HOUSTON -- Five teenagers who claim to believe in Satanism beat and slashed their victim's throat just to 'watch somebody die,' investigators said Wednesday.
Max Cox, Harris County sheriff's detective, said the five, all in their teens, took turns slashing the throat of Dennis Keith Medler, 19, then choked and stabbed him with a knife and beat him with a pipe and their fists.
'They sat around and talked about it for a week and then lured him out to the field and killed him for kicks,' Cox said. 'They just walked out there and killed him for no other purpose than they didn't like him and wanted to watch somebody die.'
All of the suspects claim to be devil worshippers, but Harris County sheriff's detectives said the killing was not a cult effort.
'This thing is getting blown out of proportion,' said Sgt. Ray Smith. 'This was just an unorganized group of kids.'
Medler's decomposed body was found Aug. 14 behind the Resthaven Memorial Gardens Cemetery.
Arrested and charged with murder were John-Michael Alexander Trimmer, 17; Michael Gene Cravey, 19; and Harold Glenn Smith. Cravey and Trimmer also face separate charges of murder in the deaths of two other men.
Authorities also have a 16-year-old boy, accused to participating in the killing of Medler, in the Harris County Juvenile Detention Center, and have found a 16-year-old girl believed to have set the victim's hair on fire and to have helped kill the man.
Cox said that when the suspects were walking away from the dying Medler, Trimmer turned and said, 'It's nothing personal, we just wanted to see somebody die.'
