A Porter County jury took less than 4.5 hours Thursday afternoon to convict Connor Kerner on seven of eight felony charges related to the killing of two Lake County teens last year.
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 will remain in custody at Porter County Jail until his sentencing at 9 a.m. Dec. 8 before Porter Superior Court Judge Roger Bradford, who oversaw the three-week trial in which prosecutors presented almost 800 pieces of evidence.
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.
His mother, Roxann Kerner, called out, “I love you, Connor,” as sheriff’s deputies put him in handcuffs. He responded “I love you” to her before being led away.
Members of the Lanham and Grill families packed the courtroom and wept after the verdict. Chief Deputy Prosecutor Armando Salinas, Deputy Prosecutor Christopher Hammer and Porter County Sheriff’s Department Detective Sgt. Brian Dziedzinski, the lead investigator in the case, hugged family members at the end of the court session.
“I just want everyone to know how hard these two lawyers worked on the case, and the rest of the prosecutor’s office. What a great job Porter County prosecutors did on the case. It was so thorough,” Porter County Prosecutor Gary Germann said.
Members of the victims’ families sat outside the courthouse for the afternoon awaiting the verdict, hugging when they found out the news.
“On behalf of the family, they’re so grateful to the prosecutors for the thorough job that they did. They’ve been waiting a long time for justice in this case and this gets them one step closer to that,” said Tara Tauber, an attorney representing the Lanham family. “Nothing will ever bring her back but we definitely felt her presence today.
Molley Lanham loved butterflies, Tauber said, and a Monarch came by while supporters were waiting for word from the jury.
“Between that and the beautiful day we had, we feel very fortunate,” she said.
Defense attorney James Voyles declined to comment after the verdict. Fellow defense attorney Mark Thiros said they weren’t sure yet whether they would file an appeal.
The prosecution and the defense spent Thursday morning going over the credibility of key witnesses during closing arguments, leaving the jury to decide their believability and whether a co-defendant committed the crimes.
Bradford dismissed jurors around 12:20 p.m. for lunch and to begin deliberations.
Hammer credited Kerner’s ex-girlfriend, whom the Post-Tribune is not naming at the request of prosecutors, with going to police after Kerner confessed the crimes to her and took her to the wooded area, before later threatening to kill her family and her if she told anyone.
Kerner, Hammer said, admitted twice to his ex-girlfriend about the murders and the arson.
“Notice it wasn’t ‘we.’ It wasn’t ‘John Silva.’ It wasn’t ‘us.’ It was ‘I,'” Hammer said, referring to Kerner’s 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, 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.
The case, Hammer said, wasn’t about choosing between Kerner and Silva, who will have his own day in court.
Thiros picked apart the ex-girlfriend’s testimony, noting that even after his client confessed to her and threatened her, she continued to see him regularly.
“He hacked her social media. That’s the straw that broke the camel’s back, not that he killed two kids,” Thiros said.
As he did in opening statements, Voyles said Silva was responsible for the crimes.
He also questioned the robbery charges, over THC cartridges worth $20,000 to $50,000 that Grill was allegedly going to sell to Kerner. Kerner reportedly met late the night of Feb. 24, 2019, with Grill and Lanham about the purchase and arranged to meet the next day.
“Where were (the cartridges) when police began searching the Dye house (near Hebron)? Where was all that money?” Voyles said. “You have to have actual evidence that that was happening and there is no such evidence in this case.”
Hammer played two recordings reportedly made on Silva’s cell phone also played earlier in the trial. The first, prosecutors have said, Silva made while Kerner killed Grill.
Grill’s father left the courtroom as prosecutors played the recording and his mother sat in court with her head down. Lanham’s family members also attended court and sometimes cried softly. Kerner’s mother, who testified during the trial, sat in the back row.
On the recording, Hammer said Grill can be heard saying, “I don’t have it.”
“He was trying to take something from Thomas that day and Thomas didn’t have it,” Hammer said.
Silva, Salinas said, was the backup guy, waiting with a gun owned by Kerner’s grandfather because he knows what’s going down.
He challenged the defense’s characterization of Kerner as a nice guy whose demeanor never changed as he met with his mother and grandparents in the days after the murders.
“Yeah, he was nice, he was polite, at Walmart, too, when he was buying all those flammables to burn the bodies of two people he just murdered,” Salinas said.
Amy Lavalley is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
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