Reaction to a jury’s Thursday guilty verdict for Connor Kerner in the murder of two Lake County teens continued long after he was returned to Porter County Jail.
Kerner, 19, of the 100 block of Kinsale, was found guilty of two counts of murder; two counts of murder in the perpetration of a robbery; two counts of robbery; and a single felony count of arson. The jury found him not guilty on a felony charge of intimidation.
Kerner was 17 when he killed Molley Lanham, 19, of St. John, and Thomas Grill, 18, of Cedar Lake, on Feb. 25, 2019, at his grandparents’ Hebron-area home after a drug deal went bad, then loaded their bodies into the Honda Civic they arrived in and set fire to the vehicle in a wooded area a couple miles away.
The victims’ family members attended the entire trial, though their numbers were limited because of the COVID-19 pandemic. They endured graphic evidence and testimony, sometimes leaving the courtroom, hunching forward in grief or sobbing softly until they could regain their composure.
Those present included Patricia Grill, Thomas Grill’s mother, who also was the state’s first witness to take the stand.
She told jurors then that she contacted police around 4 p.m. Feb. 26, 2019, to report her son missing. She got Kerner’s phone number from her son’s phone records and called him after she heard her son was headed to meet Kerner when he disappeared.
She told Kerner she understood Lanham and her son were supposed to meet up with him and asked if he knew anything about their whereabouts.
“He stated that they never showed up to meet with him,” and went to Illinois to meet someone else, she said then, adding through texting, Kerner said they went to Frankfort, Illinois, to meet someone there.
She had a final phone conversation with Connor Kerner on Feb. 27, 2019.
“The last thing he said to me was, ‘Mrs. Grill, you have a good night.’ I felt at that point the conversation had turned somewhat,” she said.
In a statement provided to the Post-Tribune after the verdict, she said the Grill family is glad that Kerner has been found guilty and held accountable “for his heinous actions.”
“The pain our family has felt since Thomas and Molley’s lives were taken is indescribable. Nothing will change the fact that Thomas and Molley are gone,” she said. “We would like to thank everyone who helped us get to this day especially the Porter County prosecutors, their office and detectives.”
The three-week trial before Porter Superior Court Judge Roger Bradford included nearly 800 pieces of evidence, yet the jury returned a verdict in less than 4.5 hours.
The work in the case is not yet done. Co-defendant John Silva II, 20, of Hamlet, who has pleaded not guilty to two felony counts of murder in the perpetration of a robbery and two counts of robbery, remains in Porter County Jail without bond. Silva was charged May 22 with the alleged crimes and is awaiting the scheduling of a trial date.
Kerner’s defense attorneys, James Voyles and Mark Thiros, tried to pin the crime on Silva, leaving the jury to decide who committed the crimes.
But Silva’s attorney, Ken Elwood, said the evidence presented by the state points to Kerner and not Silva.
“My client’s name was not mentioned by anybody interviewed by the police for weeks after the murder,” Elwood said.
Kerner’s sentencing is scheduled for 9 a.m. Dec. 8 before Bradford.
Amy Lavalley is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
