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00:12So I've got to ask, we're going on 20 years since the crime, you've never talked about
00:18a lot of this on the record before, so why are you willing to talk about it now?
00:26I held out for so long just because I didn't want to lose my life, so I knew Kathy had
00:34lost
00:34her, and so I wanted the audience to understand this is something I have to do because it's
00:43the truth.
00:44Is there any topic that's off-limits for you?
00:49No.
01:00After the jury received the written instructions, closing arguments began.
01:06Prosecutor Mark Heidemann says the state has made its case.
01:09Attorneys told the jury what they needed to do.
01:12I think most victims' families would say that justice is never letting them perpetrate this
01:18on anybody else again.
01:21This was such a heinous, severe crime that it deserved the most severe punishment.
01:28The reality judge is continuing to tell all different kinds of stories to the police and
01:34to his parents.
01:35But the defense says the evidence just doesn't stack up.
01:39Set aside your passions and prejudice that every one of us has had when we looked at that
01:44videotape and looked deeper.
01:50Brian was bigger physically.
01:52He was older.
01:53And so Brian was clearly the one most capable of committing the crime.
01:59And so we focused on that.
02:02Brian had an idea about harming people because he wrote about it in Black River.
02:09And I think that Tori was definitely drawn in.
02:22Brian claims that Tori was the one who wrote that story but just dictated it to Brian.
02:28Brian.
02:30I told Tori that Brian was not good for him.
02:34You should go like this, you know.
02:37The problem is we interviewed so many people.
02:41The vast majority of them would talk about Tori being the dominant person in that relationship.
02:52I remember when I first saw the whole tape and I saw the interactions.
02:57I remember thinking that Tori was the leader because Brian's freaking out.
03:03And Tori is more collected.
03:04And he's like, shut the fuck up.
03:06Shut the fuck up.
03:07We gotta get our atmosphere.
03:09I know Brian and I know Tori.
03:12I mean, in my mind, from my point of view, I feel like Tori ignited Brian's dark side.
03:20Let's talk about the person that really matters, Cassie Stoddard.
03:29Just minutes after Judge Peter McDermott announced the jury had reached a verdict,
03:32people surged into the courthouse.
03:35Brian Draper entered for the last time and sat with his defense team.
03:39I've been doing this for 30 years.
03:41That's the most emotional case I ever had.
03:44I got close to Brian.
03:46I got close to his family.
03:47He was a young man.
03:49I was a parent of young children at the time.
03:52And trial was hard.
03:55Is Brian Lee Draper guilty or not guilty of murder in the first degree?
04:04Guilty.
04:11I don't think he realized until that moment the pain he'd caused everyone.
04:19We got guilty.
04:20That's all we needed.
04:21Thank you so much.
04:23Job well done.
04:25One down, one more to go.
04:26No, thank you.
04:45An incredibly emotional day in the courtroom for Tori Adamczyk's family.
04:51I expected that verdict to hold out multiple days.
04:55I honestly believe that the jury would at a minimum struggle with first degree murder
05:00and then hopefully struggle with conspiracy.
05:04It took jurors seven and a half hours to come up with their decision.
05:09Is Tori Michael Adamczyk guilty or not guilty of murder in the first degree?
05:16The jury has answered guilty.
05:23The prosecutor said, if you go to bed at night and there's no snow on the ground
05:27and you wake up in the morning and there's snow on the ground, you know it snowed.
05:31So both boys were there, both boys were guilty.
05:35When the judge read the decision, Adamczyk's sister began to sob loudly.
05:40While the Stoddart family looked relieved.
05:43Get what a justice that Cassie deserves.
05:46I feel sorry for the other families too, you know.
05:50But I think justice was served.
05:54When the judge said he was going to sentence them together,
05:57I knew that he was going to give them the same sentence.
06:01They've pretty much told us that he's going to make an example out of these boys.
06:05And you need to prepare for that.
06:13Brian ultimately did confess as to his involvement and took the detectives to the evidence.
06:19We were promised they would help as a result of this and we are still waiting.
06:26It sounded like they were going to have a chance at parole in 30 years.
06:32You know, 30 years is a long, long time.
06:35I'm like, that seems extreme, but we have appeals coming up and we'll see where this goes.
06:42He was a loving and caring boy.
06:45He's an incredible kid.
06:48There was a list.
06:50They weren't done.
06:52If they wouldn't have been caught, they would have kept going.
06:55And so people were very concerned about what the judge was going to do.
07:00There was a nervous energy.
07:09You both have been convicted of murder in the first degree.
07:14Cassie was savagely stabbed many times.
07:18Disguised yourselves with mass and darkness, which made it even more frightening for her.
07:24We both were excited about the killing.
07:27He was a cold blooded, horrific act.
07:31And then the next sentence was life without parole.
07:35The life sentence is fixed without the possibility of parole.
07:44I remember the moment distinctly, I just, I just melted away.
07:52You know, I, I, you guys, I'm, I'm sorry.
07:55You guys are, like I said, you guys are kids, but I'm convinced beyond a reasonable doubt
08:02that if you were released, that you'd kill again.
08:08Life without parole is, was incomprehensible.
08:14When the verdict finally did come out, I was extremely, extremely relieved.
08:19And I just knew it was, it was right.
08:22Life without parole is absolutely required for people like Brian and Tori.
08:28I don't know whether Tori Adamczyk is the more evil person or Brian Draper.
08:33But I do know that they were both involved in the murder, they both did it.
08:36They both deserve equal sentences and they, and that's what they got.
08:43The whole thing was emotional.
08:45And the impact on the family was, was tremendous.
08:49There will always be a empty space in our hearts.
08:53We can't hug her, we can't kiss her.
08:56She left this world, frightened to death.
08:59This was a vicious and religious crime.
09:03Friends don't kill friends.
09:07You've put our family through hell, and now you will know what hell's like.
09:16Nobody in their right mind wants to see a teenager sentenced to life in prison without parole.
09:26But they intended to become famous through murder.
09:30And who explicitly made it clear they intended to kill many, many people.
09:39From a judge's perspective, you take them out of the game plan.
09:44He was barely responsible enough, according to our laws, to even have a license.
09:50Life without parole is cruel at 16.
09:57That's my take as a parent.
10:01We all walked outside.
10:03I'll never forget to this day.
10:06I walked outside.
10:07The skies were...
10:11Lightning.
10:13Thunder.
10:14Boom, boom, boom.
10:17It was like the fitting conclusion to the day.
10:21You know, even the sky wants me dead.
10:29After the trial, my daughter and I went to a new restaurant in town.
10:36And when we walked in, I felt something.
10:41People were talking and pointing and looking.
10:44But the waitress came up and said,
10:47I just need to let you know I'm Cassie's family.
10:51And my only thought was,
10:53Please, God, don't do this in front of my child.
10:56If you want to rip me apart,
11:00that's okay.
11:01But not in front of my daughter.
11:05And she...
11:07She said,
11:09I just want to thank you for the kindness and the respect you've shown my family.
11:15But I know the pain my family caused her.
11:20And their kindness to us was unexpected.
11:25Unexpected.
11:27But beautiful.
11:31I scrambled to survive.
11:33I don't know how long it was.
11:35A year or two to pretend to be at work.
11:38To pretend to do stuff.
11:41And then one day I just left.
11:44I didn't even try to sell stuff.
11:47I literally gave everything away.
11:50I lost well over a million dollars in real estate alone.
11:54I wanted to give all I could away and disappear.
12:04to what happens here.
12:12Me and Brian used to come out here and skateboard back in the day.
12:16Just hanging out over here and, you know, just enjoying life as kids.
12:24it's been very surreal that something so bad could come out of nowhere
12:32i wish things wouldn't went the way the way they did
12:37i feel like i would love to just sit and just be able to kind of look bright in the
12:43eye
12:44and tell him i'm here still and you didn't break me but know that you did take a part of
12:55my life away
13:12to be a dad means always being there for your children always being there and amazingly enough
13:21it doesn't change when your son goes to prison even for murder
13:29my son arrived here right after his 18th birthday and he's been here in that same facility ever since
13:39initially he did have some trouble with people being violent towards him because of his crime
13:47remember there was a young girl involved prisoners don't like that
13:54the pain that that crime caused there's no excuse there's no explanation
14:06just misery
14:11violence in particular violence with a weapon
14:16your brand is your weapon all of a sudden you're more powerful than anything in front of you
14:21everyone understands violence everyone feels violence everyone is afraid of violence
14:33i could go to school and nothing i did mattered like nothing i did made an effect on anybody around
14:38me
14:38i felt like i was disappearing into my school how do i immediately affect people in a way that can
14:46be
14:46extremely felt and heard and that's through violence people who are weak like i was i don't have to use
14:52my
14:53words i can just lash out like a child
14:59growing up pretty normal everyday childhood my friends in the neighborhood we used to play
15:04ahead and see just doing like normal everyday stuff i was always empathetic and emotional when
15:11i was a kid but i wasn't connected with it i didn't understand why i felt so intense about the
15:18world around me
15:19and so it just scared me and haunted me and tortured me i had all these crazy dreams about
15:25being this amazing skateboarder
15:27it was just a need to feel important and special
15:34as i got older that got polluted and twisted and contorted into something that was terrible
15:44two masked gunmen wearing all black began shooting at least 18 people
15:52that shooting opened up a path for kids like me to follow i thought that i could emulate those
16:00shooters i wanted people to think of columbine when they saw me to be afraid of me
16:06because i identified with them i went online and i constantly chatted online of people who
16:11worshipped these kids they thought they were the coolest things on the planet
16:17i watched everything all their home videos i watched those things every day every day
16:22and that's how i identified them i bought a trench coat and i wore it like it was a jersey
16:29for one thing villains are cool in movies so i was like well i could be your villain in real
16:33life
16:33and everybody would think i was cool i could go to school all the girls would want me and i
16:38could
16:38finally get a girlfriend that's how i thought
16:45you have no idea what it's like to wake up every day know that you took someone's life and that
16:51there's nothing you can do time to do that when i was 16 i didn't know what it meant to
16:56really do
16:57something like that and i think a part of me thought that like at the end of all this everybody
17:03would be
17:03okay and go back to school and over time and like getting older in here i just realized how stupid
17:10that was
17:29the library it's right there upstairs makes me think of tori and brian sitting in the library
17:39making that video before they murdered cassie
17:47it's just hard for me because i was so close with tori
17:53i often wonder if i'm the only one stuck in the past with everything that had happened
18:05it's the day before cassie was killed that tori was asking me in the halls of boktel high school to
18:13have a sleepover with cassie there were not going to be any adults there and it was just going to
18:19be
18:19cassie and me and tori and brian
18:27i had plans with my boyfriend and his parents to go to an isu basketball game who knows the what
18:33if
18:34if i did say yes on staying the night with cassie that night
18:38the next day tori had come over to my boyfriend's parents house and all i can remember is sitting
18:44and having dinner with my boyfriend his parents and tori right next to me
18:53and he was himself like nothing happened and that was before word got out that she was gone
19:04tori is just like any other teenager not really any warning signs
19:12and if there were i wish i would have seen him because i didn't
19:36i just couldn't face it emotionally
19:43i was just basically an average piece of as a person like you know the first thing i did after
19:52the crime happened was to lie about it
19:57i admitted to everything i'd done except stabbing cassie because that was the one thing i couldn't admit to
20:10so i just continued to tell a lie and make everything worse with a lie
20:18instead of taking responsibility for what i had done
20:25i was still too much of a coward to admit it to my parents or to my attorneys
20:33and i didn't actually wake up from that for a while but once i did it was like what do
20:42i do now
20:43so it's liberating because i feel like i shouldn't talk about anything at this point
20:53me and brian we weren't the same but we both had our reasons for hating something about what was going
21:00on
21:02i started disbelieving in god i'm gonna die someday and life is meaningless
21:09and if nothing mattered then morality serves no purpose
21:15i'm sure you guys believe in god as well i realized when i was in seventh grade
21:23you don't believe in santa claus or vampires or well i was basically drunk as a 16 year old on
21:33bad ideas
21:36that was definitely an obsession because i didn't have an answer for it
21:41me and brian had talked each other into doing it and that's how we got there
21:50i wanted a different life for myself but at that time i just didn't have the experience
21:56or wisdom to see any of that i was lost in a heterosexual world
22:05i don't know if he was just beginning to realize it i don't know if he'd already realized i don't
22:10know
22:10how old it was but tori is gay and he really struggled with that all my friends are straight
22:18all my family that i know are straight i didn't know one person not even like a distant family
22:27friend or anybody who's openly gay when tori told me we were in prison he's like i've been meaning to
22:36tell you this for years mom i know i've never known how to tell you this that big lie that
22:43had been
22:43dominating most of my life at that point was finally gone
22:58it was like the hardest thing for him to tell me that he was gay and i just said tori
23:05after
23:06everything we've been through this is small potatoes before i was arrested i felt my parents were basically
23:13obstacles i don't know how they would have taken me coming out as gay they might have been okay with
23:20it
23:23meant nothing to me but i can't say that would have been the case before all this
23:28i would have not been happy this changed me a lot i will be perfectly honest i thought i was
23:35a great
23:35mother i really did i thought oh my gosh i'm doing everything right very actively involved with my kids
23:42and then suddenly all those credentials are taken away tori's arrested it's like i can't parent anybody
23:48i failed at that job
23:56i wish i would have known more i didn't know more i definitely was missing some tools
24:06for you future serial killers watching this beat i don't know what to say it's been a lot of
24:14fun yeah goodbye if you're okay we're talking about it why did you make that video
24:35that video was documenting what we were thinking and planning but i think on camera i was just aware of
24:47that so i like a little differently than how i would have off camera if i make sense telling their
24:54kids we were playing dress up we were able to be characters that we wanted to be and people that
25:01we
25:01wanted to portray i don't think it was really genuinely me or him on the tape it's not like you
25:09i can say that i was like a dr jekyll mr hyde with or without the camera but it just
25:15sort of added a
25:17filter to who i was i don't want to make excuses i don't want to stick up for myself at
25:2416 like
25:25that's unnecessary because that kid was what he was the person who did that crime does not exist
25:34anymore he's gone and what he was is gone that crime happened when he was 16. we know beyond a
25:44shadow of a doubt brain development is by far not complete at age 16. the crime is not about brian
25:56it's not about tori the crime is about brian and tori two troubled teens fed off of each other
26:07the adolescent brain is like a car with the accelerator pressed down to the floor and not a good braking
26:15system
26:19and it's not until the late teens and early 20s that self-control tends to improve
26:26adults often kill for clear-cut reasons jealousy profit for adolescence they often kill for no
26:34reason at all a leather jacket a pair of sneakers a challenging glance emulating movie you want to die
26:44they're impatient and impulsive a 16 year old may commit the most heinous of crimes
26:53they are not as morally responsible as adults i feel like there's two people there was the kid i was
27:03that brought me here and i committed that crime and then there's who i am now and i feel like
27:08i'm
27:09serving a punishment that belongs to him not me
27:17i remember when i was like 25 i was like god this is never going to end
27:21and for life without parole it gets weird when you think about like accountability 20 years later 30
27:29years later we're the only country in the world that throws our juvenile children away for life
27:37and never have a possibility of parole you think that brian has served enough i think it's time
27:43he comes home well that is a very good question the easy the quick answer is yes
28:02the u.s supreme court made a ruling that maybe fell close to home the issue is whether or not
28:08that's constitutional for juveniles convicted of homicide to receive mandatory sentences of life
28:14without the possibility of parole in 2012 the u.s supreme court determined that mandatory life
28:21without parole was unconstitutional that it was cruel and unusual punishment we treat juveniles
28:27different in so many other ways they can't vote till they're 18 they can't drink or smoke till they're 21
28:33or going to concede them we knew that adolescents think differently behave differently and those
28:40types of circumstances had not been considered in these cases the u.s supreme court did not indicate
28:46whether it would be a retroactive decision what happens to kids who were prosecuted prior to them
28:53some states decided to re-sentence anyone who had been given an automatic life of parole and now all of
29:01the parole boards started having these parole hearings for people that had that had been in a while
29:06the juveniles that had received a life sentence would you make a decision at 16 that you would make
29:12it 30 probably not but how do we know for sure somebody's rehabilitated before we take that
29:19responsibility of just turning them loose again after we did all that work and due diligence to protect
29:25society and protect the victims i'm not that 14 year old kid anymore i'm a 51 year old mature responsible
29:39adult
29:41a man who beat a classmate to death as a teenager has been granted parole after 37 years
29:49in 1986 the rod matthews case and the murder of sean willette occurred in canton massachusetts
29:56he was the youngest person in america to be tried as an adult for a crime like that
30:04i am the mother of sean willette he was 14 years old when he was taken into the woods by
30:14his classmate
30:15rod matthews and bludgeoned him with a baseball bat quote for the heck of it the prosecution says
30:23matthews carefully planned what he did then cleaned off the bloody baseball bat in the snow and brought
30:30friends to see the body he decided i need to find out what it feels like to kill someone can
30:38you imagine
30:39when we heard that there's no logic to that at all there never will be i started to meet with
30:50the
30:50family of the victims uh uh jeannie quinn whom i understood the horrific pain that she felt to the
30:56loss decades later i heard from rod matthews who had written to me he understood fully the gravity of
31:06crime he committed the kill shame and remorse i carry as part of who i am as it should be
31:13i don't
31:14ever want these feelings to leave me for it will feel as if i'm letting myself off the hook which
31:21should
31:21never be the case after what i did when i testified before the parole board on behalf of on matthews
31:29i
31:29didn't do it as a friend of the killer i didn't do it as an enemy of the of the
31:34victim's family
31:35i did on behalf of justice i saw very clearly his level of remorse and that he wasn't the same
31:43person that he was at age 14. should his age matter no his deed the deed that he did should
31:52matter
31:53he lost his title of juvenile he is 15. but he's a murderer
32:03sean's mother has been pleading with the parole board to keep matthews behind bars
32:08i should let you know my fears it's for the wealth of health and the well-being of all of
32:13us
32:16so now we're in the year 2025 and rod matthews was granted parole
32:25i am livid there's nothing that i can do about rod matthews getting out
32:36nothing
32:40you don't stop another person's heartbeat and get away with it not ever
32:49you devastate so many people
32:54i know that the families typically want that person staying incarcerated it's not up to the families
33:01it's up to society i'm not saying that draper and amechek necessarily deserve parole it depends on
33:09what's gone on the past 20 years have they changed i've been trying to make sense of everything
33:19for a long time this wasn't an active like professional cold-blooded killers
33:28it was uh i can only say crisis that got me to that point where i was there and hurting
33:34somebody
33:37one thing that you haven't described and this is something we're still trying to kind of get to the core
33:42um why cassie
33:57cassie was a school friend mostly she was more outgoing than i was so she helped me to
34:10feel comfortable about myself around her that's why cassie's death is tragic because she just was
34:20the unlucky one to be alone and me and brian were talking about killing somebody a week before that
34:29happened i don't know if anybody can ever understand this but i actually had no like
34:38motivation to hurt her
34:42i really just don't know how i couldn't see the basic empathy that i owe to her
34:51let's all admit something that we know to be true
34:55that for whatever reason both of these boys at the time they committed that murder were broken
35:03something was broken in them at what point do we declare that fixed
35:11i think what i was involved in when i was 16 and the life that i've lived since i think
35:16i hope
35:18is good better productive proof that you can make your way back to normal life normal person
35:24you can put in the work and even tory i don't know anything about tory but i'd imagine that he
35:30probably has redemptive qualities too you know i don't know but brian and tory don't talk they never
35:37really did after they got into prison they never were in the same they kept them separate they still do
35:43to this day they only run into each other in passing we're cordial to each other but it doesn't go
35:53much
35:53beyond that we had one conversation this is about 10 years ago now i didn't want there to be tension
36:01so
36:02so i stopped one day at the gym and i said tory and he didn't even like recognize me so
36:06he thought
36:06i was somebody else but we had a conversation about it we've had different positions on what has
36:13happened but i think we've basically resolved ourselves to just accepting responsibility at this
36:21point the kids we were are gone and that bond is gone that's how i see it
36:32i would love to have my son have the ability to prove himself worthy
36:41but at the same time i will tell you cassie will not get a second chance and that's my family's
36:48fault
36:50so do i think my son deserves a second chance that's really hard
36:57without brian telling us about where the evidence was we wouldn't have had it and in the case wouldn't
37:03have been as strong so at the time i believed it i still believe it now that he probably should
37:08have
37:08deserved some type of consideration for his cooperation i'm just stuck at that worst decision
37:19i made as a teenager and i'm powerless to change anything about it
37:27i think that tory's come to the acceptance that he's going to spend his life in prison
37:33after the supreme court decision idaho did not change the status of any juvenile who had been given
37:41life without parole he would have to get a computation by the governor
37:48that's not going to happen i hope that in my lifetime somebody will look at tory and see that he
37:58is a
37:58human being worthy of a second chance
38:05i'm a god-fearing person and i believe that people can be rehabilitated but when you take someone so
38:14beautiful from this world you definitely need to pay the price
38:20when i think of cassie i think of a little girl and like it sucks because i see little girls
38:29here
38:29and visiting and i just can't imagine hurting someone like that and i did
38:37there's one part of that nightmare that will never go away and that's it that she's dead
38:44that's never gonna go away and that night will never go away
38:50when i think of anna started and when i think of the loss that she had and what she's had
39:00to go
39:00through it's like looking through a pane of glass
39:07but there's a mirror beyond it and seeing myself cassie and sean's murderers
39:15they need to stay where they are
39:22i take responsibility for my children i raised them
39:29if anybody could have prevented it it would have been me and i didn't
39:36i would trade my time for the freedom of my son if i could walk in there and he could
39:44walk out
39:46if i could spend the rest of my life in there i would in a moment if he could come
39:52out
39:56if he could go into the wall like that man we do not do home movies any longer i don't
40:00look
40:00at the photo albums it's just that that life is no longer there
40:09just too much to go and see what was lost
40:21and i started screaming i want my daughter i want my daughter
40:32it's still an open wound i can see anna stoddard's face it's clear as a bell i can see cassie's
40:40face
40:41i can't ever forget any of them
40:55you ask the question why are we here we shouldn't be here but but we are we're gonna do our
41:02best and
41:03we're gonna make the best of it but it just seems like just just such a waste of so many
41:07lives
41:08and it's so many levels
41:14tori and brian took such a beautiful soul beautiful person that nobody gets to enjoy life with anymore
41:27my heart hurts so much for her family they don't get to see her grow up and start a family
41:35of her own
41:37they took much more than just cassie joe's daughter it took a lot of happiness from poketel high school
41:48i just really want my own children
41:55i always tell them to choose their friends wisely
42:02so
42:10so
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