 Court illustration of Melissa Todorovic as she receives a life, adult sentence in Toronto, Ont., Tuesday, July 28. 2009. (Sun Media/Pam Davies)
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TORONTO -- It is chilling enough to know that Melissa Todorovic coolly ordered the execution of Stefanie Rengel without a tinge of concern.
But how twisted is the fact that other teens have actually come to her defence?
It seems every killer has their fan club and the 17-year-old formerly known only as MT is no different. Since her March trial, there's been a Facebook site dedicated to "Free Melissa Todorovic!" with 55 members pulling for the psychopath who demanded her boyfriend murder an innocent 14-year-old she had never even met.
"Melissa does not deserve that shit!" wrote one enraged supporter after Todorovic was sentenced as an adult to life in prison with no chance of parole before seven years.
"They only convicted her because the girl was the daughter of a pig! Melissa didn't do it! Free Melissa! Justice was not served here. We are here for you Mitty! Love you girl XOXOXO.
How sweet. How loyal. How sick.
"Mitty" Todorovic was the mastermind, "the puppet master," as Justice Ian Nordheimer called her, who was behind the cold-blooded slaying of Rengel, the daughter of a Toronto police constable and a courts officer. After her unrelenting campaign of phone calls, text messages and promises of sex, Todorovic's lovesick boyfriend, known only as DB, finally agreed to lure Rengel from her East York home and kill her on New Year's Day 2008.
And why did she want a young girl dead? Because in her insecure mind, with issues about her weight and her breasts, Todorovic viewed the Rosedale Heights School of the Arts student as a rival because she'd been of interest to DB a few years before. It was as simple, and as irrational, as that.
What do you think about Melissa Todorovic's online support group?
So the girl had to be killed. The horrific deed done, the puppet master then celebrated by rewarding her puppet with the sex she'd promised him.
A life extinguished and yet she didn't seem to feel any remorse at all. No pangs of guilt. No feelings of regret. Even after she was arrested and held at Syl Apps youth detention centre, Todorovic still took no responsibility for what she'd done as evidenced by the number of former cellmates who protest her innocence, as if she were the one cruelly victimized here.
The "Free Melissa" private Facebook site was created by a young woman who seems to have done detention time with the teen killer. She's posted photos of her friend and a jailhouse journal cover that Todorovic designed: "I love u mitty stay strong ur a tuff girl u can eat up those years like nothin!" she writes in the typical shorthand of today's youth.
"We both know melissa the same way for being in jail," writes another cellmate on the Free Melissa site, "and she is a nice and peacefull and quiet person so to all you people that dont know her stop talking her name."
After all, she didn't actually wield the knife that stabbed Stefanie six times until she collapsed and died in a snowbank -- she just insisted it be done.
"No justice in Canada," wrote another supporter after the teen's March conviction. "Home girl wasn't even present yet convicted of M1 (first degree murder)!!! All hope is lost in this country."
Who are these people? What kind of heartless humanity is out there that would defend a calculating, soulless killer?
Because as much as we want to believe the icy, amoral Todorovic is an aberration, her defenders offer a frightening glimpse of the coldness that is not hers alone.
When challenged on Facebook by someone disgusted by her group supporting a calculating murderess, Todorovic's jailhouse friend sent this callous missive in return: "What cant kill u only makes u stronger..in this case melissa may be gone but not forever..stephanie (sic) on the other hand is done for."
And then she signed off -- with a smiley face.
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