Teenager accused of killing Stefanie Rengel pleaded guilty

From the Star.com

A 19-year-old man known as D.B., who was relentlessly pressured by his teenaged girlfriend into killing 14-year-old Stefanie Rengel, has pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in her stabbing death.

Stefanie was lured from her Toronto home on New Year’s Day 2008 and left to die in a snow bank after being stabbed six times.

On March 20, a jury found D.B.’s girlfriend, M.T., now 17, guilty of first-degree murder for counselling and abetting him in killing her.

D.B., whose name cannot be published because of his age at the time of the killing, looked tense at today’s hearing.

He cried as an agreed statement of facts accompanying his plea was read into the court record.

Stefanie’s mother, Patricia Hung, hugged her husband, James, when the guilty plea was entered.

M.T.’s sentencing hearing is set for May 13 and 14.

As early as seven months before the bright, artistic Grade 9 student was slain, M.T. told D.B. in a MSN Web chat that she wanted to stab Stefanie. She was jealous of Stefanie, whom she had never met but regarded as a threat.

And on Oct. 20, 2007 – 2.5 months before the murder – the then 17-year-old D.B. showed up at Stefanie’s doorstep on Northdale Blvd., near St. Clair Ave. E. and O’Connor Dr., M.T.’s trial heard.

D.B. told Stefanie that M.T. had sent him to kill her, the trial heard.

A frightened Stefanie reported to her mother, a Toronto police constable, that he had left his cellphone on the driveway and told her that if M.T. called, she should say that he had tried to kill her, Hung told M.T.’s trial.

This would get M.T. off his back, he explained.

Hung confronted D.B. over the threat, and he assured her that he liked Stefanie, a student at Rosedale Heights School of the Arts whom he had once courted, Hung testified. “He said, `If I wanted to kill Stefanie I could at any time.’”

But M.T. continued pushing D.B. to kill Stefanie during MSN Web chats, through mobile phone text messages and conversations.

On Oct. 21, in an MSN instant message, D.B. asked, “What about Stef?”

“I want her dead … LOL. We’ve been through this,” M.T. replied.

In a videotaped statement to police, M.T. admitted that on Jan. 1, 2008 she told D.B., again, that she wanted Stefanie dead.

She told homicide detectives that after 5 p.m. that day D.B. phoned her and said he was carrying a knife with a 20-centimetre blade and was on his way to Stefanie’s house to kill her.

Shortly after 6 p.m., D.B. called Stefanie on his cell phone and lured her from her home, stabbing her six times and leaving her to die in a snow bank, M.T.’s trial heard.

Cell phone records show that he and M.T. exchanged several calls around that time.

A 16-year-old acquaintance of D.B.’s testified that the accused visited his home nearby and told him he had stabbed Stefanie “around five times.”

After the slaying, M.T. invited D.B. over to her house, she said. He messaged her at 7:07 p.m., “I love u hunny I can’t wait to see u.”

They made love that night, his reward for a job well done, prosecutor Robin Flumerfelt alleged at M.T.’s trial.

Although Stefanie’s family made no direct comment, they issued a statement, which was read to the media by Flumerfelt.

“Although nothing will bring Stefanie back, we are relieved that both of the killers have now been convicted of first-degree murder. Our thanks to all those who have supported us so far.”