Alaska teenager Rachelle Waterman lived a seemingly normal life. She sang in the school choir, competed in academic decathlons, and played volleyball. However, the facade of normalcy was shattered after the then 16-year-old murdered her mother.
People Magazine Investigate conducted research into the crime to discover that there was an underlying tension between Rachelle and her mother Lauri. After sifting through the teenager’s blog, there was evidence that went largely unnoticed that Rachelle’s resentment towards her mother was going to reach a boiling point.
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48-year-old Lauri Waterman went missing in November of 2004. Her remains were later discovered in her minivan. The vehicle had been set on fire and abandoned in the woods.
The investigators did some digging into the evidence, and uncovered the clues that there was a heated mother-daughter conflict between Rachelle and Lauri that could have motivated the teenager to kill her.
When Rachelle was arrested, she was booked on charges that she had her mother murdered by mid-20’s janitor boyfriend and his friend.
Rachelle’s blog turned out to be one of the most crucial pieces of evidence in the case. The teen titled the online journal “My Crappy Life,” in which she chronicled daily struggles with her mother.
“A lot of the ramblings and rantings on the blog are pretty typical teenage girl stuff,” Kate Coyne, the PEOPLE Executive Editor, explains on Monday’s PMI episode. “But if you scratch the surface a little bit, there seems to be a current of anger that maybe goes beyond just your typical adolescent ranting.”
Five months before killing her mother, Rachelle posted: “Well, I’m grounded. Last night my mom went psycho b—- on me. I even got to fly down the stairs.”
“I had a bad night, and a bad day,” Rachelle wrote in May of 2004. “This is my warning to all of you. If you piss me off, you die.”
In 2015, Rachelle was released from prison, and now remains on probation.
Learn more about the case on People Magazine Investigate episode titled “The Darkest of Nights” on Monday at 10 p.m. ET on Investigation Discovery.
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[H/T People]
