JOEY KESSLER, LOCAL RESIDENT, FARMER: A brush hog blade is about 25 inches. This thing that we found was like twice that length. But sure enough, that’s what it was—brush hog blades—just two of ‘em. You could tell by the holes in the metal and the general shape of them. It was like he had pressed the two of them together in a messy configgeration. And I’m sure you’ve heard them tall tales about he had actually mashed ‘em together with his gums, like they were a couple of teething toys.
ALLISON SWANSON, GIRLS’ CHEER HEAD COACH AND PHYSICAL SCIENCES TEACHER, SOMERSET HIGH: It was a shame what happened to Haley Adams...just a gosh darn shame. Pardon my French. But it was, though. We were going to take state. She was going to have a scholarship and everything. This world...it’s just not fair. For most of us, yeah, I guess we get by ok, but is that really the case? Are incidents like Haley’s just the price we pay for getting to experience the good Lord’s blessings? I guess he has a plan, but sometimes it’s hard to see. Oh Lord, it’s hard to see.
SKYE HERRERA: God’s plan, huh? Whatever lessons were learned, whatever changed after, I’m not seeing how it was all worth it.
STEPHEN PARKER: There was a scream. We had seen Haley fall over the fence. I could only hope that neither her nor Skye had been hit by the blade. Nick kept shouting and screaming at Big Baby, calling him every name in the book, hurled cow shit at him, anything he could do to get his attention. Well he did alright. He turned and started walking towards us in big strides that would close the gap in no time.
SKYE HERRERA: This damn blade was buried right in Haley’s lower back like a freaking flagpole. She was sprawled face down on the ground, blood pooling around her in the dirt. I was screaming her name, but she wasn’t responding. I crouched down by her, could feel her breathing. There wasn’t as much blood as I expected.
HALEY ADAMS: The last thing I remember was the impact...the breath knocked out of me...falling forward to the ground, my face in the mud and leaves. Unable to breathe or move for a few seconds, I thought I was dead. I thought that this is what it was like to die. You just retained all consciousness and would see the world pass on by without you. Everything went dark.
JOEY KESSLER: The motion lights were on, the dogs were barking, and there was banging and crying at my front door, all sorts of racket. I grabbed the Beretta from my nightstand and made my way to the front door. I could see her from a window that overlooked the front porch. It was this girl. She was in hysterics and her clothes were all muddy and torn.
STEPHEN PARKER: We crossed the creek and clawed our way up the other side. He stood and watched us from above, his giant figure casting an imposing silhouette in the moonlight. Even without his blade he still looked very dangerous. I had no doubt that he could break us in half or crush our skulls with his bare hands if he got a hold of us.
Nick—athlete that he was—was faster than me, but not by much. I had always been a skinny bastard, skinny but quick. I followed his lead. We were crossing an empty field of dead corn, trampling bent and wilted stalks under our feet.
OFFICER DANIELS, MOMADAY COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPUTY: The homicides occurred in about a two-mile radius from the initial point of the Walnut Creek Bridge. It’s known by some locals as Crybaby Bridge. There was the bridge itself and the field belonging to the Kessler residence. From there, a scene at County Road 1220. There was also the Loveless property to the north.
STEPHEN PARKER: My lungs and diaphragm were burning, a searing stitch in my shoulder. Nick was my coach and cheerleader, urging me onward. I hadn’t had to run this much in a long time and certainly not at this speed. Behind us was Big Baby, standing in the field like a giant scarecrow on steroids.
We jumped a barbed wire fence and crossed a ditch onto a county road. Headlights cut through the dark, headed toward us. It was actually just one headlight, and a dim one at that. Not really fit for driving. If we were to flag this vehicle down, would the driver even see us? Nick jumped out in the middle of the road, raised his hands.
It was an S10 pickup. I glanced over my shoulder. No sign of Big Baby. The little truck stopped, its driver cranking the window down.
“Help ya?” the driver asked, a weasley and scruffy face peering out from the dark, a massive dip of snuff pushing out his lower lip.
How could you calmly explain what was going on in a time like this? I let Nick spit it out. “Hey, man. There’s been a bad accident. A wreck by the Crybaby Bridge. People dead. Our friend might be really bad hurt. Do you got a phone?”
“Jesus. Y’all hop in the back. No phone, but I’ll take ya by the neighbors. Drop one of y’all off to use the phone and then we can circle back around. Shit. Y’all been drinking?”
“Not really,” Nick said and we hopped into the back of the truck, a cluttered bed of crumpled beer and Dr. Pepper cans, car batteries, and other rusty junk.
ELIZABETH ASSAD, MOMADAY COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER: It could be said that each victim had a unique presentation. Aside from the partial decapitation, another cause of death I found interesting was the lone body found on the county road. The rest of the victims had suffered brutal and often penetrative injuries with massive blood loss, but this was different. This was a 46-year-old male who was found with ligature marks of the neck, as well as a broken hyoid bone. The marks were in a pattern unlike any I had seen before.
STEPHEN PARKER: The guy yanked the car into reverse and turned back around to head in the other direction. We had only gone a couple hundred yards and were picking up speed, when he stepped out of the shadows. Right in front of the truck.
I was thrown into the cab by the impact. Big Baby simply had his hands right on the hood of the truck, legs bent and holding the thing still. I heard a cry of “What the fuck!” from the truck’s interior. Then, Big Baby squatted a bit and lifted the front end of the truck, first above his knees, then his waist. The bed went diagonal, we tumbled into the tailgate, jumped out the back.
The driver’s side door swung open and the man who was giving us a ride hopped out into the road, sidestepping a bit to get a look at what was going on with his truck. We yelled at him to run, to stop, to do anything else besides what he was about to do.
But it was no use.
The truck’s front end crashed down. Tires and shocks bounded.
“Hey buddy, the hell you doing?” the driver said.
There was the crackly drive-thru speaker voice that said, “Mama, mama, mama.” But at this point we were clinging to the shadows, slipping away.
“This a fucking joke?”
I could barely see what happened next. Only looked back once to see Big Baby lasso that umbilical rope around the Good Samaritan’s neck and pull tight. Could only hear his sputtering gags and his feet kicking up the gravel as he struggled to break free.
“It’s not out fault,” Nick rasped to me in between heavy breaths.
Sometimes I still think that it kinda was. We had unleashed this hell, after all.
In the distance on a hill we could see the roof of a house and a barn, faint interior lights shining through the trees. We headed for it.
OFFICER DANIELS, MOMADAY COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPUTY: On County Road 1220 a truck was found with its front end in a ditch, engine still running. The deceased, Billy Ferguson, was found in the middle of the road. No obvious sign of injury at first.
STEPHEN PARKER: There was a porchlight on and I could see the glow of a cigarette’s ember hovering somewhere in front of a darkened face that belonged to someone sitting on the porch. We started yelling and hollering and waving our arms. The sitting guy stood up as we neared. It was an old farmer guy, in overalls and a trucker cap, face all leathered and weathered.
“Can I help you boys with something? What in the Sam Hill are y’all doing out here at this hour? Dont’cha realize you could get shot coming up here like this? You’re lucky tha—-”
“Sir, sir. We need help. We don’t got much time. There’s been people killed. He’s after us right now!”
“Y’all slow dow—”
A T-post is a type of fence post that is an essential building material for the rural farmer and homesteader. It is a steel rail that is shaped like a T when you look at the end-on view of it. They are typically painted red or green with white tips on the top and are instrumental in stringing up barbed wire for vast stretches of land. Go for a drive in the countryside and you will likely see these fence posts. They often require a fence-post driver to set into place and the post itself is quite stout. They could be helpful in cordoning off part of your yard for your various needs. -The Country Mouse’s Guide for the City Mouse: A Handbook on Urban Farming
STEPHEN PARKER: He never finished another sentence for as long as he spent on this earth. A steel t-post had whizzed past both of our heads with a magnificent fury and momentum. Its speed fluttered my eardrums. The long rail sprouted out of the poor farmer’s neck, a gurgling sound escaping his lips. His head lolled over as blood ran down the bib of his overalls in a steady stream and he toppled to the porch in a thud, the t-post chiming along with him like a clock ringing out his final hour.