The Unthinkable: Children Who Kill

sketch Jeremy Allen Steinke

Friends of Jasmine's twenty-three-year-old boyfriend, Jeremy Allen Steinke, pointed authorities to a town in Saskatchewan, and they found Jasmine alive and with Steinke. He was an unemployed high school dropout, considered the unofficial leader of a group of Goth-punks. The two were arrested without incident and returned to Medicine Hat. After a hearing, Jasmine was sent to the Calgary Young Offenders Centre to await a trial. Within days, she had penned an apology letter to her family, admitting she had taken part in their slaughter. She wrote that she wished she could "take it all back" because now she "had no one." She said her brother was killed because he was too sensitive to survive without her parents. She herself had choked him to make him unconscious.

Supposedly, this all occurred because the seventh-grade girl had reacted badly to being grounded for dating Steinke behind her parents' backs. They told her she could no longer see him. Yet Jasmine had already agreed to marry Steinke and she was determined to be with him. She urged him to help her get rid of them.

Logo: VampireFreaks.com

A romantic bond was not all this couple shared: they had a fixation on Goth culture and Steinke even claimed to be a 300-year-old werewolf. Both had posts on a Web site known as VampireFreaks.com, and Steinke reportedly wore a vial of blood around his neck. Jasmine referred to herself on another site as "runawaydevil". They shared an appreciation for razor blades, serial killers, vampires, and blood. They would soon learn that murder was not fantasy.