Cops Try to Make Sense of Deadly Machete Attack! This Includes A Little Biography Of The Murderers. It Took One Evil Kid To Influence The Bunch!

ABC News
Cops Try to Make Sense of Deadly Skinhead Machete Attack
written by By RUSSELL GOLDMAN and LINDSAY GOLDWERT
Oct. 8, 2009

Four New Hampshire Teenagers Are Accused of Murdering Woman, Injuring Daughter

A close-knit New Hampshire town is reeling from the grisly weekend attack on a woman and her young daughter allegedly by a band of teenage skinheads who hacked the mother to death with machetes and knives and left an 11-year-old girl severely injured and bleeding in the family's front yard.

Adding to the horror are the coldhearted remarks two of the alleged teens made online and in person shortly after the killing, indicating a nonchalance about the gruesome crime.

Police arrested four teenagers in connection with the home invasion-turned-bloodbath, charging that the suspects chose the home of Kim Cates, 42, simply because of its distance from any other homes in the rural town of Mont Vernon.

Prosecutors on Tuesday arraigned Christopher Gribble, 19, a devout Mormon scheduled to go on a church mission, and three younger suspects Steven Spader, 17, Quinn Glover, 17, and William Marks, 18, in connection with the robbery and killing.

Cates died from multiple injuries to the head, torso, left arm, and left leg, according to a statement from the New Hampshire attorney general. Her daughter, Jamie Cates, 11, who was slashed and tried to run for help, remains in the intensive care unit at Children's Hospital in Boston.

Gribble updated his Facebook page just hours after the attack, writing on Sunday: "had an awesome time with steve and autumn [sic]! dexter is such a funny show!" "Dexter" is a drama on Showtime about a psychopathic serial killer who murders other criminals.

Authorities believe Spader, who dropped out of high school last year, led the gang and is responsible for slitting sixth-grader Jamie Cates' throat with a machete. They believe he and Gribble, a handyman at Mormon church who was preparing to go on a mission, hacked Kim Cates to death.

Gribble was in the ROTC. On his Facebook page he posted photos showing him in uniform and holding a "favorite knife."

Anything sharp really, but I love swords and knives," Gribble wrote on Facebook in February.

Friends of the teenagers were shocked that the boys who came from middle class families and participated in activities like school musicals and the Boy Scouts could conspire to commit such brutality.

However, those who knew the teens said they had each undergone a change in temperament in recent weeks going from friendly to darkly menacing.

On his own Facebook page, Gribble wrote: "Although everyone has a light and a dark side, mine are very extreme… If I like you (or at least don't dislike you) I'm the sweetest nicest person ever. But heaven help you if I truly lose it. It's not pretty."

Glover, the Boston Globe reported, was a singer who performed in coffee shops and in a school production of "Cabaret" and Marks was described as "insecure and angst-ridden."

Though it's still unknown how the teens met and allegedly plotted the crime, authorities are moving towards a theory that Spader was the ring leader who influenced the other young men.

Police believe Spader is a young man who cast a strong, negative influence over his peers.