‘Slow the f*** down’: Rich mom’s texts haunt her after son’s 100mph crash killed 18-year-old star swimmer

Text messages from a mother warning her son to stop speeding in the family’s car are now at the center of a murder trial after an 18-year-old star swimmer was killed in a 100mph crash last year.

Kiernan Tague, 17, had picked up his friend and neighbor Flynn MacKrell from his parents’ home in Grosse Pointe, a leafy suburb of Michigan, on the night of November 17, 2023.

Tague lost control of the vehicle just five minutes later while traveling at 105mph, hitting a pole and then a tree. The force of the impact obliterated Tague’s mother’s BMW X3 M and killed Flynn, a standout swimmer at the University of Dayton.

Tague escaped with his life but is now out on bond awaiting trial after being charged with second-degree murder in March.

Now Tague’s mother, Elizabeth Puleo-Tague is being investigated by police after text messages emerged showing she was aware of her son’s speeding habit – which she had intimate knowledge of through a GPS app called Life360.

Flynn’s parents told The Detroit Free Press that Elizabeth should face criminal charges, with his devastated mother Anne stating: ‘It’s like she handed him an AR-15.’

He had been going over 100 miles an hour in a 25-mile-an-hour zone when he crashed his mother’s brand-new BMW X3 M on November 17, 2023

Among the text messages, Elizabeth wrote to Tague on September 14, 2023: ‘Slow the f*** down right now!’  

The message was sent two months before the tragedy, after a Life360 report showed the then 16-year-old traveling 123 mph in the family’s Audi coupe.

‘I have screen shots of you… doing 123 mph… It scares me to my bone,’ read another, viewed by he paper in police reports.

Flynn’s parents, Anne Vanker and Thad Mackrell, are seeking to use the messages to show how Elizabeth failed to take reasonable actions to prevent her child from hurting others.

They wrote in a letter to local prosecutors: ‘[Tague] was speeding over and over, and mom knew it’.

Not only that, but Elizabeth, the campus minister at a local Catholic School, bought herself a brand-new BMW weeks after sending those texts that she proceeded to give her son access to, despite it being able to reach speeds of 177mph.

Tague’s passenger was 18-year-old college freshman Flynn MacKrell, a standout swimmer  whose death was deemed a homicide. His parents, Thad MacKrell and Anne Vanker and, are seeking to use the messages to show how the suspect’s mother was partially responsible

Elizabeth Puleo-Tague is accused of failing to take reasonable actions to prevent her child from hurting others after becoming aware of his speeding, as evidenced in several texts

Tague is not being charged as an adult but as ‘adult designated,’ which means that if convicted, he could be sentenced either as an adult or a juvenile, with the second-degree murder charge still carrying a max sentence of life in prison.

Before his arrest, Tague had a history of bad behavior aside from speeding, including assaulting his mother in 2020.

The offenses were uncovered by Grosse Pointe City police officers who penned a  report laying out the more than 20 offenses, and problems he was having at home before he took the BMW out for its fateful final ride while mom was away in Canada.

Citing the ‘extensive’ text messages between the two compiled during this effort, one investigator wrote: ‘There was much conversation about Kiernan taking/using his mother’s credit card without permission, being out during overnight hours without permission, and about Kiernan’s extensive reckless driving habits.’

The investigator added: ‘The messages between the two suggest that Kiernan’s mother has little to no control over Kiernan. 

‘Kiernan regularly drove recklessly and took/used his mother’s credit cards without permission, despite his mother’s repeated orders not to.’   

Another exchange cited was a text from the mother to her 16-year-old son on October 2, 2023, a little over a month away from the crash.

Months after the crash, Tague was cuffed for murder, and received a $10,000 cash/surety bond. He is not being charged as an adult but as ‘adult designated,’ which means that if convicted, he could be sentenced either as an adult or a juvenile

It read: ‘Will you pick up a bottle of wine?? … Please!’ to which Tague replied, ‘Sure.’

A week later, his mother sent him a screenshot of a website laying out the penalties for having a fake ID.  

In 2020, police responded to a call from the mom after she alleged her son ‘had just assaulted her and fled the area,’ cops wrote.

The report goes on state how the incident occurred – when Tague was being picked up at his friend’s house and became angry at his mother. 

‘While in the front seat, Kiernan turned around and began punching his mother (who was in the back seat) and even bit her on her hand,’ an officer wrote.

Tague, in turn, was arrested for domestic violence and kept briefly at the Wayne County youth home. 

In November of last year, days before the crash, another fight would break out between the two, this time at home, during which Tague broke a table after his mom refused to let him use one of her two cars.

‘I simply asked you to take your car… yet you refused. Now I’m running late and we have a broken table,’ Tague texted on Nov. 3, 2023, according to the report viewed by the Free Press.

‘Why should he get a break?’ Vanker said of Tague, who in September received the following text from his own mom: ‘Your obsession (word choice intentional) with cars having upwards of 600 hp — It’s not healthy.’

‘She was sitting on a ticking time bomb,’ Vanker told the paper eight months after her own son’s death

The two teens had been friends since 2017. The suspect was charged with MacKrell’s murder in March, and is now awaiting trial

He also apologized: ‘I’m sorry about your table.’   

Within two weeks, the crash occurred – as cops wrote the majority of the calls they received about Tague involved complaints of him being out of control at home.

‘His mother repeatedly told responding officers that she was afraid of Kiernan,’ an investigator wrote, adding their most recent to the family’s home was on August 30 of last year. 

The reason for the visit was ‘because [Tague] was yelling and throwing items within the house because his mother refused to get him an American Express Gold Card.’

Vanker and her husband are now using the exchanges between the mother and son as proof Elizabeth knew for months her son was driving recklessly, but failed to do anything about it.

Speaking to the Free Press, she brought up how Elizabeth also has a 2015 Subaru Forrester, but continued to allow her son to drive the much more powerful Audi and then BMW even after warning him about what he was doing.

The purchase of the BMW and leaving the keys for him to freely take, however, was the worst offense, she said, comparing the prospect to handing the unruly teen a loaded assault rifle.

‘She was sitting on a ticking time bomb,’ Vanker told the paper, eight months after her son’s death.

Thad MacKrell, right, of Grosse Pointe, gets emotional while talking about the loss to the Detroit Free Press, which viewed the police report laying out the litany of text messages

This kid had every break and every privilege there is,’ Vanker said during the interview, as a trial date has yet to be set

‘She knows he’s out of control, yet she basically gets him a weapon – it’s like she handed him an AR-15.’

‘I want him in prison for as long as possible,’ she added, as the family and their attorneys look to use the legal precedent secured by the case surrounding the 2021 deadly mass shooting at nearby Oxford High School by Ethan Crumbley, that killed four students.  

Prosecutors went on to charge the gunman’s parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, since they bought the gun used in their then 15-year-old son’s rampage. Both are now in the midst of separate 10-year sentences handed down by different juries.

‘Why should he get a break?’ Vanker said of Tague, who in September received the following text from his own mom: ‘Your obsession (word choice intentional) with cars having upwards of 600 hp — It’s not healthy.’

Three weeks later, she bought the BMW, and a few weeks after that, the crash occurred. 

‘This kid had every break and every privilege there is,’ Vanker declared.

Flynn, meanwhile, is survived by both of his parents and two elder siblings.

Tague – who was going over 100 miles an hour in a 25-mile-an-hour zone when the two crashed – is still awaiting a trial date.