6,835,000 pageviews


Friday, April 8, 2022

The Tyler Hadley Murder Case

     In 2011, 17-year-old Tyler Hadley, a sullen, introverted, bizarre-acting kid who avoided eye contact with people, lived with his parents in Port St. Lucie, a sprawling suburban community 40 miles north of West Palm Beach, Florida. His parents, Blake and Mary Jo Hadley, had moved to Port St. Lucie from Fort Lauderdale in 1987 to be closer to Blake's parents who lived in the neighboring town of Stuart.

     Mr. Hadley worked for the St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant as a watch engineer. Mary Jo, who suffered bouts of depression, was an elementary school teacher. Tyler's older brother Ryan attended college in North Carolina.

     As a child, Tyler, a polite well-behaved kid, was close to his parents. He tossed football with his father and enjoyed being with his family in their backyard swimming pool. But by the time he entered Port St. Lucie High School Tyler had become an eccentric, hyper kid who seemed to be looking for trouble.

     In 2010, Tyler pleaded guilty to burglary. He also, that year, set a fire in a nearby park. In April 2011 the authorities charged Tyler with aggravated battery after he attacked one of his friends. In June of that year he got drunk and urinated on another friend's bed. When daily counseling sessions didn't work his mother committed him to a mental health clinic.

     On July 16, 2011, Tyler made it known that he was throwing a party at his house that night. He said his parents were out of town and that he had the place to himself. By midnight, a hundred kids, most of whom didn't know the host were in the Hadley house drinking, making out, and smoking pot.

     The partygoers put out their cigarettes on the carpets and walls and littered the place with empty beer bottles and cans. They completely vandalized the dwelling.

     As a friend of Tyler's was about to leave the party, Tyler pulled him aside and said, "Dude, I did something. I might go to prison. I might go away for life. I don't know, dude, I'm freaking out. I know you're not going to believe me, no one will believe me. I freaking killed somebody."

     The friend didn't want to hear this. "Don't be telling me that sort of thing," he said. "I don't need to know." With that the intoxicated friend stumbled out of the house and drove away.

     To another partygoer Tyler said, "I'm going to kill myself."

     "Why would you do that," the friend asked.

     "Cause I did something really bad. If I get caught I'll be in jail for a long time."

     At one o'clock that morning Tyler spoke to his longtime friend, Michael Mandell. "I killed my parents," he said.

     "Yeah, right," replied Mandell.

     "I'm being real. I'm not lying to you. If you look closely enough, you will see signs." Tyler and his friend walked out of the house toward the garage where, in the parking lot, Mandell saw the cars that belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Hadley. When Tyler turned on the lights inside the garage his friend noticed a bloody shoe print.

     Back in the house, with the party still raging, Tyler took Mandell to the master bedroom. The door was closed and there were streaks of dried blood on its exterior surface. Inside the room Michael Mandell saw a leg sticking out from beneath a pile of chairs, dishes, pillowcases, books, a coffee table, and blood-soaked towels. Michael backed out of the room and Tyler closed the door.

     Tyler's best friend listened intently as Tyler described how, earlier in the day, he had murdered his parents. Just before five o'clock that afternoon, in anticipation of the murders, he hid his parents' cell phones. He swallowed three Ecstasy pills, and with a claw hammer from the garage, bashed his mother's head in as she sat at the family computer. When his father responded to his wife's screams Tyler attacked him with the hammer. Mr. Hadley died on the spot.

     After hammering his parents to death for no reason, Tyler wrapped their heads in towels and dragged them into the master bedroom. He next spent hours trying to clean up the gore using Clorox wipes and a sponge mop.

      Michael Mandell, after hearing his friend's detailed account of how he had murdered his parents eight hours earlier stuck around and partied for another 45 minutes during which time he posed for selfies with his murderous buddy.

     At two in the morning, some kid announced that there was another house party in town. Shortly thereafter, fifteen cars filled with drunk and stoned kids departed the Hadley house. The stampede caused such a commotion a next door neighbor called the police.

     When the two Port St. Lucie police officers knocked on the Hadley front door there were still twenty kids partying in the dwelling. Tyler answered the door and promised to keep the noise down. The officers left.

     At four in the morning the party was still going strong. Kids were starting to notice, however, that their host was acting strange. One of the partygoers notified Michael Mandell of his friend's behavior that caused Mandell to call the Crime Stoppers hotline. Mandell's description of what he had seen and heard from Tyler hours earlier brought the police back to the Hadley house.

     Just before dawn police officers called Tyler out of the house and placed him under arrest. They discovered, in the master bedroom, the bodies of his parents. A local prosecutor charged Tyler with two counts of first-degree murder. The judge denied the murder suspect bail. At the St. Lucie County Jail, Tyler became an immediate celebrity inmate.

     On February 19, 2014, less than a month before his double murder trial was to begin, Tyler Hadley pleaded no contest to murdering his parents.

     Hadley's public defender attorney, at the sentencing hearing on March 20, 2014, asked Judge Robert R. Makemon to sentence his client to two concurrent 30-year sentences with a case review after 20 years. The judge, however, sentenced Hadley to two life sentences without the possibility of parole. 

2 comments:

  1. Wow, what a total loser. This is what the death penalty was made for.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Have either one given a reason for the killings?

    ReplyDelete