The cat was out of the bag.
Adrianne called the sex she had with Kory Allison the “excuse” Sarah had invented in order to break off the friendship they had started. Adrianne was calling Sarah Kolb on her little scheme, writing:
If you didn’t want to be my friend to begin with, you should have just said something . . . instead of being a BITCH about it and instead of leading me on.
That was pretty fucked and you do fucked up shit, so you must be fucked up too. You know . . . I was still going to try to be your friend but now that I know how you are, fuck it, because you’re not worth it....
Adrianne admitted in the letter that on the night she slept with Kory Allison, she did it because I just wanted people to like me. . . . But after doing it, she said, she understood she didn’t need to sleep with a boy to get people to like me.
At the same time, she said, she ended up sleeping with Henry Orenstein because, well, I liked him. . . .
In an outpouring that must have made Sarah’s blood boil, Adrianne told her straight out that people at the house still liked her, regardless of what Sarah had been trying to do, because they still invite me over. As far as Cory was concerned, Adrianne continued, he’s not your friend. . . . Me and him are ok as friends.
Next, Adrianne made an admission. It was a mistake, she wrote to Sarah, for me to have slept with [Cory] and I am not going to do it again. . . .
The best thing Sarah could do now, Adrianne warned, was keep your mouth shut, quit telling lies and don’t be a bitch.... If you knew how my life has been, then you’d think twice about fucking with me again. . . . Keep my name out of your mouth. She said Sarah should watch what she said at the house because Adrianne would find out everything. I guess I’ll either talk to you later or not. I could care less....
Adrianne lastly warned Sarah that she was not going to lay down and take it anymore. And if Sarah thought she was a badass and could whip Adrianne and draw a knife on her: My brothers, Adrianne threatened, meaning Jo’s twins, don’t play.
40
Christmastime inside the Reynolds household was a festive affair. Santa gave Adrianne what she wanted: a black, with orange-and-red flames, six-string electric guitar. There’s a photo of Adrianne holding her ax on her lap. It looked comfortable in her hands. She fit that Avril Lavigne, Pink-inspired, rocker-girl-with-an-attitude image. Adrianne had a street toughness about her, along with a hard edge, both spoke to her need to express an artistic side she felt she had. Music filled part of that. Adrianne had always talked of an interest in playing the guitar, and Tony had worked hard to give the girl what she truly wanted.
Nothing appeared to be too out of whack in the household during the holiday season. The quarrel with Sarah, Cory, and the other kids at school, Tony and Jo perceived, was a problem preadult kids generally worked out on their own. If not, Adrianne would drop those friends and move on. If she sensed things were getting out of hand, Adrianne was smart enough to say something, Jo and Tony were certain. There was never a doubt in their minds that Adrianne would go to them if she believed serious trouble was brewing.
“Adrianne was just like any other sixteen-year-old girl who had been flopped around,” Tony later remarked. “Adrianne never disrespected Jo (or myself), as far as saying, ‘You’re not my mom. . . . You’re not my dad. You’re not gonna tell me what to do.’ We let her do things as long as she acted right.”
And as far as Jo and Tony could tell, Adrianne was doing better.
One of Adrianne’s favorite things was to head down to the YMCA with Tony whenever he went to work out. There was a teen center inside the Y Adrianne enjoyed.
“Just thinking about Adrianne at the Y and how much she loved to go there and to sing,” Tony later recalled, “puts chill-bumps all on me.”
Tony was one of those dads, he admitted, who profiled the kids his daughter hung around. He was quick to make judgments based on the way they dressed and spoke. Adrianne knew this (and had warned Sarah about it). So whenever she was around Tony, Adrianne watched what she said about Cory and Sarah, especially.
“The only time I ever saw Sarah,” Tony recalled, “was once, when she came to the house. She had this black Goth thing going on. Face paint. Dark clothes. She never said a whole lot.”
Sarah stood in the doorway the entire time.
“My dog,” Tony added, “did not like that girl. That should have been a sign! My dog, a boxer, went freakin’ crazy when Sarah showed up.”
Tony stood there, checking Sarah out, watching his dog go nuts.
“First of all, I thought she was a guy,” Tony said. “Right off the bat. You couldn’t really tell with all those baggy clothes she was wearin.’ My comment has always been that Sarah, on that day, looked like a thug freak.”
“This is my friend, Sarah,” Adrianne said, introducing the two.
Oh boy, Tony thought, lifting his ball cap off his head, putting it back on. “O . . . kay.”
“Adrianne didn’t dress that way—she wore tight blue jeans and girly stuff,” Tony said. He couldn’t figure out why his daughter had befriended someone like this: what did Sarah offer?
“Adrianne wasn’t into that Goth look.” (Tony meant Juggalo; Sarah and her friends would never call themselves Goth.) “She knew better. I wouldn’t allow her to dress like that.”
After Sarah left, Tony turned to Adrianne. “Look, honey, I love ya. But if their pants don’t fit, do not bring them into my house. Because you ain’t goin’ nowhere with them. I don’t go for no saggy-baggy pants shit. You got me?”
Adrianne nodded. She understood.
“I remember once,” Tony said, “Adrianne brought this boy over to the house. They were all in the back [of the house] playing music. There was Adrianne, three or four girls, and this one boy. The boy looked like a midget, maybe only five feet tall. They was all singing karaoke.” Having some good clean fun.
Tony walked into the room. “Hey,” he said, waving.
The short kid turned, “What up, dude?”
Tony looked at the ground. Took a deep breath. “Look here . . . son,” he began, “I’ll tell you what I am going to do. You need catch your ass up outta here, all right. If you’re trying to be somebody else, you need to be somewhere else.” Tony could tell the kid’s “dude” this, “yo” that, was all an act. He was trying to be, in Tony’s words, an urban-speaking white boy with his hat turned sideways and pants falling off his body. Tony was offended by this.
The boy looked over at Adrianne. “Is he serious?”
Adrianne nodded her head. “Ah . . . yeah, he is.”
“You’re damn right, I’m serious, boy,” Tony piped up.
The kid left.
Tony never saw him again.
“It’s like, when I look back and go over what Cory Gregory and Sarah Kolb said on the day Adrianne went missing,” Tony said. “They said they dropped her off at McDonald’s. They were asked why. ‘Because Adrianne’s dad didn’t like us,’ they both said. Well, let me tell you somethin’. That was the only truth dem kids done told that entire day.”
On December 30, 2004, Sarah and Cory took a trip to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to pick up Sean McKittrick, and bring him back to town.
Sean and Sarah were not, she later said, dating at this time. But she was beginning to have feelings for him.
“We had discussed a possible relationship,” Sarah later said, “but it wasn’t official yet.”
The one thing Sarah said she was sure of at this time?
That she and Adrianne were not going to be dating. It was over. They weren’t even friends. And Adrianne’s persistent need for closure, Sarah added, was “becoming irritating.”
41
The Juggalos hangin’ at the party house planned a big New Year’s Eve bash.
Lots of booze.
Lots of sex.
Lots of drugs.
One of the chief instigators of trouble on this night was Cory Gregory. He was in rare form. Cory was becoming increasingly impatien
t with Sarah. Every day that went by, Cory slipped further away from Sarah, perhaps beginning to accept the idea that there was no chance they’d ever be together. To Cory’s great dismay, Sarah had given up on females for the moment and announced that she was exclusive with Sean McKittrick, her date for the party. Thus, the more that Cory pulled back from Sarah, the more intense and strange his behavior became. It showed how much power she had over him.
“[Cory] was the kind of person who got into your head,” said one girl inside the group. “He was a nymphomaniac, for sure. But he also talked about killing people and having sex with them while they were dead.” Cory, this same source concluded, “is sick—his head is all full of crap.”
Nate Gaudet was jealous of Cory. Nate did not like it when Cory was around his girlfriend, Jill Hiers. Cory “wanted” Jill, same as he wanted some of the other girls. But only for a romp. Not so much a relationship. In that regard, Cory was exclusive to Sarah, and, it turned out, was beginning to feel Adrianne could fill that role Sarah had denied him.
“Cory would do anything for Sarah,” one Juggalo said. “And I mean kill! Cory worshipped the ground Sarah walked on and he wanted to marry her.”
During the New Year’s Eve party, Nate and Jill got into a blowout. They were drunk and arguing. It started inside the bathroom. Nate was doing most of the screaming. To those outside the door listening, it sounded like Nate was on the verge of becoming violent.
Then he did.
Nate grabbed Jill by the throat.
Hearing this, Sarah kicked in the door. Dragged Nate out by his arm, pushed him to the ground, and began kicking him. Nate was too drunk to react or defend himself. He started vomiting. Stood up. Then he bounced off the walls, trying to walk away.
“You fucker,” Sarah screamed, spittle spraying out of her mouth. “You leave her alone. Never choke a girl!”
Cory Gregory came running up. Everyone was now involved, yelling and arguing, getting in one another’s faces.
Nate looked tired and depressed. He was drunk, yes. But also in a terrible state of darkness. Something was going on with the kid.
Cory grabbed him. “Shangri-La, Nate . . . ,” Cory said. “Shangri-La.”
“Shangri-La” is a reference to Juggalo heaven, and part of the title from Insane Clown Posse’s eighth studio album, Wraith: Shangri-La, which was released in 2002. The cover of the disc depicts a devil-type figure without a face standing on an open book, traditional devil horns, and reptilian hands with pointed fingernails, clouds and blue sky in the background, a black bird on his shoulder. His red cape covers his head like the Grim Reaper, Mr. Death; with one hand, he is gesturing for those who wish to come to him. Among the song titles on the CD are “Walk into the Light,” “Juggalo Homies,” “Murder Rap,” “Hell’s Forecast,” “The Wraith.” Once again, it is a disc full of songs written by group founders Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope that glorify death, sadistic sex, and drugs, while degrading women in every manner imaginable.
Pure filth.
Cory was down on himself tonight. After so many months of going back and forth with Sarah, she had finally come out and told him—or maybe it was the first time he actually heard and believed it—that she was never going to be with him romantically. He could fantasize all he wanted. He could hope. He could wish. He could pray. However, it was never going to be, Sarah made clear.
His life, Cory decided, was now totally worthless. He had nothing to look forward to. In making the reference to Shangri-La, Cory knew, he was sending a direct message to Nate, pointing out an option for both of them.
“Come on, Nate,” Cory said, grabbing him. “Let’s go upstairs.”
They went into the attic.
Another friend sensed trouble and followed.
Cory had talked Nate into committing suicide with him. It was something they had discussed in the past. The way they talked about it was like one of those suicide pacts terrorists make; as if by doing the deed, there were rewards waiting for them in Shangri-La, Juggalo heaven.
They stood by the attic window. It was open.
“Come on, Nate, we’re going to do this . . . ,” Cory said. “Ready?”
Nate shrugged. His life was going nowhere. Fast. All he did was drink, do drugs, listen to music.
Death seemed like absolution. A safe place.
42
As Nate and Cory attempted to jump out the attic window to their deaths, that friend who had heard the chatter about suicide and followed them upstairs came up from behind and, in his words, “wrestled them to the ground.”
He had saved their lives.
For the time being.
“They settled down after that.”
Sarah Kolb did a lot of writing while at Black Hawk. In October 2004, she had penned a biographical essay about her life and how she viewed it up until that point. Sarah lived in Milan, Illinois, but wrote that she had been born on an American base in “Nernberg, Germany” (but probably meant “Nuremberg”). She said both her parents served in the army for a few years, which was where, she thought, she had picked up a little bit of French and German.
Juggalos all around the QC, Sarah said, were her friends.
It was her mother, Kathy Klauer, she wrote, who had raised her, and Sarah respected her for it, saying that Kathy could be very nurturing and sweet, but when it’s time to be serious, she can be a very scary woman.
Darrin, her stepfather, was the closest thing, Sarah wrote, she’d felt she ever had to a real father.
Even though she called her stepsister a half-blooded sister, Sarah said, it didn’t make any difference, we still love each other the same.
Interestingly enough, being the youngest in her family, Sarah considered herself to be a burden, yet she viewed being the runt of the litter as a blessing because she was able to watch everyone else grow, learning from their mistakes to better her own future.
Moving from Rock Island High School to Black Hawk, Sarah claimed, was a change she had needed in order to get away from . . . those students [at Rock Island] who were keeping me from focusing on schoolwork.
She planned on going to college, where she would grasp her goals with a strong fist. Sarah, clearly writing for a specific audience (the teacher), was sure about what she wanted to major in, but concerned about getting there. Her aim was to work in a warehouse that sold CDs so she could talk about music all day long.
California was where Sarah wanted to live: better weather, more options, more people.
It had not yet been three months since she had written that essay and here she was, consumed really, with the idea that there was another girl, whom she viewed as a slut and whore, trying to take her place inside that clique of Juggalos, where Sarah had been the focus for the past year or more. There was a narcissistic side to Sarah, which screamed out to the world that life needed to be about her, or she wanted no part of it. And anybody who came between Sarah and that spotlight would have to pay a price.
Inside the halls of Black Hawk, Sarah heard Adrianne was “getting around” even more than Sarah thought. Didn’t matter that Sarah had had a hand in spreading these rumors. Some later noted that Sarah, when she first met Adrianne, saw a girl she could begin a long-term relationship with and perhaps love. “Damn, she’s hot” was what Sarah said, according to a friend, on that first day she saw Adrianne enter Black Hawk. But then moments later, “I didn’t mean that,” she said, retracting the statement.
There was one more reason Sarah wanted nothing to do with Cory. It was something she told a friend a day after Christmas—this friend, a boy, knew what she meant.
“He’s bi,” Sarah told her friend. “He’s got a crush on you.”
This scared Sarah. She didn’t want to date a bisexual male. Dating bisexual females was hard enough. Plus, Sarah considered Cory to be crazy. There were far too many demons in his head. Sarah had enough of her own to contend with. She would use Cory, sure. But that’s where the relationship stood.
No more. No less.
Sean McKittrick was now dating Sarah. Sean began classes at Black Hawk after the holiday break, and he was seen often cruising the hallways with his buddy Cory Gregory. Sean had that Juggalo look to him, like Cory: baggy clothes, chain wallet, dark, withdrawn and droopy look on his face, hair shortly cropped around the ears, jarhead-like, but straight up like a jagged mountain line or rippling fire on the top, same as one of those Japanese anime characters. Sean was another one who, like Cory, listened to what Sarah said and did.
Sean and Cory passed Adrianne in the hallway.
“Whore!” Sean said.
“Slut,” Cory added.
They laughed.
Adrianne stopped. This was an everyday affair now—insults being shouted from across the hallway. Outside. In class. They were ganging up on her.
Enough was enough.
“Why did you sleep with our friends?” Cory asked, walking closer to Adrianne, Sean behind him.
Cory was so different when around the others, Adrianne thought. One minute, he was calling her and talking about going out and how much Sarah was a pain in the ass and troublemaker. The next, he was calling her names.
Adrianne wouldn’t answer. Instead, she later wrote in her journal, she wondered why they hated her so much for doing what they had asked her to do.
Sarah was not around. “If she was,” said a friend, “Cory and Sean would sit back and let Sarah do the talking.”
This said a lot about the types of kids Sarah kept in her tight circle.
Too Young to Kill Page 16