Court hears disturbing exchange between accused, his girlfriend and two others
CALGARY — In the weeks leading up to the slaughter of a Medicine Hat family, Jeremy Steinke exchanged e-mails planning the murders not only with his underage girlfriend – whom he describes as the mastermind of the plot – but also with two unnamed friends, an Alberta court was told yesterday.
Police seized 4,000 pages of material from popular social-networking site Nexopia. The site was used by both Mr. Steinke, 25, who went by the handle “souleater,” and his then 12-year-old girlfriend, who had the user name “runawaydevil,” shortly before her parents and eight-year-old brother were killed in April, 2006.
Police Sergeant Tim Schottner, a computer forensics expert, read disturbing postings from Mr. Steinke’s account, as well as e-mails exchanged with runawaydevil and two unknown individuals dubbed “Super.Jesus” and “killmyheart.”
“My girlfriends family are totally unfair,” began a 15-line poem posted on souleater’s account, “…She continues to thank that I came/Into her life to help her out … Their throats I want to slit.”
Around the same time, a message to souleater from runawaydevil read: “rawr i hate them. so i have this plan. it begins with me killing them. and ends with me living with you.”
The next day, souleater replied: “Well I love your plan but we need to get a little more creative with like details & stuff!”
Many of the Internet musings and exchanges were presented during the girl’s trial last year, when she was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder. But new e-mails were made public yesterday at the Court of Queen’s Bench in Calgary, where Mr. Steinke is facing the same set of charges.
On April 4, 2006, Super.Jesus wrote to souleater to ask how his girlfriend was doing.
Souleater replied “um just cramp with her rents… I was worried cuz she was getting in so much crap that we were going to have relationship problems but she said she’d never break up with me and to stop worrying about it!”
Super.Jesus responded with the symbol for a frowning face, adding, “Tell her parents to shove it.”
In a message back, souleater said, “yeah right that will work… um we were thinking more among the lines of killing them.! :rofl:”
Super.Jesus replied, “Lmfao. Nice.”
Souleater’s response: “yepperz & the best part is it was her idea! :D”
Not long before that exchange, souleater wrote to killmyheart to talk about an evening out.
“I’d most likely get into a scrap!” souleater wrote, “I guess it wouldn’t be to bad seeing as I want to kill some1 right now!”
Killmyheart responded the next day, apparently offering his or her help and asked, “who do you want to kill … I wouldn’t let you kill them unless you wouldn’t get caught.”
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