Ramble. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Whether you love true crime or comedy, celebrity interviews or news, you call the shots on what's in your podcast queue. And guess what? Now you can call them on your auto insurance too, with the Name Your Price tool from Progressive. It works just the way it sounds. You tell Progressive how much you want to pay for car insurance, and they'll show you coverage options that fit your budget.
Get your quote today at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. 15-year-old Eddie is trying to keep his mind together. Honestly, he's trying to get a grip. He is a world kickboxing champion for his age group when he was just 11 years old for crying out loud. I mean, he's thinking to himself, come on, get it together.
So to keep himself busy, I mean, honestly, to keep his mind from falling apart, Eddie goes on a jog. It was more like a sprint at the local park called Linear Park. And he is just plagued by all of these negative thoughts all week. And he just wants to distract himself because every second of every single day for the past seven days, his eyes are glued to his phone nonstop. He's just waiting nonstop.
Essentially, it's almost Valentine's Day, he's 15, and the girl that he likes still has not texted him, and it's driving him mad. I mean, what does it mean? Eddie comes home from his jog, he changes out of his soiled clothes, and he starts googling on his computer, how to combat anxiety. All the while, he's checking his phone nonstop, he's tapping on the screen just to see if he missed a notification, he's checking the button on the side to make sure it's not on silent mode. Ding! Eddie rushes to click open his messages.
It's not her. It's an old classmate of his named Scarlett. She texts, "My brother just told me not to go anywhere near Lanier Park because a woman got stabbed there." Eddie's fingers hover over the keyboard. Jesus, really? Yeah, they say it's murder. Holy crap! Eddie puts his phone down and he just, he lets the news sink in. Somebody was murdered at the very park that he had just been to.
When the realization of that hit, Eddie would do two things. One, he would hide the five-inch knife in his room that was covered in blood. And two, he would never speak again.
We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to support both the Point Foundation and Peace in Mind. The Point Foundation is America's largest scholarship-granting nonprofit organization for post-grade school LGBTQ students. Peace in Mind is an England and Wales-based fundraiser started by Brianna Jai's mother of today's case, Esther Jai. Now, in remembrance of their daughter, she has teamed up with Mindfulness in Schools Project,
who provides curriculum for students and training for teachers with the sole focus of bringing mindfulness into the public grade school community.
This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mango's growing team of dedicated researchers and translators. And we would also like to thank you guys, our listeners, for your continued support as we work on our mission to be worthy advocates of these causes. Now, as always, full show notes are available at rottenmangopodcast.com. Before we get into today's case, though, I do want to note some very important disclaimers. Today's case revolves around a hate crime committed against a young member of the LGBTQIA plus community.
Brianna Jai was targeted in part because she was transgender. So if this is a topic that is very difficult to listen to, please go take care of yourself, get some rest, get a comfort meal, watch some happy show, and I'll see you in the next one.
Now, with that being said, I want to make it explicitly clear that Brianna's pronouns have been and still are she, her. However, there will be moments in this episode where I read to you text message evidence where a killer does not use her proper pronouns. I think if I were to fix the incorrect pronoun usage, it would no longer really even be considered evidence. Some of the text messages, I think the only way to highlight the cruelty behind the motive of the murder are
is to keep them as they are. So I will be reading them verbatim, especially because this person, the killer, Eddie Radcliffe, is trying to appeal his sentence. So hopefully this is a reminder of what kind of person he is and what he did. So with that being said, let's get into it. The new transfer at Birchwood Community High School.
was a little weird. I mean, yeah, she had an obsession with eyeballs. It was kind of like this unspoken rule amongst all of her peers. Don't look her in the eye. Like if you're passing her in the hallway, if you glance up from your desk in class and she's looking at you, don't look her directly in the eye. There was just something not right about her eyes. I mean, don't get me wrong. They're beautiful. They're totally fine. Everything's okay. But she just had this weird thing with staring.
You know how you can tell when somebody is watching you? Well, students would look up and from across the cafeteria, there would just be a set of deep blue eyes staring directly at them. It felt like she was peering into their souls. It was creepy. And she was known for having this little journal that she would carry with her everywhere. If you opened it up to a random page, you would likely see doodles of Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker, the Serial Killer.
She thought it was particularly fascinating that Richard Ramirez had gouged out one of his victim's eyeballs and placed them in his jewelry box. The eyeballs were like his souvenir. They were like his trophy. The new girl would go around telling people that she could talk about Richard Ramirez for hours and the eyeballs that he took, she could talk about it for days.
She was weird, but she only stayed for 10 weeks. Within 10 weeks, the new transfer's locker would be cleaned out, her desk would be emptied, and the administrators put the school on lockdown. Nobody was allowed to talk about the new girl anymore. But in the hallways, while the teachers weren't listening, the students would huddle together and whisper, Did you hear what happened to her? I heard she's friends with Eddie Radcliffe.
15-year-old Eddie Radcliffe is standing in court. He hasn't said a single word to the judge since the trial started. He won't talk. Instead, he stands up and he holds up a sign above his head. It reads, not guilty. Eddie Radcliffe was pleading not guilty to the murder of 16-year-old Brianna Jai, a transgender high school student that he had at a local park, stabbed her and left her for dead.
There was a text message read out in court that Eddie sent to a friend just before the murder. The text read, I wanted to see if it would scream like a boy or girl. And another text would read, I wanted to know what size body part it had. And he's a holding side saying not guilty. Exactly.
So, I mean, it was pretty rare for Brianna to leave the house. But when she did, she always let her mom know. So Brianna's doorbell camera catches her leaving the house on February 11th around, this is in 2023, February 11th, 2023, around 1245 p.m. And just from looking at Brianna, I mean, she seems to kind of give the gray gloomy weather some color. Her red hair, it's pin straight down to her waist. And she's like, I don't know.
And it's like radiant. It's popping. And she's wearing this fluffy white coat that matches her white knee-high socks. She's got this pink and white checkered bag. And even her phone case is pink. Now, as she walks and opens the gate to the sidewalk, she sends a message to her mom. Dogs are locked up. Gonna go meet a friend.
Brianna likely felt like she's on some sort of mission. I mean, she's following the instructions clearly, but it just feels it just felt tedious and it didn't make any sense. She had to walk 25 minutes to the bus station, even though there's a bus station three minutes away from her house. She was told to walk 25 minutes to a different one. Then she had to wait another 30 minutes at that bus station before number 28 bus pulls up.
The bus is fairly empty. Only about eight people are on board. She pays for her ticket and then she sits down through this 15 minute bus ride on a route that's going to drive past her house. So she went further and then you drove back. Yeah. So she went 25 minutes into direction A, but she's trying to get to direction B. Yeah. Yeah. It didn't make any sense. I mean, what was this all for?
You can tell by the CCTV footage that Brianna's a little bit nervous. She's texting on her pink cell phone and she's giving a rundown of the whole day to her best friend Amelia.
Brianna is very anxious. She's never rode the bus alone, let alone from a bus station 25 minutes from her house. So she's quickly sitting down in the seat closest to the bus driver, closest to the front doors, like the safest seat. And she puts her little bag on her lap and she texts Amelia, her comfort person. And she's joking to Amelia that the bus is driving so wonky, like side to side, it's going to tip over before she even makes it to her destination. She's feeling really anxious about this.
At 1.41 p.m., as the bus drives past her house, Brianna texts her mom, "'I'm on the bus by myself. I'm scared.'" And her mom texts, "'Oh, well, that's good.'" And then hugs. So even from that one text, Brianna could tell that her mom was very proud of her. She's taking these big steps to confront that anxiety head-on that day. She could practically hear her mom being like, "'This is a big breakthrough. This is really good.'"
And honestly, it kind of was. I mean, she bought a bus ticket by herself. She boarded the bus by herself. And now she's going to go meet a friend all on her own. I mean, honestly, this is a pretty big deal. But it would be the last exchange ever between Brianna and her mother.
Brianna would have little more than two hours left to live. She would be found dead with injuries to her back, her chest, her head, and with a total of 28 stab wounds. Her pink blood-stained phone would be found in a drain, reportedly lighting up with messages from her friends. They would read, "'Girl, where are you?' And another one would read, "'Girl, is everything okay? Some teenage girl got killed near Linear Park. It's on the news everywhere.'"
Most of Brianna's friends remember vividly, maybe too vividly where they were and what they were doing on February 11th. It was the day that Brianna was taken from them. So it's very hard to forget. 15 year old Scarlett, she grabbed her phone and she started tapping away. She's texting a ton of her friends that live nearby. My brother just told me not to go to linear park because a woman got stabbed.
The text message seemed calm, but honestly, Scarlett was freaking out. She's texting everybody she knows, trying to check up on them. I mean, the park is so close to her house. Everybody in this part of town went to that park. It is the place to go. Her parents had just been at that park with their dog. I mean, she had just been there not too long ago. It's like everybody she knew had been at that park.
scarlet turns off her minecraft game and starts her google searching linear park murder colchis linear park birchwood woman stabbing woman stabbed in park scarlet pauses on a headline reading it carefully double checking woman involved in linear park stabbing is alive and taken to hospital an air ambulance she starts sending the articles to all her friends they're alive they're alive whoever it is is alive scarlet
Another reply comes in. No, the police just confirmed the death of the woman found with serious injuries. Scarlett just stares at her phone. I mean, she's not really sure what to say. So she just hesitates and types back. Okay, when do you think they'll find out a name? And then she goes right back to her Google search. In the middle of her investigations, she gets a reply from a friend. Jesus, really? And she quickly responds. They say it's murder. And he responds, holy crap.
Scarlett goes back through her searching, but there's just something that's bothering her. All of her friends, except one, she's heard from. But maybe that's not that big of a deal, right? I mean, she did say that she was going to go meet a boy from Manchester. But just in case, Scarlett texted her friend Brianna. Girl, is everything okay? Scarlett likely thought if Brianna doesn't respond, she could at least go check up on her. You know, they don't live that far away.
Meanwhile, Brianna's best friend Amelia lived three hours away and she just opened one eye. She was feeling so drowsy all day and she's contemplating, should I go back to sleep and nap some more? But instead, she rolls over, she grabs her phone and she's smiling and she's going to text Brianna back, but...
But, you know, because Brianna has been so anxious about riding the bus earlier that day, but she, you know, hopefully had a safe journey. And Amelia was excited to ask her about it because they're basically sisters, even though they never physically met in person yet. They talked on the phone every single day, like hours a day. They would get ready on FaceTime. They would tell each other all of their secrets. They even planned to rent an apartment together after they graduated high school. So Scarlett was texting Eddie, right? Yes.
And Scarlett also was texting Brianna and Brianna didn't respond. Yeah, Brianna's not responding. Scarlett's texting everybody because, you know, when you're in high school and you find out that someone got stabbed at a place that you all frequent, I mean, she's just spreading the news. Everybody's texting everyone at this point. But Brianna is the only one not responding to her.
And it's making her really anxious. Same with Amelia. Amelia doesn't really know what's happened at the park because she lives three hours away. But this is her best friend. And she hasn't responded. Last she heard from Brianna, she was on a bus by herself. She was anxious, nervous. And then she got off at the bus stop. And we don't know really what's going on.
They were going to meet later this year. So Amelia was like counting down the days for when she was finally going to meet Brianna in person. But right now she's counting down the seconds. Why isn't Brianna texting her back? It had been like eight hours since they last texted. They never went this long without texting. Has she heard about the news? No. So Amelia sends another follow-up text. She's worried, but she's trying not to sound paranoid. And she's thinking it's probably nothing. Maybe she's also taking a nap.
To lighten her anxiety, Amelia texts jokingly, Girl, you better not be dead. Amelia, like the rest of the world, would not find out the truth until later. At 6.25, the following evening, Scarlett chooses her favorite photo of Brianna to upload to her Snapchat. In the photo, Brianna is wearing a brown striped sweater, her trademark round glasses, and she's holding like this half-eaten candy bar and she's smiling at the camera. Scarlett writes, Rest in peace.
Brianna was one of the best people I have ever met and such an amazing friend. It is so sickening what got done to her. It is absolutely sickening.
There's a lot of information that you can gain about a person through their eye contact or their lack thereof. So it may vary across different cultures, but in the United States, it is the norm to make regular eye contact with the person that you're speaking with to show them that you're interested in what they're saying. If someone is never quite meeting your eye when they're talking to you, you might find them to be distrustful. You might at least think that they're maybe a little bit socially awkward. You're going to think something.
Or if someone holds your gaze for too long, if the eye contact is too long, too frequent, it's a different kind of unsettling. I mean, it's such a subtle thing that humans subconsciously pick up on. There is no rule book. It's just a matter of seconds. When someone holds eye contact for too little or too long, our brains register, oh my god, something is weird. So then is there a correct amount of time to hold someone's eye contact?
Actually, apparently there is. Research has revealed that the average preferred duration for eye contact is about 3.3 seconds. Now you have about like a 0.5 to a full second grace period. So as long as you're anywhere between like the two to four seconds of eye contact, you'll be fine. That is very true. Now you think about it like...
more doesn't mean better no and it's it's so that we don't even have like a set timer in our bodies we just kind of know yeah yeah yeah you you just yeah look away yeah yeah it's so interesting everybody has similar timelines for that yeah yeah it doesn't like drastically change per person it's very interesting now katherine vice made eye contact with a ton of people on february 11th 2023
Now, it's a little damp that afternoon, but Catherine and her husband, they're walking their dogs in the local park called Linear Park. I mean, it's called like a gem of a dog walk. The locals called it that. They love walking their dogs there. Now, the couple, they pass by and smile politely at dozens of other people jogging, walking their dogs, biking, playing with their friends. I mean, it's not a quiet time at the park, but the park is interesting because it never feels overcrowded, even though there's a ton of people.
Interestingly enough, the park was actually built on abandoned railway lines. So the paths would diverge. They'd come together. There are steps and benches just placed randomly around the park. There's partially hidden wooded areas. It would probably...
be a very sinister place at three in the morning, but it's pretty peaceful and private during the day. It's very busy, but it's also very secluded all at once. So if you go to the main areas, there's so much action. But if you kind of travel off the broken path, it can get very secluded very quickly. But as the vice couple turn the corner, they see in front of them a young man hunched over, putting a leash on his fluffy white dog.
They take a step forward, ready to continue their little walk. But this one step is enough for them to notice that the way that the afternoon sunlight is reflecting off the leash, that it's not a leash. It's a knife. Another step forward and their eyes travel downward and they realize that is not a dog. It is a girl wearing a fluffy white coat. They just walked into? Yes. And she's covered in blood.
Suddenly, the man that's hunched over stands upright. He makes eye contact with him briefly. It's so quick. The eye contact is like two seconds, not even maybe like a half a second. Catherine's not even sure if their eyes really met. And he quickly pulls his hood up to hide his face away. And then he starts stumbling away. He starts running off. That's when another figure stands up over the lifeless body on the ground. And this one is smaller than the first. And she catches Catherine's attention. It's a high school girl.
She just looks so out of place in this wild scene. I mean, she looks like she should be at school. She looks like she should be at the mall with her friends or playing Monopoly at home. And her eyes slowly meet Catherine's.
And the girl doesn't look scared. The girl doesn't look shocked. Her face is blank. I mean, it's free of any emotion. She's just staring, unblinking. I mean, her eyes are wide. She's got this heavy, dark makeup around them. Catherine wants to look away, but her brain is not even registering what she's looking at or even who she's looking at and what's going on. But there is just something about this girl's deep blue irises that keep her from pulling away. One Mississippi.
Two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi, five Mississippi, six Mississippi, seven Mississippi, eight Mississippi, eight full seconds. They just stood there for eight seconds? Eight seconds staring at each other, frozen. And the girl doesn't even look scared. She doesn't look shocked. She's just staring at her while standing over a lifeless body.
Those might have been the longest eight seconds of Catherine's life. It was long enough for even Eddie, who had fled the scene immediately, to notice that he was running away by himself. He turned around and he saw his accomplice standing near the couple. What the hell is she doing? Why is Scarlett not coming?
In the UK, there's a game called Knock Knock Ginger. I don't know why they call it that, but it's a game that we're all pretty familiar with to some extent. So it's called Ding Dong Ditch in America. The rules of the games follow. Step one, find the target house. The only condition is the resident must be home.
Step two, you sneak to their front door and you ring the bell. Step three, before the door opens, you run and you hide. The objective being that the resident's going to open the door, see that nobody's there, they're going to look around very confused, and you're going to be giggling to yourself in the little bushes. Residents of Birchwood were used to getting ding-dong ditched. It's a small town. I mean, the high schoolers, they don't really have a long list of fun activities that they can indulge in at night. So they go knock-knock ginger or ding-dong ditch.
One resident, late one night, gets a knock at their front door. They walk over and they look through the peephole. Nothing. It's just dark outside. They're like, this is strange. I mean, I could have sworn that I heard someone knocking on the door. So they turn the lock, grab the handle, swing open the door, and the resident freezes. It's like a cold wind just came into their house. It's so unsettling. It's so unnerving. That is not how you're supposed to play Ding Dong Ditch.
Because there on the street, standing there in the dark with nothing but the streetlight illuminating her is a girl. She's just staring at the resident. She's not hiding. She's just like Chucky. She's just standing on the street, staring directly at the resident. You mean like she's not standing in front of the door? No. But all the way back on the street? On the street, past the driveway. Ran the doorbell and ran out and just standing in the middle of the street and staring? Yes. Yes.
Okay, that's creepy. Exactly. You're supposed to hide and it's supposed to be he he the resident doesn't know who did it She's just staring at the resident. That's not how you play ding dong ditch That was scarlet's favorite way to play though. Oh, that is her game. That's her game Oh, that's crazy. Like she's trying to intimidate and freak out the people exactly Now have you heard of uh, what seat belting is?
It's a form of abusive bullying where someone grabs your backpack straps from the front and yanks them all the way down to the ground until you fall. It causes you to not only fall, but it forms these really intense rug burns under your underarms if they pull too hard from all the force.
Brianna is sitting in the school's inclusion unit. It's like a class dedicated to helping students who need extra support or students who are about to get suspended. It's such an odd mix of students in there, I'm not going to lie. I mean, some students are placed in the inclusion unit for having behavioral issues, like displaying aggression and having tendencies of violence. Like they're about to get suspended from school. That's why they're in that unit. And then other students are there because they're very socially anxious and they're nervous to be in a full classroom.
Like, I'm sure it's different by school and case by case basis, but ultimately you could end up with the biggest bullies in the school who are incredibly aggressive. And then you could end up with all the socially anxious, more timid students in the school who need a safe space all in the inclusion unit.
It's just kind of odd. Kind of. Yeah. Now, Brianna is there because the school administrators thought that she was too socially anxious. She wasn't as active or outgoing and loud as they wanted her to be. And it's believed that Brianna was seatbelted and beaten by a gang of schoolchildren. It's alleged that the kids would throw bottles at her, call her names. And if that's true, I mean, yeah, I would be socially anxious, too. I mean, I think I think anybody would be.
But one day, a new girl, a new transfer from a different school, walks into the inclusion study and sits down right next to Brianna. She's got a stack of journals and pink gel pens and these deep blue striking eyes. And she looks at Brianna, leans over and says, I like your eyeliner. Brianna smiled. That night, Scarlett would go home to text a friend from her old school, Walmart John Wick.
Yeah, that's the name on her phone. I mean, well, in the UK, she had him under Tesco John Wick, but it's kind of like saying Walmart John Wick. And if you don't know, John Wick is the movie series of an ex-hitman. But his real name, Walmart John Wick, is Eddie Ratcliffe. She would text him. I'm obsessed over someone I know, but I don't have feelings for them. She's called Brianna, and I don't know how to explain it. Also, she has a...
D-I-C-K. LOL. That's what she texts. What? Very interesting. Now, a little bit about Brianna. I mean, I think the best way to sum it up is her childhood is why would you have a black PlayStation controller when you can have a pink one? Like, it's not only a very valid question, but it's a very good question. Brianna was putting another coat of pink nail polish onto her PlayStation controller and
And it's a whole process, you know, because you have to wait for the paint to dry and then add another coat. And then you don't want to get it into like the crevices or get it too thick with the polish. And then the polish has got to be soft. But it's worth it because everything in Brianna's room had to be pink. Like it's a non-negotiable. Her fluffy eye masks, her bags, her clothes, her bedsheets, everything is pink. She would even ask her mom, Esther, like when I turn 18, can you buy me a pink car?
Brianna was getting bullied at school, but when she came home, she tried her best to be uplifting. She would post these TikToks of herself getting ready for school. She would make her uniform cuter by pairing it with like these cute blazers or the knee-high socks or headbands. And she would always put these pink little bows in her red waist-length mermaid-looking hair. And she would lip-sync to these very popular songs on TikTok.
Brianna actually managed to build a tight-knit community on TikTok. She made a lot of friends on there. She found a lot of safety and familiarity in the online transgender communities, but she also contributed heavily to it. She would talk to online friends that she's never met before and help them with everything that they're going through. I mean, she knows how hard it is to be transgender and to even the potential of making it 1% easier for someone else to go through the same thing that she went through
She was going to spend all day helping them. She would help them find doctors in their area. She would try talking to them about embracing their style. She would give insight on hormone treatments. That was her mission, just to make people happy. One of the toughest experiences to go through is they say it's to be someone's strength when you're at your weakest. And it seems like that's what Brianna did every day.
A friend of Brianna said, I mean, it's very obvious that she was struggling with mental health and being bullied online and in real life. You know, there's no denying that. But she kept going and it didn't ever stop her from doing anything.
After school, Brianna would go on her phone and see all the people that needed her support. And she would be that support. She would FaceTime her friends and she would practice gymnastics on FaceTime. Like she would do those backflips in her pink room. And every time she would fall flat on her butt, she and her friends would just start bust out laughing. Or if she noticed that one of her friends wasn't having a good day, she would try to FaceTime them and do all these silly little things to just try and make them laugh. And
Instead of drinking apple juice, because she would have like apple juice in a cup, she would pour them into little shot glasses and pretend to take shots of them. I mean, just so she could get a smile out of a friend who really just didn't feel like smiling that day. That was her goal. That's her ultimate plan. And the minute that she would get a smile out of you, she'd make you sit down and you would be her guinea pig for a new makeup look that she's trying.
But I imagine that it would be very hard to say no to someone like Brianna. She is the friend, they say, that would spontaneously decide to go to the market in her Barbie pink pajamas to buy hair dye and then start dyeing her hair a completely new color at 3 a.m. on a school night. Like that's the amount of fun and life that she had.
Brianna also never took the easy way out. So from what I can gather from never having met her, from what I can just gather online, reading about what everybody said about her, it feels like she was someone that faced everything head on. She lived and loved very intensely. And I know that sounds cheesy, but just like hear me out. She was incredibly vulnerable, but also very vulnerable.
fearless at the same time so for example she was hospitalized for an eating disorder and she struggled immensely with her relationship with food but at the same time her favorite food was domino's pizza and so she would always try to face these difficulties and these fears and she would scream down the stairs mom can we have domino's tonight
And it's like she just wanted to do everything that she could to try and live the way she wanted, no matter what. I mean, she just had this way of pulling people in towards her and she wasn't really outgoing. She's not really this crazy loud person. She was just actually very anxious and shy. But she had this energy about her that was so contagious that people were naturally drawn to her.
One friend of hers said, she made me feel unstoppable as a trans girl. And she made me feel really pretty because, I don't know, she would never let me put myself down. And it just takes someone really, really special, I think, to be able to do that. And maybe that's what attracted Scarlett to Brianna.
Scarlett was absolutely fascinated by Brianna. They would go to McDonald's after school just to hang out and talk. And they both had a lot in common. You know, they both bonded over their anxiety, eating disorders, but also makeup and clothing choices. Scarlett would just stare at Brianna's eyes every time she talked. And there was just something about Brianna that made Scarlett feel a lot of emotions at once. Jealous, excited, obsessed, angry. I mean, she couldn't really quite put her finger on it.
But she was obsessed. There were rumors circulating at the high school about the new transfer, Scarlett. People said, yeah, not only is she obsessed with eyeballs, you know she's a Satanist, right? She apparently does these blood rituals and she's asking some of the others to join her this weekend as she sacrifices a goat. I don't even know what that means.
Other students allege that they saw her post a video on social media. Yeah, it was of herself stabbing a couch with a bloodied knife. I don't know if it's real blood. Others would just say, "I don't really like her energy. I mean, she always talks about killing goats and she likes making a lot of dead baby jokes that just aren't really funny." The nicer students would say, "I mean, she's definitely not a normal person, right?"
But probably the strangest rumor was that Scarlett had to transfer from her old school because she poisoned a classmate. Some of the other students thought I was pushing it a bit too far. They're like, that doesn't make sense. We can't just spread rumors like that. What do you mean she poisoned a classmate? If she poisoned a classmate from her old school, wouldn't they expel her? Wouldn't she be in big trouble? How could she just transfer to our school?
We don't know if Brianna heard these rumors, but if she did, Brianna was also the type to ignore them. I mean, people spread rumors for all sorts of nasty reasons. Brianna herself had been on the receiving end of these fake false rumors, and it wouldn't be right for her to treat someone else differently because of these rumors. It just, to her, seemed like a different form of bullying, like there was no truth to it.
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Esther Jai, Brianna's mom, had just gotten home from work. She puts her work bag down and she hears her youngest daughter screaming for help. So she throws the rest of her stuff down, races up the stairs, taking two steps at a time, and she flings open the door to Brianna's room. And Brianna is laying in a fetal position, clutching her stomach, shaking in pain, sobbing. She's crying and she screams, Mom, I think I'm going to die.
Brianna had struggled with self-harm before and Esther was likely concerned that Brianna had hurt herself somehow. But Brianna continued to scream and cry, "'Help, don't leave me, don't leave me, it hurts!'
Esther had never seen Brianna like this before. I mean, she had never been a sickly child like this was out of the norm. She notices that Brianna is clutching her stomach and Esther is flipping through all of the possibilities in her head. I mean, could it be appendicitis? Maybe apparently the pain of appendicitis is so intense that it causes people to not even be able to sit up straight because they're in so much pain.
Esther pulls out her phone and is about to call an ambulance, but before she can, Brianna grabs her wrist and gets up and throws up all over the floor. Shortly after, Brianna starts feeling much, much better. And Esther is wiping up the vomit and she notices that there are small specks of red in it. She assumed they were grape skins. Maybe Brianna had gotten ill from eating too many grapes? Or maybe it was like a stomach bug?
Because these are the only logical explanations of what happened. Right? Too many grapes? Because it's... She's in high school. It's not like someone would poison her. Scarlett texts Eddie a picture of a handful of small red tablets. By the way, do you die from eating these? Because I have a plan if you do. Scarlett had given Brianna a ton of tiny red pills telling her to take it. Telling her it's going to get her high, but she has to take quite a bit of it.
Eddie glances at the picture and texts back. It's dangerous, yes, but I'm not sure how many would be lethal. You know that girl I mentioned? Brianna? I'm still trying to kill her, and the easiest way is a pill overdose, don't you think? Plus, people already know that she's depressed and shit, so nobody would get sus. But for some reason, she's got a high tolerance. Like, I gave her some of these today, and I thought that should have been enough to kill her.
Scarlett carried on about her day, feeling a bit frustrated. She was less upbeat than usual. She spent all day checking in on Brianna, periodically asking her about the pills. Did you take them? Did you take them? Ding. Eddie opens his text and he could basically feel Scarlett's excitement through the screen. Brianna's ill. Those tablets I gave her might be slowly killing her. Scarlett's 15, 16 as well? 15. It was ibuprofen.
Yeah. What? She said it was working. Eddie responds, try doubling the dose. That should at least put him in a coma. Misgendering. Scarlett had given Brianna a handful of the ibuprofen, telling her to take it because it's going to get her high. But in reality, she was trying to kill her. This would be the first of three attempts on Brianna's life.
So Scarlett and Eddie, they're tossing and turning in bed because it just doesn't make sense. I mean, it should have worked. That should have been enough ibuprofen. So they grab their, yeah. I remember earlier you're saying there's a new girl in the school, right? It's Scarlett. Right. And a week later she was gone. 10 weeks.
Oh, 10 weeks later. She's only there for 10 weeks. So two and a half months. Yeah. And this is all unfolding within two and a half months. Yeah. Like multiple attempts. Multiple attempts. I mean, most of it starts unfolding like the minute that she meets Brianna. Not necessarily that she's trying to kill Brianna the minute she meets her, but this like weird obsession with her. Yeah.
I wouldn't say it's an obsession in the traditional sense. It's not like she was like, I can't like I need to stalk her. I need to know her movements everywhere she goes. But it is a very strange relationship she's developing. Yeah. So the first text you mentioned, it was really odd. She said, I'm obsessed with her. Yeah. Okay. Like when you hear that, you assume like, oh, my God, I think I'm in love. Yeah. But then later she gets really upset because she thinks that Brianna is prettier than her.
So I really, I was having a hard time trying to, I think later at the end of this episode, you're going to start to realize the only answer to all of this could be pure evil and transphobia. Because other than that,
It's very hard to unpack everybody's motive in this. So just like hold on to your seats because it gets weirder. It gets more confusing. So they grab their phones from the nightstand and they text each other at night. Eddie, I want something to pour into her drink that's easy to get. Something that's odorless and is going to kill her quickly.
For the next hour and a half, Eddie lays in bed researching toxic substances. He sends this. You can buy it at Tesco, the grocery store. It's very dangerous stuff. Scarlett clicks open the photo. Sodium hydroxide? Lie? The stuff that you use to make soap? It would have to be consumed fast enough, though, since it's an acid. You would have to force her to drink it. Unfortunately, I can't find how fast it kills, but I think it kills pretty fast.
If you were to drink lye, it would turn your entire insides into literal soap. The lye is basically an acid. It's extremely corrosive. It burns all the way down into the stomach. If you pour flaming gasoline down your throat and then swallow a six-inch knife afterwards, that's what it would feel like to drink a lot of lye. It's like liquid lava.
Fire just going down your throat. You can feel where it is in your body because the minute it touches any part of your insides, your stomach lining, you can feel it. It's going to start dissolving you from the inside out. Scarlett thought the idea was perfect. She could just put it into Brianna's McDonald's milkshake after school. Another text comes in from Scarlett. Eddie opens it up and this time it's a picture with a pair of scissors and a tissue with blood on it. The message reads, I'm going to eat human flesh.
Eddie smiles because Scarlett and Eddie, they have a very unusual relationship. They actually started off despising each other. They were 11 when they first met. So four years ago and they did not get along. Eddie was a world kickboxing champion for 11 year olds for his age group. And he started training since he was like nine years old. And, you know, typically being good at any sport. Is he actually? Yeah, he actually is.
Oh, yeah. And like typically being good at any sport, it guarantees like high school popularity, but not really for Eddie. Eddie just kind of kept to himself. I mean, to the point where people thought he's like a really weird robot, a weird robot with a mustache. He started growing a full blown beard when he's like 13 years old. It was a lot.
But other than that, he was a top student. He did well in all his subjects. He wanted to go to university to study microbiology and absolutely nothing, nothing would get a rise out of him, at least not at school. I mean, who knows what's going on at home, but at school, I mean, everybody said Eddie was like this emotionless robot that he didn't even have voice inflections. He would talk like this.
He would talk like this and then this is how he responds to everything. Even if you tell him something wild, he would just respond like this. Everything is monotone. There is no emotion. This is his excited voice. This is his sad voice. This is his planned voice. This is his voice.
You would just see him walking around with his dark coat, long hair, never talking to a single person in the hallways, just very quiet. If you were in class and the teacher has their back turned and someone throws a piece of paper at the teacher's head and they start screaming, who did this? You guys tell me right now who did this. I'll wait. If someone points at Eddie, even though it was not Eddie, Eddie would have zero reaction. He wouldn't say, no, that's not me. He would just be like, okay.
Kind of scary. Yeah, he would study at school. He would study at home, play video games. He just really didn't interact with anyone except Scarlett. And Scarlett at school, she was loud. Do you guys want to sacrifice a goat with me? I'm serious. I'm doing a blood ritual this weekend.
I mean, it makes sense that these two hated each other. Scarlett saw Eddie as this weird, socially awkward kid, and Eddie saw Scarlett as this obnoxious, weird kid. They instantly had a strong distaste for one another, but they were always in the same class and in the same groups as each other. The forced proximity made them see each other in a different light. They realized, you know what? Maybe we do have a lot in common. Scarlett started texting Eddie almost daily. I'm going to stab your grandma. I'm going to fuck your cat.
That's just how Scarlett talked, apparently. Eddie didn't seem to mind it. In fact, he seemed to at least like it to a degree or thought it was humorous. Like it was a side of Scarlett that only Eddie got to see. Interestingly enough, Scarlett had a boyfriend. That's not Eddie. And Eddie has a different girl that he's interested in. Both of which have no idea about these text messages or their dark interests. They do not talk like this with their romantic interests.
Scarlett's boyfriend seemed completely in the dark about all the disturbing things that she was into. It's said that the two of them actually seemed like every other normal high school couple. They would go to the park and go on walks and take cute Polaroid pictures with each other, and from the outside, they seemed somewhat normal and stable. Except for the fact that Scarlett carved her boyfriend's name into her arm with a knife.
So, yeah, I mean, like I said, I don't know really how to dissect these people, but Scarlett is kind of crazy. Scarlett describes Eddie as trustworthy, a sociopath, someone who doesn't have any emotions or at all, has a good sense of humor, though. Very, very smart, like genius level smart, but socially very awkward, gets anxious a lot. Eddie said about Scarlett that he's not really sure how to describe her personality, but
but she's definitely not normal so it looks like they're both on the same page neither of their descriptions are glowing reviews of one another i mean not really the kind of comments that you would want to hear about yourself socially awkward sociopath not a normal person i don't know how to describe her but scarlett and eddie they thought it worked for them they just had like the right amount of understanding they had just the right amount of respect for one another and it worked
Eddie opens up a message to a text that he got from Scarlett. This one he'd been anticipating. He asked Scarlett for advice on how to ask his crush out. And he felt like, you know, I'm just so awkward. I'm so nervous. I mean, I just need help. He wouldn't even be able to start a conversation with the girl of his interest.
Eddie opens up the message and Scarlett texts to them. Eddie, there's nothing to worry about. She's not going to think you're weird. Show her that you care for her and give her support. She's going to know and she's going to rely on you and open up to you. He said, well, what if she, what if she replies? What do I do then? I mean, I've been trying this for the whole day. Scarlett reassures him that it's all going to be fine.
But he knows it's not fine. There's another boy that literally likes the same girl as him, Mark. And if Mark gets to her first, then what is he going to do then? Eddie starts sharing his anxieties with Scarlett and she reassures him. We could just kill Mark. We could just kill him. Eddie considers it for a moment and then he responds. You mean cut his heart out and then cook it and feed it to your dog?
That's not what she said. Yeah. Okay. Eddie would text Scarlett, the more you think about killing, the more likely you are to kill someone.
I mean, it's hard to say if they knew the other party was exaggerating or lying. One would imagine that the lies were so obvious that there would be no question about it. But maybe, maybe they believed each other's lies because it made it easier to believe their own. Eddie and Scarlett, they had their own idea of ideal selves, like visions of who they wanted to be. And they start projecting it onto each other. So the way that I see it, let me try to simplify it, is let's say there's two people. One of them is studying to be a doctor. That's what they go around telling everybody.
But you know that they're never actually going to get there because they're not actually ever studying. They're just so busy telling everyone they're studying. They're just saying that they are. And it's like they're more married to the idea of getting the respect of being a doctor or getting the respect of studying to be a doctor than actually wanting to be a doctor.
That's one person. The other person is starting their own business, but they have done nothing, like no real work to do anything. All they do is post on Instagram about all their meetings. But what meetings? There's no business. Now, if either of them talk to anybody who knows them, it's going to be the same thing. They're not going to be treated as a doctor or a business owner because they're not one. I mean, they're so far from it. They haven't even taken the first step to become one. But when they're around each other, the wannabe doctor, right?
pretends to be a real doctor that they've already studied they've already become a doctor they're already licensed they're practicing the wannabe business owner pretends to be a fortune 500 ceo and that's how they talk to each other in this kind of bizarre i don't want to say fantasy land because that makes it seem like they are detached from reality and don't know what they're doing but they're not but it is fantastical it's definitely a fantasy
They talk about how stressed they are and all of these things, but it's all fake. Scarlett always wanted to be treated like an evil, cold-blooded killer, so she texted Eddie. I already killed two people, you know? But who knows? It could be more. Scarlett told Eddie she was having these weird dreams.
Maybe they're more like hallucinations. Perhaps they were flashbacks of what really happened. She told him, I hallucinated that I was covered in blood and it was this guy named Landon and I was covered in Landon's blood and I could hear him scream and choking on his own blood and I just saw myself standing over his body with a knife in my hand, smiling and holding the knife. She would later tell Eddie that she thought she did in fact kill a man named Landon and these were not just hallucinations that her brain made up.
Scarlett would text, do you know what the Red Rooms are? Scarlett told Eddie that she downloaded Tor and started going on the dark web. She said she's a huge fan of the Red Rooms, which side note, if you don't know what the Red Rooms are, it's like a torture rooms, allegedly on the dark web, where you can pay money and someone will kidnap someone and torture them while live streaming it. It's like a snuff film in the making. Someone is going to die. There will be bloodshed. It's really gruesome. And it's also questionable if they exist.
So she texts him. I love watching torture videos, real ones on the dark web. I've liked this stuff for a while and I'm just happy because I finally found a good red room.
Now, OK, side note, by the way, you know how I said I don't know if these exist. These types of videos do, in fact, exist. I think the Red Room concept is unclear. Like if you can live stream it and actually bet Bitcoin or whatever cryptocurrency to make acts of torture happen, that is what is debated. The existence of snuff films and stuff like that. I mean, those are very much true.
There was one video that was recently making its rounds, not even on the dark web, a video of a cartel who had amputated a victim's arms and had skinned his entire face off while he was still very much alive. And they continued to torture him in various ways while he was screaming and they were listening, jamming out to music is how it's described. That wasn't even on the dark web. So perhaps she did find some of these videos. I just don't know if it was in a red room setting.
And in return, Scarlett let Eddie be whoever he dreamed of being, which is someone who absolutely did not care and was willing to kill anyone because why not? He's just bored. Eddie would show off his knife collection and these throwing stars that he had, like, you know, those metal star shaped daggers that you can throw at things and walls. He was so desperate to be bad and Scarlett just accepted it. People would later comment that it's so interesting that they found each other.
You know, in this small town? Because in the small town of Birchwood, there's only 10,000 residents. And one of them would go by the Instagram handle, The Cumlord. He was on Instagram, The Cumlord, in reaching out to a high schooler named Eric. The Instagram account is reaching out to Eric, asking him if he wants to meet in the woods at the local park, Linear Park. Who's The Cumlord? It's like an anonymous Instagram account in Birchwood. Oh.
It's like a fake account and he's reaching out to a high school boy named Eric and is like, meet me in the woods. It'll be fun. Trust me. And Eric is just a random kid? Yeah, same school, random kid. The Instagram account is promising Eric whatever he wants in exchange for showing up to the park. Eric opens up the DMs from the cum lord. He doesn't know who this person is. And he's like, this is sketch. He blocks the cum lord.
And Scarlett and Eddie are pissed. They're like, damn it, they lost him. So Scarlett and Eddie had been going through the trouble of creating a fake Instagram account called the Come Lord. And they were trying to specifically lure Eric out all because they wanted to petrol bomb him.
What is that? It's like a Molotov cocktail, which is essentially a DIY fire bomb. It's really dangerous. Typically, it consists of highly flammable liquid inside of a glass bottle. You stick a flammable fabric shoved into the opening, someone lights the fabric on fire, and you have an undetermined random amount of time for the fire to reach the inside.
typically nothing happens typically but we don't know because there's no oxygen in the bottle but once someone throws it the fuel the fire it goes flying splattering everywhere and it's really dangerous they wanted to throw a molotov cocktail at a high school boy named eric a fellow student they just didn't like him
But they can't ask him to come to the woods themselves because he knows they don't like him. So why would he go to the woods with them? So they created this fake Instagram account to lure him out into the woods so that they could Molotov cocktail him. They wanted to record the whole thing and post it on every social media platform because they thought it'd be hilarious. But Eric did not bite their bait. He blocked them. Scarlett and Eddie, they're really disappointed. And honestly, they're very upset because this is the fourth person they tried to kill. And it fell through again.
there were three people before eric and there would be one more after eric on their kill list october 2022 scarlett and eddie made a kill list a list of names of future victims people they wanted to kill there was no particularly good reason anybody was on that list i mean not that that there ever is an appropriate reason but it could be something as trivial as liking the same girl as eddie remember how eddie had a crush well that guy mark liked the same girl for that he was on the kill list
They plan to chop off Mark's Achilles heel, chop his tongue off so that he can't run or talk. Yeah, they wanted to torture him. And Scarlett had an idea. She said, if we kill Mark, can I keep some things? I want to keep a couple of his teeth and his eyeballs. I don't know how I would cut out the eye, though, without damaging it or get the teeth out. But we should torture him before killing him.
Sometimes their target on the kill list changed, but the conversations were always the same. Eddie would try to bring Scarlett back down to earth. We can't just go and kill everyone that you hate for the sake of it, okay? One guy was on Scarlett's kill list because he almost got her expelled from school. Scarlett wanted him dead, gone, right now.
eddie tried to reason with her over a text calm her down he responded well you can't just do that first you have to lure him out depending on what excuse you use it can change the plan like maybe you use drugs to overdose him if you said you were going to give him some drugs you could drug him or if you invite him someplace you could always assassinate him well i just want him dead asap then you distract him scarlet and i'll go from behind with my knife and then i'll stab him in his neck
Scarlett texts, okay fine, promise that you're definitely 100% gonna go through with this. Scarlett waits for Eddie's text. If the plan and timing are good, then yeah, I will. The two would even search for rope on Amazon to strangle victims with, but they concluded that $17 for rope was way too expensive.
Scarlett would keep brainstorming without the rope. She would write down on a piece of paper, okay, give them alcohol with sleeping pills, slit throat, dismember body, place pieces in black trash bags, bury bags seven feet underground, bones included in the bags. Yeah.
That was her initial plan that she wrote down on a piece of paper. And the kill list was ever rotating. Scarlett was in charge of picking the victim and her mind changed every day on who, quote, deserved it. She would pick some random, small, trivial, arbitrary reason that someone needed to die and then it was settled. She and Eddie would go about planning or fantasizing about the murder. How long was it from, like, when did they start? October to February. So, like, a month to...
February 11th. So like three to four months. Yeah. Wow. Now one day in January, Scarlett texts Eddie and she's complaining. I think Brianna is prettier than me. Eddie responds, but is it a feminine boy? He uses a shortened version of that. Or is, or a insert transphobic slur. He followed it up with, prettier than you, but it's a boy.
Scarlett told Eddie that she was getting nervous and stuff around Brianna and she wasn't sure why. She said, "She's really different. I'm kind of obsessed." Eddie responds, "Tell me how you feel when you interact with 'it'." Scarlett said, "Well, I get nervous and stuff."
Eddie takes a moment to think before responding and he says, "I don't think you're necessarily in love. I think you're more curious and intrigued by its unnatural nature. You find it interesting because the majority of people aren't trans. It's like you're going to a funeral and one person is wearing pink. You're going to be fascinated by their difference." And somehow, Scarlett's jealousy, fascination, obsession for Brianna and Eddie's transphobia combined would make Brianna their next target.
Scarlett made plans to meet up with Brianna so that they could kill her. At 11:25 a.m., Scarlett texts Eddie: "I'm so fucking pissed. Brianna just last-minute said that she can't come because of her stepdad's birthday dinner. Let's kill her tomorrow instead at 6 p.m." "I don't want to wait. I just want her to die so badly. I want it done ASAP. I want to see pure horror on her face, and I want to hear her scream." Eddie texts back: "Well, I can't. Not tomorrow. Because it's a school night."
Scarlett was annoyed with him, but she texted him a firm date. February 11th, 2023. Mark it on the calendar. It's going to be February 11th. We're going to kill Brianna. Have you ever seen the movie Sweeney Todd?
It's like a musical, okay? But the plot of it is a bit violent. It's a violent musical. It's about a man named Sweeney Todd, who is played by Johnny Depp. He shows up at a pie shop in London. The pie shop is called Mrs. Lovett's Pie Shop. But most locals in London, they call it the worst pies in London. They're disgusting. They've got flies flying all around them. But when Sweeney Todd walks in, the pie shop owner instantly recognizes him. You're the barber, aren't you? Benjamin Barker? You have to be.
Benjamin Barker was the local barber who was exiled from London. So one of the most powerful judges in London decided that he wanted Benjamin Barker's beautiful wife. So he came up with this random excuse to have Benjamin Barker banished from London. And once he was gone, his wife was all alone taking care of their one-year-old daughter. The judge invites her to a party, essays her. She ends up self-exiting because of all the trauma she endures. And the judge formally adopts the barber's daughter.
What kind of movie is this? It's a musical. Yeah. And now Benjamin Barker, the barber, is back to get his revenge. Basically, he's going to kill anybody who stands in his way. He kills his victims with the barber's razor, slitting their throats, and he gives Mrs. Lovett, the pie shop owner, all the bodies to bake into her pies. It's cheaper than purchasing real meat for her meat pies, so she takes it, and apparently it's a hit because everybody starts showing up to the bakery for more pies. They can't get enough of these human meat pies.
The meaning of the musical is basically dwelling on a dark past and horrible injustices and seeking revenge for those horrible injustices are ultimately going to destroy you and everyone around you. At the end, Sweeney Todd, the barber, he ends up dying.
But that's not the moral of the message that Scarlett cared about, okay? She didn't even care about the music. She was obsessed with the killing scenes. There's about 11 throats that get slit in the movie, and she texted a friend saying, he kills people with one of the sharpest blades in the world. One slit sliced things good very deep. It's really good and dark and gory and romantic. I'm watching it for the 9,000th time. You should watch it too.
She would post Sweeney Todd clips to her social media accounts, and mainly they were just compilations of the kill scenes. She said it was her favorite movie of all time. If she did indeed watch it 9,000 times, the movie runtime is about an hour and 59 minutes. If she watched it 9,000 times, she spent about 18,000 hours watching the movie or two full years of her 15-year life.
And normally I'd say 9000 times. It sounds like she's just exaggerating, right? But she seems like she would have watched it 9000 times. Yeah, or at least a few hundred times. We're not exactly sure how many times she rewatched it, but we do know that rewatching Sweeney Todd was what Scarlett wanted to do the night of February 10th, the night before Brianna's murder. She texted Eddie. I'm excited as fuck.
Eddie texts back, "Why?" "Oh yeah, I forgot." She texts, "I'm watching Sweeney Todd again. You should watch it." "I can't. I can't watch romantic movies." See, I don't even know which one's more chilling. The one that says that I'm so excited or he's saying that, "Oh, I forgot." "What?" He's like, "I can't watch romantic movies." "Well, make sure you wear clothes and shoes that you can run in just in case. What knife are you bringing tomorrow?"
The hunting knife that I showed you in person, you should bring a knife too if you want to stab her because I'm not going to throw my knife at you.
After those text messages, Scarlett picked up one of her journals to write in. If you were to flip open a page and take a quick glance, I mean, it looks like any other high school girl's journal. Pink and blue gel ink with those little squiggly lines and hearts doodled all over the page. Scarlett's handwriting is very small and squished together. So if you just glanced at the journal from maybe a few desks down or from across the classroom, you would have no idea what she wrote. But her little journal would have some of the most atrocious things in there.
If you flip the journal to a random page, you might land on Jeffrey Dahmer's page. And just to give you a refresher, Jeffrey Dahmer was a serial killer, cannibal, necrophiliac, meaning that he likes to have relations with deceased bodies. He's probably most widely known for, obviously, the heinous nature of his crimes and the fact that he chose very specific. He chose a lot of POC victims, but he also wanted to create love zombies.
He would kidnap victims, drill holes into their skulls while they're still alive and try to pour acid into their brains because he wanted their brains to be turned off that he could control them just physically and they would still be alive.
where he could do whatever he wanted with them. He was trying to create zombies, love zombies. He was also very keen on keeping trophies. The police found five severed heads in his kitchen. But Scarlett had a page in her journal in purple and pink gel pen that read, Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer, squiggle, squiggle.
First line, gay, intelligent, very, very, killed 17 boys and men, organized, disorganized serial killer, not sociable, sad that everybody leaves him, usually dispose of bodies in a disorganized, badly way. Next line reads, dismembered bodies, smart,
Alcoholic, smoked weed, when he's close to being caught, he usually panics and makes up a strange but smart and believable story to prove his innocence. Disorganized, made 14-year-old his own zombie with a drill, etc. High IQ, 145, genius level.
Side note, his IQ was not 145. Most reports say that it was closer to 120. So definitely not 145. But I digress. The page continues. Loved getting roadkill and dissecting it. Lonely. Wants love, attention, affection from other men, but never works out and they end up dead. Arrested. Got beaten to death in prison. Last words? She never wrote them, but allegedly they were. I don't care if I live or die. Go ahead and kill me.
If you flip to another random page in her journal, you'll find John Wayne Gacy's page, The Clown Killer. He had at least 33 victims and he was a sexual sadist. On his page, Scarlett wrote, 33 victims, killed victims by strangling. Last words, kiss my ass.
But her favorite was Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker, the one that took the eyeballs. She wrote on his page, the Night Stalker, squiggle, squiggle. Characteristics, rape, robberies, mutilation. Richard Ramirez quotes, heart, big deal. Death comes with the territory. See you in Disneyland, which is what he said when he was sentenced to death. There's a list of all the quotes that he said that she apparently really liked. You maggots make me sick. I will be avenged. Lucifer dwells within us all.
I've killed 20 people, man. I love all that blood. I love Satan. You know who I am, don't you? I'm the one they're writing about in the newspapers and on TV.
Richard Ramirez was her favorite. He had over 15 victims and he was, I mean, he would drink his victim's blood by blending them up in his juicer. He was, he would write messages on the walls and pentagrams to taunt the police. He's the one that gouged out the victim's eyeballs and put them in his jewelry box as a trophy. Scarlett would tell everybody around her. I could talk about him for at least two hours, including like quotes and dates and stuff.
But Scarlett felt like there was a fundamental difference between them and her. Unlike those serial killers, she was going to get away with it. The day after a teenage girl is found dead at the local park, Scarlett's life starts spiraling out of control. Scarlett is staring down at her phone and she has a new message from a stranger on Facebook. A stranger. It read, "'Is that your friend who got hurt? Who was with you yesterday? At the park? I saw you at Linear Park. Your friend's face looks familiar.'"
Scarlett could feel the blood pumping in her ears. Who? Who could have seen her together with Brianna at the park? She tried to think of all the people they came across. Was it that full-grown man playing hide-and-seek?
It was John and Christina's turn to hide. Their kids started counting and they're playing hide and seek. It's a classic. I mean, it's winter time, so the air is crisp and the kids are just getting their energy out. John wanted to stay close by, but still kind of hide. So he stood behind the trunk of a tree and he would poke his head out so that he could keep an eye on his kids.
From his hiding spot, John looks around for his kids and he's watching them. But he sees someone in his peripheral vision. He turns his head and he sees a young teen girl. And the other, he couldn't really make out if Eddie was a boy or a grown man. I mean, something in the way that Eddie carried himself just gave off like man-child energy. John watches them as they start climbing up the steps towards the trail, towards John.
Their heads are swiveling back and forth. It's like they're scanning for someone or looking for someone. It feels like they're also playing a game of hide and seek. It seems like they're looking for John. So John pulls his gaze from them and glances back at his own children. And when he turns back around in the direction that they were, they have now reached the top of the stairs and are now eye level with him. He makes eye contact with the both of them. The boy looks away, but the girl keeps staring.
She just had these deep, intense blue eyes that he would never forget. There's just something very dark about them. John feels unsettled, so he calls for his kids and they start making their way down the stairs and off the trail. And then they see another teenager, a young girl on her phone sitting on a bench. He can't help but notice that she had this beautiful waist-length red hair that made her look like this real-life mermaid, like Ariel. And she had this very light presence compared to the other two.
But it seems like the three were friends. It looks like they were at the park together, but the energy was just so off.
Earlier that day, before John found them while playing hide and seek, before he stared into Scarlett's eyes, Eddie and Scarlett had two bottles in their hands. Eddie had a Coca-Cola bottle. Scarlett had a Dr. Pepper. And they're checking out at the Sandsbury supermarket. They were going to go over the plan one last time. Get her to the park. Isolate her. That's the plan, right? And when Scarlett says the code word, Eddie's going to take out his knife and slit Brianna's throat. Does that sound good?
Sure. And don't forget, Eddie, the code word is gay.
Now, Brianna is starting to get a weird feeling about all of this. Probably not a dangerous feeling because this is her friend, but it was just odd. It's frustrating. It's weird. I mean, Brianna agreed to meet up with Scarlett at the park to do cocaine for the first time. She was more peer pressured into it, so she was really nervous about it. I mean, for one, they're going to do cocaine for the first time. And two, Scarlett said she's bringing a guy friend that Brianna had never met. Brianna was socially anxious, so she didn't know how she felt about it.
And maybe it was the fact that they were planning on doing drugs. Scarlett was having Brianna jump through a million hoops that day. There's a bus stop less than three minutes away from Brianna's house that would have a bus taking the same route. But no, Scarlett told her, absolutely not. You cannot go to that one. You have to walk over a mile, walk 25 minutes to the Birchwood train station and get on a bus from there. Why do you think she made her do that? Okay, so some netizens suspect it was a power thing. Other netizens think that she's so dumb.
that she thought this was like a way that killers go about misleading the police.
Okay, I can see that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because she's like analyzing all the killers and she thinks she's doing something. Okay. But she's not because there's CCTV footage everywhere. Yeah. So it really doesn't matter what bus stop that she gets on. It's not like there was a CCTV dead zone at that bus station. Yeah. Now Scarlett tells her, good, there will probably be not as many people and get on bus number 28 and ask for a child single ticket to Colchith Library. Okay.
Brianna wasn't even used to catching a bus on her own. She was way too anxious for that. This is all so strange, but maybe there's a logical reason behind it. Because Scarlett has been nothing but pretty kind to Brianna. So she went according to the plan. She walked 25 minutes to the Birchwood train station, waited another 30 minutes for the bus to arrive, bus 28. That's the one that she gets on. Then when the bus came, Brianna gave the driver her ticket and boarded.
The bus ride itself was only 15 minutes long and Brianna would watch it pass her house on the way. Then at 1.53 p.m., Brianna meets Scarlett and Eddie at the bus stop. It's Brianna's first time meeting Eddie and maybe she got a strange energy from him. Or maybe she thought that Eddie was shy too because Eddie distances himself from the two girls. He keeps walking further away from them. If a stranger walked past, they could possibly reasonably guess that Eddie was not part of the group.
It was like 50-50. He's walking so far behind them. I mean, it's just weird. It's more like he's stalking them. He's like walking behind. Scarlett seemed too distracted to try and calm down Brianna's uneasiness. I mean, everything would have to go according to plan. Scarlett even texted Eddie the itinerary for that day, the schedule. It was handwritten on a piece of paper and at the top it read, the murder plan.
Time, Saturday, February 11th, 2023. Squiggle. Victim, squiggle. Brianna, jive. Plan, squiggle. Meet Eddie at Wooden Post at 1 p.m. Check. Walk down to the library at the bus stop. Done. Wait till Brianna gets off the bus. Check and done. Then the three of us will walk to Linear Park. Currently in progress.
Once they get to the park, it does seem like the three of them feel a bit more comfortable with each other. They would periodically joke around, talking and laughing with one another. But Eddie seemed to resort back to hanging back and doing his own thing. Like he might laugh for two seconds and then he would go back and do his own thing. And now they just had to focus on the next best step.
go to the pipe or the tunnel area, a secluded area in the park that they had scoped out before this murder. So far, that part's not going well. Brianna's starting to feel off about the whole thing and they could sense it. They were supposed to meet up with a drug dealer to purchase the cocaine, but Scarlett and Eddie just seemed like they were thinking about something else. They were doing something else. I mean, the whole energy was off. Brianna snapchatted Scarlett while they're together. Girl, I'm going to wait where I am right here until we have the drugs. I'm way too anxious for this.
This is not going according to plan. Scarlett starts going on her phone and is furiously typing, sorry, it's Nathan, the drug dealer.
Insinuating that she's having a very intense conversation with Nathan, the drug dealer, likely to ask, where are you, Nathan? Where are the drugs? But she's not texting anyone. She's just texting herself. And Brianna is not buying it. I mean, it's so obvious that Scarlett is messaging herself. At 2.30 p.m., Brianna sends a message to her best friend, Amelia, who lives three hours away. What do you mean she's messaging herself?
she's like oh this is what nathan said and she's just like she's fake fake texting herself yeah there is no drug dealer who is nathan there is no nathan this is all just to lure her out to the park and she's catching on so brianna texts her best friend amelia who lives three hours away and says scarlet is so weird girl i think she's pretending to have a dealer not going according to plan
At 3:01 PM, Scarlett texts Nathan, the supplier, just the word, "Hurry." And then she looks at Eddie and she coughs. Eddie knew exactly what that cough meant because along with the murder plan note, the picture of the little handwritten note of the murder plan, Scarlett had texted Eddie reconfirming everything just to make sure he didn't forget anything.
She said, grab onto Brianna and slit her throat. When she starts to fall, stab her in the back and then pass me the knife. I want to stab her at least once, even if she's already dead, just because it's fun, lol. Eddie responds, okay, then let's have two code words. One for me getting the knife ready and then the other one for me stabbing. Scarlett says, okay, for getting the knife ready, I will look at you and I'll cough. And then for stabbing, the code word will be gay.
Before Brianna could even register what Scarlett said, because why did she just say gay? What just happened? Eddie throws her onto the floor and stabs her three to four times. They're in like a semi-secluded area in the woods.
He looks down. There's blood everywhere. He starts to panic. Scarlett snatches the knife from him and just goes into a stabbing frenzy. Brianna raises her arm to try and defend herself, but the knife slashes through the tendons in her hands and her wrists. And at any moment, Scarlett can stop. She can drop the knife. Instead, she plunges it down, fracturing Brianna's wrist bones. She brings the knife all the way back up and back down again, and the stab passes through Brianna's upper arm.
She could stop now. Brianna has been nothing but kind and compassionate to her. This was her friend who refused to believe murders who was on her side. Instead, Scarlett plunges the knife back down, leaving Brianna's wrist gaping open. And at this point, Brianna manages to escape from their grip. She gets up and she starts running up the stairs in front of them. She's trying to get to safety, flag someone down, but she makes it halfway up the flight of stairs when she's pulled onto the ground again. And at any point, they could have stopped.
But they stabbed Brianna 28 times, 14 to her head and neck, 14 to her chest back and side. She was stabbed with enough force to fracture her ribs, vertebrae, and sternum. One stab would reach a depth of at least five inches, and it penetrated into her heart. Her throat and lungs had been punctured. Her jugular vein and neck arteries were both severed. These...
are the two biggest veins and arteries in the body, and if severed, you could die within five minutes, and that's being generous. Many of the stab wounds had caused damage to her bones, including her chest bones, her ribs. They would require considerable force to inflict those levels of injury. And because of the location of where she was in the park, it took police and paramedics 20 minutes to get to her. There was no direct path.
And she was pronounced dead at 4.02 p.m. 45 minutes after the vices, the couple stumbled upon her. The couple watching the dog. Oh, so the couple were the one that caught the police. Yeah. And the couple saw them. Yeah. And gave their description and everything, but they had already run off.
Now, in the U.S., there is a 40% chance that you can get away with murder. The U.K. has just reported an abysmally low rate of solved crimes. We don't have the exact reputable stats for murder clearance rates, but we can imagine perhaps it's similar to the U.S., which means all Scarlett and Andy had to do was make sure that they don't end up in that 60%.
After they take off running from the park, Scarlett and Eddie both took separate routes to get home. Eddie hops on a bus, but he would make a few crucial errors in the first 24 hours or really even like the first hour. When Eddie boards the bus, he looks down and he notices blood on his hands. He had already tucked away his bloody knife, but the hands are stained red. He's seen on bus CCTV wiping his hands. It's kind of an odd movement. Then he starts pulling down his sleeves to hide his hands from the view.
Eddie gets home at around 4 p.m. and he patiently waits for the right moment to text Scarlett. By this point, Scarlett has already been home. Instead of taking a bus, Scarlett ran all the way back to her house since she lives pretty close to the park and she had a few things that were top priority. Scarlett took Brianna's phone. She uses Brianna's phone to text herself. Then Scarlett uses her own phone to delete a Snapchat thread and then walks over to a nearby drain on the way back to her house and tosses Brianna's pink phone in.
Very quickly, she was home, safe and sound, playing Brianna's favorite video game. It's said that Scarlett doesn't even really like this game that much. Minecraft.
Okay, you can do this. I know, I know. Carvana makes it so convenient to sell your car. It's just hard to let go. My car and I have been through so much together. But look, you already have a great offer from Carvana. That was fast. Well, I know my license plate and VIN by heart, and those questions were easy. You're almost there. Now to just accept the offer and schedule a pickup or drop-off. How'd you do it? How are you so strong in letting go of your car? Well, I already made up my mind, and Carvana's so easy. Yeah, true.
And sold. Go to Carvana.com to sell your car the convenient way. Well, we got a minute. I'm going to buy that truck I've been wanting.
Wait, don't you need, like, weeks to shop for a car? I don't. Carvana makes it super convenient to find exactly what I want. Hold up. You're buying a car on your phone? Isn't that more of a laptop thing? You can shop wherever you want. I like to do my research, read reviews, compare models. Plus, Carvana has thousands of options. How'd you decide on that truck? Because I like it. Oh, that is a great reason. Go to Carvana.com to sell your car the convenient way.
It seemed like both Eddie and Scarlett's family did not notice anything odd or alarming about them, which I think is more odd and alarming. But if we analyze their phone and internet activity, there is a lot going on. Ding! Scarlett would get a text message on her phone from Eddie. So, Scarlett, how's your cat? Good, lol. How's yours? It keeps trying to purr. Aww! Aww!
An hour later, Scarlett texts Eddie again. My brother just told me not to go near Leonir Park because a woman just got stabbed there. I'm so sorry. Do they both actually have a cat? Yeah, they do. I think so. So they are talking about their cats. Yes, but I wonder if it's code word for something or if that's their alibi to just be like, no, I was at home playing with my cat. Eddie texts back, Jesus, really? Yeah, they said it's murder. Holy crap.
The text messages read like two high schoolers just finding out some local news. They're screenshotting, linking news articles. First news article is "woman still alive and taken to hospital via helicopter." Then at 7:18, another news article is shared in the messages. The headline reads "police confirmed death of woman found with serious injuries at park." Scarlett asks Eddie, "when do you think they'll find out a name?" At the same time, Scarlett's phone is making searches for Brianna on Snapchat. She's watching her old videos.
But by 11 p.m. that night, a few very interesting, very fascinating conversations are had between Scarlett and Eddie. Eddie texts Scarlett, Do you know what my favorite quote is? If you wish for peace, prepare for war. The quote is originally in Latin. Essentially, it means you have to be prepared to fight a war when necessary because that's the only way that you can achieve peace. Scarlett texts back at 11, 11 p.m. Do you have any anxiety about getting caught? Probably.
You're not going to get caught. Don't worry. The police are shit here. I haven't been caught yet, and I'm a lot less smarter than you. Yeah. Phone records show the two of them reading any and all press reports on the killing that they could find. And all Scarlett could do was look up articles about the stabbing at the park, send them to her friends, text her friends about the stabbing in the park. There was just one friend that she did not message that night, but was always on the back of her mind. February 12th, the day after, Scarlett texts Brianna.
Girl, is everything okay? Some teenage girl got killed near Lunar Park. It's on the news everywhere. And why did you ditch us for some random guy from Manchester? Like, what the fuck? That is so fucked up. So you're saying she didn't text her the first day? No. She texted everyone else. And then texted her the second day and she's creating this alibi because she thinks, oh, wait, maybe Brianna's family knows that she's going to come meet with me. Yeah. So now I need to make it seem like she ditched us for some guy from Manchester. Throw the police off.
literally someone saw her yes and not only that it's like i don't understand the whole cat thing so she's like texting about the cat almost as if she's creating this alibi like we're both home with our cats and then later that night she's like are you anxious about getting caught yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so it's like does she think that the police are gonna check her phone or does she not think that they're gonna check her phone exactly
Meanwhile, Brianna's sister Alicia is home when she hears sirens going off in the distance. This is Brianna's older sister, and the sirens are getting progressively louder. But instead of passing through and fading off again, it sounds like they're getting closer and closer and closer, and then suddenly, it stops. And then there's a knock at the door. Alicia swings open the door, and she sees two police officers standing there. They look disturbed, they look shaken up. "'Can I help you? Is everything all right?'
The police ask if they can come inside. I mean, sure, what's going on though? Is my mom okay? We need to speak with the whole family. Is there anybody else in the house? Yeah, my sister Brianna's in her room. The two officers glance at each other and they look very uneasy about that comment. Are you sure your sister's in her room?
Alicia was certain like Brianna is almost always home. She's a homebody. But just to get some peace of mind, she's like, yeah, she's always. But I can go check. She goes to check. She knocks on her door and there's no response. And she feels like this anxiety inching up just bigger and bigger. And she flings open the door and Brianna wasn't home and she wouldn't be coming home because her life was cruelly taken from her.
It took the police less than 24 hours to find who they were looking for. They took witness statements, collected local doorbell and dash cam footage, CCTV footage. The last people to be seen with Brianna were Scarlett and Eddie. They both fled the park after she was found stabbed. I mean, it's very obvious that they were involved.
February 12th at 7.30 p.m., just over 28 hours after Brianna was stabbed, police arrest both Scarlett and Eddie. The two of them had very interesting reactions to the arrest. Scarlett looks straight at the officer. Her face looks damp, but she has no tears. She's not actively crying. She does have a little bit of snot running down her nose. And she asks, how come I'm a suspect? How come you're a suspect? Yeah, is it because I'm the last person to have seen her? Is that why?
The police just kind of stare at her like she has no emotions on her face as she's asking this. She's just staring straight at the officers, almost as if she's challenging them. Meanwhile, Eddie is forced onto his knees. His hands are behind his back and the officer with the body cam footage walks in and says, are you Eddie? Yeah. His voice is super monotone. No voice inflections, anything. Just yeah, robotic. The officer reads him his rights and Eddie stands up and he just mumbles in a robotic tone. I can explain.
Within 48 hours of Brianna's murder, the Cheshire police would be the ones doing a lot of explaining. They told the media and press, and I quote, there is no information or intelligence to suggest this was a hate crime.
By this point, the police had already read a ton of the transphobic messages between Eddie and Scarlett, and they believed because the two had a prior kill list that did not include transgender people. Brianna's murder was not a hate crime. They weren't targeting Brianna specifically for being trans. That's what they said. Brianna's lifestyle, they said, made her more vulnerable.
They said because she's anxious and she stays indoors a lot and is just a very quite vulnerable individual. That's what made her relatively easy in terms of accessibility for the killers. That's what they said. And the media ran with it. The media ran with it's not a hate crime and started committing hate crimes of their own.
Yeah. In initial media reports, many news networks dead named Brianna, which means you use and refer to someone by their old name that they no longer go by, which is incredibly offensive. Additionally, some publications even stated that Brianna had been living as a girl for several months. That's what they said. Who says that living as a girl for several months?
Some headlines would switch between ignoring Brianna's trans status or they would just refer to her only as, quote, transgender girl. While they also insisted in the same article, quote, there's no evidence of her murder being a hate crime. A lot of netizens said Brianna was being killed and bullied once more after her death by mainstream media.
Now, as for the two killers, because they were minors at the time of their crime, their identities were not initially released to the public. But the judge decided to lift it and release their names because they were already somewhat circulating on TikTok. People were doxing them on TikTok. Their names were later released and they became two of the most hated people in the UK.
Now, before Eddie stops talking, he does a lot of talking. He blames the whole thing on Scarlett. He said he never tried to murder anyone because, and I quote, it just goes against everything I know and I believe, you know? One of the first things investigators noticed even during Eddie's arrest was that he had a ton of tiny scratches and cuts all over his arms, face, and hands, even one near his eyes. And they're like, where did you get those? Various reasons. Some were self-inflicted because, you know, I was stressed about an upcoming exam. This one on the right arm was from chopping limes.
Interesting. He said he was chopping a lime when the knife slipped and it cut his arm. But the cut was on his right arm and Eddie is right-handed, so he just decided to chop limes with his left hand. And what about the cut near your eye? Oh, that was my cat.
He claimed that day he went to the park to admire the trees, but he had this sudden overwhelming urge to urinate. So he went behind a tree to pee for about three seconds. And when he was finished, he turned around and saw Scarlett stabbing Brianna. And he played zero part in this. He was absolutely innocent. He said he frantically asked Scarlett, what are you doing? Why are you doing this? Scarlett told him bluntly, because she tried to break me and my boyfriend up. It's unforgivable.
But that doesn't really make sense, does it? Because the police found pants and a jacket in Eddie's room splattered with Brianna's blood, as well as the blood-soaked knife found shoved into his closet. But Eddie sat there in the interrogation room. He was allowed to hold a blue stress ball to keep him from his stress, I guess. He said he was just so panicked and stressed and in a state of shock.
And the police said, well, what about the blood on your clothes? Eddie claimed he went over to see if Brianna was still alive. And so he touched her and he got the blood on him. He said the blood was on his clothes, shoes and hands because he was checking for a pulse. But that can't be true because blood splatter analysis showed that Eddie would have had to been close up when Brianna was stabbed.
And what about the knife? Eddie had an excuse for that too. He stated he actually never took that knife out of the house ever. He came home, washed his hands, and for some reason he touched that knife and his hands weren't fully washed of blood, so it transferred onto the knife.
Okay, what about the messages where you're both talking about murder? Eddie claims he just wanted to impress Scarlett. He said that Scarlett had told him in person that she was going to write a book. And I guess this was like their way of like method acting. So for her writing, he said he just wanted to impress her with his knowledge. You guys were specifically talking about ways to preserve Brianna's body parts after the murder.
Well, I thought I thought Scarlett just wanted to learn about preservatives. I didn't agree with anything she said in those conversations. I mean, nothing was really a plan. It was just me joking. I don't tend to speak to people until I get used to them anyway. Eddie said he thought everything Scarlett was saying was just a made up fantasy. He just went along with it because he wanted to impress her and he wanted a friend.
That's it. Now, about the crazy transphobic messages, Eddie said, It was all a joke. I was just picking up what I've learned from people. You know how people talk about other people? I just pick it up and I use it. Why would you just simply do what they do? I have insufficient knowledge about myself to be able to tell you why I copy what other people do. He also claimed that he knew gay and bisexual people. So...
Okay, yeah, I mean, the police were not inclined to believe anything Eddie was saying. So at that point, he just stopped saying anything at all. He stopped talking to anybody except his mother before the trial. He was diagnosed with selective mutism. Now, just a quick disclaimer, selective mutism is a very real thing. Selective mutism is an anxiety condition where the sufferer is capable of speech and understanding language, but is incapable or unable to in certain situations, when they're
that typically deal with extreme loss or grief or stress, they can't talk in front of strangers. Sufferers said it feels like a switch suddenly flips and they can't speak even if they want to. And they just want to like grab at their throats and they're trying to push the words out. It's so frustrating and it's even more frustrating because it only happens in certain situations. So people feel like you're faking it, but they're not.
Now, the condition is relatively rare and it's found in less than 1% of the population, typically in younger children under the age of five and typically in girls. So Eddie's sudden onset of selective mutism, very rare indeed. But it doesn't really help him in any ways, right? In the trial? It does. It does. Yeah, it does. Um...
Okay, so let me tell you. First, the trial is delayed for months because Eddie's legal team is struggling to communicate with him on how he wants to proceed. The trial would officially begin November 27th, 2023. It would last for 18 days. And for the first time in British history, due to Eddie's new selective mutism, and again, if it ever sounds like I'm skeptical...
about selective mutism, I'm not skeptical about the condition or its existence or the real life effects that it has on real people who have it. I guess all I'm trying to say is I can't be 100% certain that that is what Eddie had, right? Mm-hmm.
Now, it did make the trial unnecessarily difficult. For the first time in British history, Eddie was allowed to give evidence by typing it out on his computer. That's how he gave his statements. He would sit in a different room from the courtroom with his little keyboard. And whenever he wanted to ask a question or say something, words would appear on the screen and they had to be read out for the rest of the court. And it was a whole process because Eddie would stop to think or he would delete everything he was typing, fix up his grammar, and then someone would have to read it out loud for him.
Do they see like real life typing? Yeah. And it's just annoying. Like I think it's also kind of insulting. Like really now? Yeah. You know, and then he and Scarlett were also given fidget toys in court, which a lot of people were upset by. And I can kind of understand. I was trying to wrap my head around it. I can understand the use of fidget toys in courtrooms if it means if the purpose is for a smoother trial for the victim's family.
But it is kind of annoying when they show up with like fidget toys and Sudoku books that they're allowed to work on. Like you're just puzzling. Like I think that's kind of disrespected. I mean, I don't think that they're respectful people in any way, shape or form to begin with. But Eddie was just playing Sudoku at like high key points of the trial, especially when they're describing Brianna's stab wounds. He's just puzzling.
And just as Eddie blamed Scarlett, Scarlett and her attorney were blaming Eddie. I mean, the whole thing was really ridiculous. At one point, Eddie's attorneys even accused Scarlett and her defense team for stealing their defense. It's giving, I robbed a bank and then you robbed me. How dare you? Side note, at first, before the trial, Scarlett did try to tell the police the whole Manchester guy story where she was like, oh, Brianna left to go meet a guy from Manchester. But once the police brought in all the evidence, she started answering with just no comment, no comment. Eddie did it.
She said the same thing about the text messages, that they were all fantasies, that she just liked to fantasize about this. The prosecutors asked her, why even fantasize about killing your friends? Like, that's not a normal thing. And Scarlett would respond, I just found it all quite interesting. Why did you tell Eddie that you already killed two people? I just wanted him to think that I was a serial killer to add to the fantasy. You told him that you wanted to eat human flesh. Did you intend to eat human flesh? No.
Then why did you tell Eddie that you wanted to? I just know that some serial killers would. Like they'd be cannibals, for example. I thought I would introduce the fantasy with Eddie. It was just weird.
During the trial, Brianna's mom was devastated when she found out that her daughter was killed by someone she knew as a friend. She never met Scarlett, but Brianna used to talk about her all the time about how they would hang out at McDonald's afterwards. And she would later say it was the worst possible person that could have done this to her because it was someone that we trusted, someone that Brianna trusted. As a parent, you would never imagine that another child that your child has met from school would be capable of such a thing.
It was also revealed that just four months before Brianna's murder, Scarlett did in fact poison a 13-year-old at her previous school. That's why she transferred.
She brought a bag of gummies to school. They were cannabis edibles. And she kept trying to get everyone to try it. She's like, try it, try it. I mean, by this point, she already had a reputation of being a creepy, untrustworthy person. So everybody rejected. Scarlett was so peeved off by this that she went up to a 13-year-old at her old school and basically just forced them to take the gummy. Within 15 minutes, the unnamed 13-year-old started feeling an odd sensation, tingly sensations, like their heart was racing, their mind-body connection was not...
not intact they were hospitalized because again we don't know how much like 13 year olds i don't think that they can metabolize much cannabis and they were spiked they were poisoned they were drugged wow yeah
which, I mean, it was a huge deal, but the school did not treat it like a big deal. Essentially, Scarlett poisoned a 13-year-old, and this is crazy, but Scarlett was not expelled from her school. She was just suspended for five days, and in that time, she was arranged to transfer to a new school, and her old school said it was to give her a second chance. She got transferred to Birchwood Community High, where she would meet Brianna. This was her second chance.
The new high school, they didn't even know the extent of the poisoning. They just thought that she brought weed to school. That's why she was being transferred. During the trial, it's revealed that Scarlett and Eddie had tried to kill Brianna twice before. So the ibuprofen was one attempt. And the second attempt was they wanted to lure her out to the park like two weeks before the actual murder. But it was Brianna's stepdad's birthday. So she did not go.
Now, a lot of netizens initially thought that Scarlett was the most vile of the two. Like she was more evil than Eddie because there was a lot of notes and journals that were released by the public. Her obsession with these really creepy movies and the serial killers. People thought that because she's the one that befriended Brianna, she's the one sending all these text messages to Eddie.
he's just engaging, right? But she seems more excited about killing someone. That's what netizens thought. But then after the trial, a lot of netizens think that Eddie is actually the more evil one. I mean, don't get me wrong. Scarlett is twisted. Netizens think that she's vile, evil, gross, and she's fascinated and excited about the idea of killing someone. And she needs help. She needs to be kept away from society. She's a danger and she's an evil person. But Eddie, Eddie seems to have killed on pure hatred alone.
Like he hated Brianna for who she was. The attorneys, the defense attorneys would argue that because there were other people on the kill list that were not transgender, that meant that this was not a hate crime. This was just two people who wanted to kill someone and chose Brianna, not because of her identity, but because she was vulnerable. Meanwhile, during the trial, Eddie's dad could not show up to court because this is so foul. But just a few days before Eddie went on trial for murdering a 16 year old girl,
Eddie's dad drove up to a bus stop in his Maserati. He saw two 16-year-old girls standing there waiting for the bus, and he pulled down his pants, exposed his privates, and started touching himself while making eye contact with the two 16-year-olds.
A couple days before that killing, Eddie's dad. Not the killing, the murder trial. So he's already going to be on. Oh, this is in the middle of the trial. Before the murder trial starts, like while they're prepping. His dad is driving around in a Maserati. Yeah. And they just pull up to two young girls and doing that in public. Yeah, the girls that are the same age as Brianna. And then he was caught? Yeah.
He did it twice actually. So that day he would drive and he exposed himself and touched himself and then he was driving around town the rest of the day and then found those two girls again on the street and did it again. When he was brought in by the police, he argued that he needed to have his pants down even while driving due to his medical issues. What are his medical issues? He said that he would need to urgently pee, like urinate at any time. So he always drove with his wee-wee out is basically what he's saying.
Eddie's dad, Kyle Ratcliffe, also had indecent photos and secret recording videos of 12 to 15 year old girls in the changing rooms of a water park on his phone. He tried to argue that someone sent them to him on Snapchat, but that was easily proven as a lie. He also searched up on the Internet explicit acts involving school children while his son was preparing for a murder trial. He would be tried in the very same court as his son, and he was sentenced to 15 months in prison. So he couldn't show up to Eddie's like the second half of his trial.
Wow, this is crazy. Yeah, I don't even know what to say about that. But in the end, prosecutors argued that both Eddie and Scarlett were equally guilty. They both planned and acted on the murder together. It didn't matter who stabbed or if they both or who started it first. They played a role in her death. December 20th, 2023, Scarlett and Eddie were both found guilty of murder. The judge stated transphobia was an aggravating factor, but they did not get charged with a hate crime.
They were both given life sentences. Scarlett was sentenced to a minimum of 22 years before she's eligible for parole. Eddie, a minimum of 20. Brianna's mom, Esther, gave her impact statement where she told the court, due to Brianna's autism, ADHD, and anxiety, she wasn't really good at spotting danger, but nobody could have predicted this situation was going to be like this.
She said she was devastated that it was someone that Brianna considered a friend. She said someone we believed to be her friend, someone that we trusted, someone that I was so happy that she had, fearing that my child had been lonely. I have moments where I feel sorry for them because they have also ruined their own lives. But I have to remember that they felt no empathy for Brianna when they left her bleeding to death after their premeditated and vicious attack, which was carried out not because Brianna had done anything wrong, but just because one hated trans people and the other thought it would be fun.
I wish we knew more about Brianna's life before she passed, but I think just seeing the way that Brianna's mom, Esther, has been carrying herself with so much grace and compassion, which she absolutely does not need to have in this situation, I think it's very easy to tell what kind of person Brianna was too, because this is her mom. When the verdict was read for Scarlett and Eddie, Esther said, "'When the verdict came through, I saw how devastated one of the moms was.'"
Scarlett's parents have been really, like they have fully disowned Scarlett. They're apologizing nonstop. They want nothing to do with Scarlett. But Brianna's mom said, it kind of made me feel that's how I felt when I found out about what happened to Brianna. I don't feel that either Scarlett or Eddie are the type of people that would get on very well in prison. And I suppose that is now a worry for their parents. For me, I feel that Brianna is in a better place, but they've got to continue knowing what their children have done.
And it's true that we've all lost our children. At one vigil held for Brianna, everyone turned on their phone flashlights and lifted them in the air for two minutes of silence. And Brianna's mom said, if she could see from wherever she is now, I think she would have been very happy.
Brianna's mother Esther now has started Peace and Mind UK, a nonprofit dedicated to teaching mindfulness techniques in schools with the aim of teaching children to cope with negative emotions in a very healthy way. There is a GoFundMe that I've linked below where all the profits will go to training teachers. But there's a book called Beyond the Gender Binary and it reads, how are you supposed to be believed about the harm that you experience when people don't even believe that you exist?
And that's how the trans community felt when the authorities and the press refused to classify this as a hate crime. There are some vile comments on Twitter of people deadnaming Brianna, of people misgendering Brianna, and somehow trying to excuse her killers because Brianna was transgender.
The vigils held for Brianna were a mixture of vigils and protest. I mean, it was a mixture of grief and anger. Many of Brianna's friends who have spoken out since her murder, many of them are from the trans community. And they said the minute that they spoke out, people, strangers started flooding their comment sections with just deplorable things. One friend told Vice News, they can't let go of their horrible politics for just one minute. They're constantly trying to debate or trying to say that she was a man. It's vile.
One of Brianna's friends stated, According to a spokesperson for the Mermaids UK, a charity for transgender youth, they saw a 31% spike that week in calls to their helpline.
Another friend of Brianna's just said, Brianna's biological dad stated,
But Eddie is trying to appeal right now. And I'm not sure what we can do as netizens, but I hope this video is a reminder of the person that he is and how he does not deserve an appeal. And he does not get to make up all these bizarre excuses of how he just talks like that because he heard other people talk like that and how he knows gay people. He played Sudoku while the prosecutors recounted how Brianna was stabbed. He texted that he wanted to know if...
It would scream like a boy or girl. Brianna's funeral was held March 15th, 2023. She was pulled by white horses in a white carriage with pink feathers. All mourners were asked to wear pink. And Amelia, Brianna's best friend, was in attendance. And this was the first time they were meeting in person at her funeral.
I think being a doctor for inmates would be a very emotionally exhausting job, especially if that includes juvenile offenders. Dr. Church was sitting in front of Scarlett and she said that she had something she wanted to say. She was incredibly calm and she said, I indeed did kill Brianna. I stabbed her. Why? I found it exciting. She said that she was the one that made the final injuries and if she wasn't interrupted, she would have dragged Brianna's body to the secluded woods to hide her. Why? Why?
I never wanted her to leave. I didn't want her to stop being my friend, so I killed her so that she could always be with me. She admitted to the doctor that she wanted to take parts of Brianna's bodies as a token. She wanted to keep Brianna's pretty eyes. Scarlett would later immediately take it all back and blame Eddie for the attack. She was also asked if she had any regret for Brianna's murder, and she said, I did for two hours. Now I don't give a fuck and I'd do it again. Whoa.
Which, side note, it's also messy, but Scarlett created another kill list while she was in prison, and it's just names of, like, several staff members, doctors, and guards that were taking care of her. Meanwhile, Eddie is allegedly in speech therapy on taxpayer money and complains about how fruit is not fresh enough at his facility.
And here's what's interesting. Apparently, doodles mean something. Like what someone chooses to doodle and at what point they doodle that could have a lot of meaning. During the trial, Scarlett sat there folding a piece of paper, refolding it, opening it, folding it, and drawing a very detailed eye. She would color the pupils and sketch the eyebrows. And it's stated that people who draw eyes want to be seen or they feel like they're being watched and they don't like it.
It's likely that Scarlett wanted to be seen, but she won't be because she will be in prison and she will be watched 24-7 by guards. Meanwhile, thousands of people will remember Brianna forever. Thousands of people have showed up to her vigils to hold signs that read, rest in pride, rest in power. Pride and power again. Something Scarlett and Eddie will never have ever. And that is the case of Brianna Jai.
It was a really heavy one. What are your thoughts? I'm going to leave a link to Brianna's Mother's charity in the description. If you have even like a dollar, if you resonate with their mission, I would check it out. And with that being said, please stay safe. And I will see you guys on Wednesday.