Teen chat: Clothes, friends and, oh yeah, killing Mom

It has forever been something of a mystery, what teenagers talk to each other about for hour upon hour, whether on the phone or when hangin’ at the mall or, more recently, in online conversations and text messaging.

For a couple of Mississauga teenagers, one topic of discussion — expressed as blandly, as casually, as their social plans for the weekend — was knocking off mom. These particular two, a male and female, were Grade 11 classmates although their friendship extended back several years. The boy, who would then have been 15, had actually dated the girl’s younger sister for a time but that relationship had ended and he always felt more palsy with big sister anyway.

Close enough, anyway, that the 16- year-old girl believed him trustworthy enough as a confidant to share her evolving murder scheme, court heard yesterday. “ She would say how her mother was always drunk and couldn’t take care of ( the sisters’ kid brother). She felt very strongly about it. She felt that (her mother) couldn’t change and there really wasn’t anything should could do for her.”

Ergo, the only solution was to ply the 44- year- old woman with Tylenol 3, after she’d already had a few of her customary snorts, then coax inebriated mother to take a bath, at which point No. 1 daughter would push her head beneath the water until she stopped breathing. The sisters were charged with first-degree murder, nearly a year after the Jan. 18, 2003 bathtub drowning death of their mother. It had originally been ruled an accidental death due to intoxication. Their judge-only joint trial is now unfolding before Justice Bruce Duncan. Both girls have pleaded not guilty. Neither can be identified, nor can the victim, nor most of the witnesses. The murder plan “ just slipped out” during a conversation between the older sister and this classmate in the winter of 2002, the teen, now a first- year university student studying economics, said yesterday from the witness stand.

“ She brought out the idea about just ending it, ending her mother’s life . . . Insurance money was brought up and she mentioned that would be a plus, kind of a bonus.” These conversations continued at school, at the mall, in the girls’ home — which the friend, now 18, would visit about twice a week, exchanging only a few words with the woman whose murder the boy testified was being scrupulously planned. Soon enough, it became clear that Big Sister had shared the murder plot with Little Sister. Indeed, it was the younger sibling who first suggested the boy might help provide an alibi for the night of the crime.

It’s unclear why the sisters had such confidence that their mutual friend would keep the emerging plan to himself, not go blabbing to others. God forbid, not share that information with an adult or the police.

“ They never really took what I said seriously,” the teenager said yesterday, providing a glimpse of the power dynamics in their friendship. “ They kind of thought of me as a joke.” He did, in fact, agree to provide an alibi as plans evolved to the point where the girls said they would do the deed on a certain Saturday night, wait just long enough to confirm their mom was good and truly dead, then take themselves to a suburban bar where they would meet up with their pal and other friends.

“ They were going to go to a restaurant, Jack Astor’s, after they finished. They would be with their friends . . . if police came to them later asking questions. They would find their mother in the bathtub when they came home. They would call the cops, tell them what they found . . . and that’s it.”

In the days leading up to that fateful Saturday night special, a flurry of emails were exchanged between the sisters — mostly the older girl, because the younger sister and her ex- boyfriend had quarrelled — and the witness, he told court. Transcripts from these online chats were put into evidence yesterday. In between the computersymbol happy faces and shorthand expressions ( such as LOL, for Laugh Out Loud) the older sister wove bits of the murder plot through more blah snippets of conversation. For her part of the cyber chat, this sister always slugged her comments the same way: “ It was nobody’s fault, it was all my own. Everything’s wasted forever” — lyrics from a song by heavy metal band Spineshank, included on its 2000 album, The Height of Callousness. On Jan. 14, the friend had logged on and asked Big Sister if she wanted to get drunk on the coming Sunday. Well, that would depend, was the response.

“ We’re planning SUMTHING this Saturday, very hopefully sumthing.’’

Friend: “Well, that’s good, I guess.’’

Big Sister: “ No, I mean wit( h) my mom . . . So we can’t get drunk Sunday, unless it doesn’t work out.” From the stand, the witness elaborated: “ She’s talking about the plan to kill her mother . . . because there will be a whole lot of issues with police and stuff.”

Copied and pasted to this message was what the witness assumed to be pharmacological instructions on the properties of Tylenol 3 and how that medication interacts with alcohol, information presumably taken off a website.

And, oh yeah, there was also the exchange of a scanned photograph, an unflattering picture of another girl, a Kitchener friend, that the witness had sent on for Big Sister to view. Her reaction: “ Ewww. The girl is fat.” Two nights later, Big Sister was reminding her friend four people now knew about the murder plan. “ The thing we have to remember to do is not talk.’’

There was additional discussion about the $ 70,000 life insurance policy the sisters would receive when they turned 18.

“ In case you haven’t noticed, my life is falling apart,” she writes at one point. “ After I get the $70,000, I’m just gonna waste it on travel and drugs and a gun.” When it came down to it, however, in the clutch, this friend did not go to Jack Astor’s as promised; did not put himself forth as an alibi. They didn’t talk again until the following week, at school.

“ She was crying,” the witness testified of Big Sister.

“She was upset. What I got from what she was telling me was that she regretted what she had done.”

It was only then, the teenager told court, that Big Sister realized how much her mother had done for her, like socking away money for the girls’ education.

“ It was deep regret. She felt really bad about what she did, yeah.”