Inside the mind of the teen killer who murdered Pirjo Kemppainen
THE shocking murder trial involving the death of Callington woman Pirjo Kemppainen provided disturbing insights into the mind of the teenage boy who killed her.
WHEN he was seven, a psychologist asked him what his wishes were. "My wishes are killing more and more and more people," the boy known as B replied.
"I wish I had a catapult that would hit someone on the head and then they would all be dead."
Last week, a crowded Supreme Court gallery tensed as B, now 17, was led from the cells. Everyone watching knew he was a killer - that he had stabbed and bashed pensioner Pirjo Kemppainen more than 120 times - but it seemed incongruous with the small teen swaggering to the witness box.
He wore a black suit and white sneakers, with dark hair cropped close around his large ears.
He had a face that, under other circumstances, might one day be considered handsome. Disturbingly, he rarely blinked.
Reminded of that long-ago psychological appointment, B frowned.
"I don't remember saying that," he told jurors, "but I've said it to friends.
"I was obsessed about killing people - from Year 1 to Year 8, I've just had thoughts about killing people. I still think about it."
B's testimony easily ranks among the most chilling moments in state legal history.
His dispassionate evidence was as confronting as that of "bodies in the barrels" serial killer James Vlassakis, as unsettling as lust-driven killer-for-hire David Key.
Veteran police officers agreed that they had "never heard anything as bad" as B's evidence.
Ms Kemppainen's murder - in the early hours of September 11, 2010 - dredged up unpleasant memories of the children who killed James Bulger and Anne Redman.
People asked how a boy, aged just 14, could commit such an unspeakable act.
With this week's acquittal of his alleged co-accused, B's story can finally be told.
B was born in August, 1996, to parents who soon separated.
"He's been with his mother since birth," B's father told the Supreme Court.
"Wherever his mother was, that's where B was."
Forensic psychologist Dr Luke Broomhall, who assessed B last year, found he had mild mental retardation, Year 2 literacy skills and intellectual function "in the extremely low range".
"He is spectacularly unable to balance competing demands, brainstorm and come up with alternatives (to problems)," he said last year.
"If he had something on his mind he wanted to achieve, it would be very difficult for him to evaluate the consequences of that behaviour."
B started watching violent movies at the age of seven, pornography at 10, and had a lifelong love of video games.
Asked about his hobby in court, B underwent a visible transformation - the surly, dispassionate killer gave way to an excited, animated boy. Such was his excitement that the court's stenographers asked him to slow down because they could not keep up with his evidence.
"In Gears of War, you can cut people in half with your gun (which) has a chainsaw on it," he enthused.
"You can blow people in half with a shotgun, strap grenades to people, use people as human shields, pretty well make mincemeat out of people."
Dr Broomhall had noted this obsession and acknowledged research showing such games desensitise people to aggression and promote fighting over problem-solving.
"In some susceptible individuals, this can be a precursor to real-life events," he explained.
"The key is that we're talking about vulnerable people." B, he agreed, was such a person.
The foundation for Ms Kemppainen's murder was laid in 2008 when B's stepfather accepted an interstate job.
The family moved - but the youth did not go with them, instead joining his father and his new partner in Kanmantoo, 5km north of Callington, several months later.
There were adjustment problems from the start.
In early 2009, some children knocked over the family's rubbish bin.
"They were being smart arses," B said in court.
"I got annoyed, so I got a meat cleaver and went outside and waved it around."
His father's new partner admonished him, to which he replied: "I should have capped their motherf...ing asses."
His father's relationship broke down in the middle of 2009, with the partner leaving, and B and his dad moved to Callington later that year.
B fared poorly at school, quickly becoming the target of bullying and teasing.
"His father encouraged him to take a stand if he felt he was being bullied," Dr Broomhall said.
"He also encouraged a dislike or hatred of those who would seek to pick on him."
The school worked hard to assist B, assigning a support officer to provide one-to-one care.
Wanting to help, she became an unwilling audience to his vicious ways.
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B would spin knives on his thumb during home economics class and offer to murder her "old man" for $10.
"I know how to do it," he explained, "I would go to the front door, I would wait until he opened it and I would kill him."
Seeking to counsel - and defuse - him, the woman told B that people who do bad things get arrested.
"They won't catch me," he replied.
B's true confidante was his eventual co-accused, a 14-year-old known as A.
According to B's father, the duo spent every weekend together.
"They both loved movies and their games," B's father remembered. "What they were doing wasn't of interest to me."
It should have been.
"Every weekend, he was here, prior to the murder, I talked to him about killing someone," B told A's trial last week.
The friends would wander around Callington at night and throw rocks on houses to annoy their neighbours.
On Thursday, September 9 - two days before the murder - B asked a teacher: "How good would it be to see someone die?"
"I'm gonna stab someone," he continued. "I wish I had a gun ... how good would it be to see someone being shot?"
The school took immediate action. A psychological appointment was organised for Friday, September 10 and B was closely monitored.
The psychologist never came - The Advertiser understands the appointment was cancelled because of a lack of resources in the region.
At lunchtime that day, the school support officer found B staring at a child across the playground.
"I hate that kid and I'm going to kill him," he told her.
Before she could react, B ran across the playground and struck the child in the head.
His violence earned him an immediate suspension.
B responded angrily to his punishment.
"If you do this, people will die," he told a teacher.
IN Dr Broomhall's opinion, the suspension sealed Ms Kemppainen's fate.
"B's primary motivation is to become empowered in any situation where he is disempowered, and by any means necessary," he said.
"He experienced disempowerment and sanction in one setting, and so transferred it to a third party, an innocent victim, which allowed B to exact revenge.
"The murder was not about the victim, it was about B re-empowering himself."
A slept at B's house that night, expecting to go rock-throwing. B's blood lust was up, however, and Ms Kemppainen would be dead before dawn.
"I put the knife in her stomach," B told the court, pausing to mime the action.
"I tried to stab her twice in the stomach and then I repeatedly stabbed her in the head.
"She was screaming."
When he was 14, a psychologist asked him how he felt after stabbing and bludgeoning Ms Kemppainen to death.
"I felt like God," the boy known as B replied.
B's account of the frenzied murder, in the Supreme Court last week, was unsettling in its directness.
There was no emotion in his voice - no hint of remorse - and he spoke of an innocent woman's slaughter as casually as one recalls a movie scene.
"I walked up to the victim's house alone, walked up to the sliding door and the victim came out through the wooden door," he said.
"She asked why I had thrown the rock (through her sliding door window). I said I was drunk and I put the knife in her stomach." B then paused to mime the action.
"I tried to stab her twice in the stomach and then I repeatedly stabbed her in the head," he continued.
"She tried to hold her arms up to keep me from stabbing her, she was screaming."
B said he had "no idea" how many times he stabbed Ms Kemppainen. Forensic evidence showed he inflicted 58 wounds, and several strikes had gouged the pensioner's skull.
Dissatisfied with the bloodshed, B went outside to get a rock. Barely alive, Ms Kemppainen made a final attempt to save herself.
"She was about to shut the door on me, so I threw the rock at her door," B recalled calmly.
"It was a big chunk of rock, about 30cm across. I ran through the door and continued to stab her until she was on the floor making no sound."
B retrieved a second piece of concrete and struck Ms Kemppainen with it 69 times.
"The last thing I did was throw the slab of concrete at her head," he said.
Like the psychologist, Mr Kimber wanted to know how B felt after the murder.
"Relaxed," he answered. "I had blood all on my jumper, my face, not sure if it was in my hair but it was on my pants. I'm not sure how much, but it was a lot."
B's detached recollection of events stunned lawyers, police and jurors alike - but had already been foreshadowed by Dr Broomhall.
Having assessed B last year, he concluded B's perspective of the crime matched the viewpoint of a player in a video game.
"B's description of the act itself is a distant observer's perspective," he said last year.
"Most individuals would have an adverse reaction to the sight of blood or people suffering ... B was an interested observer."
B naively believed he had committed the perfect crime, but was arrested three days after the murder. His frustration at being caught boiled over during psychological appointments.
"If I had my phone I could've gotten away with it," he said in October 2010. "I could've gone in (to the house) and said `oh, there's a dead body'. I would have gotten $100 or $500 for finding a dead body."
Dr Broomhall said that, in custody, B had "starkly and steadfastly disavowed remorse at all".
He had told staff he dreamt of attending his high school reunion armed with high-powered weapons and "mowing down motherf--ers". His lawyer's job, he said, was to "make me innocent".
When he learned of the murder of pensioner Anne Redman, also by teenage killers, B was thrilled.
"There's been another brutal murder of an old lady," he told detention centre staff. "I've started a revolution, I'm a revolutionary. I just hope they don't catch this guy."
Staff also found ominous rap lyrics in B's room.
"From a young age I've had psychopathic thoughts," they read.
"From third grade, all I wanted to do was abduct someone and torture them and have a little fun. Don't ever think you can befriend me because I'll cut you so gently. I will turn your bedroom into a blood frenzy. Don't think I can ever change."
Faced with an overwhelming prosecution case, B accepted a deal. He would give evidence against A in exchange for a discounted non-parole period.
B freely admitted his motives were less than pure.
"My father got upset ... he told me if I didn't give evidence he wouldn't visit me more than twice a year," he told A's trial.
Characteristically, he also wanted vengeance on A.
"I'll get him back once he's inside," he told a psychologist. "I wish I had a hammer so I could smash it over his jaw."
His hatred for A - who would eventually be acquitted of murder - had grown exponentially.
"I wish A was here so I could kill him, he's such a snitch," he told his jailers. "He'll need protection for life because I'll be after him as soon as I get out."
On February 15 last year, B was jailed for life by Justice Margaret Nyland.
"Your sole motive for going to (Ms Kemppainen's) house that night was your wish to kill someone," she said. "You subjected her to what can only be described as a frenzied and relentless attack.
"Killing Ms Kemppainen was a callous and cold means to an end ... it was all about the re-empowerment of yourself."
She agreed to reduce his non-parole period to 15 years on account of his guilty plea and promise to give evidence, considering it a sign of rehabilitation. It was not. Upset with his sentence, B lodged two appeals and, when both failed, reneged on his offer to testify.
Mr Kimber promptly filed an appeal of his own, asking the court to increase B's non-parole period. Cowed by the threat, B relented and became the star witness in A's trial - but his testimony was dismissed by jurors and his former friend walked free.
B told the court he had hopes of freedom as well.
"I've started to do TAFE and school work, do my courses so I can apply for jobs when I get out," he said. "I'm working on it (my anger issues) slowly ... I'm slowly working on my behaviour."
In his final analysis, Dr Broomhall predicted a long road ahead for B.
"There is a degree of empathy for the victim beneath an outer layer of toughness and bravado," he said. "There has been a softening of bravado more than the development of empathy ... what empathy and regret we have seen is embryonic. Prison is a good place for him to start developing the empathy I do believe he possesses."
B's immediate future is bleak.
His progress will be assessed following his 18th birthday. If he can display insight and empathy, he will be allowed to remain in youth detention until he turns 20. If not, he will be immediately transferred to the harsh climes of Yatala Labour Prison.
His fate there, among the state's most hardened and fearsome criminals, is uncertain. But if Dr Broomhall is right, and B can avoid institutionalisation, he will be eligible for release on September 14, 2025.
He will have just turned 29.