At crime scene, 'Gilbert Goon' girlfriend recounts deadly Halloween party
Minutes after the fatal beating of 16-year-old Preston Lord, a "Gilbert Goon" climbed into a car where Karli Heinmiller's teenage daughter waited.
He bragged: "I knocked that kid out," Heinmiller said, describing what her daughter eventually told a detective about what her then-boyfriend did on the night of the attack.
Heinmiller said her daughter did not witness the Oct. 28 beating, but confirmed she was at the Halloween party in Queen Creek where Lord's battered body was left lying in a street.
Her daughter even told Queen Creek police officers the party was getting out of control when they showed up for a "juvenile disturbance" call about an hour before the attack, Heinmiller said.
"They approached her and asked if she saw a party and she told them it was getting out of control and they just left," Heinmiller said.
On Tuesday, her daughter met again with Queen Creek detectives, this time at the crime scene to walk through what she witnessed.
"Today was sobering," Heinmiller said. "I think putting kids back in the situation helped."
She said her daughter was quiet on the ride home.
"She feels really bad. She says she wants to help and wants to remember. But it was all so chaotic," Heinmiller said.
Heinmiller said she is grappling with her own fears.
"I told the detective I thought I had gotten my daughter away from them."
"Them" is the Gilbert Goons, a gang of white, mostly affluent teenagers who, for more than a year, engaged in a string of blitz-style attacks on other teenagers, according to interviews, court and police records and social media posts.
An investigation by The Arizona Republic found the Goons recorded themselves carrying out random assaults in mall parking lots, outside fast-food restaurants, at parks and at house parties.
Brass knuckles, beatings, fear: Random attacks on teens loom over Preston Lord murder case
Parents, students and community activists in the southeast Valley said members of the Goons were involved in Lord's murder. The account by Heinmiller's daughter bolsters those suspicions, connecting a Goon in some of the beating videos to Lord, who died on Oct. 30, two days after the assault.
Her daughter's ex-boyfriend later appeared to post a message on Snapchat confirming his involvement: "I hit a kid and this kid feel hit his head and then they kicked his head in the ground then i got word he died so idk," the post read.
The Republic could not verify the authenticity of the post. The teenager and his parents did not respond to multiple interview requests about it.
Mom's worst fear: 'They are going to kill someone'
Heinmiller said Lord's murder scared her in a way few things had. It was what she called her "worst-case scenario," one she'd warned about repeatedly in the year since her daughter started hanging out with the Goons: "Those kids are going to get killed or they are going to kill someone."
The Republic is not naming individual Goons, even in cases where they were convicted of assaults and other crimes, because they are underage. None has been charged or identified by authorities as suspects in Lord's murder, which remains unsolved.
Heinmiller, of Gilbert, said she had never heard of the Goons until her daughter became involved with them in late 2022. In the span of a few months, Heinmiller said, she went from a worried mother to a frequent target of the Goons as she tried to raise the alarm, first with parents and then with Gilbert police.
She described her 16-year-old daughter's transformation from a dedicated, competitive cheerleader to a sullen and resentful teenager unconcerned with school or much else.
Shifting gears: Gilbert police dodge questions on teen attacks, reopen 'Goon' case after Republic report
Her daughter was introduced to the Goons by a friend at a party. Heinmiller said she went from missing a few curfews to staying out all night to not coming home for days on end. Self-destructive behavior followed dizzyingly fast, she said.
"It was so much worse than I thought," Heinmiller said. "It is just ... nobody understands the relentlessness of these kids. ... They are really terrorizers."
Confronting her daughter did no good; she would just retreat — away from her family and to the Goons, Heinmiller said. Grounding her daughter, taking away her phone and forbidding her to leave the house became challenges, not deterrents, she said.
Guns, drugs, beatings: Tracking the 'Gilbert Goons' online
In an effort to get a handle on her daughter's behavior, Heinmiller started secretly monitoring her daughter's social media accounts, she said. She built fake accounts, snuck into the Goons' private chats, scrolled through posts — and started recording everything.
Heinmiller said she was horrified at what she found.
"There were so many videos of them fighting ... stomping somebody ... more guns than anything I've ever seen in my whole life," she said.
There were clips of kids — some younger than her daughter — attacking other kids, flashing firearms and street racing in high-performance vehicles. Posts showed kids spinning doughnuts behind shopping centers while kids held onto the roofs or leaned out windows. Some videos were backed with homemade rap songs. Photos showed kids pointing guns at one another, posing with handfuls of cash, drinking and vaping. One appeared to show lines of cocaine on a case for sneaker-cleaning wipes with the caption, "I Ben skiin all week."
The Goons, she said, was not just a single gang of kids from one area of town, but an overlapping association of kids from several southeast Valley high schools, including Perry, Campo Verde, Highland and American Leadership Academy in Gilbert. But she said there was a definite hierarchy, with obvious leaders and at least one "enforcer."
Tips sought: Gilbert police ask public to help identify attackers in Aug. 18 In-N-Out beating
Heinmiller tried to reach out to parents of kids in the group, but they were uninterested and brushed off her concerns, she said. The Goons got word of her efforts and began calling her mentally ill — the crazy mom — in conversations that she read in real-time on her daughter's accounts.
Gilbert police were warned of planned attacks, parent says
Heinmiller anonymously reported three planned attacks she read about in social media posts to Gilbert police via an online tip form. She supplied The Republic with a copy of a confirmation receipt of a report she made in May to the Gilbert Police Department about a planned attack at the Gilbert In-N-Out Burger.
"I did submit anonymous tips. I swear to God I did," she said. "For them (police) to say they were unaware is complete bull----."
The Republic documented seven attacks involving members of the Goons, although several more are alleged by parents and students. At least four attacks occurred near the In-N-Out at San Tan Village Parkway and East Williams Field Road.
But police never put the attacks under the same umbrella or tied them to the Goons, interviews and court records show. Even when police arrested a Goon for two vicious attacks with brass knuckles in 2022, officers did not tie him to the larger group of assailants described by victims.
Case developments: New 'Gilbert Goons' beating video, chilling account of Preston Lord's attack emerge
Gilbert police Chief Michael Soelberg said that victims of the beatings did not specifically mention the gang's name when they contacted the police.
In mid-December, the Gilbert Police Department announced it had reopened a shelved investigation into one of the attacks detailed by The Republic and asked for the public's help in identifying perpetrators. The department confirmed Tuesday that it was investigating a total of four alleged group attacks on teenagers.
Heinmiller said it seemed attacks by the Goons were not always random. She said they targeted specific individuals in some attacks. She said beatings were a big part of the gang's "entertainment."
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As Heinmiller and her husband intensified their efforts to get their daughter away from the Goons, she said, the gang came after her family. She said members came to her house in the middle of the night, raced cars in her cul-de-sac, chased her other daughters, threw a water bottle at her oldest daughter's new car, denting it, and egged her house.
She said police were repeatedly called, but the harassers were gone by the time officers arrived.
Heinmiller said in the aftermath of the harassment campaign, her daughter slowly severed ties with the Goons: She went back to school, enrolled in online classes and started putting her life back together.
Detectives come calling on Preston Lord murder
Heinmiller thought her daughter was done with the Goons until Queen Creek detectives came calling about Lord's murder. She said police had learned her daughter was at the party. A detective first sought to interview her daughter at school, then agreed to meet at the family home.
"That's when it all came out," Heinmiller said. "She would have been in a lot of trouble if I'd known."
Her daughter told the detective she was at the party with her then-boyfriend the night Lord was beaten. She told the detective she had only started dating the Goon a few weeks earlier and they were not in a serious relationship, Heinmiller said.
Her daughter told the detective she was standing outside when two Queen Creek police officers arrived in response to the disturbance call, Heinmiller said.
The two officers asked about the party, Heinmiller said, but took no action when her daughter told them the crowd was getting to be too much. The owner of the house shut down the party a short time later, leaving hundreds of kids wandering the neighborhood.
Queen Creek police said officers arrived at 194th Street and Via del Oro about 9 p.m. They reported seeing the teenagers but apparently didn't see the party and said they did not notice any illegal activity. The department said the officers left the neighborhood to respond to a "high priority" domestic violence report.
They returned 49 minutes later after receiving a 911 call about an assault just a few houses away from the first call. That's when they found Lord.
At crime scene, teenager recounts deadly Halloween party
Her daughter told detectives at the crime scene on Tuesday that members of the Goons came to the party in two separate cars, Heinmiller said.
Her daughter said she knew a fight was breaking out and that her then-boyfriend was involved. But as the crowd surged down the street, her daughter waited at the car, which was parked in front of the party house.
When the then-boyfriend finally arrived, he announced that he had just knocked out a kid, Heinmiller said.
Her daughter said Lord's beating scared her, Heinmiller said. Her daughter wanted nothing more to do with her ex-boyfriend or the Goons.
"They never talked again after that night," Heinmiller said.
Heinmiller said she has turned over a trove of videos, texts and social media from the Goons to the Queen Creek police. She said her daughter also has cooperated. They both want justice for Lord, Heinmiller said.
As much as they want to help police, Heinmiller said she and her daughter are caught in a social media vise of online vigilantism. Posters on Facebook groups and other sites are targeting kids who had nothing to do with Lord's murder — or any of the attacks — and identifying them all as Goons. Their faces and posts are being plastered all over the internet.
Timeline: Preston Lord investigation, 'Gilbert Goons' attacks stun Phoenix area
Heinmiller still worries the Goons won't face justice — and will try to retaliate. For too long, the Goons have not been held accountable, Heinmiller said, and she's not sure a murder case against some will deter them all.
"I hate that my worst-case scenario turned out to be real," she said. "This has been our life for a while. ... I just don't know how it's going to get better."
Robert Anglen is an investigative reporter for The Republic. Reach him at robert.anglen@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8694. Follow him on X @robertanglen.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: 'Gilbert Goon' girlfriend recounts party where Preston Lord beaten
