 Stefanie Rengel, 14, was stabbed to death on New Year’s Day 2008. (Facebook photo)
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To the Crown, she is “manipulative” and “consumed with bitterness,” but to her distraught mom, the teenage girl accused in the killing of Stefanie Rengel is “passive” and “kind and gentle.”
Just hours after the jury in her daughter’s first-degree murder trial began their deliberations Wednesday, the 17-year-old girl’s mom, little brother, and grandmother broke into sobs during an interview in which they professed the girl’s innocence.
“This started when she was 15 1/2,” said the girl’s mom. “She’s terrified.”
Sitting on a bench on the ground floor of the University Ave. courthouse, away from the media, police investigators, and the Rengel family and friends who gathered outside the fourth-floor courtroom where the trial took place, the girl’s mother and father spoke briefly during what they said was an agonizing wait to learn the fate of their daughter.
“She’s soft-spoken, passive, very kind and gentle, intelligent — I don’t know how many more words I can say,” said the mom, who under law can’t be named to protect the identity of her daughter. “She loves her family.”
When asked if she had a message to relay to her daughter, the mom broke down into sobs.
“We stand behind her, we love her,” she said.
The accused, who can only be identified as MT, is charged with first-degree murder in the killing of Rengel, 14.
Rengel, a Grade 9 student at Rosedale Heights School of the Arts, was stabbed six times outside her parents’ East York home on New Year’s Day. 2008.
Although MT isn’t accused of carrying out the stabbing, Crown
prosecutor Robin Flumerfelt alleged she coerced her boyfriend, who is known only as DB, into killing Rengel by threatening — via online chats on MSN Messenger — to withhold sex.
But MT’s mom said her daughter was a victim of DB, now 19, who is also charged with first-degree murder and awaits his own trial this fall.
“Absolutely — from the time she met him, she became a victim,” the mother said, adding DB was manipulating and controlling with her daughter.
She said her daughter would never be able to encourage or persuade DB into carrying out a killing.
“If you want my opinion, absolutely not,” MT’s mother said. “Just knowing who DB was, I don’t think she would be capable of having him carry out something.”
Nordheimer spent nearly two hours giving his final instructions to the jury of nine men and three women, who began deliberating at 12:15 p.m.
Just before 7 p.m. they broke for the day. Deliberations are to continue Thursday.
The accused sat quietly in court, her dark brown hair pulled back into a ponytail.
Wearing a grey hooded sweater, she stared ahead while seated behind her lawyer, Marshall Sack.
Her parents and brother sat stoically and watched the proceedings, not showing any of the emotion they would later display outside court.
Meanwhile, about a dozen members of Rengel’s family, including her parents and younger brother, sat on the other side of the court, occasionally chatting with each other.
MT’s parents also said they have been reluctant to speak with
reporters because they said some journalists have been seen to hug Rengel’s family members, which they said makes it look like the media is displaying a bias against their daughter.
brett.clarkson@sunmedia.ca
