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It was the night of September 22, 2006. On a quiet stretch of Whispering Cliffs Drive in Pocatello, Idaho, a single house sat in the dark.
Inside, 16-year-old Cassie Jo Stoddart was doing something entirely ordinary — house-and-pet sitting for her aunt and uncle while they were out of town for the weekend.
She had planned an uneventful evening of homework and movie-watching with her boyfriend and two friends. But what later unfolded was a tragedy worse than any horror film.
Watch: Check out 'The Scream Murder: A True Teen Horror Story' Official Trailer. Post continues below.
Cassie Jo Stoddart was house-sitting.
Cassie was known to others as a reliable, clever teenager who happily took on responsibilities and made friends easily, per the 2024 Dateline episode The Secret in Black Rock Canyon.
"Cassie was a good girl," her uncle Frank Contreras told the Idaho State Journal. "She didn't drink or use drugs, and she was a straight-A student. She was responsible. We didn't just trust her with our house, and she babysat my son, too."
That Friday evening, Cassie invited her boyfriend, Matt Beckham, over for a movie night to watch Kill Bill: Vol. 2.
Two fellow classmates and friends, Brian Draper and Torey Adamcik, also stopped by briefly, but left around 9.30pm, claiming they were heading to a cinema to watch something else instead.
As night fell, the atmosphere in the home shifted, per A&E TV reports. The lights flickered on and off, and the dogs began to growl towards the basement.
Cassie and Matt were unsettled. They had a feeling something was wrong.
Matt rang his mother for permission to stay over that evening. She declined but said Cassie could come to their home instead. Cassie, knowing that her aunt and uncle were relying on her, said she would stay.
Matt left a little later that evening, unaware that it would be the last time he ever saw Cassie alive.
Two days later, Cassie's 13-year-old cousin discovered her body in the family home, stabbed approximately 30 times.
Police investigate Cassie Jo Stoddart's murder.
Police questioned Cassie's boyfriend as a priority. While he seemed a little off, he passed a polygraph test, leading investigators to explore other avenues.
Reconstructing the night, Beckham explained that their friends, Brian Draper and Torey Adamcik, had stopped by before going to the theatre. A detail that would become crucial to the investigation per A&E.
Upon questioning, the boys confirmed Matt's story, but their alibi wasn't convincing.
Neither could remember the movie they'd watched or any theatre employees. A classmate told police the pair hadn't been at the theatre at all on September 22. Their story began to unravel.
They changed their story, telling police they were burglarising cars on the night of Cassie's murder. While Torey stuck to it, Brian crumbled under pressure.
He claimed their plan had started out as a 'joke' and that they merely wanted to prank Cassie, not murder her. Brian said it was Torey who made the sinister decision to stab her. But what he revealed next led investigators to the darkest detail of the case.
Brian and Torey's tape in the canyon.
Brian took police to an isolated area known as Black Rock Canyon, where he and Torey had attempted to burn any trace of evidence that connected them to Cassie's violent murder — gloves, masks, knives and a videotape, per Supreme Court records.
The videotape survived the fire. On it, the boys recorded themselves before committing the murder, speaking with a sickening language and calmness about their intentions.
"There should be no law against killing people," one said, per People.
"I'm sorry, Cassie's family, she's going to die," the other voice added.
The footage also showed them discussing a "death list" of classmates, and clips of them comparing themselves to serial killers like Ted Bundy and Ed Gein, as well as footage of Cassie taken in their school hallway the morning of her murder.
They described themselves as "sick psychopaths that get pleasure off killing other people".
The pair's fascination with horror films, particularly the 1996 film Scream, had escalated into a twisted, deadly obsession.
What happened to Cassie Jo Stoddart?
The footage in the canyon allowed police to piece together Cassie's final hours with disturbing clarity. Torey and Brian's plan was calculated, and beyond cruel.
While watching the movie at Cassie's house, Brian excused himself to use the bathroom. Instead, he went downstairs and unlocked the basement door.
After leaving to go to the 'theatre', he and Torey got supplies from their car and filmed more of their 'horror movie'.
"Unfortunately, we have the gruelling task of killing our two friends," Brian said to the camera, per A&E. "And they're right in that house, just down the street."
Later that night, they returned to the basement, making noises and switching the lights on and off to scare Cassie and Matt, who were too frightened to investigate. The boys waited until Matt left, then they crept upstairs.
Cassie was stabbed repeatedly, around 30 times, and left dead on the living room floor. Her attackers fled the scene towards Black Rock Canyon.
In a final recorded moment, Brian said, "We just killed Cassie. We just left her house".
Listen to this episode of Mamamia's True Crime Conversations, a true crime podcast. Post continues below.
Brian and Torey's trial.
In August 2007, the boys were found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In addition, they faced 30 years to life for conspiracy to commit murder, per the Associated Press .
They were tried as adults, and while only Brian's DNA was found on the victim, they were both found to be responsible. The evidence on the videotape was overwhelming.
Years later, both appeared in the 2013 documentary Lost for Life. Brian expressed regret, also later telling Dateline in 2024, "I felt like nobody, and I felt like I'd be somebody if I did something big and bad."
He elaborated, "I would give my life if I could change it, if I could go back in time and say, 'It's us, Cassie. We're just joking around.'"
Torey's family maintained he was unfairly "lumped together" with Brian and insisted he hadn't participated in the killing.
Torey's mother, Shannon, referred to her son as a "good kid" and a "kind, kind, kind person."
That same year, she self-published a book called The Guilty Innocent, premised on her belief that Torey had not actually participated in Cassie's brutal murder.
A family left forever shattered.
Cassie's family has spent years grappling with the loss.
"It affected us all in different ways," her brother Andrew said in 2016. "It took us years before we could even talk about it… All of us were really torn up from it — we still are".
Her death continues to echo through documentaries, interviews, and the community that loved her.
Her uncle Frank spoke to the Idaho State Journal in 2014, sharing that his wife Allison lost her job and fell into depression after the brutal murder of their niece.
"I had to pick up a second job; medication alone was $300 a month," Frank said. "The first two years were the worst. It was our dream home, and it turned into a nightmare." Frank's step-daughter also suffered a breakdown after she reported seeing Cassie in the house and attempted suicide.
The new Hulu docuseries — The Scream Murder: A True Teen Horror Story — revisits the case with rare interrogation footage and new prison interviews, exploring the lasting impact on Cassie's family and the killers' parents.
But at the centre of every retelling is Cassie herself.
She was a teenager who simply wanted to do the right thing, who stayed in that house because she felt responsible.
A 16-year-old girl who should have been safe. Instead, she became the target of two boys who mistook cruelty for notoriety.
The Scream Murder: A True Teen Horror Story is now available to stream on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+.
Feature Image: Cineflex Productions.
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