I WENT TO THE WORST HOUSE PARTY EVER

(Published on viceland.com)

Below is the Facebook status of Florida teen Tyler Hadley, inviting people to a party at his house. A couple of hours before posting this status, Tyler allegedly bludgeoned his parents to death with a hammer. During the party, their corpses were locked up in the master bedroom.

BTW: HMU means “hit me up”. Jeez Grandad.

As you can see from his Facebook, the party was such a success that Tyler was planning to have another one for Monday night, (perhaps he didn’t want to be alone in his house with the decomposing bodies of his mother and father). Fortunately the police, acting on an anonymous tip-off, arrested him before he could hold Worst Party Ever Part II.

Unsurprisingly this noxious combination of parties, guilt and horror spoke to us. So yesterday we got in touch with a few of Tyler’s friends. Understandably, most of the ones who attended the party didn’t want to speak to us about it. A close friend of his who wasn’t at the party told us that, though Tyler had had troubles recently, nobody saw this coming: “He was a funny guy. Always cracking jokes, never showed any signs of distress. He started smoking pot and drinking. Once he started doing that, he started cutting class. Then he dropped out altogether. He’s been in rehab for it. Nothing major, just a few hours a day on weekdays. This is all a total surprise though. I think maybe he wasn’t trying to kill them, just injure them. I’m hoping I can go see him soon.”

That’s a good friend, I’m not sure I’d want to go and visit someone who had just smashed two people’s heads in. I think it’d be too awkward. In the end we did manage to speak to one guy who was at the party, understandably he didn’t want to give his name.

VICE: Hey man, thanks for talking to us.Anonymous Party Guy: No problems.

So how long did the party last? When I first read about it, I figured the papers had exaggerated and people had only been there for a little bit.
Well, I got there at like, 10:30, but I only stayed for like, 30 minutes. I hear it lasted until about 4.00 or 5.00 in the morning.

Was it a good party? 
It was crazy, a bunch of people.

What type of music was playing?
The music was mostly rap played off of YouTube.

Maybe it’s a stupid question, but what were people doing? Just drinking and doing drugs and dancing?
Just beer from what I could see. People were playing beer pong too. And yeah, I’m sure there was drugs.

What kind of drugs? A newspaper is saying today that Tyler went mad after taking three ecstasy pills.
I’m guessing weed. I didn’t physically see any drugs, though.

What kind of crowd was it?
Just regular people for this city. I guess you could call them just middle class? Not really anybody special there. Just a bunch of high school kids. There weren’t like, any thugs or gangs and shit like that.

Was Tyler a good mate of yours?
I don’t know him that well. He’s a friend of a friend of a friend, really.

So how did you end up at the party?
I got texts from a lot of my friends with the address to the party, so I figured I would check it out and drove there.

Did you see Tyler there?
Yeah, he was acting weird. Kinda fidgety.

What was he doing?
Well, most people were partying inside the house, but he was outside most of the time, sitting on the bed of a truck. He was always quiet so I wasn’t thrown off by that, but he looked kind of nervous.

Jesus. Did any of his friends seem to have any idea of what was going on?
Not at all.

Some news reports are saying that there were rumours at the party that Tyler had killed his parents, but everybody just assumed it was a joke.
Not that I heard. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. They were all just drinking and having fun.

How do you feel about what happened?
Obviously it really creeps me out. I was in the house while there were two dead bodies not 100ft from me.

Yeah, that’s pretty horrible. When did you first hear about his parents? Did you believe it?
The very next morning. And no, I was in total disbelief. I never thought something like that would ever happen.

This is a bit of a lame thing to ask, but what do you think made Tyler do what he did?
I have no idea what made him do what he did. I don’t think anyone does.

No. OK, thanks for talking to me. Good luck with it all.

So there you have it. Tyler allegedly killed both his parents with a hammer so he could have some people over to play beer pong and listen to rap videos on YouTube. Why did no one tell him that’s what college is for? Kids these days, they all wanna grow up too fast.