Top 10 Another Most Evil Kids In History

Gary, Indiana is the setting for this tale, which saw 15-year-old Paula Cooper skip school, smoke weed, drink beer, and stab an elderly lady 33 times with a foot-long butcher knife. Despite the defense arguing for her abusive upbringing, Cooper was sentenced to death. However, this caused a massive uproar, and as a result of various condemnations, Indiana raised the death penalty's minimum age from 10 to 16. Following this, her sentence was later downgraded from death to life, and Cooper ultimately served 26 years, apparently committing suicide soon after her release.

Not even small town Canada is free from horrible crime. In April 2006, 12 year old Jasmine Richardson, and her 23 year old boyfriend Jeremy Steinke – who claimed to be a 300 year old werewolf – fatally stabbed Richardson's mother, father, and younger brother. The apparent motive for the murders were that the girl's parents – unsurprisingly – did not approve of their 12 year old daughter dating an adult man. Youth aside, Richardson was found guilty and sentenced to ten years, Canada's maximum penalty for criminals under 14, and was released in May of 2016.

Creepy stories can have a horrible effect on children, like when 12-year-olds Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser, planned to kill their classmate Payton Leutner. Having been together at a sleepover the night before, Weier and Geyser decided to kill Leutner in order to appease the Slender Man, and keep their families protected from the fictional creature. Doing so, they lured her into the forest, pinned her to the ground, and stabbed her nineteen times before leaving her to die. Leuthner, however, managed to crawl to a nearby road and eventually made a full recovery after being found by a cyclist. The perpetrators, meanwhile, were tried and committed to mental institutions.

Seemingly without motive, four Japanese teens – including Shinji Minato - abducted high school student Junko Furuta in 1988, and after raping her multiple times, took her to Minato's parents’ house. There, Furuta was reportedly raped as many as 400 times, tortured, mutilated, and humiliated for forty days. Furuta would eventually die from the abuse, leading the perpetrators to wrap her body and dispose of her in a 55 gallon drum of wet concrete. Due to the severity of her torture, Furuta could only be identified by her fingerprints. The boys, meanwhile were tried and sentenced, with Miyano, as the supposed leader, receiving a twenty year sentence.

Despite their friendship being on the rocks, high school student Skylar Neese snuck out to join her friends Rachel Shoaf and Shelia Eddy. The three drove to a secluded spot under the pretext of smoking some pot. Instead, Shoaf and Eddy stabbed Neese to death, allegedly due to the girl catching the pair having sex. Eddy moved on as though nothing happened, and even helped Neese's family hand out missing person fliers. Shoaf, however, caved, taking Eddy down with her, and led investigators to her former friend's body, resulting in a 15 to life sentence for Eddy and a 10 to 30 year sentence for Shoaf.

#5: T. J. Lane

Also in:

20 Most EVIL Couples in History

On February 27, 2012, 17 year old T.J. Lane – armed with a .22 caliber handgun – entered the cafeteria of Chardon High School and began to open fire. Claiming to have picked his targets at random, Lane's rampage left three dead and three more injured, one of which became permanently paralyzed. While Lane was initially detained as a juvenile, he was tried as an adult and received three life sentences. Throughout the trial, Lane remained relentlessly remorseless, arriving to his sentencing wearing a t-shirt with “killer” written across the chest, and telling his victims’ families that he masturbates to the memory of their murders.

Cindy Collier and Shirley Wolf had just met before they decided to hit a retirement community with a plan in mind to steal a car. Anna Brackett, who was in her mid-80s, let the two in, and entertained them for an hour, until Collier found a knife and Wolf began stabbing the elderly woman. After watching Brackett bleed to death, the duo discovered they'd stolen the wrong key, and as her car was a manual they couldn't drive it anyway. Chillingly, Wolf would note the event in her diary, referring to the murder as “lots of fun”. Both were sentenced as juveniles, and released in the early 1990s.

Bustamante wanted to kill someone for the sheer thrill of it. So, at age 15, she took her 9-year-old neighbor into the woods behind their houses, stabbed her, slit her throat and wrists, and strangled her to death. She then dumped the girl's body in a shallow grave she had dug in advance. According to officials, Bustamante simply wanted to know how it felt to kill someone and even wrote in her diary that it was “pretty enjoyable.” Despite showing signs of mental illness, Bustamante was sentenced to life in prison and had to serve at least 35 years before becoming eligible for parole.

Loveless, Tackett, Lawrence, and Rippey were all between 15 and 17 when they abducted 12-year-old Shanda Sharer from her father’s house. Motivated by a love-triangle involving Loveless and another girl, Sharer was taken to the woods where she was forced to strip naked and was beaten, stabbed, and strangled. After she failed to die, Tackett beat her with a tire iron. She was finally taken to a field and set on fire, where she died. For their respective roles, Lawrence was sentenced to 20 years, Tackett and Loveless to 60, and Rippey to 60, later reduced to 35 years.

#1: Eric Smith

Also in:

What If Eric Lindros Stayed With The Nordiques And Didn't Get Traded To Philadelphia? - Future Considerations

At a young age, Eric Smith was diagnosed with intermittent explosive disorder, and he was constantly bullied for his glasses, red hair, and freckles. Unfortunately, his mental health and his constant torment were a terrible combination that led to terrible consequences. At 13, Smith lured 4-year-old Derrick Robie into the woods. He then strangled the boy, squashed his head with a large rock, and sodomized his corpse with a stick. After confessing to his mother a few days later, she gave him up to authorities, and he was sentenced to nine-years-to-life, the maximum sentence for a juvenile. He has since been denied parole on eight separate occasions.