The Murder of Kirsten Costas "Death of a Cheerleader"
What a Creep
Margo Donohue
4.6 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 10 July 2025
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Season 30, Episode 3
The Murder of Kirsten Costas
(The Inspiration for the 1994 TV Movie Death of a Cheerleader)
In the idyllic suburb of Orinda, California, the summer of 1984 was marked by the shocking murder of 15-year-old Kirsten Costas. A popular high school student, Kirsten, was killed by her classmate Bernadette Protti from Miramonte High School. Motivated by jealousy and social pressure, the crime revealed the darker aspects of affluent adolescent life.
The murder went unsolved for months, and when the killer was finally found, it shocked the community. I contend that this case was one of the first crimes to highlight the insecurities of Generation X. The incident inspired the made-for-TV film "A Friend to Die For" (1994), later retitled "Death of a Cheerleader." Starring Kellie Martin and Tori Spelling, the movie explored themes of peer pressure, envy, and the price of popularity, giving the case a haunting cultural resonance that still lingers today.
Trigger Warning: Murder
Sources for this episode:
- The Campo Claw
- Kirsten Costas Wikipedia
- CNN
- Discovery +
- Murderpedia
- The Los Angeles Times
- Ranker
- Yahoo News
- People Magazine
- Inquisitor
- Screen Rant
- The New York Times
- The Cinemaholic
- The San Francisco Examiner
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to What a Creep, the show with Margotonio and Sonia Mansfield, talking about creeps from the past to the present. |
| 0:08.4 | This is your quick guide to the biggest creeps, jerks, assholes, and losers, the best of the worst. |
| 0:14.6 | From two nice ladies who want the world to be a little less creepy. |
| 0:27.8 | Welcome back to What a Creep. |
| 0:31.9 | This is Margo Donnyu, and my cohort in creepitude, as always, is the amazing Sonia Mansfield. |
| 0:32.7 | Hey, Sonia. |
| 0:34.9 | Hello, my friend. |
| 0:35.9 | Hello, my friend. |
| 0:56.3 | We are the podcast that talks about creeps from the past to the present. Today, we're talking about an 80s murder that happened in the Bay Area. And Sonia lives there now. She's always lived in the Bay Area. I actually moved to the Bay Area in the 80s with my family. And this is a story I was told and I can't wait to talk about it because it's just got a lot of stuff to it. But we're always, just a case, |
| 1:01.6 | this is your first time listening? And you're like, is this going to be a huge bummer? We say this. |
| 1:06.7 | It may or may not be, but we always end the show with someone who is not a creep. |
| 1:12.6 | So you can at least feel a little bit better by the end of the show. |
| 1:15.8 | Which means we're always looking for ideas for creeps and also our non-creep. |
| 1:19.7 | So let me just go through the places you can reach out to us. |
| 1:21.9 | We do have a basic Facebook page. |
| 1:23.6 | That's where people go to complain about our language. |
| 1:25.7 | This is your warning. |
| 1:26.5 | We use salty language in this program. Fuck shit. Damn. There you go, Sonia. Just get it out of your system. |
| 1:34.6 | There'll be more. There'll be more. We are much more interactive in our private Facebook groups. |
| 1:40.1 | You type in What a Creep podcast group and ask to join. You have to answer a few questions. |
| 2:01.6 | You do have to answer the questions. You have to promise not to be an asshole, basically. And if you don't do that, we can't let you in. But if you do come in, we do just talk about creeps and non-creps and pop culture and things happening in the news, stuff like that. We're also on threads, Instagram, and blue sky. And all those places we're at What a Creep podcast. |
| 2:06.6 | And we have an old-timey email, What a Creep podcast at gmail.com. |
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