Review: ‘The Scream Murder: A True Teen Horror Story,’ starring John Ganske, Roger Schei, John Kempf, Bill Collins, Shannon Adamcik, Pam Draper and Kerry Draper

February 12, 2026

by Carla Hay

“The Scream Murder: A True Teen Horror Story”

Directed by Conor McCarthy and Lisa Quijano Wolfinger

Culture Representation: The three-episode documentary series “The Scream Murder: A True Teen Horror Story” features an all-white group of people who talk about the case of Torey Adamcik and Brian Draper, who were convicted of murdering their classmate Cassie Jo Stoddart, in 2006 in Pocatello, Idaho, when they were all 16 years old.

Culture Clash: Adamcik and Draper—who planned the murder in advance, and later blamed each other for the murder—were tried as adults and sentenced to life in prison without parole, but some people believe that Adamcik and Draper should be eligible for parole because of U.S. Supreme Court cases deciding that murderers under the age of 18 should not be tried and sentenced under laws that apply to adults.

Culture Audience: “The Scream Murder: A True Teen Horror Story” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in true crime documentaries about what happens in the U.S. legal system when people under the age of 18 are convicted of murder.

“The Scream Murder: A True Teen Horror Story” is a comprehensive three-episode docuseries about the 2006 murder of 16-year-old Cassie Jo Stoddart in Pocatello, Idaho. Interviews with the killers are included in this documentary, which explores the controversial topic of adult-level punishment for children who murder. The issues for this tragedy are discussed from many perspectives, with the only missing perspective being from anyone in Stoddart’s family, who presumably declined to comment for this documentary.

Directed by Conor McCarthy and Lisa Quijano Wolfinger (also known as Lisa Q. Wolfinger), “The Scream Murder: A True Teen Horror Story” jumps back and forth in the story’s timeline, but the documentary’s skillful editing makes the story cohesive. This murder case received a lot of publicity in the United States, including being featured in episodes of several other true crime series, such as “Dateline,” “Your Worst Nightmare,” “Copycat Killers,” “Murder Among Friends,” “Unmasked,” “A Time to Kill” and “Killer Connections.” However, “The Scream Murder: A True Teen Horror Story” is one of the few documentaries with interview participation from Torey Adamcik and Brian Draper, who were convicted of murdering Stoddart. Adamcik and Draper were 16 years old when they murdered her.

Episode 1, titled “Alone in a Big, Dark House,” details how Adamcik, Draper and Stoddart all knew each other, how the murder happened, and the investigation that followed and resulted in Draper’s confession. Episode 2, titled “Just Like Scream,” includes more information about the investigation, including the discovery of a videotape with shocking evidence, as well as the arrests and trials of Adamcik and Draper. Episode 3, titled “Life Is Cruel,” discusses the aftermath of Adamcik and Draper getting prison sentences of life without parole, and has separate prison interviews that took place in 2025 with Adamcik and Draper. Adamcik and Draper each did their separate interviews on camera at the Idaho State Correctional Center, where they are incarcerated.

People who’ve already heard about the case probably know the basic facts, which are repeated in the documentary. On the night of September 22, 2006, Stoddart was stabbed to death (about 30 times) in a remote area of Pocatello, while she was alone in the house owned by her vacationing aunt and uncle. Stoddart was housesitting for the couple, who were in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, at the time of the murder. Stoddart’s aunt and uncle discovered the body on September 24, 2006, when they returned to their house from their trip.

Three other people had visited the house on the night of the murder: Stoddart’s boyfriend Matt Beckham and their friends Adamcik and Draper, who were all students at Pocatello High School. Adamcik and Draper left around 9:30 p.m. and said they went to go watch the horror movie “Pulse” at a local theater. After Adamcik and Draper left, the house lights mysterious went out and then came back on.

Beckham and Stoddart were frightened about the lights going off and stayed upstairs until the lights came back on. Beckham left around 10:30 p.m., when his mother picked him up at his request. Stoddart declined an offer from Beckham’s mother to get a ride to spend the night somewhere else because Stoddart said she couldn’t leave the house unattended, and she had to take let out the family dog the next morning.

It was later revealed, though confessions, that Adamcik and Draper went to the movie theater and bought tickets for “Pulse,” but they didn’t actually watch the movie at the theater. Instead, Adamcik and Draper went back to the house that night and were the ones who messed with the house’s light breakers, in order to scare Stoddart and Beckham. Adamcik and Draper stayed hidden inside the house and waited for Stoddart to be alone when they murdered her. After the murder, they buried these items: the clothes and masks they wore during the murder, the murder weapons (a Sloan knife and a larger Rambo knife), and a partially burned videotape that made this murder case even more shocking.

Several law enforcement officials who were involved in the case are interviewed in the documentary: Idaho State Police detective John Ganske, Pocatello Police Department chief Roger Schei, Idaho State Police detective John Kempf, Pocatello Police Department captain of investigations division Bill Collins and Pocatello Police Department captain of support services Chad Higbee. They give clear and concise descriptions of how this murder mystery was solved. The documentary has some re-enactments, but these re-enactments are minimal and don’t distract from the interviews.

During this murder investigation, police quickly ruled out Beckham as a suspect because he had an alibi corroborated by his mother, who confirmed that Stoddart was still alive when they left the house to go to the Beckham home. Beckham also passed a polygraph test, although polygraph test results are not admissible in court. After Beckham was cleared, Draper and Adamcik became the most likely suspects and were also questioned by police.

The documentary includes archival footage of all these police interrogations, as well as footage from the trials. In the interrogation footage, Beckham, Draper and Adamcik were interviewed separately, and each of them had their respective parents in the interrogation room with them. Beckham, who was questioned on the same day that Stoddart’s body was found, was polite and cooperative and seemed to still be in shock.

Draper, who was very emotional during his own interrogation, broke down and cried multiple times. At one point, when Draper was alone in the interrogation room, he sobs as if he’s talking to Stoddart: “I wanted to be your boyfriend. I really did. I’ll stop him.” By contrast, Adamcik remained calm while being questioned by police, and he seemed almost emotionally detached when giving his responses.

Draper was the first suspect to confess. His story about going with Adamcik to see the horror movie “Pulse” that night began to fall apart when he couldn’t tell any details about the movie. Draper then changed his story to say that he and Adamcik were looking to steal things from unlocked cars during the time that Stoddart was believed to have been murdered. That story also crumbled when Draper couldn’t give clear and specific details on any of the cars that he said he and Adamcik supposedly approached to see if the car doors were locked or unlocked.

Finally, Draper admitted that he and Adamcik were involved in the murder, but Draper claimed he was a bystander witness who saw Adamcik stab Stoddart. Draper also claimed that he didn’t know Adamcik would commit this murder. Draper led police to where the evidence was buried. However, Draper probably didn’t think the burned videotape could be viewed.

On the videotape were scenes of Draper and Adamcik filming themselves planning the murder and specifically mentioning that they would murder Stoddart when she was in the house by herself. They wore scary masks during the murder and planned the murder to be like the 1996 horror movie “Scream,” where the opening scene shows a teenage girl (played by Drew Barrymore) who is stabbed to death by a mask-wearing killer while she is alone in a house. In the movie “Scream,” several other students at a local high school also became murder victims in a short period of time.

The videotape also showed Stoddart saying hello to Draper (as he held the camera) while she was standing at her school hallway locker on the day that he and Adamcik planned to murder her. Adamcik and Draper videotaped themselves in a car (with Adamcik driving) just minutes after leaving the murder scene, as they talked excitedly about murdering Stoddart. During this car drive, Adamcik is seen telling Draper that they need to get their stories straight, so they would be able to tell the same stories if questioned. Draper was arrested after his confession.

Adamcik was questioned by police when he didn’t know that police had found this evidence and was unaware that Draper had been arrested. Adamcik’s initial denials about being involved in the murder followed the same pattern as Draper’s: Adamcik started off saying that he and Draper went to see “Pulse.” And then, he admitted the movie alibi was a lie and said they were really trying to find unlocked cars for burglary during the time of the murder. After the police told Adamcik what evidence they had, he was arrested too.

In 2007, Adamcik and Draper were tried separately for first-degree murder. They each pleaded not guilty because they each blamed the other for being the one who actually stabbed Stoddart. In the buried evidence that was uncovered, Draper’s clothes, not Adamcik’s clothes, had Stoddart’s blood on it. The Rambo knife (which was the main murder weapon) had Draper’s DNA on it, not Adamcik’s DNA.

However, trial testimony revealed that Adamcik was the more dominant partner in this homicidal duo, and he was the one who probably masterminded the murder. That’s the same observation made by former Pocatello High School students who knew Stoddart, Adamcik and Draper in 2006, and who are interviewed in the documentary. These former Pocatello High School students are interviewed in the documentary, with some of these former students identified in the documentary by their first names only: Kirsten Barta (her maiden surname), Miranda Chacon, Dani Dixon, a woman named Amber, a man named Josh and a man named Justin.

These former schoolmates describe Stoddart as friendly, helpful, and the type of person who liked to smile. Draper is described as an avid skateboarder who had a reputation for being a daredevil and a goofy jokester. Justin says of Draper: “He liked to hang out with a little group of people who liked to be different.”

By contrast, Adamcik (who wanted to be a movie director) was known for being quiet and serious, which was a personality switch from what he was like before he was 15, when he was known for being upbeat and comical. Amber mentions that during his junior year in high school, Adamcik hung out with fewer friends and seemed to show a darker and more menacing side to his personality. During this time in his life, he developed a fixation on knives.

Adamcik and Draper both were obsessed with horror movies and the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Columbine, Colorado, where two male students murdered 13 other students and a teacher by gun violence. Draper and Adamcik wanted to become famous murderers, according to statements they made on their secret videos and in statements they made after their arrest. Evidence uncovered in the Stoddart murder investigation showed that Adamcik and Draper said in their self-made videos and in their own writings that they had a “hit list” of other students they wanted to kill, and they eventually aspired to do a school massacre such as the Columbine massacre.

After their arrests, Adamcik and Draper eventually admitted that they often stalked other students (usually female students) to find out their routines and to see which ones would be home alone, in order to identify targets who would be the easiest to kill. Dixon talks about an incident when someone (whom she did not see) outside her bedroom window beamed a flashlight into her bedroom one night and ran away when they saw that other people were in the house. Dixon says that she believes Adamcik and/or Draper caused this incident, and it matches a stalking incident of Dixon that Adamcik or Draper described in one of their self-made videos.

Amber says she was invited to go with Adamcik and Draper to hang out at the house where Stoddart was staying on the night of the murder. Amber couldn’t go because she and her parents attended her boyfriend’s basketball game that night. The day after the murder happened (before Stoddart’s body had been found), Adamcik had dinner with Amber, her boyfriend and her boyfriend’s parents at the house of her boyfriend’s parents. Amber remembers Adamcik acted as if nothing was wrong during this dinner. Stoddart’s murdered body was found the following day. In the documentary, Amber says that she is convinced that if she accepted that hangout invitation for the night of September 22, 2006, then she would’ve been murdered too.

Shannon Adamcik (Torey Adamcik’s mother), Pam Draper (Brian Draper’s mother) and Kerry Draper (Brian Draper’s father) are all interviewed separately in the documentary. They all mention that they raised their children in the Mormon faith. These parents also provide more insights into what could have led to this horrible tragedy. Torey Adamcik’s father Sean Adamcik did not participate in the documentary, but he is seen in police interrogation room footage. After Sean knows Torey will be arrested, Sean hugs Torey in a comforting way and tells Torey that he loves him.

Out of the three parents who are interviewed, Shannon Adamcik and Kerry Draper express the most guilt about raising a son who became a murderer and say they feel like they failed as parents. They both say they are haunted by thoughts that they could have prevented the murder if they knew how troubled their sons were. Pam Draper, who says that she still loves Brian no matter what he did, appears to be of a mindset where she blames Torey for influencing Brian to become a murderer.

Shannon Adamcik, who thinks Brian Draper was the bad influence, describes Torey as a fun-loving and good kid who never got into trouble for any crimes before the murders. She says that Torey had a fairly large group of friends until his junior year in high school, when Torey became more withdrawn. Shannon Adamcik says she never saw any warning signs that Torey would become a murderer because he was never violent and didn’t express thoughts of murder to anyone their family.

Kerry Draper is the most emotional of the three parents. He says that after Brian’s trial and imprisonment, he walked away from his lucrative real-estate business and donated a lot of his money. Kerry is also interviewed in a grassy field outside the Idaho State Correctional Center and tearfully says that if he could trade places with Brian in prison, he would. He comments on the murder and the aftermath: “There’s no excuse, no explanation—just misery.”

Pam Draper and Kerry Draper, who adopted Brian when he was a baby, say that Brian had issues with anxiety from a very young age. For a period of time, Brian was in therapy and was taking the medication Ritalin, which is usually prescribed to people diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Brian also had a stutter, which made him self-conscious. As he got taller in his teen years, he was teased more by other kids about his skinny physique and his stutter.

Shannon Adamcik says that Torey and Brian didn’t like each other very much when they first got to know each other, but when they became friends, they were very close confidants. People interviewed in the documentary describe Torey and Brian becoming closer when other friends of Brian and Torey stopped hanging out with Brian and Torey. And it seems like Torey and Brian had an “us against the world” attitude that became twisted and toxic.

Brian and Torey hid their dark thoughts about murder from their families and other friends, but after their arrests, more evidence emerged about how dark their thoughts were, including the discovery of the hit list and plans for a school massacre. Brian also wrote a secret essay called “Black River” about a school massacre. Brian’s defense team was successful in preventing “Black River” to be used as evidence against him in his trial.

As for what Torey and Brian have to say in their 2025 interviews in this documentary, they both admit to their guilt in the murder. However, Brian seems to have much more emotional distance about it because he says that the person he was at 16 no longer exists. Brian no longer has a stutter and speaks with more confidence than Torey does. In these prison interviews, Brian also shows less remorse than Torey does for the murder. It’s a role reversal from their teenage years, when Torey was more confident and more unapologetic than Brian.

Torey and Brian both say that they haven’t been friends since the prison sentence, and they only see each other occasionally in passing, when they’ve had brief conversations. They don’t express dislike for each other. It’s just obvious that they both don’t want to be in each other’s lives ever again.

The biggest questions that people have about this tragedy usually start with the word “why.” Brian says that at the time he and Torey planned the murders, Brian felt invisible and wanted to do something that affected everyone at Pocatello High School. “I wanted people to think of Columbine when they saw me,” Brian comments. Brian also mentions that he thought this type of murderer notoriety would make him more popular and more likely to get a girlfriend. In hindsight, Brian says he was “stupid” for thinking this way.

Torey admits in his interview that he lied to everyone for a long time about not stabbing Stoddart. He now acknowledges that he fully and willingly participated in stabbing her. Torey places equal blame on himself and Brian for the murder. “Me and Brian talked each other into doing it,” Torey says.

Torey also reiterates that he and Brian didn’t dislike Stoddart and didn’t have a grudge against her. She just happened to be the unlucky person who was alone in a house at night in a remote area, which was the ideal situation that Torey and Brian decided they would murder someone for the first time. He says their only motive was because Torey and Brian wanted to know what it feels like to commit murder.

Torey also mentions that during his teenage years, he was struggling with his sexual identity, his religious faith, and his anger toward his parents. He came out as gay shortly after he began his prison sentence. Torey says that when he when he was a teenager, he stopped believing in God and compared it to how people stop believing in Santa Claus. Torey states that when he was a teenager, he began to question things that were taught as “right” and “wrong” in morality. Torey says this inner turmoil is not an excuse, but the inner turmoil fueled his dark thoughts that turned into murder.

Torey’s mother Shannon says in the documentary that Torey coming out as gay was not as important as everything that he and the other people experienced because of the murder. However, Shannon admits that if Torey had come out as gay under normal circumstances, when he wasn’t in trouble for anything, his coming out would’ve been a big deal in their family. Shannon also says that she has accepted that Torey will spend the rest of his life in prison.

The last episode of the docuseries mentions the 2012 U.S. Supreme Court case Miller v. Alabama, which was one of a series of U.S. Supreme Court cases in the 21st century that decided children (people under age 18) cannot be subject to the death penalty or mandatory life-without-parole sentences because of Eighth Amendment protections. However, the U.S. Supreme Court left it up to individual states to decide if they would apply this ruling retroactively to imprisoned people who received these types of prison sentences when they were under the age of 18. Idaho has decided not to retroactively apply this ruling, which means that Torey and Brian will be in prison for life without parole.

Laurence Sternberg (professor of psychology at Temple University), Jacoba Rock (professor of social work at Boise State University) and Kim Hayes (retired assistant district attorney of Louisiana’s Acadia Parish) are interviewed in the documentary to talk about how people’s brains aren’t fully developed until their mid-20s, and this type of development should be taken into consideration in criminal justice cases. According to these experts, underage teenagers are more likely than adults to make impulsive decisions and feel extreme emotions about existential issues. Sternberg and Rock are advocates of not treating people under the age of 18 as adults in the criminal justice system. Not surprisingly, the parents of Brian and Torey believe that Brian and Torey deserve a chance to be paroled, although Shannon Adamcik bluntly says because of Idaho laws: “That’s not going to happen.”

To get another perspective, the documentary has an interview with Jeanne Quinn, whose 14-year-old son Shaun Ouillette was beaten to death in 1986, in Canton, Massachusetts. His murderer was Rod Matthews, who was 14 at the time of the murder. Matthews was convicted of second-degree murder in 1988, and he was sentenced to life in prison, with the possibility of parole. In 2024, he was paroled, which is a ruling that Quinn says she strongly disagrees with because she believes murder should be considered an adult crime, regardless of the age of the person who committed the murder.

The interview with Quinn is emotional, but it seems a little out of place for the documentary to bring up the Ouillette murder case in comparison to the Stoddart murder case because there are major differences. For starters, convicted murderer Matthews was not sentenced to life in prison without parole, as is the case with Torey and Brian. Matthews was also convicted of second-degree murder, not first-degree murder. And lastly, these two murder cases took place in two different states that have different laws when it comes to juveniles accused of murder.

Other people interviewed in the documentary are Dave Martinez, Brian’s former public defender attorney; Bron Rammell, Torey’s former defense attorney; Pocatello High School art teacher Bob Beason, who taught art to Stoddart; clinical psychologist Linda Hatzenbuehler; and Idaho State Journal reporter Jimmy Hancock. Although no one from Stoddart’s family is interviewed in the documentary, the documentary has archival footage of her mother Anna Stoddart giving courtroom testimony. The documentary’s epilogue mentions that Anna Stoddart died of cancer in 2022.

One of the most impactful stories in the documentary isn’t about what happened during the murder but what happened after the trial. Pam Draper says that after Brian was sentenced to life without parole, she and her daughter went to eat at a restaurant. By sheer coincidence, their restaurant server was a member of Stoddart’s family.

Pam, who does not name this person, expected this Stoddart family member to verbally lash out at her. She was shocked when the family member thanked her for being kind to the Stoddart family, and Pam Draper also thanked the Stoddart family member for the Stoddart family’s graciousness. This story is an example that even in these tragic circumstances, devastated family members can try find a way to heal without hate for each other.

Hulu premiered “The Scream Murder: A True Teen Horror Story” on February 11, 2026.