I can't understand why nobody talks about this.
tachyonburst 10/14/2021 (Sunday) 17:08:34 #46183950
Hello again, Parawatchers. Today I’ll be looking at the case of Gabriella ‘Gabby Storm’ Edwards. Before I start, I should mention that there’s been previous arguments in other threads about this case, which was very famous at the time, and I’d rather not see a repeat here. A lot of you probably already know a lot of what I’m going to say, but given all the rumours and misrepresentation of the facts out there, I’m going to be thorough and not skip anything. I want to emphasize that I’ll only be discussing the public facts of the case, and I’m not trying to defend or attack anyone— so if you want to argue over the case, do it somewhere else, please.
Also, before anyone gets on my case about it: yes, I was a big fan of Gabby Storm. No, that doesn’t change anything. I’m going to remain as unbiased as possible. In fact, I’m writing this post because I was such a big fan, because it helped me notice the weirder aspects of this case. With that done…
tachyonburst 10/14/2021 (Sunday) 17:15:12 #46183957
Gabriella Edwards was born in Chicago in 1989, to Paige and Tyler Edwards. She was the youngest of three siblings, the older two being Josephine and Mitchell Edwards. Interviews with neighbours and other family members all said that the Edwards parents were kind and loving, but strongly encouraged all of their children to be ambitious and push themselves in the pursuit of their dreams. Paige was and still is a successful record label executive, and Tyler a fashion designer. Josephine became an actress— if you’re into theatre, you’ve probably heard of her— and Mitchell is an acclaimed classical musician. Both of them are established and well-respected names in their fields.
All the interviews agree that as a child, Gabriella was set on becoming a singer or a TV/film actress, but there was a problem: she had the drive and ambition, but not the kind of raw talent she’d need to be successful in either field. She wasn’t terrible, but she definitely wasn’t anywhere near good enough. Her parents had the kind of connections that could give her a boost, but Gabriella emphatically stated that she refused to be the kind of nepo baby who became a big name and had no talent to back it up. According to her siblings, her parents did tell her that they weren’t ashamed of her and that she should try something else, maybe see if she had talent in another field, but Gabriella refused. She wasn’t going to be an untalented nobody— for her, it was either becoming a famous singer/actor or nothing.
tachyonburst 10/14/2021 (Sunday) 17:30:23 #46183961
Gabriella gave up on singing and acting for a while as a teenager. (I’ve seen suggestions that her siblings bullied her for lacking talent, but not by anyone who actually knew the family.) She went through a moody, ‘emo’ phase and started hanging out with a group of local teenagers who were into the occult, although interviews suggest that they were more angsty and anti-authoritarian than actually in touch with the paranormal. (That being said, members of the group claimed that they found several paranormal artifacts, though none of them ever provided any details or actual proof.)
When Gabriella was about seventeen and a half, the group’s leader, nineteen year old Sebastian Jones, suddenly died from a head injury after what authorities determined was an accidental fall. The group broke up as a result, and Gabriella graduated high school and moved on to college, where she studied Music, having decided that she was going to be a singer. It was there that she shocked her family: seemingly overnight, her voice had gone from ‘mediocre at best’ to ‘really excellent’, the deep, rich contralto she became famous for. Gabriella claimed that this was the result of studying with a new music teacher for some time, but she never gave a name, saying that she wanted to keep it secret so nobody could copy her.
Whatever the cause, Gabriella graduated and began working on the start of the singing career she wanted. Her chosen method of starting it was going on America’s New Star. For the non-Americans, it’s another reality TV talent show— you know the kind, I doubt I’ll need to explain it. For anyone who doesn’t watch reality TV: one, I salute you, and two, there is one thing I will explain: because audience participation is such a big part of these shows, a lot of them put more emphasis on the sob stories of the contestants than, you know, the actual talent, and America’s New Star was no exception. That was a problem for Gabriella, because she didn’t really have one. (A sob story, that is.)
‘When I was a kid, I was told I wasn’t talented enough to achieve my dreams and now here I am’ sounds OK on paper, but at the end of the day, nobody made Gabriella become a singer. She could have tried for a thousand other careers, and her family were encouraging her to do just that. She was a pretty white woman from an upper-middle class family with connections who loved and supported her unilaterally, so she had a lot of viewers against her from the start. She wisely didn’t make a big thing out of her ‘sob story’, but she did mention it a few times, and it always got a very negative response from that part of the viewership, especially in contrast to other contestants who’d overcome a lot worse and had a lot less support than her.
Gabriella made it to the top 10 easily, but it wasn’t looking good for her— she was definitely one of the most talented, but she wasn’t especially popular. Getting at least third place would be essential to launch her career, but not many people thought that she’d make it that far. And then one of her fellow contestants went missing: Clarissa Smith, a singer and guitarist who’d been in a wheelchair since she was five and was one of the most popular contestants, thought to have a good chance of winning. I don’t have much information there— what I can tell you is that Smith never showed up for filming and numerous search parties found no traces of her and no clues to where she might have gone. All the other contestants, including Gabriella, claimed to be friends (or at least on good terms) with Smith and to have no idea where she was, and the police investigation found nothing to indicate otherwise.
tachyonburst 10/14/2021 (Sunday) 17:37:45 #46183962
In the wake of Smith’s disappearance, there was a huge debate as to whether the season should be cancelled or not. People argued that it was insensitive to continue; people argued that it would be unfair to the other contestants to just cancel it then and there. People argued that it would be a brazen, shameless cash grab to continue; people argued that Smith would have wanted it to continue. Finally, the network decided to hold one final show in honour of Smith, where all the contestants would be performing her favourite songs. To wrap the season up, the top three would all get recording contracts and all proceeds from the show would go to Smith’s family. After the votes were tallied, Gabriella was in third place.
Using the stage name ‘Gabby Storm’, Gabriella’s first three albums were all very successful— pop music with just enough heavy guitar to be edgy— but she had a problem: all of her music was written by her record label’s songwriters. She did have input, but she wanted to make her own music. So, for her fourth album, Shimmer, she did just that… and it flopped. Hard. As a former fan, I’ll be the first to admit that it just wasn’t working. The songs weren’t awful, but they definitely weren’t up to the standard of her first three albums. By all accounts, Gabriella took it very badly— what she actually did in response depends on who’s telling the story, I’ve heard a lot of versions, but the most common story is that she apparently contemplated quitting music altogether.
She didn’t, though. Instead, she went back to the record label, ate crow, and put her fifth album out a year later- Glamour, which was written entirely by the label’s songwriters. The songs were much better than Shimmer, but Gabriella had lost her shine. Most fans didn’t really care about who wrote her songs— she was listed as a contributor on all of them except the covers, so it wasn’t really a big deal. But knowing that ‘contributor’ actually meant ‘tweaked a couple of bits here and there because she wasn’t good enough to write actually good music’ lost her a lot of fans. (I wasn’t one of them, if you’re wondering— I just loved her voice, I didn’t care who wrote the words. It wasn’t like she just accepted anything put in front of her, she got really invested in her songs’ creation. But I digress.) Her career was in a perilous position— Gabriella wanted to be the next Britney Spears or Beyoncé (for the kids, Taylor Swift or Charli XCX), but she wasn’t anywhere near that big, and if she was unlucky, she might never get there.
tachyonburst 10/14/2021 (Sunday) 17:41:53 #46183965
Around this time, two things happened. The first was that one of Gabriella’s backup dancers, Tora Michelson, went missing. Again, no trace was found of her, but her ex-boyfriend was widely suspected to be responsible, given that they’d had a nasty breakup. (He was investigated and arrested, but released for lack of evidence.) The second was that Gabriella became increasingly paranoid and erratic, particularly with regard to her personal possessions. She would refuse to allow others to handle her possessions on tour, often banned everyone (including her assistants) from entering her dressing room, and threatened more than one staffer with being fired if they opened any boxes or drawers. She claimed to be worried about stalkers, but never provided any specifics.
After Michelson’s disappearance, Gabriella took a short hiatus from touring, stating that she was working on a new album and wanted to respect Michelson’s family by not carrying on as if everything was normal. Maybe a year later, she announced her sixth album, Radiance. All of the singles were welcomed as some of her best music in some time, and when the album released, it was hailed as one of, if not her best album to date.
However, this didn’t appease Gabriella, even though she became considerably more famous and acclaimed as a result. She was a ray of sunshine in her public appearances, but behind the scenes, many stories were told of her becoming short-tempered, capricious, irrational and very hard to work for. (From what I've heard, she often screamed at people and occasionally threw things, but never put her hands on anyone.) Everything finally came to a head on the final night of the Radiance tour.
tachyonburst 10/14/2021 (Sunday) 17:44:01 #46183968
August 19, 2007. It’s the last show of the tour, and it’s supposed to be the biggest night. However, things went off the rails a few hours before the show was supposed to start, when James Matthew Torson, an obsessed fan who had previously sent multiple disturbing letters to Gabriella, entered the venue disguised as a contractor and went into her dressing room. It was empty, as everyone except Gabriella had been banned from entering it, and Gabriella was not there at the time. Torson began going through Gabriella’s belongings and then focused on a locked trunk that Gabriella had brought on multiple tours, its contents unknown.
However, venue security had seen Torson enter a room that nobody beside Gabriella was supposed to enter, consulted with her team and implemented a plan: several security guards locked the door— the only entrance— and guarded it from the outside while the police were contacted. Torson was unable to leave the room due to lacking a key, but he did not seem to hear the guards or the sound of the door locking. Instead, he was trying to break open the trunk. Meanwhile, staff were attempting to locate Gabriella, who had arrived at the venue hours before, but nobody seemed to know where she was at this point.
This is the bit that anyone who knows anything about the case remembers: Torson broke the trunk open, saw the contents and freaked out. Screaming, hammering on the door, begging the guards to let him out, you name it. The cameras didn’t see what was in the trunk, so nobody knew what was going on until the police arrived, arrested Torson and opened the trunk. Inside were multiple severed human heads, not at all decomposed, with no sign of what killed them.
tachyonburst 10/14/2021 (Sunday) 17:50:03 #46183973
I want to emphasize here that this is one of the most contested parts of the story. I’ve heard people say that there were only three heads, but I've heard others say everything up to fifteen. The identities of the heads have also been debated, but what I can confidently say is that there were at least six heads. Two were identified as belonging to Clarissa Smith and Tora Michelson; the remaining four belonged to a student at the high school Gabriella had attended who’d gone missing the year she graduated, and three people who’d been reported missing and never found, with no known link between them and Gabriella— the most recent had gone missing about a week before the trunk was opened. Again, there may have been more heads, but there were at least those six.
I’ve also heard a lot of varying stories about what else was in the trunk. The most popular stories are a mirror, a piece of stone, a crystal ball or a book of magic spells; the only confirmed object was a small ball of an unknown black stone. Nothing out of the ordinary— the kind of thing you could buy from any seller of precious stones. I don’t know what happened to it; it wasn’t mentioned during the trial or in police accounts.
Anyway, the police were obviously looking very hard for Gabriella, and they finally found her in the depths of the venue. I’ve heard varying accounts about what exactly she was doing when she was found: she strolled out of the depths of the venue like she’d just been for a walk; she was attempting to kill herself; she was painting occult symbols in human blood on the walls; she was trying to flee unobserved. I don’t know, and we may never know. She was arrested, and eyewitness accounts attest to her seemingly having a mental breakdown upon being told what for, becoming almost incoherent and weeping uncontrollably.
However, she was ruled fit to stand trial. Investigations never found the rest of the bodies or any sign of how they died; Gabriella invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer any questions, only shaking her head and crying. That didn’t stop a jury from finding her guilty, and she was sentenced to life imprisonment. She lasted about two months in prison before killing herself; no cause of death was ever released.
tachyonburst 10/14/2021 (Sunday) 17:58:29 #46183981
Up until now, the case sounds weird as hell, but there’s no actual confirmed occult influence, right? See, this bit is why I wanted to talk about this case: the bizarre thing about it is that almost nobody talks about it today. At her peak, Gabby Storm was an international star whose records hit platinum; her songs were all over the radio and on multiple film and TV soundtracks. She and her father collaborated on a successful clothing line, and Gabriella made several cameos in TV shows and movies. After the heads were found, people were talking about almost nothing else until the trial ended. The trial was sensational; her suicide made headlines everywhere, pun absolutely not intended. And yet these days, it’s as though nearly everyone has agreed to pretend it never happened.
Her music is still online, with the comment sections opened, and there's a few small fan forums, but nobody brings up the murders, when you’d think it’d be the only thing anyone would ever talk about. Her family never mention her in interviews unless they’re specifically asked, and they keep the answers as short and to the point as possible. All four of them still have successful careers, untainted by being related to a serial killer. There’s no memorials for the victims, no searches for the rest of the bodies, and it’s not even known if Gabriella was buried or cremated or what- from what I could find, there doesn't seem to be any grave or marker for her. It’s as though Gabby Storm was merely some pop singer whose career flopped and then she dropped out of public sight, and not a convicted serial killer. I can't understand why nobody talks about this.
There is one more thing I want to say before I wrap this up, though. All the accounts about Gabby during the trial and her imprisonment agree that she seemed absolutely devastated, but not with any apparent remorse— as though she wasn’t sorry about what she did, she was just sorry that her career would be over. Multiple guards attested that after she was imprisoned, she repeatedly disturbed other prisoners by singing loudly and talking to some unseen person, begging and appealing to them for something unknown. She wound up in solitary several times for the disturbances and was also assessed by mental health specialists, as it was thought that she might have gone insane or had another mental breakdown.
The night she committed suicide, however, the accounts all agree that something changed. Apropos of apparently nothing, she was mid-song when her voice seemingly broke, and went from the deep, beautiful contralto to a thin, wavering imitation, very reminiscent of the way she’d sounded as a child.