Too Young to Kill (41 page)

The former Juggalo was eighteen, living in prison. He still had that street cockiness and punk attitude. Cory wanted the public to know that he was no killer. He might have helped Sarah, he told television news reporter Chris Minor, but he did not instigate or carry out a plan to attack and murder Adrianne. That was Sarah’s doing.
She
started the fight.
She
grabbed Adrianne by the neck.
She
choked Adrianne until she was blue. And
she
ordered him to burn Adrianne’s body, before coming up with the idea to have Nate Gaudet cut her into pieces.

Cory spoke like someone who knew Sarah. He told Minor that Sarah had always had an “image problem.” She was obsessed with the notion of being the “perfect person.” Cory also knew firsthand that Sarah lied to people all the time—and here she was lying once again, this time to save her own skin.

Cory pointed out a fact that Jeff Terronez had failed to spell out clearly during the trial: that in one of her own letters to Sarah, Adrianne had asked Sarah why she hated her so much. This proved, in Adrianne’s own words, that Sarah had told Adrianne to her face that she despised her, something Sarah had denied on the witness stand. The word Sarah kept using in place of hate was “upset.” She was upset with Adrianne. Not angry. Or odious. But disappointed and troubled that their relationship hadn’t worked out.

Steve Hanna, Cory’s lawyer, would not allow his client to go into specifics with Chris Minor, pending the outcome of Cory’s forthcoming trial. But Cory wanted to state emphatically, for the record, that Adrianne’s murder was a “fight . . . [that] went too far.”

He showed remorse and empathy during the interview for the first time, saying he was seeing horrifying images of the murder and cover-up as they played over in his mind. But Cory seemed to be less than truthful with Minor, saying that he had “no idea” the fight Sarah had in the car with Adrianne would erupt into violence and murder. This statement went against the information several interviews with witnesses not used during Sarah’s trial had reported. These were fellow students and Juggalos and friends of Cory’s and Sarah’s who spoke about Cory planning the murder with Sarah, and he and Sarah talking about it days before.

Hanna minimized Cory’s role in the murder by telling Chris Minor that his client just happened to be “in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

After explaining to Minor how he had “cried several times” since Adrianne Reynolds’s death, Cory said he couldn’t wait for his day in court so he could tell the world exactly what had happened inside Sarah’s car. He was looking forward to sharing the truth about Adrianne’s murder and Sarah’s role in it.

Looking at this, one couldn’t help but think it was just another blasé round of that same
he said/she said
nonsense that Cory Gregory and Sarah Kolb had been talking since their arrests.

76

Sarah’s attorneys filed a change of venue motion in early January 2006. What was interesting about the motion became how her new attorney, public defender Baron Heintz, worded a section regarding the media’s coverage and public response to Sarah’s case. The lawyer had a solid argument. Heintz focused on twenty-five thousand references to Sarah’s case on the Internet he had uncovered, which indicated that Sarah Kolb could likely not get a fair trial in the QC. In fact, Heintz smartly pointed out, some of those people who had posted on message boards anonymously said they would go to the extraordinary length of lying to the judge during jury selection in order to obtain a seat on the jury for the sole purpose of convicting Sarah.

Steve Hanna saw an opportunity, and, a day later, he, too, said he would be filing a change of venue motion under the same circumstances for his client.

On Wednesday, January 4, 2006, despite the exorbitant costs argued by Jeff Terronez of transporting nearly fifty witnesses out of the county, Judge James Teros issued his ruling. Teros granted the motion and allowed the change of venue, which could take the case from Moline to Chicago, Peoria, Rockford, or Dixon.

A major win for Sarah. A fresh set of eyes and ears would get her case. If she had gotten to one juror previously, there was nothing stopping her from getting to another.

Judge Teros sent the trial an hour and a half, almost one hundred miles, northeast of Rock Island County, to Dixon, Lee County. His hope was that the mileage between the two counties would make the media’s impact transparent. Sure, some in Dixon had heard about the case, but the talk there was not centered on it as much as it had been in Rock Island, where Sarah Kolb was still hitting the front page, above the fold, not to mention headlining all the local TV newscasts.

77

The second round in the
State of Illinois
v.
Sarah Kolb
began much in the same fashion as the first: the same dull opening arguments; the same list of witnesses, testifying about the same things they had months before; the same gallery reactions to testimony that teetered on the verge of pointing a finger directly at Sarah, but never managed to get completely there.

SA Jeff Terronez went about prosecuting Sarah in the exact same way, building his case on the relationship Sarah Kolb and Adrianne Reynolds had; the bitter feud that erupted between them after Adrianne slept with two of Sarah’s friends; and the idea that Sarah became incensed when Adrianne started to dip into Sarah’s Kool-Aid. Once again, Terronez did not offer a smoking gun. He never brought in any of those character witnesses to describe how Sarah reacted to disappointment throughout her life, or people Sarah had gotten into fights with in the past. He relied on Sarah’s journal and the testimony of former friends who said Sarah had had it in for Adrianne.

On February 21, 2006, a second jury was given the case. The only difference that would soon prove to be momentous was that Sarah had decided
not
to testify this time around. Even more shocking was that she and her lawyers chose not to put on
any
witnesses and offer
no
evidence.

By late afternoon on the first day of deliberations, the jury had asked two questions relating to the law, both of which were quickly answered by Judge Teros.

The following day, the jury—this time made up of seven men and five women—continued deliberations until 1:30
P.M.
, shortly after an announcement came indicating they had reached a verdict.

Judge James Teros brought everyone into the Lee County courtroom and summoned his jury. Fixing himself in his chair, the heavyset judge spoke: “I’ve been informed that the jury has reached a verdict. I understand that for many of you this will be a very emotional moment. Please . . . I ask that you be calm and that you be collected.”

The jury was escorted into the courtroom.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” Teros said, staring at the group, many of whom would not look up, “I understand you’ve reached a verdict.”

“We have, Your Honor,” the foreman, a young-looking, dark-haired man, unafraid to face the judge and Sarah Kolb, said.

“Would you please give [the verdicts] to the court so they can be published.”

The bailiff walked over and took the paper in his hand. He then handed it to Judge Teros, who, without much fanfare, in his deep voice, said,
“We, the jury, find the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree. Count one. We, the jury, find the defendant
guilty
,”
the judge looked up for a brief moment,
“of murder in the first degree. Count two. We, the jury,”
he continued,
“find the defendant
guilty
of concealment of a homicidal death.”

Sarah Kolb was found guilty on all three counts.

The outcome for her could not have been worse.

The newspaper back home in the QC ran a one-word banner headline with Sarah’s mug shot on the right side of the page: GUILTY.

There would be no celebration on Sarah’s part tonight. The jury had spoken clearly, sending Sarah Kolb—and, more important, Adrianne Reynolds and her family—a direct message.

When Sarah returned to the Rock Island County Jail that evening, she didn’t run into her cell, curl up in a ball to start crying, as perhaps some might have assumed. Instead, Sarah Kolb put in a request for a haircut—a rather bizarre style that spoke, in some strange way, to the people of Illinois who were now calling her a murderer. There’s no doubt Sarah was making a point when she sat down in the barber’s chair and had the prison stylist shave her entire head into a buzz cut, with the exception of two long, inch-thick strands (bangs) of black hair that hung from the top of her forehead down past her lips, like two walrus fangs. It looked almost as if Sarah had grown a mustache that started at the top of her head and sloped down around her mouth on each side. Was this her way of poking fun at that photograph used during Adrianne Reynolds’s disappearance, the same one that the missing person flyer made famous, which depicted Adrianne with the same bangs hanging down in front of her face?

According to Sarah, she shaved her head to let a good friend of hers know that she was okay with the guilty verdict. She was a survivor. Years before, when this same friend’s mother developed cancer and had lost all her hair, Sarah reportedly shaved her head in solidarity with her friend and her friend’s mother.

Regardless of why she did it, what became clear was that Sarah Kolb was still making front-page, above-the-fold headlines, only now the story was about her new look, and the threat from Mercer County prosecutors, where Adrianne’s remains were found on the Engle farm, who were considering filing additional charges against Sarah for dismembering Adrianne in their county. Mutilating a body was a felony that could garner the convicted murderer an additional six to thirty years on top of what Sarah was going to receive for the murder.

78

Teresa Gregory stood behind her son on April 27, 2006, a seasonably cool Thursday afternoon in the QC, as a subdued and subtly defiant Cory Gregory pleaded guilty for his role in the murder and dismemberment of Adrianne Reynolds. Cory must have weighed his options after seeing what had happened to Sarah Kolb, who some were saying could get upward of almost one hundred years with the additional charges, and reconsidered taking a plea deal, as opposed to rolling the dice at trial. Why the state would deal with Cory
after
Sarah was convicted perplexed many, but Cory was offered a chance at one day feeling the sun shine on his back a free man—and he grabbed it.

Under the plea agreement, Cory was going to receive a sentence of between twenty and forty years, which would allow him to walk out of prison at some point. Part of the deal, a request Tony Reynolds had made to Jeff Terronez, included Cory having to face the family of the girl he had helped murder and cut into pieces.

It would be a few more months before Cory Gregory was sentenced.

Tony and Jo went into the prison to visit with Cory after he pleaded. Jeff Terronez had told Tony he would ask for the meeting between Adrianne’s family and one of her killers, but he “thought it would never happen,” Jo recalled.

Tony wanted to look in the eyes of the person who had killed his daughter. The questions, for which maybe there were no answers, that Tony and Jo wanted to ask were “What was so bad that you had to kill her? Why couldn’t you both just walk away?”

“We wanted to know the truth about what happened,” Jo said.

Cory sat staring at the floor as Jo and Tony stood on the opposite side of the glass separating them.

“I did nothing but watch,” Cory finally said, meaning he did not initiate Adrianne’s murder.

“You’re a liar!” Jo snapped.

“Why lie?” Tony asked. “If you didn’t do anything, why would you plead out to forty years in prison?”

“Okay . . . okay,” Cory said, according to Jo, “I put the belt around her neck. I held the belt.”

Tony brought a photograph of his daughter. As Cory tried to explain his way out of it, Tony slammed the picture against the glass between them.

“Look at her!” Adrianne’s father said.

Cory gazed at the photo for a brief moment and quickly dropped his head.

Jo and Tony walked out.

They received a letter shortly after visiting with Cory, who was now apparently interested in confronting his behavior and facing his victim’s family. In that short missive, Cory explained how, when Jo and Tony had gone to see him, he didn’t have the nerve to look at them in the eyes and talk about what had happened. He mentioned how he wished every day that he could take back what had happened. He said he was truly sorry. He knew that what he did was an unforgivable act on his part, but he wanted the Reynolds family as a whole to know how sorry he was for committing the “act.”

Lastly Cory wrote that if he could give his life to bring Adrianne
back, I would in a second.

Cory Gregory was sentenced in early July to forty-five years, the maximum penalty he could have received. During the proceeding, Cory looked at Jo and Tony Reynolds. He said, “Tony, Joanne, and the rest of the Reynolds family, I am truly sorry. Truly, I am. If I could someway give my life to bring Adrianne back, I would do it.”

Cory turned to his father, Bert, and his mother, Teresa, and apologized for putting them through the ordeal of their lives.

Teresa stood behind her son, tears falling down her cheeks.

“I cried because I never wanted my son to have to grow up in prison,” Teresa said later. “He was so young and had so much life ahead of him to grow and mature and experience the many wonderful things that life can be. I cried because he had thrown that chance away.”

Cory faced Judge Walter Braud.

“All I can say and ask of the court is,” Cory said, his voice firm and unwavering, the orange jumper he wore reminding the packed gallery that they were staring at an admitted murderer, “to show me some kind of mercy.”

Judge Braud took a deep breath. “Well, it’s too little, too late, Mr. Gregory.”