FAMILY SLAYING
When young and impressionable Jasmine Richardson, 12, met dark and brooding Jeremy Steinke, 23, she was immediately infatuated.
Jeremy claimed to be a 300-year-old werewolf and Jasmine was swept up in the romance of being the object of his affection.
Unsurprisingly, her parents Marc and Debra were horrified.
Forbidding Jasmine to see Jeremy, they thought that was the end of it. They were wrong.
Jasmine and Jeremy stayed in contact online.
I have this plan, she wrote to him. It begins with me killing them and ends with me living with y ou.
On April 23, 2006, aft er watching the movie Natural Born Killers, Jasmine and Jeremy entered the Richardson’s home.
Jeremy stabbed both Marc and Debra, then headed upstairs where he found Jasmine with her eight-year-old brother Jacob.
In court Jasmine would testify that Jeremy pressured her to kill Jacob.
‘He yells at me, “Stab him, just stab him! Slit his throat!” I said “I can’t, I can’t” and he said “You have to. I did this f or you.”’
Jasmine claimed she stabbed Jacob five times because it would be cruel to leave him an orphan.
After investigating the scene, police were initially concerned Jasmine had been abducted, but when she was spotted laughing and kissing Jeremy in a restaurant a few hours later, the pair were brought in for questioning. They were both found guilty of three counts of murder.
Jeremy was handed three life sentences, but being a minor Jasmine could only be sentenced to 10 years.
She was released in 2016.
‘He yells at me, “Stab him, just stab him”’