Bully: a True Story of High School Revenge

by Jim Schutze

Bobby Kent was a bully--a steroid-pumped 20-year-old who dominated his peers in their comfortable, middle-class Ft. Lauderdale beach community through psychological, physical and sexual abuse. But on a summer night in 1993, Bobby was lured to the edge of the Florida everglades with a promise of sex and drugs and was never seen alive again. The tormentor had become the victim in a bizarre and brutal act of vengeance carried out with ruthless efficiency and cold-blooded premeditation by seven of his high school acquaintances, including his lifelong best friend and instigated by one overweight, under-loved teenager who believed her life would be perfect if only Bobby Kent were dead.

Bully is a riveting story of adolescent rage and bloody revenge all the more harrowing and horrific because it's true.

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction, Crime, History, Dark, Adult, Revenge

304 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published March 1, 1997

Reviews

[Misty Marie Harms]

True story about a group of friends that got together and murdered the bully of their group. The ringleader Lisa simply wanted Bobby dead because he was a bad influence on her on and off boyfriend Marty. The other teens were simply high and sick of putting up with Bobby's antics. It all comes to a head one night in 1993 on a dark road by the Everglades when Bobby is tortured, killed, and left for the animals to feast on.

Well researched book. Easy to follow the timeline. Recommend!

[Bren fall in love with the sea.]

"This is a true story".

Bully: a True Story of High School Revenge by Jim Schutze



Horrifying. This is a true crime book that is exceptionally well written, particularly by True Crime standards. It takes place in Florida and involves a group of kids who murdered one of their clique members..their excuse was..he was a bully.


This book really gives one a dose of reality and fast. I can't say it was a "fun" or "pleasant" read. It is actually pretty horrible. And the glimpse into the young adult brain..at least these young adults..was really chilling.

However, going on the assumption that the words written are completely factual what is also frightening are the reactions of the parents of the kids who participated in the murder. Seriously, this book is like taking a glimpse into the darkest element of humanity and staying there till the book ends. I must however give props to the author as true crime books are not usually so impactful as this one.

[♥ Marlene♥]

There are only 2 known photos of the victim and on the one most used he looks 40. I like this one better:
Beware Spoiler is coming up. !

Bobby Kent: The Victim. R.I.P.


Lisa Connelly Then:





Lisa Connelly: There are alas no photos of her how she looks now. I could not find them at least.


Heather Swallers




Ali Willis (Alice) older:




Marty Puzzio Victims "Best Friend"


Derek Dzvirko: (Lisa's cousin) then



Derek Dzvirko later:




Derek Kaufman now:


After reading this book pretty soon I began wondering about the teens described in this book. I had never known teens behave like this or even speak like the author tells me they speak. Okay I am not an American but I have read a lot of books and have never come across this kind of teens, raping and screwing around as if it is normal. Prostituting themselves and even making gay movies? wth!
Yes it makes for interesting reading but as this is being marketed as a true crime book, meaning what the author writes is based on facts I was very surprised.

But once he described the 2 days they were trying to kill and filled in what they said, what Bobby said and even what Bobby thinks I was so pissed off. I knew this was not non fiction but fiction based on a true crime.

First of all the teen is not anymore a bully than the others that were portrayed in this book!

What I also noticed was there is not one photo of the victim and it seems the author has taken what the killers said as facts. By writing this book he victimized Bobby Kent and his family again.
Not only was Bobby murdered in a most horrid way, afterwards there was a book and a movie where he was portrayed as a bully as if he deserved being slaughtered.

This is why I can't give it 4 stars even though the story is good.

Afterwards I discovered all the girls were already walking free while most of them men were still jailed. Why give someone 40 years and then let them out. Lisa was given 40 years. This happened in 1993 and madam was out in 2004! To me she is the one that should have been given life. Then we have Alice aka Ali Willis. She did an interview and is still lying.

Reading interviews I found it seems all the killers still think what they did was normal and make themselves out to be victims:

Derek Dzvirko: "Honestly and truthfully, I've made peace with this a long time ago," Dzvirko said Wednesday. "I don't have bad dreams about it, I don't think about it, I don't dwell on it, I don't ponder it. I've moved on" (How dare he say that. Did Bobby's family move one. Bobby was not able to.)
"There is a way to become a normal person and live a normal life, there is," said Lisa Connelly, who served 11 years for her role in the murder. "You have to fight for it, though."

Kent's sister in Cooper City says she doesn't understand it.

"It disgusts me that they have freedom after killing someone," said Laila Kent, 41. "They're horrible people, and they should be ashamed of what they did. They don't even deserve to be alive."

Source: http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2013...


There is also a rumour? online that the baby Lisa was carrying was Bobby's. If you know more please let me know. Lisa Connelly is apparently on facebook. Her daughter is called Megan and there is a photo but not going to place it. She has nothing to do with it.




This was another book from my wish list. I ordered it on abebooks.co.uk but it never arrived. I finally decided to let them know it had not arrived and they send me another copy which I just received.

[David]

From time to time I enjoy a true crime story and I have to admit I read this one rather quickly..

Bully is the story of Buddy and Marty. The two are best friends, but Buddy dominates Marty fiercely. He hits him, teases him, and tortures him. That is, until Marty meets and starts dating Lisa. Lisa, fed up with her man being the target of Buddy's temper and wild mood swings, instigates an evil plot to murder Buddy. Before it is over she enlists seven teens (most of who do not even know Buddy) to participate in Buddy's murder. They kill him in a clumsy and brutal manner and leave his body for the alligators in a Florida canal. But these are teens and you know that they cannot keep their mouth shuts.

Schutz violates what I consider the cardinal rule of true crime writing--he records lengthy conversations of dialogue between the seven teens involved. Strong research and interviews might help him sort of re-create the dialogues-- but Schutze tries too hard to duplicate the rantings and ravings of teens who were high on drugs or drunk. Far too much of the book reads like a novelization of a movie-- At times I wanted to scream at the author- "YOU WEREN'T THERE! YOU CAN'T KNOW PAGE AFTER PAGE OF THE EXACT WORDS OF THESE CONVERSATIONS!"

The only value of this book is that it demonstrates the apathy of teens and parents in the Palm Beach Florida area. None of the parents of this kids ever felt that their children should have to go to prison for the crime of murder. They were oblivious to the fact that their children were involved in a brutal murder.

Not a great story. True, but disgusting. Terribly marred by the author trying to tell too much of the story.

[Maxine]

This could of been spectacular. What let’s it down is the way its written. Somewhat amateurish and disjointed. Instead of flowing like an interesting story I had to brain strain to keep the people and dots together.

A sad and terrible crime occurs and I for one abhor bullying of all types. I hadn’t heard of this true crime before finding this book. It is certainly not the usual. From the start I was really concentrating, especially on the number of names, times, events presented all in a flurry. It is hard to follow.

A book that you need to allow full attention too and I think if edited would be much better telling if this sad and horrible event. 2.5 stars and that’s being generous. This book was plagued by the disease of a writer being too verbose and also writing scenes of dialogue between people - none of these being fact, the author wasn’t there and they are purely a guess at best. Sensationalising the story. I hear there is a movie about this tragedy. It may be better.

[Suzanne]

Great book, I highly recommend.

[Leslie]

Actual rating 2.5 stars but am rounding down as my opinion was at the lower end of the spectrum. I watched this movie when it first came out and was disturbed enough but not in a true crime phase at the time, so left it alone. It was on tv recently and, as much as the first time, gave me chills. This time it sparked an interest in checking out the book. I am not giving this book a 2.5 based on the crime. This was a sickening event, primarily because of the lack of remorse by all primary and remote parties involved. I give it a 2.5 because of the writing. The author spent too little time on crucial information and background on some things and lingered on things that were never really needed later. He also failed to properly flesh out all characters and for this story to have weight, more of that would have been a good thing. Other details described must have been taken from bare bone information and or third party knowledge or even worse, speculation. So, yes, I did feel that the telling of this story was lacking. Maybe some more time could have been spent on it. It was a fast read though and a horrific one.

[J.H. Moncrieff]

3.5 stars

It's difficult to read this book, which clearly illustrates the casual, calculating cruelty of the young adults who murdered Bobby Kent in cold blood, and then watch the documentary on A&E, where they all plead innocence and ignorance: "I didn't know he was going to be murdered!"

Yeah, whatever. Keep on lying, kids.

To be fair, there's no explanation of how Schutze was able to reconstruct every conversation the teenagers had leading up to the murder, and how much is fact versus fiction. But if even 50% is true, Lisa Connelly is a narcissistic sociopath who never should have been let out of prison (she's already out).

Bobby Kent was a most unsympathetic victim. Given to unpredictable rages, he apparently raped young women and used them sexually, tormented and beat mentally disabled men, and tortured his friends, especially the one who eventually stabbed him to death. How much of this was true? Did he really sic a vicious guard dog on his best friend multiple times? Did he really punch Marty in the face because there was an ant on his brownies? We'll never know, but the question remains: even if Bobby was a sadistic bully, why not just stop hanging out with him? Why kill him?

One of the most disturbing things about this case is that none of the young people felt they'd done anything wrong. Standing by (or actively participating) while a peer is stabbed, bludgeoned and drowned, isn't a big deal in their eyes...or their parents' eyes. Their parents didn't feel they'd done anything wrong either. It's difficult not to feel disgusted by the entire lot.

Schutze's book was pretty interesting and fast-paced until the trial portions, but it was unnerving to read while the author, an older man, described a teenage girl as having a "cute body." Ick. And there was a heavy focus on one of the perpetrator's experiences as a teenage prostitute, and her contemporaries' experiences as teenage prostitutes, which didn't appear to have anything to do with the murder of Bobby Kent. I'm not sure why it was included, or why the author felt the need to detail undercover cops getting oral sex from underage girls. Again, ick.

[Jessica]

I had issues with this author. The first is he spends too much time writing about incidents that have no direct bearing to the story nor do they even serve the purpose of character background. I would read through pages of stories that were neither here nor there and and the end scratch my head thinking what the hell did that have to do with anything? The other issue, and this is a big one, he writes dialogue as if verbatim. Which unless he was there recording every last word each person said is impossible. It calls into question the veracity of his entire book to pass off mountains of conversation with certitude.

Outside of those issues it was a decent story. He did a good job painting not only the perpetrators as horrible spoiled little brats but also a good job making sure the reader understood what a bunch of assholes their parents were too who did nothing to discipline their children in life, let them get away with murder (no pun intended) and make excuse after excuse for them. Sickening.

The author spent a long time building up the story. The majority of the book was devoted to the lead up to the murder, the murder itself and the kids scrambling not to get caught. Small portion of the book was devoted to one of the seven trials and precious little spent on the sentencing and aftermath. I felt a bit gypped out of that part of the story.

[X_Amytiville_X]

Thanks to the awesome true crime podcast Once Upon a Crime, I was already familiar with this case. It’s not very well known which surprises me a little simply because of the brutality of it and the fact that it involves teens.
It’s difficult to “review” a nonfiction book, especially true crime, because it’s hard to not judge the subject itself. In that aspect, every single person in this book is terrible. The victim, the perpetrators, the parents, some of the law enforcement. Yeah, terrible. The crime is also terrible (and did I mention brutal? Because yikes!)
As for the writing, I can honestly say that it reads very much like a novel, not a true crime format at all. Many times I found myself saying out loud that there was just no way the author could know things he was writing about..certain dialogue/conversations that occurred, what someone was wearing when they went to the beach, what bystanders were thinking. I just kept saying “you weren’t there, sir! How could you know these mundane things?” Other than that, the book was hard to put down.
I’m glad to have read it and have it as a part of my true crime collection.

4 stars

[Fishface]

This is like "Revenge Of The Nerds," only not funny at all. There would be a lot less bullying in schools if you had to worry about this kind of serious payback.

[Lenny]

Spoiled rich kids in Florida who too much drugs decide to murder one of their group. The weird part is that after the deed was done,none of them thought that they did anything wrong.

[Genna Bishop]

The way the author wrote about the cases. Beautiful

[Coral]

This is almost stranger than fiction. I can't believe I hadn't heard of this case before.

The writing here was compelling as the crime. I couldn't put this book down.

[Lauren Puls]

3.5 stars, I love some good true crime. This group of friends did some crazy things but now a days the way kids retaliate against a bully only gets crazier.

[Tracy]

seriously one of the more disturbing true crime tales i have ever read (and this coming from the girl who reads about the likes of the manson family, elizabeth bathory and h.h. holmes, among others). somehow, this one single murder (and of a guy who arguably kind of had it coming) seems so much more brutal and cold.

i suspect, however, that it wasn't the murder itself that made me shudder and my skin crawl. i think it was the murderers/co-conspirators themselves. they just... didn't get it. they didn't seem to grasp what they had done or what it meant, not in their own lives or to society as a whole. their parents didn't seem to grasp it either. it sounded like all those stories you hear about girls who get date raped, and all anyone seems to care about is that the poor dude doesn't get his life ruined over "something so small." it's just so... sick.

although, admittedly, strangely fascinating. i couldn't put this book down. every single time there was a decision to be made, everyone involved seem to pick exactly the opposite of sanity. sure, bobby was an abusive asshole. while he thought he was breaking poor marty down into a maleable little slave, he was actually chipping off the humanity until he was left with a monster even worse than he was. but lisa... i just don't understand her. i can't even glimpse where she was coming from. i mean, i get the alienation she felt. i get the insecurity of being seemingly the only girl in town not getting her slut on. but then she finds marty, and it's like it just breaks her brain. she becomes this exotic creature i've never even heard of, who thinks that her abusive ass of a boyfriend is the center of the universe; more important than ANYTHING ever. and that he can be fixed by something as simple as killing his "best" friend.

even more apalling, she tells EVERYONE she knows about her plan. most of them decide to join in. only one guy in the whole bunch even expresses reservations with the "plan," and even those are half-hearted at best. i just... there aren't even words.

and the single most insane thing about this whole sordid ordeal: they totally had even odds at getting away with the whole damn thing if everybody had just not been stupid. and even after they were caught and HAD CONFESSED the whole thing, still they (and their families!?) were shocked (shocked!) that they might actually have to take the rap for MURDERING someone. the insanity just piles up. it's insane to want to kill your boyfriend's best friend. it's insane to tell other people you want to. it's insane that they would agree that that is, of course, the best possible course of action. it's insane that they all actually did it. it's insane they all went around telling everyone around them all about it. it's insane that they didn't expect to get caught. it's insane that they were all surprised when they were found guilty.

so, now i'm renting the movie. because my mind is still just... blown. i mean.... wow.

[Jerry Peace]

True crime books are hard to rate. This seems to be well researched, but after finishing, I feel slimy and kind of shell shocked. Seven white, upper class Florida teens-some with a sideline of prostitution, all dopers (not sellers, just users), most high school dropouts but still living at home and well supplied with funds by parents-decide to murder one of their group. So they do. Easily discovered, each denies any direct role, none show any remorse, their families think that their darlings deserve no jail time for this unfortunate incident which resulted from peer pressure and fear and an atmosphere of violence on television and in video games. The ringleader, Lisa, complained to her attorney that her three months in jail after her arrest meant she had "done the jail thing" and she wanted out. One of the creepiest books I've read in a while.

[Marna]

Don't think this was supposed to be a hilarious journey back in time. I must just be a terrible person.

I didn't realize how word-for-word the screen play is, but I guess it was co-written by Schutze, so that makes sense. Still, that just makes the choice of updating the setting for the movie even weirder. I never really thought about it, but how are Eminem videos co-existing in the same universe with Mortal Kombat arcade games?

Anyway. I know someone got killed and it was a terrible crime. But (and maybe I shouldn't be telling you this) I found the outright stupidity of the kids laugh-out-loud funny at times. More than once I found myself cackling in both horror and disgust.

I blame island psychosis.

[Justkeepreading85]

This case is so so sad. I was really into this case when I was younger so I thought I’d reread this one and I’m glad I did. It has a good flow and is interesting throughout. What Bobby Kent went through in his final moments is just horrific. I’m glad they got caught so quick so they didn’t end up hurting anyone else.

[kesseljunkie]

Jarring, gut-wrenching, and impossible to put down. Of all the insights in the book, the most telling is that the kids responsible are a part of the generation now “running” things and their equivocations and false logic are a strong thread of the social fiber of today - and it shows.

[Kim S]

I find this book a little hard to rate.

The story: the crime itself was vicious and chilling, and the factors leading up to it read more like a soap opera than real life. The fact that nobody - parents included - took any responsibility whatsoever for the murders is appalling, but given the way the teenagers were allowed to wander about almost without any authority or structure whatever doesn't paint the parents in a positive light already.

The writing: the author frequently seemed to forget that he's an adult and not one of the teenagers he was writing about, so a lot of times when describing something or someone (when he wasn't quoting someone speaking), he seemed to talk the way one of the book's subjects would - e.g., someone's buttocks were an "ass," someone overweight was "fat," Lisa had "long greasy hair." I found it superfluous, and occasionally crude. I feel someone like Ann Rule would have told this story with a little more class.

[Raili]

I would like to get to the important stuff first. It was a REALLY well written book. It was easy to read, fast paced, emotional.. And because of it I must say it seemed at times like a fictional story. It was so shocking that I couldn't really wrap my mind around the fact that it really happened. But kudos to the author. This is a book you'll be thinking about for a long time after finishing it.
Now the story itself, as I said, was almost too weird and shocking to be true. A bunch of middle class high school kids who are somehow drawn to each other, but at the same time are all so unbelievably stupid and sociopathic? It seems a bit much. But they are. Every single one of those kids are completely twisted.
Lastly, the only reason this book took me such a long time to read was because I read other books at the same time. I just couldn't handle the story in one go. It depressed me. It angered me. It made me want to scream. But I guess that's how you know it's a good book. I really wanted to smack those teenagers to the backs of their heads, but even more: I wanted to smack their parents, too. I was unbelievably mad at the parents who were just as stupid and cold and twisted as their kids. It was just too much.
I would suggest this book to everyone just as an eye opener. Sick and cruel crimes happen everywhere. Sick and cruel people are everywhere. And sometimes these people can spin the story so that the victim is guilty of his own murder. At least in their eyes. Which makes everything even worse.

[Liz Arcand]

I enjoyed it until the end when he breezed through the trials. I would not have minded much but this is the first time in the book that he attempted to comment on socitey instead of just writing a sensationalist story. Throughout 85% of the book, he described the crimes and characters vividly, and although it was interesting, as the reader I assumed that the author was just reiterating the haneous personalities of the victim and the criminals. I was actually minutely sympathetic to their situation. Then, out of the blue, he decides to step on a "soap box' to talk about the parents and how they were defending their children instead of taking responsibility. First of all, these were not children. Secondly, why didn't he reiterate the abuse (rapes, beatings etc) that Bobby did to these "kids?" Although the crime was horrible, and the kids should not have done this, they were abused...just saying.

[JB]

Trashy, pruriently graphic in its portrayal of violence, cartoonishly overwritten in its portrayal of everything else. I described it to a friend as “In Cold Blood but written in rancid margarine.” The writing in this book is the bottom-tier melodrama of airport potboilers and movie novelizations, except its breathless purple prose is wringing exploitative outrage out of real human tragedy. Schutze spends the whole book insisting how awful and brainless these kids are as if to absolve himself of profiting so flagrantly from their awfulness, and writes them as evil Archie comic characters to achieve that aim. Maybe that’s what they were like, but given Schutze’s inability to get the titles of hit songs right, I have strong doubts about his accuracy in reporting the true facts of a case he renders otherwise in what is, again, profoundly corny prose narration. Yikes.

[Penny]

This book isn't your typical inside-out in depth account of a true crime. It's written more like a novel which kept the pace rolling real quick for me. The conspirators and victims, man what can I even say about them? Their almost constantly drug fueled decision making skills were making me face-palm up until the incredibly brutal murder. To me, the title seems a bit misleading, "a tale of high school revenge" when most of the attackers didn't even finish high school. Also the author REALLY must like the word "sullen." A NUMBER of people's faces were constantly described as "sullen" over and over again. But other than that not a bad book for it's genre; a bit different and definitely a quick read. I can see this being made into a Lifetime movie haha.

[Anne Washington]

This whole book, all of the participants, awful. I thinks all of them played a part in the murder one way or another. No one saw the fact that Lisa started the whole thing and Marty finished it. I(I think Bobby would have died without Derek and the bat, Donnie was stupid for starting it and the coward Marty was the worse. If he Bobby was such a bully, they should have stayed away from him, so they all should have gotten life with no parole! End of story.

[Jennifer]

As my first true crime book, I think I made a pretty awesome choice. I read this book in less than 24 hours. I could not put it down. I've read it about 8 times and I've had 3 or 4 copies of it. It's written really well and easy to follow. Anyone who has interest in true crime should definitely pick this up.

[Mercedes]

This story has fascinated me since the first time I heard about it. Since this is real life and a story told through drugged eyes Im not holding it to the same standards as fiction writing. That being said the writing is pretty bad but the story itself dictates it must be. The book follows the movie or viceversa. There are many unanswered questions and id like to see deeper into the players.

[bookishdoll]

Wow, it took me forever to read this, but I blame my messed up sleeping schedule. This was my first true crime novel, and I really enjoyed it. I’m excited to explore other authors and especially other cases. As of right now, I have nothing else to compare it with so my rating is 3.75 rounded up to 4 stars ⭐️

[Tracy Snyder]

This is a great, well-written book about a tragic true story. What a DUMB bunch of kids these happened to be. The whole entire fiasco was like a comedy of errors, which makes it even more unfortunate that someoen lost his life in the process, though the guy was truly a jack-ass.