The worldwide reaction to her death was overwhelming, but understandable. Michelle was the first Canadian journalist killed in Afghanistan and she touched many lives in her brief 34 years. I sat next to her daily for six of those years and she was sweet, caring, funny and humble despite winning Canada’s highest award in journalism, a National Newspaper Award in 2009. She was pretty, engaged to be married and wanted to be a mom. She would have made a great one, just as she was a great journalist.

For her birthday one year I went to a joke shop and bought her a small package of “Bitch” detergent.  The box read that it had a patented “bitch remover”  guaranteed to get the bitch out of anyone. It was such an absurd gift because in a business where there can be plenty of bitchiness, Michelle was anything but.

In terms of waking hours per week, I probably saw more of Michelle than I saw my own sweet wife, Gloria. I am tremendously saddened by Michelle’s random death, caused when her light armoured vehicle hit an improvised explosive device on the outskirts of Kandahar city. Four Canadian soldiers died with her. It is so tragic and unfair. Michelle was in a non-combat convoy and was en route to do a story on reconstruction efforts. She especially wanted to tell stories of ordinary Afghans, especially Afghan women.

Me and my colleagues at the Calgary Herald have yet to come to terms with her death.

But her crime, committed when Todorovic was 15, pales in comparison to that of Canada’s original puppet master, Runaway Devil. Known as JR in court documents, she was a mere 12 when she convinced her older lover, 23-year-old Jeremy Steinke, to kill at her behest.

JR’s story is told in the  new book Runaway Devil: How Forbidden Love Drove a 12-Year-Old to Murder Her Family, written by myself and colleague Sherri Zickefoose. We  describe how JR went from a suburban, middle-class honour student  to become Canada’s youngest multiple murderer when sentenced in the summer of 2007 for the brutal stabbing deaths of her father, mother, and eight-year-old brother.

Although she denied that she and Jeremy had concocted a premeditated plan to kill her family, it was clear from evidence that she, indeed, was the mastermind. As we write on Page 85: “JR’s friends also say she was the one pressuring Jeremy to kill her parents. In several overhead conversations, JR appeared to be the puppet master and Jeremy her marionette.”

The book contains previously unpublished details of the notorious crime that shocked a nation.

For author interviews or more information, visit my Runaway Devil site.

To hear an interview with the authors, click here.

Runaway Devil, written by myself and Calgary Herald crime writer Sherri Zickefoose, tells the story of Canada’s youngest multiple killer, a 12-year-old girl who murdered her family by enlisting the help of her 23-year-old accomplice and lover, Jeremy Allan Steinke, who claimed to be a 300-year-old werewolf and boasted to an undercover cop that he drank blood.

It sounds sensational, and it is, but we’ve attempted to write not just a purely salacious true-crime book. Rather, we hope it  is a compelling exploration of  how someone so young could have been driven to something so heinous. Stabbed to death in the night were not just her mother and father, but also her eight-year-old brother. In the killers’ warped sense of benevolence, they felt it would be best to send the boy to be with his parents in “the summerland.”

The book explores the killers’ upbringing and background, their fascination with death metal music, violent movies and the goth subculture. It has been, at times, an emotional journey, and we hope that we have honoured the memories of the victims and the work of investigators. A portion of the proceeds are donated to the victim assistance unit of the Medicine Hat Police Service and to Rockhaven, a men’s recovery centre in Sudbury, Ont.