Valerie Parashumti and Jessica Stasinowsky

Love can change everything for better or for worse. In Australia in 2006 two young women shocked the country. They said that they felt like that brewing a movie, a surreal fantasy that became horrifying. In fact, a lot of us can understand murder under certain circumstances but murder for foreplay. A fatal attraction that would end in unspeakable brutality. It's the kind of thing that scares society. The city of Perth Western Australia it's a relaxed town, in a relaxed country. In December 2006, this quiet suburbia became a killing ground. Young Stacey Mitchell had been arguing with her parents and decided to leave home. Stacey being a normal fascias, 16 year old, did what many teenage girls do at some point. They have a family argument with their parents and they leave. They want to get out of the house for a few weeks. Then she went to stay with friends.

Journalist Christiana Jones and colleague Michael Bennett are still amazed at the misfortune of Stacie's fatal choice. Stacey was left in a situation on her own, not really knowing who she was with and she just was in the wrong place at the wrong time. A mutual friend suggests Stacey can stay with two lovers, eighteen-year-old Valerie parish and 19 year old Jessica Stasi. The relationship that they had it was intense, it was possessive, it was obsessive. They wanted to prove to each other that they were committed to each other. but Stacey's arrival seems to challenge the relationship. Stacy is bubbly and attractive and Jessica sees her as a rival. Jessica began to get jealous of the time that Parish and Stacy was spending together during the day. If Stacy was unwittingly getting between the two girls, Jessica makes sure it won't be for long.

To her, the victim was a threat to her relationship with the other perpetrator. Valerie and Jessica want to settle their problems, so they make a pact to get rid of her. They don't plan to throw her out, they plan to kill her. I think is that wanting to prove one’s love to someone else by murdering someone, it's certainly a very difficult concept to understand. In just three short days a 16 year old girl first welcomed as a housemate is marked for murder. Sixteen-year-old Stacey Mitchell has no idea she's about to become a victim in a murderous love pact. She's moved in with Valerie Parrish and Jessica for a few days after fighting with her parents. Her housemates are lovers and now Stacey threatens to disrupt their relationship. They'd told people that apparently Stacey was pushing their buttons that she was annoying.

To prove their love for each other Valerie and Jessica pledged to kill this girl, now considered an interloper. They wanted to prove to each other that they were committed to each other and why they chose this way to do it, who knows. This is not a well-thought-out crime, it is not a well planned out murder, everything about it reeks of youth youthful offenders. The murder starts as a party with whiskey and dancing. The police believe Stacey is all supplied with a sleeping pill to dull her senses. The two lovers seem to be playing out a fantasy, even to the choice of music. It's st. John's passion. I think the choice of music is indicative of that it was part of a fantasy, one of the killers like that particular music and thought it would enhance the whole experience. The murder weapon is a cement block.

The prosecutor told the court that it began with Parrish hesitating a moment as she held the block. When the brain is damaged or injured it only reacts in a couple of ways, by bleeding or by swelling. As the brain swells it usually has no place to go, either out through the fractures or more commonly down into the hole at the base of the brain called the foramen magnum. The attack was prolonged, it was a sustained attack, parish followed her through the house. It was never said how many times Stacey was hit with the concrete block but it was said that it eventually broke into. Beaten to the point that the concrete block broke, this is a tremendous amount of force. Stacey is later strangled, so a bonding that goes there. It's not just you that's a killer, now we are killers together.

Two years later recorders Michael Bennett and Christiana Jones are still bewildered by the ferocious crime. I think one of the most striking things about this case and certainly one of the most bizarre was that the killers had only known Stacy for three days. But then the killing was so brutal and so callous and prolonged. It was very purposeful and it was hard for people to reconcile those two things. Just as hard to comprehend is that it seemed to arouse them. They both wrote in their Diaries after the event that they could have done it better, that they could have done things in a different way. It certainly shows the depravity of both of the individuals. They filmed Stacie's body on a mobile phone. A few things can be taken from it, look what we did, aren't we cool, that the victim is so insignificant, this is something to celebrate and memorialize forever on film. It probably sealed their fate with the jury as if the fantasy had overtaken all reason. The girls only now think about how to dispose of the body.

There was apparently a shopping list and the girls went to the hardware supply stores and price varies items, this included a shovel, chainsaw, cement and one of the plans was to reduce the body to mulch. Then after second thoughts the killer's just dumped the body in a garbage bin. Stacey's worried parents reported her missing to police and four days later some elementary police work led them to Valerie and Jessica's place where the bin quickly gave them away. Valerie and Jessica were convicted of murder and sentenced to 24 years imprisonment. When I first saw them in court and was watching their behavior, I was shocked, they were smiling and giggling and having these exchanges so much so that the judge actually mentioned it a number of times.

It could have been just they felt no remorse, they're just sociopaths to the core, so what we got caught but it also could have been false bravado. The crime remains one of Australia's strangest murders, people are still coming to terms with how a dark fantasy took the life of an innocent young girl. She was 16, she was young, she was still turning into the girl, she was going to be and I think that's one of the saddest things about this case, is that the horrific and bizarre detail overshadow the fact that really the loss, was a very young bubbly girl who had a life ahead of her.