On June 23, 1984, Protti told her parents she was babysitting; she borrowed the family car and drove to Costas' house after luring her with a phony invitation to a dinner for the Bob-o-Links, a sorority-like group at school.
"[3] When Costas could not reach her parents by telephone, Alex Arnold drove her to her nextdoor neighbor's home, noticing that the Protti family's Pinto was following them.
Following a conversation with an FBI agent who informed her that her arrest was imminent and that they knew that she had killed Kirsten, Protti wrote her mother a letter in which she made a full confession.
[9] In 1994, the events of the story were used as inspiration for a television movie entitled A Friend to Die For (also known as Death of a Cheerleader), with Tori Spelling as Stacy Lockwood and Kellie Martin as Angela Delvecchio.
[10] The aforementioned film was remade in 2019 as a Lifetime television movie starring Aubrey Peeples as Bridget Moretti and Sarah Dugdale as Kelli Locke, characters based on Protti and Costas, and Kellie Martin, who played Angela Delvecchio in the first television movie, playing the FBI Agent charged with tracking the murderer.