Jury in triple slaying trial sees notes between accused and girlfriend
CALGARY — An Alberta man accused of killing the parents and younger brother of his 12-year-old girlfriend wrote a love letter to her a week after the deaths.
Jurors were shown some correspondence between Jeremy Steinke, 25, and the girl on Thursday.
Eight notes were delivered and then seized by police in a bid to collect evidence against the pair.
“I love you more than anything in the world,” Steinke, who was 23 at the time, wrote in one.
“I’m glad to hear that you accepted my proposal,” he wrote in response to a note she sent him earlier in which she said she would marry him.
“Yes, I will, I would love to,” the pre-teen said in a letter written in black magic marker.
In that same note the girl wrote across the top of the page: “May my heart become cold to all others.”
The messages were part of a series of exchanges between the two both before and after the girl’s family was killed in their Medicine Hat home on April 23, 2006.
Steinke, 25, faces three charges of first-degree murder in the killings.
Members of the slain family can’t be named to protect the identity of the daughter, now 15, under the Youth Criminal Justice Act
She was convicted for her role in the killings last year and is now serving a 10-year sentence as part of a rarely used intensive rehabilitation program.
In the final letter penned by Steinke on May 3, 2006, he wrote at the top of the page “in joy and sorrow, my sweet 666.”
The same line was used by the girl in a note to Steinke three days after the girl’s parents and eight-year-old brother were killed.
The jury has already heard Steinke admit to killing the girl’s parents in a taped conversation he had with an undercover police officer.
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