High school romances can be passionate, with teenage infatuations fuelled by hormones.
It can be a powerful roller coaster of emotions as students fall in love for the first time and experience the hurt of heartbreak.
At Lawrence High School, in Lawrence, Massachusetts, it was no different.
Matthew Borges was only 15, but he’d already loved and lost.
The year before he had dated Leilany Dejesus, but Matthew had ended the relationship, accusing her of being unfaithful with a list of boy’s names – none of it true.
He’d let his jealousy get the better of him, but he was having trouble letting go.
Matthew was quiet, but he would get angry when his ex-girlfriend spoke to other boys.
One day, in the school cafeteria, Matthew confronted Leilany about talking to one of his friends, a popular student called Lee Manuel Viloria-Paulino, 16.
Matthew had got so enraged he had to be escorted out by a teacher.
Leilany was confused – Matthew and aspiring writer Lee were friends.
But soon, the talk of the school was purely focused on Lee, and for a very different reason.
Family fear
On 18 November 2016, Lee went missing.
He lived in a several-storey blue house full of relatives.
Every day after school, he would come home, happily singing and kiss his beloved grandmother and tell her he loved her.
He was always happy and ‘like sunshine’.
After eating dinner with his family that Friday as usual, he’d gone to his room, but the next day, his family realised he had vanished.
Some of his things were missing and there was a sign of a break-in, but he hadn’t taken essentials like his mobile or his wallet.
It was unlike Lee not to tell his family where he was going, but investigators soon discovered that he had gone out that night, with Matthew.
It seemed the pair had made up and had gone to the local Merrimack River to smoke marijuana.
CCTV confirmed it, showing the teens heading in that direction.
But Matthew said they’d parted ways afterwards.
Had something happened to Lee before he could get home safely?
Horrific discoveries
After two agonising weeks for Lee’s family, who didn’t believe his disappearance was being taken seriously enough, a man walking his dog came across a body on the banks of the Merrimack River.
The corpse had no hands and no head, but a coroner determined it was the body of missing Lee.
Later, his head was found by a state trooper who saw a plastic bag bobbing in the river.
He pulled it ashore with a stick, and found it was weighed down with rocks.
Then he saw an ear, and realised it was a head. Lee’s hands would never be recovered.
As well as being decapitated, Lee had been brutally stabbed 76 times.
Experts struggled to determine whether some wounds took place before or after his final breath.
What police did believe was that it wasn’t a random killing – this was personal.
Investigators started to interview everyone who knew Lee, and some students had a different story about why Matthew had taken Lee to the river that evening.
Four of Matthew’s friends said it had been part of a plan to rob Lee.
Matthew had wanted them to break into Lee’s home and take his PlayStation, belts and some clothes.
Matthew said he would lure Lee away – and he did.
But the evidence pointed to something more serious happening at the river.
Matthew called the group of boys afterwards and said, ‘I killed him. He’s dead.’
He told one that he’d chopped his head and hands off so he wouldn’t get caught.
Matthew was known for saying sinister things, but did that mean he was actually capable of killing, or was it all talk?
Obsessed by killing
Before Lee had vanished, Matthew had sent a message to a former girlfriend.
‘I think of killing someone and I smirk,’ it read.
‘It’s all I think about every day but I control myself... I like the sound of it – the idea of causing pain in someone getting in my way or causing me pain.’
He made it clear he didn’t like her talking to other boys either.
The day before Lee went missing, Matthew had sent more messages to the girl telling her he believed a person’s eyes change when they kill someone.
‘Take a good look at my eyes the next time we talk cuz that’s the last time ur gna see them like that ever again,’ he wrote.
‘I know what I’m going to do and I can’t do anything about it.'
'People will notice a big difference in me once my eyes turn dead.’
Even though there was no physical evidence, Matthew’s words were damning enough to have him arrested.
And despite being only 15, it was decided the crime was so serious, he would be tried as an adult.
At the trial this year, the prosecution said Matthew, now 18, had been jealous Lee had been spending time with the girl he liked.
Leilany Dejesus, also now 18, told the court Matthew had been angry she’d been talking to Lee.
Leilany cried as she recalled that Matthew had accused her of flirting with Lee and told her off even though it was innocent.
‘He yelled at me about me being friendly with Lee because we were making jokes with each other, but he thought we were flirting,’ she said.
Evil plot
The defence said there was no physical evidence to link Matthew to the crime.
No murder weapon had been found or any details about how Matthew might have killed and dismembered Lee.
It had been a robbery, and that was it.
But the prosecution said there was a ‘mountain of evidence’.
They pointed out the text messages he’d sent as well as journal entries he’d made outlining the night of the murder.
One read like a plan:
‘Go chill with him in his crib alone... bring duffel bag, wear bags on shoes, wear clothes you don’t care about.’
They said Matthew was the only person with a clear motive, means and opportunity.
He didn’t testify in his defence.
In May, after a nine-day trial in Salem, Massachusetts, Matthew was found guilty of first-degree murder, determining he’d committed the act with ‘deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity and cruelty’.
At the sentencing this July, his defence pointed out he was a child at the time of the murder and had the potential to be rehabilitated.
But Lee’s heartbroken mum Katiuska Paulino read a statement to the court saying Matthew should ‘never have the opportunity to kill again’.
‘From the moment the news became public all we have heard is an outpouring of sentiments echoing the facts that we knew to be true.'
'[Lee] was a sincere, loving, responsible, charismatic, and altruistic young man on the verge of seizing life and many, many goals,’ she said, tearfully.
‘Every day we struggle with the fact his life was cut too short.'
'We drove ourselves crazy trying to make sense of what had been done.'
'With him gone we feel like we can’t breathe… Lee Manuel... was our oxygen.’
The judge sentenced Matthew to two life sentences and ordered that he would serve a minimum of 30 years to life in prison before the chance of parole.
In 2013, it became unconstitutional in Massachusetts to sentence a teenager to life without the possibility of parole.
‘There is no sentence I can impose that will bring back Lee Paulino, or that will answer the questions we all have about how this happened, and how a 15-year-old boy could kill a friend in this manner,’ she said.
Lee thought Matthew was reaching out his hand in friendship that day he invited him to the river.
But it was the cruellest of traps. ■
