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The Scream Killers: What Happened to Cassie Jo Stoddart?
When two aspiring filmmakers turn cynical.
Background
Cassie Jo Stoddart was born on December 21, 1989, and resided with her family in Pocatello, Idaho.
She was your typical high school junior at Pocatello High School, where she met her boyfriend Matt Beckham, and two of his friends Brain Draper and Torey Adamcik.
Brian and Torey were known by classmates to be movie buffs and Brian was often seen with a video camera recording his day-to-day life. More specifically, the two friends were fans of horror movies and the “Scream” franchise.
As time went on, Brian and Torey wanted to make their version of “Scream”. But, they concluded the only way to make a good movie was to start murdering people. Leading up to Cassie’s murder, Brian frequently documented himself and Torey in Torey’s car conspiring the potential ways of murdering their victims.
Not only did they make this conscious decision, but began to romanticize the idea of becoming serial killers to each other. Brian and Torey can be heard saying on film:
Brian: We’re going for a high death count… we’re going to make history.
Torey: For all you FBI agents watching this, uhh, you weren’t quick enough and you weren’t smart enough.
On September 21, 2006, the friends can be seen on camera driving to Cassie’s house to see if she is home alone. At 8:36 PM the same night, Brian says to the camera:
Brian: We found our victim and sad as it may be, she’s our friend. But you know what? We all have to make sacrifices. Our victim is going to be Cassie Stoddard and her friends. We’ll find out if she has friends over, she’s gonna be alone in a big, dark house out in the middle of nowhere. How perfect can you get?
Torey: I’m horny just thinking about it.
After Brian confesses this, he discusses their plans to kill other classmates as well. To her unfortunate dismay, Cassie is the only one home alone since she was pet-sitting for her aunt and uncle that weekend. They later stated if Matt was present, they were going to kill him too.
