The Unfortunate Death of Cassie Jo Stoddart
The year was 2005, and Frank and Allison Contreras were excited for their move from the bustling San Francisco Bay Area to the home they had purchased in Pocatello, Idaho. Pocatello is in Bannock County, in southeastern Idaho. As of 2019, the population was estimated to be just under 57,000 people. Pocatello is small as far as cities go, and very conservative. More than half of the population are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons).
The Contreras’ new home was located on Whispering Cliffs Drive. It had 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms, and sat on 2 acres of land. It’s a quiet, secluded area, which would offer a much calmer, more easy-going lifestyle compared with the one they lived in San Francisco. Frank and Allison had two children from previous relationships and one child of their own. They were certain that their family would be happy in their new home.
The following year, in September 2006, Frank and Allison made plans for a weekend getaway. They needed someone to watch the house and their pets while they were gone. Their niece, 16-year-old Cassie Jo, who had babysat for them on several occasions, was an obvious choice. Frank and Allison thought highly of Cassie; she didn’t drink or do drugs, and she got straight A’s in school. She was trustworthy and responsible. They knew she would take good care of the animals and not trash the house while they were gone.
Cassie jumped at the opportunity to house-sit. She loved spending time at her aunt and uncle’s house. Plus, it would be an easy way to make some extra cash.
Cassie Jo Stoddart was born Dec. 21, 1989 in Pocatello. She had an older sister, Kristi, and a younger brother, Andrew. Cassie’s parents were not together when this story takes place and there wasn’t any information on her father. The Stoddart children were very close with their grandparents, and lived between their house and their mother and stepfather’s house growing up. Cassie was a talented artist and loved music. She was smart, kind and strong-willed. Her brother, Andrew, described her as his role model, even though she was only a year and a half older than him. Andrew and Cassie were not only siblings, they were best friends.
“Cassie and I were into the same stuff and going to the same places,” Andrew later said. He added that while they sometimes argued, as all brothers and sisters do, they pretty much did everything together.
At the time this story takes place, Cassie was a junior at Pocatello High School. It was at school that she met her boyfriend, Matt Beckham. As of September 2006, the two had been dating for about 5 months. After school on Friday, September 22, Cassie arrived at her aunt and uncle’s home on Whispering Cliffs Drive, where she would house-sit until Sunday. Since the house was in a pretty remote area, Cassie asked her aunt and uncle if Matt could come hang out with her in the evenings. They told her that would be fine.
At 6pm that evening, Matt arrived at the house. The two decided to watch a movie, specifically Kill Bill, Volume II. Matt also invited two other friends over, Brian Draper and Torey Adamcik. Brian and Torey were classmates of Matt and Cassie’s at Pocatello High School, and while Cassie considered them friends, they weren’t particularly close. In fact, Cassie was a little annoyed with Matt for inviting them over without asking her. Matt told Cassie that it would be okay; they were just going to hang out and watch a movie, after all.
Brian and Torey arrived between 6:30 and 7pm, and Cassie gave the boys a tour of her aunt and uncle’s house. While she was showing them the basement, Brian unlocked the door which led to the backyard without Cassie’s knowledge. Once Cassie finished giving the tour, the four returned to the living room and began watching the movie.
About halfway through the movie, however, Brian and Torey announced that they were bored and wanted to leave. They told Matt and Cassie that they were going to go to the movie theatre instead. By this point, they had been at the house for about two hours.
About fifteen minutes after they left, the power in the house went out. Being plunged into darkness in the big, isolated home made Matt and Cassie uneasy. They knew the circuit breaker was in the basement, but they were spooked. There was no way they were going down there. Instead, they sat on the couch and huddled together, hoping that the lights would come back on.
At the same time, one of the Contreras’ dogs began growling at the door which led to the basement stairs, which added to Matt and Cassie’s fear. Matt had a bad feeling, so he called his mother, asking if he could stay the night with Cassie. His mother said no, and she was going to pick him up as planned.
There were differing accounts regarding his mother’s response; some say she told Matt that Cassie could come and stay at their house, while others make no mention of her making this offer. Regardless of whether Cassie was invited to stay at Matt’s that night, she felt responsible for the house and the animals and did not want to leave.
Eventually, some of the lights came back on. This made Matt and Cassie feel a little better. At around 11pm, Matt’s mother came to pick him up. Cassie and Matt said their goodbyes.
This would be the last time anyone would see Cassie alive.
Two days later, on September 24, the Contreras family arrived home as planned. Frank and Allison’s 13-year-old daughter was the first to enter the home. The front door was unlocked, which she found strange, but she didn’t think too much of it. When she went into the living room, however, she began screaming. Her parents ran inside to see what was the matter.
There was blood everywhere; on the carpet, the furniture and the walls. On the floor next to the couch lay the deceased body of Cassie Jo Stoddart.
Frank Contreras called the police right away. Cassie’s devastated mother and stepfather soon arrived. Andrew Stoddart later described his stepfather calling him, sobbing down the phone that his sister had been murdered.
“I dropped the phone and crumbled to the ground,” Andrew later said. I didn’t even know how to process it.
Word of the murder spread quickly through the community. “Things like this don’t happen here,” Pocatello residents said, as people often do when something awful happens in their small town.
Investigators quickly arrived and began processing the scene. The Sheriff’s Department put the Contreras family up in a hotel during this time. They could not find any signs of forced entry, suggesting that Cassie let her killer (or killers) into the house. She likely knew them.
Apart from the scene in the living room, the rest of the house appeared undisturbed. None of the Contreras’ belongings were missing, which ruled out burglary as a motive. The dogs and cats had been locked in a separate room, but were unharmed.
Cassie’s autopsy report revealed the sheer brutality of her attack. She had been stabbed 30 times, in her chest, neck, back and abdomen. Between 9 and 12 of her stab wounds were fatal. She had defensive wounds on her hands and arms. It was estimated that she had been dead for about two days when she was discovered, meaning she was murdered on Friday night.
As is commonplace in cases like this one, suspicions immediately fell on Cassie’s boyfriend, Matt Beckham. Matt was the last person to see Cassie alive. Furthermore, the attack was vicious and brutal; stabbing someone 30 times is overkill. It’s something usually seen in a frenzied attack perpetrated by someone who knows the victim, perhaps a romantic partner who flew into a rage.
Matt was eager to help the investigators in any way he could, however. During questioning, he gave a detailed timeline of how he spent the evening, and with whom. He detailed how Brian Draper and Torey Adamcik had been at the house, but left early. He told them about the phone call he made to his mom about wanting to stay with Cassie at the house because he didn’t want to leave her alone. But his mom picked him up, and he had spent the rest of the evening with his parents before going to bed. He had phone records to show his calls and texts. The following day, Saturday the 23rd, he repeatedly called Cassie, but she never answered her phone. Furthermore, Matt did not have a car (I’m not sure if he knew how to drive), meaning he needed to get rides everywhere.
Investigators were quite sure that Matt was not responsible for his Cassie’s murder. The combination of his timeline, phone records, the alibi from his parents and his cooperation with their investigation made them confident that he was not involved. They pressed him hard, bearing in mind that being Cassie’s boyfriend made him a good suspect. But the more they questioned him, the more their suspicions lifted.
They asked him some questions about his friends, Brian and Torey. Matt told them that he was better friends with Torey, and that Cassie had been friends with them, but they weren’t close. Both boys had shown interest in Cassie in the past and had flirted with her, he added.
On September 25, 2006, Brian and Torey were brought to the station to be questioned. The two boys were led to separate rooms along with their parents — they were allowed to have their parents with them as they were only 16 at the time. Both of them sat for several interviews with investigators over the next few days.
Before speaking to investigators, Torey told his mother that he had been with Cassie, Matt and Brian that night, but had nothing to do with Cassie’s murder. Torey’s mother, of course, did not want to believe that her son could be capable of something so heinous, so she did not question his story.
As the questioning from investigators progressed, the two boys became increasingly frazzled and were unable to keep their accounts straight. They explained that after they left the Whispering Cliffs house, they went to a movie theatre. But they had nothing to prove that they were there. Brian originally said that they went to see the movie Pulse, but when asked to describe the plot of the movie, he couldn’t do it.
On September 27, 2006, three days after Cassie’s body was discovered, Brian cracked. He told investigators what happened that night, but he didn’t exactly confess; rather he said that Torey murdered Cassie Stoddart.
Brian’s story went like this: he and Torey went to Cassie’s that night, and while she was giving them a tour, he unlocked the backdoor in the basement so that he and Torey could re-enter later. After watching part of a movie with Matt and Cassie, he and Torey left, telling the other two they were going to the movie theatre. But they never actually left the property.
Instead, they went outside for about 10 minutes. I believe this was when they went to Torey’s car and put on their Halloween masks and gloves, and grabbed the knives they brought along. They then went back into the house via the unlocked basement door and hid in a small room where the circuit breaker was located. They turned the power off at the circuit breaker, in hopes that this would lure Matt and/or Cassie to the basement where they would “scare” them. But when they never came down, they turned the lights back on.
Brian and Torey stayed in the basement. It wasn’t totally clear whether they knew that Matt left, but I would assume they heard him leave when his mom arrived. They messed around with the circuit breaker more, hoping that someone would come down to investigate. But when no one came, Brian said, Torey ran up the stairs and began stabbing Cassie.
This is where things get a little unclear, as the boys turned on each other. In Brian’s fourth interview, he told investigators that while Torey was the first to stab Cassie, he did stab her in the leg and chest. But this was only because Torey was threatening him to do so, because according to Torey, Cassie was going to die anyway.
Torey could no longer claim that he was innocent, as he had up to that point. But he did do his best to wiggle his way out of any accountability, by pointing the finger at Brian. Torey was obviously implicated, but he said that it was all Brian’s idea, that he didn’t really know what was happening, and he thought they were just going to “scare” Cassie. He insisted that he believed they were just making a movie, like Wes Craven’s classic horror flick Scream. This was why they wore scary masks and had the menacing looking knives — they were planning to make a slasher film of their own. That was all.
It was Torey’s explanation that resulted in this case becoming known as the Scream murder.
When they were in the basement, Torey said, he was too scared to go upstairs. When he did eventually go up, he said, Brian was there, and he had stabbed Cassie to death. The blame game did not work out for either of them, however, as investigators were about to come across a jackpot of evidence against both boys.
Brian led investigators to Black Rock Canyon, where he and Torey had taken the evidence from the crime scene that connected them to the murders, including the knives they had used to stab Cassie.
They recovered close to two dozen items from the spot Brian led them to. I won’t list all of them, but they included a pair of black boots, rubber gloves, a pair of black gloves, four different knives — one of which had a serrated blade, and one looked like a dagger. There were also Halloween-style masks, a Sony videotape and a camera.
Several of the items were partially burned, one being a handwritten note. Given the burn marks, they couldn’t make out exactly what it said. But it appeared to detail some of their plans for the murder. They were able to decipher something about the possibility of killing Matt if he was still at the house.
As investigators would find out from examining the camera, Brian and Torey considered themselves budding film-makers, mainly interested in making documentary style films. They were the subjects of their own movies, going around documenting their everyday lives.
On top of Brian’s confession, it was what the boys talked about in the films that really cemented investigators’ beliefs in their guilt.
The videos of interest were filmed between 8pm on September 21, the evening before the murder, and 11:31pm on September 22, after the murder. I’ll post a link to the full transcripts in the show’s notes (here), but I’ll go over some of the things that the boys said that were of particular interest to investigators.
Brian: We found our victim, and sad as it may be that she’s our friend, but you know what? We all have to make sacrifices. Our first victim is going to be Cassie Stoddart and her friends. We’ll find out if she has friends over, if she’s going to be alone in a big dark house out in the middle of nowhere. How perfect can you get? I mean like holy shit dude.
Torey: I’m horny just thinking about it.
The following is from September 22, the day of the murder, just before 8:30 a.m. Torey and Brian are at school and approach Cassie at her locker.
Torey: (looking down and writing in notebook) I was planning to kill him.
Brian: September 22, 2006, we’re skipping our fourth hour class. We’re writing our plan right now for tonight. It’s gonna be cool.
Torey: (still writing) We’re making our death list right now for tonight.
Brian: Hopefully this will go smoothly and we can get our first kill done and then keep going.
Torey: For you future serial killers watching this tape.
They laugh, then talk about previous attempts they made to murder people, but express regret about how it didn’t work out.
Torey: Hopefully you don’t have like 8 or 9 failures like we have.
Brian: Yeah, we’ve probably tried maybe 10 times, but they’ve never been home alone so -
Torey: Or when they have, their parents show up.
Brian : As long as you’re patient you know, and we were patient and now we’re getting paid off, cause our victim’s home alone, so we got our plan all worked out now. I’m sorry. I’m sorry Cassie’s family, but she had to be the one. We have to stick with the plan…and she’s perfect, so she’s gonna die.
They laugh some more. Cassie approaches them to where the two boys say hi and continue to video tape her.
The next film was taken the same day, at 9:53 PM. It’s dark, and the two are sitting in the car near the Whispering Cliffs Drive House.
Brian: We’re here in his car. The time is 9:50, September 22nd, 2006. Unfortunately we have the grueling task of killing our two friends and they are right in that house just down the street.
Torey: We just talked to them. We were there for an hour.
Brian: We checked out the whole house…I unlocked the back doors. It’s all unlocked. Now we just got to wait. We’re really nervous right now but, you know, we’re ready.
At 11:31:56 PM, Torey and Brian are back in the car. Torey is driving, and Brian is filming.
Draper: — just killed Cassie! We just left her house. This is not a fucking joke.
Torey: I’m shaking.
Draper: I stabbed her in the throat, and I saw her lifeless body. It just disappeared. Dude, I just killed Cassie!
Torey: Oh my God!
Brian: Oh, oh fuck. That felt like it wasn’t even real. I mean it went by so fast.
Torey: Shut the fuck up. We gotta get our act straight.
Brian: It’s okay. Okay? We- we’ll just buy movie tickets now.
Torey: Okay.
The other items recovered at Black Rock Canyon were taken to the lab for forensic analysis. The partially burned black gloves were soaked with blood. DNA testing showed that the blood was Cassie’s. Her blood was also present on a black-handled serrated knife. Torey Adamcik’s DNA was discovered on one of the masks.
Brian Draper and Torey Adamcik were tried separately for the murder of Cassie Jo Stoddart. Brian’s trial began in early April, 2007, and Torey’s began on May 31, 2007. They were each charged with one count of murder in the first degree and one count of conspiracy to commit murder in the first degree. It was decided that due to the gruesome and horrific nature of the murder, they would be tried as adults.
A friend of Torey’s, 18-year-old Joe Lucero, testified at both trials that around August 31, 2006, he received a call from Torey asking if he would buy some knives for him. Together Torey, Joe and Brian went to a local pawn shop to buy the knives. On the way, they stopped at an ATM so Brian could withdraw money. Brian provided $40 for the knives, and Torey provided $5. Torey chose one knife and Brian chose three.
The medical examiner who performed Cassie’s autopsy testified that it did appear Cassie had been stabbed with different knives — for example, a serrated knife and a dagger style knife could both have been used.
Brian did not leave his defense team much to work with, given his confession, his leading investigators to the evidence in Black Rock Canyon, and the things he and Torey said on the tapes. He literally said “Dude, I just killed Cassie”.
Torey, on the other hand, stuck to the defense at trial that he did not know that Brian was actually planning to murder Cassie. He thought the whole thing was part of their movie — including the films they made beforehand, the buying of the knives, and the film they made afterwards. (I, personally, don’t buy it.)
Both boys’ defense attorneys attempted to have the videos made inadmissible in court and tried to have the trial moved, as the videos became public. Everyone could watch Brian and Torey on film talking about their plans to murder Cassie, and then brag about it afterwards.
The prosecution in both trials claimed that the boys’ motive for murdering Cassie was fame and notoriety. They used their own words against them from the tape, in which they said they were going to be infamous like Ted Bundy and the Hillside Strangler.
It also came out at trial that Brian was fascinated with the Columbine High School shooters, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. He felt as though he could relate to them, because like them, he had always felt like an outcast. He aspired to create chaos and destruction of the same magnitude they did when they walked into their high school on April 20, 1999, and murdered 12 of their classmates and one teacher.
On April 17, 2007, Brian Draper was found guilty of first degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the first degree. On June 8, 2007, Torey Adamcik was also found guilty on both charges.
On August 21, 2007, both boys were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus 30 years for conspiracy to commit murder.
Both boys appealed their convictions, albeit with differing degrees of determination. It seemed as though Brian was more accepting of his punishment, while Torey, who continued to claim his innocence, was less so.
Torey’s family were firmly behind him at the time, and continue to be to this day. They have supported him emotionally and financially to no end. His mother, Shannon Adamcik, has written a book about her son, and his experience of being tried as an adult, despite being a juvenile at the time of his crime.
I have not read the book, and I’m not here to judge Shannon Adamcik. I can’t even begin to imagine how she must feel, or the understand the emotional turmoil this experience has had on her. Of course, I understand the need of a mother to see the best in her child. But I also believe that being Torey’s mother effects her ability to view the situation objectively, to say the least.
The attorneys for both boys filed appeals to the Idaho Supreme Court. Brian was seeking to have his conviction vacated, or to be given a limited life sentence that would allow him to be released on parole (if he were approved) after 30 years.
His attorney, Molly Huskey, said that her client’s immaturity and poor judgment were partially attributable to his youth at the time of the crime, and he deserved a chance for release. She also said the jury received erroneous instructions.
The appeal was denied by the court, but they did throw out the conspiracy conviction, on the grounds that jurors were given erroneous instructions on that charge.
As for Torey’s appeal, his attorney, Dennis Benjamin, specified eight different points of concern with his client’s conviction. He argued that Torey’s sentence is cruel and unusual punishment, given he was just 16 at the time of the murder.
He also said that there was a lack of evidence to prove that Torey actually stabbed Cassie, or that any stab wound he may have inflicted was a deadly wound. So he was pretty much saying that yes, he may have stabbed her with every intention of killing her, but because none of the wounds he inflicted were deadly, he should get some relief.
The appeal was not granted and both of Torey’s convictions were upheld.
But Torey was not giving up. In July 2015, he was granted a hearing for post-conviction relief, as a result of his attorney claiming that Torey’s former attorney did not call character witnesses who could have changed the outcome of his sentencing. This felt weak to me, but the judge was willing to entertain a hearing. In March 2016, however, his request for post-conviction relief was denied. He appealed this decision to the Idaho Supreme Court. In 2017, the court rejected the appeal.
Of course, Torey appealed the state Supreme Court decision. U.S. Magistrate Judge Candy Dale ruled in 2019 that the evidence supports his murder conviction, and the state Supreme Court did not err in affirming his life sentence without parole.
In May 2020, he appealed this latest ruling by Judge Dale to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. There has not been a ruling on this appeal that I could find as of May 2021.
Also important to take into consideration is the 2012 Miller vs. Alabama case, in which the United States Supreme Court ruled that mandatory sentences of life without the possibility of parole are unconstitutional for juveniles, even in cases of murder.
In 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Montgomery v. Louisiana that the Miller vs. Alabama ruling should be applied retroactively. The decision made more than 2,000 inmates across the country eligible for re-sentencing or the possibility of eventual freedom, including Torey Adamcik and Brian Draper.
Cassie’s aunt and uncle, Frank and Allison Contreras, who had only been living in the Whispering Cliffs home for about a year when Cassie was killed, had their lives turned upside down by the murder.
After returning to the house once it was no longer a crime scene, Frank Contreras told the Idaho State Journal in 2014, they had the house repainted and put in new carpet. They tried to make the place feel like home again. But the painful memories continued to linger. They knew that they would never again experience the joy that the house once brought them.
The emotional toll hit Allison hard. She lost her job and fell into a depression. Their daughter who found Cassie’s body had a breakdown and attempted suicide. Frank had to pick up a second job.
“I just quit loving and started drinking,” he said.
The pressure on the marriage and his family was almost too much to bear, but things eventually did get better. Although things are looking up, Frank said, they continue to feel trapped in a house they can no longer stand to live in. Every year since the murder, Frank and Allison put it on the market. This was in 2014; I couldn’t find any word as to whether it has since sold.
Andrew Stoddart, Cassie’s brother, spoke to the Idaho State Journal in 2016, 10 years after his sister’s murder. He explained how everyone was affected differently by the murder. It took them years before they could really talk about it. It did hit their mom, Anna, particularly hard, however.
While everything felt very dark for a long time, the loss of his sister did bring some perspective about life. He said:
It makes you appreciate things a lot more. You never know how fragile life is. You never know how easy it is for someone to be gone the next day.
As for whether he could ever forgive his sister’s killers, he said that he could not. Every time a new court date comes up related to another appeal, his family’s wounds are reopened.
Now, they just want to move forward with their lives. They don’t want to sit in any more courtrooms or see Brian Draper or Torey Adamcik on the news. Andrew said:
“We love her. It’s always going to be a part of us. It’s not like it’s ever going to go away. It’s always on the back of our minds, but we focus on keeping our family strong instead of focusing on the bad. We focus on the good and when she was still around. Nobody should ever have to go through this.”
For more like this be sure to visit lightsonpod.com and listen to audio versions of cases on Spotifiy, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.
