Danielle Tyning - Killer Children: Horrifying True Stories of Kids Who Kill

Killer Children: Horrifying True Stories of Kids Who Kill (Volume 1)

By Danielle Tyning

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W hen you think about the evil in the world, you conjure up images of those who prey on children, serial murderers, and criminals who carry out sickening and violent acts towards the weak, vulnerable, and undeserving. Names like Bundy, Gacy, and Gein come to mind, alongside the many other murderous people out there who've gained notoriety because of their evil. When you're envisioning the unthinkable and heinous acts that are carried out in this world, it's unlikely you imagine a youngster as being a perpetrator of evil.

Killer children, although rare, do exist. The thought alone is terrifying; we see children as being vulnerable and pure, which makes it harder to comprehend them wanting to inflict pain and suffering on another being. The correlation of a child and unthinkable acts of murder is undeniably tricky to compute.

The children in this book carried out acts of savage murder - even just typing that sentence feels wrong. Some of these murders are sexually motivated; some are carried out for revenge; others are part of an occult ritual. Regardless of the motivation for these children to commit unspeakable acts of cruelty, they are all disturbing.

T his book was written to give you some food for thought, to allow you to digest some of the heinous crimes committed by youngsters and consider why they'd carry out such horrific acts. This book will open up a world of questions, many of which I've likely pondered upon myself. While I do offer up my own opinion throughout this book, I do need to (as much as possible) stick to the facts to let you make your own mind up.

With that in mind, let's delve into some of the despicably horrific murders that were carried out by children.

Sandy Charles

H orror movies and video games that depict violent crime have long been blamed for the rise in antisocial and savage behaviour in younger generations. Whether this is true or not is up for debate, but the case of Sandy Charles certainly benefits those who argue that violence in the media promotes violence in real life. In this shocking case, the 14-year-old carried out the murder of his 7-year-old victim just like a scene from his favourite horror film, Warlock.

Sandy Charles was born on July 6th, 1981, in La Ronge, Canada, to a teenage mother. With no father (or meaningful father-figure) in the picture, and two more siblings being born, finances were complicated. The workaround for the lack of funds was that Sandy would take care of his infant brother and sister while their mother was at work, usually a mixture of different jobs to make ends meet.

Despite money being tight and bearing a lot of responsibility for his younger siblings, Sandy was the picture of your typical child growing up. Up until the age of thirteen, he was like any average kid who liked to play with his friends and he earned extra money from his newspaper route. Like most children do when they hit their tween years, Sandy changed. However, the shift in mood for most children turning into teenagers isnt too drastic; mood swings, acting out, and resistance to authority tend to be as bad as it gets. For Sandy, this transitioning time in his life became something much darker. He withdrew from his friends and became reclusive. He stopped doing his newspaper rounds. His mother didnt know why this sudden change had happened, nor how it would lead to things to come.

Sandy began to hear voices in his head and thought his bedroom was haunted by ghosts ordering him to do things. Around this time, he also found his enjoyment in watching horror movies. For most teens, the lure of scares and watching films that they're forbidden from viewing attracts them to seeking out horror flicks. It gives them something rebellious to do with their friends, or give them bragging rights about viewing an 'R' rated movie when they know they shouldn't. For Sandy, however, this evolved into an interest in the occult, and he eventually bought an ouija board to try and contact the ghosts he was convinced were in his house. The teenager claimed he would also spend lots of time contemplating suicide, but the voices in his head ended up talking him out of it. He would also ask his mother for a bible and asked her to define the word 'ritual'.

After watching the 1989 cult B-movie horror, 'Warlock', the voices in Sandy's head became more sinister. Apparently, they began to tell him he must commit the same kind of mutilation and sacrifice as shown in the film to please Satan. This particular murder in the movie depicts a male witch slaughtering unbaptised little boys to create a flying potion. Sandy took this horror story of fiction and began plotting to make it a reality.

Jonathan George Thimpsen had left home in La Ronge one Saturday morning in July 1995. It was commonplace for little Jonathan to flit between his mother's and his grandmother's house at the time, and if he wasn't at one of their homes, they knew he'd be at the other. Both his mother and grandmother assumed the little boy was at the other's house, and it wasn't until Sunday that they realised he wasn't with either of them.

The police became involved, and posters and missing signs were hastily made up to put on display in shops and around the neighbourhood. A search party was formed by the community, with no luck in finding the young boy. After some investigation by the police, they discovered the missing 7-year-old was last seen with Sandy Charles.

Sandy didn't dispute this when police questioned him, and he recalled that while Jonathan did play baseball with him and his friend, he ended up leaving after they got into an argument. The search then resumed, which was aided by apparent sightings of little Jonathan around the area. Then, in a heartbreaking blow, one of the search parties found a child's lifeless body in a wooded area. This woodland was not far from Sandy's house. The body was identified as the decomposing corpse of Jonathan.

As the last people to have seen the young boy alive, Sandy and his young friend who played ball with Jonathan were brought in to be questioned by police. Initially, the two boys denied any involvement or knowledge about the murder, but eventually, Sandy confessed. With a sense of pride and self-assurance, the teenager recounted to police how and why he killed young Jonathan.