I remember when the case of JR made the news. At the time, I was eighteen years old, and the perpetrator of the shocking family massacre in Medicine Hat, Alberta was only twelve. This was before social media became what it is today. The main reason the case was on my radar was because JR and her partner in crime-slash-boyfriend belonged to the goth-alternative scene, like myself. JR had a profile on the website VampireFreaks, an alternative subculture social network of sorts, as had I. Sure enough, the story, with all the sordid details, made the rounds of our LiveJournals. My friends shared it with equal parts revulsion and fascination. The usual flurry of think-pieces in mainstream media followed, all of which had been expected and had begun to feel repetitive: the harm of violent imagery in movies and video games, violent music, and so on, and so forth. We’d heard it all before.
(I’m not going to offer my opinion on the subject, but for the record, I know a number of people in that subculture, and most of them have not murdered anyone.)
But even without the goth aspect, the details of the crime fascinated me. By Canadian law, because of JR’s young age her identity is protected, and I’m not allowed to use her name. One night, JR and her boyfriend, who was twenty-three years old at the time, murdered JR’s parents and her little brother in the family home. (Chillingly, it has never been determined which one of the pair stabbed the eight-year-old boy to death.) Then they proceeded to go to a party with their friends. The police at first thought JR herself had been kidnapped, but soon they caught both her and the boyfriend as they tried to leave the province.
There’s something wrong, on a visceral level, about the very idea of children murderers. It flips all the tropes and common beliefs about the world on their heads. Children are supposed to be innocent and pure, even though everyone who remembers their childhood and teenage years knows they can be anything but. Sure enough, child psychology studies have shown that children tend to be more prone to impulsive actions without thought to the consequences. But still, the idea of a person committing irreparable acts before they’re old enough to drive tends to get strong reactions. Terms like “born wrong” and “bad seed” creep up. But is it really a question of unchecked impulsivity? Or are there other factors at play? What makes children become killers?
There’s something wrong, on a visceral level, about the very idea of children murderers. It flips all the tropes and common beliefs about the world on their heads.The Alyssa Bustamante case is particularly disturbing. A teenage girl plans and executes the murder of a nine-year-old, then writes about it in her diary like it was something as mundane as skipping school—the word sinister doesn’t quite cover it. In photos, Bustamante looks like a typical teenager from 2009, with too-long emo bangs and dramatic makeup. In hindsight, there had been signs that something was off about Bustamante—and it wasn’t just a typical teenage attempt at rebellion and provocation. She was prone to self-harm and had confided in a friend that she wanted to know what it felt like to kill someone. Yet who thought she would go through with it, and in such a cold-blooded, calculating way?
Christopher Pittman, like JR, was only twelve when he murdered his grandparents. He shot them with their own gun, then set fire to their house and fled, to be stopped two states away. Unlike JR, Pittman came from a troubled home and had a history of disturbing behaviour and mental health issues. His father sent him to live with his paternal grandparents because he thought it would be a source of much-needed stability, but perhaps it was too late. It could have been the side effects of the medication Pittman was taking, medication intended for adults, or maybe it was the culmination of all the abuse Pittman had suffered at the hands of his caregivers. Bustamante, likewise, was the child of a neglectful teenage mother and an imprisoned father, and she suffered from depression, anger outbursts, and suicidal ideation.
Of course, none of these things are an excuse for murder, nor are they signs that someone is destined to snap and become a cold-blooded killer. But when such senseless crimes happen, people naturally want to know “what went wrong”—because in a way, it’s reassuring. The so-called normal people who surround us in our everyday lives, including our own children, could never commit such heinous acts… right?
Which brings us back to JR. In a way, hers is the most disturbing case of the three. First, while Bustamante and Pittman were tried in the US as adults and got lengthy sentences, JR was found guilty and sentenced to…ten years, the maximum sentence an offender as young as twelve can get, under Canadian law. Despite the fact that she was to receive extensive psychiatric treatment, and to spend additional years after her release on probation, it’s easy to see why some might find it outrageous. Before JR is thirty years old, her record will be sealed, and she will be able to do what she wants with her life—including, why not, working with children and other vulnerable individuals.
Maybe JR saw it all as a thrilling game of pretend, kind of like her profile pictures where she posed in dramatic makeup brandishing a fake gun. Right up until the moment it became all too real.But what makes JR’s case stand out among the three is how normal her life was before the murders. She grew up in a small Canadian town, in a house with a loving family. One could theorize it was Jeremy Steinke, her twenty-three-year-old boyfriend, who manipulated the impressionable twelve-year-old. But evidence, including their online correspondence, shows that if anything, it had to be the other way around. JR asked him repeatedly to kill her parents, who were opposed to the relationship. JR told him that to kill her parents was the only way they could be together. It’s easy to blame the goth subculture, the website VampireFreaks, music, video games—except millions of people listen to music and play video games and dye their hair black, all without murdering anyone. What it comes down to is that it could be just a case of extreme teenage impulsivity. Maybe JR saw it all as a thrilling game of pretend, kind of like her profile pictures where she posed in dramatic makeup brandishing a fake gun. Right up until the moment it became all too real—and by then blood had been spilled and it was too late to turn back.
Sociopathy in children and teenagers is a real thing—any psychiatrist will tell you that. But usually, there are signs. Only the most willfully obtuse parent can ignore them forever. As heartbreaking as it is, the causes of sociopathic tendencies in children are not always clear and not one hundred percent understood, and treatment has achieved mixed results. Still, the harm can be minimized, and the risk of something irreparable happening can be reduced. But what do you do when there are no signs? Or when the signs are easily mistaken for regular acting-out? It’s not a comforting thought, not just for parents but for anyone.
The subject of children who kill never fails to bring audiences to TV screens and bookstores. Every good domestic suspense starts with the question, could this scary thing happen to you? But when children are involved, it takes the paranoid drama to a whole new level. From The Bad Seed to literary thrillers like We Need to Talk About Kevin, we are captivated by the tale of the perfect child from a seemingly perfect home who goes on to become a monster. The underlying reasons can be more or less defined, but are never quite clear enough to reassure: no, this could definitely not happen to you.
