Mom tells of events until son’s arrest in murders of two teens
Connor Kerner’s mother, Roxann, went through dozens of text messages she exchanged with her son, some on an encrypted app and redacted, as she explained to a jury Wednesday that she wasn’t coaxing her son for a future police interview about two missing Lake County teens but trying to get him to explain to her what happened.
Roxann Kerner was on the stand for more than two hours in Porter Superior Court Judge Roger Bradford’s courtroom, providing a timeline for her contact with Connor Kerner from Feb. 25, 2019, when she left for a two-day business trip in Detroit, until March 2, 2019, the Saturday the two were picked up by Porter County Sheriff ’s Department deputies and transported to the county jail for questioning.
Kerner, 19, of the 100 block of Kinsale, has pleaded not guilty and remains in Porter County Jail without bond, held on two counts of murder and additional felony counts of intimidation, arson, murder in the perpetration of a robbery and attempted robbery.
Kerner was 17 when he allegedly 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.
Roxann Kerner, who often looked over from the witness stand and smiled at her son and the jury at the start of her testimony, was granted use immunity for her testimony before the jury was brought into the courtroom. Bradford explained she could be held in contempt of court if she refused to answer questions and the immunity would not protect her from perjury.
James Voyles, one of Connor Kerner’s defense attorneys, had a standing objection to the text messages being admitted as evidence in the trial.
The bulk of the text messages began the morning of Feb. 26, 2019, when Roxann Kerner, through GPS tracking on her son’s
phone, discovered he had not gone to school that day while she was out of town. Connor Kerner was a senior at Valparaiso High School who only had to attend school for three hours each morning.
Connor Kerner i ni t i al l y texted her that he had a migraine and decided to stay home but later, as the text exchange evolved, told his mother as she questioned him about not going to school, “I understand but you don’t know about last night and that’s all that matters.”
He declined to talk to her over the phone and she sent him a link for an encrypted Zoom conversation, she said, “so he would talk to me so I could figure out what was going on.”
They later switched to an encrypted message app, Keybase, and Roxann Kerner told her son she received a message from Patricia Grill, Thomas Grill’s mother, asking if she knew her son and if he met with Connor Kerner that day.
Connor Kerner texted his mother that he was supposed to meet with Thomas Grill after Grill went to Illinois and the two were going to drive to Michigan together.
Later, she messaged him on Keybase, “Hi, you need a solid story about Thomas.”
Roxann Kerner said in court that her son needed a solid story to answer her questions.
He later texted her that the previous night he “had a deal go bad” and drove up to Michigan to put some stuff away. Roxann Kerner told the jury “she had no idea” what her son was talking about but told him the missing teens were all over Facebook.
Roxann Kerner later texted to her son, “Get out of this now,” and instructed him to contact their attorney Mark Thiros, who is now part of his defense team.
Connor Kerner texted his mother, “I had nothing to do with this” and told her he was not in danger.
Roxann Kerner later texted her son to brace himself because there was a huge investigation into Grill’s disappearance. “You need a reason for meeting Thomas,” she texted, noting riding dirt bikes or concert tickets.
She told the court she was not suggesting a reason.
“I was still trying to get information at that point,” she said.
But on Feb. 27, 2019, before she returned from her work trip and her son picked her up at the airport in South Bend, the text exchange between the two again returned to why Connor Kerner might have had a planned meeting with Grill.
“Because concert tickets would be a good one,” Roxann Kerner messaged to her son, before telling her that if the cops come to their house, not to say a word to them because “they’ll trick you.”
Once Roxann Kerner returned to Valparaiso, she and her son continued to exchange numerous texts, including conversation about his breakup with his girlfriend, who reported the alleged crimes to police.
The two texted about chores to be done before a showing of their home planned for March 3, 2019, before it went up for sale and her contacts with the Grills and Molley Lanham’s mother and stepfather.
Sometime before 11 a.m. March 2, Roxann Kerner said she and her son were stopped by police while he was driving her Jeep Cherokee.
“We are surrounded by six to eight squad cars, SUVs, and I am absolutely in shock. I asked them, ‘ What is going on and where are we going?’ ” she said, fighting back tears. “I was handcuffed on my knees with big guns pointed at my head and they’d already taken Connor.”
Sheriff ’s deputies transported the Kerners to the sheriff ’s department for questioning. Police allowed her to contact Thiros and she agreed to let police look at her phone.
She also found out then from police that her son was going to be charged in the deaths of Grill and Lanham.