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00:00¿Qué es lo que pasa?
00:48No.
01:00After the jury received the written instructions, closing arguments began.
01:06Prosecutor Mark Heideman says the state has made its case. Attorneys told the jury what they needed to do.
01:12I think most victims' families would say that justice is never letting them perpetrate this on anybody else again.
01:21This was such a heinous, severe crime that it deserved the most severe punishment.
01:28The reality is continuing to tell all different kinds of stories to the police and to 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 videotape and
01:45looked 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.
02:01Brian had an idea about harming people because he wrote about it in Black River.
02:09And I think that Tori was definitely drawn in.
02:21Brian claims that Tori was the one who wrote that story but just dictated it to Brian.
02:30I told Tori that Brian was not good for him.
02:36The 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.
03:00Because Brian's freaking out.
03:02And 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.
03:24Cassie Stoddard.
03:29Just minutes after Judge Peter McDermott announced the jury had reached a verdict,
03:32people surged into the courthouse.
03:34Brian 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.
03:51And 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?
05:15The jury has answered guilty.
05:23The prosecutor said, if you go to bed at night and there's no snow on the ground and you wake
05:28up 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.
05:54When the judge said he was going to sentence them together, I knew that he was going to give them
05:59the same sentence.
06:01They pretty much told us that he's going to make an example out of these boys and you need to
06:06prepare 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.
07:08You 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.
07:24You both were excited about the killing.
07:26He 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.
08:35They 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.
08:57She left this world frightened to death.
08:59This was a vicious and malicious crime.
09:03Friends don't kill friends.
09:07You've put our family through hell.
09:09And 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.
09:37You know, from 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.
10:22You 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.
10:40People were talking and pointing and looking.
10:44But the waitress came up and said, I just need to let you know I'm Cassie's family.
10:51And my only thought was, please, God, don't do this in front of my child.
10:56If you want to rip me apart, that's okay.
11:01But not in front of my daughter.
11:04And she, she said, I 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, but beautiful.
11:31I scrambled to survive for, I don't know how long it was, a year or two to pretend to be
11:37at work, to 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.
12:12Me 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 have went the way they did.
12:37I feel like I would love to just sit and just be able to kind of look Brent in the
12:43eye and tell him, I'm here still.
12:48And you didn't break me.
12:51But know that you did take a part of my life away from me.
13:13To be a dad means always being there for your children.
13:17Always being there.
13:20And amazingly enough, it doesn't change when your son goes to prison.
13:26Even for murder.
13:29My son arrived here right after his 18th birthday and he's been here in that same facility ever since.
13:38Initially, 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.
14:12Violence. In particular, violence with a weapon.
14:16If you brandish a 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.
14:39And I felt like I was disappearing into my school.
14:43How do I immediately affect people in a way that can be extremely felt and heard and that's through violence?
14:50People who are weak, like I was. I don't have to use my words. I just lash out like a
14:54child.
14:59Growing up, pretty normal everyday childhood.
15:02My friends in the neighborhood, we used to play hide and seek and just doing like normal everyday stuff.
15:09I was always empathetic and emotional when I was a kid, but I wasn't connected with it.
15:14I didn't understand why I felt so intense about the world around me.
15:19And so it just scared me and haunted me and tortured me.
15:24I had all these crazy dreams about being this amazing skateboarder.
15:29It 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.
15:43Two masked gunmen wearing all black began shooting at least 18 people.
15:52That shooting opened up a path for kids like me to follow.
15:57I thought that I could emulate those shooters.
16:00I wanted people to think of Columbine when they saw me to be afraid of me.
16:06Because I identified with them.
16:07I went online and I constantly chatted online with people who worshipped these kids.
16:13They thought they were the coolest things on the planet.
16:17I watched everything.
16:18All their home videos.
16:19I watched those things every day.
16:21Every day.
16:22And that's how I identified them.
16:24I bought a trench coat and I wore it like it was a jersey.
16:29Everyone thinks villains are cool in movies.
16:31So I was like, well, I could be your villain in real life.
16:34And everybody would think I was cool.
16:35I could go to school and all the girls would want me.
16:38And I could finally get a girlfriend.
16:41That'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.
16:50And that there's nothing you can do to undo that.
16:54When I was 16, I didn't know what it meant to really do something like that.
16:57And I think a part of me thought that like at the end of all this, everybody would be okay
17:03and go back to school.
17:06And over time and like getting older in here, I just realized how stupid that was.
17:29The library is right there, upstairs.
17:34Makes me think of Tori and Brian sitting in the library, making 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 happened.
18:05It's the day before Cassie was killed that Tori was asking me in the halls of Buchtel High School to
18:12have a sleepover with Cassie.
18:15There were not going to be any adults there.
18:18And it was just going to be Cassie and me and Tori and Brian.
18:27I had plans with my boyfriend and his parents to go to an ISU basketball game.
18:32Who knows the what if, if I did say yes on staying the night with Cassie that night.
18:39The next day, Tori had come over to my boyfriend's parents' house and all I can remember is sitting and
18:45having dinner with my boyfriend, his parents and Tori right next to me.
18:53And he was himself like nothing happened.
18:57And that was before word got out that she was gone.
19:04Tori was just like any other teenager.
19:08Not really any warning signs.
19:12And if there were, I wish I would have seen him because I didn't.
19:18Hello, you have a call at no expense to you from Tori Adamcheck.
19:24An inmate at Idaho Maximum Security Institution.
19:36After the crime was committed, I just couldn't face it emotionally.
19:43I was just basically an average piece of shit as a person.
19:48And like, you know, the first thing I did after the 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.
20:11So I just continued to tell a lie and make everything worse with a lie instead of taking responsibility for
20:21what 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.
20:39But once I did, it was like, what do I do now?
20:42So it's liberating because I feel like I didn'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.
21:14I'm sure you guys believe in God as well.
21:20I realized when I was in seventh grade, you don't believe in Santa Claus or vampires or werewolves.
21:28I was basically drunk as a 16-year-old on bad ideas.
21:36Death 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.
21:49I wanted a different life for myself, but at that time, I just didn't have the experience or wisdom to
21:58see any of that.
22:00I was lost in a heterosexual world.
22:05I don't know if he was just beginning to realize it.
22:08I don't know if he'd already realized. I don't know how old it was, but Tori is gay.
22:13And he really struggled with that.
22:16All my friends are straight.
22:19All my family that I know are straight.
22:30When Tori told me we were in prison, he's like, I've been meaning to tell you this for years, Mom.
22:37I've never known how to tell you this.
22:39That big lie that had been dominating most of my life at that point was finally gone, but it's no
22:52excuse for what I did and choices I made.
22:58It was like the hardest thing for him to tell me that he was gay.
23:03And I just said, Tori, after everything we've been through, this is small potatoes.
23:09Before I was arrested, I felt my parents were basically obstacles.
23:15I don't know how they would have taken me coming out as gay.
23:19They might have been okay with it.
23:23It meant nothing to me, but I can't say that would have been the case before all this.
23:28I would have not been happy.
23:31This changed me a lot.
23:33I will be perfectly honest.
23:34I thought I was a great mother.
23:36I really did.
23:37I thought, oh my gosh, I'm doing everything right.
23:40Very actively involved with my kids.
23:42And then suddenly all those credentials are taken away.
23:45Tori's arrested.
23:46It's like, I can't parent anybody.
23:48I failed at that job.
23:56I wish I would have known more.
23:58I didn't know more.
23:59I definitely was missing some tools.
24:05For you, future serial killers watching this beat, I don't know what to say.
24:12It's been a lot of fun.
24:14Yeah.
24:16Good luck.
24:18It's okay with talking about it.
24:20Why did you make that video?
24:29Um...
24:30Cassie and Matt, they're our friends, but we have to make sacrifices, so...
24:36That video was us documenting what we were thinking and planning.
24:43But by being on camera, I was just aware of that.
24:47So I liked it a little differently than how I would have off camera, if that makes sense.
24:54Telling their kids.
24:55We were playing dress up.
24:57We were able to be characters that we wanted to be and people that we wanted to portray.
25:03I don't think it was really genuinely me or him on the tape.
25:08It's not like you could say that I was like a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with or without the
25:14camera, but it just sort of added a filter to who I was.
25:20I don't want to make excuses.
25:22I don't want to stick up for myself at 16.
25:25Like, that's unnecessary.
25:26Because that kid was what he was.
25:31The person who did that crime does not exist anymore.
25:35He's gone.
25:35And what he was is gone.
25:39That crime happened when he was 16.
25:41We know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, brain development is by far not complete at age 16.
25:52The crime is not about Brian.
25:55It's not about Tori.
25:58The crime is about Brian and Tori.
26:02Two 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.
26:31For adolescents, they often kill for no reason at all.
26:36A leather jacket, a pair of sneakers, a challenging glance, emulating movie.
26:41You wanna die?
26:44They're impatient and impulsive.
26:47A 16-year-old may commit the most heinous of crimes.
26:52They are not as morally responsible as adults.
26:59I feel like there's two people.
27:01There was the kid I was that brought me here, and I admitted that crime.
27:05And then there's who I am now.
27:08And I feel like I'm serving a punishment that belongs to him, not me.
27:17I remember when I was, like, 25, I was like, God, this shit's never gonna end.
27:21And for life without parole, it gets weird when you think about, like, accountability 20 years later, 30 years later.
27:31We're the only country in the world that throws our juvenile children away for life and never have a possibility
27:39of parole.
27:40Do you think that Brian has served enough?
27:43I think it's time he comes home.
27:46Well, that is a very good question.
27:49The easy, the quick answer is yes.
27:52There were children.
27:54There's literally different people now.
28:03The U.S. Supreme Court made a ruling that maybe fell close to home.
28:07The issue is whether or not it's constitutional for juveniles convicted of homicide to receive mandatory sentences of life without
28:14the possibility of parole.
28:17In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that mandatory life without parole was unconstitutional, that it was cruel and
28:24unusual punishment.
28:26We treat juveniles different in so many other ways.
28:29They can't vote till they're 18.
28:30They can't drink or smoke till they're 21 or go in a casino.
28:35We knew that adolescents think differently, behave differently, and those types of circumstances had not been considered in these cases.
28:44The U.S. Supreme Court did not indicate whether it would be a retroactive decision.
28:50What happens to kids who were prosecuted prior to that?
28:53Some states decided to re-sentence anyone who had been given an automatic life of parole.
29:00And now all of the parole boards started having these parole hearings for people that had been in a while,
29:06the juveniles that had received a life sentence.
29:09Would you make a decision at 16 that you would make at 30?
29:13Probably not.
29:16But how do we know for sure somebody's rehabilitated before we take that responsibility of just turning them loose again
29:22after we did all that work and due diligence to protect society and protect the victims?
29:33I'm not that 14-year-old kid anymore. I'm a 51-year-old, mature, responsible adult.
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 Ouellette 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 Ouellette. He was 14 years old when he was taken into the woods by
30:14his classmate, Rod Matthews.
30:17And bludgeoned him with a baseball bat, quote, for the heck of it.
30:21The prosecution says Matthews carefully planned what he did, then cleaned off the bloody baseball bat in the snow and
30:30brought friends to see the body.
30:32He decided, I need to find out what it feels like to kill someone.
30:38Can you imagine when we heard that?
30:42There's no logic to that at all.
30:46There never will be.
30:48I started to meet with the family of the victims, Jeannie Quinn, whom I understood the horrific pain that she
30:55felt, the loss.
30:58Decades later, I heard from Rod Matthews, who had written to me.
31:03He understood fully the gravity of the crime he committed.
31:08The guilt, shame and remorse I carry is part of who I am, as it should be.
31:14I don't ever want these feelings to leave me, for it will feel as if I am letting myself off
31:19the hook, which should never be the case after what I did.
31:25When I testified before the parole board on behalf of Rod Matthews, I didn't do it as a friend of
31:30the killer.
31:31I didn't do it as an enemy of the victim's family.
31:35I did it on behalf of Justice.
31:38I saw very clearly his level of remorse, and that he wasn't the same person that he was at age
31:4514.
31:46Should his age matter? No.
31:49His deed, the deed that he did, should matter.
31:53He lost his title of juvenile.
31:57He is 15.
32:00But 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.
32:10It's for the wealth, the health and the well-being of all of us.
32:15So now we're in the year 2025, and Rod Matthews was granted parole.
32:25I am livid.
32:28There'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.
32:47Not ever.
32:49You devastate so many people.
32:55I know that the families typically want that person staying incarcerated.
33:00It's not up to the families.
33:02It's up to society.
33:04I'm not saying that Draper and Nemechek necessarily deserve parole.
33:08It depends on what's gone on in the past 20 years.
33:12Have they changed?
33:15I've been trying to make sense of everything for a long time.
33:20And this wasn't an act of, 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.
33:43Um, why Cassie?
33:55Um, why Cassie was a school friend mostly.
34:03She was more outgoing than I was, so she helped me to feel comfortable about myself around her.
34:15That's why Cassie's death is tragic, because she just was the unlucky one to be alone.
34:24And me and Brian were talking about killing somebody a week before that happened.
34:32I don't know if anybody can ever understand this, but I actually had no, like, motivation to hurt her.
34:42I really just don't know how I couldn't see the basic empathy that I owed 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.
35:06At 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,
35:17I hope, is good, better, productive.
35:20Proof that you can make your way back to normal life, and a normal person, you can put in the
35:25work.
35:26And even Tori, I don't know anything about Tori, but I'd imagine that he probably has redemptive qualities too, you
35:32know?
35:33I don't know, but...
35:35Brian and Tori don't talk, they never really did.
35:38After they got into prison, they never were in the same, they kept them separate, they still do to this
35:44day.
35:45They only run into each other in passing.
35:49We're cordial to each other, but it doesn't go much beyond that.
35:56We had one conversation, this is about 10 years ago now.
36:00I didn't want there to be tension, so I stopped one day at the gym, and I said,
36:04Tori, and he didn't even, like, recognize me, so he thought I was somebody else.
36:07But we had a conversation about it.
36:09We've had different positions on what has happened, but I think we've basically resolved ourselves to just accepting responsibility at
36:21this point.
36:23The kids of me were gone, and that bond is gone.
36:27That'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.
36:49So do I think my son deserves a second chance?
36:54That's really hard.
36:58Without Brian telling us about where the evidence was, we wouldn't have had it, and the case wouldn't have been
37:03as strong.
37:04So at the time I believed it, I still believe it now, that he probably should have deserved some type
37:10of consideration for his cooperation.
37:15I'm just stuck at that worst decision I made as a teenager, and I'm powerless to change anything about it.
37:27I think that Torrey has 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 life without
37:42parole.
37:44He would have to get a computation by the governor. That's not going to happen.
37:51I hope that in my lifetime, somebody will look at Torrey and see that he is a human being worthy
37:59of a second chance.
38:05I'm a God-fearing person, and I believe that people can be rehabilitated, but when you take someone so beautiful
38:15from 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.
38:28I see little girls here 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 that she's dead.
38:44That's never going to go away, and that night will never go away.
38:51When I think of Anna Stoddard, and when I think of the loss that she had, and what she's had
39:00to go through, it's like looking through a pane of glass.
39:06But there's a mirror beyond it.
39:09And seeing myself, Cassie and Sean's murderers, need to stay where they are.
39:22I take responsibility for my children. I raise 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.
39:43If I could walk in there and he could walk out.
39:45If I could spend the rest of my life in there.
39:49I would, in a moment, if he could come out.
39:56We do not do home movies any longer.
40:00I don't look at the photo albums.
40:03It's just that that life is no longer there.
40:10Just too much to go and see what was lost.
40:21And I started screaming.
40:23I want my daughter.
40:25I want my daughter.
40:29Because she's dead.
40:31I'm like, no, no.
40:32It's still an open wound.
40:36I can see Anna Stoddard's face.
40:38It's clear as a bell.
40:39I can see Cassie's face.
40:41I can't ever forget any of them.
40:55You ask the question, why are we here?
40:58We shouldn't be here, but we are.
41:01We're going to do our best and we're going to make the best of it.
41:04But it just seems like just such a waste of so many lives.
41:08And at so many levels.
41:15Tori and Brian took such a beautiful soul.
41:20Beautiful person that nobody gets to enjoy life with anymore.
41:27My heart hurts so much for her family.
41:32They don't get to see her grow up and start a family of her own.
41:37They took much more than just Cassie Jo Stoddard.
41:41It 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.
42:37Let's take 30 years.
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