Teen's Rift With His Mother Leads To Sting and Murder-for-Hire Trial

For two months they didn't see much of Ryder, who spent at least one night in his truck and stayed with friends.

Troiano found a recent MySpace page her son created, one showing his affinity for hard-core rap, which she felt was a growing influence in his clothing and demeanor. She said she talked to one of his friends, who confirmed that Ryder wanted to spend a brief stretch at Cheltenham, thinking it would boost his street credibility.

In June, after the sting and after Ryder was sent to Cheltenham, his parents received two letters from him. Troiano's hands shook as she opened the first.

"You know I love you with all my heart mom!" he wrote in the first. The second was similar: "Mom, thank you for every thang' you ever did for me!"

Troiano was moved, but others quickly saw manipulation, particularly because, in one letter, Ryder asked his mother to tell the judge she wanted him back home.

"I know you love your son," her friend Pamepinto remembers telling her. "But in reality you could be dead right now. If that was not a police officer, you and your husband would be dead."

His mother made a decision: She would go along with what St. Mary's prosecutors wanted to do -- charge her son as an adult and try to send him to the adult prison system.

The hearing Sept. 17 was to determine whether the case would be heard in adult court or be transferred to juvenile court. The Troianos took their seat in the gallery. As deputies led him in, Ryder -- dressed in black shorts, a baggy white T-shirt and a baggy Allen Iverson jersey -- appeared to glance in their direction.

Juvenile Services officials testified that Ryder could benefit from treatment in their system. "He's actually a pretty gentle person if you talk to him, if you sit down and talk to him and listen to him," added Georgia Kenney, a clinical social worker in the public defender's office. "He needs to learn some social behavior. He needs to learn how to control his anger."

Kenney said Ryder had told her that his stepfather hit him and physically abused him, an assertion that Circuit Court Judge Karen Abrams dismissed.

"I don't for one minute think that Mr. and Mrs. Troiano abandoned Cory or did wrong by him or abused him or didn't go well out of their way to try to help him and get him what he needed," she said. "And I understand completely what I heard when I heard, 'We've called this agency, we've called that agency and we've called somebody else and somebody else.' "

The judge ruled that Ryder should be tried in the juvenile system because of its emphasis on rehabilitation, a decision that means he cannot be held past his 21st birthday.

That outcome, and the possibility that he could be released much sooner, left Troiano deeply concerned for reasons she explained as she spoke of her conflicted emotions in court moments earlier.

"I miss him being at home," she said, "and I miss us joking around and kidding around. And then in the very same breath. . . . I don't know what this kid will do, because it's not my son. That can't be my little boy sitting there."