Souleater, the Runaway Devil, and the Richardson Family Murders
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In the spring of 2006, the sleepy Canadian city of Medicine Hat, Alberta still held a certain small town innocence. Its picturesque suburbs were nestled amongst crystal clear creeks and thick, sprawling forests that hummed with wildlife. Tight-knit communities kept the area safe and violent crimes were unheard of. However, this innocence was soon shattered when a little boy uncovered a gruesome secret.

On April 23rd of that year, six-year-old Gareth Penner skipped over to the neighbor's house to play with his best friend, Jacob Richardson. He knocked on the door furiously, eager to escape the chill outside. A few moments passed, but no one answered. He knocked again, hard enough that it echoed. Still, no one came to the door. The Richardsons' home was eerily quiet for a Sunday afternoon.

Gareth noticed that their cars were in the driveway, so he ran around the back. He called out to the family, hoping to get their attention, but there was only silence. Undeterred, Gareth decided to check the basement living room. Perhaps they were busy down there and couldn't hear him. He knelt on the dewy grass and peered through the basement window. What Gareth saw that day would be etched into his nightmares for decades to come.

He had stumbled upon a grisly triple murder scene and a story stranger than fiction. It would soon come out that this massacre wasn't a random act of violence or a robbery gone wrong. It was a targeted attack committed by the Richardson's daughter and her boyfriend. Don't be fooled though. This is not a story about a desperate rescue from abusive parents.

This is the story of a 12-year-old girl, a 300-year-old werewolf, and the forbidden infatuation that drove them to slaughter her loving family. Part 1: The Ruin of Jasmine Richardson Back in 2005, Jasmine Richardson was just like any other 11-year-old girl in Medicine Hat. She was a bright, Catholic school honor student with a personality as colorful as her clothing.

Her younger brother, Jacob, looked up to her as a role model and she didn't disappoint. Jasmine worked hard to get good grades and her sweet smile and warm, welcoming nature helped her make several good friends. She balanced her studies and social life with swimming and fine art, but always made time for her family. The Richardsons were close in those days. Jasmine's parents were incredibly loving and supportive of their two children and they spent a lot of time together as a family.

Her mother, Deborah, had recently become a Reiki practitioner and the two bonded over their shared interest in alternative cultures. Mark, her father, was a successful technician who did well for himself and treated them to several vacations over the years. Jasmine adored her family and was especially protective of little Jacob. However, everything changed in 2006. Mark and Deborah noticed a sudden shift in Jasmine's personality

She became distant, brooding, deeply defiant, and lost all interest in school and spending time with her friends. They initially assumed that Jasmine was experiencing the first waves of puberty and tried to be understanding. However, they soon uncovered the real reason behind her bad attitude. She had recently made a new group of friends, the kind you wouldn't want your 12-year-old daughter hanging around.

They were an older, wayward bunch of teenagers dubbed the "Mall Goths of Medicine Hat." They shared the same gloomy style and had a fascination with the dark and disturbing. While true gothism is a pacifist, free-thinking way of life, mall goths tended to be more hostile and only dressed the part for shock value. Jasmine thought they were totally badass and became hooked on the narcotic pull of their rock and roll lifestyle.

Jasmine started going to underground death metal gigs, drinking, and staying out late with the misfits she now idolized. Mark and Deborah tried to stop her, but it just made things worse. She became increasingly aggressive towards them as they tried to control her behavior and would simply sneak out anyway. They prayed that it was just a phase she would soon grow out of, but their prayers went unanswered. By the time Jasmine turned 12, their little girl had become unrecognizable.

In early 2006, the once innocent preteen began dressing and acting much older than she was. She donned black clothing, fishnets and mesh, dog collars, chains, short skirts, and heavy dark makeup. Jasmine's teachers were shocked by her rapid downward spiral, and her friends at school started to avoid her. Although her macabre transformation didn't go unnoticed, everyone figured she was just trying to fit in with her new friends. Unfortunately,

The truth was far more sinister than that. Jasmine was being groomed. Unbeknownst to Mark and Deborah, their 12-year-old daughter was in a relationship. She had been secretly dating Jeremy Steinke since meeting him at a punk rock gig in January of 2006. But this was not the beginnings of a boy meets girl romance. Jeremy was no boy. He was a 23-year-old man.

Despite Jasmine being obviously underage, the creep was captivated by her and pursued the preteen anyway. Jasmine was delighted to have the attention of an older man from the punk rock scene and quickly became spellbound by his bad boy charms. Jasmine thought she was in love with Jeremy, sparking an infatuation that corrupted her judgment

She completely transformed her appearance to embody Jeremy's Gothic style and tailored her identity to suit his reckless way of life. Although bad influences themselves, her friends grew concerned. Jasmine was too young to be dating anyone at all, let alone sleeping with a fully grown adult. And Jeremy Steinke was no Prince Charming either. Part two, abused, bullied, and bloodthirsty.

- Jeremy Allen Steinke was a troubled teenager trapped in a broken man's body who had been molded by the darkness he was born into.

Jeremy grew up in crime-riddled slums in trailer parks in Medicine Hat, Alberta, where he was neglected by his alcoholic mother and beaten by his abusive father. His mother, Jacqueline May, bore the brunt of her husband's savage beatings, and with nowhere to hide in their tiny mobile home, Jeremy was forced to watch. Jacqueline finally left his father when Jeremy was still a child.

However, she replaced him with several deadbeat boyfriends and soon-to-be ex-husbands who had no interest in being father figures. Instead, they physically and verbally abused Jeremy. Jeremy hoped that school would be different, but he never stood a chance. He was singled out as the poor boy with a drunk for a mother and bullied relentlessly. His peers and even some school officials called him stinky.

a nasty nickname playing on his surname and reputation as trailer park trash. Jeremy's teachers were just as unsympathetic and he was constantly in trouble. One incident occurred in grade five when he arrived late for class again. Finally fed up with his tardiness, his teacher berated him in front of everyone and demanded that he get an alarm clock. Most preteens would simply roll their eyes and take their seats, but Jeremy wasn't like the other kids.

He was damaged by his rough upbringing and flew into a rage. The 10 year old roared that his mother refused to buy him one and screamed so ferociously at his teacher that it frightened his classmates. By 13, Jeremy had become consumed by depression and deep seated anger issues. He tried to cope with his deteriorating mental health the only way he knew how to, through substance abuse and self-destructive behavior.

Jeremy started smoking weed every day, drinking heavily, experimenting with drugs, and cutting himself to numb the pain of his isolated, empty existence. He yearned to belong and soon found solace in fringe subcultures and online forums. He connected with fellow outcasts who shared his morbid fantasies, and the line between fiction and reality began to blur. Jeremy became obsessed with the occult,

He believed he was a 300-year-old reincarnated werewolf and wore a vial of blood around his neck to prove it. He proudly told people at school that he craved the taste of iron-rich bodily fluid and needed to drink it regularly to survive. Jeremy's tough new alter ego gave him a sense of empowerment that he couldn't let go of. While his school friends grew up and moved on, Jeremy's desperation to escape reality never faltered.

He dropped out of high school and his lichen lifestyle persisted. Jeremy couldn't hold down a job and spent his days drinking, shoplifting, smoking pot, playing electric guitar and writing dark, brooding poetry. He continued to be rejected by most people his age and seemed to fit in better with teenagers. Although this was incredibly inappropriate.

Those close to his family said that Jeremy was mentally and emotionally immature. Some have speculated his immaturity stemmed from mild fetal alcohol syndrome as his mother drank while she was pregnant. Jeremy developed a pattern of dating younger and younger girls. And by 2006, the 23 year old was embraced by a group of mall goths he met at a punk rock gig.

The high schoolers looked up to Jeremy as their cool older friend who could drive and buy them alcohol. He slotted seamlessly into their pseudo subculture and even developed a fan following amongst the underage girls, one of whom was Jasmine Richardson. The girls were mesmerized by the Gothic man who claimed to be a 300-year-old werewolf, but he only had eyes for her. Part three, Soul Eater and the Runaway Devil.

Mark and Deborah Richardson were worried sick about their little girl and her risky behavior. They began monitoring her messages to get a glimpse into her secret life. It wasn't long before the concerned parents discovered Jasmine's intimate conversations with Jeremy Steinke. To their horror, their 12-year-old daughter was in a sexual relationship with a strange man almost double her age. Mark and Deborah were livid. Enough was enough.

The couple confronted Jasmine about her wildly inappropriate affair with Jeremy Steinke and forbade her from seeing the self-proclaimed lycanthrope. They grounded her indefinitely and banned the preteen from going to gigs, seeing her friends, and wearing makeup. Mark and Debra hated being so strict on her, but Jasmine needed to understand the severity of the situation. Unfortunately, she didn't.

Jasmine exploded. Incredibly, she couldn't comprehend why her parents disapproved of her 23-year-old unemployed high school dropout boyfriend who lived in a trailer, regularly did drugs, and identified as an immortal werewolf.

A rage overcame her that her parents had never seen before. Neighbors a few houses down later recalled hearing several screaming matches during this time. Some were so bad that they had even considered calling 911. Enraged by her parents' interference, the determined couple continued their perverse relationship online. The two met in secret on VampireFreaks.com, an online forum for those interested in morbid topics and mythical creatures.

It was here that Jasmine's dark side spiraled out of control. Jeremy had been a member of VampireFreaks.com for several months already. It was a sanctuary from society where he could vent about his disdain for the world and live out his werewolf fantasies without judgment. His username was Soul Eater and his interests were listed as pain and razor blades.

Jeremy's profile was riddled with posts about his life as a reincarnated beast, macabre music, and disturbing writings about Jasmine's parents. Jasmine joined him under the name Runaway Devil. She claimed to be 15 years old and described herself as a nocturnal Wiccan who liked dark poetry, kinky shit, and Jeffrey Dahmer, an infamously depraved serial killer dubbed the Milwaukee Cannibal.

Jasmine signed it off with, "Welcome to my tragic end," as if predicting the horror to come. The 12-year-old populated her profile with provocative pictures of her in tight black clothing, sucking her finger suggestively, and even posing with a realistic replica handgun. The already suspicious Mark and Deborah quickly caught on and confiscated Jasmine's phone and computer.

They forced her to attend family counseling, hoping to mend their broken relationship and rebuild trust. However, Jasmine had other things in mind. She played along with the counselor's advice and pretended to be on the road to recovery. Her charade worked, pleased that their daughter seemed to have calmed down. Mark and Deborah relaxed their rules and gave her computer back with a stern warning. Little did they know, they had just been played.

Jasmine had no intention of breaking things off with Jeremy and their forbidden love blossomed in the ether once again. The couple exchanged passionate emails where they professed their love for one another, shared violent fantasies and planned secret meetups in the dead of night. In one poorly typed email, Jeremy said, "You were a sight for sore eyes and I miss you more than killing people. Can we get together and kill people together?"

Their love was not the only thing that blossomed in the spring of 2006 though. The couple's shared resentment towards Jasmine's parents was in full bloom too. Part 4: She was the motive, he was the means. Jasmine had become consumed by a hatred for her parents that she couldn't control. Although Mark and Debra handled her rebellion as any loving, level-headed parents would, they had unknowingly painted a crimson red target on their backs.

Her friends would later remember having conversations with Jasmine where she wished her parents would die. She wanted to be free from their control and elope with her Lycan lover if only her friends had taken her rants seriously. Near the end of March, Jasmine Richardson hatched a plan that would see her name go down in Canadian history. The 12-year-old thought her parents were ruining her life and decided they deserved to die.

Luckily, she knew exactly who to ask for help, Jeremy Steinke. Although older and supposedly wiser, Jeremy's immaturity made him extremely impressionable. He worshipped Jasmine, and she knew that he would do anything she asked, making him the perfect pawn for her plan. Jasmine sent a chilling email to Jeremy which read, "I have this plan. It starts with me killing them and ends with me living with you."

Her devoted boyfriend responded without hesitation, saying that he loved her plan, but they needed to get creative with the details. And get creative they did. The cold-blooded couple began plotting how to murder Jasmine's parents. They considered making it look like a murder-suicide or burning the house down while they slept inside. Shockingly, their sick plan included Jasmine's little brother, Jacob, who they deemed too sensitive to be an orphan.

Jeremy made their plan public through a twisted poem he uploaded to VampireFreaks.com on April 3rd. He ranted about his 12-year-old lover's parents and accused them of being greedy, uncaring, and cruel to their daughter. Jeremy wrote that he wanted to slit their throats and that their blood would be payment for their insolence. Unfortunately, it became lost amongst his slew of violent tirades that never came to fruition.

and any hope of saving the unsuspecting Richardson family was snuffed out. On the night of April 22nd, Jeremy and his friends were watching Oliver Stone's 1994 film, "Natural Born Killers" in his trailer. It was his favorite movie and eerily similar to his situation. It was a fictional story about two lovers with traumatic childhoods. The man murders his girlfriend's abusive parents and the two run away together to embark on a killing spree.

Jeremy compared his and Jasmine's plan to the movie while he drank, smoked weed, and snorted line after line of cocaine. Once they got to the scene where the girlfriend's younger brother was spared, Jeremy made an ominous statement. "That's where it would be different," he said. "Jasmine would kill her brother." After the movie, Jeremy got a phone call from Jasmine. He began pacing back and forth in his tiny kitchen, clearly on edge.

His friends overheard him telling Jasmine that he didn't want to do it and kept asking if she was sure she wanted to go ahead with their plan. Once he had hung up, his preteen friends tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn't listen. Jeremy was high, drunk, and hell bent on saving the girl he considered his soulmate. Despite this, not one of his friends said a word. Protected by their silence, Jasmine and Jeremy set their plan in motion.

Part Five: Natural Born Killers A few hours later, Jeremy Steinke arrived at the Richardsons' home in the quiet residential suburb of Ross Glen. He crept around the back of the house and broke in through the small window of their basement living room. Jasmine's mother, Deborah, woke to the sounds of shattering glass downstairs and decided to investigate.

As she got to the bottom of the stairs, she turned to see Jeremy dressed in black, wearing a neoprene mask and wielding a filleting knife. Jeremy panicked and attacked the unarmed woman before she could try to protect herself. He began savagely stabbing Deborah, slicing through her aorta and lungs. Blood spewed from her gaping wounds and splattered the stairwell, walls, and ceiling. She became limp and fell to the ground at the bottom of the stairs, where she died in a crumpled heap.

Jeremy stood over her in a daze, unable to comprehend what he had just done. Suddenly, he heard movement coming from upstairs. Mark was woken by the screams of his dying wife and came barreling down the basement stairs. He found Deborah twitching in a pool of her own blood and Jeremy standing next to her body holding a bloodied knife. Armed with nothing but a small screwdriver, the burly man threw himself at Jeremy in a desperate attempt to protect his family.

Mark tried to stab him with the screwdriver, but he got stuck in his thick hoodie. Thinking on his feet, Mark started choking him and tried gouging his eyes out. Jeremy thought he was a dead man at this point and snapped. He started stabbing and slashing at Mark in a blind rage, and a gory fight to the death ensued. Mark tackled Jeremy, and the pair smashed into the stairwell banister, which shattered into pieces.

Jeremy got the upper hand as soon as they hit the ground. He stabbed Mark over and over again so viciously that he felt the knife hit bone. Once Mark stopped moving, Jeremy got to his feet, shaking from the adrenaline rush. As Mark lay dying on his blood-stained basement floor, he uttered his final word. Why? he asked. Because your daughter wanted it this way.

Upstairs, Jacob was standing in the hallway in his underwear, his skinny legs bare and shaking. He had been woken up by his parents' screams and was frozen in terror. Jacob heard the heavy footsteps of someone walking up the stairs from the basement and began to back away. He was instantly flooded with relief when he saw his big sister, Jasmine, coming toward him until he saw the black handled kitchen knife clasped in her hands. She sliced Jacob open as he turned to run into his room.

He managed to make it to his bed, but Jasmine and Jeremy followed close behind like wolves, stalking their wounded prey. Jasmine stood over her eight-year-old little brother as he begged for his life. She began stabbing Jacob ferociously in his face and chest, unfazed by his pleading. When that didn't do the trick, Jasmine delivered the fatal blow and slit his throat. Blood sprayed from his severed jugular vein, soaking Jacob's bedding and painting his toys red.

Jeremy watched the carnage unfold in silence. The killer couple then left the room, leaving Jacob curled on his side in the fetal position and choking on his own blood. Jeremy left the preteen to pack her things and headed home to his mother's trailer, smashing the passenger side window of Mark's car as he did. Jasmine went downstairs and surveyed the gruesome scene in the basement where her parents' bodies lay still warm.

Satisfied, she calmly rinsed off the kitchen knife she had used to murder her little brother and cleaned herself up. Jasmine then packed a bag of clothing, stole her dead mother's bank card, and called a taxi to take her to Jeremy's trailer. Part six, murder and medicine hat. On the Sunday of April 23rd, at around 1.15 p.m.,

Sarah Penner was startled by her son Gareth running through the front entrance of their home. He was supposed to be playing with their neighbor Jacob. Gareth cried that there were bodies with blood on them in the Richardson's basement. Sarah was doubtful at first. Little boys had wild imaginations after all, but followed her son next door to see for herself. She knelt beside Gareth and peered through a ground level window.

There, Sarah saw the stiff, blood-smeared body of a man in black boxer shorts and immediately called 911 in a panic. Officer Brent Sikondiak, the staff sergeant at Medicine Hat Police Service, was the first to arrive at the scene. He went around the back of the house and inspected the basement through the window. Sikondiak saw the body covered in blood and, fearing the killer might still be inside, he called for backup.

Three other officers joined him within minutes and broke the front door down. Nothing seemed to be amiss within the Richardson household, aside from the bloody handprints smeared on the walls and light switches. The officers made a beeline for the basement where they discovered the battered corpses of Mark and Deborah Richardson. Both were cold, covered in defensive wounds and stiff from rigor mortis. 48-year-old Deborah had been stabbed 12 times and lay with her nightgown hiked up, naked from the waist down.

42-year-old Mark Richardson had suffered a frenzied attack. His body was covered with 24 stab wounds, and the knife that killed him was bent wildly out of shape. It had buckled in the middle and curved at the tip like a hook. Once they had cleared the basement, the policemen followed the trail of dried blood to the upstairs bedrooms. Nothing could prepare the young officers for what they were about to see.

they entered a room that had purple walls lined with shelves of wrestling figurines and found the dead body of eight-year-old Jacob Richardson. His throat was slashed wide open and his face mangled by stab wounds. Sikondiak, a father of three, left the room for a moment to compose himself and noticed something that sent a chill down his spine. He saw a family portrait on a nearby coffee table of a mother, father, son, and daughter.

There were only three bodies in the house, and Jasmine Richardson wasn't one of them. Fearing she may have been kidnapped, the police initiated a desperate search for the missing 12-year-old and sent out an Amber Alert. However, it soon became apparent that she wasn't another victim. She was the villain. Officers searched Jasmine's room and locker at school and found evidence that suggested she was involved in her family's annihilation.

one childishly drawn cartoon strip depicted a graphic scene of stick figures pouring gasoline into a home sprinkler system. The drawing showed the family inside being burned alive and screaming in pain while the cartoon couple ran to a truck outside. The officer's suspicions were confirmed when they discovered Jasmine and Jeremy's online chats. They were no longer searching for a missing little girl, they were chasing a murder suspect. Part seven.

from missing little girl to suspected murderer. The next day, on April 24th, Jasmine and Jeremy were already long gone. The couple had convinced their 19-year-old friend, Casey Lancaster, to drive them and two other underage runaways to another province. Jasmine smiled as she looked over a front page newspaper story about her family's murders in the car, unaware that the police were already one step ahead of them.

After interviewing the couple's friends, the Medicine Hat Police Service knew exactly where they were headed. Leader, Saskatchewan, almost 100 miles away. Aaron Ewert, a Leader Police Constable, waited for them outside the closed gas station he knew they would try to fill up at. Sure enough, the pickup approached the gas station several hours later. The runaways parked in the parking lot of a nearby high school to wait for the gas station to open.

The Leader Police Service surrounded the truck, where they found Jasmine and Jeremy getting cozy under a sheet in the back. All five were arrested and began giggling and hurling obscenities at the officers as they were cuffed. Once they arrived back in Medicine Hat, Jasmine and Jeremy were taken into custody, where they would stay until their trials. Officers confronted Jeremy about his child bride, but he insisted that he didn't know she was 12 until their arrest.

Whether this was true or not, we will never know. What we do know is that Jeremy asked the 12-year-old child to marry him. He proposed in a series of badly spelled love letters just days after her family's bodies were found, and she gleefully accepted. Clearly, the gravity of what was about to come had not yet set in. Two days later, on April 26th, Jasmine and Jeremy went to court in Medicine Hat for the murders of Mark, Deborah, and Jacob Richardson.

The killer couple was charged with three counts of first-degree murder and both pleaded not guilty. Casey Lancaster, their getaway driver, was charged as an accessory to murder after the fact, which was later dropped when she entered a plea deal. Casey confessed to cleaning Jeremy's bloody car seats and helping him hide the green 1981 Firebird and pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice instead. She was sentenced to one year of house arrest. Part Eight

Welcome to our tragic end. After spending more than a year in custody, Jasmine Richardson went to trial in June 2007 at the Court of Queen's Bench in Medicine Hat, Alberta. Canada's Youth Criminal Justice Act protected her identity and she remained anonymous throughout her court case. The world only knew her as J.R. and it stayed that way for many years. However, her name was not the only thing that changed.

Jasmine no longer wore the Gothic uniform she was prepared to kill for. Instead, she donned a lilac collared shirt, khaki pants, and a neat ponytail. Jasmine's lawyers used her newest identity to paint the picture of a good church-going girl caught in the clutches of a depraved pedophile. While this was true to some extent, it was clear that she played an active role in her family slaughter.

Jasmine feigned innocence and claimed that she was joking when she said she wanted her parents dead. She insisted that she never thought Jeremy would take her seriously and blamed everything on her doting boyfriend. Jasmine accused Jeremy of breaking into her home, murdering her parents and forcing her to stab Jacob before he slit the little boy's throat. The court was not convinced. Despite being recently diagnosed with two behavioral disorders,

The evidence proved that Jasmine convinced Jeremy to help her murder her family and displayed clear, calculated thinking after the fact. The Crown prosecutors also highlighted that she had several opportunities to call the plan off or get help, but never did. It was obvious that she wasn't a mere pawn in Jeremy's plan. She was the mastermind. Jasmine eventually conceded. She admitted to planning the slayings and even confessed to murdering her eight-year-old little brother.

Finally, on July 9th, 2007, the then 13-year-old Jasmine Richardson was found guilty of the first-degree murders of her family, making her the youngest person in Canada ever convicted of multiple homicides. Four months later, she was handed the maximum sentence Canadian law allowed for minors. Jasmine was sentenced to six years in prison, followed by four and a half years of conditional supervised release in the community.

She was ordered to spend the first four years of her sentence in a psychiatric institution for the most serious violent offenders. Jasmine's partner in crime, Jeremy Steinke, went to trial nearly one year after she was sentenced. The then 25-year-old denied plotting to kill the Richardson family. He claimed he had only gone along with it and broken into their house to help Jasmine run away.

Jeremy alleged that he panicked when confronted by Deborah and Mark and was too intoxicated to control himself. However, the autopsy showed his victim sustained a combined 36 stab wounds, which would be a difficult feat for someone who didn't have murder on their minds.

Jeremy's now terminally ill mother, Jacqueline May, came to his defense in December 2008. The frail woman strapped to an oxygen tank recounted his traumatic, abusive childhood and acknowledged her dismal parenting. Jacqueline blamed his erratic behavior on the abuse and depression he suffered from. She recalled that Jeremy continuously wished he was dead as a child and had tried to kill himself three days before meeting Jasmine.

making him vulnerable to her demands. However, witness statements made Jeremy's mental health struggles seem inconsequential. Several witnesses took the stand to testify against Jeremy. Apparently, mere hours after murdering the Richardsons, he and Jasmine went to a party at their friend's apartment. The two were seen kissing, giggling, and even disappearing into a room to have sex.

The witnesses recalled that Jeremy proudly admitted to killing Mark and Deborah, showing off his bloody eyes to prove it. Worse still, he allegedly boasted to his friends about gutting them like fish. However, the same witnesses also came to Jeremy's defense, insisting the couple both said that Jasmine had slit her brother's throat.

After just one month of deliberations, a jury convicted Jeremy Allen Steinke of three counts of first-degree murder on December 5th, 2008. Ten days later, the 25-year-old was back in court for his sentencing. Before handing down her verdict, Justice Adele Kent asked him if he had anything to say for himself. Jeremy shook his bowed head in silence. With that,

Justice Kent sentenced him to three life sentences to be served concurrently, one for each of the slain Richardsons. Jeremy would be eligible for parole in 25 years, which was as long as he had been alive. Part nine, Beauty, the Beast, and a Bittersweet Ending. During the final years of Jasmine's sentence, some conditions were relaxed due to her progress. Her curfew was removed by September of 2011,

and she was allowed to attend classes at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta. Later that fall, Jasmine was released from a psychiatric institution and allowed to begin reintegrating herself into society under strict community supervision. One year later, Jasmine's sentence was reviewed in court.

The specialists who cared for her had nothing but praise for the then 18 year old. They stated that Jasmine had responded positively to treatment, showed genuine remorse for her atrocious crimes and was assessed as unlikely to re-offend. Jasmine had been living alone, working and taking classes successfully by this time. And her lawyer dubbed her the poster child for rehabilitation.

Jasmine Richardson went on to complete her 10-year sentence on May 6th, 2016, and was released at the age of 23 years old, the same age Jeremy had been when the pair slaughtered her family. She was liberated from all court-ordered conditions, restrictions, and supervision, and allowed to live her life as a free woman. Interestingly, Jasmine was also told that, as long as she didn't commit any crimes for five years, her family's murders would be wiped from her record.

Jeremy Steinke, on the other hand, was not so lucky. He tried to turn his life around while in prison and even had his name legally changed to Jackson May. However, it wasn't enough to convince the courts that the poor high school dropout deserved a second chance. In 2012, Jackson May tried to appeal his 2008 conviction, claiming that the jury's decision was unjustly harsh considering his circumstances.

His appeal was too late and ended up being denied. Jackson was told to file a motion to extend the cutoff date, but never did. The retired Creature of the Night is still in prison to this day, where he will stay until his parole in 2033.