Brean decided to Google the name to find out what was so special about these guys. Every band has a website or at least a MySpace page these days, he figured. To his surprise, no such band existed, but what he found was far more fascinating.
An account on VampireFreaks.com under the name “Biteforblood,” which gave [email protected] as its owner’s e-mail contact address came up on his searches repeatedly. He looked at the user profile and the physical self-description confirmed it was Ashley’s account. He looked down to see her likes. Among them, he spotted: Blood, pain, hating people, darkness, thunder, fire, drugs, cemeteries, knives and guys with sexy longish black hair and green eyes. At the bottom of her profile, she listed sanguinarius.com, a now-defunct website dedicated to the drinking of human blood, as one of her favorite sites. On her profile page at Xanga.com, another social networking site popular with teenagers, she wrote: “I like to wear a lot of black and like a lot of dark. Blood is good . . . both flowing and . . . Yum.”
She had a blog on VampireFreaks and another on Xanga. Brean realized he had to read them. All 15,000 words of them.
He found that they were not focused on blood and gore. She didn’t write like a typical Goth kid, using big words with little care about their meaning and overcomplicated syntax. Actually, he found, she had some genuine writing talent. For the most part, they were the typical writings of an advantaged—maybe a bit spoiled—teenager. She wrote about her friends, her job at Lick’s Homeburgers, school and boyfriends. She complained about her mother, her workload at school, how perfidious boyfriends could be and her disdain for her psychiatrist visits. She also wrote about how “hot” certain guys were. In all her writing, she showed an impressive ego, a sometimes charming sense of humor and a desire to play with language.
Brean read it all and noticed significant edits and a bit of a change in language after July 22, 2004. Her blog that day began, “Well my mom reads this, hey mom, thanks for reading this. Her excuse is it’s public, so are the bathrooms in the park, but you don’t use them.”
There was only one, oblique reference to Johnathon’s murder. Many people who use social networking sites fill in long questionnaires in an effort to give their readers a little better insight into their personality. In one rather exhaustive one, Ashley answers the question “When have you cried the most?” by writing: “It’s a three way tie between when I thought Will was dead, when we broke up and the whole . . . November thing.” On the same quiz, she claimed to have “hundreds” of scars and that she lied “constantly, though I’m bad at it.”
And, to Brean’s surprise, she wrote about the trial. She even mentioned him once, calling him a “really hott reporter” and musing that he was “hitting on” her.
Most of what she wrote about the trial consisted of complaints about how much time it was taking out of her life, how much school she was missing, how slow the process was and the numerous delays (including one because a “stupid jurer” got sick).
But a couple of things stood out for Brean. The first was her vehement desire for her parents not to show up in court during her testimony. She wrote:
Got in a huge fight with my parents last night. I don’t want them coming in the courtroom with me when I testify (If I didn’t say it somewhere else, court is on thursday/friday) because . . . I don’t even know why . . . It’s just one of those things . . . They think I’m hiding something from them or that I don’t trust them, and neither of which is the case. Well . . . I sort of don’t trust them, but only the way every teen doesn’t really trust their parents. Anyway, it’s like . . . When I’m performing, singing or dancing or whatever, I never want them there, it makes me nervous, but then they asked how could I have my friends there . . . I don’t even understand why I feel like this I just do, and I don’t want them being there to jeopardize my testimony. . . .
Brean remembered that her parents had not been present when she testified. It wasn’t too surprising, actually. Despite her complaining about her mother’s intrusions, Ashley rarely had any trouble getting her way at home. One figure key in the case described her parents as a “couple of old hippies,” and said “she could do no wrong in their eyes” and that she was “the tail that wagged that dog.” Other sources also indicated that if Ashley wanted something badly enough, neither parent would put up much of a fight.
While doing a good job on the stand was understandably important to Ashley, it was mystifying as to how her parents would jeopardize that. And why did she refer to it as “performing?”
The blog continued: “. . . if I screw up and those fuck holes get off with a day less than they deserve I’ll blame myself and never forgive myself.”
It was clear she wanted to see Tim, Kevin and Pierre suffer, but unclear as to whether it was for murdering Johnathon or for dragging her into it.
When she finally gave her testimony, she was relieved that it went well, but clearly annoyed with the cross-examination style of Tim’s lawyer, David McCaskill, who she called “Bigasskill.” She wrote:
Thank god! It’s finally over!!!! Well . . . not entirely, but I’m done on the stand. TOOK THEM FRICKEN LONG ENOUGH! Johnathon’s mother and aunt came and thanked me and said I was their hero and what an amazing thing we did. It makes me sound like an ass. Mr. Bigasskill (hahaha B. you’re terrible) was such a douche. I wanted to smack him so fucking hard.
But everyone who watched her in court—other than Tim—had nothing but praise for her performance. She thought that was funny:
So there is this really hott reporter and he was hitting on me today which was fun for me. Also Christie Blatchford (another reporter for the Globe) is in love with me. Honestly, she called me “regal”. ME. REGAL./ Bwahaha.
And, just before she left for her Quebec ski trip, Ashley left a couple of interesting comments, revealing her attitude toward Tim, who she (illegally) mentioned by name. In the first, she accuses Tim of perjury:
Well, Tim said a bunch of bull shit and it was hilarious. He’s not done yet so i get to back Monday and Tuesday (at least) to watch more riddiculous lies. I can’t wait!
And in her final trial-related post, she wrote:
Another day in court. It was much more entertaining today because the Crown lawyer caught Tim in a whole web of lies. he almost had a panick attack. It was like a car crash, terrible but you can’t look away. You almost feel sorry for him . . . No.
And later in the same posting, she seems confident Tim will be found guilty and end up in prison. She wrote: “I’m done, it’s shower time. Bwahaha, but I don’t have to be afraid to drop the soap, unlike tim, sucka.”
Brean could hardly believe what he’d found. After those initial successes, he “Googled the hell out of her.” He searched not just her name and onscreen nickname, but the names and nicknames of her friends and some of her frequently used phrases like “bwahaha” and “anysnitch.” When he was satisfied that he could find no more information on his laptop, he went to the Post and used a bigger, more capable computer.
Overloaded with this sensitive information, he didn’t know what to do. Even though it was his first murder trial, he was aware that it was considered bad form to publish anything the jury hadn’t already seen. He was sure he’d be found in contempt. But he couldn’t leave it alone and he wrote his article anyway. When he was finished, he ran it by his boss, Steve Murray, who told him to run with it. Brean did, changing the names and nicknames just enough to ensure Ashley’s identity wouldn’t be uncovered.
At court the next day, Feb. 15, 2005, Brean was surprised to see that the lawyers treated him no differently than they had the day before. Blatchford and Small, on the other hand, were shocked and impressed with his story and told him so. They particularly liked the inclusion of “Bigasskill,” even though McCaskill was far from overweight. The merriment it brought helped ease the boredom of another day waiting for the jury to come to a conclusion.
With nothing else to do, Brean and Blatchford decided to teach Small how to play gin ru
mmy at about 5:15 that afternoon. They had just started the lesson on a courthouse hallway floor when McCaskill walked by. Thinking he might appreciate his new nickname, Blatchford handed him a copy of the Post, which had Brean’s story on the front page.
As he read, McCaskill’s mood changed from jovial to deadly serious. He looked at Brean, told him there would be some “legal issues” with the piece and headed upstairs to confer with Lenzin and Nuttall.
Alarmed and sure that he would be held in contempt, Brean excused himself from the other reporters and headed to the men’s room. He was just leaving a urinal when he was immediately surrounded by three big men in black robes. Lenzin—with his long red hair, the most fearsome-looking of the trio—asked him where he got the information he put in the piece. Brean told him the Internet. Lenzin rolled his eyes. It was clear he didn’t put a lot of faith in the information superhighway. Lenzin asked for his notes. Brean said that he could lay his hands on some, but most of them were on his computer. Trying to be helpful, he told Lenzin that he could get most of the information by Googleing Ashley.
To his surprise, they did. Although the lawyers managed to find Ashley’s VampireFreaks page and her Xanga blog, she had recently removed much of what she had written. Brean surmised that she had been warned by her host that her blog was attracting extra traffic from him and his editors. They looked at what was on the Net and his story again, and recommended he get himself a lawyer.
Brean returned to the press pack while calling the Post to see if they could get him a lawyer. As he hung up, relieved that they promised to take care of him, he could tell from the other reporters that he had transformed from reporter observing the case to part of the case itself.
He was talking with Blatchford and Small when the trio of defense lawyers passed by and went into the courtroom. Lenzin had Brean’s article in his hand. The entire press horde, including Brean, followed them in. To their amazement, they didn’t argue for contempt charges against Brean, but perjury against Ashley. They wanted the jury to stop deliberating. They wanted to call Ashley back to the stand. They even mulled over the idea of Brean taking the stand.
Watt asked for the article. He skimmed it and asked the collected defense lawyers how they could have missed such a thing. Lenzin said that he had done an Internet search on Ashley (using Yahoo, not Google) and had found nothing out of the ordinary. Watt asked how Brean had been able to, then. Lenzin replied that the blog was: “hidden within this technical thing called the Internet, and I don’t know how he could have found it.” Wrong answer.
Watt told the court he would read the article over the dinner break and address the matter at 8:30.
When Watt came back, he was fuming. Brean later wrote: “New evidence was not supposed to come out in the newspapers before it was presented to the court, especially not while the jury was deliberating.” Watt sighed and told the lawyers and press: “If this young woman did not commit perjury, she came close enough for government work to it. And I just don’t understand what else I can realistically do. I don’t see in this case how Humpty can be put back together again.”
When the jury came in, Brean said he could tell they knew something was wrong. Once they were seated, Watt thanked them for their great sacrifice over these last four months and told them that they could go home.
After countless hours of heart-wrenching testimony and over $1 million in public money spent, the Johnathon Madden murder trial had ended in a mistrial.
At least two reliable sources later told me that jurors told them that they were very close to finding all three boys guilty when the trial ended.
A new trial date was set for November 14, 2005—almost two years after Johnathon’s death.
CHAPTER 7
Starting Over
Ashley’s wasn’t the only blog Joseph Brean found when he started combing the Internet for information related to the case. While searching for information about Kevin, he came across a blog entry called “My Ex-Best Friend is a Murderer.” It read:
I get home today and my friend who had just gotten out of jail (No, I don’t hang out with a bad crowd, I’m a loner I hang out with no crowd :P.) pasted me a link from cp24, first thing I assumed was that it had something to do with My Ex-Best friend murdering his brother Johnathan. So i clicked the link and a few minutes later he supplied me with more links with extended stories on the court hearing, I mean there’s not much to say about it, I wasn’t there when he did it. I did know the guy for years though and we were good buds up until his girlfriend dumped him for me(woops) So I hope now he gets a life sentence cause I know if he gets free he’s going to come and kill me, seriously. I’m just going to post the links to the news stories; I don’t really feel like talking much on the subject, the guys dead to me.
He didn’t post anything illegal. Although he did try to identify Johnathon, he misspelled his name “Johnathan,” which is not far from the name “Jonathan” that the media had been using to describe the case.
But, on an Internet discussion forum, the same person, let’s call him Alex, posted the names of all three accused. Since they were all under 18, that was against the law, although the media was briefly allowed to publish the names of Kevin and Tim while they were at large overnight in and around Taylor Creek Park. But then they were identified as missing persons, not suspects in a murder case. Alex wrote:
I was asked by a member here to reveal the names, and I will because I hate that fucking Youth Protection bullshit. I would testify against Kevin Madden because some of you don’t understand how disgusting this is . . . im sorry, even if I had a lifetime friendship with him I would wish death upon him.
Alex didn’t go to the police or lawyers, he said, because he didn’t believe in the legal process. But he didn’t mind talking to the media. He did an anonymous interview with Citytv and, when Brean contacted him, he was more than happy to talk via e-mail. But he had one—somewhat hypocritical—condition, he didn’t want his name to appear in the paper. Brean agreed.
Alex told Brean that he’d known Kevin for about 10 years and had gone to his house many times, mostly to play video games. He said he had witnessed several fights between Kevin and Ralston, but chalked them up to youthful rebellion. He also spoke about Kevin’s disdain for Johnathon. “I know he was really annoyed by his little brother a lot,” he wrote. “But a lot of people can’t stand younger siblings, so that wasn’t anything out of the ordinary either.” Alex described Kevin’s life as being fraught with discord, hatred and violence, a situation he considered perfectly normal.
Brean asked why they were no longer friends. Alex boasted that Kevin’s girlfriend dumped him, so that she could date Alex instead. The girl in question was Katie, the one Kevin pleaded guilty to threatening with his “die, bitch” note. Alex said that he’d heard Kevin had been depressed ever since.
If they weren’t talking, Brean asked Alex how he knew that. They had a friend in common, Alex told him. If Brean really wanted to know about Kevin, he said, he should get in touch with his friend Gabriel. Kevin and he had become practically inseparable since Katie left him. Alex gave Brean Gabriel’s e-mail address.
Brean sent Gabriel an e-mail asking if he wanted to talk about Kevin. What he got back surprised him. Gabriel wrote back a long, rambling essay about how he taught Kevin the “truths of Nazism.” In it, Gabriel likened himself to Edward Norton’s handsome, charismatic and intelligent character from the film American History X, and he compared Kevin to the obese, mentally challenged character with a hair-trigger violent side played by Ethan Suplee in the same film. While he may have been a fan of the film to the point of fantasy, he had clearly missed its obviously anti-Nazi point.
And that wasn’t the only thing he seemed to have missed. Gabriel’s message was written in a style that, to be kind, would embarrass most fourth graders. Sprinkled with multi-syllable words he clearly didn’t know the meaning of, the message was couched in a bizarrely stilted, almost unfathomable perversion of English:
> To speak the tale of Kevin would oblige me to state the significance of my life, and thus I shall attempt to do so. The essence of death entails inquirer, as the life remains excused, I question some time if the life ever existed. Kevin was folly to the vanity of knowledge and life. Kevin was bewildered and beguiled by the only structure and religion he had ever acquired, society. His life was a perpetual misery, caused by reconciliation of eternal vanity. Though I feel obliged to elucidate, as I shall . . .
Gabriel claimed to have known Kevin since they were very young children and to have noticed early on that he was different from the other children. “Essentially he could manipulate perception; he could induce accentuated states of comprehension, such as indulging in toy activities,” he wrote. “As most children would irrelevantly occupy their time playing with toys, Kevin would contrive intricate and unfathomably zany scenarios.” This apparently meant that while the other kids in class were having fun with toys, Kevin played by himself.
Gabriel did offer some tortuously worded insight on Kevin’s development and home life. He had very little respect for Kevin’s parents, writing:
Kevin was by nature afraid, thus hostile. This I assume derived from the neglect he endured as a child. Kevin’s father abandoned him on Christmas Eve, when Kevin was five. His mother hysterically lost, married an ex-convict. And thus the new stepfather assumed responsibility for Kevin and his brother. . . . Kevin would frequently tell me how his stepfather would favor Jonathon for mysterious purposes, and as yet beat Kevin as a youth.
Later, he added: “With the inconclusive beatings from his step father, and Kevin’s now obscured personality incited ridicule from school, and thus the anger grew.”
Rage Page 17
