Stefanie Rengel Case Statement Of Facts

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FACTS IN SUPPORT OF DB PLEA TO FIRST DEGREE MURDER

1. Stefanie Rengel was a Grade 9 student at Rosedale Heights School of the Arts.  She lived with her parents and siblings at [.] in the City of Toronto.  She spent the last day of 2007 celebrating the New Year with her family.  On the first day of 2008, she was lured from her home and stabbed to death by DB.

2. The facts in support of his plea are as follows.

3. DB and MT were students at East York Collegiate Institute.  They began dating in March 2007.  Their relationship quickly became sexual and they were professing their love for each other within a few days of going out.  Their relationship was marked by jealousy on both sides.

4. The two often communicated by way of MSN chats.  The police retrieved many of the chats from their computers.  The chats demonstrate mutual obsession and jealousy.  They were both jealous of any interaction the other had had with members of the opposite sex.  DB called or texted MT more than 3,300 times in four months.  MT monitored DB’s email addresses to determine if he had been speaking to other girls and also insisted on having his Facebook and MSN passwords so that she could check his conversations.

5. The chats reveal that MT was jealous of any girl that DB had been involved with in the past.  MT became particularly jealous of 14 year old Stefanie Rengel.  DB had first met Stefanie in the summer of 2005.  The two were members of the same group of acquaintances and would see one another outside of their schools or at the park.  The relationship was not sexual and they broke up after a few weeks.

6. While MT was jealous of many of DB’s ex-girlfriends, she became increasingly fixated on Stefanie.  She became obsessed with the factually incorrect belief that Stefanie was trying to steal DB from her.  The chats clearly demonstrate that MT was jealous and controlling; highly manipulative and obsessed with a hatred for Stefanie, a girl she didn’t even know, all of which led MT to begin to formulate the idea of persuading DB to kill her.

7. On October 20, 2007, DB was reluctantly trying to satisfy MT’s desire to kill Stefanie Rengel by developing a ruse to satisfy MT without harming Rengel.  DB went over to the home where Stefanie lived with her mother and stepfather, Patricia and James Hung.  He phoned Stefanie and asked her to come out of the house and talk to him for a moment.  When she did, he explained the situation, left his phone and requested that when MT called it that Stefanie pretend that DB tried to kill her so that MT would stop pressuring him.

8. Later that evening, the Hung’s attended at DB’s residence to return his cell phone.  When confronted by Ms. Hung, DB indicated that he didn’t really want to kill Stefanie, but just wanted her to tell MT that he had tried to kill her so that she would stop bothering him about it.  He then said that if he really wanted to kill Stefanie, he would have done it already.

9. The following day (October 21) MSN chats show that MT repeated her demand that DB kill Stefanie.  MT continued to pressure DB to kill Stefanie.  Following that day there were numerous MSN chats between them discussing the murder.

10. On December 31, 2007, at approximately 6:30, DB was seen in the vicinity of the Rengel household talking on the phone.  He was observed to be in the same general location, on the phone at 7:00, 7:20 and 7:40.  He was gone by 8:10 p.m.  During this time, DB communicated repeatedly with MT via cell phone.  DB phoned Stefanie Rengel at 8:11 and again at 8:21, but was only able to contact her voicemail.  DB then called MT 15 more times before phoning Stefanie Rengel again at 8:57.  After this phone call, there were 21 further calls between DB and MT.

11. On January 1, 2008, MT continued to pressure DB to murder Stefanie Rengel.  She threatened and taunted him saying that she would have sex with another boy if DB did not comply with her demands.  In the early evening he returned to Stefanie Rengel’s street armed with a knife he took from his kitchen with the plan to kill her.

12. DB phoned ST between 5:00 – 6:00 p.m. to see if he was home.  DB also spoke with MT before leaving his house.  Once outside Stephanie’s residence, DB spoke with MT three times.  After the third phone call, he immediately hung up and phoned Stefanie, call-blocking his number and lured her outside by telling her he wanted to talk to her.

13. Stefanie left her little brother and ventured out on to the dark street to speak to DB.  DB then pulled out the large knife he had brought with him and stabbed Stefanie 6 times with the intention of killing her.

14. DB ran away from the scene while Stefanie was still standing and made his way over to ST’s house.  DB then knocked on ST’s door and was invited into the house.  While in the kitchen with ST, DB admitted that he had stabbed Stefanie multiple times in the torso.  They discussed the situation and ST helped hide DB’s jacket.  At some point DB threw the knife over the fence into a neighbouring yard.

15. Later, while in a bedroom in the ST residence, DB received a call on his cell phone from MT, who asked him to come over.  DB took a taxi to the MT residence.  Once at MT’s residence, MT paid for the taxi.  Once inside, he told her what he had done and they had sex which was DB’s reward for killing Stefanie.

16. DB returned home later that evening and was arrested.