The stepmother of a 16-year-old girl whose body was burned, sawed and hidden in two counties said the teen convicted in the killing is “a girl without a soul.”
“She didn’t cry, I didn’t see nothing from her,” Joann Reynolds said Wednesday after a jury found 17-year-old Sarah Kolb guilty of first-degree murder and concealing a homicide in the death of Adrianne Reynolds.
Kolb’s court-appointed attorney, though, said the teen is not the vindictive killer portrayed by prosecutors. David Hoffman said he spoke briefly with Kolb after the verdict.
“She was scared and anxious and now she’s probably as depressed as hell. That’s the way I would be,” Hoffman said.
Adrianne Reynolds had just moved to East Moline from Texas about two months before she was killed. Prosecutors said she was just trying to fit in at a new school but picked the wrong friend.
The verdict came in Kolb’s second trial in three months. The first ended in a mistrial after a Rock Island County jury deadlocked 11-1 in favor of conviction and the retrial was moved to Dixon because of media coverage.
The Reynolds and Kolb families wept quietly as the jury was polled. Kolb’s family declined comment as they left the courthouse, but Hoffman said they were “devastated.”
Jurors declined comment as they rushed past a crowd of reporters outside the courthouse.
Kolb faces up to 60 years in prison, but no sentencing date has been set. Her ex-boyfriend, 18-year-old Cory Gregory of East Moline, also is charged with first-degree murder and concealing a homicide. He has pleaded not guilty and is to stand trial May 1.
Prosecutors allege Kolb, Reynolds and Gregory were in Kolb’s car at a Moline fast-food restaurant when a fight began Jan. 21, 2005. Authorities have determined that Reynolds was killed in the car.
In closing arguments this week, Prosecutor Jeff Terronez said Kolb wrote in a class journal that she was going to kill Reynolds just hours before Reynolds was beaten and strangled. Several witnesses testified that Kolb made similar threats in the weeks before Reynolds’ death.
Hoffman told jury that Gregory killed Reynolds, citing testimony by a woman who saw Kolb alone in the car’s front seat.
Terronez told jurors that Kolb likely did not kill Reynolds, but still was accountable by law because she instigated the fight and aided in the death by choking and beating Reynolds before Gregory “finished her off.”
