As the Kolb retrial starts Monday, it’s time for readers to join discussion

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By Barb Ickes | Saturday, February 4, 2006 10:54 PM CST | () comments

This is an invitation. During Sarah Kolb’s first trial in the murder of Adrianne Reynolds, comments from readers poured onto our Web site pages carrying the court stories. Some people vented, some ranted, some questioned and others accused.

It was part-therapy, part-argument and part-, I think, prayer.

As we head tomorrow into Kolb’s retrial at Dixon, Ill., I invite you to join the discussion.

This is partly selfish. It would help me tremendously to know what kind of questions you have about what’s going on in Dixon. I’ve stewed for weeks about how to put a fresh face each day on a story that so many Quad-Citians already know by heart.

We’ll all be on the lookout for discrepancies in testimony from the first trial to the second. And, of course, the lay of the land will have changed between Rock Island and Dixon. We’ll have new jurors and a few other new faces in the courtroom as Lee County officials host the retrial.

But this is still about the murder, burning, dismemberment and concealment of a 16-year-old East Moline girl’s body and the sworn explanations about how it happened.

Maybe it will be easier to read the second time. Maybe it will be easier to report. There is room for skepticism on both counts.

If something occurs to you, share it. If you are curious about what others are saying about the trial, you may simply read their comments. The posts can be found (and added to) by clicking on the daily Kolb trial story at www.qctimes.com.

At the end of each day’s story will be room for comments.

If I miss a detail, I would hope that you will point it out. Maybe there’s something you want to know that hasn’t been reported. Maybe you’ll remember something from the first trial that is missing in the second.

In trying to capture the big picture, some of the smaller images get lost. This is why it’s helpful to have more than one set of eyes looking out for the details.

In addition to filing daily stories about the court proceedings, I will pay attention to what readers are saying when those stories hit the Internet. Sometimes I’ll answer what I can live — on the Web site. If there’s something of broader interest, I’ll try to find that and report it in the next day’s published story, too.

That’s what I can do — bring all the facts from the courtroom into the discussion.

What I can’t do is force a tone of respect into that dialogue.

That’s the other thing I’m asking of you.

Barb Ickes can be contacted at

(563) 383-2316 or bickes@qctimes.com.