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cblatchford@globeandmail.com

Marshall Sack didn't ever put it this baldly, but boiled down to its bones his theme was, "Oh, those crazy kids!" or, its kissing cousin, "Murder was a phase; she'll outgrow it!"

Mr. Sack is the lawyer for M.T., the long-haired girl killer who was the mastermind behind Stefanie Rengel's slaying on New Year's Day of 2008.

Stefanie, just 14, was lured out of her family home in east-end Toronto by a boy who was in M.T.'s thrall and was acting upon her fevered, relentless and often quite specific instructions, reams of which were saved for posterity in recovered MSN and text chats.

This boy, known as D.B., put his cell down just long enough (he was talking throughout to M.T.) to trick Stefanie into coming outside, stab her six times and then leave her to die in the snow. He has since pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and will be sentenced this fall.

Going on this week before Ontario Superior Court Judge Ian Nordheimer, who was the trial judge, is the sentencing hearing for M.T., who was convicted by a jury this March of first-degree murder in Stefanie's death. Days from her 16th birthday at the time, she is now about six months from turning 18.

Mr. Sack's view of the crime and of adolescence became evident yesterday as he cross-examined Dr. Philip Klassen, a forensic psychiatrist appointed by the court, under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, to assess M.T. with a view to helping the judge decide whether she should be sentenced as an adult or as a youth.

Neither road leads to what could be termed a burdensome punishment for planned and deliberate murder.

A youth sentence carries a maximum of six years in custody and four of supervision in the community; at worst, M.T. would be free as a bird, utterly unmonitored, by the age of 27. An adult sentence (for a young person) means M.T. would receive a theoretical life sentence, but would be eligible for parole after five to seven years, depending on the judge's decision; at worst, she would be parole-eligible by the age of 23.

The real difference between the two is that with the adult sentence, M.T. would be on parole for the rest of her life; the publication ban that protects her identity could also be lifted.

Dr. Klassen's report on M.T. was even-seeming and fair, as indeed was his evidence yesterday.

Early on, he noted that because teenagers aren't fully formed personalities, it's tricky to either diagnose them or assess their future dangerousness. He made allowances for M.T.'s age and immaturity, and appears to have exercised caution in his assessment.

But cut through the jargon of his profession, and the bottom line is that he was startled, as was the psychologist who administered various tests to M.T., by her "somewhat striking lack of empathy and consistent self-preoccupation," by the disconnect between her usually convention-adhering behaviour and the enraged jealous girl who emerges in intimate relationships (not only with D.B., but with two earlier boyfriends) and by "the extent to which M.T. continues to dismiss or minimize her role" in the murder.

While she was frequently weepy during their two sessions, she "presented as somewhat self-pitying than remorseful," he said; in other words, she was crying for herself, not for Stefanie.

Enter Mr. Sack, who focused on the volume of electronic chat between M.T. and D.B. ("Do you have any perception of the frequency with which today's teenagers text and e-mail each other?" he thundered) as opposed to their content (M.T. to D.B., "We've been through this; I want her dead," and, when D.B. tried to stall by saying he didn't yet have a mask, "Cut fucking leotards").

At one point, Mr. Sack asked Dr. Klassen why he'd used as sources Toronto Police interviews of M.T.'s acquaintances (while they uniformly described a cruel girl prone to threats, one even reported a rumour that M.T. allegedly had some interest in having sex with dogs) when adolescents are so routinely immersed in such lurid gossip.

Dr. Klassen replied, reasonably enough, that since M.T. wouldn't give him permission to speak to most of those acquaintances about her, these interviews were all he had, and that they were useful in corroborating what more reliable people had reported to him or what M.T. herself had admitted to, such as wanting other girls dead and even having "ongoing thoughts of hurting other persons involved in her case."

But, Mr. Sack cried, "These are teenagers! They're in high school! They're in Grade 9 or 10!"

Dr. Klassen, in the end, didn't come to a firm diagnosis, though he flirted with one - borderline personality disorder, one of the most difficult-to-treat disorders, characterized by extreme jealousy, rage, devaluing others, fear of abandonment and, usually, the habit of leaving behind a trail of chaos and destruction.

M.T. has features of the disorder, he said, some of them "quite well established despite her age," and enough of them that Dr. Klassen raised in his report the spectre of the character played by Glenn Close in the movie Fatal Attraction, considered, by psychiatrists, to be the archetype of the high-functioning borderline personality.

(This prompted one of my smartest friends to remark that the M.T. movie would be entitled, She's Way Too Into You.)

Dr. Klassen made no hard-and-fast recommendation about sentencing, but noted, "I would like to know M.T. is being monitored somehow," and said evenly, "She has years of exposure to relationships ahead of her."

It was when Mr. Sack was pressing him to accept the notion that the reason M.T. may be even less willing to accept responsibility and be more hardened now is because she has spent 18 months at a youth jail and gone through the justice system that Dr. Klassen made his most chilling observation.

"I do agree with you," he said in his mild way, "that M.T. feels profoundly put upon by the legal process she's been through."

Put upon: Stefanie Rengel is dead, and the vicious creature who orchestrated her trip to the grave feels put upon.

Oh well. Surely this too will pass, like her insistence upon straightened hair, as she grows up: Those crazy kids.

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