Pod Insights Canadian True Crime The Richardson Family Murders [1] About this episode A three-part series — A little boy peered through the window of a neighbour’s home one Sunday in Medicine Hat, Alberta, and discovered a scene so horrific it would shock even seasoned police officers.
A frantic search began for a missing 12-year-old girl.
* Additional content warning: this episode includes the death of a child. Please take care when listening.
The intention of this series is to take a look back at a shocking crime sensationalized through headlines and explore how it impacted the community. Some names have been changed to respect the privacy of those involved.
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Canadian True Crime donates monthly to help those facing injustice.
This month we have donated to the Calgary Homicide Support Society. https://www.calgaryhss.ca/
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Transcript 8,721 words · 10 speakers
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1:02 Speaker 02 Canadian True Crime is a completely independent production, funded mainly through advertising. You can listen to Canadian True Crime ad-free and early on Amazon Music, included with Prime, Apple Podcasts, Patreon, and Supercast. The podcast often has disturbing content and coarse language. It's not for everyone. Please take care when listening.
1:22 Speaker 03 Hi there, I hope you're well. Today, we start a two-part series about another one of the most notorious and disturbing murder cases in recent Canadian history. So sorry about the slightly longer wait. With cases like this that are well-known and highly requested, it's more important than ever that we handle them with the care and depth they deserve. So thanks so much for your patience and understanding, and your kind messages. This tragic story has been highly sensationalized across Canada and around the world, resulting in considerable online lore that focuses on some shocking details, involving a 300-year-old werewolf,
2:05 Speaker 03 vials of blood, the goth subculture, natural-born killers, teenage rebellion in the online era, moral panic, and the nature of evil. But as you'll find out, some of this law has been distorted and its importance to the actual crime exaggerated, to the point where many of the most widely held narratives surrounding this case rely more on public imagination than actual facts. This two-part series has been pieced together from court documents and the news archives, including the trial reporting of Sherry Zikafus and Robert Remington for the Calgary Herald, as well as their investigative book, Runaway Devil.
2:49 Speaker 03 Please note that even though international media has published the name and identity of a key figure in this case, they are still under publication ban in Canada, so we've given them a different name. Some other names have also been changed to respect privacy. An additional content warning: this series also includes the death of a child. And with that, it's on with the show.
3:26 Speaker 03 It was Sunday, April 23rd of 2006, just after lunchtime, in the small city of Medicine Hat, located along the South Saskatchewan River in Alberta. Medicine Hat seems like a strange name for a city, but it's derived from a Blackfoot word that literally means medicine man's hat, a nod to the eagle-feather headdress worn by indigenous spiritual leaders. The land holds deep cultural significance for the Blackfoot people. Long before European settlers arrived, they camped in the area during the winters. In 2006, Medicine Hat was home to about 60,000 residents.
4:09 Speaker 03 It's about a three-hour drive southeast of Calgary, and said to be the sunniest place in Canada. Eight-year-old Jacob Richardson could perhaps be considered one of the most popular kids in town. He was a cheerful child, always grinning, a known Star Wars fan who fancied himself a Jedi Knight.
4:33 Speaker 03 That Sunday, just after lunchtime, a six-year-old neighbour showed up to see if Jacob could come out and play. He knocked at the door, but no one answered. It was very strange. The young neighbour had seen Jacob's father's white truck parked in the driveway and assumed the Richardson family were at home. So he went over to a nearby window and peeked through to check. He saw somebody through the window, lying on the ground, motionless. Distressed, the little boy told his mother, who came back with him to look through the same window. She immediately called 911.
5:17 Speaker 03 When the police arrived, they noticed the white truck's passenger window was smashed out. They entered the home with a battering ram, and they could hear a dog bark in the basement. They went down the stairs, where they were met with a very confronting scene. Lying on the floor was the body of a woman in her 40s, covered in blood, with a small dog standing next to her whimpering. Nearby was another body of a man around the same age, also covered in blood. Both of his hands were clenched tightly in a fist, as though he had died in a fighting position.
5:59 Speaker 03 There was a bloody, black-handled knife on the ground next to him. The knife was bent wildly out of shape, and its once-straight tip was now curved like a hook. There had clearly been some kind of confrontation in the home. The stairwell railing was broken. There was blood spattered on the walls, the carpet, even the ceiling. It was everywhere. The police went upstairs, seeing bloody handprints smeared on the walls and railing. It seemed to indicate there was more to be found. They saw a large amount of blood on the carpet upstairs that continued into a child's bedroom.
6:44 Speaker 03 Lying on the bed was the body of a little boy on his side, covered in blood. His bed was covered in blood. There was a large blood stain on the carpet and blood spatter on the wall and all over his toys, including a plastic toy Star Wars lightsaber. The discovery of two adults and one child who had likely met terrible deaths was already distressing for even seasoned police officers. One of the officers would later describe the scene as horrific, the worst they'd ever had to attend.
7:24 Speaker 03 But they had seen photos on the walls depicting a family with four members, two children. The little boy seemed to have an older sister. Where was she? The police searched the house more thoroughly and found another kitchen knife in the bathroom across from the little boy's bedroom. It had been partially rinsed off, but there was clearly blood on it. There was also a partial footprint in blood on the floor, but there was no sign of the girl. The neighbour told the police the family's names. Parents Mark and Deborah Richardson, twelve-year-old daughter Jade, and son Jacob, who was eight.
8:09 Speaker 03 And they'd been at home the previous night as Mark barbecued dinner. The neighbour said there was nothing unusual or notable heard after that.
8:22 Speaker 03 The police feared that twelve-year-old Jade might have been abducted by whoever had killed the rest of her family. They had to locate her as soon as possible. As a forensic team was called to help process the crime scene, a frantic search for Jade Richardson began, with investigators reaching out to staff from the school Jade attended for any leads about what might have happened and where she might be. Although it was a Sunday afternoon, they managed to connect with Jade's school councillor within a few hours and were given access to her locker. Inside, they came across a hand-drawn cartoon that gave them pause.
9:06 Speaker 03 Over a series of nine or 10 crudely drawn boxes, the cartoon strip depicted three stick figures being burned alive while two other figures laughed nearby. There was no indication of who the author was or what it was in reference to.
9:26 Speaker 03 The next step was to contact Jade's known school friends to see if they knew anything. And that was when the police learned some very disturbing information. 12-year-old Jade Richardson had been dating a 23-year-old man for a couple of months and her parents were opposed to the relationship, according to her friends. They said Jade often commented about how much she hated her family and wanted them to die, but they didn't take her seriously. They were all adolescents after all. They said stuff like that about their parents too. Same thing with the stick figure cartoon.
10:08 Speaker 03 One of the friends confirmed that Jade herself did draw the cartoon, pointing out that the letter "I" was dotted with an "X", a trademark of Jade's own handwriting. But it was just venting, they thought. Typical teenage angst.
10:28 Speaker 03 As for the man Jade had been dating, her friends told police his name was Jeremy Steinke. They said at first, they didn't really get a good feeling about him because of the age difference, but they never thought he was dangerous. Just older and really immature for his age. Now the police had two people to find. Local media was notified to issue a public plea via radio, TV and newspapers.
11:00 Speaker 03 By that evening, the media was reporting that the bodies of a man, woman and little boy had been discovered in a medicine hat home, and the police needed help to find a missing girl on an urgent family matter. A photo was broadcast with this information, showing an attractive young girl with long dark hair and an excited smile. This would be the first time and the last time the girl's real name would be published in Canadian media.
11:35 Speaker 03 That same Sunday evening, the police received a phone call from a young man named James, who had just seen a picture pop up on his TV of a girl he recognised. He told them he knew Jade Richardson and had seen her very recently. James identified himself as a friend of Jade's boyfriend, Jeremy Allen Steinkie, and he'd been with them both that Sunday afternoon just a few hours earlier. They were all at a small house party with about six others, mostly teenagers, and there was more. James told the police that at one point Jeremy Steinkie called him over and calmly informed
12:20 Speaker 03 him that he and Jade had just killed her family. They'd been, quote, "gutted like a fish."
12:29 Speaker 03 And Jade Richardson herself said that her little brother, quote, "pleaded for his life and gurgled as he died."
12:39 Speaker 03 "The comments were disturbing," James said, "but he didn't really believe what they were saying. The couple did not seem upset, they were happy together that day. So he just told Jeremy, 'You're crazy,' and forgot about what they said." It was only later that evening, when he was shocked to see Jade's photo on TV along with news about the murders, that James realised the importance of the conversation and called the police. He gave them the address of the apartment where they were all partying. It was very close to where the Richardson family lived. Investigators took a look at the locations and the timeline.
13:23 Speaker 03 They realised that at the exact same time as Jade Richardson was partying at that apartment with her much older boyfriend, the police were discovering the dead bodies of her parents and younger brother less than a kilometre away. It was imperative that this couple be found as soon as possible. James told the police that the party ended when several of the partygoers announced they were driving to Saskatchewan. Jeremy and Jade volunteered to go with them, and the car departed for the town of Leda, about two hours' drive away from Medicine Hat. James told the police it had only been a few hours since they left.
14:08 Speaker 03 They'd probably arrived at Leda already, or were close. The police were quick to alert law enforcement in the area of Leda, Saskatchewan, to be on the lookout for a small pickup truck with a bunch of teenagers and young people in it. Investigators were starting to suspect that 12-year-old Jade might not have been abducted by the same person who killed her family. It appeared that she might have gone with him willingly, and perhaps she might not be a victim in the way they first suspected.
14:59 Speaker 03 The Richardson family had only moved to Medicine Hat three years earlier. Mark and Debra were originally from Sudbury, a city in Ontario, and they met at the gym in 1990. Debra was six years older than Mark, but they bonded quickly because they were both recovering from past issues with substance abuse, according to the book Runaway Devil by Zikufus and Remington. By the time Mark and Debra met, they had completely turned their lives around, hence why they were at the gym. A year later, they were married, and they both stayed on the wagon from that point on,
15:41 Speaker 03 becoming mentors and sponsors at substance abuse recovery programs as they planned their own family. Deborah gave birth to Jade in 1993, and a few years later, she was pregnant with Jacob. They wanted to take advantage of opportunities in oil and gas in Alberta, and the family decided to make a move from Ontario to the town of Oketoks, just south of Calgary. Neighbors there would describe them as a model family who were seen to treat each other with respect and love. It was a good move for the family.
16:21 Speaker 03 Mark Richardson built up a career in electrical engineering and was known to be a good worker, a skilled mechanic and welder, someone who got things done and could fix just about anything. Within a few years, his company offered him a promotion, which included paying for the family to relocate a few hours' drive south to Medicine Hat. So they did. They enrolled the kids in school, Jacob in grade one, where he soon gained a reputation as a lovable class clown. Jade entered grade five and was described as a very intelligent, straight-A student,
17:02 Speaker 03 a normal, well-adjusted girl who was quick to make new friends. The Richardson family was known as close-knit and content, good church people, the picture of middle-class suburbia. They purchased a nice, split-level family home in Medicine Hat and were known as the kind of family that played ball together in the backyard on warm summer evenings. Even their answering machine greeting told the caller they had reached "the very happy home of the Richardsons." But that happy home was about to be faced with a crisis.
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18:59 Speaker 03 When Jade Richardson started grade six, she was the same as all her friends, an ordinary pre-teen. But as the year progressed, she physically matured much, much faster than her friends. And they noticed that her rapidly changing body troubled her and made her feel awkward. During that year, Jade slowly began changing her appearance. She got into wicker and witchy stuff. She started wearing more black clothing and eyeliner. By the end of grade six, Jade had a fully-developed woman's body and could pass for 15 or 16 years old. She was only 11.
19:45 Speaker 03 Jade and her friends were hanging around at the local Medicine Hat Mall and came across a bunch of older teenagers and young adults who were all dressed in goth attire. Jade felt she'd found a home, and they soon befriended these new, older goth friends. Soon, she was incorporating fishnet stockings, spiked collars and chokers, chains, black mesh tops and short skirts into her wardrobe. Her mother would sigh to friends about how Jade seemed to be 11 going on 20, but it was just typical teenage rebellion stuff, par for the course.
20:28 Speaker 03 Jade turned 12 in October of 2005. She had just started grade seven and the older boys were showing a lot of interest in her. She started dating a 16-year-old boy who would later say he assumed she was about 14, because she was more mature than other girls he knew. When Jade's mother Deborah found out about that relationship, she insisted on meeting the boy. The encounter was reportedly awkward and embarrassing for Jade, something she never wanted to happen again. It spurred her to be more careful about hiding future romantic relationships from her parents.
21:12 Speaker 03 After just a month, the 16-year-old boy broke it off, reportedly jealous of the time Jade was spending with her older goth friends. She'd grown particularly close to two older guys: a 19-year-old who went by the name Raven and sported an aesthetic similar to Edward Scissorhands, and a 20-year-old known as Trench Coat. The age difference might have been frowned upon in other friend groups, but Jade's new friend group was composed of older misfits who struggled to fit in, young adolescents struggling with their parents, and anything in between. They all found belonging and acceptance in being goth,
21:57 Speaker 03 where individualism was king and friendship wasn't restrained by age.
22:04 Speaker 03 The Goth subculture grew out of the post-punk music scene in the United Kingdom in the late seventies and early eighties, with bands like Susie and the Banshees, The Cure, and Joy Division bringing a darker and more atmospheric tone to punk. Inspiration was also drawn from Gothic literature and film, incorporating themes of darkness, mystery, melancholy, romanticism, and the macabre. The concept of "being Goth" grew into much more than just a musical movement. It offered a sense of belonging for people who felt like outsiders, and a space for
22:45 Speaker 03 self-expression through fashion, music, and art, and social media.
22:54 Speaker 03 Jade Richardson was active on MySpace and other social media sites of the day. It was 2005, before Facebook and Twitter. There were forums like Vampire Freaks for people interested in the Goth subculture, and Nexopia, a Canadian forum popular with young people at the time. Some of the handles Jade went by included XMadnessX, KillerKitty, and RunawayDevil, and she posted, quote, "I go crazy if I'm kept inside my house for too long."
23:32 Speaker 03 Jade listed a bunch of things she liked: guitars, loud music, eyeliner, bats, hatchets, serial killers, horror movies, criminal psychology, tarot cards. She wrote that she was into dark poetry and death metal music, and listed her heroes: Jeffrey Dahmer, Criss Angel, Marilyn Manson, and Batman. She also posted several photos of herself to her various profiles. In each of them, she wore heavy makeup and looked a lot older than what she actually was, though she listed her age as being 15.
24:12 Speaker 03 According to her profile, Jade was bisexual, an emotional person who thinks deep thoughts. She had a love of sharp junk. She wanted to be a piercer and tattoo artist, and she produced a long list of piercings she wanted to get. At the end of her profile, she wrote, "Welcome to my tragic end."
24:38 Speaker 03 There is some conflicting information about how exactly Jade Richardson met Jeremy Steinkie. Some say they met online, but according to the book Runaway Devil, Jade first came across the 23-year-old shortly after she started grade seven in the fall of 2005. Jeremy was doing donuts in a car at the Medicine Hat Mall parking lot. Jade was immediately impressed, and will later say she thought he was good-looking and the car was cool. There wasn't much else for Jade to be impressed by. Jeremy Steinkie did not have a lot going on in his life.
25:21 Speaker 03 He was an unemployed, high-school dropout, a known drug user who lived in a rundown old trailer with his mother and her latest boyfriend. But there was one aspect of his personality that was very important to Jade at the time. Jeremy was part of the local goth scene and was mutual friends with the 20-year-old who went by the name Trench Coat. In fact, Jeremy would say he thought Jade was actually dating Trench Coat at the time. Jeremy Steinkie was into heavy metal music and aspired to be a musician. He wrote emo poems and lyrics. He wore all-black hoodies and ripped jeans,
26:05 Speaker 03 and jewellery with spikes and skulls on it. He liked to wear a bandana around his neck that he would pull over his face, showing only his eyes that were heavily lined with black eyeliner. He often got into trouble with mall security staff. But among his group of friends, Jeremy was known as someone who was fun, polite, and loyal, nice and sweet, and a little weird. He was also the oldest, which came with benefits. He could drive them all around and buy alcohol for them.
26:42 Speaker 03 Jade Richardson and Jeremy Steinke were officially introduced towards the end of 2005 and got more acquainted as they saw each other at the same all-ages punk shows each week. They would both downplay the age difference by claiming they weren't aware of how vast it was. Jade would later say she knew Jeremy was older, but she wasn't sure how much older and she didn't really want to find out. She also claimed she told a friend to tell him that she was 13. Jeremy would later insist he was under the impression that Jade was 16.
27:22 Speaker 03 At home, Mark and Deborah Richardson were finding it more difficult to deal with their oldest child. It wasn't so much her appearance, it was her choice of friends and her changing attitude. When they discovered she'd been spending time with much older guys at the mall, like Raven and Trench Coat, they were extremely concerned. Jade had only just turned 12 and they knew she was active on the internet. They became highly suspicious that she was also messaging these older guys online. Perhaps they were the reason why she'd started to change.
28:02 Speaker 03 Mark and Deborah started monitoring Jade's computer usage and threatening to ground her. Jade confided in Jeremy about how her parents were trying to restrict her. He told her about his personal struggles too. Apparently he had a girlfriend that he was drifting away from. He and Jade were just platonic friends at this point, but things were changing. Shortly after that, in early February of 2006, Jeremy told Jade that he and his girlfriend had broken up. Then, on Valentine's Day, he wrote Jade a romantic poem and asked her to be his girlfriend. She said yes.
28:47 Speaker 03 Because Jade was already walking on ice with her parents, she was adamant about hiding her relationship with Jeremy from them. So at first, she stayed in touch with him by talking on the phone late at night, and meeting up in secret whenever they could. Jeremy would also pick Jade and her Goth friends up down the street, and drive them over to the trailer where he lived with his mother. Many of them were younger like Jade was, and struggling with their parents too. Some were known runaways, and Jeremy's trailer wasn't nice by any stretch, but it gave them what they craved:
29:27 Speaker 03 a refuge, a place with no rules and no one to be upset about what they were doing and who they were hanging with.
29:37 Speaker 03 One night, Deborah and Mark went to a work function, and trusted Jade to stay at home to babysit her younger brother Jacob. But before the function ended, Deborah received a phone call from the eight-year-old. He said his sister had gone out, and he was scared to be home by himself. Deborah and Mark left immediately to rush home to their son. When Jade returned home later, she seemed unbothered. She told them she'd decided to go to a convenience store with a friend instead. Jade's attitude was continuing to change for the worse. Her parents grounded her indefinitely.
30:21 Speaker 03 This marked a breaking point for Jade, according to the book Runaway Devil. She started complaining to everyone about her parents, announcing that she couldn't handle living under their rules anymore. She also appeared to be annoyed by her little brother Jacob. He felt it too, and told his parents he didn't want to walk home from school with her anymore.
30:47 Speaker 03 Twelve-year-old Jade Richardson had a new shining star. Jeremy Steinke, a 23-year-old man, made her feel heard and understood. And when she complained about her parents, he always took her side. Now that she was grounded indefinitely, it was much harder for her to see him and speak with him, but she went to great trouble to make it work. Her friends would call the house and after one of her parents answered and went to get her, they would pass the phone to Jeremy. Another night, when she knew her parents would be out, she invited him and some other friends over, and she snuck out herself whenever she could manage it.
31:32 Speaker 03 Jade and Jeremy realised they were both active with profiles on many of the same social media sites, and he started sending her friend requests. Jeremy mostly went by the name Soul Eater, and in his profile, he described himself as a 300-year-old lichen, or werewolf, and claimed he liked the taste of blood. He listed his favourite bands as Marilyn Manson, Cradle of Filth, and Slipknot. He also provided a long list of things he didn't like: having his heart broken, hypocrites, liars, the sun, posers and backstabbers, and spider webs.
32:14 Speaker 03 Jeremy added that he hated cops, black people, which he referred to by the N-word, and sex workers. Quote, "I like to kill them, play with their insides." Jade apparently thought all this was cool, and happily connected with Jeremy online. But two people who definitely did not think this was all cool were Jade's parents. The tension had been worsening as her relationship with Jeremy continued, and they'd started actively monitoring her computer activity. They discovered some of her social media profiles, they read the emo poems she posted,
32:57 Speaker 03 like this one, quote, "If you knew the tears I cried, if you knew what was behind these eyes, my heart and soul are filled with fear. Cut my wings from my back and let me bleed my dreams away."
33:14 Speaker 03 But the poems were not the most disturbing thing for Jade's parents. It was the photos she uploaded and other things she wrote. In one photo, Jade is holding up a real-looking fake gun with a nihilistic expression on her face. In another, she has black teardrops drawn in eyeliner seeping from her eyes and down her cheeks. In one post, she answers a questionnaire for fun. Next to "Have you ever been arrested?", Jade answered "Not yet." As to whether she'd ever cheated on someone, she wrote "Yes, many years ago", as though she'd been on the earth much longer than 12 years.
34:00 Speaker 03 Mark and Deborah assumed Jade's new older friends were the root cause of all this. A new rule: no more late-night phone calls from older guys. But they remained paranoid that she was still speaking to them online. Desperate, Mark put all the computer parts in a box and took it all to a local computer repair business. He was a mechanical whiz, but computers were not his forte. He asked the experts to help him access his daughter's private messages, but they weren't able to help. So he and Deborah decided they had no choice but to remove the computer from their home altogether.
34:44 Speaker 03 That should put an end to it. But Jade was smart. She just went to the public library and continued chatting online using computers there, warning all her friends that her parents were restricting her even more. Some of her friends were getting sick of Jeremy Stanky. It was clear he was extremely immature and a bit of a try-hard, always trying to show everyone how hardcore he thought he was. And Jade's friends were also concerned about the very large age gap.
35:21 Speaker 03 They would say they didn't think Jeremy held any control or influence over Jade, but they felt the relationship was inappropriate. She dismissed their concerns. Jeremy's own friends, the ones who were the same age as him, weren't all comfortable with the relationship either. In response to his ranting that Jade's parents were extremely strict and didn't want him around her, several of his friends reminded him that he was 23 years old, dating a girl in grade seven. He was a grown man and should have a job. But Jeremy didn't care. He maintained he believed what Jade wrote on her social media profiles, that she was
36:06 Speaker 03 15 or 16 years old, which at the time, was a year older than the legal age of consent in Canada. Despite the fact that Jade was still grounded and her parents were continuing to watch her closely, she continued communicating with Jeremy in secret and sneaking out to see him as much as she could. Jeremy and Jade spent a good couple of weeks expressing their undying love and affection towards each other on social media. Jeremy tried to emulate the dramatic, poetic, melancholic tone often associated with Gothic literature.
36:46 Speaker 03 In one message to Jade, he told her he'd started writing a song for her titled "Till Death Do We Part". He posted some lyrics. You're the blood that flows through my veins. You're the sun breaking through the clouds when it rains. My love is for you forever, as we die here together. We'll be together forever, till death do we part.
37:14 Speaker 03 Jeremy asked Jade for confirmation that she truly felt that she had fallen in love with him. She responded: "Well, you see, I fucking love you." But then, their messages started to take a decidedly dark turn. Jeremy asked her: "How goes it? You were a sight for sore eyes and I miss you more than killing people. Can we get together and kill people together?" Jade replied: "Aha, yes, we shall." She told him she missed him as well.
37:51 Speaker 03 From their separate social media profiles, it was clear that both Jade Richardson and Jeremy Steinkie wanted themselves to be seen as "very serious goths", or at least what they perceived the Goth aesthetic to be. It's also clear that their perception was shallow and uninformed, but they were by no means alone in that. Like with many alternative subcultures, the concept of being Goth has often been misunderstood. Its dark, threatening aesthetic and dramatic style has led to unfair associations with killing, hostility, and antisocial behaviour, often fuelled by the media.
38:35 Speaker 03 This narrative reached a fever pitch in 1999, after two teenagers dressed in black trench coats stormed Columbine High School with firearms and shot thirteen students and one teacher dead. As the media and the public searched for meaning, a prominent theory soon emerged that the shooters were into the Goth subculture. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were not Goth. They were mentally unstable, angry teenagers who listened to heavy metal and chose to wear trench coats that day. But thanks to the media spectacle,
39:14 Speaker 03 the concept of being Goth was suddenly associated with killing, death, and being a bad person. For parents, it became the latest moral panic, but for many rebellious kids, it was an aesthetic they saw as inspirational.
39:32 Speaker 03 The reality is that Goth culture is not at all about aggression, violence, criminality, or any kind of real-world harm. While the subculture does embrace imagery and themes related to death and the macabre, it's more symbolic and artistic, the creative expression of an appreciation for the beauty in darkness. Goth culture tends to be overwhelmingly peaceful, passive, introspective, and inclusive, with a strong emphasis on individuality and emotional depth. And there were some aspects of this interwoven in Jade and Jeremy's messages. He sent her another poem about how beautiful he thought she was.
40:18 Speaker 03 She asked him if they might get married one day. He said they would, and they spoke of having a Gothic-themed wedding and living together in a castle in Europe after that. They would even get their wedding rings tattooed on. Jeremy arranged for a gift to be delivered to Jade. It was a small vial that he said contained his own blood as a token of his love. When he didn't hear anything back from her, he messaged to ask what she thought of it and that he hoped she could get in touch with him soon. He added, quote, "When are we going to go get together and kill some more pitiful souls?"
41:03 Speaker 03 A few days later, Jeremy sent a message to an online friend. He wrote that he and Jade were fantasizing about doing something similar to his favorite movie, Natural Born Killers. The 1994 film, based on a Quentin Tarantino screenplay and directed by Oliver Stone, tells the story of a young couple who embark on a violent killing spree across the American Southwest. The story is told through a surreal, chaotic lens, portraying the couple, played by Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis, as anti-heroes, as the media glorifies their crimes and effectively turns them into cult figures.
41:52 Speaker 05 When them people come here and they ask you who done this, you tell Mickey and Mallory Knox did it, all right? Say it!
41:58 Speaker 06 Mickey and Mallory Knox did it.
42:00 Speaker 05 Mickey and Mallory Knox. I love you, Mickey.
42:05 Speaker 06 Love you, Mallory.
42:08 Speaker 07 It's just murder, man. All God's creatures do it in some form or another. I mean, you look in the forest. You got species killing other species, our species killing all species, including the forest. And we just call it industry, not murder.
42:25 Speaker 03 In a joking tone, Jeremy told his friend that "Natural Born Killers" was the best love story of all time. And he loved the film so much, he wanted to do what the legendary couple did. He said the idea was that he and Jade would first kill her family and then start a killing spree across Canada.
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44:08 Speaker 03 Jade was desperately trying to convince her parents to drop their restrictions and let her go to one of the all-ages punk shows to see her friends. So much so that she agreed to attend family counselling and seemed to have a good attitude about it. Deborah and Mark Richardson were reasonable people and reasonable parents. They wanted to keep Jade away from those older male friends. They didn't want to prevent her from keeping friends her own age, so they said they would let her attend the show, but they had to go too. She agreed. At one point, Mark and Deborah lost sight of Jade at the show and ran around the venue
44:51 Speaker 03 looking for her with one of her friends. They ended up frantically searching outside and down an alleyway, and there, they caught Jade making out with a man who was much older than her and seemed to be dressed like some kind of vampire. It was Jeremy Steenkey. That's the only reason she wanted to go to the show. When he saw them, he scurried off like a scared little rat. Mark and Deborah were extremely angry. It was bad enough that their 12-year-old daughter had been hanging out with older teenagers, but this "man" was something else.
45:32 Speaker 03 The indefinite grounding was back on, along with some additional restrictions. No more punk-rock shows, no seeing Jeremy. Jade wasn't allowed to speak on the phone at all now and was also banned from listening to music. No computer, no makeup, no more trips to the mall, no hanging out with friends. She was to go to school and come straight home again. Jade was outraged. Clearly, her parents thought she was still a little girl. She did not agree. She found a way to sneak off to the library to send Jeremy a message. It simply read, quote, "Sex, sex, sex, sex, oh, and love."
46:17 Speaker 03 He asked what she meant by that, and she explained, quote, "I miss you an overwhelmingly large amount and love you, and also that I want to bang you, ha, ha, ha, love."
46:35 Speaker 03 Jade Richardson was a whirlwind of emotions. While professing her undying love for Jeremy Steinke, she was also greatly upset about her home situation, and everybody knew it. Jade visited the school guidance counselor extremely upset, saying she hated her parents and wanted out of the house. She wanted to go into foster care. She kept saying, "I hate it there, I hate it there", over and over. The guidance counselor needed more information about what was going on. She was one of many who had noticed Jade's marked transformation in her personal appearance.
47:17 Speaker 03 And recently, her skirts were shorter than ever. She'd come to school with teardrops drawn on her face with eyeliner, and pentagrams drawn on her hand. None of it was a good look at a Catholic school. During one of several warnings she was given about dressing inappropriately, Jade explained the pentagrams were related to wicker, not the devil. But now it was clear she was extremely upset, insisting she wanted to be removed from her family home. The guidance counselor asked Jade some follow-up questions to get more details. If there was any indication of abuse, it would need to be reported.
48:01 Speaker 03 But as Jade continued complaining, the counselor realized that there was nothing out of the ordinary happening. Jade was just mad at her parents for treating her like the 12-year-old that she was. She'd been pleading with her parents to bring the computer back. She wore them down, but before they plugged it back in, she had to promise to remove the older guys like Raven, Trench Coat, and Jeremy Steinke from her friend list. She promised she would, but she wasn't happy about it. Shortly after this, Jade snuck off to send Jeremy another message. It read: "Roar, I hate them, so I have this plan.
48:46 Speaker 03 It begins with me killing them and ends with me living with you. So we are set. Love you with all my heart." Jeremy replied. Well, I love your plan, but we need to get a little more creative with like details and stuff.
49:04 Speaker 03 By this point, it was about a month before the murders. A few days later, Jeremy wrote a new poem and posted it to his Nexopia profile. Quote. My girlfriend's family are totally unfair. They say that they really care. They don't know what is going on, they just assume. As their greed continues to consume, she is slowly going insane. She continues to think that I came into her life to help her out and to stop what they keep trying to shout. It's all total bullshit. Their throats I want to slit. They will regret the shit they have done, especially when I see to it that they are gone.
49:49 Speaker 03 They shall pay for their insolence. Finally, there shall be silence. Their blood shall be payment.
49:59 Speaker 03 Jade was getting desperate to see Jeremy. She tried to sneak out of her house one evening, but Deborah and Mark caught her leaving. A week or so later, she tried again and was successful this time. She ran down the road where Jeremy was waiting for her in his mum's pickup truck. Then they drove back to the trailer he shared with his mum and her boyfriend. Jade would later claim that this was the time they first had sex. Quote. I thought it would bring us closer together. I thought it would make him happy. I knew he wanted to have sex with me.
50:41 Speaker 03 Jeremy Steinke was 23 years old. Under Canadian law today, the legal age of consent is 16, but at the time, it was just 14. And at just 12 years of age, Jade Richardson was still far too young to legally consent to sex.
51:05 Speaker 03 At the time, a homeless seventeen-year-old named Jordan had been crashing on the couch for a few months in the trailer Jeremy shared with his mother. Although Jordan was five years younger than Jeremy, they got on well and decided to start up their own heavy metal band. They even had a name for it, Project Status Quo. Jordan was planning to be the bass player and Jeremy had already started writing lyrics. Feeling inspired, he'd just written a new song and posted the lyrics to his Nexopia profile. Quote, "You feel you're alone but you're not. I will give you everything that I got. I will kill. I will spill the blood for you tonight.
51:50 Speaker 03 If you want the world, then we shall conquer if you promise that you will stay longer. We'll fight them all and see them fall and watch our shadows grow tall. We'll continue to kill and torture if thy lady desires more of a bloodshedding fight."
52:10 Speaker 03 Late one night, Jeremy's house guest, Jordan, went into the kitchen of the trailer to make a phone call. The seventeen-year-old picked up the phone, not knowing that Jeremy was already on the phone in his room. Jordan heard a female voice say, "Will you kill them?" Jeremy replied, "Let me think about it." Jordan would later say he'd been drinking that night, and described himself as "medium drunk" at the time. He didn't think much about that particular conversation. Jeremy was always bitching about Jade's parents. But he hadn't noticed Jeremy getting weirder and weirder.
52:53 Speaker 03 It had been a couple of months, maybe it was time to find another couch to crash on. Jordan moved out.
53:03 Speaker 03 About a week later, Jeremy Stonkey was chatting with another friend of his named Grant, and asked for his help to kill Jade's family. He needed ideas and someone he could trust. Grant thought Jeremy was just in a bad mood, blowing off steam. He refused to help, and instead, handed him a copy of Natural Born Killers as a kind of consolation prize. "One of the classics," he said.
53:33 Speaker 03 A few days later, on Friday, Grant posted a public message on Jeremy's Nexopia page, asking him sarcastically: "Hey man, what are you doing? I enjoy hitting myself and making my face bleed." Jeremy replied: "Oh yeah, lol. Hope you enjoy hitting yourself. I, on the other hand, would rather do morbid stuff to others. Like Jade's parents, for example. Which I'm going to do this weekend."
54:08 Speaker 03 That same Friday, Mark and Debra Richardson decided to go for a family motorbike ride. The book Runaway Devil details it was something they'd been doing for a couple of years as a family. Mark and Debra each had a motorbike, and would each take a kid, whether Jade or Jacob. It was by this point April 21. The warm spring weather was rolling in, and it was a good opportunity for a family ride. Jade didn't put up any opposition to speak of. By this point, it had been about seven or eight months since Jade's older friends had become a problem,
54:48 Speaker 03 and just over one month since she was caught with Jeremy making out in the alley. The situation had caused the Richardson family a great deal of stress, but the motorbike ride seemed to bring a smile to their faces. Mark and Debra were feeling optimistic about the future. Mark had just purchased a new white truck and was thinking about starting his own repair business. And as for Deborah, after years of devoting herself to raising the kids, she had started practising Reiki out of the home as a side hustle. She was taking a course on small business management, hoping to turn it into something bigger.
55:32 Speaker 03 Little Jacob was planning a playdate with one of his many neighbourhood friends. Maybe everything was going to be okay.
55:44 Speaker 03 The next day was Saturday, April 22 of 2006. Jeremy Steinke called his former roommate Jordan three times that day, asking for help to scare Mark Richardson. During one of the calls, Jeremy said, "We're doing it today." When Jordan asked what he meant, Jeremy replied, "We're going to kill them." Jordan responded sarcastically, "Okey dokey, sure." He did not take Jeremy seriously.
56:20 Speaker 03 Later that day, Jeremy and a couple of other friends, including younger teenagers, attended a punk rock show, and they all went back to his mother's trailer afterwards to continue partying. He put Natural Born Killers on and they watched the movie together as they smoked cannabis and drank alcohol. After the movie was finished, Jeremy told his friends he was leaving for a few minutes. He showed up at Jordan's new place to hit him up about their earlier conversation and asked for help. Jordan still didn't know if Jeremy was serious or not, but he shook his head. He didn't want any trouble.
57:05 Speaker 03 Jeremy was extremely angry and slammed the door as he left.
57:13 Speaker 03 Minutes later, the 23-year-old returned to his mother's trailer, where the small group of troubled teenagers were waiting for him. He pressed play on Natural Born Killers again. It would be the second time they watched it that evening. His young friends noticed Jeremy seemed really interested in certain parts of the movie, particularly a later scene where the young murderous couple enter a family home and kill a mother and father, but spare their son. In another part of the film, when the characters killed the father by drowning him in a fishbowl, Jeremy commented that Jade's family doesn't have a fishbowl.
57:59 Speaker 03 Most of the friends there would say they weren't surprised to hear Jeremy's comments that suggested he was thinking about killing the Richardson family. Jeremy was all-in on the goth aesthetic, which in his mind was about murder and killing, wearing black hoodies, eyeliner and spiked collars, and listening to bands like Slipknot and Cradle of Filth. He talked about killing all the time with a nonchalant tone. But also, they were all drunk and not really thinking clearly. Jeremy thought he'd try again. He picked up the phone and called Jordan, his 17-year-old former roommate.
58:41 Speaker 03 Several of the teenagers heard him yelling at Jordan. Then he slammed the phone down and came back into the living room. He muttered, "Somebody is chickening out", and went back to watching Natural Born Killers.
58:58 Speaker 03 It appeared that Jeremy realised his former roommate was not going to help him. Jordan would later say that Jeremy threatened him on that phone call, that if he ever found out that Jordan or anyone else told the police about any of this, quote, "I will kill all of you because I won't know which one is the rat." At this point, Jordan took Jeremy very seriously and started fearing for his life.
59:30 Speaker 03 Most of the teenagers at the trailer went home in the early hours of Sunday morning, but two remained. Shortly before 2am, a 17-year-old named Mike went to Jeremy's bedroom to grab his things, but the door was locked. He banged on it, but there was no answer. He thought he could hear Jeremy inside, talking to someone on the phone. The other teenager left was an unnamed 14-year-old girl, and she overheard Jeremy say, quote, "Are you sure you want to do this?"
1:00:07 Speaker 03 A short time later, Jeremy unlocked his bedroom door and walked out, driving off in his mother's pickup truck.
1:00:17 Speaker 03 Jeremy Steinke showed up at the apartment of a local cocaine dealer. The book Runaway Devil offers an explanation for the stop. Jeremy had begged his friends to be his accomplices to help murder Jade's parents, but they all rebuffed him, so, quote, "Jeremy turned to coke for courage." He snorted lines of cocaine with his 18-year-old dealer Charlie and his girlfriend Heather, who was 15. It's not known how exactly Jeremy was able to pay for it all, since he was unemployed, but he stayed for an hour or two and whatever they offered him, he took. Vodka, wine, ecstasy.
1:01:01 Speaker 03 He even left with some additional cocaine for the road.
1:01:07 Speaker 03 When Jeremy started up his truck again, it was around 4 in the morning. He snorted his extra cocaine and headed the short distance to the Richardson family home.
1:01:27 Speaker 03 Thanks for listening. That's where we'll leave it for part one. In part two, available to all in a week, we unravel the rest of the story and find out the awful truth of what happened that night and the aftermath. If you're subscribed to our ad-free premium feeds on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music included with Prime or Patreon, look out for early release. This series has been pieced together from court documents, the news archives, and daily trial reporting, as well as the book Runaway Devil by Sherry Zikifus and Robert Remington. For the full list of resources and anything else you want to know about the podcast,
1:02:09 Speaker 03 visit canadiantruecrime.ca and follow us on the Canadian True Crime Facebook and Instagram pages to see photos and clippings from this series. If you found this episode compelling, please tell a friend, post on social media, or leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks again. Canadian True Crime donates monthly to those facing injustice. This month, we have donated to the Calgary Homicide Support Society, who provide ongoing group support, assistance, and education to families and those close to victims of homicide in Calgary and across Alberta. Learn more at calgaryhss.ca.
1:02:54 Speaker 03 Audio editing was by Crosby Audio and Eric Crosby voiced the disclaimer. Our senior producer is Lindsay Eldridge and Carol Weinberg is our script consultant. Research was by Hayley Gray. Writing, additional research, narration, and sound design was by me, and the theme songs were composed by We Talk of Dreams. I'll be back soon with another Canadian True Crime episode. See you then.
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