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(More customer reviews)A 12 year old girl from a middle-class family suddenly develops an interest in the darker side of life. She goes "goth" and begins to associate with a group of drug-addicted, indigent teenagers and young adults who do not attend school, do not work, and lack appropriate parental supervision. Once an honor student, JR becomes defiant and hostile toward her family.
When her mother and father learned she was talking to much older boys on the telephone, they forbid her to take calls from boys. JR has a girlfriend call her home instead, who then passes the phone to one or more boys.
When her parents learn she is communicating with these boys through various internet sites, they confiscate her computer. JR uses the computers at the public library.
When ordinary restrictions do not have the desired behavioral effect, JR is grounded. She uses a basement window to leave the house under the cover of darkness.
As if all this were not enough, JR forms a romantic relationship with 23 year old Jeremy Steinke. Like the other young people in the Goth Crowd, Jeremy is a drug addicted, unemployed, high school dropout living with his alcoholic mother in a cheap trailer across town.
In many ways, Jeremy Steinke garners a good deal more sympathy than JR ever will. She was a 12 year old child whose parents applied the consequences any loving parent would to keep her safe and hold her accountable. Her childhood does not include neglect, abuse, addiction, or any other extraordinary dysfunction. Rather than the obvioulsy troubled young man Jeremy was, JR presents as a bratty, unappreciative, and seriously mentally disturbed little girl.
In an act of ill-planned desperation and impulsivity, JR finally summons Jeremy to her home one dark night to murder her parents. There is some disagreement about who stabbed JR's 8 year old brother in the chest. This information is irrelevant to the prosecution of the case, however, and does not matter.
All of the information provided would surely signify a slam-dunk in the genre of True Crime. However, as with all True Crime stories, it is the use of the written word that either makes it or breaks it. Unforunately, RUNAWAY DEVIL suffers badly from a lack of creative prose or any stylistic use of language. The facts are reported adequately, but there is no attempt to create strong visual images for the reader. Similarly, there is little attempt to induce true horror in the reader, horror this crime surely must have caused for thousands of middle-class families everywhere.
In short, RUNAWAY DEVIL is dull. It was not so boring that I opted not to finish the book, but neither could I wait for it to end. My general impression was one of tepid disappointment.
There are two interesting chapters in the book. The first covers the trial of JR. The second is the Epilogue. Both of these chapters provide psychological exploration of the motives and feelings that would drive a 12 year old girl to plan the murder of her entire family. Although the strict prohibitions governing Canadian law did not allow for the release of all medical and psychological information available, the information that is allowed is enough. JR was later diagnosed with Oppositional-Defiant Disorder and a Conduct Disorder. "Conduct Disorder" is a legal and psychiatric term used for those children who engage in sociopathic behavior but cannot yet be labeled a "sociopath" because of their age.
As part of a bizarre and rather stupid attempt to gain a more complete confession from JR, one police investigator asked her to write an "apology letter" to her already deceased parents and younger brother. The manner is which JR begins this letter says it all: "Dear my loverdly parental units."
Perhaps most disturbing is this: Counting the time served prior to her trial, JR was sentenced to the maximum of 6 years. Once released from custody at the age of 18 in 2012, JR will be under "community supervision," or probationary restrictions for another 4 years. When JR is 22, she will be free of all supervision or restriction of any kind. If she does not commit another crime for an additional 5 years, her youth record will be expunged. At the age of 27, JR will then be free to work as a teacher, a health care provider, a social worker, or anything else she so desires. She will be free to have children of her own. She will be under no obligation to disclose her criminal past, nor will any record of it exist. A child responsible for the slaughter of her entire family - a triple homicide - will be free to disappear and remain forever anonymous.
No one in Canada (or anywhere else) is happy about this.
I really wanted to like this book more. It held such promise. The facts of the case are riveting. The writing is not. I read True Crime almost exclusively. Perhaps my standards are rather specific, but they are not exceptional or unrealistic. RUNAWAY DEVIL is not a 5 star story. It is not even a 3 star story. It is a book that reads with all the emotion of a morning newspaper account. I cannot recommend it.
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