Australian article

Girls 'just felt right' murdering friend
By Liza Kappelle
April 23, 2007 07:34pm




TWO teenagers who wanted to experience murder told police it "felt right" to strangle a friend and bury her body in a shallow grave beneath her West Australian home.
The 17-year-old girls, who cannot be named due to their age, today faced a sentencing hearing in Perth Children's Court after pleading guilty to murdering Eliza Jane Davis in the small coal mining town of Collie on June 18, 2006.
As the girls sat stony-faced in court today, Prosecutor Simon Stone said they had confessed that after partying with Eliza on the Saturday night they decided to kill her.
"Sunday morning me and (her) woke up, and we were just talking, and for some reason we just decided to kill her," one of the girls told police in her interview.
"We just did it because we felt like it, it is hard to explain," the other girl said.
"I knew we had wanted to kill someone before.
"We knew it was wrong, but it didn't feel wrong at all, it just felt right."
The girls planned their attack and changed into old clothes.
One of them snuck up behind Eliza as she was reading, wrapped speaker wire twice around her throat and quickly tightened it as the other held her down, trying to press a chemical soaked cloth into her mouth.
"She started not being able to get her breath, and we just kept going," one of the girls said.
"She was just yelling at us `What the f**k, what are you doing' .. `Oh you freaks, what's wrong with you psychos."
Mr Stone said they chose to strangle Eliza because one of them had to return to Perth that afternoon and they wanted a quick and "non-messy" killing.
"As our friend, we did not really want her to suffer," one told police.
"We didn't really expect to get away with it.
"We were willing to take the risk."
The girls regretted the fuss the killing caused but neither felt remorse for their dead friend, Mr Stone said.
"If she had died another way it probably would have bothered me ... but it just did not," one girl said.
The girls reported Eliza missing after they buried her and pretended to help her family look for the dead girl.
The girls turned themselves in several days later, walking into separate police stations and directing authorities to where they buried her body.
Mr Stone told the court the girls had no remorse and were holding back on the reason behind their cold-blooded, premeditated, sadistic killing.
"It is a mystery your honour, what happened."
He said the girls had discussed killing someone else and one had prepared for homicide by killing two kittens.
"Whilst together (they) will continue to pose some risk to others in custody."
Mr Stone called for sentences of life in prison.
The hearing continues tomorrow.



This article was emailed to me by a casting director. It is the basis for the script of an upcoming indie film I think I'm going to audition for.
I don't know what to make of this article. Its a million shades of disturbing. But after re -reading it, I find myself attempting to justify what these two girls did. Maybe its just the actor side of my brain kicking in, obviously if I were to play one of them I would have to have some good motivation behind it. Could it really have been that simple as two teenagers craving experiences and having gone too far? I mean, its widely known that teenagers like to push the limits. They experiment with alcohol, drugs, sex, rebellion, but these are all mild compared to actually murdering someone. But could that thirst for knowledge and life really result in death?
I've been hearing a lot about death lately. Its always been a subject of fascination for me, maybe because not a single person can write in actual fact what happens in the perceptional world once someone is deceased. The concept is almost to hard to grasp. So many religions and philosophers dedicate enormous amounts of time, lifetimes even, into analyzing death and the spiritual world, when in fact, we all know that no one can say exactly how it works.
With this in mind, why would these two girl feel the need to explore and tamper with something so out of their own hands? Perhaps they wanted to know what it felt like to commit an act so sadisticly cruel? Or maybe playing with life itself was their objective all along.
You know, even in analyzing this myself, I find a similarity (however small) to these two girls. That is the need for exploration. How exhiliarating and adventerous (if not difficult) it would be too tap into the mindset of a young killer! There is an sick thrill in the danger of discovering thier world. I think I will audition.