law, told a jury in little more than a whisper that her boyfriend, Jeremy Steinke, had killed her parents and then ordered her to stab the little boy, the daily Globe and Mail reported.
"He yells at me, 'Stab him, just stab him! Slit his throat!'" she testified.
"I said, 'I can't, I can't,' and he said, 'You have to. I did this for you'."
The jury in Medicine Hat, Alberta, heard the girl, now 13, had regularly talked about killing her parents, but did not mean it.
Prosecutors said she was angry that her parents had grounded her in an attempt to cool her relationship with 23-year-old Mr Steinke.
According to the Globe and Mail, the girl testified her brother pleaded with her for his life, saying: "I'm scared. I'm too young to die."
She said she stabbed him once with a kitchen knife "somewhere on his upper body," but could not do anything more, the paper said.
The girl claimed that angered Mr Steinke, who was covered in her parents' blood and panting, so he grabbed the boy and slit his throat.
Unable to watch, she heard her brother trying to breathe, she said, weeping on the stand. "He was gurgling."
The girl also admitted to having sex with Mr Steinke in his trailer after sneaking out of the house one week before the April 2006 slayings, and again in a friend's apartment while her family lay dead, hours before their bodies were discovered by her brother's playmate peering through a basement window.
"I loved him so much. I thought it would bring us closer together," she said.
Mr Steinke faces three charges of first-degree murder in the killings, but has not yet entered a plea and no trial date has been set.
Girl lied about murder role, court told
ReplyDeleteFrom correspondents in Alberta for news.com.au
A 13-year-old Canadian girl, angry over being grounded, plotted with her adult boyfriend to murder her family, and stabbed her little brother herself during the killing spree, the prosecutor in the case has said.
The girl, 12 at the time of the killings, faces three counts of first-degree murder in the slayings of her parents and 8-year-old brother last year in the small city of Medicine Hat, Alberta, a grisly crime that shocked the country.
The defense and prosecution made their closing arguments for the jury, which is expected to begin deliberations on Monday.
Her lawyer contended the girl never believed her family would be slain by boyfriend Jeremy Steinke, then 23, who had been known to tell friends he was a werewolf. The girl cannot be identified under Canadian law because of her age.
But prosecutor Stephanie Cleary said the girl's testimony - that her assertions to friends that she wanted her family dead were just idle "venting" - was false.
"It cannot raise a reasonable doubt in your mind about her guilt. It makes no sense," Mr Cleary said.
"The reason her tale doesn't make sense is not because she's 12, not because she was involved with Jeremy, but because it's not true."
The girl's father, 42, mother, 48, and brother were discovered stabbed to death in the family home in April 2006.
A day later, the girl and Mr Steinke were found sleeping in a truck parked in a small town in the neighboring province of Saskatchewan. With them were a bag of bloodstained clothing, knives and a purse belonging to the preteen's mother.
Mr Steinke's murder trial date has yet to be set.
Testimony in the month-long case was often gruesome and heart-rending, including details of how the little brother begged for his life.
The girl told the court Mr Steinke broke into the home, attacked her parents and then ordered her to stab the boy. His body was found in his room among blood-soaked toys. Her parents' bodies were found in the basement, stabbed dozens of times. Mr Steinke left the girl at the scene.
Prosecutors said she hatched the plot after her mother and father grounded her and blocked access to a computer she had been using to communicate with Mr Steinke.
Defense Lawyer Tim Foster said evidence showed the girl did not plan the killings. He said Mr Steinke had to break into the home, there was no escape plan and the duo stayed around Medicine Hat for almost a day afterward.
The girl had testified that she met up with Mr Steinke hours after the deed and had sex with him.
Her actions showed she was in a state of panic and looking to cling to the last person in her life, Mr Foster said.
"In these circumstances, don't you think she needed a hug, someone to comfort her and tell her everything would be OK?" he said.
13yo girl found guilty in family murder
ReplyDeleteFrom News.com.au From correspondents in Montreal
A JURY has found a 13-year-old Canadian girl guilty of murdering her parents and her younger brother in a case that has shocked the country, local media reported.
The jury in Medicine Hat, Alberta, found the teenager guilty on three counts of first degree murder after only three hours of deliberation.
The girl, who cannot be named under Canadian law, is believed to be the youngest person to be convicted in the country's history, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and other media reported.
“I truly hope that we have done the right thing here and I think that we have done the right thing by this young person and by the victims,” Crown prosecutor Stephanie Cleary told CTV.
“This is the community's response to this terrible crime and I hope that the verdict gives some comfort to the families of the victims,” she said.
The girl was 12 at the time of the murders in April 22 last year.
During the trial, the girl told the jury that her boyfriend, Jeremy Steinke, 23, had killed her parents and then ordered her to stab her eight-year-old brother.
“He yells at me, 'Stab him, just stab him! Slit his throat!”' she testified.
“I said, 'I can't, I can't,' and he said, 'You have to. I did this for you'.”
The girl said she stabbed her brother once with a kitchen knife “somewhere on his upper body,” but could not continue.
She claimed that angered Steinke, who was covered in her parents' blood, so he grabbed the boy and slit his throat.
Prosecutors said she was angry that her parents had grounded her in an attempt to cool her relationship Steinke.
Sentencing is scheduled for August 23, with the girl facing up to six years in jail and then four years of supervision.
Steinke, now 24, is also charged with three counts of murder and a date for his trial has yet to be set.