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Thread: Tyler Hadley Sentenced in 2011 FL Slayings of Mary Jo and Blake Hadley

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    Tyler Hadley Sentenced in 2011 FL Slayings of Mary Jo and Blake Hadley



    PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. (AP) — Neighbors knew Tyler Hadley as a polite and respectful teen who played basketball with his father in the driveway and built forts of junked wood as a kid — not as someone who could kill his parents and throw a party while their bodies lay tucked beneath towels and other items in a locked bedroom.

    The 17-year-old made his first court appearance Tuesday after being charged in the killings of his parents, Blake and Mary-Jo Hadley, whom authorities say he bludgeoned with a hammer Saturday before hosting a party for dozens of friends. A motive remains unclear.

    In his brief appearance via video conference from jail, the teen glanced downward and calmly replied, "No, sir," when asked by the judge whether he had a lawyer or any questions. He was ordered held without bail and appointed a public defender.

    His politeness was baffling to Tom Bakkedahl, the prosecutor who later viewed the bodies of Hadley's parents as they underwent autopsies at the medical examiner's office.

    "His demeanor in court was not consistent with what I saw at the autopsy," Bakkedahl said of the parents, whose heads and torsos were maimed in the attack. "It's absolutely horrific. The injuries were just massive."

    Hadley's next-door neighbor, Raeann Wallace, said she has known the teen since he was born. He was friendly and polite and never seemed to be the source of any problems. She'd even ask him to keep an eye on her house when she went on vacation.

    "How do you go from shooting hoops with your dad in the driveway to beating him with a hammer?" asked Wallace, a 64-year-old retired purchasing agent. "At some point, he's going to get out of the dark place that he's at and he's going to realize that he killed his parents."

    On Tuesday, police continued to come and go from Hadley's modest white ranch, evidence still being processed for a third straight day. Yellow crime scene tape blocked part of Granduer Avenue off to the curious.

    Hadley is being charged as an adult in his parents' killings. While he currently is charged with second-degree murder, Bakkedahl said it's all but certain a grand jury will indict him on more serious charges.

    He will not face the death penalty if convicted because of his age.

    His public defender, Mark Harllee, said he had met with Hadley, but he would not go into detail about the boy's state of mind.

    "We will be representing him zealously, and the next step we will take is to enter a plea of not guilty on his behalf," he said.

    As police tell it, Hadley posted word on Facebook around 1:15 p.m. Saturday that he would be hosting a party at his house that night. Sometime afterward, the parents were attacked outside their bedroom, where their bodies were brought and covered with varied household items, and the door was locked.

    The party went on as planned, with as many as 60 guests having such a raucous time that police were called with a noise complaint. They arrived at about 1:30 a.m. Sunday, but the party was already breaking up.

    Then, tipped off that a murder may have taken place, they returned to the home at about 4:24 a.m. Hadley was seen pacing inside a front bay window, police said, and when he finally answered the door he appeared nervous.

    Inside the master bedroom, they found the bodies.

    Police would not say who called in the tip about a possible slaying, how the person knew or how the person was connected to the family.

    Since his arrest, Hadley has been questioned by police, but has given no inkling what motivated his alleged actions, said Tom Nichols, a police spokesman in Port St. Lucie, which is about 50 miles north of West Palm Beach.

    "He didn't say anything as to why this murder occurred," Nichols said.

    The mother, 47, was an elementary school teacher. The father, 54, worked for Florida Power and Light. The Hadleys also had a 23-year-old son who lives out of state. Relatives of the family declined to comment or let calls go unanswered.

    As police probed for clues, so did those who knew the family.

    "They always seemed happy," said James Moses, another neighbor. "There was no indication that anyone was dysfunctional."

    Read more: http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/ne...#ixzz1SejcQiVz

  2. #2
    Administrator Michael's Avatar
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    He made it into the german news too. I can´t believe that a polite "kid" without problems kills his parents. I just can´t imagine.

  3. #3
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    Its typical german that in the german news his eyes are pixeled and his name is just Tyler H. although every american news station shows his picture and his name

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    Friend: Teen showed him murdered parents


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    Slain Port St. Lucie couple Blake and Mary Jo Hadley recalled as quiet, gentle

    PORT ST. LUCIE — Friends and co-workers describe Blake and Mary Jo Hadley as calm and quiet, never prone to anger or violence.

    That made their violent deaths July 16, which detectives said was at the hands of their 17-year-old son Tyler Hadley, all the more difficult to comprehend.

    Blake Hadley "was so quiet and gentle," recalled Brian Nichols, who worked with him for 15 to 20 years at the St. Lucie Nuclear Plant on Hutchinson Island. "I don't think I ever saw him get angry at anyone or anything, and we've been in some pretty tough working conditions together at times. He didn't have a mean bone in his body."

    A teacher for 24 years and union leader at Village Green Environmental School in Port St. Lucie, Mary Jo Hadley excelled at gathering teachers' concerns and presenting them to administrators, said Vanessa Tillman, president of the St. Lucie County Classroom Teachers Association and Classified Unit, "and always in a calm manner."

    According to reports compiled by the Port St. Lucie Police Department, Tyler Hadley stood behind his 47-year-old mother about five minutes as she sat at the computer and thought about killing her before he struck the first blow with a hammer in the back of her head

    As he started hitting her, she reportedly screamed and turned to ask Tyler Hadley, "'Why?'"

    Blake Hadley, 54, came out of a bedroom, and the two stared into each other's eyes.

    "Tyler said he then went after his father and murdered him," according to statements in a juvenile arrest affidavit from a friend who told police Tyler Hadley had confessed the crime to him.

    Nichols said workers at the nuclear plant were in shock when they heard about the double homicide.

    "It stunned a lot of people here," he said. "I still can't wrap my mind around it, and we talked a lot about it at work."

    Blake Hadley was a big man, Nichols said, "6-3 or 6-4, 270 to 300 pounds. He had the biggest hands I've ever seen."

    Given Blake Hadley's size and strength, Nichols said he couldn't understand how Tyler Hadley could have killed him with a hammer.

    "That's one of the things that shocked me," Nichols said. "(Tyler is kind of) a small kid and his dad was so big. Either Blake was in shock over what was happening, or (Tyler) surprised him. Maybe it was both. It would take a lot to overpower (Blake Hadley)."

    Tyler Hadley has been charged with two counts of second-degree murder.

    Tillman said educators both at Village Green, where Mary Jo Hadley taught for the last six years, and throughout the district were stunned by the deaths.

    "In education," she said, "you always look for ways to figure out how and why things occur," Tillman said, "but you also know that you can't always answer those questions."

    Tillman said Mary Jo Hadley was an excellent teacher.

    "Besides the training and the scientific side, there's a true art to teaching," Tillman said, "and (Mary Jo Hadley) was excellent when it came to both sides. She was interested in educating the whole child, not just the academic side, which is particularly important in early childhood education."

    Lauren Espitia, 36, said her 6-year-old daughter, Alyssa, was in kindergarten at Village Green Environmental School and spent time with Mary Jo Hadley.

    "She was the only teacher outside of Alyssa's main teacher that she ever mentioned," Espitia said. "I know she said she got to go to her room sometimes, and she was really nice and helped her with her reading."

    Espitia said Mary Jo Hadley "definitely made an impact" on her daughter, who hoped to have Mary Jo Hadley as her teacher in first grade.

    Nichols couldn't remember Blake Hadley talking about any problems with his son Tyler.

    "He wasn't one to talk about how his family was doing," Nichols said. "He was a very quiet person. He had the driest sense of humor."

    Blake Hadley's cousin, Brenda Mayes, of Evansville, Ind., recalled when Blake Hadley and his parents were living in Florida in the late 1960s or early 1970s and came to Indiana for a visit.

    "Blake had never seen snow," Mayes said, "and he made snowballs. His dad bought dry ice so that Blake could take them back to Florida and throw them at his friends."

    Mayes said Blake Hadley was no stranger to tragedy: He went to a hospital in Evansville in November 2005 to visit his cousin, Kerry Hadley, whose home had been hit by tornado, killing his daughter and injuring him.

    The Rev. Mark A. Szanyi, pastor of St. Lucie Catholic Church in Port St. Lucie, where Blake and Mary Jo Hadley were active members for 25 years, called the couple "quiet, unassuming people; and their deaths have greatly affected this close-knit community. They will be missed."

    http://www.wptv.com/dpp/news/region_...-quiet,-gentle

    1,000 mourners lay slain Port St. Lucie parents to rest, son Tyler Hadley accused in slayings

    The noon bells began to toll outside the St. Lucie Catholic Church Saturday just as the hundreds of people gathered inside began singing the last chorus of How Great Thou Art.

    The voices drifted out of the church’s front doors just as Ryan Hadley emerged. He looked for a moment at the red rose pinned on his shoulder before he turned his head, eyes wet, and stared at the two wooden coffins parked behind identical hearses.

    Inside were the bodies of his parents, Blake and Mary Jo Hadley. Police say Ryan’s brother, 17-year-old Tyler Hadley, bludgeoned them to death a week ago, then threw a party where dozens of teens drank just outside the locked bedroom where the bodies lay.


    Ryan Hadley, 23, hugged both sets of grandparents and kept his hand firmly on Maurice Hadley’s back as family members crossed the street from the church, where nearly 1,000 mourners had gathered to remember the Hadleys. More than a hundred relatives and close friends stayed behind afterward for a small private reception in a nearby parish hall.

    One of Ryan Hadley’s childhood friends, Stacey Perez, left right after the memorial mass. She’d known the family since she and Ryan met in elementary school and said she was as shocked as everyone who knew the Hadleys when news of the murders broke.

    Her only encounter with Ryan since then was a brief moment before the mass began.
    “I just told him ‘we’re thinking of you, and we love you,’” she said, tears in her eyes. “He just nodded, He had no words.”

    A crush of media lined up outside the church before the funeral began, just as they surrounded the family’s home on Granduer Avenue for days after police first took Tyler Hadley in custody.

    Family members asked the media not to attend the memorial service, but family and friends who attended said the sanctuary was adorned with three large posters. Each held a collage of pictures of the couple, along with their sons – both the one who mourned them and the one suspected of killing them.

    The priests who conducted the mass never spoke directly of the gruesome manner in which the couple died, those who attended said, but they made several subtle points about shock, tragedy, love, loss and forgiveness.

    Mary Jo and Blake Hadley had been active members of the St. Lucie Catholic Church parish for 25 years, church leaders said. Mary Jo, a first grade teacher at Village Green Elementary, was a lector and a member of the teaching team for the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults. Church leaders in a statement said the couple would be missed.

    On the morning police discovered her body, Mary Jo Hadley was supposed to have read a scripture at morning mass – the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians, a passage about love being patient and kind.

    Those who attended the funeral said one of the celebrants read it for her Saturday morning. One of them also said that Tyler Hadley at some point this week had asked to speak to a priest. The one who visited him said he told the teen that no matter what he had done, God would not turn his back on him.

    Tyler Hadley remained in jail Saturday on a suicide watch. A friend who reported the murders to police said Tyler had told him he took three Ecstacy pills before killing his parents and had planned to kill himself with 10 Percocet pills after the party ended.

    “The thing about this is, this is a kid that most of us knew our whole lives,” said Cameron Adams, one of Mary Jo Hadley’s former students who was also an acquaintance of Tyler’s. “This is what we’ve all had on our minds.

    Adams said he ran into Tyler Hadley at a gas station the day before the murders. Tyler invited him to the party he was planning for the next night. Adams told him he might check it out, but at the last minute changed his mind and decided to watch a movie with his girlfriend.

    About 20 minutes after Adams left the reception at the church Saturday, the Hadley’s next door neighbor RaeAnn Wallace came out, eyes still red from crying as she clutched the two gold crosses hanging from her neck.

    Tears began to well in her eyes again as she described walking up to the altar for communion and seeing Mary Jo’s mother standing at her coffin, patting it softy, like a mother putting a child to sleep.

    Family and friends remembered both Mary Jo and Blake Hadley as outgoing and bubbly. Miles Pekaitis, 17, still remembers meeting Blake Hadley for the first time. Pekaitis, who lives near Blake Hadley’s parents in Stuart, recalled lake Hadley’s hands being so big that he lost sight of his own when the two shook hands.

    “All I can say about him is that he was like a gentle giant,” he said.
    But what Wallace remembers most about the couple was one of her last memories of them. As the sun set one afternoon she caught a glimpse of them going for a stroll together down the street walking their dog. They were holding hands.

    Now, Wallace says, she hopes Ryan Hadley having his grandparents, other relatives and neighbors like her to lean on will help him get through the months ahead.

    “After this, this is over for most of us,” she said. “The media will go away, the neighbors will look at the house and just remember that there was a tragedy there, but for the family, this process is just beginning.”

  6. #6
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    Partygoers: Teen hinted he 'did something bad'

    A 17-year-old boy accused of killing his parents with a hammer and then hiding their bodies in their bedroom while he hosted a house party hinted to partygoers that he "did something bad," according to court documents obtained by WPBF 25 News on Thursday.

    Tyler Hadley is charged with two counts of second-degree murder in the death of his parents, Blake and Mary Jo Hadley.

    Port St. Lucie police said the teen used a hammer to bludgeon his parents to death hours before he sent a Facebook invitation to friends about a party at his house.

    Discovery documents made by the state attorney's office show that about 20 people at that party were interviewed.

    According to witness statements, Hadley told a guest that he was going to prison for 60 years because he "did something bad." Another witness said Hadley claimed that "something crazy is going to happen in the next week." Another witness said Hadley told him that he would rather die than go to prison.

    Police said Hadley's best friend was the tipster at the party who alerted them to the crime.

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44028968.../#.TjyE0GE97Fw

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    Tyler Hadley case: 911 calls released in case of accused hammer murderer



    Video: 911 Calls in Accused Hammer Murderer Case of Tyler Hadley Released Aug. 8, 2011


    Port St. Lucie, Fla. - The 911 calls in the case of Tyler Hadley, the Florida teen accused of murdering his parents with a hammer on July 16, were released Monday, along with other information regarding the teen.

    According to police, on Saturday, Hadley, 17, used a hammer to kill his father, Blake Hadley, and his mother, Mary-Jo Hadley. Just hours later he held a party at his family's home with about 40 friends he invited via Facebook.

    The first 911 call was made by a female who can be heard saying, “It's not an emergency. Someone had a party tonight and someone reported that this kid had killed their parents.”

    Another call was made by a male who tells the 911 operator, “He [Hadley] told me that the kid, Tyler, is f****d up and he was like – he told me – he told me that the gist of it – that he did something to his parents. I was like, bro, I don't wan to know any details. He said he already called and reported everything to CrimeStoppers. I was just calling cause I felt I needed to.”

    The operator then asks, “Did he say specifically he hurt them? Like, are they still alive?”

    The male voice responds in a shaky voice by saying, “My understanding of it was that he killed them.”

    He also tells the operator that he believes the bodies of Hadley's parents are in the family home, adding “...I'm really like scared, confused, you know.”

    The caller notes that Hadley was in possession of a large amount of money “out of nowhere.”

    According to WPTV, another call was made to Crimeline in Orlando to report the murders.

    To hear the Tyler Hadley 911 calls, click here.

    Authorities also released information regarding Hadley's performance in school, which indicates he maintained a 'B' and 'C' average, but was habitually absent.

    Hadley remains jailed at the St. Lucie County Jail and slated to appear in court on Sept. 1.

    http://www.examiner.com/crime-in-nat...ammer-murderer

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    Judge restricts release of evidence in Port St. Lucie murder case

    FORT PIERCE — A judge on Wednesday restricted media and public access to evidence in the Tyler Hadley murder case.

    The 17-year-old is charged with two counts of second-degree murder for the bludgeoning death of his parents, Mary Jo Hadley, 47, and Blake Hadley, 54, on July 16 at the family home in Port St. Lucie.

    Since the incident, the State Attorney's Office periodically has released evidence in the case — such as copies of 911 phone calls and an affidavit by a friend of Tyler Hadley's who said the defendant told him about the murders — to the media as part of the "discovery" process, an exchange of information between prosecutors and defense attorneys. By law, when the information is exchanged between the two parties, it becomes public record.

    According to a ruling made Wednesday by Circuit Judge James McCann, once information in the Hadley case is exchanged, the receiving party has 20 days to decide if all or parts of it should be withheld from the public. Any items sought to be withheld, crime scene photos for example, will be reviewed by McCann.

    If the judge agrees to withhold the information, a hearing will be called. Lawyers for media outlets will be able to plead the case for disclosure at the hearing but will be under a gag order and cannot describe the piece of evidence in question if the judge upholds the ruling that it remain withheld.

    Chief Assistant Public Defender Mark Harllee said he asked for the restriction because widespread media coverage of the case endangers Tyler Hadley's ability to receive a fair trial.

    Harlee noted that within 24 hours after the 911 call in the case was released Tuesday, "thousands of media outlets around the world and every single newspaper in Florida were reporting it."

    A change of venue in the case would "cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars," he said, and because of "the deluge of media coverage, we might not be able to get (an impartial) jury anywhere."

    Assistant State Attorney Bernard Romero countered that release of public information is required by law and noted that much personal information, such as medical records, are redacted before release and that autopsy photos are not released.

    Romero said Hadley family members had asked that crime scene photos, particularly those showing the victims' bodies, be withheld.

    "Even if the media shows restraint in their use," Romero said, "the photos could get leaked and put on the Internet, causing the (Hadley) family to be victimized a second time."

    Tyler Hadley did not attend the hearing, but several family members did.

    McCann declined to order that any evidence be withheld from disclosure immediately, saying it all should go through the review process.

    McCann called the 20-day review process "a balancing act" between the media's right to access to public records and the defendant's right to a fair trial.

    Harllee said he expected "the vast majority" of evidence would be open for release without taking it to the judge to review.

    According to a previously released affidavit from a teenager who told Port St. Lucie Police he was Tyler Hadley's best friend, Tyler Hadley bludgeoned his parents with a hammer on the afternoon of July 16 and had a party with about 60 attendees at the family home in the 300 block of Northeast Granduer Avenue later that night. During the party, Tyler Hadley allegedly showed the bodies to the friend, who called CrimeStoppers.

    http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2011/aug/...e-in-psl-case/

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    A lot more questions than answers in Port St. Lucie murder case

    Why?

    It's the question on thousands of lips, the subject of thousands of watercooler conversations about the horrific bludgeoning deaths of Blake and Mary Jo Hadley last weekend at the hands of their son Tyler, age 17.

    "Why?" was the last thing Mary Jo said as her son attacked her with a framing hammer as she sat at her computer, according to testimony released Wednesday by prosecutors.

    There are lots of other whys in this strange case, none of which will get answered until (or if) Tyler himself tells authorities what his motives were. Perhaps even he doesn't know what prompted an act that must have been infused with an unimaginable rage.

    As more information is released about this case, it's looking as if Tyler may have been thinking about killing his parents for some time before he acted.

    According to a police report, a friend recalled Tyler had told him early Saturday afternoon that he was going to kill his parents. He'd apparently said that before, so the friend discounted it as an empty threat. The friend told investigators that later that night Tyler admitted he'd bludgeoned first his mother then his dad around 5 o'clock Saturday.

    One of the biggest whys, of course, is how anyone could commit such a heinous act, spend several hours trying to clean up the carnage and then carry on with a party for 60 or so of his buddies that evening without any hint of anything being amiss.

    I suspect it's that apparent cold-blooded and callous side to Tyler that has attracted so much out-of-town media attention.

    Television viewers and newspaper readers as far away as Australia have become fixated on this since the story broke Sunday. And perhaps in the eyes of network and cable TV journalists, this just goes to show you what a truly weird place Florida is.

    Timing is everything. Only weeks ago we heard about Casey Anthony partying her brains out while her daughter was missing and probably dead. Now we have this second piece of cold-hearted news occurring not 150 miles south of Orlando.

    Murdering one's parents isn't as rare as we'd like to admit. It goes on almost every day in every corner of the country, and this is not the first time it's happened here. I was reminded of Jacob Brighton, then 16, who shot and killed his parents, Penny and Richard Brighton, in the summer of 2007.

    In Jacob's case, he used his father's gun, not a hammer. He also showed remorse for what he'd done.

    "I've done something terrible. I've shot my parents," he told a police officer he flagged down. "There's no point in rescue. They're dead."

    Tyler Hadley didn't do that; he kept quiet about what had transpired and he carried on with plans for the party he'd advertised on his Facebook page.

    According to the police report, he spent quite some time cleaning up the blood, dragging furniture into a bedroom along with the bodies and piled books and papers on top of his mother and father, then locked the bedroom door and carried on without an apparent care in the world

    It's been revealed that Tyler took Ecstasy pills before he attacked Blake and Mary Jo.

    I hope, if this case goes to trial, we won't get some cockamamy defense that it was the drugs that caused all this. To me, it's clear something was seriously amiss without the influence of any designer chemicals.

    Some things about this case reminded me of the trials of Victor Brancaccio of Port St. Lucie, who in 1993 battered an 81-year-old neighbor to death for daring to criticize the profanity-laden rap music booming out of his Walkman.

    Brancaccio's high-profile lawyer, Roy Black, tried to claim it was the prescription drug Zoloft that triggered Victor's "involuntary intoxification" and that therefore he wasn't responsible for his actions.

    Judge Dwight Geiger and judges at two subsequent trials rejected that specious argument. Largely because of the "Zoloft defense," the Brancaccio trial became a regular fixture on Court TV. Interestingly enough, it was during the first trial in 1995 that the O.J. verdict came in.

    Puberty can be tough on teenage boys. Leaving childhood behind and learning how to become a man isn't always an easy transition. Sometimes it can cause violence, even murder. Jacob Brighton said he felt he would never be good enough to measure up to his father's expectations, so he shot him.

    "I just remember thinking ... he was always disappointed in me and wanted me to be who he is. I can't live my own life. So there's nobody, now there's nobody to be disappointed in me, try to make me lead their life," Jacob explained.

    His first-degree murder trial is scheduled to begin Aug. 22.

    Did Tyler Hadley have similar feelings and did those frustrations lead him to murder? We still don't know and we may never have an answer to the biggest question of all: Why?

    http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2011/jul/...tions-than-in/

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    Grand jury considering Tyler Hadley case

    A St. Lucie County grand jury is considering whether a teenager should face first degree murder charges.

    Police say 17-year-old Tyler Hadley killed his parents with a hammer, then threw a party with their bodies still inside the home.

    Investigators found Blake and MaryJo Hadley buried underneath some household items in a locked bedroom.

    Because of his age, Tyler Hadley is not eligible to face the death penalty.

    Read more: http://www.wptv.com/dpp/news/grand-j...#ixzz1XwuU2pcv

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