The Cheerleader Murder: A 1980s High School Clique Turns Deadly

Today's story reminds me of a simple fable from Japan. A young crab becomes utterly frantic when the tide retreats, convinced the sea is disappearing forever. The older crabs calmly wait, knowing the tide always returns. That's the power of inexperience. The prism of adolescence makes things like fitting in or getting the right invitation seem way more intense, way scarier, or way more important than they really are. But what happens when that teenage panic, that conviction that the tide is never coming back, drives someone to a permanent, unthinkable act? This is a story about the devastating cost of misplaced desire for belonging, amplified by the panic of youth and the tragic final price paid by an innocent girl. I'm Harviki Yan, and this is Killer Stories. It's 1984 in the wealthy town of Orinda California. Well, that means popping your collar on your eyes out shirt, getting those bangs nice and crunchy, and jettying around in your beamer. Nestled in the Berkeley Hills, Orinda is full of picture-perfect homes along manicured streets. If you live here, you've made it. But there's this underlying sense that if you want to really belong, you have to look the part. Especially if you're a student at Mita Monte High School, a microcosm of the richest little town in America. The students drive better cars than teachers. There's justice for you. Walking the halls is like stepping into a lacossed catalog. To a lot of kids here, nothing is more important than getting in with the right click. That determines your status, and at such a competitive school, it could also determine your future, whether you get into certain sports, the right clubs, the best colleges. Here, the pressure to conform is inescapable. Just ask 15-year-old Bernadette Prattie. Bernadette is absolutely a part of the popular crowd. She's smart, blonde, and pretty, a cheerleader, and an academic. But she's not a typical cool kid in Orinda. Unlike other high-powered executive dads in town, Bernadette's father is older. He's a retired engineer and supports a large family. The Pratties are definitely middle-class, but not upper, upper middle-class. So Bernadette makes do. She wears all the right brands, but her clothes aren't always new. She styles her hair herself instead of going to the salon. She may not exactly look the part, but after years of living in Orinda, she's learned that her personality will win people over. She's cute, but unassuming, and her reputation as the nice girl has secured her a spot on the fringes of the cool-click. From her position on the outskirts, Bernadette has an up-close look at what life is like for the it-girls. They seem to have it so easy, practically gliding through the halls. And no one embodies that in touchable aura, quite like Kirsten Kostas. Her father is an executive at a large company, and her mom stays at home. Make sure her kids are set up for a continued success. Growing up, Kirsten had access to all the perks Orinda had to offer. She belonged to all the right social clubs, wore the newest clothes, always had cute hairstyles. Not to mention, she'd won the genetic lottery. She was gifted athletically too. Kirsten made the varsity swim team and secured a coveted spot on the cheer squad. It just came to her naturally. To anybody who's not a popular kid, there's probably no obvious difference between Bernadette and Kirsten. Like, if you were talking about Bayside High, you know, save by the bell. And here one of the unfortunate extras whose role is just like Boy at Locker or nerdy girl, it would be like looking at Kelly Kapowski and Lisa Turtle. They're both pretty and popular, and one is a little nicer and Lisa is rich. But if you are part of the in crowd, those little differences can feel huge. Towards the end of her sophomore year, Bernadette starts to feel like there's this chasm between her and the other cool girls, and it's getting wider and wider by the day. Especially once she tries out for cheerleading again. She's been on the team before, and she practices around the clock. But after making it to the final 12, Bernadette gets cut. But Kirsten makes the team. Bernadette also loses out on the yearbook staff, so now she's lost her foothold on two clubs. In Bernadette's mind, she has one shot at redemption, at reviving her dying social status. The bobblingks, aka the Bobby's. Pretty much the closest thing Miramonte High School has to a sorority. Officially, the bobbies are like candy strippers, they volunteer at local hospitals, but unofficially, they're an elite group of only the richest and prettiest and the most popular. Kirsten, of course, gets her invitation to join at the end of sophomore year. She'll start with the bobbies as a junior. Bernadette waits desperately for her own invite. A devout Catholic she prays to God to please just make her a bobbie. And one day, she opens her locker to find that coveted envelope. She's been invited to join. Her spot on the social ladder is safe. Now, being invited to join the bobbies seems more exciting than actually becoming a bobbie. A few days later, the new recruits are summoned to a classroom after school. They find the current members standing around with a bunch of eggs, mayonnaise, and embarrassing old clothing. It's an initiation. The newbies have to rub the eggs and mayo in their hair, put on the clothes and go stand in the corner selling kisses for 10 cents. It's humiliating, but if that's what it takes to join the bobbies, Bernadette and Kirsten are going to do it with a smile. A couple weeks later, everyone's enjoying summer break. Kirsten is away at cheerleading camp when Bernadette calls her house. Without giving her name, Bernadette leaves a message with Miss Kostas. There's a dinner for the new bobbies that Saturday, and somebody will swim by to pick Kirsten up. Then Bernadette hangs up, hoping Kirsten doesn't talk to the other bobbies before this weekend. If she does, she'll realize none of the bobbie officers are even in town. They're in Hawaii, and there is no dinner that Saturday. Now, Bernadette has just two days to plan what could be her most important conversation ever. Becoming a bobbie was the ultimate sign that Bernadette had made it, socially. But at the back of her mind, these negative thoughts keep creeping back, telling her she's inferior, worthless, and that even this exclusive club doesn't mean she's one of them. And Bernadette is smart. If there's a problem she's going to try to solve it, the solution she comes up with is if she can make Kirsten accept her, then everyone else will fall in line. So why does she focus on Kirsten? It's honestly hard to say, but there are a few incidents that led up to Bernadette's plan. In the winter of 1983, one of the girls invited Bernadette to her family's cabin in Lake Tahoe. To Bernadette, it was probably a big deal, like a really big deal. Everyone knew you couldn't go to Lake Tahoe in the winter without hitting the slopes, which meant she needed skis. Bernadette managed to borrow some hand-me-downs, but everyone else had shiny top-of-the-line equipment. Kirsten was also on the trip, and at one point she made a cognizant quip about Bernadette's stuff. And it was like that comment gave the other girls permission to laugh and look at Bernadette with pity. And that was pretty much how things went for anyone Kirsten didn't seem to care about. According to one of her fellow classmates, she was the queen of withering glances and snotty remarks. She knew how to knock anyone down a peg or two. Kirsten's rejection seemed to make Bernadette more desperate to prove herself, and that's what she planned to do on the night of June 23rd, 1984. Around 9 o'clock, Bernadette pulls up in front of the Costa's house. She's borrowed the family slightly beat up Goldish Yellow Ford Pinto. She probably knows that as soon as Kirsten sees the car, she's going to have questions. So, according to Bernadette, this is her plan. Right away, she'll tow Kirsten the truth. That there is no dinner for the Bobby's. Instead, she'll offer to drive her to a party. Technically, Bernadette wasn't invited. It's only for the coolest. upperclassmen, but she figures if she shows up with Kirsten, they'll let her in. Then Bernadette can prove to Kirsten how cool she really is that she's worthy of being in her inner circle, and once she does that, the rest of high school should be a breeze. Whatever Kirsten may think of Bernadette's plan, we don't really know. But according to Bernadette, Kirsten says if they're going to a party, they need to make a stop first. She tells Bernadette to pull into an abandoned church lot, a local teen hang out, and Kirsten pulls out a joint. They're sitting there for about 30 minutes. We know because a couple is also parked in the lot. We'll say they were, um, necking. Is that what they said, ladies? necking? I don't know. Is this show PG-13? No, it's not. Okay. Anyways, this couple doesn't see what's going on in the car, but from everything we know, this is probably when Bernadette launches into her big sales pitch, the one where she tries to persuade Kirsten to be her friend. Whether or not Bernadette gets far in her speech, Kirsten isn't interested. She calls Bernadette weird and hops out of the car, heading off down the street. Bernad follows her in the car and watches as Kirsten knocks on the door of some guy's house. In that instant, it occurs to Bernadette that Kirsten might go tell everyone that she has just embarrassed herself and she can't let that happen. She has to fix it. The house Kirsten visits belongs to a family friend, Alex Arnold. She tells him she's stranded and needs a right home, so Alex agrees to drive her. During the three mile drive, Alex notices a Pinto following them. He asks Kirsten about it and she mentioned her friend was being weird, but she doesn't seem to be worried at all. She just shrugs it off and says everything's fine. Inside the Pinto behind them, things are not fine. Bernadette is panicking. She's terrified of the damage Kirsten might do to her reputation with just one phone call, and the more Bernadette thinks about it, the matter she gets. Kirsten's driver pulls over in front of her house, so the Pinto pulls over too. But Kirsten doesn't go inside. Nobody's home. So she hits towards her next door neighbors. Bernadette will later say she has no idea what's going through her mind at this moment. All she remembers is the anger. She grabs a knife that was already sitting in her car and races across the grass calling out to Kirsten. She can't let her reach that front door, but Kirsten isn't having it. She shouts for Bernadette, just go away. It's loud enough for the neighbors to hear. That's when Bernadette brings the knife from behind her back and stabs Kirsten five times in the back and chest. Kirsten screams alert the neighbors. She stumbles around as blood stains her torn clothes. In a split second, Bernadette's rage turns to horror. She can't believe what she's just done. But she knows she has to get far away. She sprints back to the Pinto and races off into the night, but it's on a clinget away. Because Kirsten's friend, Alex, is still sitting in his car and he saw the entire bloody encounter. Bernadette Prattie has just stabbed one of the most popular girls in the school multiple times in someone's front yard. And a witness saw it all happen. But he didn't get a good look at Bernadette's face. So when police arrive on the scene, he can only describe her as a blonde teenage girl, which could literally be 100 different people. Meanwhile, Kirsten is rushed to the hospital, but she loses too much blood. She's pronounced dead before midnight. It's the first homicide in their quiet town in seven years, and now the hunt for a killer is on. Bernadette wakes the following day not knowing whether Kirsten lived or died. She sits down to breakfast with her family feeling calm, normal almost, with the news playing quietly in the background. It's not long before she realizes Kirsten's name is all over the news. She listens to the reporters about the stabbing, the hunt for the suspect, and the tragic outcome. It's like something inside Bernadette kind of shuts down. Everything feels like it's happening to someone else. Even as she listens to the description of the killer, she doesn't process that the reporters are talking about her. The murder of Kirsten completely shocked the quiet California town, and in the costus home, they were not mourning a popular girl or a cheerleader. They were mourning a daughter, a sister, and a friend. When Kirsten's devastated family holds her memorial five days after the murder, Bernadette is there. She blends in with all the other grieving teenagers, sharing stories and memories of their lost friend. Bernadette stays calm when the Sheriff's Department brings her in for an interview. At this point, they're talking to all of Kirsten's friends, especially all of her blonde friends, because they have next to no evidence to work with. And Bernadette gives them no reason to suspect her. She cooperates, answers every question with what seems to be the right emotions. She even takes a lie detector test and passes with flying colors, even when she lies about an alibi. She tells detectives she was babysitting, and they only double-check by asking her sister who backs her up, because Bernadette also lied to her about where she was. And yeah, the proddy's own a gold-colored pinto, but it turns out Bernadette doesn't even have her driver's license, so the police assume she wouldn't have been driving it. While Bernadette's having herself a summer hanging out with the bobbies and gearing up for junior year, the police are looking in the wrong place. I guess they figured if Kirsten wasn't killed by the popular kids, maybe it was somebody who hated what she stood for, somebody on the fringes, and they set their sights on a girl named Nancy King. Nancy's kind of the Janice Ian from Mean Girls of the story. She used to be in with The End of Crowd, and she's known Kirsten since middle school, but during sophomore year Nancy rebelled. She cut her hair, dyed it blonde, and black, and now she loves punk, eyeliner, and underage drinking. She's actually just a normal teenager, but police know she's voiced her dislike for Kirsten, and by voiced her dislike, I mean they found a notebook where Nancy wrote, and I quote, "I want to see her blood, drip, drip, drip, drip." So yeah, to be fair, it's not a great look there, Nancy. And yes, Nancy does lie to the police. The night of the murder, she was at her boyfriend's house, a place she was not supposed to be at. And she's more worried about her parents finding that out than she is about looking suspicious to the cops because teen priorities. So she tells them she was at the movies. Watching ghostbusters. I am afraid of ghost. Eventually the alibi gets cleared up, but the damage has been done. See, the town of Orinda demands answers for what happened to Kirsten. To them, she symbolizes the very best of their city, the ideal they all strive for. Her death feels like an attack on their way of life, and people are not kind to Nancy Kane. Even though she's innocent, she winds up having to transfer to another school, which puts investigators back to square one. The Sheriff's Department has retraced every step and exhausted every resource, so they try something relatively new, criminal profiling, and they reach out to the big guns, who actually develop profiling for the FBI. People like John Douglas, who wrote the book, Mindhunter, and Dr. Anne Burgess. They spend years understanding the likes of Ted Bundy and Charles Manson, so what are they doing hunting down someone like Bernadette Prattie? Well, in 1984, they're trying to prove that profiling is the future of criminal investigations of all kinds, not just serial killer cases. Six FBI agents sit down and dissect Kirsten's case. One part they find really interesting is that the weapon was a knife. That tells them the killer was angry. This was personal. In the end, they come up with a 14-page profile. It suggests that the killer is from a large Catholic family and lives in or very close toward India. There's someone Kirsten knew, but they probably aren't showing obvious signs of for more. Investigators, re-interview all of Kirsten. friends and independently they all start thinking it was Bernadette. And then they actually go and talk to the family, she says she was babysitting for that night, the night of the murder. Turns out she hadn't worked for them in the past year. On Friday, December 8th, they asked Bernadette to come in for another interview, this time with FBI interrogators present. They questioned her for nearly five hours. But just like before, she doesn't show much emotion. At this point, the police are up against it. The entire town wants answers, but they don't have any physical evidence tying her to the crime. No murder weapon, no DNA. This means they really need her to confess. So they try something a little unorthodox. They slide a paper across the table. The criminal profile. Bernadette starts looking at this paper, which describes her to a T. And she looks up and asks one of the FBI agents if he thinks she killed Kirsten. There's no use lying. So he tells her, yes, he thinks she did it. But Bernadette doesn't say anything else. So she's free to go home. A few days later, Bernadette wakes up on a Tuesday morning and gets ready for school. She leaves a note for her parents to find when she's gone. Her mom discovers it and opens the letter and it reads, "Dear mom and dad, I've been trying to tell you this all day, but I love you so much. It's too hard. So I'm taking the easy way out. The FBI man thinks I did it. And he's right. I've been able to live with it, but I can't ignore it. It's too much for me and I can't be that deceiving. Please still love me. I can't live unless you love me. I've ruined my life and yours and I don't know what to do. I'm ashamed and I'm scared. PS, please don't say how could you or why because I don't understand this and I don't know why. After reading the letter, Bernadette's mom immediately picks her up from school and tries her to the Sheriff's Department where she's arrested. When people find out Bernadette is the killer, it shocks the public almost as much as the murder itself. She'd been right under their noses the entire time. What's worse, she was supposed to have been Kirsten's friend, the sense of betrayal runs deep. The court of public opinion hands down a swift verdict. Bernadette is an outlier, a sick troubled girl, which means the murder must be an isolated incident. But not everybody agrees, especially other teenagers. After Rolling Stone magazine publishes an article about the case, kids from all over right in. Even though what Bernadette did was horrific and the outcome was tragic, the magazine's readers recognized the universal truth she'd been dealing with. Her desire for popularity, her need for acceptance and belonging. The spectacle of this whole case isn't over yet. It continues into 1985 with three-day trial. Every day the courtroom is packed with spectators, it's standing room only people get turned away. On the stand, Bernadette says she was angry as she wanted to hurt Kirsten. But she didn't mean to kill her. She testifies that she did not bring the knife with her in the car that night. It was just there. And she happened to notice it. And her sister backs her up with the story, saying the knife was hers. She used it to cut up fruit because she's always had to eat lunch on the road for work. Because Bernadette's a minor, there's no jury to decide her fate. Only a judge who convicts her of second degree murder. When Bernadette receives a nine-year prison sentence, she's 16 years old. When she gets out on parole in 1992, she's 23. And the story doesn't end there. In 1994, the case gets adapted into a made-for-tv movie called "A Friend to Die for." But it's also known by its more popular title, Death of a cheerleader. It stars Tori Spelling at the height of her 90210 fame as the popular cheerleader. And Kelly Martin, aka Jani Jessman, from the face on the milk carton as the killer. Its fictional eyes, the names are changed and biting insults are invented, like this one. It's been really nice talking to you, but you better run along now. We don't feed straights here. And the movie goes down in history as a campy cult hit. It also becomes the highest rated TV movie of that year. It even gets remade in 2019. Maybe we keep coming back to it because there are so many uncomfortable truths in this story. It's nostalgic for all the wrong reasons. It highlights the worst parts of high school, the roof comments, the desperation we all felt at times. And it isn't just a story about a girl who wanted to be popular. It's a story about a teenager who believed the tight was retreating forever, that the loss of cheerleading and the failure to secure her place in a click meant she would be abandoned and left exposed on the sand. And an innocent life was lost over something that was in reality, fleeting. Thanks for tuning into Killer Stories, Spotify podcasts, new episodes release on Mondays. If you liked today's story and want to learn more, we drop some of our favorite sources in the episode description. Until next time, I'm Harvey Gien. Stay safe out there.