As true crime remains the subject of massive interest from fans across the globe, history’s thicket of crimes against humanity continues to be picked through by publications and true crime enthusiasts alike. The result is the reveal of countless morbidly fascinating stories that are more detailed with each passing year as the age of information sharing gives us more dirty details than ever before.
One of the U.S.’s many grisly crimes buried (no pun intended) by the avalanche of crime stories flooding publications during the 2010s is the murders committed by seventeen-year-old Tyler Hadley in 2011.
Publications across the board covered Tyler Hadley and the murder of his parents in Port St. Lucie, Florida after the story broke in the early 2000s. Rolling Stone released a detailed account of the murders in 2013, revealing massive insight to the bizarre murders which were seemingly celebrated with a party immediately following the crimes.
Premeditated
Tyler Hadley reportedly murdered his mother & father on July 16th, 2011. Shortly before 5:00 pm on the Saturday which would forever live in infamy in Hadley’s life, he stood behind his mother who was working on her computer. Reports say Tyler Hadley stood behind his mother Mary-Jo for five minutes brandishing a hammer, claw end out.
Tyler Hadley had already hidden his parents’ cell phones before taking three ecstasy pills and planning to make his move, as he stated he didn’t think he could kill his parents sober. This detail is increasingly confusing, as anyone whose taken ecstasy can tell you the drug’s effects are anything but homicidal in nature; killing after taking E is the equivalent of throwing up after drinking a stomach-settling ginger tea.
However, ABC News reported in 2014 Tyler Hadley had a history of mental health issues, had seen psychiatrists, taken antidepressants, and undergone a substance abuse program prior to the 2011 murders.
Readers can only imagine the great deal of psychiatric stress Hadley must have been under, something which may have overrode the effects of the drugs he took, or perhaps combined with them for a deadly combination.
Party time
Whatever the cause for Tyler Hadley gaining a motivation to off his parents, he planned the murders ahead of time, and told witnesses he’d have a party after going through with his deadly plan.
Reports indicate friends didn’t take his threats seriously, and when Tyler Hadley told friends he might have a party on July 16th, they didn’t believe him. Hadley’s parents were reportedly strict, and Hadley’s friends never believed they’d allow a party.
Despite initial skeptics, Tyler Hadley bludgeoned his mother to death with the claw end of a hammer before throwing a party on the fateful Saturday. It wasn’t long before Tyler’s mother Mary-Jo let out screams his father Blake could hear, and Blake soon came to see what the commotion was.
Tyler followed suit and bludgeoned his father to death in the same way, cleaned the scene as best he could, and shoved the evidence along with the bodies in a locked bedroom.
Say cheese
Tyler Hadley announced he was having a party on Facebook at 8:15 pm after killing his parents, and by 10:00 pm, local teens started piling into the Hadley home looking for fun in the hum-drum coastal Florida town of Port St. Lucie.
The party blew up, and before long, Hadley spilled the beans as to how the party could’ve erupted in the otherwise strict Hadley household.
Tyler told his friend Michael Mandell what he’d done, and after spotting Blake Hadley’s leg in a closed bedroom, Mandell knew the unthinkable had actually happened. Mandell took a selfie with Tyler, in what we can only imagine he knew to be one of the last they’d have together as free men.
