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Today’s case is about Cassie Jo Stoddart, who was just 16 years old from Pocatello, Idaho. She was artistic, kind, funny and headstrong. Cassie was mostly raised by her grandparents though she did see her mom and step-dad often. She had an older sister and a younger brother who considered Cassie his biggest role model. Both in school and through family and friends, Cassie was known as a straight A student who was mainly focused on school and didn’t really do much else. Aside from school, like any teen, Cassie had big goals and dreams ahead of her, that she was robbed of way too soon.
Cassie was dating her boyfriend Matt when this entire tragedy took place. They had been dating for five months and though it may seem like Matt had something to do with this, he didn’t. It just happened to be wrong place, wrong time. Cassie and Matt had two acquaintances that they attended school with, Brian Draper and Torey Adamcik. Brian Draper was adopted but we don’t know much about his upbringing. Brian had a long time crush on Cassie and it seems as though he’d been denied with the way he engaged with her. Both Brian and Torey had both always felt like outcasts, and though it’s sad when someone feels like an outcast, it’s not sad when they decide to murder people for it.
These two were super into movies and considered themselves to be movie buffs and critics. They spent all of their free time at the movies and watching movies and this is not something odd for two 16 year old boys as well as prior to the social media world came into play. (This case took place in 2006). These two also had a strong obsession and fascination with the Columbine Shooting. They essentially looked up to Dylan and Eric and thought of them as the hero to the outcasts, kids who took a stand against the cool kids. However, though that’s what the media at the time tried to paint these two as, it couldn’t be further from the truth. The Columbine Shooting was an awful event that left families absolutely devastated and many lives lost, for no reason other than a savage killing.
From their love of movies, obsession with Columbine and anger at being the outcasts, Brian and Torey came up with the idea to start killing people, so they constructed a kill list and presented their ideas to one another. Brian wanted to take a route similar to Columbine, where they go in and shoot as many people as possible in a short amount of time. Torey wanted to take a more theatrical, performative route and copy murders similar to those from the movie Scream. He wanted to wear masks and scare his victims one-on-one, to have more of an intimate killing.
At school, they talked a lot about wanting to write, direct and film their own horror film. This is something that is really cool, and it’s impressive that high school students wanted to do something like this, because it’s amazingly creative. However, this is not a cool thing when it’s based on a real murder that’s being committed for said movie. That is so beyond not cool.
The remainder of this cases includes real footage from Torey and Brian, and actual transcripts of things they said both prior and after the murder took place.
For the full episode, listen below!
As always, thanks for listening and see you next Monday! Keep it spooky!
Kels