Scream: Two horror-obsessed teens set out to recreate a scene from their favorite movie. Their target? An innocent girl who thinks they’re her friends.
Moon Madness: A little girl missing from a hospital ward, a frantic search by moonlight, a killer lurking in the shadows.
666: Deep in the Russian woods, a group of teenage Satanists are preparing for a ceremony, one that will come as a nasty shock to their newest recruits.
The Killer Online: The murky waters of Internet dating are said to hold plenty of fish. Unfortunately, there are sharks too.
Killing Mary: The victims had the same name and were murdered in the same city, within days of each other. Coincidence? Or something more sinister?
A Twist in the Plot: A budding author challenges his friends to come up with a plot for the perfect murder. He has no idea that one of them will take the task literally.
For My Sister: The police said it was a missing person case but Teresa was convinced that her twin sister had been murdered. Now all she had to do was prove it.
Death of a Fat Man: A brilliant detective is faced with a unique challenge - solving the murder of a man who everyone hated.
Lesbian Vampire Killers: Four young women cruising the darkened streets of Brisbane, Australia - looking for blood.
Thirteen Steps: A disgruntled employee hatches a plan to get back at his former boss, with catastrophic results for an innocent little girl.
Click the "Read More" link below to read the first chapter of
Murder Most Vile Volume15
Scream
When legendary horror director Wes Craven released the teen slasher
movie Scream in 1996, he probably had no idea how successful it was going to
become, spawning a franchise that has grossed over $600 million in revenue. The
plot after all, is hardly original. A group of high school students is
terrorized by a masked killer who stalks and kills them one by one. When the
murderer’s identity is eventually revealed, he turns out to be not one, but two
of their classmates, working together. Director Craven has admitted that the
story was inspired by the real crimes of notorious serial killer Danny Rolling,
alias The Gainesville Ripper. What is less well-known is that the movie itself
inspired a particularly bloody murder.
Brian Draper and Torey Adamcik were a couple of apparently normal
16-year-olds, attending Pocatello High School in the city of Pocatello, Idaho.
Torey had grown up in the area, while Brian had moved there recently from Utah
with his family. The two were soon firm friends, drawn together by their mutual
love of films, particularly horror movies. Torey in fact had ambitions of
attending film school after graduation and had dreams of becoming a movie
director. He was seldom, if ever seen without his video camera, shooting random
footage and sometimes conducting impromptu interviews with his fellow students.
Of the two Torey was the more popular among his peers, Brian the more
introverted. But they did have a few mutual acquaintances, notably Cassie Jo
Stoddart and her boyfriend Matt Beckham. Like Brian and Torey, Cassie was in
her junior year at Pocatello High and she and Matt were on friendly terms with
the boys. What Cassie could not have imagined was that Brian and Torey were
planning a massacre, with her the intended victim.
Where exactly this diabolical scheme had its genesis is difficult to
fathom. After the event, Brian and Torey would both play the innocent and try
to shift the blame to the other. But there is a substantial body of evidence to
suggest that they were equally culpable. They certainly brought out the worst
in one another, Torey with his slasher movie obsession and Brian with his
admiration of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the Columbine High School
shooters. What we know is that in the months leading up to the massacre, they began
shooting video footage in which they candidly discussed their worldview and
their ambitions to become serial killers.
The video makes for disturbing viewing. In it, one or the other plays
the role of interviewer while the other answers questions. Giggly and jovial,
they share with the camera their Nietzsche-inspired views - that good and evil
do not exist; that murder is only wrong because the law says so and that they,
as superior human beings should be entitled to kill lesser individuals. They discuss
the killers who they admire, dismissing Ted Bundy and the Hillside Stranglers
as “amateurs” and honing in on Ed Gein as the ideal (even if they incorrectly
attribute the crimes of Ed Kemper to Gein). And perhaps most chillingly, they
describe the killing spree that they are going to carry out, talking about the
time they’ve spent staking out potential victims and honing in eventually on
Cassie Jo Stoddart and Matt Beckham. “They're our friends but we have to make
sacrifices,” Draper says into the camera. “So, um, I feel tonight is the night
and I feel really weird and stuff. I feel like I want to kill somebody. Uh, I
know that's not normal but what the hell.”
That particular clip was recorded on September 21, 2006. By then,
Draper and Adamcik’s plans for mass slaughter were already well evolved. Three
weeks earlier, Adamcik had called an 18-year-old friend named Joe Lucero and
asked if he would buy some knives for him. Lucero had agreed and the two of
them, together with Draper had gone to a local pawn shop and purchased four
hunting knives for $45.
But the murder would not take place on September 21, probably because
Cassie Jo Stoddart’s parents were at home. The would-be killers then staked out
the house of another potential victim before deciding that there was too much
risk involved. They then called it a night. Their tilt at infamy would have to
wait.
The following day, September 22, 2006, Cassie Jo Stoddart was due to
housesit at her uncle’s residence on Whispering Cliffs Drive. Adamcik and
Draper got to hear of these plans at school when Cassie invited them to hang
out with her and Matt that evening. Adamcik’s video diary for that day contains
one innocent and yet, in retrospect, chilling clip. It shows Cassie standing at
her locker in the school hallway. Draper is filming and picks her up on camera.
“Hey look, it's Cassie,” he says, “Hello Cassie.”
“Hello,” Cassie replies smiling and waving at the camera.
“I'm getting you on tape,” Draper giggles. “Say hi please.”
“Hi,” Cassie says smiling.
Within twelve hours of that segment being filmed, Cassie Jo Stoddart
would be brutally slain by the youth behind the camera and his warped cohort.
Adamcik and Draper arrived at the Whispering Cliffs residence at
around 7 p.m. on the evening of Friday, September 22. They spent around two
hours chatting and joking with the two young people they intended killing. Then
at around nine, Adamcik abruptly announced that they had to leave. Some fifteen
minutes later the power at the home went out. That frightened Cassie and so she
asked Matt if he could stay the night. Matt then phoned his parents and asked
for permission to sleep over. His mom however said no and confirmed her prior
arrangement to pick him up at 10:30. By the time she did so, the electricity
had been restored and Cassie was feeling slightly less anxious. Little did she
know that it had been Adamcik and Draper who had tampered with the power supply
and that they were at that very moment hiding in the dark and watching the
house. About half an hour after Matt Beckham departed, the lights went out
again and this time the killers crept forward, gripping their recently acquired
blades.
Cassie Jo Stoddart’s body was not discovered until her uncle and his
family returned home on Sunday evening and walked in on a bloodbath. The
subsequent autopsy would reveal the true horrific extent of the murder. Cassie
had been stabbed thirty times, with twelve of the wounds considered
“potentially fatal.” The pathologist also determined that two weapons had been
used in the attack, one with a serrated edge, the other non-serrated. In view
of the defense both killers would soon raise, this was a vital piece of
evidence.
And tracking down those killers would be a relatively straightforward
task. After Matt Beckham revealed that Draper and Adamcik had been at the house
on the night of the murder they were questioned as potential witnesses.
However, their answers to questions asked by investigators soon roused
suspicion and before long they were elevated to the head of the suspect list.
Both however insisted that they knew nothing about the murder.
According to them, they’d gone to a local movie theater to watch a film called
Pulse. They were even able to provide ticket stubs, although neither seemed to
have the slightest idea what the movie was actually about. Caught out in that
lie, Draper changed his story. He now said that he and Adamcik had agreed to
use the movie as an alibi. They had actually been out breaking into cars.
This admission was an immediate red flag to investigators. Experience
told them that criminals hardly ever admit to a crime unless it is to cover up
a more serious offense. Moreover, there had been no reports of burglarized
vehicles in the area in which Draper claimed to have been operating. Convinced
more than ever that Draper and Adamcik were lying, the investigators increased
the pressure.
It was Draper who cracked first. During the course of his third
interview on Wednesday, September 27, 2006, he admitted that he and Adamcik had
gone back to the house after Beckham had left. They’d entered, he said, through
a door which they’d deliberately unlocked earlier in the evening. According to
Draper their intention had been to give Cassie a scare. But then Adamcik had
drawn a knife and started stabbing Cassie. Draper initially denied hurting
Cassie but he later admitted to stabbing her in the leg and chest. He’d only
done so, he said, because Adamcik had threatened to kill him if he refused.
Draper also agreed to show police where he and Adamcik had disposed of
the murder weapons and later that afternoon led a contingent of detectives and
crime scene investigators to a location at Black Rock Canyon. Here several
items were recovered, including bloodstained clothing, latex gloves, three
daggers and a Sony videotape. An attempt had been made to damage the tape but a
police expert was able to recover the recording, which included some of the
material mentioned earlier in this article. Particularly telling however, was a
segment apparently filmed directly after the murder.
Draper and Adamcik are in a car driving, with Adamcik at the wheel and
Draper holding the video camera.
Draper: “We just killed Cassie! We just left her house. This is not a
fucking joke.”
Adamcik: “I'm shaking.”
Draper: “I stabbed her in the throat and I saw her lifeless body. It
just disappeared. Dude, I just killed Cassie!”
Adamcik: “Oh my God!”
Draper: “Oh, oh fuck. That felt like it wasn't even real. I mean it
went by so fast.”
Adamcik: “Shut the fuck up. We gotta get our act straight.”
Draper: “It's okay. We'll just buy movie tickets now.”
Adamcik: “Okay.”
Brian Draper and Torey Adamcik were tried separately for the murder of
Cassie Jo Stoddart. At trial, each of them attempted to shift the blame to the
other and to portray himself as having been coerced to participate in the
murder. The videos, so meticulously compiled by these wannabe filmmakers told a
different story, proving that each was equally liable. The juvenile killers
were both found guilty and received identical sentences, life in prison without
the possibility of parole. They are currently incarcerated at the Idaho State
Correctional Institution near Kuna, Idaho. Appeals to the US Supreme court by
both killers have been denied.
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