Family member questions need to resentence admitted killer in QC strangulation
One of the two people serving time for the 2005 murder of Adrianne Reynolds appeared before a Rock Island County Court Wednesday as a judge weighs the possibility of a new sentence.
Cory Gregory pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and concealment of a corpse for his role in the death of Adrianne Reynolds. On July 10, 2006, he was sentenced to 40 years in prison for murder and 5 years for concealment, resulting in a 45-year prison term.
Gregory is being held in the Lawrence Correctional Center with a new identity as a woman named Harli Quinn, and her sentence is being scrutinized for the second time. After a resentencing hearing in 2022, in late 2024 the Illinois Appellate Court ordered Rock Island County to hold a new sentencing hearing.
The Rock Island County Clerk's Office confirmed a status hearing was held Wednesday. It is not known when a judge will hear arguments in the resentencing hearing.
The backstory
Adrianne Reynolds spent the last months of her life living with her adoptive father, Tony Reynolds, and step-grandmother Jo Reynolds in East Moline. Adrianne had moved in with the couple, Jo Reynolds said, after a troubled time with her mother and stepfather in Texas.
Adrianne Reynolds met Sarah Kolb and Harli Quinn at Black Hawk College Outreach Center in November 2004. Jo Reynolds said Adrianne Reynolds was studying there to get her "high school certificate, not her G.E.D. like Cory and Sarah."
"Adrianne was really excited at first to meet Sarah and to have a friend. Sarah was cool. She had a car and a job at a movie theater," Jo Reynolds explained. "Adrianne struggled to have friends, maybe. Adrianne's first love was music. She loved to sing and she wanted to be on American Idol.
"Adrianne spent a lot of time in her room, listening to music and just singing. I know she wanted friends, and she thought she had a friend in Sarah."
Jo Reynolds said Sarah " ... only came around the house one or two times, and she was really dressed goth. It was odd, because Adrianne was more of a blue-jeans-and-t-shirt kind of a girl."
Jo Reynolds said she chooses not to call Quinn, previously known as male, Cory Gregory, by her new name.
Jo Reynolds said she thinks things changed between Adrianne Reynolds and Kolb when Adrianne started seeing Harli Quinn in private.
"They went somewhere and kissed, and Cory had always kind of been Sarah's friend or boyfriend," Jo Reynolds said. "What we heard in court was that Sarah was jealous and mad at Adrianne, and that's how all this happened. Sarah wrote in a notebook that she wanted to kill Adrianne."
On the afternoon of Jan. 21, 2005, Kolb invited Adrianne Reynolds to join her, Quinn, and a friend named Sean McKitrick for lunch at Taco Bell. They picked Adrianne Reynolds up, and shorty after arriving at the restaurant, Kolb and Adrianne Reynolds started fighting.
"When they took Adrianne to Taco Bell and the fighting started, a kid named Sean McKitrick told them to stop, and Sarah told him to leave," Jo Reynolds explained. "That's what Sean did, he left. Sarah and Cory stayed and strangled her to death."
In the following days, Kolb and Quinn first took Adrianne Reynolds' body to Kolb's grandparents' farm in Millersburg, a small town in Mercer County near Aledo, authorities say. There they are accused of trying to burn her body with gasoline, then enlisting Nathan Gaudet, a 16-year-old boy from Moline, to help dismember the body.
They placed parts of Adrianne Reynolds' body in different places, including Black Hawk State Park, authorities say.
'Resentencing makes no sense'
Kolb, Quinn and Gaudet were arrested on Jan. 26, 2005.
Kolb's first trial started on Oct. 31, 2005, at the Rock Island County Courthouse and lasted two weeks. After 15 hours of deliberation, the trial jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict on any of the three charges. A mistrial followed with a change of venue.
Kolb's retrial started Feb. 6, 2006, in Dixon. She was convicted on all counts and later sentenced to 48 years in prison for murder and five years for concealment. These sentences were to be served consecutively, for a total of 53 years incarcerated.
Quinn, previously Cory Gregory, pleaded guilty to all charges. On July 10, 2006, Quinn was sentenced to 40 years in prison for murder and five years for concealment, resulting in a 45-year prison term.
Both Kolb and Quinn appealed their sentences at different times.
In the years that followed, the Illinois Supreme Court found that any sentence of 40 years for a juvenile offender is, in essence, a life sentence and unconstitutional. In 2019, a Rock Island County judge ruled Quinn would get a new sentencing hearing.
That hearing was held in March 2022, and Judge Peter Church ruled the court was bound to uphold the sentence.
Quinn appealed, and the Illinois Appellate Court ruled that Church did not consider "aggravation or mitigation" when determining that Quinn did not warrant a new sentence. The appellate court said Church did not hold a new sentencing hearing, and the sentence upheld by the court "cannot stand."
Jo Reynolds said she feels it's now important to speak up on behalf of Adrianne Reynolds.
"We want to talk about Adrianne, we want to keep her memory alive. We think of her all the time and wonder what her life might have been like," Jo Reynolds said Tuesday.
"As for Cory and Sarah, they didn't get life sentences. They didn't get a death penalty. When they were sentenced, the judge took their age into account," she said. "Resentencing makes no sense - especially in Cory's case. He pleaded guilty.
"Cory could have gone to trial and taken his chances, but he admitted his guilt. Tony and I got a chance to meet with him after his sentencing. He was there with his lawyer, and we asked him questions. And he wouldn't answer. Finally the lawyer told him he had to give us something.
"He said, 'I'm the one who put the belt around her neck.' That's all he said, but he admitted he was part of it."
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