Too Young to Kill

by M. William Phelps

  Sarah wrote back, threatening the girl, saying: You have it coming, bitch.... [I am going to] fucking cut your throat.

  A short time later, another girl texted Sarah and asked the same question about the same girl, who was now in college and much older than the fifteen-year-old Sarah.

  Sarah sent a message back, warning: I’m gonna climb in your window, slit your throat, and cut you to pieces.

  When Sarah saw the same girl at school a day later, she grabbed her by the arm in the hallway. “Bitch, I’m going to kill you!”

  Asked later about these incidents, the girl said, “Sarah had a split personality.... One minute, she could be normal. Furious the next.”

  Melissa Duggan (pseudonym) dated Sarah for a time during an early stretch of 2004. Sarah was impulsive when it came to reacting to what people said to her, Melissa later said.

  “She could be verbally mean.” Of course, it generally came on after Sarah didn’t get her way. There was one night when Sarah told Melissa, “I want to marry you.”

  Melissa didn’t know how to respond.

  “I hate you. . . . I’ll kill you,” Sarah snapped after not getting the answer she desired.

  Melissa’s mother had cancer. “I hope you get cancer and die with your mother,” Sarah said another time.

  Then she apologized.

  Then she said something else offensive and meanspirited.

  Back and forth. That was Sarah.

  Alive. Dead.

  According to a former coworker, Sarah had a fascination with dead bodies. There was one day when, while at work, Sarah went on about how being around the dead did not bother her. She had been desensitized to death.

  “Why?” asked her coworker. How could Sarah know what it was like to be near a dead person?

  “I saw [a relative] hang himself,” Sarah explained.

  As Sarah met and started hanging with the Juggalo crowd, she found a way to channel all of this bottled-up negative energy, which was perhaps one reason why she felt so at home inside the Juggalo world of darkness, blood and guts, and filthy, vile music. Sarah’s mother had once filed a runaway report with the Milan Police Department (MPD), fearing that Sarah had taken off. When she went missing, Sarah could often be located in a park somewhere close by, hanging out, or walking in the woods. This was a time when Sarah had both her nostrils pierced with loop earrings, her hair dyed a dark ink black. She liked to wear bandanas around her head then, and also long trench coats she had decorated (or defiled, depending on who was asked).

  Another popular Juggalo location Sarah gravitated toward with the QC Juggalo crowd was the Singing Bird Lodge, a center where families and park dwellers had cookouts and get-togethers, located inside the Black Hawk Forest Nature Preserve in South Rock Island Township, just outside Rock Island. Police reports from the summer of 2004, not long after Sarah met and attached herself to Cory Gregory, described several instances where 20 to 30 JUVS in their teens . . . all dressed in black and [with] their faces painted were reportedly causing problems inside the park and near the shelter. Most of the time, they were throwing rocks, screaming, and acting crazy, as kids, in groups, sometimes do. But there were other times when park patrons reported sightings of kids in large numbers surfing on the hoods of cars driving through the park’s grassy areas and cars driving in circles in the grass, tearing up the park’s lawn. Sometimes the kids were caught walking around the park in packs: hitting garbage cans with bats and setting them on fire, said one report.

  There was also a group of Juggalos prone to hassling people in local parks, walking around and scaring those hanging out with their families, minding their own business. One of the last times Sarah was involved, a group of “JUVS,” dressed down in baggy clothing and black-and-white face paint, stood around a large bonfire, tossing gasoline on the fire and kicking over garbage cans.

  And yet even within this setting, which seemed to offer Sarah a way to vent her frustration and introverted feelings of rage, Sarah sought another outlet.

  Near this time, not a week after she met Adrianne, Sarah turned to a friend one night while hanging out and expressed how much she liked Adrianne. She could see herself dating her, Sarah said. There was chemistry there between them. Sarah could feel it.

  “I’m thinking of getting her name tattooed on my upper arm, near the shoulder,” Sarah explained, pointing to the spot.

  24

  Beyond her explosive temper, Sarah Kolb also exhibited an almost cruel, evil, and domineering disposition that would emerge from time to time. In her writings and behavior as the fall of 2004 came, Sarah articulated a deep hatred for anyone she saw as a threat, adversary, rival, or beneath her on the food chain. At the same rate, though, Sarah was also very much afraid of sharing her innermost feelings—unless it involved her berating someone—with friends, family, or in a group setting. Her journal writing, however, was another story; this simple exercise that millions of kids do every day in school gave Sarah the opportunity to talk about who she was and what she truly thought of people.

  Journaling in general, Sarah noted, was not for the person writing the journal (as in its therapeutic value); it was for “other people,” she believed. As much as we all want to convince ourselves we’re writing our deepest thoughts in some sort of cathartic Freudian analysis, what we’re doing is revealing, Sarah pointed out quite astutely, secrets [we] don’t want to tell but . . . want everyone to know.

  Sarah felt the only “safe place” for a person’s thoughts was inside his or her head. On October 6, 2004, about six weeks before she met Adrianne Reynolds, Sarah wrote that she was afraid people were taking her journal and reading it when she wasn’t around. This—added to a growing list of additional anxieties she was experiencing at the time—bothered Sarah Kolb.

  She wrote how she considered the Internet to be the CB radio of the 90s, while calling the home PC the trailor [sic] park of the soul, a dangerous tool when in the hands of idiots.

  At times Sarah displayed her paranoia, noting at the end of the same entry that self-imposed fascism [would] destroy man because he would ultimately convince himself he doesn’t have to think anymore.

  A day after she wrote that rather critical entry, Sarah was back to being angry at the world, wondering if the people around her had been replaced by a group of imbeciles who had been beamed into her life only to irritate her. She felt everyone was driving her crazy. In response to those who were getting in her face and giving her problems, Sarah waxed violently about slaughter[ing] them like fucking sheep. She wanted to be left alone when angry. Why couldn’t people stay out of her face? Not speak to her. Not touch her. Not look at her. Breathe on her. Smile at her. Even think about her. She was becoming frustrated because people were asking why she was so pissed off all the time. And all they were doing was shortening the wick burning inside her. She was desperate for some sort of relief from the agony of her mind.

  Why?

  So I don’t hurt people, or myself....

  As Sarah was dealing with the torment inside her own head, Adrianne had just turned sixteen on September 12, 2004. She was still in Texas going through another dark period of her life, depressed and ready to pack it in. As an exercise, Adrianne sketched out her feelings one day. She was tired of the people in her life letting her down.

  Why don’t they care? she asked. I’m tired of all this. I’m ready to sleep—sleep it all away.

  Adrianne hated ignorant people, yet made no mention specifically as to whom she was referring. She was “grieving for darkness.” She was “tired” and in “pain.” She wrote she hoped for the best but longed for the worst.

  Part of Adrianne enjoyed the process of expressing her feelings on the page in the form of poetry and lyric writing. Yet, there was a certain tint of gloom—and certainly emotional pain—in everything she wrote. I’m broken was a familiar phrase Adrianne leaned on. I don’t feel right was another. She missed people immensely, likely because her life had been, up to then, a series of people (whom she
loved) being taken away from her, and she being taken away from those same people. This hole in her heart was replaced by the transparent pull of promiscuous sex. Adrianne filled the void with the love that anyone offered, in any form: whether it was genuine or a one-night promise in order to get her into bed, Adrianne thought it would help her feel better about her life and herself.

  Near the middle of October, Adrianne penned a poem that was, sadly, a harbinger of what was to come:

  Knocking at death’s door,

  Entering through hell’s gates,

  Better do something now,

  Before it’s too late.

  Adrianne had a clever way of expressing her feelings: might be a sentence or two, a doodle, or three pages of scattered sentences with no literal meaning or connection. They all tell us something about the person behind the pen. In one, she wrote: You said you couldn’t stand to see my heart broken.... So when you broke it, did you close your eyes? Another read, Breaking my heart . . . ripping my soul. Most of this centered around the boys who were bedding (and then letting) her down. Adrianne wanted love—and everything that came with it: commitment, respect, friendship, peace. All things, according to her own hand, she had never experienced.

  Heading into Black Hawk Outreach that fall, meeting Sarah for the first time, Adrianne soon felt as though she might have just found what she had been looking for all along—that one person who understood how she felt, might one day love her unconditionally, and not let her down.

  25

  Sarah Kolb viewed any attention taken away from her as a personal attack and blow to her ego. Her girlfriend had just broken it off and was now seeing someone else, a rival Sarah viewed, in her words, as “my replacement.” It was that insecurity and low self-esteem directing how Sarah felt, how she thought, with whom she socialized on a particular day, and on whom she would take out her repressed feelings of contentiousness. In Sarah’s skewed view of her life, her girlfriend had left her because Sarah was worthless. Not because there was no love or she had no feelings for Sarah. This was just another in a series of bad things Sarah saw happening in her life, all of which she viewed as entirely her own fault. Sarah saw herself as worthless.

  By October 18, 2004, Sarah had been put on a new set of medications to manage her feelings of suicide and fury. She was, truly, out of control. Her high-school life, for no apparent reason, had been consumed up to this point by chronic drug use, abusive lesbian relationships, aggressive and near-violent sex with males—“She liked to bite my neck while we had sex,” said one male, “until it was bruised”—booze, cutting herself, fighting, and more anger than her delicate emotional state could handle. Still, all that being said, the medication they were now trying on Sarah had turned her into a “zombie,” she described.

  “I feel weird.”

  The drugs made her lazy and lethargic, as though she could sleep for “three . . . days.” She questioned that maybe she should sleep more. Or, in a burst of inspiration and clarity, simply solve her problems and move on with my life, she wrote.

  In one brief journal entry, Sarah talked about how her previous girlfriend had just up and decided one day to break up with her. She asked herself why she even bothered to care so much. She wondered what “happy” actually was and how she wasn’t accomplishing anything in life. She had no job and no friends. What she had was a shitty car with shitty grades. All of it, she wrote, was an obvious indication of her life in general, which she referred to as shitty shit.

  On October 20, Sarah was feeling a bit better about herself. It was her baby sister’s one month birthday—something she took a bit of pride in, now being a big sister. Yet, as soon as she seemed to teeter on the verge of happiness, clinging to a modicum of light, Sarah was back in the darkness, chastising and blaming herself for the breakup with her last girlfriend, whom she could not seem to let go of. The breakup, she concluded, was the impetus for her being in such a traumatic psychotic state and on the periphery of suicide. She said she wanted to find her ex-girlfriend, run up, and kiss her. But she realized that if she did that, the girl would probably slap her across the face. Sarah mentioned how she couldn’t seem to get over this particular girl, as though the former lover had some sort of magnetic pull on her emotions Sarah couldn’t break free from. It was strange, too, Sarah thought. The girl wasn’t pretty. On top of that, she had bad breath and was a drunk, not to mention she nagged Sarah about everything. On the other hand, Sarah thought, she did make me laugh and feel good about myself.

  This was the type of lifestyle that mainly drove (or fed) Sarah’s anger: any self-esteem she acquired from another human being became like a drug; she craved attention and love as much as Adrianne Reynolds did. Yet, the moment it was taken away from her, Sarah went into withdrawal, so to speak, and dealt with it vis-à-vis that internal, explosive rage that exposed itself every once in awhile.

  Two weeks later, as Adrianne was making preparations to move back to East Moline, Sarah was dreading the time she had spent at Black Hawk. She had been a student there since December 9, 2003. It was the beginning of November 2004, a dreary month of cold rain and sharply falling temperatures. A few days before, Sarah mentioned how she had gone out for Halloween and got blasted drunk on Bacardi Hurricane, Skyy Blue (vodka), Smirnoff Twisted (a hard tea), Bud Light, and Captain Morgan. What a mixture! It must have been some night with all those different liquors and—at the least—some morning after. Sarah was “cold and tired” as she wrote—and no wonder. She was missing her gal pal again and still having trouble getting over the demise of the relationship. The failure of the love was all her fault, she told herself again and again. She had cursed the relationship and scared her girl away, she now had herself convinced. Her “broken heart” was only half of what troubled her—because she also believed she had a “broken spirit,” before asking herself if she would ever be totally over this chick, all coupled with a constant feeling of being “alone and empty.”

  A day later, Sarah was preparing to celebrate Cory Gregory’s birthday, but she didn’t know what to get him. Sarah’s mother had said she was going out to get Cory a present, but didn’t mention what. This thought—that her mother was spending money on one of her friends—sent Sarah down that slippery slope that was her self-esteem once again, crying out for a hand to hold. She was discouraged because she couldn’t pay her mother back right away for all the money she had spent on her and now a gift for Cory. This made Sarah’s soul recoil; she spiraled down into another level of darkness. Sarah pleaded with herself not to quit her job, which was something she generally did the moment somebody pissed her off, she wrote, or she didn’t get what she wanted. She hoped she could get a raise “or employee of the month.” Not for herself. But because she wanted to make her mother proud. She said she loved her mom, and needed to “do good” because that was one way she could at least prove to her mother that she cared about her.

  Here was a girl dying a slow death on the inside, filling the void with abusive relationships, drugs, booze, and rage.

  An emotional jack-in-the-box.

  Seven days later, November 9, Sarah was again looking to lie down somewhere and sleep her life away. She penned the word “sleep” in her journal sixteen times in a row, only to interrupt the repetitiveness by saying how irritated she was by these fucking niggers who were singing, actually rapping. She hated these kids. The music. And found it all annoying.

  After the bitchy rant about the music, Sarah went back to repeating the word “sleep,” ending the half-page entry on an entirely different subject: I hate my job.

  As the Thanksgiving break neared, Cory Gregory had not yet shown up at Black Hawk. He was supposed to start attending classes months ago. But on November 22, Sarah noted, Cory—that “stupid fuck”—finally walked into the school as a student.

  Cory’s teacher later told police that on this day, Cory “was very quiet and sat alone. He isolated himself from the other students. He wore dark clothing, but no jewelry or piercings.”


  Sarah said she hoped Cory failed his test on that first day. She did not want him in her class, she said. I’ll snap! she wrote. She felt so strongly about this, she claimed she would drop out of school before sitting in the same class as Cory.

  To his face, however, Sarah was one of the best friends Cory thought he ever had. He and Sarah became inseparable.

  A day later, November 23, Adrianne Reynolds was on the scene, combing the halls and classrooms of Black Hawk Outreach, looking to hook up with a new set of friends. She dropped by Sarah’s desk soon after beginning classes, flipped open Sarah’s journal, and left this girl, whom she found attractive and interesting, her phone number and an introductory note:

  Hey, girl, what’s up? Not shit here. Just chillin. We need to hang out one of these days and get drunk over the weekend.... But you should call me sometime. . . . Love ya!

  Sarah Kolb had a new friend. A girl she found appetizingly striking and new to the neighborhood.

  Fresh meat.

  Just maybe everything Sarah had been waiting for.

  Still, Sarah played hard to get.

  Sara [sic] hasn’t said anything to me at all: a hi, or anything like that, Adrianne wrote in a notebook she passed back and forth between her and the other students in her class.

  The boy she wrote to suggested Sarah might be shy.

  She don’t seem like the shy type, Adrianne responded.

  Her friend wrote back that Sarah sayz she’s 17 but looked more like 15.

  If Sarah likes me, Adrianne wrote, having been told that Sarah was bisexual and on the prowl, hoping to hook up with her, then she needs to start talking to me because I already made the first move....

  By the end of November, Sarah was over her girlfriend and trying to get with another girl in school, who seemed to be nothing more than a pain in her ass.