Too Young to Kill (27 page)

Cory ran up the hill, the bag containing Adrianne’s head and arms slumped over his shoulder and back as though he were Santa Claus. Then he placed it inside the trunk of Sarah’s car.

Nate brought the saw up and put it inside the trunk next to the bag.

Back at the site where Nate had butchered Adrianne’s body, Sarah took the gardening tool she brought from home and pushed the two halves of Adrianne’s torso, along with her legs, into the small gully (or “stream,” they called it) running through the ravine.

The body parts sank in the mud.

Nate returned. He found a fox hole near a timber that had fallen over and into the stream. So he forced Adrianne’s legs and torso into it with the gardening tool.

Sarah brought the gardening tool back up the hill and placed it in her trunk.

When Cory explained this part of the crime to police during his first interview, he blamed it all on Sarah, never once mentioning Nate had been with them.

Cory stated that Sarah proceeded to cut the head off Adrianne’s body, then the arms,
an EMPD report filed on January 25, 2005, read.
Sarah then placed the head and arms in a trash bag. Sarah then cut the torso in two. The legs were already dismembers [
sic
] from the body because of the fire....

In the remainder of this particular report, Cory blamed every aspect of the crime on Sarah: from the murder to the cover-up, to the dismemberment and the hiding and burying of the body parts. It is clear from this report that he was hoping by minimizing his role in the crime, he would get off with being an accessory, and completely save Nate from any charges.

Cory Gregory lied to save himself and his friend, finally turning on the girl he had claimed all along he had loved.

When Nate returned after forcing Adrianne’s torso and legs into the fox hole, a tepee-shaped structure made out of old logs and brush, he and Cory (now standing up by the car, smoking a cigarette) watched Sarah take Adrianne’s necklace out of her pocket and toss it into the trunk.

“Let’s eat,” one of them suggested.

“McDonald’s,” Nate said.

Cory had a double cheeseburger. Nate ate a Big Mac. Both later said they forgot what Sarah ordered, but she ate, too.

The job was not yet complete, however.

Inside Sarah’s trunk were Adrianne’s head and arms. Thus, the question remained: what were they going to do with the body parts that could identify Adrianne?

Sarah started her car.

She had an idea.

53

It had been a long day of smoking weed, dismembering and disposing body parts, which could ultimately send them all to prison for a long time, and gorging themselves on fast food. And yet there was still one important job left to be done: hide Adrianne’s head and arms, the two most distinguishable parts of a human being: teeth and fingerprints.

Sarah needed gas for her vehicle. So they stopped at a pump station in Aledo and Nate pumped gas into the tank while Cory went inside to pay the cashier.

Sarah waited inside her vehicle.

For the time being, Sarah and Nate were alone outside at the pumps. What would become an important issue in the coming months, Sarah never said a word to Nate. In fact, she had every opportunity to grab Nate, pull him aside, and plead whatever case she wanted to make. But Sarah never did any of that; instead, she waited patiently and quietly.

Nate had left his bowl (a pipe for smoking weed) in his room at his grandmother’s house. They needed it. So Sarah drove to Nate’s grandmother’s so he could grab some more weed and the bowl.

Leaving there, Sarah suggested getting rid of Adrianne’s body parts at Big Island. There was enough open area and some water. Plenty of secluded ground to choose from.

When they arrived, Sarah didn’t feel comfortable; there were people fishing. Others were wandering around.

So they smoked a few bowls and took off.

“We’re going to my house,” Sarah said.

After parking in front, Sarah got out of the car and walked into the house.

Nate and Cory sat inside Sarah’s car and smoked a cigarette.

Soon Sarah came out of her garage with a shovel.

“Black Hawk State Park,” she said as she started her car. There were plenty of places inside the Black Hawk State Forest section of the site to dispose of Adrianne’s head and arms: a watchtower, a bird observation area, an abandoned coal mine, picnic shelters, and plenty of thickly settled forest. According to information on its website, Black Hawk State Historic Site is a 208-acre steeply rolling tract that borders the Rock River, in Rock Island County.

Sarah knew of a spot down the main trail, which they could get to easily by parking in the yellow-lined public lot. There was a wood stairway that led to a river. She had been there before with Cory and other Juggalos. They could find a hidden location out there to get rid of the bag.

Nate, Cory, and Sarah walked through the woods for at least five minutes. It was icy and slippery, tree branches stingingly whipping them in the face as they walked.

Soon they came to a set of wooden stairs, as Sarah later explained, which led down to a secluded area of two “dirt stairs” built into the ground.

“Here,” Sarah said. “Right here.”

Cory had the shovel. Nate carried the bag of Adrianne’s body parts.

“Dig a hole, Cory,” Sarah ordered, pointing. “Over there.”

Cory walked over and put the shovel to the ground, but he had a hard time breaking through the frost barrier. It was like trying to stab a shovel through concrete.

Time for plan B.

Sarah pointed: “Try over there, then.”

Nate placed the bag on the ground, walked over to Cory, grabbed the shovel out of his hands, and “walked up the hill a little bit and started digging.”

The ground seemed softer over there, for some reason. Nate was able to plow right through the first few inches of earth as though the ground had thawed. As he did this, the shovel hit something, making a
ding.

Concrete?

“A manhole cover,” Nate said. A cement lid.

Perfect.

“Help me out, Cory.”

Cory walked over. He and Nate hoisted the lid off the manhole.

The hole was about “twelve feet deep,” Nate estimated later. He was wrong. Based on the videotape taken by the police, the hole is about eight to ten feet deep. There were rocks and concrete cinder blocks strewn about the bottom of the hole. It was a concrete pipe, actually, probably part of the park’s rainwater flushing system, or a sewer drain, either active or abandoned. The hole went straight down, and then another pipe crisscrossed through it at the bottom in a T formation.

Cory ran over, picked up the bag of body parts, and dropped it inside the drainage ditch.

They stood over the hole and looked down at the bag.

Was this a good idea? Sooner or later, some workman would have to go down into the hole. Looking from the top of the hole down at the bag—with Adrianne’s head pressed tightly against one corner of the plastic—they could actually make out her facial features. It looked as if a piece of black latex had been stretched over a skull.

Unconcerned someone might stumble upon this gruesome bag of body parts, they left.

When all three got back to Sarah’s car, they sat and smoked a cigarette.

Cory began to fear the worst. Adrianne’s name was already popping up in the news. People were out looking for her. Flyers were being hung up all around the QC. Cory became uncharacteristically quiet.

Sarah took a deep drag from her Marlboro.

“Don’t worry about it,” Sarah told them both. “Everyone will think she’s a runaway.”

54

There was a parking lot directly across the street from Cory Gregory’s house. After completing the final task of Adrianne’s murder and cover-up, Sarah Kolb drove to Cory’s neighborhood and parked there.

Cory got out. “I’ll talk to you later,” he said.

Something was happening with Cory. He was turning whiter shades of pale. He had started to shake. He walked with his head down, hands in his pockets, eyes darting from side to side.

Sarah didn’t know what to think.

Nate went to get out of the car, but Sarah put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him.

“What?” Nate asked.

“Take the saw (from the trunk) and put it in your book bag.”

Nate Gaudet did what he was told. Then he followed Cory into the house.

Sarah drove off. She had to go to work.

Cory called his sister Katrina Gates. He hadn’t been stopping over Katrina’s as often as he had in the past. But he wanted to talk.

“How are you?” Katrina asked.

“Oh, the police are following me around. They think I know about a girl who went missing.”

This was true. By Sunday night, the police had a good bead on Cory and Sarah, and they believed both knew more than they were saying. Either that or they had something to do with Adrianne’s disappearance themselves.

“Who cares what they say, Cory!” Katrina said. Katrina was under the impression, after Cory explained, that Adrianne had taken off with her boyfriend, and Cory and Sarah were covering for her. “Don’t
worry
about it.”

“But why are the police following me around?” Cory asked. He couldn’t leave it there. His conscience, some said later, was beginning to get the best of him.

Katrina could hear the panic in her brother’s voice. He sounded scared.

“Cory, who really cares? The cops are just doing their damn job.... This is
no
big deal.”

“I’ll be over,” Cory said.

During the first interview he gave to the police—during which he said he had no involvement in the actual murder of Adrianne Reynolds—Cory Gregory was asked why he went with Sarah Kolb and helped her cover up this gruesome, violent crime.

“Because I love Sarah,” Cory said. “And I was scared because I was in the car with Sarah and I thought . . . I thought, since I was there with her in the car when it happened, that I was
automatically
in trouble for it. . . .”

This
love
Cory espoused for a girl who had specifically told him she would
never
love him back in the way he had hoped would soon be put to the ultimate test.

55

On Monday morning, January 24, 2005, Cory Gregory’s family began to notice a change in the boy. Cory had always been a quiet, reclusive teen, known more as a “druggie Juggalo” inside what was a tight circle of friends. He was acting very out of character on this particular morning.

Cory and Sarah left school early on Monday morning. It’s safe to say that neither could concentrate on schoolwork. Sarah reiterated to Cory at some point that morning that the cops had been calling her all weekend, asking questions about Adrianne and what many in school had reported to police was a fight that had taken place between Sarah and Adrianne the previous Friday inside Sarah’s Prizm. Sarah was confident, however, that she had given the police the right answers.

Sarah told Cory to stop fretting. Adrianne’s disappearance was being viewed as that of a runaway. There was nothing to worry about. Sure, the murder and cover-up had not gone as planned or expected, but they would soon be in the clear. Nobody, moreover, was going to find Adrianne’s body.

Stay cool, man. Keep your head.

Cory’s gut spoke to him all day. When three people know about a murder . . . uh . . . there is
plenty
to be concerned about. Sooner or later, one of the three will crack. Successful murderers commit heinous acts by themselves and tell no one. It is one of the reasons why serial and professional contract killers can commit murder for decades without being caught.

Walking out of school, Cory and Sarah ran into a classmate.

“I cannot talk right now . . . ,” Sarah said. She wouldn’t look at her friend.

“What’s wrong?” the student pressed.

“Can’t talk,” Cory added.

“We got into something bad,” Sarah admitted through the open driver’s-side window of her Prizm before taking off, out of the school parking lot.

Sarah dropped Cory off at his sister Katrina’s, and took off without saying anything that was ever documented.

“He was pure white,” Katrina Gates recalled, seeing Cory that early afternoon. “A funny white color.”

Cory was acting fidgety, too. Looking down at the ground. Not talking. Shaking. Pacing inside his sister’s house.

“What’s wrong with you, Cory?” Katrina asked.

“Oh, I just don’t feel good.”

“No, Cory, I know you too well.” Cory didn’t want to eat. He said he wasn’t sleeping.

They talked for a while.

“I gotta tell you something,” Cory confided to his sister.

“Wait!” Katrina said, stopping him. “I know you all too well, Cory. Whatever it is you want to tell me, I think it’s best you go to Dad.” Katrina wasn’t equipped, she said later, to handle anything Cory was prepared to confess. She honestly believed Cory was going to say he had helped Adrianne run away and had been hiding her out.