Sinister

Last week I was thoroughly engrossed in the Stephanie Rengel murder trial. The trial, which was occurring here in Toronto exposed details on a sick and twisted tragedy which really did not need to happen. But then what murder of a 14 year old is necessary?

The shortened version of the story is this for those of you who haven't heard it: M.T a teenager (15 at the time I believe) had a 17 year old boyfriend D.B. (For your info they cant be fully named here in Canada as they were both minors at the time of the crime) M.T was very jealous of a girl who D.B had, been in a prior relationship with, that being Stephanie. She thought that Stephanie wanted to have D.B back and that she was spreading tales about M.T having sex with other boys.

M.T over a period of months cajoled, begged, threatened, blackmailed and bullied her boyfriend D.B into killing Stephanie. Its all documented in tonnes of text messages and I.M messages that they had over this period. D.B resisted for a while but M.T threatened to withhold sex and then to sleep with other boys if D.B did not give into her demands and kill Stephanie.

Apparently he came close in October of 2007 and didn't have the heart but finally with more threats from M.T he finally did the deed, luring Stephanie from her home one winter evening, the evening of New Years day 2008 to be exact, where he finally stabbed her numerous times and left her to bleed to death in the snow. With her last breaths she was able to finger the murderer to a passerby who found her dying in the cold. D.B meanwhile called after his deed was complete and told his girlfriend M.T that it was done. She called Stephanie's phone to check, just to make sure and then D.B went back to M.T's place for a nice sex romp, his reward for fulfilling his mission.

Pretty chilling stuff for a couple of teenagers. You can google it if you want more details.

The trial this week was for the girl M.T, D.B's trial is later in the year, and after three days of deliberation, which was about three days too long in my opinion, the jury came back with a guilty verdict. We await sentencing.

Now I know that child and teen crime isn't the once shocking occurrence that it used to be. 10 year olds have murdered, kids have plotted and succeeded in killing parents etc but this one, maybe because of the wealth of supporting evidence showing how the plot was developed and the amount of begging, convincing and threatening done by M.T to get it carried out seems especially chilling.

Its also rather instructive to see how the family of the murder accused saw her still as a school smart young lady, with little street smarts who would never do something like this. They had no clue as to the vulgar and disturbing messages that their little "angel" was sending online and via text message or as to the plot she had conceived using boyfriend D.B as the de facto murder weapon.

What can you say about it all? Kids these days are being exposed to a lot of stuff from early, I'm not sure we can shield and protect them anymore. Their childhood definitely will not be the same as ours. Still I guess one can only try to give them a good foundation, stay involved in what they are doing, keep on their ass, give them proper context into which to understand the knowledge that they are being bombarded with daily and pray. A whole heap a pray.

Well and if that doesn't work there is always Liks.

Still its mind boggling to me that a girl as young as M.T would conceive of this sick crime and use her body as collateral to get it done. Did she understand that murder was wrong? Did she think well maybe there is another way to solve this issue with Stephanie, did she think about consequences? Did her parents ever think to check her moral compass somewhere along the way? Lots of unanswered questions.

For all the smarts it took to plan this murder etc, she was extremely naive to think that she would get away with it. A case of too much know how but not enough knowledge?

And what about the victim. Yea what about her and her family. Destroyed over something so like this. So senseless.

No idea. Mi nuh know how de yout get so.