"Bizarre," conceded the judge.

Mark was in the courtroom, listening to Clarke sketch the full account of the story in which Mark himself was such a major participant—and of which he knew so little. In the months since the stabbing, he had been working out regularly at the juvenile-detention-center gym; he had grown muscular, hard.

As Clarke spoke about how John had manipulated the older boy, deploying a stream of imaginary virtual characters to lure Mark into carrying out his murder, he sneaked a look at Mark's face. The boy was, no mistaking it, aghast. The beautiful Rachel West, whom he had loved, wooed, and honestly mourned, was John—as was Kevin, who reveled in the bloody details of her gang rape and murder. Lyndsey East, who had briefly enchanted him and then disappeared without a word of good-bye, was John. Janet Dobinson, who had watched him masturbating on a Webcam, and who had promised him a lifetime of wealth and glamour, was John. The ice-cream vendors and shop assistants engaged in ceaseless surveillance of Mark: all John. The world he had known was John, written, produced, and directed by John.

"I've been a fool," said Mark.

At the end of May, the teenagers, their lawyers, and the press gathered in Judge Maddison's courtroom, where neither boy so much as glanced at the other. Both pleaded guilty and received, to their patent relief, probation. When the sentence came down, Mark winked at his mother, and Sally Hogg, whose work had uncovered the degree of his manipulation by John, wept for the duller, more susceptible boy. "I just thought, It could have been my son," she says.

There were conditions made: no unsupervised Internet sessions for either boy, no further contact between them. Tales were told of instant transformations. Since seeing a psychologist, John's mother informed the court, John had been getting along nicely with her live-in companion. Moreover, added the mother, despite his earlier homosexual leanings, John now had "a girlfriend." At which point, one local reporter informs me, "Everyone in the press put down their pens and pads." They might as well have burned them.

Only a part of this amazing story was ever revealed to the British public. Almost nothing consequential came out, as the lawyer representing the Manchester Evening News, the Daily Mail, and The Sun complained.

For example, although the media had named John as a stabbing victim and published his photograph less than a year earlier, no one in Britain would ever be allowed to learn that he had tried to engineer his own execution that hot June day in Goose Green: "As far as the public in south Manchester are concerned there is at large … a crazed knifeman who murderously attacked a 14-year-old," said the newspaper lawyer. "And the public, in the submissions of the press, are entitled to be told the truth."

Not in Britain, however. Even though, thanks to the Internet, anyone who wishes can access all relevant information. Just a few well-chosen words typed into Google are enough to call up some media stories identifying John as a stabbing victim last year, as well as other articles, more recent, revealing that in fact the victim incited his own attempted murder. Only in the second instance is John's real name excised from accounts. It is a paradox that seems to have escaped the British judiciary.

In the absence of factual press reports, John feels at liberty to craft, for the benefit of his girlfriend, fabulous new tales, starring himself. He has told his therapist about his lies to his girlfriend. Someone stabbed him in Goose Green for revenge, he told her, because he, John, had identified a killer on the loose. Perhaps his girlfriend has access to the Internet; she doesn't believe him, John reports.

The mere thought of Mark reduces the boy to tears. He misses him terribly, even while recognizing, as he puts it, "the friendship with Mark was fake." It wasn't John whom Mark loved, the boy knows. "Because he had the friendship with Rachel and Janet."

Where does he belong? John wonders. Not at home: "It doesn't suit me, being part of a family environment, being sucked in," he says.

He doesn't think he will ever get married, much less have children. He couldn't imagine, he says, being stuck with the same person his whole life.

Judy Bachrach is a Vanity Fair contributing editor and the author of Tina and Harry Come to America: Tina Brown, Harry Evans, and the Uses of Power (Free Press).