A Party To Die For | The Disturbing Case Of Tyler Hadley

10 to Life

This episode revisits the chilling 2011 double murder of Blake and Mary Jo Hadley, committed by their 17-year-old son, Tyler Hadley. The narrative

Key takeaways

• Tyler Hadley used a claw hammer to kill both parents in their master bedroom.
• The murders occurred on July 16, 2011, just before Tyler hosted a party for nearly 100 teenagers.

Main topics

• The Hadley double murder
• Tyler Hadley's mental health history

Notable quotes

Why the F not?

Conclusion

The episode provides a haunting look at how a desire for notoriety and

Transcript preview

Speaker 8 (0:00) For many of us, going further isn't a choice. It's a feeling we can't ignore. Because ambition has a way of outgrowing where it began. Turning dreams into direction. Every journey brings us closer to the life we imagine. So, where will your journey take you? Etihad. Beyond Borders. Speaker 7 (0:32) It's a story making national headlines. Mom was killed first, then dad. Speaker 4 (0:40) A 17-year-old who killed his parents with a hammer. Speaker 8 (0:43) I saw bloody sheets piled everywhere. I saw broken pictures with blood on them. Speaker 3 (0:50) He Speaker 8 (0:52) took both of his hands off my, at 5 Speaker 3 (0:55) p.m. He used the back of a hammer. That Speaker 4 (0:58) dude will never believe me. No one will believe me. I freaking killed somebody. Speaker 6 (1:05) 17-year-old Michael Mandel loved to have a good time. And on the night of July 16th, 2011, That's exactly what he was doing. He was at a party that was being hosted by his best friend, Tyler Hadley. And this was a killer party. I mean, there were people everywhere. Music blasting all throughout the house, people talking, people drinking, people dancing. And Michael was right there smack in the middle of all of it. He had already had a few drinks. He was talking with friends, just enjoying the night like everyone else there. But at some point, Michael decided to step away from the crowd for a little bit. He left the packed rooms and all of the noise behind him and headed somewhere quieter, probably just looking for, you know, a little break from all of the noise for a minute. So he made his way down the hallway looking for a specific room, the master bedroom. And when he finally found it, he reached for the doorknob, turned it, and pushed forward, expecting the door to fully swing open. However, the door only opened a few inches, a little crack, before coming to a complete stop. It felt like something was wedged behind the door, physically preventing it from opening all the way. But what Michael didn't know in that moment is that what he was about to uncover would not only change the entire course of the party and the night, but it was something that would stay with him for the rest of his life. Because lying on the floor behind this door, there was a pair of human legs blocking this door from opening any further. And the legs belonged to his best friend, Tyler's dad, Blake. And next to Tyler's dad was Tyler's mom, Mary Jo. Both of them were just there, lying on the ground, motionless. even more disturbing part is that they were both covered in blood. They had been violently attacked. But the question that he was left with and everyone at the party was left with is who did this? Who violently attacked this teenager's parents? How did these teens go from partying and having what they thought was just this normal night to unknowingly being in the same space as two people who had been murdered in the other room? Now, I first covered this case back in 2022, but since then, there have been new updates. I've changed my perspective on things a little bit, and so I wanted to reopen the case with you today. And if you're new to Reopen Cases, you'll basically be hearing from me. current Annie and also past Annie. The audio might jump around a little bit because I've changed my equipment over years, but I string all of it together to make sure that you have the full story. Nuts and bolts of it, the new updates, the new perspectives, things that I've changed my mind on possibly here and there. And so you have everything in one place. I'll be jumping on present tense Annie periodically throughout the episode too, just kind of having those hindsight moments and dropping in the new updates. But you'll hear from both of us. I guess it's us, both of us, so you know the drill. I'm Annie Elise, and today we are reopening the case of Tyler Hadley. Let's jump right in. Speaker 3 (4:07) On Saturday, July 16th, 2011, 17-year-old Tyler Hadley signed into his Facebook account to make an announcement. At around noon, he wrote, party at my crib tonight, dot, dot, dot, maybe. Several teens started commenting on the post to inquire about the uncertain invitation. Was this party real? Was it not? Because anyone who knew Tyler knew that his parents were very strict. Plus, he had gotten into some trouble recently and was technically grounded. So how was he going to get away with... throwing a party. Was he waiting for his parents to go out of town, or did they have a sudden change of heart and give permission to have people over? One of his friends sent him a message and asked what would happen if his parents came home, and somehow Tyler was positive that this would not be a problem. Only having a few close friends, he was really eager to impress the kids in his town, and there was no way that his parents would wreck his party. So he confidently typed and sent his reply to his friend saying, don't worry, they won't. Blake and Mary Jo Hadley were a happy, fun, and loving couple. They moved to Florida in the 1980s, where Blake worked as an engineer at a local power plant, and Mary Jo was an elementary school teacher. Blake had been referred to as a giant teddy bear, and Mary Jo was the kind of person who never gave up on people, especially people that she loved. Their relationship had been described as the model marriage. and the only thing they loved more than each other? were their two sons. Their first son, Ryan, was born in 1987, and their son, Tyler, completed their family in 1993. Ryan was an easy baby, but Tyler had some struggles literally right out of the womb. Tyler was born premature and spent the first month of his little life in an incubator. Now, this rough start caused Blake and Mary Jo to be pretty lenient and even indulgent with their boys, wanting to mitigate as many more hardships that they could for Tyler. While everything always seemed to go smoothly and happened easily for Ryan, as Tyler grew up, he encountered more and more medical issues. One of these issues was a thyroid abnormality. The thyroid plays a major role in a child's growth and development, and Tyler became insecure of his short stature as a child. Unsurprisingly, worrying constantly for their little boy caused Blake to develop some anxiety, and Mary Jo was also diagnosed with mild clinical depression during this time. Mary Jo wanted to do everything she could to protect Tyler from low self-esteem, so to boost his confidence, she asked the doctor to place him on a growth hormone so that he could catch up physically to his peers. However, by kindergarten, Tyler was already beginning to display behaviors that caused his parents to worry that he may have inherited some mental struggles as well. Now, a doctor diagnosed Tyler with depression at the young age of six years old. By 10 years old, Tyler was placed on the antidepressant Lexapro, which is extremely rare for children his age because it is a very potent and strong drug. Typically, a child will only be placed on a medication like that after a very recent traumatic event or as a last resort from counseling and therapy not helping. But Tyler's doctor and his parents felt like it was the right thing for him at that time. Even through these difficulties, Tyler was said to be very quiet in class, very respectful, and although he wasn't considered popular, He was well-liked by his peers. As he entered his early teens, like most kids, Tyler started pushing boundaries and becoming a little moody and defiant towards his parents. At 15 years old, his mom took him back to the doctor, and he was switched to the medication Prozac from Lexapro. Shortly after, Tyler started to lose his quiet and shy demeanor, and he started causing all sorts of disruptions in class. So back to the doctor he went, where he was then diagnosed with ADHD and placed on Adderall. Pretty much all boys go through the awkward, chubby phase. Let me just start by saying that, guys. No shame, no blame in that. But Tyler, already feeling different from having so many medical problems, going through this phase really lowered his self-esteem, which is something that Mary Jo had worked so hard to avoid. So she pushed to keep him on those growth hormones, hoping that it would make him taller and raise his confidence. As you can see, Mary Jo loved her son so much that she wanted to do everything she felt was right to make her son a happy kid. Tyler and his mom were said to be very close, and whenever they would get into arguments, he always felt extremely guilty. Even though teens mouthing off to their parents is, you know, fairly normal, during one argument, he told his mom to shut up, but then immediately apologized right after. He even told his best friend how sorry he felt for talking to his mom that way, and said he couldn't believe that he had done that. So like I mentioned earlier, Tyler was a really quiet kid up until high school, and he didn't have many friends at all besides his best childhood friend Michael and a few kids that were in his neighborhood. People weren't mean to him, but he really wanted to get a larger group of true close friends. So Tyler and Michael both started trying to fit in by hanging around kids who wouldn't really be considered good influences. Port St. Louis is a small town on the Treasure Coast of Florida, located smack in the middle of Orlando and Miami. It's been referred to as Florida's ecological jewel because of the lush nature preserves and aquatic sanctuaries that are home to native alligators and manatees. It's a boat lover's dream and a golfer's playground with some of the best courses in the state. It sounds like a place that any adult would love to live, own a vacation home, or even settle into for retirement. However, there wasn't much for teenagers to do there, especially back in 2011. If high school-aged kids weren't involved in sports or preoccupied with a job, they tended to get into mischief just out of pure boredom. Tyler was no different. and not ever really being the jock type, he had to find other ways to have fun. It was really common for teenagers in the area to party, to drink, to dabble in drugs, and even steal or vandalize. Mary Jo and Blake, being concerned with their son's safety and future, did their best to rein him in, but that only pushed him further away. And that's kind of how it goes when you try to have too much control, whether it's a you know, parenthood, relationship, friendship, people start to get resistant and they start to push away and pull back and, you know, you kind of have this struggle where you're hitting heads. So the group that Tyler was trying hard to fit in with got him involved in marijuana and with drinking alcohol, which may have temporarily taken his mind off his anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. So to him, it looked great. But in an attempt to impress the group, one day Tyler went with the kids to an area in one of the nature preserves where he helped set a couch on fire. To an immature teenager, this may have just seemed like no big deal and just a harmless, you know, pyro prank. However, the fire got so big and so out of control that they could no longer contain it themselves. The fire department had to come to prevent it from spreading into the nature preserve, which federally protects animals that live there and their environment. The kids didn't consider how much trouble this could have gotten them into, but Tyler, along with some of the others, got off easy with just a simple warning from the county judge. Although the judge was easy on Tyler, his parents were not. And they were pissed and they started to realize that coddling him and allowing him to get away with so much as a child due to these medical conditions was starting to come back now. And it was starting to bite them in the, you know, the you know what. So right away, they got Tyler back into counseling and started doing home drug tests. His parents were a little strict, possibly a little smothery and a little overprotective, but they cared deeply for their son. However, due to his immaturity, Tyler was unable to view his parents' actions as signs of love, but rather viewed them as attempts to control him. They were now in a power struggle with a rebellious teen who was once their quiet, respectful, and emotionally fragile little boy who apologized after arguments who loved them. Tyler went through yet another medication change because his mother felt as though his depression may have been contributing to these new behaviors. So while most of us can remember times where we wished our parents would just let us do whatever we wanted and stay out of our business, at the end of the day, we knew it was because they wanted what was best for us. We especially know that if we're parents ourselves now, you know, and doing this with our own children. Guilty. So some of us may have slammed doors in our parents' faces or threatened to run away or stomped up the stairs yelling, I hate you. But that was pretty much the extent of it for a lot of us. But for some reason, Tyler had feelings of rage towards his parents, and it only grew as their grip on him got tighter. Tyler started to make comments to his friends that he wished he could just kill them. His friends awkwardly would chuckle and, you know, shrug it off thinking he was obviously joking and was just upset for getting busted or grounded, but Tyler wasn't laughing when he would say these things. By age 17, if Mary Jo and Blake eased up at all, Tyler was back to drinking and doing drugs. So one day, Tyler and one of his so-called friends got into a fight and he was actually arrested on charges of assault and battery. Once again, Tyler was given a slap on the wrist and served less than a week in the county jail and two weeks house arrest. It seemed like he was slipping further and further down this path of destruction and just of not caring about anyone or anything. Assaulting someone he considered a friend showed his callousness towards people that he had relationships with. Tyler's brother Ryan recalled visiting his family and their mother worriedly waiting up all night for Tyler to come home. One night, Tyler's parents caught him sneaking into his room through a window, clearly intoxicated. So feeling helpless and not knowing what else to do, they took away his phone, his car, and made him start an outpatient substance abuse therapy program. Tyler was having to attend this program daily, and he felt like he was suffocating under his parents' control. He would have text conversations with friends where he expressed just how much he hated going to these therapy sessions. Instead of the program improving, Tyler's mental health, it seemed it was declining internally, and he even made comments on several occasions that he wished he could just take his own life. One day when talking to his best friend Michael, he made the statement, I want to kill my parents and then throw a party afterwards. It would be so cool because no one has ever done that before. I'm sorry. First of all, there's nothing cool about that. And there's a reason that nobody has done it before because it is psychotic. Psychotic. But this statement. when I first heard about this case, rang true in so many ways because so many kids these days, it feels like, are committing crimes because of the notoriety they believe it will carry. They think it'll give them social media fame, that they'll be noticed, that nobody's ever done it before, and so that's why they do these crimes, and it is just such a scary time in which we live. But I'm sorry, I digress. Let me get back to the case. So even though that remark was oddly specific, Michael still thought Tyler was just joking. around. He had known the kid for years, and even though this was a rough patch for the Hadley family, Michael could never fathom his best friend actually hurting his parents for real. Since Tyler was basically grounded for life after he was caught sneaking in the house drunk, his social life he worked so hard to build was evaporating and really just diminished down to Facebook messages on the family desktop computer. His friends recall thinking that their conversations were pretty typical and that they could have known that inside Tyler's brain, anger, resentment, and compulsive thoughts were growing more and more intense. During his mental downward spiral, he decided to hide a kitchen knife in his bedroom just in case he ever had the guts to do something about his parents constantly trying to control him. In July of 2011, the Hadley family made a trip to Georgia to visit some family. Some of his aunts and uncles recall Tyler acting a little odd, and one of his aunts recalls worrying that he was showing signs of an eating disorder. Tyler had always struggled with body image issues and was terrified of looking overweight, so when she saw vomit off the side of the porch after dinner, she knew that it was his. His uncle said that during his visit, Tyler would pace around and say things like, none of you love me, none of you love me, and even though everyone considered the visit to be pleasant, none of them knew that that would be the last time they saw Blake and Mary Jo. The weeks after the family arrived home, Tyler seemed to be acting a little nicer towards his parents. He was being cooperative about going to his therapy meetings, and Mary Jo felt like things may be on the up and up, finally, after such long battles and so many years. She even had a text message exchanged with some of her friends where she wrote that she felt Tyler was finally over the hurdle and that she was so happy that he was back to his old self. Just so, you know, a breath of fresh air, she finally has the weight lifted off her shoulders like my old loving son is back. That next Saturday, on July 16, 2011, Tyler made that Facebook post on his wall that said, party at my house maybe. Were Mary Jo and Blake letting Tyler throw a party now that his behavior seemed to be turning around? Tyler's friends highly doubted it and questioned him on the post, but he was determined to prove to them that he was going to have a party and that none of them would ever forget it. Speaker 1 (18:19) I know, I know, I know I'm going to sound like a broken record, but you know how important sleep is to me, whether it's my mattress, my sheets, or something else to help me aid in my sleep. I mean, you know how crazy my schedule gets between the work, the kids, everything else. Sometimes my brain just does not want to shut off. It's going into research overdrive. And that's why I love Beam Dream. You know, I've talked about them before. I've been using Beam. Gosh. two years now, three years now, I don't even know, I've lost count. It's a delicious nighttime hot cocoa that