Kinda Sorta Buried Alive!

For about four seconds, you're shocked, and then something tips you off. It all depends on what part of the tape you're watching. Maybe it's the way one of the "kidnappers" gets up close to the girl's head and casually explains, in a voice maximized for cold-blooded nefariousness, "You are being buried alive. You are going to die."

Maybe it's the drawling statement from one of the guys as they're kidnapping the girl: "If I'm gonna be a movie writer, someone's gotta show me what to write about." Maybe it's the moment when one of them says, with a straight face: "If you scream right now, we bury you half-alive." Maybe it's the "grave" that looks about two feet deep, so that getting unburied alive seems like a matter of doing a sit-up.

Or maybe it's the reality that pretty much no one buries anyone alive, period. And even if they do, they probably don't make a lame black-and-white VHS recording of it in which they announce their plans again and again because they're so, you know, evil.

Any vaguely analytical viewing of this now infamous videotape, created last month by at least one would-be filmmaker and his four friends in suburban Michigan, reveals almost instantly that the thing is the most thinly veiled of publicity stunts. If it somehow fools you until the end, the way the guys credit themselves as writers and directors is a pretty big giveaway. But some aspirations to Hollywood come with a price, and this one landed its five collaborators in the Lapeer county jail on charges of kidnapping and conspiracy to commit felonious assault. The subsequent legal shenanigans, including infighting among the defendants' attorneys over the release of the tape, along with a full complement of lurid coverage at the hands of "Dateline" and company, has all but guaranteed that, come this fall, Lapeer County is in for a textbook media feeding-frenzy trial.

The sole question at the heart of the trial is whether the subject participated willingly. Let's recap the bizarre chain of events as expeditiously as possible: Danielle Taylor, a 19-year-old Taco Bell cashier, lived with her sister on the outskirts of Flint, Mich. In February, she made the acquaintance of Travis Payea, a 20-year-old student at nearby Mott Community College, who harbored dreams of becoming a screenwriter and director. Payea lived in Flint with fellow student and horror-movie buff Jon Cockerill; the duo's house served as the gathering place for their crowd, which included friends James Carwile, Christina Lumm and Derek Faxlinger.

On the night of March 6, during what was, according to county prosecutor Byron Konschuh, Taylor's second or third visit to the house, she was -- either willingly or unwillingly -- bound, handcuffed, blindfolded, threatened with bodily harm, bundled into a car, driven to an open field in nearby Elba Township, placed in a disused firepit, and told she was being buried alive. Payea and his friends (except Faxlinger, who stayed behind at the house) then dumped a few shovelfuls of snow into the pit before letting Taylor know that the joke was over. Depending on whom you believe, Taylor either did or didn't party with the rest of the gang after being exhumed.

If Taylor hadn't had a doctor's appointment the next day, nothing more might ever have come of this. But her doctor, noting the bruises on her wrists and her complaints of general soreness, encouraged her to report the matter to the police, which she did. The following day, Payea invited Taylor back to the house for a screening of the tape. Despite strenuous requests by the state police that she have no contact with Payea, Cockerill and friends, she attended the screening, and given a spare moment alone with the tape, swiped it from the VCR and turned it over to the cops, who arrested the five on March 11. Only Faxlinger was released on personal bond. The others were held on $500,000 bail, following Judge Laura C. Bernard's assessment that the tape was "repulsive" and "sadistic." That description isn't really inaccurate, but a friend of mine has a better phrase to account for the movie and the decision to make it. "This," he said, "is a bad idea gone wrong." Payea and company have benefited from strong support from people in their own community, many of whom seem to understand this incident as a case of some basically good kids exercising poor judgment. "You know what this is about?" asks Georgia Westover, a resident of nearby Davison who helped to organize a candlelight vigil for the accused. "You know the expression, 'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned'? That's what this is, exactly." The line in the community runs that Taylor had a romantic interest in Payea and that when he rebuffed her, she took her revenge by turning the tape over to the cops.