Six people were murdered over a fucking Xbox that the ringleader believed were stolen by someone in the house.
The accomplices (all 18 years old) have spilled their guts.
These people, who may or may not have stolen the items, were beaten to death while they slept. The killers used aluminum baseball bats.
Just when you think people couldn’t be more fucked up, a story like this comes along.
If these fuckers don’t get the death penalty, I don’t know what it would take.
Orlando Sentinel story: registration required
I’m gonna file this under “reasons to be glad I moved away from Florida.”
Deltona is only about a 45 minute drive from me. I attended Deltona Junior High back in the day.
Crime happens everywhere. This just happens to be a case that got nationwide attention. Don’t slam the whole state. Actually, I’m glad they found the attackers so quickly.
That’s one thing about psychotic wack jobs: they don’t care where they live.
The reason I say I’m glad I moved away is that, in my opinion, there’s a lot more of this weird shit going on in Florida than elsewhere. I mean, sure, six people can get murdered anywhere, but murdered over an Xbox? It makes no sense! They had his stuff ready to go. It’s just such an odd motivation, and it seems there’s a lot of odd people and odd motivations for crimes in Florida. I mean, the state has its own crime novel genre, for chrissakes.
What did he say to the other three idiots that would make them go along with this?
I don’t think it’s unique. This could have happened in New York, or Texas, or Connecticut. It just happened this time to be in Florida.
“If we work hard enough, we’ll create the mystique that Florida is more batshit crazy than any other state and really piss off ivylass on the SDMB.”
“What’s the SDMB?”
“I dunno. The aliens that send me orders through my tinfoil hat told me about it.”
“Who’s ivylass/”
“I think that’s one of Jenna Jameson’s usernames on the Frisky Floridian Facials website.”
“Ohhhhhhhhh…”
I heard about the killings, but I didn’t know it was over an Xbox.
On a related note, get a look at this.
www.lsj.com/news/local/040807_brother_1b-2b.html
He supposedly killed his own brother over less than ten bucks.
In the UK, a statement like this by the authorities to the media would preclude the perp ever being brought to justice, as it would be seen as making a “fair trial” pretty near impossible. Isn’t it the same in the US? 
People tend to overestimate the practical effect that such statements have as far as “poisoning the jury pool” is concerned.
In a notorious case here in Canada, (which has yet to go to trial,) an Ontario police chief recently held a press conference to announce the apprehension of a suspect in the death of a beautiful little girl. Eyebrows were raised when he showed a mugshot of the suspect and made the declaration “This is not just a murderer – this is the most despicable of criminals. This is a child murderer.”
While it was obviously an ill-advised remark, realistically Mr Chen’s right to a fair trial has not been jeapordized-- the jury selection process allows the courts to ensure that they have people who understand their duty to examine the actual evidence presented to them, and leave any preconceptions that they have behind them. Being brought to trial is an accusation in itself. Jurors have to understand that an accusation (even a foot-in-mouthed, emotional accusation) doesn’t mean squat without a preponderance of evidence – and it’s not so hard to find twelve people who understand this simple concept.
Not necessarily. If the guy confessed to the crime, and what the officer said was part of the killer’s confession (or one of the accomplices confession) then it’s going to be heard in court anyway. And if the officer is talking out of his ass, then the defense can use it as an argument in court that the police had made up their mind about who the guilty party was, without following proper procedures to acquire the necessary evidence to secure a conviction.
You said it. I hate aluminum bats. They’re ruining baseball.
It’s a good thing I won’t be sitting on the jury for that trial, 'cuz I’d be laughing my damn fool head off at the case.
“You committed murder over an XBox? Good gravy, man, that’s lame! The only thing dumber was if you had done the deed over the XBox and a matching set of Monster Cables…”
Xbox new commercial: You too would kill for it. 
How bizarre.
I wanna know this one, too. I have a hard time believing that one homicidal moron could quickly locate three others on short notice. Therefore, I can only speculate about what Mr. Nutjob did or said that convinced three other people to join him in beating a houseful of people (and one dog) to death…
They were probably the people who used controllers 2, 3, and 4 on the Xbox. Once they found out that they could no longer kill virtual people, these idiots decided to start killing real people.
I’m wondering if they were with him as squatters in the grandmother’s house. At least one of them had moved out of home in May. But, yeah, seems like it should take a lot of persuading, maybe even threats, to get people to go along with that plan.
Although it does seem that the killings were just the end of the whole scheme, which included harrassment during the last few days. So maybe it just escalated with each episode, until they were all ready to go the next step.
And I’m going to go ahead and say what we all know. This has nothing to do with the xbox. I think it’s a “you can’t do that to me” power trip from being kicked out of that house.
Oh my, this made me laugh out loud!
On a side note, maybe the Xbox was modded and contained a list of high profile coke dealers or something. I’d kill for that… If I was a columbian drug lord. Perfect place to keep some confidential info.
Hey man, don’t fuck with a man and his <i>Halo</i>.