State of Midlands v. Tyler Perry

## Synopsis

On Friday, October 22, 2004, after returning home from a night out with the soccer team, Bailey Reynolds was kidnapped from the Reynolds home. That evening Bailey’s parents, Ryan and Madison Reynolds, were having dinner at the residence of Tyler and K.C. Perry. The couples both live in Evanston, Midlands. They had left their three children, Kayla, Spencer, and Bailey, with the babysitter, Peyton Bralow. After checking on Bailey around 11:00 p.m., Peyton placed a 911 call to report a possible kidnapping. The police arrived shortly after the call was placed and found Peyton, Kayla, and Spencer in the home. Upon investigation, a ransom note was found in Bailey’s room asking for $250,000 for the return of the child. Three days later on Monday, October 25, Bailey was found in a Hampton Hotel in the neighboring town of Freeport. The child was blindfolded and handcuffed to a pipe in the bathroom. Bailey was not physically injured and was returned to the Reynolds. After the police investigation, Tyler Perry was arrested for the kidnapping.

## Details

This case is described as being a criminal case under the charge of kidnapping. It centers around events taking place in the towns of Evanston and Freeport, Midlands in October of 2004.

Ryan Reynolds is the CEO of Fisz Enterprises, a company that makes enough profit for Ryan and the Reynolds family to live well off. Fisz Enterprises also employs the defendant Tyler Perry, along with two other witnesses in the case, Lauren Konanova and Jesse Sturgeon. Ryan lives in the town of Evanston, Midlands along with a spouse and three children, including Bailey Reynolds, who was only 11 years old at the time of the incident. Ryan and the defendant were good friends, as their families would commonly eat dinner together, and the two even owned keys to each others house.

Tyler Perry worked at Fisz Enterprises, and had a spouse K.C. Perry along with two children. In 2003, K.C. Perry began to suffer from frequent headaches and memory loss. After visiting a doctor, they learned that K.C. was suffering from a growing brain tumor. The doctor gave K.C. two years to live at most without treatment. However there was an experimental surgery available which if successful could improve K.C's lifespan to up to 20 years. The surgery cost $300,000 however, and Tyler's medical insurance at Fisz Enterprises would not cover it. Tyler had been hoping to receive a promotion for a recently opened up position at Fisz Enterprises, however Ryan Reynolds decided not to give the promotion to Tyler, despite being friends and being aware of K.C.'s brain tumor. This made Tyler furious, with some witnesses reporting that Tyler insisted Tyler would do anything to make sure K.C. got that surgery, and that Ryan needed to have something terrible happen to Ryan's family to understand the position Tyler was in.

On the night of October 22, 2004, the night of the incident, the Reynolds were invited over to the Perry's household for dinner. During the dinner they ran out of wine, so Tyler offered to go out and pick up some more. During this same time, the Reynolds children, including Bailey, were left alone at their house mere minutes away with babysitter Peyton Bralow. Bailey reports being grabbed and drugged by some assailant who broke into Bailey's room. Bailey could not identify the kidnapper. When Bailey came to, Bailey was in a car driving somewhere. When Bailey came to again, Bailey was blindfolded, and handcuffed to a wall. Over the next several days, Bailey was left in the room, with only occasional food and water coming from the kidnapper whom Bailey could not see or hear.

After Bailey was kidnapped, the babysitter Peyton Bralow, who claimed to have fallen asleep during this time, woke up and found Bailey missing. Peyton called the police to report the kidnapping. It was around this time that Tyler Perry had returned back home from the trip to pick up more wine from the nearby town of Freeport, about 20 minutes away. After the police arrived, the Reynolds were informed of their child's kidnapping and returned home. Police began to investigate the household, and found a ransom note in Bailey's room, demanding $250,000 for Bailey's safe return. Over the next several days, police investigated and searched for the missing child.

Three days later, Bailey was found at the Hampton Hotel, in the nearby town of Freeport. The bell-boy at the Hampton Hotel, Micky Skogan had received complaints from guests of noise coming out of a hotel room on the third floor. When Skogan investigated the room, inside was Bailey, blindfolded and handcuffed to the wall. Bailey was safely returned to the Reynolds family. The hotel room was reserved under an alias, and no hotel staff could successfully identify who made that reservation several days earlier. However, police eventually decided to arrest Tyler Perry for the kidnapping of Bailey Reynolds.

The Prosecution alleges that Tyler Perry left the Perry household under the excuse of buying wine, but ended up actually going to the Reynolds' residence, in order to kidnap Bailey and receive a ransom to pay for K.C.'s surgery. Tyler then took Bailey to the Hampton Hotel in Freeport in order to store Bailey there, as Tyler would be giving a conference for Fisz Enterprises in that very same hotel over the next several days. Traces of the drug used to incapacitate Bailey were also found in Tyler's car, along with six strands of Bailey's hair. The defense counter argues that Tyler had no motive to commit the crime, because weeks before the kidnapping, Tyler had received a job offer from another company with health insurance that would cover the surgery. They also claim that the police did not look enough into the babysitter Peyton Bralow as a potential alternate suspect, as Peyton did not have an alibi the night Bailey was kidnapped and had direct access to Bailey's bedroom. Peyton also works at the Hampton Hotel and was spotted there during the weekend Bailey was missing.

## Witnesses

### Prosecution

* Peyton Bralow
* Bailey Reynolds

### Defense

* Tyler Perry
* K.C. Perry

### Swing

* Frankie Gustovo
* Lauren Konanova
* Jordan Nathanson
* Ryan Reynolds
* Micky Skogan
* Jesse Sturgeon
* Detective Donny Walsh
* Sam Lawrence

## Other Case References

* This case references Gilbertson v. The Everest Experience. One of the exhibits in this case is the Midlands University Newspaper, the Maverick. On the Maverick front page, one of the articles mentions Roger Holman, a witness from that case.
* Detective Donny Walsh states that Walsh's mentor and former boss was Officer Ryan Stanfield. Officer Stanfield is a witness from Smith v. Thompson.
* This case is referenced in Walton v. BNN, when witness Fran Martin recalls a time he wanted to run a news story accusing Peyton Bralow as a suspect in the crime.
* An exhibit in Davis v. Happy Land Toy Company references the events of this case. According to the exhibit, Peyton Bralow was actually the culprit who drugged Bailey.
* In Park v. Duran, Jesse Duran states that Peyton Bralow was one of Jesse's former babysitters.
* In Ginger v. Heisman, Casey French, the man who tried to suppress voter turnout in the election through a misinformation campaign, went by the alias Bailey Reynolds.
* This case is also referenced in a piece of case law in Taylor v. Trifecta Entertainment, "Bailey Reynolds v. Kees Enterprises." The case law describes an autobiography written by Bailey Reynolds about the kidnapping, and another work that is ultimately found to infringe on Bailey's copyright. This case law also says that Peyton Bralow was the true culprit, meaning that Tyler Perry was canonically found Not Guilty.

## Trivia

* This is the first documented case to ever feature a child witness, which makes it one of only three cases to ever feature one, along with Park v. Duran and State v. Hendricks.