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When Mean Girls Meet Heathers
Four cases that prove there’s nothing more dangerous than teenagers.
The cruelty of teenage girls is well-documented. Movies like Heathers and Mean Girls took the concept of vicious teenagers to the mainstream. But stories about girls who torture and murder their friends have been a common staple in TV movies and books for generations. From Judy Blume’s ‘Blubber’ and Christy Masters in Romy & Michelle’s High School Reunion to the book (and Lifetime spinoff) Dare Me and the movie Tragedy Girls, if you want a character to be evil, you’d best make them a teenage girl.
While there are plenty of artistic examples of killer cliques, do these stories have any basis in reality?
Definitely yes.
The Murder of Viktoria (Vika) Averina
In the summer of 2019, the body of Viktoria Averina was found at an abandoned building site in Arkhangelsk, Russia. She had been tortured before her death, and her face had been slashed with a jagged shard of glass.
Initially, investigators believed they were dealing with a depraved maniac, but they soon realized the suspect was someone far more insidious.
Before long, two 16-year-old classmates were arrested in connection to the gruesome murder. Named simply as “Lina and Irina” in the press due to…