Barbara Thomas frantically called friends and e-mailed her eldest son.

Jim Summers stayed home from work, anxiously hoping for a phone call.

Jerry and Vicki Koch drove for hours around Redmond, searching.

A parent’s worst nightmare was unfolding. Their children were gone.

For two anxiety-filled days, Sunday, March 25, and Monday, March 26, 2001, these parents prayed for their teenagers’ safety.

The youths would return to Central Oregon in shackles.

For on Monday night, five teens — Adam Thomas, Justin Link, Seth Koch, Lucretia Karle and Ashley Summers — would plunge into irreversible darkness.

Jim Summers and the Kochs reported their children as runaways on Sunday. Neither of their 15-year-old children, Ashley Summers and Seth Koch, had ever pulled a stunt like this before.

The parents of 16-year-old Lucretia Karle called police, too. But this was routine. Lucretia took off with such regularity that her disappearances lacked the same urgency.

No one even knew to worry about 17-year-old Justin Link. When police arrived at his mother’s home after the murder, she said she hadn’t seen him in two months.

And for Barbara Thomas, Sunday and Monday were just the latest in a series of gut-wrenching days.

Adam, 18, had moved out of the house. She had no idea where he was. During the previous week, he had crawled in a window and stolen items as she slept, and he failed to show as promised on Sunday to clean.

The break-in scared Barbara. She put several guns beneath her bed and asked her close friend Cathy McDaniel to bring her German shepherds over. She promised McDaniel she would change the locks on the house that day, but hadn’t quite gotten to it.

She sent Adam e-mails. It is uncertain if he ever read them.

“You can no longer have access to my home until you are ready to sit down and tell me what the hell is going on and just what you think you are doing,” she wrote on Tuesday, March 20.

“Whatever you think you are accomplishing, I hope it feeds you and clothes you and houses you because I am not.”

Four days later, Barbara wrote Adam again.

“What is the matter with you?” she wrote.

“I know you are doing drugs now and I know who got you into them. I ache for you … You are really messed up and need help. Please son, let me help you … Don’t keep going down this WRONG path in your life.”

She had told a friend Adam never would hurt her.

That Monday, Barbara didn’t reveal her distress to her boss, Ron Audette. She talked of the upcoming visit by her eldest son, Jason Thomas, and his pregnant wife. A surprise baby shower was planned for that week.

As the work day closed, the boss and employee started their regular evening departure routine.

Barbara would say, “I’ll see you tomorrow.” Audette would answer, “I hope so.”

But Audette planned to take Tuesday off.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Barbara began.

Then she paused.

“Oh, I guess I won’t.”

*****

The morning of Monday, March 26, 2001, five teenagers woke in a Cadillac El Dorado parked next to Haystack Reservoir.

Today was it. Adam, Seth, Justin, Lucretia and Ashley would drive to Canada.

Ashley later said they got two hours of sleep at most that night. The reservoir, about 15 miles southeast of Madras, is a popular underage drinking spot. They stayed up drinking alcohol and cranking the car stereo. Seth had stolen the car and the booze from his parents.

The teens had already spent much of the past week away from adult supervision. Living in motels, the teens drank alcohol and smoked marijuana. A few guzzled cough syrup. A syrup and booze cocktail produces a funky high teens call “Robofrying,” after the cough syrup brand Robitussin.

In their minds, Canada was a place where they would live without rules.

Before heading north, the teens decided to make a stop.

They arrived at Barbara Thomas’ rural residence before 11 a.m. Adam knew he wasn’t supposed to be there. His mother had even demanded the house key back five days before.

Adam gave it to her. He never told her he had already made a copy.

At first, the visit seemed like another stop in the ongoing party.

Lucretia and Ashley scavenged the kitchen for food, heating up ramen noodles and leftover pizza. The three boys dug through drawers in Barbara’s bedroom for money or credit cards.

The teens mixed cocktails of booze and Gatorade in the kitchen. The girls drank a bit. Seth drank more, polishing off a few swallows left in a bottle of whiskey. He later said he stumbled as he walked.

The boys decided to go to nearby Tumalo for cigarettes. As they were leaving the house, Justin thrust a .308-caliber rifle at Lucretia.

He told her to shoot anyone who came up the driveway, a dirt and gravel path that leads 450 feet from the highway to the manufactured home perched on the hillside.

“I told him I wasn’t going to shoot anybody,” Lucretia later said. “He said, ‘You will if you have to.’”

They never went for cigarettes. The keys to the Cadillac − their Canada car — were missing.

They searched in a calm manner for more than an hour. Seth told detectives he grew agitated as they combed the property, and Justin barked at them more and more.

The hunt dissolved into mayhem.

Stereo pounding, five teenagers rampaged through Barbara Thomas’ property Monday afternoon.

An ax cracked into the top of a dorm refrigerator.

A wood dresser chopped to splinters.

Guns scattered about the residence. A revolver, a 9 mm pistol, rifles.

Drawers yanked out and craft paper and coats and clothes and bills dumped to the floor.

Lucretia spotted a gash on a wall and drew a bull’s-eye around it in red. They all threw golf balls and a coffee mug and decorative metal balls at the target.

The metal balls are called Chinese meditation balls. According to tradition, people who use them properly enjoy higher intelligence and enduring youth.

*****

Asked later why they destroyed the house, four of the teens were at a loss, except to say that Justin told them to do it.

“We were getting our jollies and I guess we got carried away,” Adam told a psychiatrist.

When the same question arose about killing 52-year-old Barbara, the answer again came back to Justin.

They lost the keys and needed Barbara’s car, Justin said. They trashed the house and were now in trouble, Justin said. There was no other solution, he said. There was no turning back. They have to. Don’t wimp out.

We have to do it.

That was the story relayed by Adam, Seth, Lucretia and Ashley. Lucretia later told prosecutors that if Justin said jump, the others asked how high.”He didn’t want to get in trouble for the house being a mess,” she said.

Seth called him “the mouth.” He said Justin boasted of having done everything else in life, and now he wanted to kill somebody.

Justin was already due back in court to face burglary and theft charges. If he stepped out of line, if he got caught for destroying Barbara’s home, a judge would throw him in jail.

Justin disputed their version. The idea that he was Svengali and the others were puppets was ridiculous, said Tom Howes, one of Justin’s defense attorneys. Justin went outside during the crime because he wanted no part in it.

Ultimately, Deschutes County Circuit Court Judge Alta Brady found Justin guilty on all charges, including aggravated murder.

Until that day, Seth told detectives, he didn’t take seriously Adam’s anger at his mother or Justin’s thirst to pop someone.

“Adam saying he hated his mom was kind of like people saying, ‘I hate rainy days.’ Justin saying he wanted to kill someone was like saying, ‘I hate cold mornings.’”

*****

As Monday afternoon wore on, Sheriff’s Deputy Tim Hernandez cruised around Redmond, looking for Seth, Lucretia and Ashley. He talked to teens who had seen them with Adam and Justin the day before.

The five teens, meanwhile, contemplated murder.

Sitting on the couch amid the devastation, these were the options to get out of their predicament.

Maybe we could tie her up.

No, we have to kill her.

Maybe we could knock her out.

No, we have to kill her.

OK, we could electrocute her in the bathtub, Lucretia suggests.

Inject her with bleach, Ashley adds.

Perhaps set the house on fire, Adam muses.

Hit her with a bottle. Knock her out.

If all else fails, shoot her.

They prepped the residence. Seth fetched electrical cords. Lucretia filled the bathtub. Adam plugged in the appliances in the bathroom.

It seemed like a good plan. One or two strokes and she’s down. Then into the tub. Nice and clean.

Just before sunset, a car pulled up to the house.

The group started to panic until Lucretia said, “Wait, I know them.”

It was four teens — Jason Bice, David Busche, Tera Parcell and Jessica Weidman.

Bice later said they went to the house to find Justin. They thought Justin had stolen sandals, a T-shirt and a marijuana pipe from them the weekend before.

They walked into a stunning scene.

“It looked like everything that was in the house was on the floor,” Busche said. “I didn’t see nothing on the walls, nothing on the counters, it was all, like, on the floor.”

The teens told them that burglars trashed the house and drove away in a blue truck just as they arrived.

To placate Bice and Busche, Justin offered to sell Bice a rifle from the Thomas house. Bice agreed to buy it for $100. He gave Justin $20 and pledged to pay for the rest later.

Bice said Justin seemed antsy.

”They wanted us to hurry up and leave,” he said. “Justin kept on saying, ‘His mom is going to be home.’ He must have said that two or three times.”

Weidman, who knew Adam, said “hi” to him. He didn’t respond.

“Adam was suspiciously quiet,” she said. “He wasn’t talking to anybody. He was sitting on the couch and staring into space.”

Parcell remembered the same scene. “He was acting weird,” she said. “He was sitting there on the couch mumbling.”

*****

Barbara had already bid her boss farewell.

She had less than two hours left in her life.

It had been a busy day. She completed all the tasks on the list her boss handed her in the morning.

Barbara closed up the main office at about 5:30 p.m., but stopped at a store in the outlet mall before her 25-minute commute home.

She popped into The Paper Factory carrying several bags from Carter’s, the baby store at the mall. She greeted the clerk, Alisa Hagedorn, whom she had met about three years ago.

“She was all excited,” Hagedorn said later. “She wanted me to help her pick out some gift bags and wrapping paper. … I was teasing her about not buying out Carter’s.”

Police later found The Paper Factory receipt in the yard. It was stamped 5:46 p.m.

Barbara told Hagedorn of Jason’s impending arrival. Barbara and Jason had exchanged phone calls and e-mails daily about Adam. They discussed the break-in.

“I’m just about to lose my sanity over this whole thing,” Barbara wrote to Jason. “I am stressed and distraught to the max. I don’t know what to do.”

Jason later said that when he came to town he planned to change the locks on the Old Bend-Redmond Highway residence and teach his mother to shoot a gun.

“She became afraid when Adam started running with these kids,” said Barbara’s friend Cathy McDaniel. “I don’t think she really realized the potential until Adam broke into her home.”

Barbara started the drive north.

*****

She pulled into her driveway sometime between 6 and 6:30 p.m.

It was a moonless night. At the top of the drive was a car she didn’t recognize — a maroon Cadillac.

Justin hovered somewhere outside. Barbara apparently didn’t see him. Adam, Seth, Lucretia and Ashley watched her through Adam’s bedroom window. They scattered when she approached.

The house was dark. She walked in the back door, into chaos.

Lucretia and Ashley huddled behind Adam’s bed. Their view opened into the hallway.

Adam hid behind the bathroom door. He saw his mother enter through the crack between the door frame and wall. He gripped an empty champagne bottle. It was a keepsake decorated by Barbara and her friends at a New Year’s Eve party.

Barbara confronted a teen she had never seen before. She was 5 feet 10 inches tall and could look him straight in the eye. He had scruffy light brown hair, a child’s face, a mouth with braces. And a bottle behind his back.

“What happened to my house? Who are you?”

Seth responded, “I’m a salesman.”

“Where’s my son?”

“He’s in your bedroom.”

She turned toward the room. Seth glanced at Adam. Adam was not going to do it.

Seth took a swing. Then another.

Barbara fell to the floor.

Adam descended upon his mother. He went into a rage, hitting her at least a dozen times with the bottle. He kicked her in the chest. He hit her so hard, the bottle broke into shards of green.

It wasn’t like Hollywood. Barbara remained conscious.

She grasped her head with her hands, her elbows protecting her face. She was almost in a fetal position.

She screamed, begged, pleaded for reason. She knew her attacker was her son.”Why are you doing this?” she said.

“I have split personalities,” he answered.

Barbara stumbled to the back porch. Bleeding. Confused. Terrified.

Adam and Seth followed her out. Adam looked at her. Seth put his arm around her and helped her inside.

She was asking why. She was asking for an ambulance. She was asking for them to stop.

Seth brought her to a bar stool in the family room. She sat. Then, inexplicably, she turned to Seth and asked him to move her car.

Suddenly again the obedient 15-year-old, Seth picked up her car keys from where they had fallen in the kitchen. He walked out of the house.

Seth later said he heard Justin in the darkness. According to Seth, Justin incredulously asked Seth what he was doing. He told him.

“Why?” Justin said.

“Because she asked me to.”

She looks really bad, Justin said. She’s suffering.

“Put her out of her misery.”

Instead of moving the car, Seth went to the Cadillac. He grabbed a .308-caliber rifle. He loaded it.

He returned and handed the gun to Adam.

Adam held the gun at his hip, facing his mother.”Close your eyes,” he said. “I don’t want you to see this.”

“No, you’ll shoot me.”

He looked toward the bed room and motioned for the girls to come to him. They shook their heads no.

“I can’t … I can’t do it,” Adam said.

Seth returned again from outside. In one swift movement, he took the gun and brought the scope to his eye.

Adam walked to the laundry room door and leaned his head against it. He didn’t witness his mother’s final moment.

*****

Adam broke down as they left the house. So did Seth, falling to his knees on the ground. The girls hoisted Adam into the back seat. Tears streamed down the girls’ faces.

Seth called himself a heartless bastard. Justin, at the wheel, told them all he was proud.

“He made an analogy to a dog,” Seth later said. “If a dog was dying, you’d put it out of its misery. He was saying it to calm us.”

Justin had called from outside several times on a cell phone. The others said he gave them pep talks. Seth told detectives it was “something like a coach would talk to you about before a football game.”

Hours later, on a forest road, the five teens gathered around flames.

A bloody shirt burned. So did a blue coat. It had come from beneath the body of Barbara Thomas.

Adam dropped his birth certificate into the fire. It’s the beginning, he said, of a new life.

It was the beginning of a new life for all of them.

They fled, not knowing their deed was discovered before they reached Salem.

By the next day, they planned to be in Canada. They had less than $50 in cash, a Texaco card in Barbara’s name and Barbara’s new credit card which, without key numbers, they were unable to activate.

The girls wore several of Barbara’s rings that they had taken from her jewelry box. The group had stolen Barbara’s Honda Civic.

Adam, Seth later said, fretted as the shell from the fatal shot was tossed into the forest. He wanted to wear it on a necklace. Another memento lost.

He had one keepsake he took from the family safe. He kept his mother’s wedding ring in his wallet.

*****

Later, police found the Cadillac keys in a pair of shorts in a suitcase in the back of the Honda.

Justin’s attorneys implied that Adam ignited the events that led to the murder.

“I think the reasonable inference you can draw, your honor, is that Adam Thomas located these keys and secreted them in that suitcase,” Clarinda Spencer told the judge. “They never searched his room. They knew he packed. I think he hid those keys.”

Others implicated Justin.

Darryl Nakahira, Deschutes County chief deputy district attorney, pointed out during Justin’s trial that Seth said he was about to search the suitcase when he was told not to.

“(Justin) seemed to be agitated when he did that,” Nakahira said. “He didn’t want them to be looking in the suitcase.”

Ultimately, Judge Brady never gave an opinion on whether anyone deliberately lost the keys.

*****

Barbara’s brother Rod Jones woke on Tuesday, March 27, to the most spectacular sunrise he had ever seen.

The Jones family property doesn’t lack for views of stunning skies.

But this one was unparalleled. The whole family braved the biting morning air and gathered on the deck.

“I figure it was a gift from God,” Jones said. “It was to prepare me for that day to come.”

Read Part 6 in the series.