The Richardson murders developed inside the collision of an impressionable adolescent and an alienated older man obsessed with dark fantasy. Debra and Marc Richardson had intervened after discovering their daughter was dating Jeremy Steinke, an unemployed twenty-three-year-old who claimed to be a three-hundred-year-old werewolf on early social networking sites like VampireFreaks. Grounded and prohibited from seeing Steinke, the twelve-year-old used online messaging and email to propose killing her parents to eliminate the obstacles between them.
Steinke broke into the Richardson home in the early morning hours armed with a combat knife. While Steinke tackled and slashed Marc and Debra Richardson during a violent struggle on the upper floor, the twelve-year-old slit her younger brother's throat in his bed. The pair fled together, were apprehended hours later in Leader, Saskatchewan, and left investigators sifting through digital correspondence that directly proved joint premeditation.
The crime ignited furious public debate across Alberta. Detailed in the investigative book Runaway Devil by journalists Robert Remington and Sherri Zickefoose, the case exposed how juvenile defiance could turn homicidal under the influence of adult grooming and violent subcultures. Steinke would eventually face trial as an adult, receiving three concurrent life sentences with no parole eligibility for twenty-five years.
