Cassie Jo Stoddart

Case background and investigation

Cassie Jo Stoddart was a 16-year-old student at Pocatello High School in southeastern Idaho. On the weekend of September 22, 2006, she was house-sitting and looking after pets at the home of her aunt and uncle in Bannock County while they were away. She was stabbed to death in the house that night. Her relatives found her body when they returned two days later.

Investigators first spoke with the people who had been with her that evening. According to Biography.com's account of the case, her boyfriend was questioned and cleared. Attention then turned to two classmates, Brian Lee Draper and Torey Michael Adamcik, both 16. Draper acknowledged involvement when questioned by police, and the two were arrested on September 27, 2006, according to Wikipedia's summary.

The central evidence was a videotape the pair had made. As described in the Idaho Supreme Court's 2017 opinion in Adamcik's case, the recording showed them planning the killing in advance and talking about other possible victims. Biography.com reports that the tape also included footage recorded shortly after the attack in which Draper said they had just killed her. The court's opinion states that Stoddart suffered 30 knife wounds, 12 of which were potentially fatal.

The two were tried separately as adults in 2007. A jury convicted Draper in April, and another jury found Adamcik guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder on June 8, 2007. In August 2007 each was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder, along with a term of 30 years to life on the conspiracy count.

Both men have pursued appeals. In September 2011 the Idaho Supreme Court upheld Draper's murder conviction and life sentence but set aside his conspiracy conviction because of an error in the jury instructions, according to Biography.com. In December 2011 the same court upheld Adamcik's convictions and sentence by a 3-2 vote, the Associated Press reported in the Deseret News; his lawyers had argued, among other things, that life without parole was cruel and unusual punishment for someone who was 16 at the time.

Adamcik later sought post-conviction relief, citing the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Miller v. Alabama on juvenile life sentences. On December 26, 2017, the Idaho Supreme Court affirmed the dismissal of that petition, finding that the sentencing judge had adequately considered his youth. A federal court denied a further petition in 2019. Both men remain in Idaho state prisons with no parole eligibility. The case was revisited in a documentary series released in February 2026.