A Scream obsession turns deadly in a chilling teen murder plot ahead of Dateline

Dateline's latest episode, "The Secret in Black Rock Canyon", revolves around the murder of 16-year-old Cassie Jo Stoddart. For those who don't know, Cassie was a victim of a thrill killing on September 22, 2006. She was at her uncle and aunt, Frank and Allison Contreras's house in Pocatello, Idaho, to take care of their dogs. The perpetrators of this crime were two of her classmates, Brian Draper and Torey Adamcik.

Dateline had previously covered this case back in 2024, but the NBC series returned to this 20-year-old case, as it continues to haunt Pocatello even today. The official logline of this Dateline episode reads:

"When police retrace the final hours of 16-year-old Cassie Jo Stoddart, they uncover evidence including a homemade horror film that points to her killers."

Trigger Warning: This portion of the piece describes a violent act. Reader discretion is advised.

Dateline: What happened in the Cassie Jo Stoddart case?

As mentioned earlier, this case was covered almost two years ago by Dateline, which described Brian Draper and Torey Adamcik as “Scream Killers". The two boys were fans of the horror franchise. They even knew Cassie Jo Stoddart as classmates before thier fatal act. Cassie had invited Adamcik and Draper and her boyfriend, Matt Beckham, while taking care of the Contreras' residence.

The four kids were watching a movie at Contreras' home when the two boys left the movie in the middle, claiming that they had to catch a movie in a theater. However, the two boys did not leave the residence and, some time later, sneaked back into the basement of Contreras's house. The two boys began to repeatedly turn off the power after finding the circuit breaker located in the basement.

Initially, they hoped to lure in both Matt and Cassie to scare them before carrying out their Scream-inspired crime. But, when Beckham and Stoddart did not come downstairs, the two turned the power back on. But this temporary power outage had affected Cassie, something Matt noticed. He called his mother to ask if he could stay with Cassie that night.

But Matt's mother offered to take him and Cassie to their place, but Stoddart refused the offer, stating her responsibility towards her family. Once Draper and Adamcik heard Matt leave, the two turned off power, went upstairs, attacked Cassie, and stabbed her nearly thirty times.

The police did not initially suspect the boys:

The police initially suspected Cassie's mother's romantic partner, as they found his fingerprints in the circuit breaker door. However, he had an alibi stating that he was the one who did the electrical work in Contreras's house, something the family corroborated. They even suspected Matt, but his mother told the police that she heard Cassie's voice as the boy left the Contreras residence. Matt even passed the polygraph test, and he had a consistent alibi.

But the investigators finally found their culprit in Adamcik and Draper, as they initially lied that they were in a theater watching a movie. When they couldn't recall the details, the investigators grilled the boys harder for details. Then, the boys claimed that they were roaming around. But it was finally Draper who confessed to killing Cassie, while initially downplaying his role.

Draper even led the investigators to Black Rock Canyon, where they had partially buried the masks, clothing, and weapons. They also found a partially burned VHS tape, which showed them planning the murder.

What were Draper and Adamcik's sentences?

Over the course of the trial, it was revealed that the two young boys had a "death list". It seems that the first two names in that list were that of Cassie and Matt. The VHS tape also revealed that the boys were describing themselves as "psychopaths" who enjoyed taking lives. The judge sentenced them to life imprisonment without any possibility of parole.

The previous Dateline episode revealed that both of them are regretful of their actions while they are serving their life sentence at ISCI (Idaho State Correctional Institution).

The Cassie Jo Stoddart Dateline episode is currently available on Peacock.

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