Cassie Jo Stoddart Was Murdered By 2 Boys Inspired By the Movie 'Scream'

In September 2006, two Pocatello, Idaho, teens took their love of horror movies way too far. 

While at her aunt's house, 16-year-old Cassie Jo Stoddart was brutally murdered by two masked intruders. They stabbed her approximately 30 times and left her to die in the living room, only to be found by her 13-year-old cousin. It was a scene straight out of Scream, orchestrated by a pair of film buffs who thought they were Billy Loomis and Stu Macher. In reality, they were two 16-year-old boys who decided they had to kill their friend for no real reason at all. 

The docuseries The Scream Murder: A True Teen Horror Story tells Stoddart's story.

Stoddart was, by all accounts, beloved by everyone who knew her. As reported by Keith Morrison in the 2024 Dateline episode "The Secret in Black Rock Canyon," she got good grades and made friends easily. 

On the weekend of September 22, 2006, Stoddart was house- and pet-sitting for her aunt and uncle. The house sat on a street called Whispering Cliffs Drive, and she invited her boyfriend, Matt Beckham, over to watch movies. She also invited friends Torey Adamcik and Brian Draper, but they didn't stay long. The two got bored with watching Kill Bill: Volume 2 and said they were going to see a movie in theaters instead. 

Then things got strange. The power started turning off and on, and one of the dogs was barking and growling at the basement door. Beckham called his mother and asked if he could stay with Stoddart overnight. His mom said no but offered for Stoddart to stay at their house instead. Stoddart declined, not wanting to abandon her responsibilities. Beckham's mother picked him up later that night, and that was the last time the couple saw each other. Stoddart's body was discovered on September 24 when the family returned home. 

Beckham reacted to news of his girlfriend's death with seemingly little emotion, but he passed a polygraph test and helped investigators put together the last hours of Stoddart's life. Casually, he mentioned that Adamcik and Draper had also stopped by, but they left long before he did. 

Adamcik and Draper confirmed Beckham's story, but neither boy could recall anything about the movie they allegedly saw, and a theater employee and fellow classmate told police the two were not at the movies on September 22. They eventually claimed they were burglarizing cars that night, and that's the story Adamcik stuck to. Draper, on the other hand, started revealing the truth. 

It was supposed to be "a joke," he said. They just planned to prank Stoddart, not kill her, and it was supposedly Adamcik who started stabbing. Draper even led police to Black Rock Canyon, a vast recreation site with over 40 miles of trails. He showed them where he and Adamcik had tried to hide and burn gloves, masks, knives and a video tape. Police were able to recover the chilling footage from the tape. 

Draper and Adamcik had recorded themselves talking about the murder before committing it, saying, "I'm sorry to Cassie's family, but she had to be the one" and "there should be no law against killing people." They filmed themselves explaining their "death list" full of classmates and compared themselves to serial killers like Ted Bundy and Ed Gein. 

"We're sick psychopaths that get pleasure off killing other people," Draper says in one clip. "We're gonna be just like Scream, except real-life [murderers]." 

The footage helped put the rest of the pieces of that night into place. Adamcik and Draper joined Beckham and Stoddart for Kill Bill: Vol. 2. During the movie, Draper said he had to use the bathroom, but he was really unlocking the basement door. When he and Adamcik left the house, they went to their car to gather supplies and film a bit more of their "movie." 

"Unfortunately, we have the grueling task of killing our two friends," Draper says. "And they're right in that house, just down the street." 

They stopped recording for the time being and snuck back into the basement, making noise and flipping the lights on and off. Beckham and Stoddart were too scared to go down to the basement to investigate, so their intruders just waited until Beckham left and Stoddart was alone. They crept upstairs, stabbed Stoddart and then fled to Black Rock Canyon. Had Beckham ever gone down to the basement, he likely would have died, too.

"We just killed Cassie," Draper says in a video recorded as they drive away. "We just left her house.”

Draper's DNA was found on the victim, per the Murder, Mystery & Makeup podcast, leading Adamcik to argue he didn't actually participate in the murder, but the video footage suggested otherwise. 

Adamcik and Draper were tried separately as adults. Both blamed the other for the crime, but both were convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. On August 31, 2007, they were both sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus 30 years to life for the conspiracy charge. They were sent to the same Idaho prison.

In 2013, Draper and Adamcik appeared in the documentary Lost for Life, which focused on juveniles serving life sentences. Adamcik and his parents said it was unfair to be "lumped together" with Draper, who they claimed was barely even Adamcik’s friend and clearly the mastermind of the murder. Adamick’s mother, Shannon, referred to her son as a "good kid" and a "kind, kind, kind person." Around the same time, she self-published a book called The Guilty Innocent, premised on her son having not actually participated in Stoddart's murder. 

Draper expressed regret in his 2013 interview, and when Dateline spoke to him again in 2024, Morrison asked why he killed Stoddart. 

"I felt like nobody, and I felt like I'd be somebody if I did something big and bad," he said. "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.'"