Megan Hutchinson
Staff Reporter
July 16, 2011, was the day Tyler Hadley would lose his parents. Tyler Hadley was a 17-year-old high school student with erratic behavior and who frequently missed school. As a child, he was ‘punched and beaten by his father, this was later proven to be untrue by his older brother who says his parents were loving, pushover parents, giving Tyler everything he wanted. However, his father was an alcoholic, strict, and would occasionally take his anger out on his son. While his mother was domineering, she did everything for her son.
Tyler Hadley was born prematurely weighing only 3 pounds, 10 ounces, thus causing him to spend nearly a month in the incubator. As newborn spending so much time away from his mother he could have missed that necessary nurturing from his mother. When Tyler became a preteen/teenager he began taking Accutane, famously known for causing depression and suicidal thoughts for its patients. However, he had shown no signs of abnormalities and was a model patient. Eventually, he developed a hormone imbalance due to an underactive thyroid, hypothyroidism. This contributed to his low self-esteem, self-degradation, and would often refer to himself as “ stupid, dumb, and fat”.
On July 16, 2011, Tyler had invited his friends over to his house for a party that would be the talk of the town.. Most of his friends knew he was practically grounded by his parents and they would never allow him to do something like this, they questioned how he would be able to pull this off with them around. At 1:15 p.m. he publicly posted to his Facebook, “party at my crib tonight...maybe”. According to Hadley's Facebook, he replied to his questioning friends about where his parents would be and if they would be around with “they won’t trust me”. The Hadley’s lived at 371 Northeast Grandeur in St. Port Lucie, Florida, one of the ‘safest’ neighborhoods in Florida.
At 2:30 a.m., the police were dispatched to the Hadley residence for a noise complaint. When police arrived, Hadley was upstairs with his close friends smoking and taking Percocets, by then the party had cleared. Law enforcement had entered the home which was nearly destroyed. They noted toppled furniture, large holes in the wall, trash scattered everywhere, and bloodstains strung from the master bedroom to the kitchen, and garage.
But how did the partiers not notice what was clearly blood?
Well, an unnamed teen ( for privacy reasons), noticed while playing beer pong, that the ball had bounced into a “ nasty, brown liquid”; he continued to play thinking really nothing of it. Once police had reached the master bedroom they had found the corpses of Mary Jo and Blake Hadley, buried under piles of family photos, clothes, books, and anything Tyler could find to try and conceal them. It was later found that Tyler was in fact on ecstasy when the initial murders occurred. However, being on ecstasy would not drive you to kill, in fact, it has relatively the same effect as throwing up after consuming alcohol.
Blake Hadley, the father of Tyler Hadley stood at 6 feet tall, 300 pounds. According to Port St. Lucie Medical Examiner, Roger Middleton, Hadley’s father was savagely beaten. Blake Hadley had a broken nose, abrasions and contusions to the face, a smashed skull in several spots, his skull was visible through the skin, the right temporal lobe ( responsible for hearing) had multiple visible lacerations. His brain was floating in blood and had swelled significantly due to the repeated blows from a hammer. In addition, he had also suffered from a broken leg, a shattered fibula, and massive and extensive skull fractures. All together Blake Hadley had received 65 strikes of blunt force trauma.
Mary- Jo Hadley, the mother of Tyler Hadley, was a school teacher of 24 years at the St. Lucie County elementary school. Mary- Jo had been believed to be beaten with so much force that her spine had fractured. This is possible if she had hyperextended her back during the attack. She had suffered 7 broken ribs, a punctured left lung, and extensive injuries that were visible to the skull with the claw end of the hammer. Additionally, she had 14 wounds across her back and lacerations varying in size across her face and back. According to Robert Middleton, her skull had been “pulverized” so horrifically that her skull was apparent and clearly visible.
In August, after his arrest, arraignment, and weeks in jail, he had spoken to the state psychologist for more than 3 hours; the state attorney had later released this conversation. During this conversation, Tyler Hadley states, “ I remember looking at myself in the mirror and laughing and just, looking at myself”. He later also talks about how he had wished he had gotten to know his parents for who they were as people and not just as ‘mom and dad’. Due to his age when he committed these crimes, the death penalty was not an option but he was charged as an adult. Therefore, he is currently serving 2 life sentences without the possibility of parole.
Image Credit: Etsy
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