What a goddamn mess.
His commanding officer had been short on details other than that a couple of kids had been killed out in the woods at the edge of campus. The situation was ripe for overreaction. Hence the presence of the town’s entire police and fire departments. And, from the look of it, half the hospital staff. Doctors in scrubs and nurses in white coats glowed as they walked in front of the ambulance headlights. Officers talked to students and faculty as they poured through the front gates and into the circus of flashing lights. He noticed a Channel 6 news van parked outside the crime scene tape. Despite the bewitching hour, he was sure more were on the way.
Detective Henry Ott climbed from his car while the officer in charge brought him up to speed.
“The first nine-one-one call came in at twelve twenty-five. Several others followed, all describing some sort of mess out in the woods.”
“Where?” Ott asked.
“At an abandoned house on the edge of campus.”
“Abandoned?”
“From what we’ve learned so far,” the officer said, “it used to be a boarding house for faculty but has been empty for several years since a Canadian National rail line went up that sent daily freight trains past that part of campus. It was too loud, so new faculty housing was built on the main campus. The school had plans to develop the land into a football field and track-and-field course. But for now, the house just sits abandoned in the woods. We talked to a few students. Sounds like it was a favorite hangout for late-night parties.”
Detective Ott walked toward the gates of Westmont Prep, and then through the entrance. A golf cart sat parked in front of the school’s main building; four giant pillars rose up to support the large triangular gable that glowed under the spotlights. The school’s logo was engraved across the surface of the stone.
“Veniam solum, relinquatis et,” Detective Ott said, his head craned back as he looked up at the building. “Arrive alone, leave together.”
“What’s that mean?”
Detective Ott looked back at the officer. “I don’t really give a shit. Where are we headed?”
“Climb in,” the officer said, pointing at the golf cart. “The house is on the outskirts of campus, about a twenty-minute walk through the woods. This’ll be faster.”
The detective clambered into the golf cart, and a few minutes later he was bouncing through the woods on a narrow dirt path. The trunks of tall birch trees were a blur in his peripheral vision, the light from the moon was gone, and as they drove deeper into the woods, only the golf cart’s headlights offered any glimpse of where they were headed.
“Jesus Christ,” Detective Ott said after a few minutes. “Is this still part of campus?”
“Yes, sir. The old house was built a ways from the main campus to give faculty privacy.”
Up ahead, the detective saw activity at the end of the narrow path. Spotlights had been set up to brighten the area, and as they approached the end of the dark canopy of forest, it felt like exiting the mouth of a giant prehistoric creature.
The officer slowed the cart before they reached the exit. “Sir, one more thing before we get to the scene.”
The detective looked over. “What is it?”
The officer swallowed. “It’s quite graphic. Worse than anything I’ve ever seen.”
Woken in the middle of the night, and stuck somewhere between the buzz he’d fallen asleep with and the hangover that waited, Detective Ott was short on patience and had no flair for the dramatic. He pointed to the edge of the woods. “Let’s go.”
The officer drove from the shadows of the path and into the bright halogen spotlights. The crowd here was smaller, less hectic and more organized. The responding officers had enough sense to keep the horde of police, paramedics, and firefighters to a minimum out here at the crime scene to reduce the chance of contaminating the area.
The officer stopped the cart just outside the gates of the house.
“Holy Christ,” Detective Ott muttered as he stood from the golf cart. All eyes were on him as the first responders watched his reaction and waited for his instruction.
In front of him was a large colonial house that looked to come from a century long past. It was cast in the shadowy glow of the spotlights, which highlighted the ivy that crept up the exterior. A wrought iron gate squared off the perimeter of the house, and tall oak trees stretched up into the night. The first body Detective Ott saw was that of a male student who had been impaled by one of the shafts of the wrought iron gate. Not by accident. Not as though he were trying to scale the gate and had inadvertently fallen onto the tine in the process. No, this was intentional. Almost artful. The young man had been placed there. Lifted carefully, then dropped to allow the spear of the gate to rise up into his chin and through his face until it poked through the top of his skull.
Detective Ott pulled a small flashlight from his pocket and headed toward the house. That’s when he noticed the girl sitting on the ground off to the side. She was covered in blood with arms wrapped around her knees and rocking back and forth in a detached state of shock.
“This wasn’t a couple of kids screwing around. This was a goddamn slaughter.”
PART I
August 2020
CHAPTER 1
THE THIRD EPISODE OF THE PODCAST HAD DROPPED EARLIER IN THE day and in just five hours had been downloaded nearly three hundred thousand times. In the days to come, millions more would listen to this installment of The Suicide House. Many of those listeners would then flood the Internet and social media to discuss their theories and conclusions about the discoveries made during the episode. The chatter would generate more interest, and new listeners would download earlier episodes. Soon, Mack Carter would have the biggest hit in pop culture.
This inevitable fact pissed Ryder Hillier off in ways that were indescribable. She had done the research, she had sounded the alarms, and she was the one who had been looking into the Westmont Prep Killings for the past year, recording her findings, and posting them on her true-crime blog. Her YouTube channel had 250,000 subscribers and millions of views. But now, all of her hard work was being overshadowed by Mack Carter’s podcast.
She had seen right away that the Westmont Prep story had legs, that the official version of events was too simple and too convenient, and that the facts presented by law enforcement were selective at best, and straight-up misleading at worst. Ryder knew that with the right backing and some smart investigative reporting, the story could draw a huge audience. She had pitched her idea to studios the previous year, after the case made national headlines and was open and shut before any real answers were given. But Ryder Hillier was just a lowly journalist, not a bona fide star like Mack Carter. She didn’t have the All-American face or the strong vocal cords, and therefore none of the studios had paid any attention to her pitch. She was a thirty-five-year-old journalist unknown outside the state of Indiana. But she was sure her articles about the case, which had run as a feature in the Indianapolis Star and were referenced by several other outlets, as well as the popularity of her YouTube channel, had something to do with the sudden interest in Westmont Prep. Mack Carter didn’t shift from prime-time television to a Podunk town in Indiana by chance. Someone, somewhere, had been paying attention to her findings, and they saw opportunity and dollar signs. They commissioned Mack Carter—the current host of Events, a nightly newsmagazine show—to run a superficial investigation and to produce a podcast around his findings. His name would draw attention, and the podcast would draw millions of listeners on the promise that the great Mack Carter, with his proven investigative skills and hard-charging attitude, would find answers to the Westmont Prep Killings, which had been too cleanly closed. But in the end, he wouldn’t prove a goddamn thing other than that, with the proper sponsorship and tons of upfront cash, a podcast could grow from the ashes of tragedy to become a lucrative endeavor for everyone involved. So long as that tragedy was disturbing and morbid enough to draw an audience. The Westmont Prep Kil
lings qualified.
Ryder wasn’t going to allow the reality of Big Business to deter her. Quite the contrary. She’d worked too hard to give up now. She planned to piggyback on the success of the podcast. She wanted to pull Mack Carter in, to show him the cards she was holding. To gain his interest and make him take notice. Her YouTube channel provided a decent income from advertisers, and her gig at the paper paid the bills. But in her midthirties, Ryder Hillier wanted more from her career. She wanted to break out, and attaching her name to the most popular true-crime podcast in history would bring her to another level. And the truth was, Mack Carter needed her. She knew more than anyone about the Westmont Prep Killings, including the detectives who had investigated it. She just needed to figure out how to get Mack’s attention.
Like hundreds of thousands of others, she had downloaded the latest episode of his podcast. She put the buds into her ears, tapped her phone, and took off down the running trail as Mack Carter’s practiced voice rang in her ears:
Westmont Preparatory High is a well-respected boarding school nestled on the banks of Lake Michigan in the town of Peppermill, Indiana. It prepares teenagers not just for the rigors of college but for the challenges of life. Westmont Prep has been around for more than eighty years, and its rich history promises that the institution will be here long after those listening to this podcast are gone. But in addition to the honors and accolades, the school has a scar. An ugly, jagged blemish that will also be here for years to come.
This podcast is a retelling of the tragedy that occurred at this prestigious school during the summer of 2019, when the rules that normally define the school’s conduct were loosened, just a bit, for those students who remained on campus through the hot summer months. It’s the story of a dark and dangerous game gone wrong, of two students brutally murdered, and of a teacher accused. But at its core, this story is also about survivors. A story about the students who are desperately trying to move on but who have been mysteriously pulled back to a night they can’t forget.
During this podcast we will explore the details of that fateful night. We will learn about the victims and about the reckless game that took place in the woods on the edge of campus. We will go inside the abandoned boarding house where the murders took place. We will meet those who survived the attack and take a closer look at life inside the walls of this elite boarding school. We will review police reports, witness interviews, social workers’ notes, and psychological evaluations of the students involved. We’ll go in depth with the lead detective who ran the investigation. Finally, we’ll creep into the mind of Charles Gorman, the Westmont Prep teacher responsible for the killings. Along this journey I hope to stumble over something new. Something no one else has discovered, perhaps a piece of evidence that will shine light on the secret many of us believe is still hidden behind the walls of Westmont Prep. A secret that will explain why students continue to return to that abandoned boarding house to kill themselves.
I’m Mack Carter. Welcome . . . to The Suicide House.
Ryder shook her head as she jogged. Even the goddamn intro had her hooked.
I’m Mack Carter, and on episode three of The Suicide House we’re going to meet one of the survivors of the Westmont Prep Killings, a student named Theo Compton who was present at the abandoned boarding house the night of June twenty-first. Theo has never before given an interview to the media but agreed to talk to me exclusively about what happened the night two of his classmates were killed. He reached out to me through the message board on The Suicide House web page. Per his request, I met him at the McDonald’s in Peppermill.
We sat at a back booth, where he whispered through most of our discussion. It took a bit of time to get him talking, so I’ve edited our conversation down to the last third. Here is a recording of the interview, with my comments added in voice-over throughout.
“So you were there the night your classmates were killed?”
Theo nods and scratches at stubble on his cheek.
“Yeah, I was there.”
“Tell me about the abandoned house. What was the draw?”
“What was the draw? We’re a bunch of teenagers trapped at a boarding school with strict rules and a dress code. The house in the woods was an escape.”
“An escape from what?”
“From the rules. From the teachers. From the doctors and the counselors and the therapy sessions. It was freedom. We went there to get away from school, to screw off and try to enjoy summer.”
“You are about to start your senior year at Westmont Prep, correct?”
“Yeah.”
“But this current summer, you and your friends don’t go out to that house anymore.”
“No one goes out there anymore.”
“Last summer, on the night of the killings, you and your friends got caught up in something. A dark and secretive game. Tell me about it.”
Theo’s eyes go mad as his gaze jets to me, then away as he looks out the window and into the parking lot. His reaction gives me the sense that Theo thinks I know more than I do. It’s been just over a year since Westmont Prep became infamous for the killings inside its walls, and the students who survived that night are about to start their senior year. The police have refused to answer questions about their investigation, and the silence has fueled the flames of rumor. One of them is that the students were playing a dangerous game the night two of them were killed.
“Tell me about that night. What were you doing at the house?”
Theo pulls his gaze from the parking lot and looks at me.
“We weren’t at the house. We were in the woods.”
“The woods that surround the house.”
Theo nods.
“You were playing a game.”
“No.”
He says this suddenly, as if I’ve insulted him.
“This isn’t about the game.”
I wait but he offers no more, so I push.
“Many have suggested that you and your classmates were participating in a game called The Man in the Mirror. And that it was the commitments and demands of this game that might have brought the horrific events of that night.”
Theo shakes his head and looks out the window again.
“We screwed up, okay? It’s time to put the truth out there.”
I nod my head and try not to look desperate.
“The truth. Okay, tell me what you know.”
He takes a deep breath. Several of them, in fact, until he is nearly hyperventilating.
“We didn’t tell the police everything.”
“About what?”
“About that night. About a lot of stuff.”
“Like what?”
Theo takes a long pause here. I wait anxiously for him to say more. Finally, he does.
“Like the things we know about Mr. Gorman.”
My breath catches in my throat, and for a moment I can’t speak. Charles Gorman is the Westmont Prep teacher accused of murdering Theo Compton’s classmates. Slaughtering them, in fact, and impaling one of them on a wrought iron fence. The case against him is profound, and there has never been another suspect. But despite the evidence against Gorman, many believe that there is more to the Westmont Prep Killings than what the public currently knows. Theo Compton appears ready to produce the missing pieces of a very complicated puzzle.
“What about him?”
I sound desperate, and Theo recognizes it.
“Shit. I can’t do this.”
Theo shifts his weight and starts to slide out of the booth.
“Wait! Tell me about Charles Gorman. Do you know why he did it?”
Theo suddenly stares straight into my eyes.
“He didn’t.”
I fixate, unblinkingly, on the young man in front of me. I shake my head.
“Why do you say that?”
Theo stands up suddenly.
“I’ve gotta go. If the group knew I was talking with you, they’d freak out.”
“What group?”
He turns away from the table and is gone in an instant, walking away through the doors of the McDonald’s, leaving me alone in the back booth.
I sit for a while, asking myself the same question over and over.
“What group?”
CHAPTER 2
RYDER HAD MADE IT THROUGH HALF OF THE EPISODE DURING HER run. She was anxious to finish it but had an article due the next day. She wrote a weekly true-crime column for the Sunday edition of the Indianapolis Star. It was one of the paper’s most popular columns, always generating long comment threads for the online edition, and popular news websites commonly linked to it.
After a shower, she pulled on jeans and a tank top and sat at her kitchen table, where she opened her laptop. She wrote for an hour, until 10:40 P.M., putting the final touches on an article about a missing South Bend man. There had been some recent developments in the case having to do with the timing of the man’s life insurance policy, which brought his wife under suspicion. Ryder was trying her hardest to finish the article, but the writing came slowly, and she was frustrated with her lack of concentration. Mack Carter’s deep and practiced voice rattled in her head, and all she wanted to do was get back to the podcast. Finally, she succumbed to her temptation, pushed her laptop aside, and tapped her phone to resume the episode.
So my interview with Theo Compton was what the kids would call an epic fail. Epic, but not complete. Our short conversation was curious. The Westmont Prep Killings happened on June twenty-first. Charles Gorman came under suspicion after detectives found a manifesto in his home describing in explicit detail how he planned to carry out the murders. In neat cursive writing he explained the exact method in which he intended to kill the students, details about slashed jugulars and the particulars of using the tines of the wrought iron gate for impalement. After chronicling his plans in his journal, Gorman did exactly what his words promised.
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