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.
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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 pr
emeditated 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.
“What I want you to pay is very close attention to . . . [the] very heavy continuous press coverage . . . where on the news, in the papers, everywhere, people are talking with each other. And there are things that are being recorded, sometimes attributed to certain people and sometimes not. So I want you to pay close attention to separating rumor, innuendo, opinion, and what purports to be news from what people actually know and what is actually fact.”
Hoffman was at the top of his game.
“I ask you to remember that you are dealing with teenagers,” Hoffman said awhile later. “Miss Kolb is here on trial as an adult.”
These were the same issues a state’s attorney generally addressed during his opening, with the hopes of heading off any arguments before they were allowed to fester.
Hoffman asked the jury to “pay close attention to what their relationships are, a lot of people will use the term ‘friends’ and I think one of the things you need to do is separate out as to who is actually whose friend. . . .”
He then spoke of how SA Terronez had haphazardly used the word “they” throughout his opening.
“I want you to pay close attention to what is actually attributed to a specific person, who did or said what. Not the ‘they.’ It is easy to say ‘they’ all went somewhere. Well, who did what, where?”
Hoffman pointed out the fact that every time Nate Gaudet talked to police about the case, he changed his story.
“It was different.... So pay close attention to Mr. Gaudet. I don’t know what he is going to say, but we have records of what he said in the past, so we can compare them.”
For the next ten minutes, Hoffman focused on the evidence—that is, the bludgeoning stick, the blood, the carpet in Sarah’s car, the “graphic evidence” of Adrianne’s skull. He encouraged the jury not to be taken in by what a witness says about the evidence, but only what DNA analysis of the items proves.
Good points. All of them.
In the end, Hoffman told the jury to listen carefully to the “charges,” what they were, and how they applied to his client. He asked the men and women of the jury to “separate in your minds . . . what happens that causes Adrianne’s death from what happens to her remains afterward, because that is the part that is going to be most graphically offensive to you.”
Jeff Terronez objected to this.
The judge said opening arguments were not intended to be closings.
It was the perfect segue for David Hoffman to conclude on what turned out to be an extremely powerful note: “I’ve said enough to you. You are going to hear the evidence, and you already know what Mr. Terronez and I say is not evidence. So we will start now.”
SA Jeff Terronez’s first few witnesses set up the feud between Sarah and Adrianne. Classmates of both girls talked about how Adrianne slept with Sarah’s friend at the party house that night in December, and then turned around and flung it in Sarah’s face, which upset Sarah.
One of the girls told jurors that Adrianne, who could be extremely rancorous herself, told Sarah in school some days after the party night in December 2004, “I met two of your friends, and I fucked them both!”
Then East Moline police officer Kevin Johnson took the stand and talked about how, on the day after Adrianne disappeared, he spoke with Sarah by phone. She was talkative and seemed more than willing to describe the relationship between herself, Adrianne, and Cory. There was even one part of the conversation, Johnson noted, when Sarah became concerned about Adrianne.
“She said,” Johnson testified, “that Adrianne said she was in love with Cory, and that she said [to her], ‘I don’t know how you can be in love with him, you barely know him.’ And then she told—Sarah told Adrianne that—that Sarah likes Cory, Cory likes Sarah, but Cory doesn’t like Adrianne.”
It came across as the soap opera Sarah had made it out to be.
“Did she say what conversation took place next? . . .” Terronez asked.
“Um, she told—she told Adrianne that she hated her and that she was a slut and she spreads like Jiffy.”
“That she spreads like what?”
“Like Jiffy.”
“Did she make any reference to what ‘spreading like Jiffy’ meant?”
“No, she didn’t. She had talked about how promiscuous Adrianne was with other guys, having sex with other guys.”
Johnson answered a few more questions about the phone call with Sarah. Terronez played the recording, and then Hoffman passed on asking the cop any questions.
Next up for Terronez was Sergeant Timothy Steines, a cop with the Rock Island Police Department. Steines had been brought into the case on January 25, 2005, by a request from the ISP and EMPD. He immediately dispatched half his unit, he said, to aid in the investigation. Steines was on the stand to verify that he brought along a team of officers to the Black Hawk State Historic Site on the night Cory Gregory led everyone down into that ravine where Adrianne’s head and arms were hidden in the manhole.
In a moment of reflection, the gallery realized why that ninety-pound steel manhole cover (they had seen it in the video) had been so easy for Steines to lift off and toss aside like a Frisbee. Steines was a six-foot three-inch, 235-pound monster of a man.
“Did you ever observe the contents inside that bag?” Terronez asked, encouraging the cop to describe what they had found inside the manhole.
“I did.”
“And what did you observe inside that bag?”
“There was a head and two arms.”
“And in what condition?”
“Badly burned and . . . in pieces.”
“They were severed?”
“Yes.”
Hoffman had only three or four questions for Steines, which were centered on the officer’s size and how many of his men—“around ten”—he brought out to the park on the night Cory Gregory led them to Adrianne’s head and arms.
Because of witnesses Tim Steines and ISP crime scene investigators John Hatfield and Thomas Merchie, SA Terronez was able to introduce the two videotapes recorded that night and the next morning as investigators recovered Adrianne’s body parts from the park and Sarah’s grandparents’ farm. If nothing else, the tapes proved that Cory had shown police where Adrianne’s body parts were hidden. And Hatfield, talking about his inspection of Sarah’s car, was able to explain that the trunk smelled of gasoline, the accelerant Cory had told the police he and Sarah had used to burn Adrianne’s remains, adding further credence to Cory’s statements.
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The following day, November 3, began with the technical side of Terronez’s case. It seemed the SA was following a playbook written by those prosecutors before him. On the previous day, Terronez had set up the relationship between Adrianne and Sarah; then he progressed into the search for Adrianne’s remains, how Sarah became involved, and ended the day with videotape images of Adrianne’s charred body parts. This morning, by calling Dr. Jessica Bowman, the pathologist who had inspected what was left of Adrianne’s corpse, Terronez was going to give the jury the results of the murder the state claimed Sarah Kolb and Cory Gregory had committed.
Bowman would also inject the trial with its first bit of shock and awe.
Assistant State’s Attorney (ASA) Peter N. Ishibashi questioned the doctor, who quickly rattled off her long list of credentials.
Ishibashi then asked Dr. Bowman to explain—of all things!—what an autopsy was in respect to finding out how a human being had died.
It seemed a bit unnecessary.
From there, Bowman talked her way through examining Adrianne’s bo
dy parts, slowly detailing every graphic cut, char, muscle tissue size and weight, along with the condition of Adrianne’s scalp, leg, arms, head, and torso.
After saying that she could not give the jury an “exact cause of death,” Bowman surprised some in the room when she said she had come to a “different diagnosis . . . based upon what I saw. And the differential diagnosis includes strangulation, either manual or with a ligature, compressional asphyxia, and that would be when somebody would sit on the body, preventing the chest wall from moving up and air from getting into the lungs.”
The doctor was saying Adrianne was, in effect, smothered to death.
Bowman next talked about “blunt-force trauma,” admitting that there was “no evidence of lethal blunt-force trauma.”
ASA Ishibashi had the doctor explain the term “asphyxia.”
Then, several questions later, he asked Dr. Bowman if there was away to tell if Adrianne was alive when Cory and Sarah lit her on fire.
“There was no evidence to suggest she was alive at the time of burning.”
Smartly, Ishibashi ended there. The worst thing a prosecutorial team can do is keep one of its experts on the stand, talking technical terms nobody really cared much about. The plan should be put a specialist up there, get her to give the money sound bites, and then quickly get her off the stand. Any more than that and the team is belaboring the technical facts of its case, which juries, by and large, do not want to hear.
David Hoffman went right for an opening he had apparently felt the state left him, asking Dr. Bowman if she had noticed any “missing teeth” on Adrianne’s skull.
“No missing teeth,” the doctor testified.
Thus, if Sarah had beaten Adrianne with her broom handle stick, as witnesses would soon testify, why were her teeth intact?
Too Young to Kill Page 27