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It’s common for teenagers to despise their parents, but what’s uncommon is when those teens go to the extra step of doing something about it. Troubled teen Brooklyn Reynolds took that fateful step.
In one of the more disturbing true crime tales of the past decade: Reynolds conspired with her boyfriend to murder her parents because they forbade her from seeing him, and then staged the crime scene to look like a break-in.
The background to the incident was Brooklyn’s parents’ concern for their daughter dating an older man named Christopher Evans. Evans was 22 at the time of the killing and had been dating Brooklyn since she was 15.
Reynolds kept this important age detail secret from her parents, but after perusing her phone, they found out not only his age but intimate pictures of the two. Her parents, Henry and Chara Bryant wanted to protect their daughter, but that cost them their lives.
It took a while for Henry and Chara to find each other and get married for good. They were familiar when they were younger – Chara had a thing for Henry way back in middle school and high school, when he was on the football team.
They both went through multiple relationships before finally finding each other again and combining their families in a house in Mount Vernon, Kentucky. It was a slow-moving community, away from the bustle of the city. The kind of town where everyone knew each other and looked out for each other too.
They married in 2002 and combined families; Chara had three children from a previous marriage (including Brooklyn) and they eventually had a daughter together. Things were good until they weren’t. As the girls got older, they got more rebellious, especially Brooklyn.
However, there was always tension with Brooklyn and most of that was because of her relationship with Christopher. In Apr. 2017, they told her she would no longer be able to see him, and she reluctantly agreed. That agreement was just lip service though, because she kept seeing him in secret.
So far, so good. Nothing more than a disagreement between a teen and her parents about who she’s dating. Nothing to suggest anything nefarious. Yet.
The hammer dropped on June 8, 2017, more than two months after the edict to never see Christopher again. Reynolds called 911 from the family home at 7:30 a.m. and said when she woke up the sliding glass door to her parent’s bedroom was broken, and it looked like someone had forced it open.
She told the operator that her mother and stepfather were both lying on the floor and neither was breathing. First responders rushed to the house and found Brooklyn and her sisters Madison Bryant and Caitlin Whitt waiting. They were taken to the police station while authorities combed over the crime scene.
When detectives questioned the girls who were in the home at the time, it struck them as odd that none of them heard anything, especially considering there was a struggle and multiple gunshots. It was so odd that they even investigated to see if it was even possible to not hear anything from outside the parent’s bedroom.
Another curiosity: the glass was shattered on the outside of the house, meaning someone inside the house broke it before the deadly incident. Brooklyn simply said the family had just gotten back from a vacation and that she found the bodies after she walked the dog in the morning, something her sisters confirmed.
As they pressed, investigators became aware of the rift between Brooklyn and her parents. Then they found out about Christopher. When they questioned him, Christopher laid it on pretty thick. He said he wasn’t dating Brooklyn anymore, but they were still friends.
He also said he was close with the family and had helped them unload from vacation the night before the murder. When he left, he said, everything was peachy. A detective drove Christopher home and when he went into the house, he noticed a handgun under Christopher’s bed.
Christopher played dumb, saying he’d never even touched it. This struck investigators as odd, and after more investigation one of Christopher’s neighbors said they saw him practicing shooting a gun which looked similar to the one they found under the bed.
Detectives also re-questioned Brooklyn’s siblings, who contradicted Christopher’s story about being in the family’s good graces. Brooklyn’s bother, Austin Whitt, told the police that Christopher wasn’t even allowed near the house.
Detectives got a warrant to test the gun, and Christopher changed his story. He had fired the gun, he said, but only as practice. He said he was worried he’d get in trouble, so he lied. More questions emerged when detectives noticed that texts between Brooklyn had been erased.
Now that they were closing in, they brought him in for even more questioning. It worked. Christopher broke down when presented with evidence and admitted to the killings. He explained that he killed the parents to protect his girlfriend because they were “mean” and “violent” toward her.
He then revealed how the murders went down: He drove to their house in the middle of the night and Brooklyn let him in. He then walked into the master bedroom and shot Chara, waking up Henry. Henry was shot, tried to fight back, and he was shot again. He tried to crawl to the bathroom and Christopher shot him one last time.
Authorities then got the texts between Brooklyn and Christopher going over the murder plot. They were dead to rights. Brooklyn pleaded guilty to helping with the murder and got 23 years in prison for each parent, to be served concurrently.
She won’t be eligible for parole until 2037 when she’s 36. She’s currently 23 years old. Christopher took a plea deal and was sentenced to 60 years. He won’t be eligible for parole until 2074, when he’s 79 years old.
If you’re in the mood for more true crime, check out our article on the bizarre Gypsy Rose Blanchard case and the mother who murdered her family on New Year’s Day.