Who is Jasmine Richardson, the 12-year-old who murdered her family with her ‘300-year-old werewolf’ boyfriend?

Content warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of murder. Please take care while reading.

In a case as bizarre as it is tragic, in 2006, Marc and Debra Richardson and their eight-year-old son were brutally murdered in a stabbing attack at their home in rural Alberta, Canada. As the police would later learn, Marc and Debra’s daughter, Jasmine Richardson, was partially responsible for the crimes.

Then 12-year-old Jasmine, however, was not the only person involved in her family’s murder. Jeremy Steinke, Jasmine’s boyfriend, a 23-year-old high school dropout and self-identified “300-year-old werewolf,” who wore a vial of blood around his neck and said he liked the “taste of blood,” killed Jasmine’s parents while Jasmine murdered her brother in his bedroom, slitting his throat. Jasmine’s father tried to fight off Steinke with a screwdriver. All combined, Marc and Debra were stabbed more than 30 times.

The police searched for Jasmine

Before those details were known, however, police were concerned that Jasmine, too, had been the victim of foul play. When they arrived at the Richardson’s home, they found three bodies, but Jasmine was missing, and they issued an Amber Alert. Before long though, evidence discovered in the young girl’s bedroom, as well as text and digital exchanges between Steinke and Jasmine led the police to declare them persons of interest in the case.

“I have this plan. It begins with me killing them and ends with me living with you,” Jasmine reportedly wrote Steinke in one message. “Their throats I want to slit. They will regret the s*** they have done. Especially when I see to it that they are gone. They shall pay for their insulince [sic]. Finally there shall be silence. Their blood shall be payment!” Steinke wrote on his blog, according to The New Zealand Herald.

Inspired by the movie Natural Born Killers, the couple planned the murder when Jasmine’s parents forbade them from seeing each other. Steinke and Jasmine met at a punk show, and both had profiles on VampireFreaks.com where they communicated.

At that time, VampireFreaks had a social media component for people interested in goth culture and extreme lifestyles. The social media aspect has since been removed because several killings were linked to the site, including the Richardson family murder.

Steinke and Jasmine were seen kissing after the murders happened

After killing Jasmine’s family, Jasmine and Steinke were seen kissing at a house party just up the street from where it happened, according to Global News. The day after the crimes, Jasmine and Steinke were arrested about 80 miles away. Steinke’s friend, Kacy Lancaster, was also taken into custody, charged as an accessory for allowing the couple to use her truck and disposing of evidence.

Given Jasmine’s age, her name was kept confidential and she was only identified in the media as “J.R.” At first, she denied her involvement in the triple-murder. While she admitted to planning the attack, she said she never intended to follow through with it and pleaded not guilty. Witnesses at her trial, however, said both she and Steinke admitted what they had done.

Is Jasmine Richardson out of jail?

The jury gave Jasmine a 10-year Intensive Rehabilitative Custody and Supervision (IRCS) sentence, including time spent in a psychiatric institution followed by community supervision, the maximum punishment allowed under Canadian law because of her age. Meanwhile, Steinke, who has since changed his name to Jackson May, confessed and was sentenced to life in prison. Steinke proposed to Jasmine behind bars. She accepted, but they never married.

In 2016, Jasmine’s sentence expired, and she was freed. To this day, Jasmine is thought to be the youngest killer convicted of multiple murders in Canadian history. “I think your parents and brother would be proud of you. Clearly you cannot undo the past; you can only live each day with the knowledge you can control how you behave and what you do each day,” Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Scott Brooker told Jasmine announcing her time served was complete, according to the CBC.

As of a 2016 The New Zealand Herald report, she now lives somewhere in Canada, amid the people who vividly remember what she did and are not exactly on board with her walking free and living in their suburban neighborhood.