Too Young to Kill (35 page)

“Well, [she] threatened me. She said, ‘I’ll take care of this during a visit someday, or in the hall on the way to a visit.’ This is very disturbing to me.” Sarah started to cry again. “I think she’s even been inside my cell, reading some of my papers associated with my case.”

“How so?”

“I came back from an attorney visit one day last week and found my cell open—[she] was out [in the corridor] cleaning.”

“Doesn’t mean anything. . . .”

“No, but [she] asked me questions later on that day about my case that only someone who read that stuff would know.”

“So what?”

The report of the conversation indicated that Sarah claimed that Tisha
later . . . mentioned a codename and something about a purse or a bag,
and the only other people who knew about those items were her attorney and Cory Gregory. Sarah was greatly concerned about this.

“I keep notes in my cell and these notes,” Sarah explained to the nurse and CO, “contain information on my case that could prove to be incriminating for me.”

Inmates were always looking for material to barter. If they found out something about a major case going to trial, they could use it to chip away at their own time. Was Tisha trading info about Sarah for time off her own sentence?

“What are you worried about, Kolb?”

“[She] threatened to go to the state’s attorney with the information. I need you to move her away from me. I cannot take it anymore! I don’t know what I am going to do.”

“Are you suicidal, Kolb?” the CO asked.

“No. I would never hurt myself.”

“Okay.”

“But under this type of pressure and anger,” Sarah warned, “I might do something to hurt someone else. This is why I should never be put in a cell block with other girls.”

“I don’t think there’s much we can do for you, Kolb, but I will speak with the shift commander.”

The CO checked. Tisha was not going to be moved from the block, but she was placed in a cell at the end of the corridor, away from Sarah, so they would not be neighbors any longer.

The two were listed as enemies,
the report concluded,
and a note was posted . . . to keep the two separate at all times.

This would not be the end of it, however. And Sarah wasn’t telling the entire truth of the matter.

67

A mental-health evaluation was ordered on Sarah Kolb after that little problem she had with Tisha. There was, after all, another side to this story—namely, Tisha’s.

That “code name” Sarah had mentioned to the CO and nurse was chosen by Cory and Sarah as a mission title for killing Adrianne, and the “purse” or “bag” was actually a backpack only Cory and Sarah knew the whereabouts of. What was in the backpack was anybody’s guess.

The nurse who evaluated Sarah pulled her aside a day after Sarah had reported Tisha. Confronting Sarah, the nurse said, “You told her, didn’t you?” The nurse was referring to what Sarah and Tisha, who were close friends at one time, had discussed when they used to hang around together.

Sarah looked defeated. She stared at the nurse, whispered, “Yes. This is why I am so scared.”

Tisha was running around telling everyone that Sarah had admitted murdering Adrianne, and Tisha was planning on going to the state’s attorney with the info.

Continuing, Sarah said, “Tisha and I were a lot alike six months ago. I did not appreciate what I had. I wanted the best car, the best clothes. I was always jealous because I thought other people had more than I had. I was so jealous that I wanted what everyone else had.”

A day later, two COs and the nurse caught up with Sarah and spoke with her again. Tisha was still taunting her, Sarah said. It was beginning to break her down. She was on the verge of losing it.

“You don’t know what that’s like,” Sarah explained. “Being called a murderer . . . is something that I am going to have to live with for the rest of my life, and I don’t need anybody throwing it in my face constantly. I am going to hurt somebody else! That’s what I do. I have a temper.”

They brought Tisha in later that same day.

“This all stems from an argument we had over cleaning,” Tisha insisted. “I used to be close with Sarah. Sarah confided in me. Yeah, she told me
everything.
She’s scared now? Hell, she should have been scared when she was telling me her whole story.”

The girls were finally split up. Tisha ultimately met with investigators.

Nate Gaudet had given cops a second interview in March. Enough time had elapsed by then for Nate to come to terms—in some sense—with what he had done. The memories were still fresh enough in Nate’s mind for investigators to double-check and figure out if he was telling the truth. By now, it was clear to Nate that he was going to be spending some time in prison, but not anywhere near the amount his cohorts faced.

“Sarah,” Nate explained, “. . . started punching Adrianne in the face, and then Adrianne broke Sarah’s nose, so Sarah had Cory hold Adrianne’s arms while Sarah choked her to death . . . and beat her with a wooden stick.”

Nate further explained how Adrianne’s corpse “started to stink,” so they put her in the trunk and drove out to Big Island, eventually ending up at Sarah’s grandfather’s farm.

There was no question that when Cory and Sarah picked Nate up that weekend at his grandmother’s house, they asked him to go back into the house and grab a saw, and Nate knew
exactly
what that saw was going to be used for. He did not have to be persuaded or threatened, he claimed.

Premeditation once again became evident. Investigators asked Nate an important question: if Adrianne and Sarah did not like each other, as everyone had been suggesting, and were not getting along at the time of Adrianne’s murder, how did Sarah get Adrianne to agree to get into the car on that day?

Nate said Cory helped out with that. Cory convinced Adrianne she should go to Taco Bell with him for lunch, and that he would make things cool with Sarah.

“Why was [Sarah] acting [as if she was Adrianne’s friend]?”

“Just to do what they did.”

“And what do you mean by that?”

“Uh, so Sarah could get her in the car so they could bring her to Taco Bell and kill her,” Nate said.

“How do you know that?”

“’Cause they told me!”

Later on, during the same interview, investigators asked Nate, “What, if any other involvement, did Cory Gregory have in this homicide?”

“Cory took the belt and put it around Adrianne’s neck while they drove to Big Island to put the body in the trunk.”

SA Jeff Terronez sat in on the interview. The SA was preparing his cases. Nate Gaudet was obviously going to be one of the SA’s main witnesses. Terronez was worried about those lie detector test questions Nate had failed to answer truthfully.

“You understand,” Terronez asked Nate as the interview wound down, “I cannot put you on the witness stand and have you testify to something that is not true?”

“Yes.”

“You have to tell the truth.”

“Yes.”

“If you don’t tell the truth, I can prosecute you for lying on the witness stand under oath—you understand that?”

“Yes.”

“And that’s completely different and separate from what you’re facing right now.”

“Yeah.”

“You would get separate time and everything else if you’re lying on the witness stand under oath—you understand that?”

“Yes.”

Terronez carried on, asking Nate several more times if he understood the ramifications of lying on the witness stand.

Nate didn’t back down; he kept telling the SA he understood.

Thus, for the SA, there was not much else he could do besides prepare for trial against Sarah Kolb, who was, as the summer of 2005 came to an end, showing no signs of wanting to cut a deal and testify against her counterpart, Cory Gregory.

68

According to legend, Halloween is the day marking the end of the harvest season and the beginning of what are long, dark, cold winter days juxtaposed against all of the bone-chilling, frigid nights ahead. An old Celtic tradition says that the first day of November is the time of year best associated with death. Therefore, in one sense, Halloween could be considered a celebration. A time to don one’s best costume and scare away those ghouls, ghosts, and goblins that might bring the end of life the following morning.

For Sarah Kolb, sitting and facing her fate inside Rock Island County Circuit Court on October 31, 2005, the Honorable James Teros presiding, jury selection on this day concluded with eight jurors being chosen.

First thing the following morning, November 1, four additional jurors—and three alternates—were selected, and all were sworn in.

The
People of the State of Illinois
v.
Sarah Kolb
was under way.

SA Jeff Terronez had announced he was not going to be calling Sarah’s mother, Kathryn Klauer. All the SA would admit to reporters regarding the decision was that he had certain reasons for scratching Klauer. Yet, the main witness everyone was talking about—a man not on Terronez’s list—was Cory Gregory. Why wasn’t Cory going to testify on behalf of the reputed love of his life? He was there, inside the car. Cory had witnessed the murder. He could give jurors a play-by-play of what had happened.

“Cory had a constitutional right not to testify” was all Terronez would tell the author later (through a third party).

Terronez wore a brown suit over a white shirt, red tie. He carried his files and a few charts into the Justice Center courtroom on the morning of November 2 in one of those white (with blue lettering)
PROPERTY OF THE U.S. POSTAL SERVICE
containers. In his rather brief and not well-planned opening statement, the SA explained how Sarah Kolb met, befriended, and then murdered Adrianne Reynolds. Sarah, dressed in black slacks, a white turtleneck under a gray sweater, sat quietly, listening, looking over her shoulder every once in a while to sneak a peek at family members there to support her. One of those, her mother, Kathryn Klauer, was photographed walking into the courthouse holding a photo of a young Sarah, her blond hair hanging over a broad smile, an obvious happy child with a zeal for life.

As he addressed the jury, it was amazing to listen to how much SA Terronez left
out
of his opening argument, along with the few details he included. By the end of his first breath, Terronez said, “Adrianne’s fatal mistake in judgment was that she tried to befriend the defendant, Sarah Kolb.”

It was showboating (but true), and sounded more like a teaser for an episode of
Dateline
or
48 Hours.
Not the product of a polished state’s attorney. The pressure was definitely on Terronez; this was his first major jury trial since being elected.

Terronez laid out his case by describing that ride to Taco Bell that Sarah, Sean, Cory, and Adrianne took on Friday, January 21, 2005. Oddly, he gave jurors a brief layout of the parking lot, promising maps and charts.

“You will hear that Sarah Kolb, together with Cory Gregory, committed first-degree murder in two counts and committed a count of concealment of a homicidal death,” Terronez said.

After this, he launched into a short argument about how Sarah had driven Adrianne’s body out to the Engle farm and tried to get rid of it by fire. Terronez kept saying “they,” meaning Cory and Sarah, but it was Sarah giving the orders on this day, an important detail Terronez failed to make.

Nate’s role came up next.

“Nathan Gaudet will testify in this case, ladies and gentlemen, and he will tell you about a car ride . . . and Nathan Gaudet will tell you about a physical attack that took place in Sarah Kolb’s car at the hands of Sarah Kolb, together with Cory Gregory.”

And yet Nate was not there; his testimony regarding this would be third-party hearsay. It was Sean McKittrick who would describe this scene. Sean was there. Inside the car.

Sparing no graphic detail, Terronez described the way in which Nate dismembered Adrianne’s body while his friends watched and guided him.

The SA mentioned Black Hawk State Historic Site.

He talked motive on Sarah’s part—but he didn’t mention what it was.

And, quite surprising, simply because he
did
have the evidence to prove this part of his case, Terronez said, “I
don’t
expect you to hear evidence of a premeditated plot.”

Why ring
that
bell?

Perhaps hoping to talk his way into a guilty verdict, Terronez then spelled out the jury’s “job” when they ultimately took the case back into the jury room—a direction a more experienced prosecutor at this level would have been expected to give during his closing. Terronez, though, reiterated what the judge had said already that morning, calling jurors “fact finders,” saying how the jury’s main purpose was to take the facts and apply them to the law.

And then he was done.

Not even ten minutes into it.

Appointed defense attorney David Hoffman had a reputation as being a tough no-holds-barred competitor inside a courtroom, not to mention an advocate for going after what he believed to be injustice. The well-dressed, experienced attorney, with fluffy white hair and a cotton white mustache, stood and, after addressing jurors, went right into the problems he had seen with Terronez’s case.

“I found it interesting . . . that the state does not claim that there is evidence that Sarah actually killed Adrianne Reynolds.”

Whispers and murmurs followed that statement.

“And secondly,” Hoffman continued in his scratchy smoker’s voice, “the issue of no premeditated plot?”

Hoffman was essentially saying something many in the room had likely pondered: With no evidence and no premeditation (
without
Cory Gregory), how in the heck was SA Terronez going to prove Sarah Kolb murdered Adrianne? Where was the state’s magic hat and white rabbit?

Hoffman next did a smart thing, something experience had taught him long ago. He hit on a note that he would continue going back to throughout the trial.