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"Jonathan" Trial (caution: long read)

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  • "Jonathan" Trial (caution: long read)

    This story has been major news locally here in Toronto, but people outside of the area might not have heard much about it. This trial has been so sensational that it will also likely wind up as a future Law and Order case. I bring this up here because of how it involves the Internet and online forums. But first, let us begin with a recap of events that have been agreed upon in court. The names have been withheld from public record because all involved are minors. Young offenders in Canada and in some cases their victims, have their identities kept from the public.

    In November of 2003, three teens skipped school to hang out for the day at one of their homes. They spent most of the day smoking weed, drinking and playing video games. Things got a bit rowdy and they started trashing things in the basement. They broke beer bottles, furniture and a television.

    Later on, one of the young men got a call from his girlfriend at school and they talked a bit. The two had been dating for only a few weeks, and the guy was worried about being able to keep her as she discussed breaking up a few days earlier. He was a self professed auto-vampire who enjoyed sipping his own blood as a form of foreplay. She was a more popular student at school. He thought she was impressed by his vampirism and thought it was a bit of a turn on for her. He bragged about trashing the place. He makes a comment about killing the family of the teen whose house they were trashing.

    The girlfriend was alarmed by the comment and later in the afternoon, she and a couple of her friends called him back and got him to talk about it more. They decided to record the call in case things were as serious as she had thought. During this call, the boy and his two friends made further comments about a plan to kill the family. The boyfriend was recorded crying out that "blood was on tap". They discussed using "fists and knives" to carry out the murders. The girl asked "What, you're killing people now? Since when?" and the boy responded "since today". After finishing the call, the girlfriend turned the tape over to her mom who took her to the police.

    Later in the day, the stepfather of the house the three teens were in came home. The boyfriend brushed past him and said "I'm so sorry" before leaving for home. The stepfather came upon the other two and they attacked him with a baseball bat. The father managed to fight his way outside, the two teens still beating on him and even ripping his pants off. He flags down a passing cyclist and begs for help. The cyclist calls 911 but the police are already on their way. When they arrived at the scene the police found the two teens, and in the basement, crammed into a crawl space was the body of the teen's brother, dead after 71 knife wounds.

    Police later find the third teen and place him under arrest for the murder of the 12 year old brother, given the nickname "Johnathan" to protect his identity and those of the accused. The other two teens are charged with murder as well as assault.

    Here's where the stories diverge. According to the accused, the recorded massacre plans were not serious and were just an attempt to impress the girlfriend. They really weren't planning on carrying them out. After school had let out, "Johnathan" came home to discover the mess his brother and his friends had made. The two brother argued and Johnathan said that when their step-father came home, he'd tell him about what happened and the brother won't be able blame Johnathan for it as well. According to the accused, this enraged the brother who grabbed his hunting knife and attacked Johnathan. The brother testified that he was in such a rage that he blacked out until he later found his brother dead before him. He asked the other two teens to help hide the body, and they agreed because they feared he would attack them next. When the step-father came home, the boyfriend fled, mumbling an apology. The step-son told the remaining friend to help attack the step-father before he discovered what they had done.

    The prosecution has relied on the taped phone call as their primary evidence that the murder was premeditated and they feel that the three teens should be tried for first degree murder. The girlfriend testified that her boyfriend's bloodthirst scared her a bit and claimed that she did not really like his lifestyle. She said under oath that she felt his vampirism to be childish. She felt scared after the first phone call and thought the boys really were planning a massacre. Forensic tests also show that of the 71 stab wounds, only the last three proved to be fatal as they punctured Johnathan's windpipe, causing him to drown in his own blood. The first 68 wounds were meant more to cause pain than to kill. Those 68 wounds were measured and likely were caused by more than one weapon, countering the defence's theory that the wounds were caused by one weapon in a murderous and uncontrolled rage.

    With both sides having presented their cases, the jury was withdrawn to render a verdict. On the second day of deliberations, a newspaper journalist brought to the defence's attention a website where the girlfriend was registered: a goth-themed forum community called Vampire Freaks. In her profile there, she claimed that her turn-ons included knives, pain, blood and cemetaries. She even posted semi-naked pictures of herself so there was no mistake that it was her. In other websites she also wrote about details from the trial including some mocking comments about her former boyfriend having a panic attack during his testimony. The defence brought this up with the judge who had no choice but to recall the jury and declare a mistrial.

    There will be a new trial and both the defence and the prosecution (though moreso on the crown attorneys) are under criticism for not having done their research on the girl. Both sides admitted that they did a rudimentary search but found no evidence of the websites in question. Those sites are no longer up though the reporter who discovered them managed to find a cached copy on a search engine. Thousands of public dollars will be spent on a new trial all parties involved will have to wait many more months before they can get the closure they had hoped for when the jury was sent to deliberate last week.

    The girlfriend is naturally receiving a lot of the blame from this. The judge said that her behaviour meant that she had either commited perjury or come close enough to it that a mistrial had to be declared. Expert opinions differ on how her forum posts may affect the next trial. Some experts, backed by descriptions of the girl by schoolmates, say that her forum activity may not be a true reflection of her actual personality but rather an alternate online personality. I have seen many people make the same claims here that how they act in the TW community does not reflect who they really are.

    Comments?
    Last edited by Troll King; 02-18-2005, 01:14 AM.

  • #2
    id say that any online "personality" a person assumes is some part of who they are but they would never expose people to it face to face, only online because of their anonymity.

    Comment


    • #3
      I'd have to say that my online personality is a bit like my real one. I am very sarcastic and can be very rude to stupid people and I tend to make a lot of snide comments when they say stupid things.

      I don't think it's like some players claim, "if you play a weasel, then you're like a weasel in real life. Sneaking up on friends and co-workers to stab them in the back." Yes, someone said that.

      Edit: Also, I'm a fan of Law and Order, so if this does become one of their shows, I'll be watching it. Vampires, ha!

      Comment


      • #4
        If anyone has comments on what they think about the case itself, I'd be glad to hear them too.

        It'd be interesting to see how the law will look at the girl and her "online personality". A professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education said that it's common and normal for teens to create an online persona that may be quite different from their "real life". The way she explained it though wasn't to say that this online self was not "real" but rather as a way for teens to test out certain aspects of their personality. It's be much easier for example for someone to claim to be a goth and experiment with it online than it would be to make a more dramatic change and start getting fully into it offline because there's less risk involved. It's sort of like trying on clothes in a store before buying them and wearing them in pubic.

        The girl in the trial has friends at school who said that they didn't think she was in to that vampire stuff at all, and that sort of fits into the professor's theory; she could try it out without her friends knowing about it and seeing it for themselves.

        Another interesting facet from this series of events is how much the parents of all of the kids involved are aware of what happened or the circumstances around it. The parents of the auto-vampire for example say they didn't know about his fetish, nor did they know that he often skipped school to hang with his friends, or drank or smoked pot. The girl's parents didn't know about her web personas. Of course, most kids probably wouldn't want their parents to know about any of that, but I think this trial has opened some eyes and parents are starting to think about what they don't know about their kids.

        Comment


        • #5
          i read it on tha newspaper a few days ago

          i suggest life sentence'n

          Comment


          • #6
            Everyone has an online persona, whether it is true to your offline self is up to the individual. I just say what I think around here, and I believe that its very easy to misconcieve the fashion in which people are presenting themselves online.

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            • #7
              I think "online" personality is more of your real personality than you in real life ... without constrains. You might try on a cloth in a store without buying it because it is too expensive, but would you try on a cloth if you didn't like it in the 1st place? Online personality is more like your "dream" personality, you can almost get away with anything without be punished. It is a bit like trying on the same cloth without buying it day after day.

              I do think the girlfriend in this case fantasized about vampirism, although it was merely a fantasy. There are people who fantasized about jump off the cliff and flying, but they don't actually do it because they know they would die or at least severelly injured if they try.


              3 things:

              1) The brother blacked out when the 71stabs were takeing place? How?

              2) His friends just stood there and watched ... 71 stabs takes a while, it's not like his friends were made of wood.

              3) The girlfriend had her profile (including a photo) on a website and all those times no one noticed until the 2nd day of deliberation?

              Personally I think all 3 teens should be locked away in prison until they rod, and the girlfriend would definitely be blamed for lying.
              ☕ 🍔 🍅 🍊🍏

              Comment


              • #8
                haha im totally different IRL than online, i can believe that she had nothing to do with it
                I'm just a middle-aged, middle-eastern camel herdin' man
                I got a 2 bedroom cave here in North Afghanistan

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by Troll King
                  She even posted semi-naked pictures of herself so there was no mistake that it was her.
                  I put off commenting partly because I doubt many Canadians will agree with what I think, and the case is in your country and all. So, In My Opinion:
                  The problem with the quoted bit to my mind, is unless the girl confessed that it was her that posted it, there is really no way to know. You can get an IP and go down to a specific account and phone number or residence that was logged on, but you can't know who was at the keyboard, unless she admitted to it. It could have equally been one of her friends there doing it while joking around, etc. Any posts or what not that had been done before the murder could have equally been done by her boyfriend, or at his behest. If she did admit it was her, she's going to pay for it with a perjury charge most likely.

                  Originally posted by Telcat
                  1) The brother blacked out when the 71stabs were takeing place? How?
                  Take your pick: Blood loss, shock, pain, fear. Lots of reasons he could have blacked out.


                  I honestly think the girl did the exact right thing by recording it, and by taking it straight to the police. I think those three boys are little better than animals from this behavior, and in this instance? If on a jury here, and I found them guilty, I'd vote to put them to death. The faster a personality that could do this is culled from the gene pool, the better.
                  "Sexy" Steve Mijalis-Gilster, IVX

                  Reinstate Me.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    remember this, no death penalties in canada

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      it was the vampire bitch
                      can we please have a moment for silence for those who died from black on black violence

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                      • #12
                        I seriously just got over my g.g. allin nightmares. goddamnit.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          It was most probably her that posted the pictures there. There was also a weblog where she openly talked about the trial, discussing among other things her own testimony, and on that weblog, she had written in her profile: "I like to wear a lot of black and like a lot of dark. Blood is good ... both flowing and ... Yum.". The same nicknames and e-mail addresses were used in each location.

                          You can still google a cached copy of that site that lists her name and birthdate, and just looking at the day to day stuff she wrote about, it's reasonable to assume that it's her. There are just too many things that matched up. Even if there was a possibility that someone was posing as her for all of it, there is enough reason for the judge to declare a mistrial as this was relevent to the case and there was no way for the jury to have access to this new information.

                          You can see a video clip of coverage from the night the mistrial was announced here: http://www.pulse24.com/News/Top_Stor.../Video-5-2.asx

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            If I understand the case correctly, I don’t’ think the girlfriend has any responsibility in the murder. Impressing a girlfriend doesn’t make it a murder for hire.

                            However, the fact that the guys said before hand that were going to commit this murder speaks to intent. Intent is basically premeditation. They thought about doing this, this wasn't some emotional breakdown where someone simply lost their shit.
                            No one is going to believe their lame story, they have already proven that they lie. They were ‘big men’ to talk shit about blood, about murder, impressing women. Now that want to hide behind a bunch of crap? Wait, perhaps the devil made them do, or they had broken homes, or were taking some medicine.
                            A true ‘man’ stands by his actions and is willing to be responsible for his actions?

                            My theory? My theory is that we should not perpetuate generational defects such as people who aren’t willing to take responsibility for their actions. If society has issues with a death penalty and is willing to foot the bill to keep these kinds of people incarcerated, then sterilize them and make sure none of these kinds of people ever sees the light of day again.

                            As to online vs. IRL, we should all be 'men' enough to act the same in either case. In other words and to be politically correct, all people should feel a responsibility to behave like decent human beings whether we are anonymous or not. You are not being faithful to yourself or to others if you are not. Anonymity is not a license to act irresponsibly or in an unethical or illegal way.
                            Last edited by Ephemeral; 02-18-2005, 05:34 PM.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              That is fucked up.
                              I hate hearing about this shit happening in Canada (not trying to harass the US.. but it's just not quite as mundane when it happens here.) I think that the girlfriend probably was told to say that the vampire thing was childish so to distance her from any possible blame. I think she deserves a lot of credit for turning the tape over to her mother, I can't imagine many teens doing that.

                              As for this blog- I'm assuming she probably did some research on vampirism (when she met the boyfriend) and came across the forum. She probably made all of that shit up just so she could fit it or something.

                              I think that many people are the same on the internet and real life, but if someone is having trouble in life they'll probably keep it from the web. The more you wish to hide, the more different from you your internet persona becomes.

                              I personally feel that I am the same in real life as I am on here, but at the same time how could I know? I'm just as outspoken in real life, just as judgmental, just as blunt and equally brash. At the same time though, I think having grown up on this stupid game, my personality is somewhat reflective of the game itself. When I was 13 and spending just as much time on SS as actually having a life, I don't think I even differentiated. I was the same person on SS as in real life, and I didn't need to distinguish.

                              I wonder what I would be like if I had never started playing... I think it's safe to say I wouldn't have the condescending tone or bulletproof skin.
                              Kthx> Does JB Inc pay his child support with pub bux?

                              Undisputed Pre-Menstral Super-Bitch Internet Kickboxing Champion 2005

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