F for Fake

The Chicago Tribune sure isn't mincing words in its headline today. "HOAX!" it screams from the top of the article. It's an odd story about a two-year deception involving the student newspaper of Southern Illinois University, Iraq, and a fake little girl and her single father sent to war. (The same article appears to be available without registration from the Duluth News Tribune.) It's not clear exactly what happened. One woman in the midst of the controversy used the name Colleen Hastings. She claimed to be an in-law of the father and the guardian of the little girl, "Kodee Kennings," while her father was in Iraq. The Daily Egyptian ran frequent stories about "Kodee," keeping the college community up to date with her exploits as she waited for her father to return, and "Kodee" would even visit the newsroom from time to time. The whole thing, it now turns out, was false from the get-go. "Colleen Hastings" was really Jaimie Reynolds, and the little girl was an acquaintance of hers who now claims she believed she'd been shooting a movie (even if she'd never actually spied a camera during the entire affair). "Kodee's" father was played by another acquaintance of Reynolds who also bought into the movie angle.

The whole thing started to fall apart when it was reported that "Kodee's" dad had been killed in Iraq. Reynolds and the girl attended a memorial service for him in an American Legion hall last weekend, but by this time they were starting to get too much attention. People, particularly reporters for the Chicago Tribune, who'd been tipped to the human interest story, began to ask questions that had no answers. Reporter, and later Daily Egyptian editor, Michael Brenner had been involved in the story from the beginning. He claimed to have been given a letter from "Kodee" criticizing anti-war protesters at the university and, after exchanging e-mail with the her, started to explore her alleged situation. Reynolds claims that she and Brenner concocted the whole scenario, but Brenner is denying any involvement at this point. He did, however, always seem to be the middleman between "Kodee" and the paper, a relationship that flowered to such a degree that "Kodee" herself was supposedly writing a column for the paper from time to time.

Jaimie Reynolds claims the motive was to help Brenner's career. She said that she didn't want to take it as far as it has gone but that Brenner "just wouldn't let it go." For his part, Brenner is so far sticking to his story that he was taken in as much as anyone else. From what's come out at this point, however, this is the only motive that makes sense (but I certainly acknowledge that the situation could become even more convoluted before it's all over). Although Reynolds seems to have been in a position to have exploited the situation for money, she never appears to have gone down that road.

The reaction of the parents of the real little girl seem very odd in all this, as well. The father, a Nazarene pastor, and the mother have been identified in the various news stories but I'll not identify them here for the sake of their daughter (who's also been named). The family lived variously in Kentucky and Indiana and would allow Reynolds to drive their daughter on trips of several hours to get to the SIU campus. The mother told the Trib, "I just realized that I didn't know [Reynolds]. In the profession that my husband is in, we move and meet new people all the time. What if she'd never brought [our daughter] back? We feel like we're idiots." I guess. You have to wonder if they were more than innocent bystanders in all this, too.

I'm not sure what fascinates me about this story, or even why it's been given front-page play in the Trib. I came across it this morning and haven't quite been able to work my way through this post (I've written and rewritten this thing over and over because it keeps shifting on me--when I first looked the story up in Google news, there were just over a dozen references, but on my latest search, the number was almost 200). Other than some people telling lies that give them attention they don't really deserve, there's not much to the story when you get into the details. But there are too many things about it that don't make sense, that leave me asking more questions. I don't know if we'll find out more or if it will just go away, but it's attracted my curiosity, and I don't appear to be the only one. The Trib has put up some examples of "Kodee's" writing, some of which appeared in her column "Kenningsology," and it's pretty terrible. The Southern Illinoisan of Carbondale is reporting that Reynolds seems to be holed up in her family home while various TV crews try to contact her. Tune in tomorrow, as they say.