Too Young to Kill (2 page)

There is another component figuring prominently in this tragedy: the inner world of a wayward, aimless, depressed, and sometimes violent, group of people who paint their faces, wear symbols of violence, and call themselves “Juggalos” (known formerly as Insane Clown Posse, or ICP, Kids). The Juggalo culture played a role in both the life and death of the victim in this book. Insane Clown Posse, the self-proclaimed “horror rap” group that inspired the Juggalo army to form in the late 1990s, continues to write and record songs that incite violence, oversexualize kids, and preach drug use and death, among other disturbing things, to put it mildly. These songs are as graphic and violent as anything I’ve ever heard; many of the songs exploit women as objects and disrespect a woman’s place in society as an equal (something I have no tolerance for and denounce vehemently).

In exchange for me being allowed access into this world, I was asked to change names, which I did. I chose to change the names of several others due to the information that that person provided, either through a personal interview with me or law enforcement, information of which is revealing, shocking, and rather alarming. I am indebted to those who came forward and helped me understand the true nature of today’s teen culture, at least as it pertains to this story.

During the late winter of 2010, the tragic story of fifteen-year-old Phoebe Prince’s suicide became fodder for prime-time cable TV shows (Nancy Grace, Larry King et al.), talk radio, and the tabloids. Phoebe, whose photo graced the cover of
People
magazine, was the “new girl” at her high school in South Hadley, Massachusetts. She had moved to western Massachusetts from Ireland. She was allegedly driven to suicide by the bullying she endured at school and electronically. Nine of her peers were indicted. The case is still pending as I write this. Reports claim a group of students at South Hadley High School knocked books out of Phoebe’s hands on a daily basis. Flung things at her at random. Scratched her face out of photographs around school grounds. And sent threatening text messages to her cell phone. All this, mind you, beyond spreading vicious and humiliating rumors about her on the Internet and at school.

“The investigation revealed relentless activity directed toward Phoebe designed to humiliate her and to make it impossible for her to remain at school,” District Attorney Elizabeth Scheibel told the media after announcing the indictments of Phoebe’s classmates. “The bullying, for her, became intolerable.”

Phoebe was routinely called an “Irish slut” and “whore” in person, on Twitter, Craigslist, Facebook, and other social networks.

The harassment was consistent, unremitting, and cruel.

The case exploded while I was working on this story of Adrianne Reynolds’s murder, the sixteen-year-old student at the center of this book who was, like Phoebe, tormented to the point of death. The difference for Adrianne, however, was that, unlike Phoebe, she was brutally murdered and dismembered.

The similarities in these cases are instantly recognizable, but so are the differences. Murder is a selfish act driven by love, revenge, or money, with various additional motivations branching off from there. As it is with kids murdering their peers, there’s an emerging dynamic playing out in every case I have researched: almost an elemental instinct inside these kids continually pushing them to take things to the next level, with no cognizant indication here that they care about the ramifications of their actions. Some kids today are essentially living on the adrenaline rush of fear and violence, as if both have become drugs, giving them highs they cannot get anywhere else. These kids know what they are doing. They understand the consequences of their behavior. They know that this type of conduct can lead to death and torment, emotional or psychical, for their victims, and years behind bars for them. But something inside encourages them to keep pushing forward; and keep taking things to another level. Adrianne Reynolds’s murder, maybe more than any of the other cases I have covered in my books, is one of those—like Phoebe Prince’s suicide—stories that, when you look at all the evidence in its entirety, you scratch your head and ask yourself,
Why did this have to happen?
I don’t buy the argument of snap judgment and anger boiling over and erupting into violent rage. There’s another element at work here—one that I set out to explore in depth in this book.

I had several courageous sources come forward and tell me their stories; likewise, I had over two thousand pages of police reports, search warrants, witness statements, interviews, letters, journal entries, and other documents (many of which the media has never seen), including psychology reports, to sift through for information. The paper trail for this case is well documented—and that doesn’t include two trials, several additional court appearances by the perpetrators, and the dozens of hours of interviews I conducted myself.

—
M. William Phelps
Vernon, CT
March 2011

“Dimiter was haunted all his life . . . by The Problem of Evil. ‘A heart-stabbing mystery,’ he called it. But came to believe there was a mystery much deeper that he spoke of as the ‘mystery of goodness.’”

—William Peter Blatty,
Dimiter

PART I

JUGGALO HOMIES

1

Joanne “Jo” Reynolds pulled into her driveway on Seventh Street in East Moline, Illinois, near 4:00
P.M.
, on January 21, 2005. As she did every early evening after arriving home from her shift at the local Hy-Vee supermarket, Joanne checked the mail, then headed into the house. Inside, she tossed her keys on the kitchen counter, started down the hallway toward the bathroom to freshen up. Joanne’s husband, Tony, had just gotten home himself. The Reynoldses had their slice of the good life here in the Quad Cities (QC). Located in the Mid-Mississippi Valley, the towns of Moline, East Moline, and Rock Island, Illinois, along with Bettendorf and Davenport, Iowa, house some four hundred thousand residents making up the QC, with an imaginary state line running through the Mississippi River, splitting the east and west sides of the quad in half.

We’re talking Middle America here. Small-town USA. John Deere’s world headquarters is located in Moline.

Pure Americana.

Tony and Jo were high-school friends who had lost touch for twenty years and met again later in life. Theirs was a rough road to love. Tony had done some time in prison, been married once. Joanne was divorced, too. Her two adult boys—twins—lived with her and Tony, along with their wives, a baby, and Tony’s adopted daughter, Adrianne. No, not the perfect, textbook family unit, scripted on the pages of some sappy, glossy magazine, but they loved one another and, for the most part, got along. When the statistics said it shouldn’t, the blended Reynolds family, like so many in America today, worked.

From the late-afternoon twilight, as the sun did its downward, lazy dance over Mark Twain’s Mississippi, which is located approximately three miles north of Jo and Tony’s modest ranch-style home, Jo had been thinking about Adrianne, Tony’s sixteen-year-old daughter. “Lil’ Bit” was what they called Adrianne. “Texas,” too. Or “Tex.” Adrianne was the pride and joy of Tony Reynolds’s eye, a man whom Adrianne had called “Dad” all her life. Adrianne had moved in with Tony and Jo in November 2004. This was after a spell of living in the Reynoldses’ East Moline home a year prior. That first time Adrianne had gone to live with Jo and Tony did not go so well. Adrianne and Jo disagreed. Fought like cats. Stopped talking for days at a clip. Tony was constantly stressed, he said. Always caught in the middle of some drama between his wife and daughter. A truck driver, Tony was always on the road, leaving Jo to deal with the bulk of Adrianne’s teen angst.

“I want her out,” Jo had said, probably more times than she wanted to recall, this back when Adrianne had lived in the house that first time. She later admitted she was scared for her two boys. Adrianne had made an accusation against her stepfather back in Texas, recanted, then made the accusation again. Jo was concerned she might do the same to one of her boys. She wanted no part of Adrianne’s dysfunction.

But ever since Adrianne had been back, she and Jo, although not skipping stones together, taking sunset walks along the Mississippi, had reached an impasse. Perhaps it was a tough decision, but they were getting along. In fact, Jo and Adrianne had a scheduled session with a therapist on that Friday night, January 21, a follow-up to a session the previous Friday, which, according to Jo, “went very well.”

In truth, they had reconciled. They were on the path of healing a broken relationship.

And Tony, of course, was all for it.

When Jo walked past Adrianne’s room on her way to the bathroom, she noticed Adrianne’s work garments all laid out.

Odd,
Jo thought, stopping, staring.
She should be at work.

So Jo took a quick peek around the house. Nothing had been touched. She had asked Adrianne to empty the dishwasher and do a few additional chores. Adrianne had always done what she was told to, as far as her chores were concerned.

Where is she?

Jo quickly succumbed to the opposite of one of those feelings you get when, after walking into your house, you just know—that feeling of violation—someone has been inside while you were gone. It was different for Jo, because she felt
no one
had been home all day long.

Which was strange. Adrianne got out of school at noon. She was generally home every day, all afternoon.

“Tony?” Jo yelled. Tony was glad to be home—a Friday night, nonetheless—from his truck-driving shift. Ten hours on the road wreaked havoc on the guy’s back. Tony needed some rest.

“Yeah?” Tony answered.

Jo knew Adrianne had to work that night. “I woke her up this morning,” she told Tony. “She told me she had to be in at five.”

“Ain’t dat right,” Tony said in his heavy Southern drawl.

They both peered into Adrianne’s room. There, on the floor, was Adrianne’s work uniform. The room was a mess—as most teenagers feel that cleaning is one of those “things” that can wait until later on in life.

“Yeah, she said five.” Jo was certain.

“She done went to work
without
her uniform?” Tony asked, more to himself than Jo. He looked at his watch. It was close to five. Adrianne should have been home to get dressed and head out to work.

Jo spotted Adrianne’s work shoes on the floor. She’d never go to work without them. Moreover, Adrianne Reynolds was not a teen who blew off her shift. She loved the job at Checkers, a nearby fast-food joint. It was easy. Very little stress. Plus, it put a little pocket money in her purse. Adrianne was in a GED program at the Black Hawk College Outreach Center, nearby on the Avenue of the Cities. High school had been something Adrianne, to put it mildly, despised. So much so, she had not accumulated any credits to graduate—heading toward the end of her sophomore year—and would need to step it up in order to get her GED. The outreach program fit Adrianne’s school work ethic, her attitude toward education in general. No homework. Everything you did, you completed at school. You got out near lunchtime. This allowed a “people person,” like Adrianne, plenty of the day left for socializing, something the young girl had put at the top of her “to do” list every day.

“Adrianne,” an old friend said, “wanted to be liked. She loved to have friends.”

An understatement.

Slightly concerned about Adrianne’s work uniform still at home, Jo called a few family members and friends, while Tony went about his daily routine, undeterred by Adrianne’s sudden disappearance. Who knew—maybe she had
two
uniforms? Perhaps she didn’t have to work, after all. She could have blown it off to meet up with friends.

A thousand and one possibilities.

“I was not the least bit worried,” Tony later said. “Not then.”

Adrianne had been making lots of friends since moving into town. She was always hanging out with someone. One of her favorite places these days was the teen center at the YMCA. And, of course, the local mall.

Ten minutes went by. Jo made several additional calls.

“No one’s heard from her,” Jo told Tony. She said it, but didn’t like the feeling of those words coming out of her mouth. Something was wrong. Jo could sense it.

Gut instinct.

“Let’s take a ride to Checkers,” Tony suggested.

2

Jo and Tony didn’t say much to each other as they made their way to Checkers. The restaurant was just a short ride from their home. Adrianne had started working at Checkers only a few weeks back. She had never voiced any concerns about a problem at work, nor had Adrianne
not
come home from school. Still, Tony and Jo had an initial, nagging feeling that Adrianne had taken off. Run away. The rigors of teen life—that constant battle to find the right group of friends, how to fit in, to do or not do those drugs put in front of you, take a swig of that bottle, keeping everyone at home happy and content—had worn on Adrianne in the past. Jo and Tony were under the impression that Adrianne’s time of rebellion and contempt had come and gone—but maybe not. Perhaps she had packed it in. Teens can be so unpredictable. Maybe Tex decided to blow off work and go party with friends.