"Goth Killers"?

Well...I guess I am glad that they only classified them as "goth" and didn't mention columbine, or make a number of other sweeping generalizations. They did find neighbors who found the woman bright and friendly, instead of strange and brooding.

But hey....if you know these folks, there are some people in Canada who really would like to hear from them.

Pair sought after family finds bloody apartment
Rachel Adams and Mark Rempell had a taste for the Goth scene and haven't been seen since Monday

Ethan Baron
The Province

Sunday, October 10, 2004
A woman missing from a blood-drenched Vancouver apartment had a stormy, sado-masochistic relationship with a "suicidal" man who has also vanished, friends of the missing pair alleged yesterday.

Police are searching for Rachel Adams, 23, and Mark Rempell, 28.

Relatives who visited Adams' eastside suite Thursday found a great deal of blood inside.

"[Rempell]'s been very depressed lately, and suicidal," said Sarah, a woman who said she's been dating Rempell for two months and would not give the Sunday Province her last name.

The woman called police after receiving an e-mailed "suicide note" from Rempell on Tuesday afternoon.

"It just said, 'I think I'm going to die, I hope you understand,' " Sarah said. "He knew if he called me I would have tried to stop him, so he decided to contact me by e-mail."

Rempell's family is also appealing for Mark to come forward and contact them as soon as possible.

"We want you to know we love you very much," his mother Linda Rempell told BCTV News on Global last night. "We'd like to help you in any way we can. If you hear this message, please call."

Rempell has been studying toward a master's degree with the University of B.C. psychology department, and Adams has been studying forensics, French and psychology at Langara College, friends said.

Both were active in Vancouver's "Goth" scene, which features ghoulish clothing and makeup and a fascination with death. The two were also interested in sado-masochism, friends said.

"They [said they] were into play piercings," said Adams' friend,

23-year-old Mathew Smith. "You just put [needles] in your body in places for transitory pain and pleasure."

Smith said Adams and Rempell had an interest in "suspension," a sado-masochistic activity in which hooks are pierced through the skin of a participant's back and shoulders so that the person can hang in the air. To Smith's knowledge, Adams and Rempell hadn't actually engaged in suspension.

Three of Adams's relatives went to her suite Thursday because Adams' mother was worried about not hearing from her.

"We just found it just absolutely splattered with blood," said Adams' cousin, Marion Wilson-Brown. "There was blood everywhere. There was a pool of blood in the kitchen along with bare footprints through the blood. We found blood in the bathroom and also the bedroom."

Adams' 34th Avenue suite, in a neighbourhood of small, well-kept homes, sits just across the street from Mountain View cemetery.

"She liked to go out and take pictures of crows on tombstones," Smith said.

Her next-door neighbour, Jim Turner, described her as "a very fine lady."

"She's a girl who is sharp," Turner said, adding that Adams hoped to continue her forensics study in the U.K. and to specialize in the analysis of insects that feed on dead bodies.

Friends said Adams and Rempell had a tumultuous, on-again, off-again relationship.

"Whenever they'd break up, it was really nasty," Smith said. "They'd get in physical fights," he claimed.

Adams and Rempell were reportedly seen Thursday in West Vancouver and both appeared healthy, said Vancouver police Const. Anne Drennan. The evidence in Adams's suite that raised police concerns was left before the two were sighted, she added.

"We have information that they may have gone to [Vancouver] Island or up to Whistler," Drennan said.

The pair may be travelling in a 1988 white Nissan 300-Z, licence plate BWL 049.

ebaron@png.canwest.com

GOTH PRIMER

The Goth "scene" emerged out of a dark musical trend that followed the punk movement in the late-1970s.

Notable Goth bands include Sisters Of Mercy and Bauhaus, although the musical influence of Goth is very prevalent in today's industrial rock genre.

Though difficult to classify as one homogenous group, Goths typically wear dark (mostly black) clothes, and have a taste for the subversive, rather than mainstream, elements of popular culture.

Ran with fact box "GOTH PRIMER", which has been appended to the story.

© The Vancouver Province 2004

:Whipping_