A lot of people in town knew Roy Tullock got rid of the guns in his house long ago at his wife’s insistence, Stone said, noting “their babysitter would’ve been aware,” suggesting the girls had concocted that fear as a feeble self-defense ploy. Stone acknowledged the girls came from rough childhoods but said that they took out their twisted, exaggerated, misguided feelings of victimhood on an innocent family.

“Their invasion of the Tullocks’ house was merely a rehearsal that went live when the Tullocks arrived home early,” Stone said, presenting the horrifying crime scene photos to the jurors during closing arguments. “The evidence rests in the Tullocks’ blood and it cries out. Their fingerprints are on the knives, their footwear impressions in the blood and their own admissions affirm that they each had a hand in the killings of Neal, Linda, Connie and Roy Tullock.”

The case lasted three weeks before it was turned over to the jury.

After several hours of deliberation it returned with its verdict.

Justice Claiborne told the girls to stand.

They were each found guilty of four counts of second-degree murder.

A banshee wail tore through the room causing Justice Claiborne to tap his gavel as the girls turned. One saw her father and mother, consumed with anguish, looking older, weaker and smaller. The second girl met the eyes of a stranger before she realized she was looking at her mother, who was now frail and wasted.

The sobbing and gavel knocking subsided, then Justice Claiborne concluded by saying sentencing would come in several months.

Four weeks later, in Eternity, accompanied by a caseworker, a child services worker and two RCMP officers, Janie stood in the drumming rain as her mother’s casket was lowered into the ground.

Her killer: liver failure.

But Janie knew the truth. She’d had a hand in her mother’s death, too.

She was taken back to The Brandon Correctional Centre, realizing that at fourteen she was a hated convicted killer, alone in the world.

Five months later, Justice Claiborne’s hands shook a little as he read his written remarks to a packed courtroom as he sentenced the girls.

Blood had dried in a red dot on his chin where he’d nicked himself shaving that morning. The case had taken a toll on him and he’d lost sleep and a little weight.

“The taking of four innocent lives, including those of two small children, was an unconscionable act, suggesting to this court that you had colder blood in your veins icing your souls,” he said. “That you were barely out of your own childhoods at the time catapults this tragedy to a realm beyond evil. I therefore am compelled to give each of you the maximum sentence and conditions allowed under the law. Whether you will work your way back to redemption only time will tell.”