Okay, I can admit it. Maybe I did blow the call. Maybe I did go entirely too easy on her because she’s a girl and would have had an entirely different view of the whole mess if she had been a boy. Maybe, as commentor Debbie on the previous post put it, “You wimped out. You know good and well that if this were a 13 year old boy…”
And now, I’m pretty damned sure that I blew it. Richardson is currently on trial in Medicine Hat, Alberta; charged with the murders of her parents and her 8 year-old brother. Originally, I was reluctant to mention her by name. At the very least, I had decided to keep it to myself until she gets convicted (if). But after what I’ve learned today, I just can’t do that anymore…
Members of the five-woman, seven-man jury listened intently to the evidence of forensic unit Const. Gerald Sadlemyer.
They then sombrely reviewed his booklet of nearly 50 macabre scene photographs, including the bloodied bodies of the three victims.
Among the most gruesome viewed by jurors was a photograph of the accused’s younger brother, lying in his underwear on his side on his blood-stained bed.
The boy’s throat can be seen slashed, his eyes open, mouth agape.
Under the questioning of Crown prosecutor Stephanie Cleary, Sadlemyer detailed his examination of the family home — including the eight-year-old victim’s room.
“There was a lot of blood all over the walls and all over the boy,” said Sadlemyer, of the young victim who can’t be identified under provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
With eyes wide open and surrounded by blood-soaked toys, an eight-year-old boy was found dead in his own bed in April 2006, an Alberta jury learned yesterday.
The body was two floors up from where the boy’s mother and father died in the basement of their home.
And the Chronicle Hearald tells how the parents didn’t go down easy:
Sadlemyer said the mother’s right hand had long hairs in it that were a light sandy colour: “It was as if she was grasping or holding onto it.”
She was clad only in a light nightgown that had been ripped and stained with blood.
In addition to 12 stabbing punctures, the woman also had numerous “defensive wounds” that included cuts to her hands and the tips of her fingers.
Sadlemyer also testified that police found the body of her husband nearby, with stab wounds to nearly every part of his body, indicating signs of a violent struggle.
Blood stains and splatter covered almost everything in the basement, including the roof, the television, an exercise ball and the fireplace.
By all accounts, Jasmine Richardson was a good kid who never got into any trouble before she fell in with Jeremy Steinke. Clean cut, good grades and all that. Not hard to imagine from her picture at the top of this post. It’s from Wikipedia and was originally released to the media on April 23, 2006 (when the police were looking for her, but she was not an official suspect) but was suppressed on April 24 when she became a suspect (and was arrested). The other pics are from her myspace profile. Some progression, huh?
I tried to show restraint; I did. But now, I don’t give a shit how good this kid used to be. I don’t give a shit how old she was at the time. Her name and face were spread across the whole country last year. You can’t put that genie back in the bottle. You don’t get to slaughter an entire family — especially your OWN family — and then hide!
I guess this just goes to show you that sometimes, a thing really is just what it looks like. Police have now confirmed what just about everybody had already suspected ever since last Thursday: the deaths of Acting Insp. Kelly Johnson and retired superintendent David Lucio were in fact a murder-suicide.
Johnson first shot Lucio and then turned the gun on herself. At this point, no one knows why.
The truth of it is that we may never know…
LONDON, Ont. (CP) — Police in London, Ont., have determined that the deaths of a high-ranking female police officer and a retired officer last week were a murder-suicide.
Investigators have concluded that Acting Insp. Kelly Johnson, 40, shot and killed retired superintendent David Lucio, 57, then turned the gun on herself inside the vehicle Lucio was driving.
The regional coroner has determined that Lucio and Johnson both died from single gunshot wounds.
Police were called to the scene early Thursday morning by witnesses who saw a van crash into a building, and officers found the two bodies inside, along with Johnson’s service pistol.
Johnson and Lucio were ex-lovers, but the nature of their relationship was unclear at the time of their deaths.
Lucio’s funeral takes place today in London.
UPDATE
For all of those of you that have been wondering, speculating, and other things ending with “ing,” the answer may have come out:
London police officer Kelly Johnson learned two days before she killed David Lucio and herself that he was leaving her for his wife, Lucio’s best friend said yesterday.
Lucio, a retired superintendent, told acting inspector Johnson he was moving back home, retired RCMP officer Gord Brodie said yesterday.
Being somebody that follows politics, you’d think that I’d be used to some things not making any sense after all this time. But there are some things that will get into your head and just won’t let go of your brain.
If you live in London — or even near it, for that matter — you likely know by now about what happened to Kelly Johnson and David Lucio. Just after midnight last night, the van that Lucio was driving slammed into an apartment building on Picton St. Neighbours rushed to the scene to be confronted with a gruesome sight. Both Lucio and Johnson dead from gunshot wounds.
Johnson’s service weapon was on her lap.
Speculation is that it’s a case of murder/suicide but, as Chief Murray Faulkner pointed out: “we need to have proof, not just speculation, not just opinion.” Amen to that. The fact is that, right now, nobody’s sure of anything…
‘An irrational act’
Fri, June 8, 2007
Top-ranking female officer, retired superintendent found in scene of horror The service pistol used belonged to Kelly Johnson, a leader in fighting domestic violence.
Just before London police’s “rising female star” and her ex-lover, a retired officer, were killed in a murder- suicide, she made a mysterious stop at the police station. Then, Acting Insp. Kelly Johnson, the force’s highest- ranking female officer, jumped into a waiting van. Minutes later, two gunshots were fired inside a van before it crashed into a brick wall six blocks away from the station, outside Johnson’s apartment building at 7 Picton St. Stunned neighbours found Johnson, 40, dead, her face bloody, her 9 mm Glock service pistol — which she wasn’t authorized to have with her — on her lap. Beside her, the driver of the van and her ex-lover, retired superintendent David Lucio, 57, was slumped over with what witnesses called a bullet wound to the head.
I’m tempted, at first sight, to say that it must be just what it looks like. But that nagging little voice in the back of my head just won’t shut up. And the more I read, the louder it gets.
That’s what I’ve been getting asked over and over again since I posted the day before yesterday about the 13-year girl from Medicine Hat. Her trial began on three charges of first degree murder for the deaths of her parents and eight year-old brother.
Yeah, that girl.
Everybody was real quick to point out to me that I’ve never had any problem posting the identities of teenage killers in the past whenever it had already been published in the MSM. They also point out that, while I did remove the identities of Peter Whitmore’s victims from the posts that I made in reference to that case, I’ve never bothered tidying up posts on juvenile criminals after they get caught. Well, let’s face it, boys and girls: all the wishful, hug-a-thug, warm, fuzzy thinking in the world isn’t gonna shove the genie back into the bottle. Everybody knows that Todd Cameron Smith was the one that shot up that high school in Taber, hitting three students and killing one. We know this because his mug was on the front page of every paper in Ontario after he escaped from custody in August of 2005.
So why the hell am I going so easy on this kid all of a sudden? And, seemingly the most popular question: would I be so discreet with her identity if she had been a teenage boy??
Alright, I admit it: that one got me thinking. Am I going easy on her because she’s a girl? And why the hell is it that whenever I think about this case, I find myself being more critical of her father (one of the murder victims!) than I am of her!? I think to myself, “This man knew damned well what Jeremy Steinke was, and what the sonofabitch was up to with his daughter. How the hell could he let that God damned child molester anywhere within five miles of his little girl? Didn’t this guy own a shotgun??” Do I really have my head up my ass on this one? Am I allowing myself to be influenced by the fact that I come from the same hometown as Steven Truscott? He has the distinction of being the youngest person in Canadian history to be wrongly convicted of murder. He was only 14 years old when he heard his sentence:
“Steven Murray Truscott,” Judge Ferguson began, “I have not alternative but to pass the following sentence upon you. The jury have found you guilty after a fair trial.
“The sentence of this court upon you is that you be taken from here to the place from whence you came and there be kept in close confinement until Tuesday, the 8th day of December, 1959, and upon that day and date you be taken to the place of execution and that you there be hanged by the neck until you are dead.
“And may the Lord have mercy upon your soul.”
I’ve been thinking about that for nearly two days now, ever since a friend of mine brought it up about an hour after I put up the post. And after all that, the answer is “no.” I do not have my head up my ass.
There’s just too damned much about this case that I don’t know; too many questions that haven’t been answered to my satisfaction. But that might change. The judge has decided to deny the outright publication ban that the defence was asking for:
Reporters and other members of the public won’t be banned from the courtroom during the first week of a 13-year-old girl’s trial on charges that she murdered her parents and little brother.
Justice Scott Brooker of Court of Queen’s Bench in Medicine Hat says the defence failed to prove that a ban was needed during this week’s hearing, which is being held to determine what evidence should be permitted at the trial itself.
So we will get more information as time passes. Who knows? Maybe she’s innocent, maybe she really is guilty, after all. And yes, her name and photograph may well end up here someday.
Here’s something unusual. It’s not too damned often that I manage to come across something that makes me feel uncomfortable writing about. Disgusted, annoyed, outraged, or just plain old fashioned pissed off; those happen all the time. It’s one of the things about being a grouchy bugger with a net connection: I get to take my opinions and inflict them on the rest of you. And everybody knows that opinions are like arseholes: everybody’s got one and mine don’t stink. So I usually have no problems spouting off without feeling any of that self-doubt crap that the touchy-feely crowd loves so much.
But being uncomfortable about writing/ranting something? That’s a rare one.
Everybody and their dog knows by now that the trial is about to begin in the matter of the Richardson family murders in Medicine Hat…
MEDICINE HAT, ALTA. — A first-degree murder trial begins today for a 13-year-old girl accused of slaughtering her parents and little brother in a case that has stunned this southern Alberta city.
[…]The accused was 12 years old and in Grade 7 when her family members were found dead in their home in April 2006. Her brother was eight. He was buried with his parents in Sudbury, where the family lived before moving to Alberta in the late 1990s.
The girl, who cannot be identified under provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, has pleaded not guilty to the charges. Her co-accused, and boyfriend at the time of the incident, 24-year-old Jeremy Steinke, faces the same murder charges. He will be tried later as an adult.
[…]Steinke told friends he was a 300-year-old werewolf who liked the taste of blood. The two also left an Internet trail, posting pictures and messages on websites such as VampireFreaks.com.
[…]Sanjeev Anand, a criminal law expert at the University of Alberta, says the case is unique for Canada.
“I don’t remember in recent history, a person that young being charged with multiple murders.”
Most people know that I’m no fan of the YCJA, especially when it comes to violent crime. And it’s not like anybody that wants to know the accused girl’s name can’t find it with just a quick google search.
What bothers me about this is how much I don’t know. The cops haven’t even disclosed how the family died. And maybe I’m being naive, or old fashioned, or whatever, but I have a hard time believing that a 12-year old girl, who was never in any trouble before she fell in with a child molester twice her age, just up and takes it into her head to kill her whole family.
Do I know who she is? Yes, I do. I have a hell of a lot of info on her, actually. But until I know more about just what the hell happened, I’ll be keeping it to myself.
Okay, I can admit it. Maybe I did blow the call. Maybe I did go entirely too easy on her because she’s a girl and would have had an entirely different view of the whole mess if she had been a boy. Maybe, as commentor Debbie on the previous post put it, “You wimped out. You know good and well that if this were a 13 year old boy…”The boy’s throat can be seen slashed, his eyes open, mouth agape.
In addition to 12 stabbing punctures, the woman also had numerous “defensive wounds” that included cuts to her hands and the tips of her fingers.
I tried to show restraint; I did. But now, I don’t give a shit how good this kid used to be. I don’t give a shit how old she was at the time. Her name and face were spread across the whole country last year. You can’t put that genie back in the bottle. You don’t get to slaughter an entire family — especially your OWN family — and then hide!
I guess 
The regional coroner has determined that Lucio and Johnson both died from single gunshot wounds.
Did I really wimp out?
“This man knew damned well what Jeremy Steinke was, and what the sonofabitch was up to with his daughter. How the hell could he let that God damned child molester anywhere within five miles of his little girl? Didn’t this guy own a shotgun??” Do I really have my head up my ass on this one? Am I allowing myself to be influenced by the fact that I come from the same hometown as 
I’ve been thinking about that for nearly two days now, ever since a friend of mine brought it up about an hour after I put up the post. And after all that, the answer is “no.” I do not have my head up my ass.
