12-year-old kills stepmother inspired by Creepypasta
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12-year-old kills stepmother, inspired by Creepypasta character.
**Trigger warning- contains descriptions of violence, may be disturbing to some readers. Read at your own risk!
Created by Kai Coyne, Staff writer
September 22, 2023
Even though most times when we watch a horror movie, like ‘IT’ or ‘The Ring’, we understand that what we’re viewing is fiction, there are instances where people do not differentiate between what’s real and what’s fake.
A 12-year-old girl fatally stabbed and killed her mother, cut her father, and started a fire on July 23, 2015, in Indiana, the girl was diagnosed with D.I.D. (Dissociative Identity Disorder) and PTSD (Post-traumatic stress disorder) and it is believed that she had other disorders. The girl’s name has been kept private due to her age at the time despite the crime she committed and she was not tried as an adult. It was obvious that she plotted the attack as investigators found she searched online for how to hide from the police, make poison, sharpen knives, and survive in the woods. Based on video footage of the attack, during the stabbing the song “Pop Goes the Weasel” was playing, an obvious connection to “Laughing Jack”. The girl had spoken to her father in a ‘Clownish’ voice, telling him to stay back and not come closer. The girl began to act and dress similarly to the character.
How does this connect to fiction?
The girl formed an obsession with “Laughing Jack”, a “Creepypasta” character, and claimed that he told her to do it. The character “Laughing Jack” is from a story and a film. The character is a monochromatic grayscale clown with sharp, pointed teeth (basically Pennywise’s taller emo cousin). The character was mentioned in a few stories, one in which the clown was a Rainbow clown that belonged to a boy, as the boy was sent away from the clown to boarding school due to concerns from his family. The clown lost its color after 13 years and became corrupted by how the boy turned out as an adult (a serial killer). As a result, the clown adapted to the boy’s personality and eventually killed the boy.
In another story, the clown starts as an imaginary friend of another boy. The mother is concerned after her son receives real candy out of seemingly nowhere and is heard speaking to someone. Eventually, the boy’s bloodied body is hung up on the wall by the clown as the mother comes in and tries to save her son. She ends up stabbing her son instead of the clown and ends up in a psychiatric hospital, hearing the “Pop Goes the Weasel” song outside of her room. The stories are made by ‘SnuffBomb’ on Deviant art and ‘a guardian angel’.
As I mentioned in my previous article, there was a similar case (The Slenderman Stabbing Case) that took place on May 31, 2014, inspired by a fictional character called ‘The Slenderman’ or just ‘Slenderman’. Two girls stabbed their ’friend’ or rather sacrificed her in order to please The Slenderman. The two attackers were 12 years of age however their names have been made public even though one of the girls did have schizophrenia while the other was simply insane. So, this is yet another example of how young people with severe illnesses that may or will impact their thoughts and cause them to struggle to see the line between fiction and reality should not have unrestricted access to the internet (including certain television genres seen as violent).
Author commentary
I believe that the girl was made vulnerable to actions like this due to her disorders and age. Children can have difficulty differentiating fiction from reality which could have also influenced her behavior. It seems that she was not receiving treatment either as one article states that her symptoms intensified the longer they were unaddressed by her family. The crime could have been avoided if they had only acknowledged her behavior and given her proper treatment such as communication, counseling/therapy, and possible medication.
Despite her age at the time being 12, I do not believe that her age gives her an excuse to act violently. She still has self-control and I believe that her fixation on the ‘Laughing Jack’ character had been a cause of the act, and even got to the point she started developing a separate personality due to the fixation. It is not the character’s fault for being created but it is the girl’s fault for having such an unhealthy obsession with the character and her family’s fault for not providing her with treatment.
I personally do not see why the girl who had stabbed and killed her stepmother and committed arson identity was kept secret. She was the same age as the girls from the Slenderman case, and their identities were released. And this girl did in fact KILL her stepmother while the two other girls from The Slenderman stabbing case had stabbed, not killed their victim. Therefore, anyone who commits a crime of this severity, whether they’re a minor or not, deserves to lose their right to anonymity.
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