Praise for Too Young to Kill
“Phelps is the Harlan Coben of real-life thrillers.”
—Allison Brennan, New York Times best-selling author of Fear No Evil
Praise for Kill for Me
“Phelps gets into the blood and guts of the story.”
—Gregg Olsen, New York Times best-selling author
“Phelps infuses his investigative journalism with plenty of energized descriptions . . . interesting . . . [an] enormous effort.”
—Publishers Weekly
Praise for Death Trap
“A chilling tale . . . a compelling journey . . . Fair warning: for three days I did little else but read this book.”
—Harry N. MacLean, New York Times best-selling author
Praise for I’ll Be Watching You
“Phelps has an unrelenting sense for detail that affirms his place, book by book, as one of our most engaging crime journalists.”
—Dr. Katherine Ramsland, author of The Human Predator
Praise for If Looks Could Kill
“M. William Phelps, one of America’s finest true-crime writers, has written a compelling and gripping book.”
—Vincent Bugliosi, author of Helter Skelter and Reclaiming History
“Starts quickly and doesn’t slow down.... Phelps consistently ratchets up the dramatic tension.... Readers will feel the effects of Phelps’ skill from beginning to end.”
—Stephen Singular, author of Unholy Messenger: The Life and Crimes of the BTK Serial Killer
“This gripping true story reads like a well-plotted crime novel and proves that truth is not only stranger, but more shocking, than fiction. Riveting.”
—Allison Brennan, New York Times best-selling author of Fear No Evil
Praise for Murder in the Heartland
“The author has done significant research . . . his writing pulls the reader along.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Phelps uses a unique combination of investigative skills and narrative insight to give readers an exclusive, insider’s look into this incredible, high-profile American tragedy . . . a compassionate, riveting true crime masterpiece.”
—Anne Bremner, op-ed columnist and TV legal analyst
“Phelps expertly reminds us that when the darkest form of evil invades the quiet and safe outposts of rural America, the tragedy is greatly magnified. Get ready for some sleepless nights.”
—Carlton Stowers, Edgar Award–winning author of Careless Whispers
“This is the most disturbing and moving look at murder in rural America since Capote’s In Cold Blood.”
—Gregg Olsen, New York Times best-selling author
“A crisp, no-nonsense account . . . masterful.”
—Bucks County Courier Times
“An unflinching investigation . . . Phelps explores this tragedy with courage, insight, and compassion.”
—Lima News
Praise for Sleep in Heavenly Peace
“An exceptional book by an exceptional true crime writer. Phelps exposes long-hidden secrets and reveals disquieting truths.”
—Kathryn Casey, author of She Wanted It All
Praise for Every Move You Make
“An insightful and fast-paced examination of the inner workings of a good cop and his bad informant, culminating in an unforgettable truth-is-stranger-than-fiction climax.”
—Michael M. Baden, M.D., author of Unnatural Death
“M. William Phelps is the rising star of the nonfiction crime genre, and his true tales of murderers and mayhem are scary-as-hell thrill rides into the dark heart of the inhuman condition.”
—Douglas Clegg, author of The Lady of Serpents
Praise for Lethal Guardian
“An intense roller-coaster of a crime story . . . complex, with twists and turns worthy of any great detective mystery, and yet so well-laid out, so crisply written with such detail to character and place that it reads like a novel.”
—Steve Jackson, New York Times best-selling author of No Stone Unturned
Praise for Perfect Poison
“A stunner from beginning to end . . . Phelps shockingly reveals that unimaginable evil sometimes comes in pretty packages.”
—Gregg Olsen, New York Times best-selling author
“True crime at its best—compelling, gripping, an edge-of-the-seat thriller.”
—Harvey Rachlin, author of The Making of a Detective
“A compelling account of terror.”
—Lowell Cauffiel, best-selling authorof House of Secrets
“A blood-curdling page turner and a meticulously researched study of the inner recesses of the mind of a psychopathic narcissist.”
—Sam Vaknin, author of Malignant Self Love—Narcissism Revisited
Other books by M. William Phelps
PERFECT POISON
LETHAL GUARDIAN
EVERY MOVE YOU MAKE
SLEEP IN HEAVENLY PEACE
MURDER IN THE HEARTLAND
BECAUSE YOU LOVED ME
IF LOOKS COULD KILL
I’LL BE WATCHING YOU
DEADLY SECRETS
CRUEL DEATH
DEATH TRAP
FAILURES OF THE PRESIDENTS (coauthor)
NATHAN HALE: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF AMERICA’S FIRST SPY
THE DEVIL’S ROOMING HOUSE:
THE TRUE STORY OF AMERICA’S DEADLIEST
FEMALE SERIAL KILLER
KILL FOR ME
LOVE HER TO DEATH
TOO YOUNG TO KILL
M. WILLIAM PHELPS
PINNACLE BOOKS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
For Matty,
Work hard.
Realize your dreams.
Table of Contents
Praise
Other books by M. William Phelps
Title Page
Dedication
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Epigraph
PART I - JUGGALO HOMIES
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
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10
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12
13
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15
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PART II - “LIKE SLAUGHTERING SHEEP”
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PART III - BODY PARTS
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PART IV - “I DIDN’T MEAN TO KILL HER”
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PART V - PINKIE’S TIME
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EPILOGUE
THANKS
NEVER SEE THEM AGAIN
Copyright Page
Notes
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Writing about teen violence is not something you do with a light heart. The brutality involved in this particular case was something I had never considered to be any more encompassing or taxing on the soul than the other murder books I’ve written. Yet, there is an implausible layer of malevolence involved in this story (surprisingly transparent if you do not know where to look), an innocence all kids possess that was egregiously neglected. This is, perhaps, an all too predictable and familiar American story; and yet the audacity and total lack of respect for human life still nagged at me from the beginning.
Part of my struggle was wrestling with the notion that children could commit such horrific, evil acts, and hate one another as much as this case proved. Another was coming to grips with how a sixteen-year-old boy could use a household saw to dismember one of his peers into seven pieces. Then, when asked why he did it, give such a nonplussed, casual, and cold answer, as he did. This boy cut up a girl with a miter saw that his grandfather likely had used to build toys and a tree house for him, and he didn’t think anything more of his behavior than the idea he was helping a few friends get away with murder.
Makes you wonder how high the bar has been set within our culture today.
In Base Instincts: What Makes Killers Kill? (an important book by Dr. Jonathan H. Pincus, chief of neurology at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Washington, D.C.), Pincus claims there’s an “interaction of childhood abuse with neurological disturbances and psychiatric illnesses” in some people, which is directly related to an explanation of the murders these same individuals later commit. Pincus lays out his theory clearly, telling us that the “abuse” a person suffers in childhood “generates the violent urge.”
This comment is easy enough to understand: we are taught to use violence as a means to an end.
Yet, it’s the “neurological and psychiatric diseases of the brain”—I like the use of the word “diseases” here—that ultimately “damage the capacity” for a preordained violent person (a tendency, per se) to “check that urge.”
Keep Pincus’s theory in mind as you read this book; and when you’re finished, come back here and read it again. You’ll realize what I mean.
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.
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