Studies show no link between film violence and real-life violence , but a recent case doesn’t do much to drive the point home. A 17-year-old wrote in a confession released Thursday that the Rob Zombie version of the film Halloween inspired him to kill his mother and sister.
The teen, Jake Evans, is currently on trial for killing his 15-year-old sister, Mallory, and his mother Jami in their Aledo home on October 3, 2012. In his four-page confession to police, written hours after his arrest, Evans said that he had watched the Halloween remake three times that week, reports NBC News .
Rob Zombie’s 2007 remake of Halloween concentrates on the back-story of famous film killer Michael Myers who, as a 10-year-old boy, murders several people. 15-years later, he goes on a killing spree (the main events of the film).
“While watching it, I was amazed at how at ease the boy was during the murders and how little remorse he had,” Evans wrote. “Afterward, I was thinking to myself it would be the same for me when I kill someone.”
Later, his mother and sister were watching the presidential debate, and he calmly “just sat in the living room thinking about how I was going to kill my family.” He then got up to get a knife. “I went back upstairs and kept pacing back and forth imagining killing Mallory,” he said. “Thoughts of causing her pain kept entering my mind and were really bothering me. But then I’d think about the times she hurt my feelings.”
He tried to lure his sister by asking her to watch the Adam Sandler comedy Water Boy with him.
“After a while, I thought to myself that if I were to kill my mom and Mallory, I wouldn’t want them to feel anything, so I decided to kill them both with the .22 revolver I stole from my Grandpa,” he wrote. “I then spent probably over an hour walking nervously around the house thinking how life will never be the same and how I would never see them again,” he wrote.
Then, Evans acted, knocking on his sister’s door, reports The Daily Mail .
“She came out and out of the corner of her eye she saw me pointing the gun at her,” he said. “She thought I was joking and told me that I was freaking her out. I shot her in the back and then the head.”
After that, he tracked down his mother and shot her three times.
“In shock, I ran to my room and was screaming at the top of my lungs that I am really messed up and that I killed my mom and sister,” he wrote. “As I emptied the shells on my bed, I heard noizes (sic) and realized that Mallory was still alive,” he said. “While I loaded the gun back up, I was shouting that I was sorry and then ran as fast as I could to kill her. I made sure my mom was dead and shot her again in the head.”‘
He then placed the gun on the counter and called 911. Police arrived, found the bodies of his mother and sister, and arrested him.
“I know now though that I’m done with killing. It’s the most dreadful and terrifying thing I will ever experience. And what happened last night will haunt me forever,” he concluded.