Rage (26 page)

She has turned out pretty much as any close observer of the case may have predicted. She’s shaken off the past and recreated herself as a slightly different person. She still has an artistic bent and a healthy sense of self, but has packaged it all into a person who is much more appealing to the public at large. No longer does she claim on the Internet to “bite for blood”; now she parties like any other college student. Gone are the black clothes, thick eyeliner and dour attitude, replaced by tasteful colors, sensible looks and an upbeat personality. If, as many people said during the trial, there were two Ashleys—the calm, endearing witness and the secretive, name-calling perjurer who stalked the Internet proclaiming her love of blood and vampirism—only one seems to have survived.

At least, as far as I know. See, Ashley made a rookie’s mistake when she made all those postings Joe Brean discovered back in 2003—she used her real e-mail address when she signed up. Of course, she could now be posting anything she wants over the Internet under an assumed name. But nothing posted to the Internet is ever really untraceable (or truly deletable) and a diligent search of postings from her IP address could yield some surprises.

The other kids largely fell into predictable paths as well. Few who knew Kevin before the murder would be all that surprised to learn that he ended up in prison. He was a big, dumb kid who had a problem following rules and had a sense of entitlement. That he’s not responding to treatment in any significant way is no shocker, either. There is simply no tried-and-true remedy for what he has. Whether being behind bars will ever help him is debatable, but it has certainly been safer for the people outside. While the psychiatrists may differ as to exactly what disorder he suffers from, they agree that he is prone to fits of anger during which he is capable of exceptional violence. His continued incarceration is an excellent example for the argument that prisons keep the general population safe by segregating the most violent offenders from the rest of us.

Conversely, Tim could act as a poster child for the rehabilitative qualities of the penal system. Tim, whose many personality problems all seemed to have stemmed from his immaturity and lack of self-confidence, may well have fared better in Syl Apps than he would have outside the facility. He has, by all accounts, reacted well to the discipline (both official and social) imposed by the facility. My sources say that he’s lost the smugness, the tantrums, the feeling that he’s always right no matter what the situation.

It may well be overly optimistic to think that he will leave the facility a fine, upstanding and well-adjusted member of society, but every source I have agrees that Tim is far more mature and better equipped to be part of the world than he was back in 2003. It’s just a shame that it took a multi-year stay in a secure institution to help him.

The only one of the kids who didn’t end up where everyone expected was Johnathon himself.

When I was planning this book, I was sure I was going to write a chapter about Johnathon, but it doesn’t seem appropriate now. I have spoken with dozens of people—kids, teens, adults, friends, relatives and teachers—who knew Johnathon when he was alive and they all tell basically the same story. He was a typical little boy. He was 12 and liked all the things people expect—or perhaps want—a 12-year-old to like. He liked sports and had a fondness for video games, although not the frightening ones his big brother preferred.

The adults I spoke with who knew him all remember him as flawless. To them, he was an unalloyed, unblemished embodiment of everything that is good and innocent in our world. They tend to use the word “angel” a lot when they describe him. They always point out his love for sports, especially basketball and his hometown Raptors. He also had a fondness for lacrosse and went to go see the Toronto Rock—whose tickets were much cheaper and easier to get than the Raptors’—with Ralston. He also had a fondness for Ralston’s cooking, especially traditional Jamaican standards like curried chicken and salt fish. And most of the adults I spoke with mentioned Johnathon’s love of classical music, especially the works of Beethoven, which were said to calm him down when he was stressed.

One adult, the mother of a friend of his, said that when Johnathon came over, he acted a little strange sometimes. He was, she said, shy around adults he didn’t know—much more so than most kids his age—and would never, ever accept anything offered to him, no matter how small or trivial. She told me she found that strange.

But the children and teens who knew him paint a slightly different, far more realistic picture. He tended to find himself funnier than anyone else did. He had a goofy haircut and he liked to wear gaudy, even ridiculous shirts. Johnathon did all the things you expect—even want—a boy to do. He grossed out girls, chided his classmates, did things behind his teacher’s backs and performed risky stunts that would have made his parents cringe if they’d known about them.

But all of the people I spoke with—no matter what their age or their relationship to him—held Johnathon in high regard. He was playful and considered himself something of a class clown. It’s hard to find a picture of him when he isn’t smiling or at least smirking. He tended to get good, though not great, marks in school. He was just too easily distracted to be a great student. Johnathon had many friends and generally treated them with equal warmth and respect.

In November 2003, at almost exactly 12 1/2ars old, Johnathon was on the cusp of a whole new life. While he enjoyed going to the Santa Claus Parade with his mother only days before he was murdered, he also admitted at about the same time to having a crush on a neighborhood girl and had asked family and friends what kind of restaurant he should take her to for their first date.

Johnathon never went on that date, never had a first kiss. He died before he could enjoy many of other things the rest of us take for granted.

It was a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But what makes his story all the more tragic is that the wrong place was his own home, where a child should be safest. But Johnathon had the bad luck to live in the same house, the same room, as a brother who would torture him for no discernible reason and finally kill him.

Nobody, not even Kevin, disputes that he murdered Johnathon. The courts have decided that Pierre had nothing to do with his death and that Tim only facilitated while Kevin did all the hacking and slashing. And there’s nobody around who’ll prove them wrong: Kevin continues to accept all blame, Pierre and Tim will admit to nothing more than the tape and eyewitnesses have made absolutely impossible to deny. The only other person present is dead.

The question isn’t who did it, but why. The consensus is that Kevin was mentally ill. While there’s no doubt that Kevin had deep psychological issues, the doctors I consulted indicated that up to five percent of the entire population share at least some of his problems. If that’s what made him kill his brother, it’s a true wonder that the murder rate isn’t much, much higher than it is.

If you believe Kevin’s story, what made him hack his little brother’s throat to shreds is the fact that Johnathon said he was going to tell their parents about the mess Kevin and his friends had made. Kevin and Johnathon had probably had bigger conflicts in the past. But this one was different.

Clearly, Kevin knew there was no turning back once Johnathon arrived home. When he took out the bat and started smashing mustard jars, beer bottles and eventually a TV, he must have surmised it would be impossible to live with Ralston any more. They had already gotten to the point where they barely spoke.

The situation at home was bad. Ralston and Joanne had done everything they could to keep the peace in the house—including sending Kevin to mental health professionals and accompanying him to family counseling. If Ralston came home to find his basement entirely trashed and his TV destroyed, Kevin would have been in the most serious trouble of his life. Would he have had to fear for his life? Almost certainly not. But the mind of a teenage boy—especially a psychopathic one—doesn’t always work along logical pathways.

Kevin’s best friend had just stolen his longtime girlfriend. Ralston had taken the disciplinary reins back, banning him from the family PC. He was failing in school yet again. He had, according to Alex, tried desperately to lose weight and failed at that. For a boy with so little positive stimulus and so limited an intellect, it must have seemed like there was little to live for.

So he came up with a plan. He told his friends he would kill his family, take all of their money and credit cards and live off them until the funds ran out or the cops came. After that he (or they, as he tried to recruit Pierre and Tim) would move to another house, kill its inhabitants, use their cash and credit cards to survive and repeat as necessary.

It may seem ridiculous, but the life plans of many 16-year-old boys are ridiculous. I know mine were. When compared to the more probable future facing Kevin, the guy with the lowest marks and the most behavioral problems in a hard-luck vocational school, the long shot may have appeared the better bet.

I’m sitting across from Joseph Brean at a pub we’re both familiar with. I’ve been interviewing him for a couple of hours, furiously writing down everything he says. He’s a hell of a storyteller and his attention to detail is outstanding.

I have to wrap it up to go get my kids from an after-school program, so I’m getting his views on how the trial fits into a social and historical context. One of the reasons the trial was important, he says, is that there won’t be another one like it. Witnesses won’t be able to hide behind the anonymity of the Internet anymore.

I have to respectfully disagree. Of course, that day will come, just not right away.

The only reason Ashley got caught in perjury—a crime almost universally acknowledged she committed but was not charged for—was that Brean was curious about how she came up with her e-mail address. By the time he tracked down her all-too-revealing blogs, the jury was already deliberating. And, from my sources, ready to find all three boys guilty.

And even after Brean’s front-page story was published, few people involved with the trial read it, and many of them failed to see its significance.

What if Brean hadn’t done his search? What if Ashley hadn’t blogged under the same name she used as her e-mail address? What if Christie Blatchford hadn’t handed David McCaskill Brean’s story to see what he thought of his “Bigasskill” nickname? What if he hadn’t read it? What if justice David Watt hadn’t taken it seriously?

Although Brean’s discovery had brought attention to what witnesses are doing online, too many things happened just the right way to expect it to happen consistently from now on.

Brean’s just got too much faith in the ability and desire of people—especially those of the age group that run our courts—in power to understand the intricacies of the Internet.

At the time I interview Brean, I’m working for a large daily newspaper. On its editorial staff, there are two distinct groups—the lifers and the kids. The lifers, baby boomers and older, almost universally showed disdain for the Internet. They either found the concept of navigating it too complicated or considered it nothing more than a bad neighborhood full of hucksters and charlatans bent on giving them bad information and trying to get their credit card numbers. Sure they can access online e-mail servers and maybe make a hotel reservation, but they generally fear and distrust the Net. They will gladly use CNN’s television broadcasts as a reliable source, but won’t touch anything gleaned from
cnn.com
. And when their old-school research techniques don’t pan out (as often happens), they usually hand their work off to one of the kids—who invariably goes to the Net.

The blindness is not limited to journalists. In a speech during a debate on network neutrality, U.S. Senator Ted Stevens (a Republican from Alaska) famously referred to the Internet as “a series of tubes” in 2004, demonstrating a profound ignorance of a medium he had a big role in controlling.

A far more frightening display occurred in May 2007—well after the Johnathon decision—in Britain. Justice Peter Openshaw was hearing a trial about whether Islamic fundamentalists who posted threatening messages on an online forum had violated anti-terrorist laws. During one witness’s testimony, Openshaw interrupted and said, “The trouble is I don’t understand the language; I don’t really understand what a website is.”

Aghast, prosecutor Mark Ellison took a few minutes to explain to the 59-year-old judge what “websites” and “forums” were. Later in the case, Openshaw said “I haven’t quite grasped the concepts” of the Web and when Ellison introduced a computer expert as a witness, Openshaw asked him, “Will you ask him to keep it simple?”

The trial made “news of the weird” columns in papers around the world, but caused little uproar. Not only was Openshaw not removed from the case, but one of the key defendants changed his plea to guilty.