True Crime Campfire - When Nerds Attack - Ensnared: The Murder of Kelly Bullwinkle

Episode Date: May 16, 2025

There’s a meme I’ve seen a few times. It says “You never know how toxic something is until you breathe fresher air.” I think it’s about how easy it is to get so completely wrapped up in a relationship, or a group dynamic, or a way of thinking that you stop seeing it for what it is. You become less and less tuned in to what’s normal. This happens a lot when you get two close friends together—two people who might not be likely to do any damage if left to themselves, but who become like fire and gunpowder together. Pushing each other further and further, with neither one willing to flinch. This can get even scarier when the two friends in question are teenagers with huge egos and a fascination with all things dark and edgy.Join Katie and Whitney, plus the hosts of Last Podcast on the Left, Sinisterhood, and Scared to Death, on the very first CRIMEWAVE true crime cruise! Get your fan code now--tickets go on sale February 7: CrimeWaveatSea.com/CAMPFIRESources:LA Weekly, "Two Against One," Christine Pelisek. January 8, 2004.Redlands Daily Facts: https://www.redlandsdailyfacts.com/2023/07/19/high-profile-killer-of-redlands-teen-granted-release-from-prison/CBS News: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/best-friends-held-in-teens-death/Court transcriptsLA Times Archives: "Teen's Crush Was Fatal," Lance Pugmire, January 2005LMN's "I Killed My BFF," S3, E5Investigation Discovery's "Mean Girl Murders," episode "Goth Girl Gone"Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/truecrimecampfire/?hl=enTwitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers, grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. There's a meme I've seen a few times. It says you never know how toxic something is until you breathe fresher air. I think it's about how easy it is to get so complete. wrapped up in a relationship or a group dynamic or a way of thinking that you stop seeing it for what it is. You become less and less tuned in to what's normal. This happens a lot when you get

two close friends together, two people who might not be likely to do any damage if left to themselves, but who become like fire and gunpowder together, pushing each other further and further, with neither one willing to flinch. This can get even scarier when the two friends in question are teenagers with huge egos and a fascination with all things dark and gloomy. This is your latest when nerds attack, ensnared, the murder of Kelly Bullwinkle. So, campers, for this one, were in Redlands, California, October 4, 2003. It was just afternoon when two men came bursting in. to the police station. They'd been playing paintball over near the San Timoteo Creek, they said,

and they were pretty sure they'd found a body. They hadn't seen it up super close. It was down an embankment and partially covered by an old abandoned couch. Now, police never really know about a thing like this until they see it for themselves. People's imaginations can run away with them. It was possible the men had just seen a weirdly shaped bundle of clothes or something. One time, a woman had called 911 in a panic about a dying bear in her front yard and it turned out to be a faux bear skin rug somebody had thrown out and not even a very convincing one apparently. So until you get there and see for yourself, you can't really be sure what you're going to find. But when investigators arrived at the foot of that embankment, they quickly realized this was all too real. The woman had been

buried in a shallow grave and covered with a beat-up orange sofa. She was clothed, Levi's and a camo jacket and a blue tank top. She had a little bag of weed tucked into her waistband. The body looked like it had been there for a few weeks at least. Littered around the body were a bunch of random things, some cassette tapes, a broken cell phone, gloves, the handle of a shovel, and most disturbing, the casing from a 25 caliber bullet. It was a teenage girl, the medical examiner soon found, and she'd been shot twice. One of the shots was just a great raising wound, the kind of thing that would have needed a bandage but didn't do any serious damage. But the other shot was deadly. Close range right to the back of the head. It didn't

take long for investigators to make an ID. They'd been working a missing person's case for three weeks now, the disappearance of 18-year-old college student Kelly Bullwinkle. Kelly had gone missing on September 13th after wrapping up a shift at Baker's Burgers, and as the days went by without answers, her friends and family had taken to the TV news to ask the public for info. Kelly's mom, Diana, thought her daughter must have been abducted. Through the cameras, she spoke directly to the person, whoever it was, that had taken Kelly from her. Please send her home, she said, don't hurt her.

She's a great kid. There had been searches where Kelly's loved ones joined dozens of volunteers to comb the area around a mall where Kelly's car had been found. But there hadn't been many leads until. now. The news of Kelly's murder hit the town like a meteor. Kelly had been a light in a lot of people's lives. It was hard to accept that that light had gone out. Kelly was one of those kids who really did march to the beat of her own drummer. A lot of kids like to think there that way. Like, ew, I'm not one of the cheerleaders. I wear black lipstick. But they're really just conforming to a

different aesthetic. Line up a bunch of high school goth kids and tell me they don't look like they're in uniform, right? But Kelly Bullwinkle had her own style. She'd like to jerry-rig her own clothes. She'd make a skirt out of bits and pieces of other clothes, for example, or combine two jackets into one with safety pins. She dyed her hair bright red to match her favorite singer, Tori Amos. I was obsessed with Tori Amos in high school, so that little detail really tugged at my heart when I was researching this case. Kelly's way of sort of Frankenstining clothes together to make something unique may have had something to do with the way she grew up. Her mom was in the Coast Guard, so they'd moved around a lot over the years, meaning Kelly had to change schools a lot.

Just when she'd start to vibe with a new set of friends, it would be time to move on again. And for a while, it would just be Kelly, her mom, their cats and dog, and Kelly's showhorse banner. That shit's hard on a kid. But Kelly learned how to make it work, how to quilt a life together out of bits and pieces. She could roll with the punches. jump into a new school with both feet and find her people fast. She was sparkly, outgoing, fun to be around. People were drawn to her. But underneath the fun, quirky exterior was a girl who was a little insecure and had a deep need to be accepted and loved. She could be a little more naive than most, maybe because she'd never been around any friend long enough for them to disappoint her or

betray her trust. But the friends she'd made in Redlands over the past couple years were a pretty tight little family. She'd found people who really loved her there, admired her growing writing talent, showed interest in her ideas, appreciated her fizzy personality. Redlands is a small town, and at least in the early odds, it had a very Norman Rockwell vibe. So Kelly and her friends had an experience that a lot of us weird folks have in high school, standing out in ways that make people nervous or uncomfortable. Yeah, I grew up in a small town, and I remember what that was like. And as much as you're feeling kind of exhilarated to start breaking out of the norm and exploring your own identity, it's still a little bit destabilizing to feel like everybody's staring at you

and making assumptions about you. Right. So when you meet friends who are all so different in the same way you are, those friendships can be really intense, even more than teenage friendships usually are. You finally feel like you belong somewhere. You sort of cling to each other. It didn't take long for the weird kids at Redlands East Valley High to notice Kelly Bullwinkle. And they bonded with her pretty much immediately. Her friend Rachel later told L.A. Weekly that she and Kelly used to hide under their desks in class just to mess with the normie kids. Sounds fun, kind of like a teenage version of a blanket fort. Hell yeah. Before long, this little circle of friends became Kelly's universe.

And although she got close to several other girls, the one she had the the closest connection with was Kinsey Nordman. Kinsey was pretty much the undisputed queen of the weird kids. She was passionate about her beliefs. She was the one who started a chapter of P-flag, parents, families, and friends of lesbians and gays at the high school. And she didn't back down, even when a group of kids staged a protest against it. Very cool.

Yeah, even more so in 2002 than it would be now, I think. Oh, definitely. Yeah. Another time, Kinsey decided the school cafeteria shouldn't be serving meat. Meat was murder, and they were condoning it with every hot dog they dished up. So she got a bunch of like-minded kids together and coordinated a hunger strike at school. Hey, boy, okay, I'm all for P-flagged, but quite a bit less stoked about the hunger strike. It just seems like a bad look for a bunch of privileged kids who don't have to worry about where lunch is coming from.

Right? I mean, it's great to be vegetarian. Kenzie, honey, I've been vegetarian for years at a time. I'm not now, but I've done it often on my entire life. I am all for being vegetarian, but you don't get to demand that everybody else is. I'm sure some people found her insufferable. I mean, I do. But a lot of kids admired her for standing up for what she believed in. For the record, I find her insufferable for the vegetarian thing, not the P-flag thing.

Yeah, of course. Like, a hunger strike for meat is. It's a bit much, isn't it? Like, let's all relax a little bit. Settle down. Her one-time girlfriend and classmate Heather Hill told Ellie Weekly, Kinsey was the leader. She always had something interesting to say.

People looked up to her and respected her. Kinsey was her parents' golden girl. They'd adopted her when she was four days old, and she was their only child. Every year, they celebrated her gotcha day, in addition to her birthday, and they let her know she was adopted when she was still really young. They wanted her to know she was special. They'd chosen her, and they were devoted parents. Kinsey had pretty much anything and everything she could want,

and for the most part, she was really close with her mom and dad. It wasn't all peaches and cream in Kinsey's family, though. They'd had a few rocky patches over the years. When Kinsey was a sophomore, she was dating this senior guy named Marco, and Marco was bad news. Years later, dude ended up in jail for statutory rape, that kind of bad news. And one night, Kinsey's mom, Deborah, picked up the phone to make a call and realized Kinsey was on the phone with Marco.

Instead of hanging up the phone, Deborah decided to give in to the motherly urge to be nosy and listen in on the call. And she very quickly wished she hadn't. Hey, wouldn't it be cool if your mom got cancer? Marco said. Then we could take away her medication and she could die. Oh, my God. Yeah. So her jaw probably on the floor, Deborah waited for her daughter to tell Marco to go straight to hell on the big slide. But instead, Kenzie said, yeah, that would be cool. And it got worse as Marco went on. Wouldn't it be cool if your dad killed himself? He said, yeah, said Kenzie. Deborah slowly hung up the phone, probably feeling like she'd been kicked in the stomach. That had to have been an awkward family dinner that night. But of course, Kinsey was a soft.

more in high school at the time, dating an older bad boy type, so it would probably be pretty tempting for her to play along with whatever Marco said just to seem cool. And this was definitely a wrong note in Kinsey's otherwise cool personality. It wasn't just that she fought for social justice. She was also the kind of person who would go out of her way to befriend people who didn't fit in with the crowd. She cared, her friend Cheryl later told investigation discovery. She wanted to make a difference. She met new girl Kelly Bullwinkle at the the P-flag table in the school lobby, and she liked her right away. Kelly had a big personality, and she was pretty much an open book to her friends. If she was in a bad mood, she'd come to school

in all-black. If she was happy, she'd be in rainbow colors and makeup. Kelly was by, like Kinsey, so they bonded over that, and over their taste and clothes and music, their mutual writing talent, and general creativity, their love of horseback riding and books. That first day, Kinsey brought Kelly to sit with the other P-flag kids at lunch, and everybody thought she was great. Open and warm, and definitely not boring, like most of the losers at their school. Before long, Kelly considered Kinsey her best friend. And wherever you found Kinsey, you were also going to find the guy she considered her number one bestie and soulmate, the guy who would soon become the center of Kelly's world,

Damien Guerrero. Yeah, Damien. I know if it was a movie, you'd say it was too on the nose. Like his creepy little namesake in the movie The Omen, and like many a dork we've covered on this show before him, Damien very much presented himself as one of the children of the night. Every single high school has some version of this kid. The goth slash punk slash emo guy with the brooding eyes

and the notebook full of terrible poetry and the clothesigress and the floppy hair. Probably a little bit of music. snobbery thrown in there, lots of cynical commentary about a world that he's barely dipped his big toe into yet. If he ever cracks a smile, it'll be all rye and sarcastic one. We all know this guy. And we all know that especially if he's easy on the eyes, like Damien was, he tends to be catnip to a certain type of high school girl. And I was that type of high school girl. So don't come at me for saying that. Little 17-year-old Whitney would have been all over him. 100% certain.

So, what else can I tell you about Damien? He liked to wear white contacts like Marilyn Manson. Ooh, spooky. He collected knives and swords, of course he did. His favorite movie was natural-born killers because, of course it was. He was also a big Tarantino fan. Music-wise, he liked nine-inch nails and tool. It was a tool.

For his yearbook quote one year in high school, school, he quoted Samuel Johnson. He who makes a beast of himself loses the pain of being a man. And, as so many world-weary teenagers do, he lived a comfortable life with his mom and stepdad in a well-to-do area of town. And unsurprisingly, Damien was the undisputed king of the alternative slash goth kids in Redlands. Yeah, I can see why. He's almost. I almost got the whole bingo card filled out. The only thing he's missing is an obsession with vampires and bloodletting. And, you know, I don't know that he wasn't into vampires.

I just don't know that he was. I wouldn't be surprised if he took an occasional nip from one of his little hangers on, just like our boy Rod Farrell. I feel like he must have at least tried it. Yeah. Yeah. Or at least like said he did. I think he probably carried like some knives.

I mean, he had to. Look at him. He's got, he's got, I mean, Trent Rezner's right there. Bless him, I love nine inch nails. I hate to, I hate to be in the, be in the vicinity. But God. Well, that's what always galls me about these people because they remind me so much of myself in high school. Like, I would have totally hung out with these kids, you know.

And now I just realized like, oh. Oh, you little dorklings. But the thing is, like, when I was into, like, nine-inch nails, I wasn't like, you know, I think Trent Rezner's being very serious right now in these songs. Well, and you probably didn't use lyrics as your yearbook quote either. No, no. I just feel like there are people that are, like, appreciating the artistry, and there are people that are like, this is real life.

And I'm going to make this my entire person now. Right. And that are like, I need to buy weapons right now and figure out how to use them. Like there's a line. It's a thin line, but there's a line, you know? I feel like it's a thick line to be perfectly honest. I feel like it's a bright neon line. And this is why like every time, every time something happens, they're like, did video games do this?

No. know it's so funny. Did Ramstein make fucking, you know, the Columbine killers do this? No. There's something wrong in their brains. They don't understand metaphors. Okay. So, Damien definitely

had those teenage cult leader vibes. He knew how to hold. Yeah, he knew how to hold back just enough to stay dark and mysterious. And the goth kids all flooded around him like moths around a light bulb, especially the girls. Kinsey loved natural-born killers just as much as Damien did. For Christmas, she gave him a replica of the snake rings. Spree killers Mickey and Mallory Knox wore in the movie.

Bought one for herself, too, so they'd match. And she named her pets, a parrot and a rabbit, Mickey and Mallory. Oh my God, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, little guys. You deserve so much better than that. What a dork. The real question is if she liked natural born killers before after she knew Damien did. And I can promise you.

I promise you she did not. I promise you. Because it's not a good movie. It's just not. We can argue about it in the comments, campers. But it's not a good movie. for her yearbook quote one year she picked the lyrics from the nine-inch nail song the becoming the me that you know he had some second thoughts he's covered with scabs he's broken and sore the me you know he doesn't come around much that part of me isn't here anymore you know this bitch reminds me of especially like you saying that you bet she didn't like that movie before she met damien like i think you're totally right and i just realized who she reminds me of freaking laura hall Remember her from the Colton Potoniac case, the guy we called the gosh father?

Laura followed her bad boy crush Colton around like a smitten little puppy, while he treated her like a smear of dead cockroach guts on the bottom of his shoe and basically used her as a sex doll slash errant girl. You are so right. Yeah. Kinsey swore up and down. She was not in love with Damien, that they were just best friends and soulmates. And, I mean, again, I guess we have no way of knowing for sure.

They were both dating other people during all this, several other people in Kenzie's case. But I got to say, y'all, I'm calling bullshit on that. Oh, me too. I absolutely think she was in love with him, or at the very least, really possessive of him. Damien had a big influence on Kinsey since they started hanging out. When they graduated in 2002, the kids voted Kinsey most changed. One of her classmates later said She went from a surfer chick to a goth

She wore conga shells and was going out with a guy in track A few months later she looked like something out of The Crow I love that comment That is such a like a subtle little burn I just love it They don't do superlatives anymore And I can see why Because that is not a very nice thing to say

Most Changed is so mean She also liked to mess with people. Like if she knew you were skewed out by bugs, she shoved one in your face and laugh. Oh, hell no. She liked playing pranks. To some of her friends, it seemed like she craved attention. And she didn't really give a shit if it was good attention or bad.

If the spotlight wasn't on her, she'd always do something to swing it back her way. And once she started hanging out with Damien, her rebellious streak ramped up. She started fighting with her parents a lot. Sometimes it seemed like she and Damien were competing to see who was the edgiest edge lord in all of Edgislvania. And Kinsey seemed proud of the fact that Damien saw her as one of the guys. Oh, pick me, pick me.

Careful, babe, you're going to pull something reaching for that male validation. They spent a lot of time together, despite Damien having a girlfriend, Elody. Supposedly, Eladie didn't care that her boyfriend was spending a metric shit ton of time with another girl, a girl that Damien had described as his hetero life mate? Whatever the hell that means. Wouldn't Elity be your hetero life mate since, yeah. I don't get it. You're in a hetero-presenting relationship?

It's so weird. I don't, yeah. I don't miss 2002. I puzzled over that for like 10 minutes. I kept thinking, did I read that wrong? Nope, hetero life mate. I do not understand. What the hell are you talking about?

What? Anyway, once new girl Kelly Bullwinkle started hanging around with Kinsey and the rest of the goth kids, it was pretty much inevitable that she'd get close to Damien too. Before long, they were the three little goth musketeers. It was kind of a chain. Kinsey idolized Damien and Kelly idolized Kinsey,

or at least she respected her a lot and saw her as a role model. Kinsey and Damien were older than Kelly, by the way. Kinsey was two years older and Damien was one year older. But they were a tight little unit for a while, the three of them. They played around in the cemetery, which I think is actually required by law for kids with piercings who like Marilyn Manson and whose wardrobes consist of at least 70% black. Check your city ordinances, but I'm pretty sure that's a law. They went for nature walks in the woods. They watched movies like Reservoir, and Pulp Fiction and, of course, their favorite natural-born killers, they hung out at the coffee shop.

And after a while, something started sparking between Damien and Kelly. This was messy. Damien's girlfriend, Elody, was one of the goth friend group. She was somebody Kelly thought of as a friend. But Damien was just too tempting to resist. Their classmate Kirsten later told investigation discovery, Damien was kind of a spider laying in wait, looking for a specific type of meal.

Kelly knew it was a dumb idea to get involved with him. She knew it might throw a gigantic wrench into the well-oiled machinery of their friend group, and she knew it would probably piss Kinsey off, but she just couldn't resist Damien. So behind Elity's back, Kelly and the Dark Lord of the Lunch Room started a torrid affair. Actually, some sources say Kelly thought Damien and Elity were on a break when it started, so it's possible she didn't know. he was cheating at first. But either way, this was when the tide started to turn for the goth musketeers.

Kinsey didn't approve of what Kelly and Damien were doing behind Elodie's back. None of the friends did. And Damien, of course, was the worst. Instead of being honest with Elodie, Damien took the chicken shit option, fooling around with Kelly behind her back, whispering all kinds of sweet little nothings in both girls' ears when they were alone, and then treating Kelly like garbage whenever they were all hanging out together. I guess he thought if he made fun of Kelly all the time, it would help hide their little affair from his real girlfriend, which I don't think would work because if I were Elity, I'd be more suspicious for him to start constantly teasing this other girl. Why are you suddenly picking on this girl? I would just, I would totally

suspect something. But anyway, I think that's what he thought. And what made this bullying even worse was that Kinsey started joining in. Kinsey, who was supposed to be Kelly's best friend in the world. And at first it wasn't too bad. They just tease her, little barbs that made Kelly feel small, but still gave Kinsey and Damien plausible deniability if she called him out on it. For Kelly, it must have been such a mind-fuck, because when they were alone, Damien could be so loving and kind.

He'd confide in her, tell her she was beautiful. But then they'd get back around their friends, and he'd turn into a totally different person. Teenage infatuation can be pretty in. tense, and soon Kelly was borderline obsessed with Damien. Not all of her friends knew, at least not at first. Kelly knew most of her friends weren't fans of Damian. They thought he was a sarcastic asshole whose ego was way too big for him.

And they'd seen him be intentionally cruel to people. Kelly was so sweet, it seemed like a bad match to them. The actual relationship between Kelly and Damien only lasted a few months. Eventually, Damien told her he wanted to focus. on Elity. Kelly wasn't ready to let go. Her friend Rachel's take was that Kelly had kind of an obsessive personality. When she was into something, she gave it her full attention. She'd get into a movie or a TV show and want to collect all the merch she could get her hands on, that kind of thing. And she brought that same kind of energy to her infatuation with Damien, calling and emailing

and taking every chance to spend time with him. Damien treated her like an annoying little mosquito a lot of the time, but the friend group was still hanging out together. The relationship between Kelly Kinsey and Damien was getting poisonous and confusing. When Damien was around, Kinsey would join in on the bullying, but in private she still acted like Kelly's bestie. As all goth kids are contractually obligated to do, the Redlands crew like to hang out at Denny's at all hours. Yep. And at one point, that spring, a huge screaming fight broke out between Kelly and Elity. Damian dragged Kelly outside and pretty much redder to filth.

Look, I'm back with Elity. It's over. Do not fuck this up for me. Kelly ended up leaving upset. For Kelly's 18th birthday, she and her friend Amy put together a party with a fun kid's birthday party theme. Paper hats, party games, cake and ice cream, sounds like an absolute blast to me. But apparently not to Kinsey and Damien, who showed.

up and stood together in one corner of the room the whole time rolling their eyes and whispering. Happy birthday, Kelly, right? What fucking loser is too cool to enjoy a birthday party. Good job, guys. It's like there's like teenagers that just like they're too cool to just enjoy basic things. Like they're just too cool to enjoy ice cream. That's literally what it comes down to. Definitely like some part of their brain is like, go get some ice cream. What do you? doing. They're like, the ice cream, the ice cream will clash with my Janko pants.

Ice cream is, ice cream is a tool of the bourgeoisie. It's like, man, just have some ice cream. There's no ethical consumption under capitalism. Just get some fucking, just get some fucking cake, man. It's fine. Play some pin the tail on the donkey. It's going to be okay. And shortly before Kelly's graduation in 2003, things got tense at prom.

Kinsey and Damien had graduated the year before and were now in community college, but they both went to prom anyway. Damien with Elity and Kinsey with Kelly. Elity was pissed at Kelly and Kinsey, allegedly because the two girls were trying to talk Damian into using some cocaine with them, something they'd allegedly been getting more and more into lately. and she confronted Kelly calling her a poser and making fun of her for copying her style, getting her clothes at Hot Topic like Elity always had. Kelly called Elity a bitch. Damn, in a crowd like that, poser is freaking nuclear.

That's about as bad a burn as you can get. At least it wasn't my day. Yeah, no, it's mine too. I remember that. When you're a 16-year-old goth, someone calling you your commitment into question feels like the world ending. Now I'm like, I have a job. Please leave me alone and put the fries in the bag. Also, like, Kelly is like the furthest thing from a poser.

She was making her clothes. Yeah, she was the one among them who was the most original and the most truly herself, I think. Yeah. That's the ironic part. Yeah. But despite all this barely concealed cruelty from Damien and Kinsey, Kelly just couldn't bear to give up her connection to either of them. She kept coming around. And I think that made little Timu, Bonnie, and Clyde feel bolder.

They could put her through pretty much anything and get away with it. Ooh, fun. Let's see how far we can push her. This is even more bizarre when you consider that at some point in the midst of all this, Damien and Kelly started hooking up again. I assume because he initiated it. Oh, boy. Yeah.

And interestingly, he kept that a secret from everybody, including hetero life mate Kinsey. Our boy was apparently a very smooth liar. But despite the fact that he was dating Kelly again, Damien didn't let up on the bullying when the friends were all out together. It was worse when Kenzie was there. They seemed to bring out the meanness in each other. One evening, Damian, Kinsey, Kelly, and their friend Amy were in Damien's car, heading for the movies when the bullying started again. They were making fun of Kelly for the movie she wanted to see. and then they took it to the next level.

Kinsey and Damien started grabbing Kelly's hands and bending her fingers back, as if trying to break them. Kelly yelled out in pain, but it didn't stop them. Finally, Damien stopped the car, and he and Kinsey kicked Kelly and Amy out on the sidewalk and just left him there. And Amy was just gobsmacked. She looked at Kelly and said, that is it.

I can't do this anymore. I can't spend any more time with these two. and Kelly just kind of looked sad and apologetic. She told Amy she knew it was getting bad, but she felt like she had to be there, had to keep holding on. And I mean, like a lot of people in toxic relationships, Kelly was weighing the good and the bad.

They weren't always like this. Sometimes they still had a lot of fun together. When they were alone, Damien told her he wanted to be with her. And the bottom line was she was still in love with him. But things started to go south again as Damien and Kinsey egged each other on to increasing levels of assholeery whenever Kelly was around. That finger-bending incident was the beginning of the end for Kelly.

She was getting fed up with Damien's Jekyll and Hyde bullshit, and she finally decided to do something about it. As most kids did in 2003, the friends spent a lot of time chatting online through AOL chat, remember? Aw, nostalgia. One of Damien's AOL screen names was Necromaniac, by the way. A fucking course it was, dork-ass loser. Kelly's was sage pony, which I think is really pretty.

And in August 2003, Kelly took the gloves off. She logged into her AOL instant messenger and told Elody about her in Damien in specific detail. I think Elity probably suspected before this, but now Kelly just came out and told her over AOL instant message. "'I know you like Damien,' Elyde wrote. "'I know you want us to break up, but it's not going to happen. "'This stops now. "'I'd hate to see anything happen to you. "'Bye-bye.'

"'Oof, sounds like a threat to me, right? "'But when Kelly told Damien about it, he took Elity's side. "'You need to stop being in love with me for the good of everyone,' wrote the necromaniac. "'And that was it. "'Damian broke it off with Kelly for good. "'He was furious at her.' Kelly's friend Amy told L.A. Weekly, she was upset, but after a while she was saying, who cares about Damien? He didn't treat her well. And that's one of the most heart-wrenching things

to me about this case. Kelly was almost out. She just started to make a new life for herself without Damien and Kinsey. She'd learned something from the past year or so, and she'd found the strength within herself to stand up to her bullies and say, this is toxic. I'm done with this, which takes a lot of balls. I mean, it really does. She wanted to concentrate on college, which she was planning on starting in the fall, and she wanted to focus on her real friends. But Kinsey and Damien weren't going to let her get away. Mickey and Mallory had come to a decision.

Kelly had forgotten her place in their pecking order. She'd had the nerve to tell on Damien. How dare she? Kelly was going to die. Kinsey and Damien planned the murder for several days. They found an isolated orange grove that they figured would be the perfect place for it, and they spent a couple hours pre-digging a shallow grave, just deal with the creepiness of that.

And Damien already had a gun, a present from his brother. It was a 25-caliber Raven Arms Model P-25. They knew where they were going to kill Kelly, and they knew how. Now it was time to set their plan in motion. Kinsey messaged Kelly. Like, hey, I feel really bad about the way things have been between us lately. Can we go for a hike and talk about it? And, you know, Kelly still cared about Kinsey.

They'd been best friends until all the Damien stuff started. So maybe a little bit reluctantly, she said, sure. They set a date in time, September 13th, and agreed to meet up at the Orange Grove. When the day came, Kelly pulled up in her little Mazda and greeted Kenzie as she got out of the car. I imagine she was smiling at her friend, happy to be getting together to talk things out. But then she heard another car approaching. She turned around to see Damien driving up. Damien was not supposed to be there.

Did her heart drop when she saw him? Was she scared right away, or did she hope all three of them were going to reconcile? We have no way to know. What we know is that Damien fired first, grazing the side of Kelly's head and sending her falling to the ground. And the killing shot? That was Kinsey's doing. She took the gun from Damien, walked up to her former best friend, and fired a single fatal shot. Then she and Damien dragged Kelly into the shallow grave they'd already dug days earlier. They covered her as best they could with dirt and leaves, then pulled in a little bit of,

an old abandoned couch on top of the makeshift grave. They dumped Kelly's car off at the mall, and then they went out to dinner in a movie. Jesus, just imagine being hungry after that and wanting to go see a show. I just can't even imagine how scared Kelly was and how sick she felt at the weight of that betrayal. It's just unimaginable. These aren't people fit for society. They killed a girl over Myspace to your drama.

Yeah, absolutely. When Kelly didn't show up for two shifts in a row of, at work, and when her friend Amy went to her house to try and find her and found the pets all alone and uncared for, everybody knew something was badly wrong. Kelly wasn't the type to do a no-call, no show at work, and she would never leave her animals with no food or water. Her mom, Diana, was out with a coast guard at the time, but she came rushing back as soon as she'd learned that her daughter was missing. And she was missing for three weeks, during which time people posted missing posters all over town, gave

interviews to the TV news stations, cried and prayed and worried. Diana especially, and all the while, Kinsey stuck close to Kelly's mom, consoling her, helping her put up the flyers, telling her it was going to be okay. I hate this girl so much. She also painted some Tori Amos lyrics on poster board and helped set up a memorial at the Orange Grove where they killed Kelly after her body was found and everybody knew it was a homicide. But as Billy badass as Damien and Kinsey thought they were, they did not handle being murderers very well. The stress was getting to both of them. At one point, Damien got into a big argument with Elodie at her house and he flipped out right in front of her mom,

sobbing and screaming and punching their garage door. Oh, you're all right there, buddy? What could possibly be the matter? And I know this is going to shock you because we thought their soul matery would be eternal, but Damian Kinsey were starting to get on each other's nerves. Get out. Damien seemed to be avoiding Kinsey, and Kinsey was pissed about it. She was having noticeable mood swings in front of her friends. As you might imagine, it didn't take long for police to zero in on Elity, Kinsey, and Damien as possible suspects in the murder. All their friends had plenty to tell the cops about the drama that had been unfolding between them for the past year or so. They were able to rule Elity out pretty quickly, and that just left the other two.

They found out that Kinsey and Damien had been together on the day of the murder. This raised their eyebrows, and they rose even higher when they took a look at their instant messages and realized that Kelly and Kinsey had plans to meet up that evening for a hike. Guess where? So they hauled Kinsey in for questioning, and I know you're going to be stunned to hear this from such a cool criminal mastermind, Kinsey cracked like an egg at the first sign of pressure. We did it, she said, but it was an accident. It was just supposed to be a practical joke. We were just going to take out the gun and scare her. But then Damien accidentally shot her and she was writhing around in pain and I just shot her to put her out of her misery. Now obviously, the detectives did not buy this

bullshit. Why would you pre-dig a grave just to play a practical joke? Isn't that a bit much? And if you'd just accidentally shot one of your best friends, wouldn't you like call 911 or something? Wouldn't you at least be too upset to go straight to the mall for a snack? Now that they had a confession, well, sort of, they needed to go lean on Damien too, and you will love this. When they knocked on his parents' door to question him and told him Kinsey had just confessed, he said, I do not want to answer any questions and I am going to get up and walk into the house and take a nap

like a little Roman emperor waving them away good luck with that Bubba they arrested him a few days later at the movies he was watching Matrix Revolutions I know it's so appropriate isn't it I'm sure he thinks he's the one

as well just like Neo Kinsey when on trial in 2005, and the jury didn't buy her. It was supposed to be a joke, defense. She was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 45 years to life in prison, with no consideration for parole until she'd served 44 of those years. At her sentencing, Kinsey reiterated her claim that the murder was just an accident, a prank gone sideways, and said she'd never meant to hurt Kelly. She called the murder a bad decision. Yeah. Damien, unfortunately, got much luckier, with his first jury deadlocking on the first-degree murder charge.

The deadlock was 11 to 1 in favor of conviction, which just, ugh, kills me. And I can't imagine how it deadlocked in the first place. Like, in addition to everything else, they found bullet casings in Damien's backyard where he liked to do target practice that perfectly match the casings at the crime scene. I mean, what do you want? That is nice, hard evidence, but whatever. To avoid a retrial, Damien took a plea deal, second-degree murder in exchange for a sentence of 15 to life. Not even close to enough, in my opinion. I can imagine that really hurt Kelly's loved ones as if they hadn't been hurt enough already. This case is a little more complicated than it's been made out to be, I think.

The prevailing theory is that Kinsey and Damien killed Kelly because she told Elity her boyfriend was cheating on her. And I'm sure that's partly true, but I feel equally true. sure that this murder wasn't just about that. I think these two had been pushing each other's limits for months now, enjoying taking their abuse of Kelly to the next level and the next level and the next. I think this was part revenge, part thrill kill. And for Kinsey, I think killing Kelly was a way of cementing her bond with soulmate Damien forever. Elodie and Kelly might get to sleep with them, but now she'd have this huge secret connection with them for the rest of their lives. Mickey and Mallory Knox, soulmates. Girl, please, what soul are you talking about? I also think she was

jealous of Kelly, jealous that she had a secret with Damien. Like, how dare he keep a secret like this from her? They were supposed to be best friends. One of Kelly's friends, Rachel Schneider, has been on a couple of TV shows about the case. On one, she said, I think the story is about kids who don't know how to handle their emotions and their circumstances and get carried away in some sort of fantasy world. From the outside, it was really easy to see that there was something not completely right, but from the inside, it was hard to see that there was something off about it, which is really a great way to describe an abusive relationship. Rachel got a tattoo to memorialize her friend so she would never forget Kelly, or the lessons her murder has to teach us. And one final

PS to this story. Damien Guerrero was released from prison on parole in 2023, much to the dismay of the prosecutors and to Kelly's friends and family. They argued that he'd never taken real responsibility for the murder, instead trying to blame the goth scene, violent movies, lack of parental attention, pretty much anything but Damien himself. And when I searched his name to see if there was any info on what he's up to now, I found a TikTok from a user who calls herself Latin Barb. Her TikTok account is dedicated to warning people about scary people on dating apps, like if a bunch of women have a scary experience with the same guy, she'll tell you about him and advise you to keep away from him. And guess who recently popped up in one of her TikToks? Yeah, Mr. Damien Guerrero,

still looking irritatingly handsome and using an alias, presumably to prevent women from looking him up and finding out he's a frickin' murderer. So be careful out there, ladies. And look, if you have friends like Kenzie and Damien, especially if you're a teenager and you have friends like like this, the problem is not you, okay? And you're not going to get any medals for putting up with their toxic bullshit. Bullying is a tactic of small, angry little minds. Be better than that. You are better than that. So get the hell out of there, babe, and go live your best life. So that was a wild one, right campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime

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