True-crime junkies like me are always looking for weird tales of mayhem and murder. Variables such as teenage angst, familial hostilities, wicca, gothy depression, and the internet never fail to ratchet up the weird factor, as the tale of Rachelle Waterman demonstrates:
The teenage daughter of a woman whose body was found in a burning van on Prince of Wales Island has been charged with her mother's murder, along with two men that she knew, according to authorities.
Lauri Waterman, 48, of Craig, a community of 1,200 about 220 south of Juneau, was killed early Sunday. Craig Police Sgt. Mark Habib said Lauri Waterman's daughter, 16-year-old Rachelle Waterman, was arrested late Friday, although she was out of town when her mother was killed. No specific information on her involvement was available, but she was to be arraigned Saturday in Craig District Court, according to the Ketchikan Daily News.
She faces first-degree murder charges along with two men arrested in the case.
According to some, Rachelle is an "ideal" child - and an honor student. Unluckily for her, though, the entire world gets to check out her grammatical skills, because she has a journal - and it's online:
Well I'm going to anchorage tomorrow morning, huzzah for going to hot topic! ^_^ it shoudl be af un trip besidse the massive amounts of caluculus I have to do and nobody can help me cus nobody knows it :P taht kidna sucks but oh well
not a lot else going on, I sprained my ankle monday but it's a lot better so I'm still playing, that's what a brace is for. Unfortuantely I might be getting sick, which sucks but I have some flu stuff. though it did suck today in school when I had a migraine from about 9am-6pm.
And so on, misspelled word after misspelled word. Most days, her mood is listed as sick, tired, or depressed; me, I would have selected "whiny" as the appropriate label for most posts. She claims to have gotten in trouble with the folks for having wicca books around. And, allegedly after she had been made aware that her mother was dead, she posted this:
Well back from anchorage and it was an okay trip. I got kinda sick but oh well
Did shopping, played v-ball (got 5th, bah), and that's about it. Not much to tell, well I got these incredibly awesome boots that go up to my knees, I absolutely love them. will post pic later
Five days later - and one day before her arrest - she mentions that her mom has been killed, and that the police are taking her computer. I haven't had time to slog through the 4000+ comments from that post, but I'm sure there are some interesting comments on there (Barista has selected a choice few, though, and Wizbang has the best post title). Here are the unhappy teenagers in court. And the Alaska State Troopers' press release has some additional information about Lauri Waterman's last, horrific minutes.
Update: Glassdog is not impressed by Rachelle's tales of woe. As one commenter notes, "Further proof that you can never trust a Wiccan Hot Topic Patron that can't spell simple words."
And Michele notes here in my comments:
Do NOT slog through the comments. Lots and lots of ugly, pornographic images inserted therein.
I'm not surprised. In fact, I'm only surprised that LJ hasn't disabled the page yet.
Update #2: From AlarmingNews comes this take on the story, which focuses heavily on the LJ aspect of thing.
For several days, the Web site was quiet. Then came stories about Waterman's arrest and arraignment, some of which mentioned the journal. Since then, it's become a hot spot...Most [of the comments] seem to be written by teens and young adults. Many are glib, some are heartfelt, a few are disturbing and a number are obscene.
Taken together, they create a fascinating peephole into a world where lock-and-key diaries have been replaced by journals written for the whole planet to read and respond to, a world where voyeurism has been compounded by participation.
This is a no-filter, no-editors world where people speak their mind in sometimes profane outbursts. Sometimes, they don't really have all that much to say, but feel compelled to comment anyway...
"No-filter, no-editors world"? That's rather ominous phraseology to describe pages on which people are creatively exercising their freedom of speech. What, are we supposed to be scared of blogs and online journals now?
Posted by kswygert at November 29, 2004 10:53 AM