“Jaimie, is that you?” Kimberly asked as she turned on the nightstand lamp, believing it was her daughter. But the light never turned on. Two young men, one on each side of the bed, began savagely slashing her with a machete while the woman was still asleep. “You don’t have to do this. Please stop,” the victim pleaded.
Once the throat was slit, it was the girl’s turn, just 11 years old. The intruders lifted Jaimie into the air and threw her against a glass door. They then stabbed her until she stopped moving. When he finished, the boys fled. They were the Disciples of Destruction, two minors who wanted to see what it felt like to take a random human life. Steven and Christopher had the urge to kill.
Steven Spader, born on November 9, 1991, was abandoned by his mother after birth and adopted five days later by the Spader family. He had a normal childhood in Brookline (New Hampshire), without shocks, abuse or humiliation in the family or school environment. However, despite the care of his parents, he developed an antisocial, lonely and problematic personality.
Not even the time he spent in the Boy Scouts made him appease his darker side. As he grew up, he clashed with his parents: he dropped out of school and developed increasingly violent behavior. So much so that he came to star in two complicated episodes: in one of them, the teenage boy threatened his father with a knife; and, in the other, the police had to intervene by sticking a knife into the counter of an establishment and throwing food.
Steven and Christine were completely desperate at their son’s dangerous behavior. The couple even put themselves in the hands of professionals to help them, but there was no way. Nobody could beat him. This is how a month before the assault on Kimberly and her daughter Jaimie, this young man, barely 17 years old, formed a brotherhood called the Disciples of Destruction. It was September 2009.
The sinister club had several members, whom Steven had personally recruited: Christopher Gribble, Quinn Glover and William Marks, all of them local acquaintances with a common fascination with death and mayhem, and an obsession with serial killers and characters as creepy as the Zodiac Killer or Charles Manson.
As in all these groups there was an initiation ritual, and this consisted of carrying out a home invasion of a random home with the occupants inside. “Steven wanted to break into houses, steal things, kill people, spend the night and make scenes for the press with their bodies. “He talked about eating people, roasting people, putting heads on stakes, making scenes for the press,” Quinn Glover declared once they were arrested.
For his part, Christopher Gribble, a couple of years older than Steven, also came from a normal family and was a Boy Scout, and even wanted to enlist in the United States Marine Corps. Likewise, he was so fascinated by knives that he posed smiling with his favorites on his social networks.
October 4, 2009 was the date chosen by the brotherhood to take its first hit. “We’re about to do the most evil thing this city has ever seen,” Steven told his accomplice as they headed toward Mont Vernon, where there was an isolated house, the Cates family’s. The choice of home had been a product of chance, nothing more, nothing less.
Once there, the teens cut the power and, while William and Quinn stood guard outside, Steven and Christopher burst inside with a knife and a machete respectively. First they headed to the master bedroom, where Kimberly was sleeping.
When the woman tried to get out of bed when she heard a noise, the young people began the carnage. The victim received up to 32 serious stab wounds, his skull and eyes were mutilated, his torso was pierced, and his throat and some bones were severed.
The teenagers then attacked the young daughter, Jaimie, beating her until her skull and jaw were broken, and stabbing her 18 times, cutting off part of her left foot. Despite the virulence of the attack, the little girl survived by playing dead and, as soon as the attackers fled, she managed to crawl to the kitchen phone and call the emergency services.
While the brotherhood headed to the Nashua River to get rid of both the clothes and the bloody shoes they were wearing, investigators took statements from the only survivor and possible witnesses. Everything pointed to a “white man” and a specific type of vehicle thanks to a tire track on the dirt road to the property.
Seven hours after this bloodbath, Christopher went to a pawn shop with some of the jewelry stolen from the Cates. He got $130 for them. That same day, around 5:30 p.m., Steven and Christopher visited another mutual friend, Kyle Fenton, to whom they explained how they felt during the assault.
However, Kyle’s mother overheard her son’s conversation with these friends and decided to immediately call the police: she feared that Kyle was involved in the terrible murders that had already made the front page of the media. Within minutes, Steven and Christopher were arrested and charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder.
One of the most important pieces of evidence against them was their own bragging: the way they bragged to their friends about the attacks led them straight to prison. “Spader admitted his work. He enjoyed it. He liked to go over it in his head afterwards…” said Deputy Attorney General Jeff Strelzin.
During his time in provisional prison awaiting trial, Steven even wrote letters to a former cellmate telling him how the bloody assault was carried out. “The letters describe the preparation, the attack and the hours and days after the murder in excruciating detail,” said one of the experts who analyzed the letters. “I am probably the sickest and most twisted person you have ever met,” Steven himself wrote in one of those letters.
As for Christopher, he confessed that “he had wanted to kill someone for a long time and was disappointed that he didn’t feel any emotion after Cates’ murder. “He told the police that he and the others planned to rob the house and kill anyone who might be there, just for fun,” according to The Telegraph.
In November 2010, Steven Spader and Christopher Gribble were tried for the murder of Kimberly Cates and the attempted murder of her daughter Jaimie. “He is a psychopath,” stated Jeffery Strelzin about the founder of the brotherhood when analyzing the psychiatric examination of him, “he has no regard for the life or well-being of others. The only person he really cares about is himself.”
For the prosecutor, the teenagers were united by a “terrible synergy”: “They do not care about others and, unfortunately, they took satisfaction in inflicting pain and chaos on innocent people. It gave them a feeling of power and pleasure. That is what they are”. And he stated that, if they had not been arrested, they would have committed a similar assault and crime again. “They wanted to do this again, it was part of the plan,” Strelzin said.
Lt. James Geraghty, commander of the New Hampshire State Police Major Crimes Unit and lead investigator on the case, was also clear about what Steven Spader was like: “He’s just bad to the core.” “It is not a phase. It’s not something I’m going to get over with time. “That’s who he is,” the prosecutor reiterated.
Before the verdict, Steven’s attorney read a letter of apology that the inmate had written from jail and was addressed to the Cates: “Through my impulsive actions, I have destroyed families and ruined lives. I am truly sorry for the pain I have caused you. “I don’t expect forgiveness nor do I deserve it.”
When it came time to hand down the sentence, Judge Gillian Abramson turned to Steven and said, “You will remain in that cage for the rest of your useless life.” Both young men were sentenced to life in prison without parole, while their accomplices, William Marks and Quinn Glover, were sentenced to between 30 and 60 years and between 20 and 40 years, respectively.
Although the United States Supreme Court gave the prisoners the opportunity to appeal the sentence in 2013, Steven, for example, chose not to appear: “I choose to accept responsibility for my actions.”
The hearing was also held and the state of New Hampshire confirmed the life sentence considering lack of remorse on the part of the inmate, in addition to pointing out the possibility of repetition of the crime.
As for Christopher, the court also rejected the possibility of reducing his sentence and, like his friend and accomplice, he will remain in prison for at least seventy more years.
