Esmie Tseng

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Esmie Tseng, aka rockonlittleone, (born April 7, 1989) is a Kansas teenager charged with stabbing her mother to death at the age of 16. While matricides are rare in the United States, the case also gained visibility due to her active online presence. Tseng maintained blogs on Xanga, LiveJournal and MySpace.

Tseng attended Blue Valley North High School, where she was on the honor roll for her first two years and a member of the school's Gifted program. She participated in a range of extra-curricular activities, winning places in both debates and piano competitions.

Entries from Tseng's blogs reflected discontent with her parents over academic pressure and most notably over cultural differences. In January, Esmie's parents grounded her for her falling grades. In the corresponding blog post, she complained:

My character doesn't fit my nationality and its culture. I can't fit many of these expectations, nor do I want to. I'm not who I'm 'supposed' to be, and I'm happy about that, but they're going to fuck it up.

Unable to come to a compromise with her mother over this issue, she posted on her LiveJournal:

I don’t fucking know what I’m going to do. I’m scared what I might resort to. They don’t realize that they can’t stop me, they’re only going to force me to sneak around and lie and become indifferent to conscience.

The day of the murder, Esmie was rumored to have been sent home from school early for strange behavior. News outlets such as the Kansas City Star reported other classmates suspected drugs. While firsthand accounts from friends have confirmed the use of mind-altering substances (followed by depressive crashes), toxicology from the day of the arrest was drug-free.

Esmie Tseng stabbed mother, Shuyi "Sue" Zhang, on August 16, 2005 in a knife fight. Police believe the stabbings took place in several rooms within their Overland Park home. Zhang called her husband, Tao Tseng, and expired after he arrived home. After the incident, Tseng was taken to the hospital for a wound to her hand.

While imprisoned, Tseng has posted on her LiveJournal via a friend who knows her account passwords. While these are protected postings, the first such entry was apparently leaked.[1]

Tseng's Xanga site has now been shut down, while posts on both her LiveJournal and MySpace accounts are now protected from public viewing.

Esmie's father, Tao Tseng, has asked that his daughter not be tried within the adult criminal justice system. "If my daughter is tried and penalized with hardened criminals and recidivists, she will be doomed," he has said, "I have already been deprived of my wife. I am afraid I will not survive the loss of my daughter, a more devastating blow."

Despite a campaign against charging the minor as an adult, on March 6, 2006, sixteen year old Esmie pleaded guilty in adult court in exchange for the prosecution charging her with voluntary manslaughter rather than first degree murder. She agreed to an eight year, three month sentence.

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