Jealousy of Popular Girl Blamed in Killing

Feb. 3, 2005 -- -- When Adrianne Reynolds, the pretty new girl in school, started getting too much attention from the boys, Sarah Kolb, another girl at the East Moline, Ill., school didn't like it and expressed her anger the way a lot of teens do, saying she wanted to kill her rival, classmates of the two said.

When Reynolds disappeared and a boy from the school led police to her burned and dismembered body, prosecutors charged Kolb with carrying through on her threats.

Kolb, 16, and Corey Gregory, 17, have both been charged with first-degree murder and concealment of a homicide in the death of Reynolds. Both pleaded not guilty Tuesday, and they were ordered held on $1 million bail. Their trials are scheduled for April 4.

The three were students in the Black Hawk College Outreach Center's GED program.

Rock Island County State's Attorney Jeff Terronez said a third teenager suspected of involvement in the case, a 16-year-old boy, is in juvenile custody but Terronez is considering charging him as an adult as well.

Investigators testifying Tuesday at the preliminary hearings said Kolb choked and beat Reynolds, while Gregory held her arms, then strangled her with a belt on Jan 21.

The pair then allegedly spent six hours trying to burn the body with gasoline at a farm in Mercer County but failed. They then enlisted the help of the third teen to saw off Reynolds' head and arms and cut her torso in half, investigators testified. Her legs had come off when the body partially burned, they said.

Police said Gregory led them to Reynolds' body on Jan. 25. Parts of the body were found in various locations around the Blackhawk State Historic Site in Rock Island and on Kolb's grandparents' farm.

Now, other students are trying to deal with the thought that three people they thought they knew might have done something so monstrous.

"They were my friends for years," Sean McKitrick, who was with Reynolds, Gregory and Kolb on the night the girl was killed, told ABC News affiliate WQAD-TV in East Moline. "I didn't think they were capable of such a thing."

McKitrick came to court to hear the evidence. He said he was with the other three in a car in a Taco Bell parking lot that night, but he said he left after Kolb started yelling at Reynolds and pulling her hair.

"I wish I would have took her with me," he added. "If I knew something like this would have happened, I would have pulled her out of the car with me."

Investigators say Gregory led them to a plastic bag containing Reynolds' head and arms, dumped under a manhole cover in Black Hawk State Park in Rock Island, but he has denied any part in the killing or dismemberment.

Reynolds' mother, Carolyn Franco of Longview, Texas, said she has been trying not to hate the teenagers accused of the killing.

''I don't want to hate them, but I almost can't help it," Franco said. "They took my baby from me. I just don't see how a child could do that to another child, how any human being could do that.''

A parent who knows Gregory told WQAD-TV she still can't believe he could have been involved.

"He was respectful to my family," said Ellie Lopez. "I don't know if something just snapped on him or what, I don't understand."

The teenager who was charged as a juvenile is the one who led investigators to Gregory after his grandmother called police to tell them she'd found a bloody saw in his backpack, police said.

The question that has troubled many in the community is, if the three are guilty, why they would have done it.

Schoolmates told WQAD that Kolb was jealous because Reynolds was getting too much attention from boys at school.

Kolb "had mentioned to a few people that she was going to kill her," said Jackie Martinez, 17. "She [said], 'I don't care.' She told people she wasn't afraid to kill her and she would do it and she's not scared."

Reynolds had been at the school for just a few weeks. She was trying to make a fresh start and earn a General Education Diploma.

"She was pretty and funny," said Betty Wilson, 16.

Kolb had been a student there for over a year and was popular, but when the boys at the school started to take notice of Reynolds, it threw Kolb into a jealous rage, Wilson said.

"They just had some problems over boys and Sarah was upset," she said. "Sarah was really nice. She got along with everyone and all the sudden Adrianne came in, and it's totally different, she says, 'I will kill her, I will kill her.' "

Wilson was one of the last people to see Adrianne alive on Jan. 21.

"I just saw Adrianne and Sarah and two males get into the car. I heard they were going to Taco Bell to get lunch," she said.

Reynolds wasn't looking for trouble, she only wanted to make a fresh start, desperate to fit in with the "in" crowd, Wilson said.

"Adrianne really wanted to be Sarah's friend. That was all she wanted," she said.

A note written by Reynolds days before her murder indicates the girl may have believed her former friend's feelings were serious, and that she hoped they could make up. Reynolds' family found the note after she died and showed it to WQAD. The station took pictures of it, and it is now in the possession of police.

Reynolds' family says the girl wrote the note to Kolb on Jan. 18, asking her point blank in the first sentence: "Why do you hate me so much and why do you want me to die?"

The note indicates the two girls at one time had some kind of relationship, perhaps more than friends.

"I wanted a chance for us to start over again, to at least be friends," Reynolds wrote. "At least talk to me so we can get things worked out."

In the note, Reynolds also told Kolb about saying no to two boys.

"This kid I used to like a lot even asked me, and I told him no. I told him no because of you ... Now I don't have to do that to find or to keep friends. I also realized that's a way to lose them like I did you," she wrote.

Other students at the school both attended have said they believed Kolb was out to get Reynolds. The note appears to show Reynolds was hoping to patch things up, asking Sarah to "write back and tell me what you have to say."

Reynolds' father, Tony Reynolds, said he had forbidden the girl to see Kolb.