In 1990, Mark Richardson met his wife Debra in Ontario Canada. The two were both involved in recovery groups for substance abuse. Mark was involved in a biker club in his earlier years and became involved in drugs, but was determined to become sober.
By the time Mark and Debra met, they were committed to a life of sober living. In 1991 the couple married and on October 21st, 1993, they brought Jasmine into the world. A few years later they would have Jacob.
The couple would take their children on family outings and raise them in a tight-knit environment and a quant suburban home. In her preteen years, Jasmine had many friends, straight A’s, and was heavily involved in her school’s fine arts program.
Mark was an instrument technician, and Debra was a stay-at-home mom who had been trained as a Reiki practitioner. The family was perfect and fit perfectly into the community of Medicine Hat, a city in southeast Alberta, Canada. It was located along the South Saskatchewan River.
By 2005, Jasmine encountered a group of young people who were intertwined with the goth culture. The group frequently visited the local mall where Jasmine and her friends also hung out. In time, Jasmine’s friend group began to comingle with the goth group. Within the goth group, the ages ranged from 12 to 21 years old.
Jasmine was only 11 at this time.
When Mark and Debra learned of Jasmine’s association with the goth group, they were not happy. Jasmine was blossoming and physically developing at a rapid pace; some felt she could pass for the age of 15 rather than 11. While Jasmine’s body was changing, so was her mindset.
She would be 12 in 2005 and began creating profiles on Myspace.com, Nexopia, and VampireFreaks.com.
Jasmine began posting risqué photos on all profiles.
Jasmine gained Jeremy’s attention while hanging out with the goth group at the Medicine Hat mall. Jasmine was friends with 13-year-old Kaylee. The two went to school together until Kaylee dropped out of school in January 2006. Kaylee was a runaway and often engaged in self-harming herself. Kaylee introduced Jasmine to Jeremy Steinke around Valentine’s Day in 2006.
Jeremy Steinke was born to Jaqueline May on January 15th, 1983 with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. He lived in a trailer park with his parents. His mother was an alcoholic and his alcoholic father was physically abusive. Later in his childhood, he was physically abused by two stepfathers.
Jeremy often was bullied in school and didn’t do well academically. By age 14, Jeremy began smoking marijuana and using mushrooms and by his 10th grade year of high school, he had dropped out completely.
Self-harm became a constant in Jeremy’s life, cutting himself, and abusing drugs and other substances drove him to attempt suicide. In 2005, Jeremy immersed himself in the goth lifestyle. Due to the Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, he was born with he had a range of cognitive and behavioral abnormalities which caused him to have a lower mental age.
At 22 years old, he had the mentality of a 14 to 16-year-old. Within the goth group, he often associated with younger individuals. He often hung out with a 14-year-old named Morgan, who was friends with Kaylee.
He often told friends that he was a 300-year-old werewolf and loved the taste of blood. Jeremy regularly wore a small vial of blood around his neck.
When Jeremy and Jasmine met, they fell for each other and moved forward into a committed relationship. Jasmine kept the relationship from her parents as she knew they would never approve of her dating a 23-year-old at 12 years old. The two often talked on the phone and communicated on an instant messenger from the Canadian social media platform Nexopia.
Jasmine would go to the mall to see Jeremy and, at times, sneak out of her home to visit him at his trailer. Her behavior became increasingly erratic. When she was babysitting her younger brother, Jacob, she would leave him alone and sneak out to Jeremy’s trailer.
Though her parents had no idea her behavior was a result of Jeremy, they took her computer and phone away and chose family counseling. This seemed to help, and Jasmine responded to the counseling. Once things appeared calm, Jasmine asked to attend a rock concert with one of her friends, but due to her age, Mark and Debra felt they needed to go along with her.
At the concert, during a musical break, Mark and Debra began to look around for Jasmine, and after some time, they found her in an alley. She was kissing an older man who wore a black hoodie and dark, gothic makeup. Mark and Debra were extremely upset and took her phone and computer away.
Who was the guy in the alley? Well, I’m sure you already know… It was Jeremy.
Now her parents knew of the relationship and forbid Jasmine from communicating with Jeremy.
Even though her parents took her phone and computer, Jasmine continued to communicate with Jeremy against her parent’s wishes.
By April 2006, Jeremy and Jasmine became sexually active with each other.
In Canada, this is considered sexual assault because she is below the age of consent which is 14. The two had only been in a relationship for about two months but Jasmine wanted to live with Jeremy and the only way she felt this was possible, was to kill her family. From this point forward, the two began planning the murder of Jasmine’s family.
Via the internet the two shared messages back and forth discussing, sex, dark poetry, and the murder of Jasmine’s family. Jeremy used the handle souleater and Jasmine went by the name runawaydevil. On April 3rd, 2006, Jeremy posted a 15-line poem that read:
““Payment! My Lover’s rents are totally unfair; they say they really care; they don’t know what is going on they just assume. As their
greed continues to consume, she is slowly going insane. She continues to thank that I came, into her life to help her out, and to stop what they keep trying to shout. It’s all total bullshit. Their throats I want to slit. They will regret the shit they have done. Especially when I see to it that they are gone. They shall pay for their insolence. Finally there shall be silence. Their blood shall be payment!””
In another message, Jasmine wrote:
“Rawr, I hate them, so I have this plan. It begins with me killing them and ends with me living with you.”
Jeremy responded:
“Well, I love your plan, but you need to get a little more creative with details and stuff!”
Jeremy told a friend in a public post that he wanted to do “morbid stuff” to Jasmine’s parents.
Around April 22nd, the two watched the 1994 movie Natural Born Killers, Jeremy told Jasmine they should kill her parents in the same fashion as the movie portrayed, but they would not spare her 8-year-old brother. Jasmine agreed.
On April 22nd, 2006, Jasmine let Jeremy into her home. Her mother Debra was doing laundry in the basement. Jasmine headed upstairs to where her brother was, and Jeremy headed to the basement. While in the basement, Jeremy stabbed Debra to death. Hearing Debra’s screams, Mark raced down to the basement. Mark attempted to attack Jeremy, but Jeremy was able to throw Mark off and then stabbed him to death.
Mark was able to push out one last word. Why.
Jeremy replied, “Because your daughter wanted it that way.”
Meanwhile, upstairs, Jasmine was to take her little brother’s life. Though there are conflicting stories of who ended the child’s life. Jasmine claims she stabbed him twice, and Jeremy carried out the rest of the murder. The child was stabbed in the chest, and his throat was slit.
After the murders, Jasmine and Jeremy separated for a short time. Jeremy went to his trailer to gather some things, and Jasmine took a cab to a nearby 7-11. Roughly two hours later, Jasmine walked to Jeremy’s trailer. Jeremy had told his friend to tell anyone who asked that he had not been there all weekend.
For the next 24 hours, Jasmine and Jeremy lived and loved freely, hanging out with friends, laughing about the murder, eating at restaurants, cuddling, and kissing all with no signs of remorse for the murders they had committed.
On April 23rd, 2006, Jacob’s friend came over to see if he could come out and play. The little boy knocked and received no response, so he peered into a basement window and ran home to inform his mother that he thought he saw a dead body in the Richardsons home.
Authorities arrived, and a detective was able to see through the window and determine there was a body on the floor. Authorities determined that Mark attempted to fight back with a screwdriver. They also noted that Jasmine was not in the home, which led to authorities putting out an alert as they feared she may have been a victim.
At this point, Jasmine and Jeremy are trying to get out of town. The two met up with Kacy Lancaster. Kacy had met Jeremy about six weeks prior and had a bit of a crush on him. Once she learned he was in a relationship with Jasmine, she just remained friends with him. Kacy was at Jeremy’s trailer the night of the murders and hung out with the couple the day after the murders.
Kacy assisted in wiping down Jeremy’s truck after the murders and later had plans to drive a friend of hers out of town. The friend was running away from her foster parents, and Kacy agreed to drive her to Leader, Saskatchewan. When Jeremy and Jasmine heard they asked if they could ride along.
Kacy and her friend were unaware of the murders and believed that Jasmine was just running away to be with Jeremy. The group arrived in Leader late Sunday, April 23rd. Kacy’s Mazda truck was running out of gas, and they were unable to locate an open gas station. The group stayed the night parked in a dark field.
The next morning, Kacy and her friend found a gas station and saw the newspaper’s front page reporting the Richardson Family Murders. It wouldn’t be long after this that they were arrested. Kacy was arrested alongside Jeremy and Jasmine as an accessory to murder. She had driven them away and disposed of evidence in Jeremy’s truck.
While incarcerated, Jeremy and Jasmine continued to communicate by writing letters. Jeremy proposed to Jasmine, and she accepted. They bragged of the murders and titled themselves legends, and believed they were immortal.
Jasmine’s trial began in June 2007; when asked why she killed her family, she stated that Jeremy killed her family and that she was in a zombie-like state; she also stated she was just joking about killing her family. One month later, on July 9th, 2007, Jasmine was found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder.
Her sentence was given on November 8th, 2007. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison, with 18 months as time served. After serving her sentence, she would also serve 4 years in a psychiatric institution and 4 ½ years under conditional supervision.
Jasmine began attending classes at Mount Royal University in her last months of incarceration. Her time at the psychiatric facility ended in 2011. She expressed remorse for the murder of her family, and the terms of her sentence were completed in May 2016.
Jeremy’s trial began in November 2008; he was found guilty on three counts of first-degree murder and sentenced on December 15th, 2008, to three life sentences. He will only be eligible for parole after he serves 25 years. During his trial, he was asked why he killed the Richardson family, and his response:
“When you found your soul mate, you do anything for them; I did anything.”
Jeremy changed his name from prison to Jackson May, a homage to his late mother, Jacqueline May. She passed in 2016.
Kacy Lancaster’s charges were eventually dropped; she only received one year of house arrest.
