TEEN SUICIDE BAND ALEC TRIAL

Fiorella, Delashmutt and Casey avoided trial by pleading guilty to murder and were sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. The civil litigation, however, was not allowed to proceed until every appeal in the criminal case had wound its way through the court system. The parents filed the lawsuit shortly after their daughterвЂ™s body was found. It started to influence the way I looked at things.вЂќ вЂњItвЂ™s almost embarrassing that I was so influenced by the music. вЂњIt gets inside your head,вЂќ Fiorella was quoted in a probation report. The parentsвЂ™ suit cites violent lyrics from such Slayer songs as вЂњAltar of Sacrifice,вЂќ вЂњTormentor,вЂќ вЂњPostMortem,вЂќ вЂњKill Again,вЂќ вЂњSerenity in MurderвЂќ and вЂњNecrophiliac,вЂќ alleging that these and other compositions marketed by the band and their record company incited the вЂњsacrificial murderвЂќ of their daughter.Д«efore pleading guilty to murdering Pahler, Fiorella told authorities that he and the other boys often stayed up several nights in a row taking drugs and listening repeatedly to Slayer. The lawsuit says the boys returned to the crime scene afterward to have sexual intercourse with her corpse. Pahler fell to the ground, praying and calling out for her mother, before the teens stomped her with their feet on the back of her neck, according to the lawsuit and other criminal court records. The boys choked her with a belt and then took turns slashing and stabbing her more than a dozen times with a hunting knife, according to the suit. The boys lured Pahler to the eucalyptus grove to smoke some marijuana and then attacked her, according to the lawsuit. The suit says Casey told police that he and the other teens idolized Slayer and had conspired to kill a virgin girl as a sacrifice to Satan, hoping it would bring fame to their own musical trio, Hatred. Casey told police that he and his two friends, 14-year-old Joseph Fiorella and 16-year-old Jacob Delashmutt, had plotted to kill Pahler for months before they took action July 22, 1995, according to criminal and civil court records. Investigators were led to the crime scene by Royce Casey, a 16-year-old acquaintance of Pahler, who confessed to his participation in the unsolved murder to his preacher, and then to police. Police found her half-naked corpse under a pentagram about half a mile from her parentsвЂ™ home in nearby Nipomo. The decomposed body of Elyse Marie Pahler was discovered March 14, 1996-about eight months after she disappeared-in a eucalyptus grove just outside San Luis Obispo. If youвЂ™re gonna do something stupid like that, you should get in trouble for it.вЂќД«ostaph then went on to critique the crime, suggesting that PahlerвЂ™s killers did not even accurately follow the necrophilia sacrifice rituals detailed in SlayerвЂ™s songs. вЂњTheyвЂ™re trying to blame the whole thing on us,вЂќ Bostaph said. Sony, American and Slayer declined to comment for this report.Д«ut in a July 1998 interview with Guitar World magazine, Paul Bostaph, who plays drums for Slayer, dismissed the allegations raised in the lawsuit. They couldnвЂ™t care less what their fans did to our daughter. They donвЂ™t care whether the violent, misogynistic message in these lyrics causes children to do harmful things. вЂњSlayer and others in the industry have developed sophisticated strategies to sell death metal music to adolescent boys. ItвЂ™s about marketing,вЂќ said David Pahler, father of the murdered girl. SonyвЂ™s lawyers will remind the judge that other courts have consistently upheld artistic expression and thrown out product-liability suits blaming teen suicides on records by other heavy-metal acts such as Judas Priest and Ozzy Osbourne.Д«ut the Pahlers are looking beyond issues of expression and instead are focusing on the cold realities of music as a business.

On Tuesday, lawyers for PahlerвЂ™s parents will square off against free-speech attorney Floyd Abrams and a top-notch legal team representing Sony, which will argue that SlayerвЂ™s music is protected under the 1st Amendment. That report followed an FTC study last fall that accused entertainment conglomerates of targeting children with violent music, movies and video games.

Teen suicide band alec