Too Young to Kill

by M. William Phelps

  The following day, Saturday, Sarah went to work. She didn’t tell anyone at work that some lunatic had killed a girl inside her car and was threatening to kill her and her family. Instead, she told coworkers—well, actually, she bragged about—how she had smashed Adrianne in the face and busted a few of her teeth, which was a lie.

  Sarah admitted that Cory had told Nate Gaudet after they had picked him up that day how she had strangled Adrianne, but she was, of course, too afraid of Cory to correct him or butt into the conversation he was having with Nate as she drove.

  If she wanted the jury to believe her erroneous, concocted story, Sarah needed to explain the McDonald’s connection. So she blamed that on Cory, too. But she involved Sean McKittrick, saying, “[Cory] told Sean that Adrianne and I had got in a fight and that she hit me and I hit her back, that she broke my nose and that we made up and dropped her off at McDonald’s.”

  Cory told Sarah she needed to stick to this story. Or—you guessed it—she and her family were as good as dead.

  As Sunday came, and Sarah was back at home, she believed she was too deeply involved by then to go back and explain to anyone that Cory had killed Adrianne. Plus, she added, she was still in fear of Cor y sneaking into her house and killing everyone.

  Regarding the dismemberment of Adrianne’s body, Sarah claimed she watched it from the top of a hill, looking down, and that Cory had threatened Nate, telling him he was involved to the point of no turning back.

  Nate, of course, did not agree with this.

  Sarah took things a step further with regard to Nate and Cory cutting up Adrianne’s body into pieces. She claimed Nate and Cory, while they were completing this incredibly horrific act, cracked jokes.

  “It grossed me out,” Sarah said. She meant this literally. The jokes were so “disgusting” that she became physically ill while they were laughing at what was the most awful thing she had ever witnessed in her sixteen years.

  Throughout midafternoon, Sarah proceeded to tell jurors that she never spoke to anyone about the case besides Nate and Cory. She never talked to her coworkers about anything.

  Apparently, all those people who testified were making up things.

  The problem with this argument was that unless Sarah had said something to her coworkers that weekend, there was no way any of them could have known the facts they brought forth. It was absurd to believe Sarah did not talk about the fight she had had with Adrianne.

  She said she never told any of her cellmates about the case. It never came up, in fact.

  They, too, like all the others, were liars.

  In the end, Sarah was “shocked” by Adrianne’s death, she said.

  “How do you feel about women being hit?” Hoffman asked.

  “It’s not right.”

  “Is this a special thing to you?”

  “Yes!”

  After David Hoffman looked down at his notes, checking to see if he had asked his client everything he needed, he turned Sarah over to SA Jeff Terronez.

  If one was to believe Sarah Kolb’s direct testimony, a person would have to draw the conclusion that she wasn’t complicit in anything that had happened to Adrianne Reynolds on the day she was murdered.

  73

  If Jeff Terronez was ever going to prove to the voters who put him in office that he was the right man for the job, this was the prosecutor’s chance. There is a certain white-glove touch and polished manner that prosecutors need to adhere to when questioning a murder defendant. This, seasoned prosecutors say, comes with experience. An attorney doesn’t want to try to drop the hammer on every single lie he believes the defendant has told. Instead, he picks his most powerful arguments and keys on these, without, of course, running the risk of passing up a golden opportunity to prove to jurors that they are being taken for a ride by an unremitting liar.

  Terronez began with Nate Gaudet. He asked Sarah Kolb, who seemed oddly cool, calm, and collected, several questions about Nate driving around with her and Cory Gregory on the day they dismembered Adrianne’s dead body. Terronez wanted to know if Nate was “correct” in testifying about what had happened on that day.

  Sarah answered yes to just about every question Terronez posed. It got to the point where some in the gallery wondered where Terronez was heading with so many questions to which Sarah repeatedly said yes.

  What the state’s attorney tried to do, it soon became clear, was ask Sarah if every one of the witnesses he had put on the stand had effectively lied about what she had told each one of them, or her behavior during that weekend. The SA’s suggestion in asking Sarah all of these questions related to previous testimony was designed to point out, without saying it, that in order for Sarah Kolb to be telling the truth, all material witnesses the state had put on before her had lied or perjured themselves.

  This was laughable. There was not a chance. Two people who don’t know each other—any fool knows—cannot tell the same lie.

  It is impossible.

  Terronez brought out the fact that Sarah had even spoken to the police twice that weekend. During those calls, one of which the jury had heard, Sarah sounded fine. She never mentioned how scared she was of being Cory’s next victim.

  And then there was that little problem of Sarah lying to the police when she didn’t have to.

  “. . . So all of these people that have testified that you told them that you either struck or strangled Adrianne Reynolds,” Terronez stated at the conclusion of his long list of facetious questions, “they are all incorrect? Is that your testimony?”

  Sarah didn’t bat an eye. She leaned in: “They were all incorrect.”

  A few questions later, Terronez, in a patronizing tone, said, “Everybody is out to get you, aren’t they, Miss Kolb?”

  “That’s not what I said. . . .”

  For the next five minutes, Terronez went through the same list of questions again, asking Sarah if each witness was correct or incorrect.

  The SA had made his point. It was time to move on. Emotion cannot play a role in a good, well-though-tout direct examination.

  Terronez seemed to get on track and chipped away at Sarah’s argument of being held hostage by Cory Gregory that weekend. He asked Sarah how tall Cory was and how much he weighed.

  She said she had no idea, sassily snapping: “You would have to ask him!”

  Terronez asked Sarah if she knew of any weapons her grandfather kept inside his house, where she and Cory had ended up that night after being chased off the farm by the same man.

  Again, in an irritable inflection, Sarah Kolb said, “I don’t live there.”

  Terronez wanted to know why Sarah never ran to her car and took off as Cory was lighting Adrianne on fire. Sarah had the keys. She could have left Cory out there to fend for himself. Drove home (or to the police station). Warned everyone in her household that a madman had killed Adrianne and was coming for them next.

  “Because I just watched him kill somebody, and I was afraid to run,” she answered. “I was afraid to do anything other than listen to him and do what he told me to do.”

  Terronez had Sarah tell the jury how much time she spent alone that weekend. In doing so, she made the point that she had every opportunity to go to the police, but she was too afraid.

  “Were you scared?” Terronez asked.

  “Yes, I was scared.”

  “So under those circumstances, ma’am, when you were scared, you came up with a story that wasn’t quite truthful, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “You’re here in front of this jury. In a matter of days, they’re going to be deciding whether you’re guilty or not guilty of first-degree murder. You heard a lot of testimony in this evidence. You’ve heard what people have had to say to this jury. Are you scared now?”

  “Yes, I am. Is there a reason why I shouldn’t be?”

  The judge intervened. “You don’t answer a question with asking a question, Miss Kolb.”

  Sarah cracked a smile. Then: “It’s the truth,�
� she said.

  “I am not going to instruct you again!” the judge warned.

  Jeff Terronez and Sarah Kolb went back and forth for a time, heatedly discussing certain aspects of the case. Sarah was determined not to give Terronez an inch. She disagreed with him—as he did with her—on just about everything. It became tiresome. The facts of the case had spoken. Terronez had done a respectable job in that regard. But now, he was trying to force a square peg into a round hole—and it wasn’t budging. If his goal was to get Sarah to make an admission, or catch her lying, good luck.

  “You grabbed hold of her, didn’t you?” Terronez asked Sarah.

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Told her to stay away from all of you?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Then Cory took it upon himself to do what he did?”

  “You’d have to ask him.”

  “You were there, ma’am. I am asking you.”

  “Okay, yes.”

  “Without any instruction, without any input from you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even though all of these witnesses said that you had reason to hate her, you were just a bystander?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even though all these witnesses testified that you took part in it, you were a bystander?”

  “Yes.”

  “You said that Cory punched you in the nose and caused it to bleed in the car?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “And that you had to get a napkin and try to stop the bleeding.”

  “Yes.”

  Where was SA Jeff Terronez going? The gallery was waiting for a punch line that never seemed to come. In fact, after a few more questions, Terronez switched subjects entirely, asking Sarah about the dynamics of the relationship she had with Cory Gregory and how angry she was that Cory and Adrianne had entered into a friendship.

  Sarah would not agree.

  Then Terronez asked Sarah how she felt about Adrianne Reynolds having sex with Henry Orenstein and Kory Allison.

  For what seemed like the umpteenth time, Sarah said she was “upset.”

  So Terronez asked if Adrianne had called her a slut.

  No.

  Had Adrianne hit her?

  No.

  Had Cory held Adrianne’s arms down while Sarah choked her.

  No.

  “So when Nate Gaudet says you told him all those things—he is incorrect?”

  “Yes, he is.”

  Terronez’s big moment came when he asked Sarah to read the final journal entry she had made. She had written about being expelled for spreading the fucking Jiffy and calling Adrianne a stupid bitch and telling her to back off my Kool-Aid. Sarah had no choice but to finish reading the entry, telling jurors how she would fucking kill her.

  “That was written the day she died, correct?”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “So when all these people say that on the same day you told them you would kill her, or that you wanted to kill her, or that you were going to kill her, they’re all incorrect?”

  “Yes,” Sarah repeated. “They’re all incorrect.”

  “But you cannot deny that assertion from January twenty-first in your journal entry, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “I have no further questions, Your Honor.”

  David Hoffman stood and asked Sarah Kolb several questions on redirect that, in the scope of things, didn’t amount to squat. It felt as if Hoffman was fulfilling a duty rather than truly getting to something that could help Sarah.

  All told, Sarah’s testimony did not go that bad. She stayed her ground. Never broke. And sounded as though she believed herself. The arguing she did back and forth with Jeff Terronez was more a reflection on the state’s attorney.

  On recross, Terronez seemed to backpedal somewhat.

  “Miss Kolb, prior to January twenty-first, Adrianne Reynolds had made you angry?”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “She made you angry again in the car when she talked about Sean?”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “She gave you a smug look and you felt insulted?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “And you did nothing about it?”

  “I grabbed her by the hair.”

  “And that was [the] extent of it?”

  “I . . . uh . . . yelled at her.”

  “Nothing more physical?”

  “No.”

  “Cory took over from there?”

  “After Sean got out of the car, after I had let go of her, yes.”

  “No further questions. . . .”

  74

  Court was closed on Friday, November 11, 2005, for Veterans Day, and the subsequent weekend, but everyone reconvened on Monday, November 14. Before David Hoffman rested his case, the state called a rebuttal witness.

  Cory Gregory’s neighbor.

  The girl had testified on the previous Thursday, after Sarah Kolb had concluded her direct and cross. Cory’s neighbor claimed that on the night Adrianne Reynolds was murdered, she saw Sarah and Cory together.

  “Sarah was sitting on Cory’s lap,” Laura Lamar told jurors, “and [she] had her arm around him.”

  A brilliant move on SA Jeff Terronez’s part.

  Even more damaging to Sarah’s testimony was that Lamar explained how Cory was “really quiet. . . .” Whereas Sarah appeared bubbly, definitely not “nervous,” or “on edge.”

  This was hardly the behavior of a girl who was scared to death that the boy who had just killed someone was going to kill her and her family.

  Sarah was back on the stand that Monday, November 14, refuting Laura Lamar’s testimony, saying Laura was drunk, seeing things. It never happened the way she had framed it and, Sarah’s attorney seemed to presume with his questioning, Miss Lamar had perhaps mixed up her days and thought she saw Cory and Sarah on Friday night, when it was actually Thursday.

  During his final rebuttal, SA Terronez contested Sarah’s drunken neighbor claim, saying that in order to believe Sarah Kolb, one would have to agree that every witness lied. Terronez jokingly mentioned something about a gathering that was going to be held at a local club in Sarah’s honor: “The let’s-all-get-together-and-frame-Sarah-Kolb party.”

  Some found this funny; others thought it to be over-the-top.

  In any event, both attorneys gave closing arguments, which turned out to be uneventful and unmoving. The idea in closing out a case is to wrap it up nicely in a bow, giving jurors several reasons to take a definite side. Neither lawyer was able to do this convincingly. There was much backpedaling and don’t believe this, believe that sort of rhetoric, words that sounded more condescending and pleading than anything that might remotely sway jurors one way or the other.

  Judge James Teros gave the jury its long list of instructions on Tuesday, November 15, first thing in the morning, and the jury hit the carpet soon after to begin deliberating.

  They spent the entire day discussing the case.

  By 4:32 P.M., one hour and twenty-eight minutes before the close of deliberations for the day, the first sign of trouble for the state came in the form of a question. Jurors said they were having “trouble” defining the term “intent.”

  Judge Teros provided the legal definition. Intent is pretty straightforward. Any legal dictionary will give various forms of the same meaning: The determination or resolve to do a certain thing, or the state of mind with which something is done.3

  The fact that the jury was asking was not a good sign for Jeff Terronez. It meant the jury was considering the fact that Sarah might have been involved, but in a lesser degree. Gerald and Kathleen Hill, coauthors of some twenty-five books, including The People’s Law Dictionary, Real Life Dictionary of the Law, and Encyclopedia of Federal Agencies and Commissions, astutely define “intent” in terms any layperson can understand, calling it the mental desire and will to act in a particular way, including wishing not to participate. Intent is a crucial element in determining if certain acts we
re criminal.

  Still, all of this seemed a waste of time. The jury did not have the option to find Sarah Kolb guilty of a lesser charge. In Terronez’s words to the press later that day, jurors faced an “all or nothing” verdict when making a decision. Where the term intent came into play, some speculated, was in the description of the two counts of first-degree murder with which Sarah had been charged. One charge was written to include the notion that Sarah Kolb “intended to kill” Adrianne Reynolds; while the additional charge stated that Sarah’s actions on that day inside her car corresponded with a “strong probability of death.”

  Things got even worse for Terronez on Wednesday, November 16, when the jury came in and asked the judge what “presumption of innocence” meant.

  The words seemed simplistic and self-explanatory; yet when broken down into what they meant in actual terms of the law, things got a bit fuzzy. Basically, the presumption of innocence, again, according to Gerald and Kathleen Hill, requires the prosecution to prove its case against the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt.

  In asking about this, was the jury saying the state did not accomplish that task?

  It seemed so.

  The jury ordered lunch after the judge read the definition.

  At 3:40 P.M., with a total of sixteen hours of deliberations in the books, Judge James Teros did something no judge wanted to do.

  Declare a mistrial.

  The jury was unable to come to a verdict based on the charges.

  Tony and Jo Reynolds, who had stayed fairly quiet throughout the trial, erupted into tears. Jo was wearing a T-shirt with Adrianne’s photo; Tony was dressed in a leather jacket over button-up shirt and tie. On the front steps, outside the court, they held a photo of Adrianne. Tony looked beaten, his eyes and cheeks swelled from tears, his face sagging.

  Tony’s only response, which he repeated over and over as he walked away, was “I can’t believe it! I just cannot believe this. . . .”

  Turned out there was one guy, Mark Hurty, the foreman, who couldn’t vote guilty.

  Hurty told the press that although he firmly believed Sarah was not innocent, the state did not prove its case.