Inside spoiled teen car crash ‘killer’ and his teacher mom’s bizarre relationship
A Michigan mother said she feared for her troubled son months before he totaled her BMW in a 100-mph crash that killed an 18-year-old swimmer.
Kiernan Tague, 17, is charged with second-degree murder in the death of his friend Flynn MacKrell after he lost control of his mother’s BMW in Grosse Pointe on the evening of Nov. 17, 2023.
Investigators have since revealed that Kiernan was no stranger to law enforcement, having been in contact with authorities at least 22 times since 2018, the Detroit Free Press.
Police visited Kiernan’s home several times after his mother Elizabeth Puleo-Tague, a minister at a Jesuit school, reported that he was losing control and “breaking things in the house.”
Kiernan’s last contact with police before the fatal crash occurred on August 30, 2023, when Elizabeth called police “because Kiernan was screaming and throwing things in the house because his mother refused to give him an American Express Gold Card.”
Kiernan Tague, 17, is charged with second-degree murder in the death of his friend and neighbor Flynn MacKrell after he lost control of his mother’s BMW in Grosse Pointe last year
Elizabeth Puleo-Tague is accused of failing to take reasonable steps to prevent her child from hurting others after she became aware of his speeding, as evidenced by several texts
In 2020, police responded to a call from the mother, who claimed her son “had just attacked her and fled,” officers wrote.
The report goes on to describe how the incident unfolded: Kiernan was picked up from his friend’s house and became angry with his mother.
“While Kiernan was in the front seat, he turned around and began hitting his mother (who was in the back seat) and even bit her on the hand,” an officer wrote.
Kiernan, in turn, was arrested for domestic violence and held briefly in the Wayne County Juvenile Hall.
In November last year, a few days before the accident, another fight broke out between the two, this time at home, when Kiernan broke a table after his mother refused to let him use one of her two cars.
Kiernan’s passenger was 18-year-old freshman Flynn MacKrell, an excellent swimmer whose death was ruled a homicide. His parents, Thad MacKrell and Anne Vanker, are trying to use the messages to show how the suspect’s mother was partly responsible
Kiernan was driving over 100 miles per hour in a 25 mile per hour zone when he crashed his mother’s brand new BMW X3 M on November 17, 2023
“I just asked you to take your car… and you refused. Now I’m late and we have a broken table,” Kiernan texted on Nov. 3, 2023, according to the report seen by the Free Press.
A Grosse Pointe City detective wrote the following about the “extensive” text messages the two collected during this attempt: “There was much discussion of Kiernan taking/using his mother’s credit card without permission, being out at night without permission, and Kiernan’s reckless driving.”
The investigator added: ‘The messages between the two suggest that Kiernan’s mother has little to no control over Kiernan.
‘Kiernan routinely drove recklessly and took/used his mother’s credit cards without permission, despite his mother’s repeated orders not to do so.’
But the relationship between mother and son also appeared cordial at times: During a conversation in October 2023, Elizabeth asked her then 16-year-old son to buy her wine.
The message read: “Would you like to bring a bottle of wine??… Please!” to which Kiernan replied: “Sure.”
A week later, just days before the fatal accident that killed Flynn, Kiernan’s mother sent him a screenshot of a website explaining the penalties for having a fake ID.
Flynn’s parents, Anne Vanker and Thad Mackrell, allege that the exchanges between Elizabeth and Kiernan demonstrate that the mother is criminally liable.
Police are investigating Elizabeth after text messages emerged that showed she was aware of her son’s speeding, with intimate knowledge of the incident via a GPS app called Life360.
Flynn’s parents told the Free Press that Elizabeth should face criminal charges. His mother Anne responded with shock: “It’s like she gave him an AR-15.”
Elizabeth wrote one of the texts to Kiernan on September 14, 2023, two months before the crash: “Take it easy now!”
This happened after the then 16-year-old boy was caught driving the family’s Audi coupe at 208 km/h.
“I have screenshots of you… going 123 mph… I’m terrified,” read another.
Kiernan Tague, the driver who survived the catastrophic high-speed crash, has had at least 22 documented encounters with police since 2018
Elizabeth, the campus chaplain at the University of Detroit Jesuit High School, bought a brand new BMW a few weeks after sending those texts and let her son have access to it, despite the fact that the BMW could reach speeds of 177 mph. Stock BMW X3 M pictured above
The Tague House in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, is pictured above
Flynn’s parents, Anne Vanker and Thad Mackrell, want the messages to show that Elizabeth failed to take reasonable steps to prevent her child from hurting others.
They wrote in a letter to local prosecutors: ‘[Kiernan] kept driving too fast, and mother knew it.
Additionally, a few weeks after sending the texts, Elizabeth, the campus chaplain at the University of Detroit Jesuit High School, purchased a brand new BMW for herself. She then gave her son access to the BMW, despite the car being capable of speeds of 177 mph.
Vanker and her husband are now using the conversations between the mother and her son as evidence that Elizabeth knew for months that her son was driving recklessly, but did nothing about it.
Speaking to the Free Press, she said Elizabeth also owns a 2015 Subaru Forrester, but she let her son drive the much more powerful Audi and later the BMW, even after warning him about what he was doing.
Elizabeth is the campus pastor at the University of Detroit Jesuit High School
However, buying the BMW and leaving the keys behind so he could take them freely was the worst offense, she said, likening the prospect to giving the unruly teen a loaded assault rifle.
“She was sitting on a ticking time bomb,” Vanker told the newspaper, eight months after her son’s death.
“She knows he’s losing control, and yet she gives him a gun. It’s like giving him an AR-15.”
DailyMail.com has contacted the University of Detroit Jesuit High School for comment on this story.