Melissa Todorovic
Melissa Todorovic, the "puppetmaster" behind the killing of Stefanie Rengel, has been given an adult sentence for the 14-year-old's murder.
In a stinging decision today, Ontario Superior Court Judge Ian Nordheimer said Ms. Todorovic, now 17, has a "character flaw that is frightening in its prospects" and that the life-long monitoring under an adult sentence better protects the public.
The sentence means Ms. Todorovic, while theoretically receiving a life sentence, nonetheless will be eligible for parole at the age of 23, the adult sentence being tempered by the fact she is still a youth. The imposition of the so-called adult sentence (for adults, first-degree murder means life in prison with no parole for 25 years) means the publication ban that protected Ms. Todorovic's name is lifted.
The teen with what almost everyone who assessed her called a stunning lack of remorse cried when Judge Nordheimer pronounced the sentence.
In the front row, her parents, maternal grandmother and little brother - the stable, loving family who gave Ms. Todorovic every chance to develop into a normal teen - fell sobbing into one another's arms.
Ms. Rengel was stabbed six times and left to die in the snow outside her east-end Toronto home on Jan 1, 2008.
She had been lured to her death by a young man, who can be identified only as D.B. and who was then Ms. Todorovic's 17-year-old boyfriend.
But though DB was the actual killer - he has pleaded guilty to first degree murder - he was relentlessly badgered to kill Ms. Rengel by Ms. Todorovic. Hundreds of MSN messages, in which she urged DB on, threatening to withhold sex and sleep with other boys, were evidence at Ms. Todorovic's trial in March.
Judge Nordheimer rejected defence arguments that she was less blameworthy because she wasn't present when Ms. Rengel was slain.
"A person who plans and orchestrates and directs another person to take the life of a human being is at least as morally culpable as the person who does the actual act," the judge wrote in his 23-page decision.
"Put simply," he said, "the puppermaster is not less blameworthy than the puppet.
"Indeed, I would suggest that the master is more culpable since he or she puts the wheels in motion..."