An Ontario Superior Court jury yesterday saw shocking videotapes of a teenage girl who spoke in a childish whisper, blithely detailing for Toronto Police homicide detectives her extensive knowledge of and alleged participation in the stabbing death of 14-year-old Stefanie Rengel.
In one particularly galling remark, the girl protested that she and her co-accused boyfriend weren't talking earlier that evening only of their alleged plan to kill the lovely Grade 9 student.
"We were just talking about other stuff," the girl told Toronto Police Detective Doug Sansom and Detective-Sergeant Steve Ryan. "Like our birthday party and things ... we weren't concentrated on just her [Stefanie]dying."
Two interviews - the first made when police believed the girl, who can be identified only as M.T., was merely an important witness to the crime, the second when they concluded she had been a participant - were videotaped at a police station hours after Stefanie fell in a snowbank not far from her east-end home and died of her wounds.
Later yesterday, in cross-examination by M.T.'s lawyer, Marshall Sack, Det.-Sgt. Ryan said of the exchange when he realized the girl wasn't just a witness, "For the first time in my 20 years of police work, the hair on the back of my neck stood up."
He was referring to a point in the first interview when Det. Sansom asked M.T., who was accompanied by her mother throughout, if, when police interviewed her boyfriend, "will he tell us that you had asked him to do this?"
"Probably," said M.T.
"And he'll say that, will he say that because you did ask him to do this?" Det. Sansom asked.
M.T. calmly nodded yes, prompting her mother to blurt out, "M., do you know what you're saying?"
Immediately thereafter, the detectives ended the interview, told M.T. "you need to be arrested for part of this homicide" and arranged for her to consult a lawyer.
The two teens are accused of first-degree murder in Stefanie's death on New Year's Day of last year - the 19-year-old boy, D.B., alleged to have been the actual killer, the 17-year-old girl the mastermind who wasn't there but was the alleged moving force.
The girl, who has pleaded not guilty, is on trial now; the boyfriend will be tried separately later this year. Because they were under 18 at the time, their identities are protected by the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
After a private consultation with the lawyer and her mother, police then took M.T. painstakingly through her rights and told her repeatedly she didn't have to make any statement at all. But she agreed to do so, again with her mother present.
In this second one, she admitted she not only repeatedly told D.B. she "wanted her [Stefanie]dead," but also that she threatened to break up with him if he didn't do the deed.
As D.B. left his home that evening, carrying a lethal knife with an eight-inch blade, she told the detectives, she was almost continuously talking to him on her cellphone.
In fact, she told police about the knife, the description perfectly accurate, about five hours before a constable found it half-buried in snow near the Rengel house.
Minutes after D.B. saw Stefanie coming out of her home - it is alleged he lured her outside, call-blocking his number and pretending to be someone else - he hung up the phone.
"And then," the girl told the detectives, "I called him and I said, 'Did you kill her?' or something."
D.B. allegedly stopped off at a friend's, where he ditched his jacket and the knife in a backyard, then took a cab to M.T.'s house, where she was home alone, her parents and younger brother out at a movie. According to what prosecutor Robin Flumerfelt told the jurors in his opening remarks earlier this week, in an Internet chat with a girlfriend, M.T. denied that she or D.B. had anything to do with Stefanie's death, but gleefully bragged, "we fucked tonight lol."
She told the detectives that she knew where he had stabbed Stefanie - she was struck six times with the blade, the three most lethal wounds to her liver, lung and stomach - because, at her request, they basically re-enacted the attack.
"I just said, like, pretend I'm Stef," the girl said, "just show me what you did and then he said, 'I took the knife and I stabbed her in the stomach and then she bent over.' "
Throughout both interviews, M.T. was quiet and self-possessed, even placid. The only times she displayed any passion was when her mother pressed her to be truthful - and she snapped at her in a peevish voice - or once asked, clearly horrified, why she hadn't called police or 911 to stop D.B. as he was en route to Stefanie's.
"But you should have called," her mother said, obviously distressed. "For some, for the police at least. For me. For anybody. Did you think of it?" she finally asked. "A little bit," M.T. said a minute later, "but I was, there was no point in calling cause if someone's stabbed, they're pretty much dead."
Several times during the second interview, the girl wept or snuffled, but never when asked how she felt about Stefanie's death (of which she said she felt, "Sort of like happy that she's dead but then bad"), only when she was talking of herself and the problems Stefanie (more accurately, the girl's obsession with Stefanie) had caused her and her boyfriend.
Although a couple of times M.T. protested that she was only joking about wanting Stefanie dead or that she didn't know D.B. was actually going to kill her, when Det. Sansom said, "I get the impression that you disliked Stef far more than he disliked her, and this idea of going and killing Stefanie might have been more your idea than his idea. Am I accurate?" M.T. said, "Yeah."
The trial resumes on Monday.