The family that never was

CARBONDALE, Ill. -- Word that Sgt. Dan Kennings had been killed in Iraq crushed spirits in the Daily Egyptian newsroom. The buzz-cut soldier befriended by students at the university newspaper was dead, and the sergeant's little girl, a precocious child they'd grown to love, was now an orphan.

They all knew Kodee Kennings' mother died when she was 5. The little girl's fears and frustrations about her father being in harm's way had played out on the pages of the Daily Egyptian for nearly two years, in letters fraught with misspellings, innocent observations and questions about why daddy wasn't there to chase the monsters from under her bed.

It turns out daddy didn't exist at all.

The Chicago Tribune went to Southern Illinois to learn about the bond between Kodee and Dan Kennings, and the life Kodee would face now without her hero.

Over seven days, the Tribune learned the real story, one of elaborate fabrications and lies spread out over two years. There is no soldier named Dan Kennings. The charming girl people came to know as Kodee Kennings is someone else entirely, a child from an out-of-state family led to believe she was playing a part in a documentary about a soldier.

Using role players, the woman at the center of the hoax spun a remarkable wartime tale so compelling it grabbed the hearts of young journalists, university faculty members and readers, and left them blind to the possibility it could all be a ruse.

Struggling to say goodbye

The tale began in 2003 when student reporter Michael Brenner was handed a letter from a girl saying she saw an anti-war protest on the Southern Illinois University campus and it bothered her because her dad was a soldier. Brenner e-mailed the girl, and as he learned more about her situation decided to tell her story.

The story appeared in the Daily Egyptian on May 6, 2003, detailing an 8-year-old's struggles saying goodbye to her father, who was shipping off to Iraq with the 101st Airborne. Kodee, according to the story, had lost her mother years earlier, so Kennings was her only blood relative.

"I don't have a mom," Kodee was quoted saying in the newspaper story. "If he died, I don't have anywhere to go."

Upon Kennings' departure, Kodee came under the care of a young woman named Colleen Hastings, the wife of Kennings' adoptive brother. Outgoing and affable, she forged a friendship with Brenner.

Brenner, then the editor of the paper, started publishing unedited notes that Kodee would write about her dad, or about things happening in her life.

Last week Hastings contacted the newsroom and said Kennings had been killed in action in Iraq. A professor in the journalism school called the Tribune last Wednesday, and the newspaper had a reporter on the road to Carbondale, Ill., that night.

However, no details of Kennings' death could be confirmed. His name didn't appear on a Department of Defense Web site that lists U.S. casualties.

By last Thursday, the story was falling apart. Military officials could find no one named Dan Kennings in the Army or any other service.

Hastings refused to speak with the Tribune, saying through Brenner -- who had graduated in 2004 and was living with his family in West Chicago -- that she wanted to shelter Kodee from the media.

Defended his existence

By Tuesday night, Michael Brenner was pacing outside a Dairy Queen in Carterville, Ill., talking to Hastings on his cell phone. He handed the phone to a Tribune reporter, and Hastings said she would come to the Dairy Queen and listen to questions.

Brenner, 25, said he was still convinced of Kennings' existence and defended Hastings as a woman trying to protect a girl.

Hastings pulled into the parking lot. She was told the military was denying Kennings' existence and that the name Colleen Hastings appeared in no public records databases in Illinois. She was asked for a driver's license and for a death certificate for Kennings. With each question, Hastings shook her head no.

And then she drove off.

The Tribune traced the license plate of Hastings' car, and by Wednesday afternoon, a reporter was outside a home in Marion, Ill., looking for a woman named Jaimie Reynolds.

Reynolds agreed to talk.

Sitting on the back porch of her house, her face flush from crying, Reynolds admitted she had pretended to be Colleen Hastings. She said Dan Kennings was invented, and those who met him had actually met a friend of hers who agreed to play the role.

She said, and the Tribune confirmed, that she was a broadcast journalism student at SIU. She graduated in 2004, putting her there alongside the very people she was deceiving.

Reynolds acknowledged the girl actually is the daughter of friends, and said she persuaded the parents to let her bring the child regularly to Carbondale by saying she was filming a documentary about a soldier killed in Iraq.

"We told her it was for a movie," Reynolds said.

Reynolds said the scheme was Brenner's idea.

"Mike is my best friend," she said. "In the last couple of years, he's had a hard time with his career. He asked me if I would help him out. I said I would. It just got a little bigger than he told me it would."

"That is absolutely ridiculous," Brenner said late Friday in denying he helped concoct the story. "I was a year and a half from graduation and had no career to advance."

On Thursday, 10-year-old Caitlin Hadley sat between her parents on a couch in Montpelier, Ind. She retold the two-year odyssey that began with her believing she was going to be the star of documentary film about a little girl named Kodee.

"It was sort of weird, but I had a lot of fun," Caitlin said.

The Egyptian issued a complete retraction, apology and a news article Friday explaining what happened.

"There is no pleasant way to put it," the Egyptian said. "We didn't check the facts carefully. We believed what we were told without verifying."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.