She strangled and stabbed an autistic teen – then checked it off her bucket list, court says

It was June 13, 2016, in Perth, Australia, and Aaron Pajich was headed over to his friend’s house.

The 18-year-old video gamer, who had Asperger’s syndrome, had been invited over by his friend’s mom, 43-year-old Trudi Lenon, to swap games with her son, according to the BBC.

It didn’t happen. When he got inside, 24-year-old Jemma Lilley allegedly wrapped a garrote around his neck and strangled him until the wire broke, then pinned him to the ground and stabbed him twice in the neck and once in the chest, prosecutors said, according to the Guardian.

When he was dead, the two women allegedly picked him up and moved him to a special room lined with blue tarps and a gurney, reported the BBC.

The women had bought acid – about 100 liters of it – but didn’t use it to dissolve the body, Mirror UK reported. Instead, the boy’s body was buried in a shallow grave in a back garden, then tiled over.

Now an Australian court has sentenced both women to life in prison for the murder.

Prosecutors told the court the two women were “obsessed” with serial killers and horror movies. Lilley had even written a book about a killer whom she named “SOS,” and longed to take on the identity of the character, reported the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Prosecutors said Lenon had become an “obsequious and sycophantic” follower of Lilley’s, and the two exchanged text messages affirming their homicidal fantasies until they reached a point where both said they were ready to kill for real, according to The Guardian.

“I feel as though I cannot rest until the blood or flesh of a screaming victim is gushing out and pooling on the floor ... I cannot shift this belief that the world has become not only ready for me but it needs me to be ready,” Lilley allegedly wrote, according to The Teleraph to which Lenon allegedly replied, “It is definitely time.” It was a little over a week before Pajich was killed.

Six days after Pajich went missing, police arrived at Lenon’s home after searching the boy’s phone records. There, they discovered knives, weapons, a list of torture techniques – and home security footage of Pajich entering the home, the BBC reported.

During the trial, a witness told the court Lilley had bragged about the killing and that she had said she wanted to kill someone before she turned 25 and check it off her “bucket list,” reported The Guardian.

Justice Stephen Hall, who heard the case, said Lilley “...wanted to kill for the euphoria of it and was so elated afterwards that she could not contain herself and told a work colleague,” according to the Australian.

“You are both equally responsible … there can be no doubt the both of you intended to kill Mr Pajich,” he added at sentencing, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. “There is nothing to suggest either of you had the slightest regret about what you had done.”

Pajich’s mother said at the sentencing she hoped the two women would never be released.

“He was my precious little boy, he was my first-born. He was full of life,” Pajich’s mother told Sky News. “They deserve everything they get for what they’ve done, they’ve taken an innocent boy from his loved ones.”

This story was originally published February 28, 2018 at 9:29 AM with the headline "She strangled and stabbed an autistic teen – then checked it off her bucket list, court says."