Lara Knutson - Childhood

Childhood

Reich was born as a male named John Mark Karr in Conyers, Georgia and spent her early childhood in Atlanta. Her father, Wexford Karr had married Patricia Elaine Adcock (John's mother) on August 21, 1958, when he was 37 and she was 18. Wexford filed for divorce in 1973, saying the marriage was "irretrievably broken," and that Karr and her older brother, Michael, were in his custody. Soon after, Wexford Karr, then 52 years old, married 29-year-old Susan Simpson, his neighbor in the same apartment complex. His marriage with Simpson ended in divorce six months later.

A family friend, George McCrary, has said that Karr mother believed her child was possessed by demons. Karr's mother allegedly built a pyre of kindling around her child then attempted to burn the then infant alive. Adcock was committed to the Central State Hospital, a mental hospital in Milledgeville, Georgia, and later lived in a group home, according to her stepmother Shirley Adcock.

Karr moved to Alabama to live with her grandparents when she was about 12 years old. She grew up in Hamilton and graduated from Hamilton High School in 1983. Karr returned to live in Atlanta at least twice: once to attend one semester at Riverwood High School in Sandy Springs from January to May 1981, and again some years after graduating from high school.