- 7/8/2025
Mean Girl Murders Season 3 Episode 2
Category
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Short filmTranscript
00:00The Bobbies were a high school sorority.
00:14When you become a Bobby, you become a little bit more elite.
00:18Some of them were nice, but most of them were not nice.
00:22They gave me a banana and a condom,
00:25and it was just total public humiliation.
00:28It was like being in a shark tank.
00:31When the news spread that those screams came just before her death,
00:35friends and neighbors were shocked.
00:37There were lots of rumors about all the kids that dressed in black
00:40and hung out in the parking lot.
00:43She wrote a note in class saying,
00:46I want to see your blood drip, drip, drip.
00:48Virtually everyone I talk to is certain the killer is enrolled in this school,
00:52but no one will say who it is.
00:54People were pointing fingers.
00:55It was almost like, okay, you literally could have been sitting next to a murderer,
00:58but you don't know who it is.
01:00Around 9.30 p.m., the doorbell rang at Alex and Mary Jane Arnold's house in Moraga, California.
01:24They had been playing cards with friends.
01:27Alex Arnold opens the door, and there's this young girl standing there,
01:31and it's Kirsten Kostas.
01:34She looked a little nervous, a little tense.
01:35She was kind of freaked out.
01:39She said that her friend was acting weird,
01:42and could she call her mom to come pick her up?
01:47Fifteen-year-old Kirsten Kostas isn't far from home.
01:51She lives just down the road in nearby Orinda.
01:55Alex Arnold invites her in.
01:57Meanwhile, he looks outside, and they see a blonde girl standing towards the end of the driveway,
02:03and there's a car parked there.
02:07She called.
02:08Nobody answered, and Mr. Arnold agreed that he would drive her home.
02:12It was, you know, like two or three miles down the road.
02:15And he notices behind them this other car that was parked at the house,
02:27which is this Pinto, this yellow Pinto,
02:31is following them with the headlights very close.
02:36And he's concerned about that.
02:37He says, do you know who that is?
02:39Do you know what's going on?
02:40And she tells him that everything's cool, or not to worry about it.
02:44It's no big deal.
02:47But Kirsten can't quite hide her disappointment.
02:51This was not how this night was supposed to turn out.
02:57That night, Kirsten had a secret initiation dinner with the Bobbies.
03:03The Bobbies were a high school sorority.
03:06You had to be selected to be in the Bobbies.
03:08Now I'm feeling fine, got my head in the game.
03:10Tonight, I'm calling the fish on the scene.
03:14I hear the crowd calling out my name.
03:16Can't stop me, I'm a working machine.
03:19The Bobulinks, or the Bobbies, as we called them,
03:22was not a school-supported organization at all,
03:26but something that you heard about when you were a freshman or a sophomore.
03:31The Bobbies' goal was to raise money for an organization.
03:35It was a group that was developed with a philanthropic goal,
03:41but really it was more of a party and a social club.
03:44If you were Bobbies, then you knew where the parties were.
03:47It was competitive, I'd say.
03:49Very competitive.
03:50If you were part of the Bobbies,
03:52then you were part of the upper class and Arinda.
03:55The Bobulinks, it's a type of a bird,
04:02and they shortened it to Bobbies.
04:04I don't know exactly where or why they chose a bird,
04:08but that was what they did.
04:10Becoming a Bobbie could change your social status
04:13because it's automatically going to link you to a new group of girls.
04:17It's going to expose you to new people and new experiences
04:21that I think could really broaden your circles.
04:26It was important what you belonged to.
04:28That was very important to people that lived in Arinda.
04:31Also important to Arinda, money, lots of it, and showing it off.
04:43All you have to do is look in the parking lot at Miramonte High School,
04:47and you could see 16-year-old, 17-year-old kids
04:49driving cars that were, you know, $40,000, $50,000 in the 80s.
04:55I remember one kid had a Lamborghini,
04:57one kid had a DeLorean.
04:59It just all really screamed like money.
05:10So at Miramonte High School,
05:13who you associate with is worth its weight in gold.
05:16And the best possible company a girl can keep is the Bobbies.
05:21The selection process is rigorous and arbitrary.
05:25So it's kind of this legacy thing.
05:31To become a Bobbie, you have to actually be nominated by a former member.
05:35And then there was a vote taken by the other members.
05:41Now, you could be excluded for a number of reasons.
05:44Somebody just didn't like you.
05:45Or maybe they thought you liked their boyfriend, just for whatever reason.
05:50You didn't know if you were going to be invited.
05:52You didn't know how they were going to pick you, or if they were going to pick you.
05:57When they rang my door to give me the invitation for the Bobbies, I was shocked.
06:01I was surprised.
06:02I didn't really expect it because I didn't know how they selected people.
06:08And because I just wasn't 100% sure that I would be somebody they would want.
06:15Such exclusivity comes with a high price tag.
06:19Dues must be paid.
06:21And the currency is humiliation.
06:24The Bobbies had some interesting initiation rituals.
06:34They would come to your house real early in the morning, wake you up, have you dress horribly,
06:41put your hair crazy, put crazy makeup on, and humiliate you in front of a boy that you liked.
06:47Then they gave me a banana and a condom and said,
06:53go over to that group of senior boys with that banana and roll the condom on it right in front of them.
07:02So it was just total public humiliation.
07:07But it made me feel included.
07:10It made me feel seen.
07:11It made me feel that I was a part of a group that was exciting.
07:22Kirsten Costas is a perfect prospect for the Bobbies.
07:26Wealthy family, good grades, and all the right clothes.
07:34I believe Kirsten was definitely one of the popular girls.
07:38She kind of looked like a doll.
07:38Kirsten was like a typical California girl.
07:43She was, you know, the sun-kissed tan and the pretty, you know, wavy brown hair and skinny.
07:51And she had made the cheerleading team.
07:54She was on the swim team.
07:55She played soccer.
07:56And she was just one of the in crowd.
08:00Her friends were Heidi and Jamie and Gigi and three girls named Stacy.
08:04She was very much engaged in being a part of that whole popular crowd.
08:16Things did come easier to her because she was cute.
08:18She had the personality.
08:19She had the look.
08:20She came from a good family.
08:22They definitely were one of the elite in Orinda, for sure.
08:27I believe Kirsten was a shoe-in, the Kimma Bobby.
08:35So, literally no one is surprised when the group taps Kirsten in June of 1984.
08:43In sophomore year, the Bobbies accepted as members Kirsten, Stacy, Bernadette, and the whole cheerleading squad.
08:49Jamie was the president.
08:52Bernadette was the secretary.
08:56Kirsten fit the mold of what a Bobby entailed.
09:00Everybody that was friends with Kirsten's were in the Bobbies.
09:04She fit in perfectly there.
09:07And every kid at Miramonte knows that where you stand in the social pecking order comes down to three words.
09:15Location, location, location.
09:19At Miramonte High School, you would know who was in what group by where they hung out at school.
09:26Like, the popular kids like the Bobbies would be in the quad, right?
09:30In the center of the school where they're front and center.
09:33And the stoners and the punks, they'd be on the outskirts.
09:36They'd be in the parking lot smoking.
09:38Behind the hoods, behind the knives
09:41If hollow souls robbed of lies
09:46They wanted to be completely the opposite of what the Bobbies stood for.
09:52I think the punk crowd separated themselves from everybody else.
09:55They were intimidating to me just because I thought they were, like, going to cause trouble.
10:02High school is just a big soup pot of drama.
10:05It's just an instant breeding ground for insecurity, and it's not healthy for anyone.
10:12Anything could happen.
10:13As Alex Arnold pulls up to Kirsten's home on Orchard Road, they notice that nobody's home yet.
10:34So he pulls into the driveway next door.
10:39As Kirsten's walking up to the neighbor's house, he sees another girl jump up from behind a hedge and start running towards Kirsten.
10:49He hears Kirsten turn around and say, get away from me, you're weird.
10:52And then he sees the other girl raise her arm and bring it down on Kirsten.
11:02He kind of saw a flashing motion.
11:06He thinks it's a fist fight.
11:08Both of the girls are screaming.
11:10He sees Kirsten fall to the ground.
11:12Both the girls start running back towards him.
11:14Both girls ran past his car.
11:19So he got a pretty good look at the assailant.
11:23She then jumped back into her car.
11:26He then saw the Pinto pull out and screech up the road.
11:34Alex Arnold thinks Kirsten's okay because she's run across the street towards her house.
11:39So he decides out of instinct just to follow this yellow car and see what he can find out.
11:46While Arnold was pursuing the Pinto, Kirsten ran to her neighbor's house.
11:54He had heard the screams and the noise.
11:57And as he opened his door, she collapsed pretty much in his arms and said, help me, I've been stabbed.
12:06Kirsten suffered five stab wounds, two to the front, two to the back, including one that
12:14severed her carotid artery.
12:20To get her to the hospital, but Kirsten didn't make it.
12:25She was pronounced dead at 11 p.m.
12:26Kirsten Kostas could be heard screaming for help on a driveway across from her Orinda home.
12:41When the news spread that those screams came just before her death, friends and neighbors were shocked.
12:47And it just doesn't seem like it would happen to us.
12:50I don't remember where I was when I heard about Kirsten's murder.
12:58I remember seeing the newspaper and seeing her picture and just being in disbelief and shock.
13:07Like, how could this happen?
13:09How could this happen?
13:10It never felt real to me, you know?
13:14It was, it just didn't seem real, you know, because our parents were friends and I kind of grew up with her.
13:20She was sweet.
13:24The funeral was, I think there was probably over a thousand people there.
13:28It was very sad and it was just emotional and I felt bad.
13:33I remember the parents being there and I went with my mom and my brother.
13:39The Bobbies were there.
13:41Pretty much most everybody that was at Miramani was there.
13:44The whole community kind of came together.
13:47It was hard.
13:51I think that initially people wanted to believe that somebody outside of Orinda did this.
13:57They were thinking maybe someone over from Berkeley or Oakland where, you know, the hoodlums live or something like that.
14:04I just don't think that people in Orinda really wanted to accept that anything could have happened from someone else in their community.
14:11A massive investigation gets underway.
14:15I don't believe that there was any murder weapon found at the scene.
14:19Alex Arnold gave them a physical description of the assailant.
14:23She was blonde, fairly tall in relation to Kirsten.
14:28He described the car as a mustard-colored Pinto.
14:35Didn't have the license number.
14:39Somebody had to be really, really angry to do the kind of damage that they did to Kirsten.
14:45This was a brutal attack.
14:47It just doesn't seem like this could be something that was done by this young girl that people had described.
14:55But teenage girls can be full of surprises.
15:06The phone rings at the Kirsten's home and Kirsten's mom answers it.
15:16Kirsten is not home.
15:19She's away at cheerleading camp.
15:21There's a young woman on the phone who tells Kirsten's mom that there is a secret dinner for the Bobbies two nights later on Saturday night and to let Kirsten know.
15:32The young woman does not identify herself, but tells her mother that, tell Kirsten not to tell anybody because it's a secret dinner and, oh, somebody will come and pick her up at nine o'clock and to wear something nice.
15:46That phone call was apparently a phony.
15:51Kirsten's girls' club had, in fact, had its initiation three weeks before.
15:56Nevertheless, when a gold-colored Pinto came to pick up Kirsten Costas on Saturday night, she went along.
16:02They started to look at Kirsten's inner circle or people that she knew as suspects because the person that lured her out of the house knew her phone number, knew where she lived, knew that at the time of the call she was at cheerleading camp, and also mentioned the Bobbies organization.
16:23I know there were rumors that Jamie, the president of the Bobbies, was possibly to blame for Kirsten's murder.
16:32I know that Jamie and Kirsten were having a disagreement.
16:35Jamie and Kirsten got in an argument because Kirsten said something about a guy that Jamie liked.
16:42That's something that caused a rift.
16:45Jamie was questioned.
16:47They interviewed all the Bobbies, and they were all alibied and or polygraphed.
16:53So, knowing that it had to be somebody that knew Kirsten very well, a lot of speculation.
17:08Could it have been somebody that she attended cheerleading camp with that didn't like her?
17:13Could it be somebody that she was on the swim team with who didn't like her?
17:20Maybe it was somebody that wasn't part of the Bobbies.
17:22It was somebody that despised the Bobbies or wasn't, like, part of that group that did not like Kirsten, did not like what the Bobbies stood for.
17:29And there's one name that fits that bill to a tee.
17:33So, Nancy Kane had been in the popular crowd.
17:41She was kind of a preppy girl early on.
17:45She was even asked to join the Bobbies, but she turned it down.
17:51She started dressing differently.
17:52It was kind of startling to see the dark hair, the dark makeup, the dark clothes.
17:58It was definitely a different persona than what she was before.
18:01I don't know what changed.
18:02For me, as a high school student, Miramani was like being in a shark tank.
18:12It wasn't okay to be different.
18:14There was a lot of judgment.
18:15You needed to fit in.
18:17And Nancy Kane intentionally put herself on the fringe.
18:20And she and Kirsten had known each other as kids.
18:27Kirsten and Nancy Kane became mutually adversarial.
18:33They just didn't like each other.
18:35And Kirsten would say nasty things about Nancy to her friends.
18:40Beef between two former BFFs isn't much of a lead.
18:50But investigators soon learned that Nancy had recently ratcheted up the rivalry.
18:57There was one incident where Nancy Kane wrote a note in class on a piece of paper saying,
19:03I want to see your blood drip, drip, drip, and held it up so Kirsten could see it.
19:08She became an immediate suspect.
19:10And her hatred of the Bobbies became the focus.
19:17Police interviewed Nancy Kane.
19:19They asked her to take a polygraph test, but her parents refused.
19:23They said no.
19:25That set off some alarm bells for me.
19:27Why would she need to tell a lie if she wasn't involved?
19:33I remember at some point getting a phone call from somebody and them saying to me,
19:38they think that you did it.
19:40All eyes in Arenda are on Nancy Kane.
19:52Did she murder Kirsten Costas?
19:55I remember somebody saying to me, okay, the detectives are coming to your house to talk to you.
20:01I remember the detectives coming in and sitting down and talking to me.
20:08The police asked about my relationship with Kirsten.
20:10They asked the, you know, the question of, was there something that happened between the two of you?
20:13I remember just saying, no, it was fine.
20:17Nothing in detail.
20:20They asked me what I had done the night that she was killed.
20:22I told them that I went and saw a ghostbusters.
20:28They asked my parents if I could take a lie detector test.
20:32My parents said no.
20:33And when they were walking out the door, I asked my mom, did I need to tell them the truth about where I was that night?
20:46There was just so many things that I would, you know, after everything is said and done, I look at it and I think, why was this so hard?
20:59Kirsten was my friend from first grade on until freshman year and I remember just being done with her and not wanting to hang out with her and her being confused as to why we weren't friends anymore, but I was just done.
21:21The Bobbies was offered to me.
21:23I turned it down.
21:24Some of them were nice, but most of them were not nice.
21:29I wanted to be different.
21:30I did not want to be a girl like that.
21:40I got looks more than anything, like the up and down, what's wrong with you look?
21:45What happened?
21:46What happened to her?
21:50I loved it.
21:51I loved it.
21:55But Kirsten didn't.
21:58After Nancy Kane changed her look, there was just this kind of unspoken rule that nobody talked to Nancy Kane anymore.
22:05She wasn't part of the group.
22:06She was on the outs.
22:07I sat probably three rows back from Kirsten in biology.
22:14I can picture it in my head right now.
22:16And, you know, she would turn around and look at me and I was like behind her plotting and planning and, you know, thinking to myself what an asshole she was.
22:25I wrote on my notebook, I want to see her blood drip.
22:32And I was referring to Kirsten.
22:35I just wanted people to know that I didn't like her at all.
22:40At the time, she was not nice.
22:43She wasn't kind.
22:44She made people feel bad.
22:45She was the epitome of what I didn't want to be.
22:55Kirsten definitely, unfortunately, had sort of a bullying mentality.
23:02She was very charismatic.
23:04She had a big, vivacious personality and that gave her a lot of power and she used it.
23:14If she didn't like you, she was very direct.
23:17So I felt very much on my toes, sort of, to make sure that I watched what I said.
23:22It's actually hard for me to hear that because I didn't know her that way.
23:30That's not the Kirsten that I remember.
23:32She wasn't always the nicest, but I don't think she really was intentionally trying to be mean or mean-spirited.
23:39Kirsten's personality was, I think she was kind of shy and maybe that took it as being a little bit stuck up.
23:48People are going to think she's rude, she's bitchy, she's mean.
23:52It's just part of that social hierarchy of being the one who's the top dog.
23:59I mean, being 15, 16 is difficult already and Kirsten did not have to try to be popular.
24:06She just was.
24:07I think she had a little bit of what I wanted in life.
24:11I had told my parents that I was going to the movies with a friend the night of the murder and that's not what I did.
24:28I told the detectives that because they didn't want to get in trouble with my parents for lying.
24:35So we got them to come back in and I told them the truth.
24:40I was at a boyfriend's house and I didn't want my parents to know.
24:43They talked to my boyfriend's mother so she could confirm that I was there.
24:49Thank God.
24:52Once they cleared me, I felt relief.
24:56But things changed so drastically that that was kind of short-lived.
25:01In this community where image is everything, rumors speak louder than facts.
25:11The rumor mill went crazy and people thought of all sorts of things.
25:17I felt like anytime I went anywhere in Arenda that there were whispers.
25:21People thought I took PCP and didn't remember killing her.
25:26It just got more and more far-fetched.
25:32Nancy is not a suspect.
25:35But her story focuses investigators on Kirsten's reputation for unintentional casual cruelty.
25:42And that's when another suspect emerges.
25:47Helena Hinton was one of the outsiders.
25:50She was quiet, meek, pale.
25:57And they teased her, you know.
25:59They teased her.
26:00They teased her the way she dressed, the way she looked.
26:04She was an easy target.
26:06Easy target.
26:08I heard one time Kirsten yelled at Helena and Helena ran to the bathroom and was crying.
26:13And, you know, hurt.
26:20Hurt her.
26:21It was mean.
26:22When Helena was in the bathroom, she said, I could just kill Kirsten.
26:25Another suspect in the murder of Kirsten Costas walks the halls of Miramonte High School.
26:39But Helena Hinton isn't much of a match to the knife-wielding assailant.
26:44Helena Hinton did long black hair and didn't fit the physical description at all.
26:50Her alibi was confirmed immediately.
26:53She was eliminated pretty quickly.
26:56The police were running out of suspects.
26:59They didn't know who did it.
27:00There was nothing.
27:01They had nothing.
27:15At Miramonte High, it's the first day of school and Kirsten is not forgotten.
27:19It's kind of hard to forget a friend.
27:20When we started junior year, there were a number of girls missing.
27:27Some of the girls were friends of Kirsten and they just couldn't come back because they
27:32were so devastated.
27:33I know Nancy never returned.
27:36The principal of Miramonte told my parents I couldn't come back to Miramonte.
27:40I had to go to a different school because there was no suspect.
27:44So I became the scapegoat.
27:48People were pointing fingers.
27:49It was almost like, okay, we're going to school with a murderer, but you don't know who it is.
27:53You literally could have been sitting next to a murderer you didn't know.
27:56It's the possibility that the killer may be a neighbor or a classmate that's most upsetting
28:01to people here.
28:02Several of the parents we talked to refused to be on camera because they were afraid the
28:06killer would see them and then retaliate against their kids.
28:08It's been three months and there's no leads.
28:20The investigation had gone completely cold.
28:24The Costas's hold a press conference.
28:27Today, Art and Barrett Costas talked to the press for the first time since their daughter
28:30Kirsten was murdered.
28:32Their decision to be interviewed based partly on frustration.
28:35It's time that we got an answer as to why this person or persons needed to do this to
28:44Kirsten.
28:45I was hired by the Costas's and just tasked with taking a look and reviewing and seeing
28:53if I could bring a fresh perspective to the case.
28:56They felt that Kirsten's killer was right there and that the police were just not doing their
29:06job.
29:1115-year-old cheerleader Kirsten Costas.
29:13The media coverage was crazy.
29:16It was, you know, it was on the news, obviously.
29:19There was the Contra Costa Times where it was on the cover of that all the time.
29:22And Rolling Stone had called, People Magazine covered it, Ladies Home Journal.
29:29Yeah, it was everywhere.
29:30It was everywhere.
29:32After an entire summer of searching under an intense media spotlight, the Orinda Police
29:38Department decides to call in the big guns.
29:42The sheriff involved in the case and I were pretty good friends.
29:46And so when he called me and asked if we could do something, I decided to ask our crime unit
29:52at Quantico to do a criminal profile of the case.
29:56What the criminal profilers do at the FBI Academy, they take information from a police department,
30:03fill out a very, very detailed report on the crime scene primarily.
30:10And from that information, putting it all into computers and that sort of thing, they can come
30:16up with a profile of the probable person that was the perpetrator of the crime.
30:22It's not perfect, but it's very, very sophisticated and it can be quite accurate.
30:28Because most of the guys there at Quantico are a master's degree in psychology, and it
30:33is a little bit speculation, but it's still very helpful.
30:41They compiled the report and they said that the crime had been undoubtedly committed by a
30:48young woman, probably a friend of the victim, who would be driving a small car.
30:55They also thought it might be somebody who felt like they were inferior or didn't fit
31:00in some way or weren't accepted by Kirsten.
31:09That isn't news to anyone who has been following the story for the past five months.
31:14But what comes next is a game changer.
31:17They did say, as I recall, that the perpetrator would come from a Catholic family with six
31:27children.
31:30Using this FBI profile, investigators went back to their interviews and looked at the possible
31:37suspects.
31:37And one person who fit the profile almost exactly was Bernadette Prade.
31:41Bernadette Prade was a 15-year-old sophomore at Miramonte.
31:47She was smart.
31:50She was blonde.
31:52Everybody thought she was just a nice girl.
31:56Bernadette and I went to catechism together.
31:59Her mom was very religious, and I knew that she was the youngest and that her five siblings
32:04were much older.
32:04And she didn't have the look of the popular girls.
32:09She wasn't crisp.
32:10She was just plain.
32:13She was not vibrant at all.
32:18Nice, but not vibrant.
32:20But she was trying.
32:21She definitely tried.
32:24Bernadette didn't really fit the personality of the girls that were normally asked to be
32:30a Bobby.
32:31But Bernadette was invited by her good friend Jamie, and Jamie was the president.
32:37She had tried by trying out for cheerleading, and she didn't make that.
32:41She had tried to be part of the yearbook committee, and she wasn't accepted into that.
32:46So I think Bobby's was probably a really big deal for her, because it meant that she had
32:51been accepted or included.
32:53And Bernadette has the one thing that investigators have been looking for since the night of the
33:01murder.
33:03The family did own a yellow Ford Pinto.
33:08It really fit her to the T, but the sheriff said, well, she passed a polygraph.
33:17That's when I went back to Quantico, and the guy at Quantico said, oh, she'll pass a polygraph.
33:22Because she has put the crime to sleep in her mind, if you will, re-polygraph her about
33:30the improper use of the family car that night.
33:44Bernadette was brought back in for another polygraph examination.
33:47This time, the examiner was FBI agent Ron Hilley.
33:51He asked her again the question she'd been asked before.
33:54She still said that she had not killed Kirsten.
33:57She didn't know anything about it.
34:00But then he took her through the FBI profile.
34:03And at the end of that very detailed profile, Bernadette was silent for a moment and then
34:08said, you think I did it?
34:11And he said, yes.
34:12She said, well, is there something we have to wrap up right now?
34:17He goes, no, we can talk more later.
34:20And she said, okay, thank you, and left.
34:22She wanted very much to talk to her mother.
34:25And it was decided that she wasn't going anyplace.
34:28So she was allowed to go home.
34:38Bernadette got ready for school.
34:42She left a letter on the counter.
34:44And she told her mother, don't read it for 30 minutes.
34:47And then she left for school.
34:51Bernadette's mom set her timer for 30 minutes.
34:54And then she opened the letter.
34:56And once she opened that letter, it changed their life from that moment forward.
35:21The letter was a confession letter.
35:24She wrote to her mother, the FBI man thinks I did it, and he's right.
35:29Her mom came and picked her up at school, and they went down together to the police station,
35:34where she confessed.
35:42Bernadette told her parents that she had a babysitting job that night.
35:46But Bernadette drove to Kirsten's house, honked the horn.
35:50Kirsten came out, and she saw that it was Bernadette.
35:53And she said, oh, it's you.
35:55When Kirsten said, you know, oh, it's you, I can imagine that it just fueled Bernadette's feeling of inadequacy and loneliness.
36:07Bernadette told her, hey, there is no initiation dinner.
36:09Bernadette told her, we're going to go to a party.
36:12So she got in the car, and they started driving.
36:17Bernadette claimed that Kirsten wanted to stop at a church parking lot to smoke marijuana.
36:23They stayed there for a while.
36:24Bernadette was talking to Kirsten, and was just trying to convince her to be her friend, to accept her.
36:31That was something that was really, really important to Bernadette.
36:36And she was almost pleading with her.
36:40Kirsten seems to have lost patience with that.
36:42And finally just said, what are you, like, in love with me or something?
36:46Or something to that effect.
36:48Which really made Bernadette angry.
36:53So then Kirsten says, you're weird, leaves the car, and starts walking across the street.
36:59And rang the doorbell of Alex Arnold.
37:01And Bernadette followed them in the car.
37:05Bernadette realized that if Kirsten went to school the next day and told everybody that Bernadette was weird,
37:11she would have lost her status, and maybe she could have got kicked out of the bobbies.
37:18By the time Kirsten arrives home in Orinda, Bernadette's fear of being humiliated has morphed into white, hot rage.
37:30When she saw her go up to the house, she reached under the seat.
37:34She said there was a knife under the seat of the car.
37:39The knife was her sister's knife, a butcher's knife.
37:43She kept it in the car because she ate lunch in the car.
37:48I think Kirsten said something mean to Bernadette.
38:12And I think it was almost like it took over or something.
38:16And it just made her do a crazy thing.
38:18So I remember when we heard that it was Bernadette, we were floored.
38:33We were completely shocked.
38:35I would have never thought it was Bernadette.
38:37That would have never crossed my mind.
38:39It's horrible to say that, but it seems like I know why Nancy and Helena got, you know, accused.
38:44Because they would fit the mold, right?
38:47Bernadette wouldn't.
38:49I was so angry.
38:52I felt betrayed.
38:54Bernadette and I sat next to each other.
38:56I lost all of my friends because nobody knew whether or not I had killed somebody.
39:02Because there was no suspect.
39:04That ruined my life.
39:06And I'm still angry that she let that happen.
39:14On March 13, 1985, almost nine months after Kirsten Costas was stabbed to death in front of her childhood home,
39:22now 16-year-old Bernadette Proddy is convicted of second-degree murder.
39:27She is sentenced to a maximum nine years in prison.
39:32It's the most a minor can receive in California.
39:35And Orinda is left to come to terms with this terrible teenage tragedy.
39:40I mean, being popular at Marimani was important, but it's definitely not worth killing somebody over.
39:52I think it would be easier to accept if it was an outsider.
39:58Maybe even somebody outside of the community would probably be what everybody really wanted to be the answer.
40:04And it just wasn't.
40:06The Bobbies changed their name.
40:08We changed it to the Kestrels, and we stopped the hazing.
40:12There was no public humiliation.
40:19High school is a breeding ground for insecurity.
40:22But I don't think any of us had the feeling like, you know, I'm going to kill her.
40:26What is actually even happening here?
40:29What does that mean about all of us?
40:32I just feel bad.
40:34I feel bad for Kirsten.
40:35Who's the mean girl?
40:36Well, yeah, it doesn't matter in the big scheme of things.
40:40She lost her life, and her parents had to go through all that.
40:45And they're still going through it because it doesn't go away.
40:49It shouldn't have happened.
40:50It's terrible.
40:51It's just awful.
40:52I feel like Kirsten's remembered as a good person, somebody that would be successful and came from a good family.
41:02What happened to her was really sad.
41:03On the next Mean Girl Murders.
41:13Working at the cookie factory, I mean, it was rough.
41:16I had no respect for her.
41:18She had started a war.
41:20That a friend could do this to another friend is incomprehensible.
41:24She kept screaming, she's gone.
41:26I know who killed the woman in Perry.
41:29I know who killed the woman in Perry.
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