This is the story about a 14-year-old girl from British Columbia who was invited to a party & never returned home after she was ruthlessly beaten & murdered by a group of her peers. On April 17, 2024, Hulu launched a show, “Under the Bridge” which details this case & is based on a book that shares the same name; the show has fictionalized & invented details about the case including name changes.
Reena Virk was born on March 10, 1983 in Saanich, British Columbia, Canada. The area where she was raised was a predominately white, upper-class neighborhood. Her father, Manjit Virk, was an immigrant from India & her mother, Suman, was from an Indo-Canadian family that had converted from Hinduism to Jehovah’s Witness soon after Reena’s grandmother arrived in Canada. Suman grew up on Vancouver Island after her father moved to the area from India’s Punjab region in 1947. In 1979, she met Manjit who was vacationing in the area while visiting his sister.
The couple settled in View Royal, a waterfront suburb of Victoria. Reena, whose name means “mirror”, was the first of their three children. Some would say that Reena was a “minority within a minority” since the family was Jehovah’s Witnesses while many in their South Asian community adhered to the Sikh religion. As Reena got older, she grew tired of her religion which she believed was making her different from her peers.
As Reena entered middle school, her parents noticed that she began acting out at home & was growing irritable & argumentative. She deeply struggled with low self-esteem because she wasn’t happy with her weight. Reena was once described as a rare combination of boldness & innocence who was dark skinned & heavy in a town & time that valued the thin & the blond. When the Virk family moved in May 1994, Reena transferred to a new elementary school & her family hoped it would end the bullying that they knew their daughter was subjected to. The new environment initially proved to be positive & Reena seemed to be coming out of her shell & socializing. She met a new friend which Reena was very excited about but soon the relationship turned & this girl shunned Reena & the bullying picked back up.
In 1996, Reena started attending Colquitz Middle School & she came across a group of kids who were smoking at a park & immediately felt a connection. Reena immediately viewed this group as the “cool kids” & was enamored by their wild, rebellious ways.
Reena was envious of these kids who had freedom & stayed out late drinking & smoking. As a typical teenager, she wanted to fit in with those around her who were out, celebrating birthdays & holidays that her religion prevented her from celebrating. She wanted freedom from the rules that her parents put in place & once commented that she felt her parents were “smothering her.” She felt accepted by this new friend group but her parents did not approve which only caused Reena to act out even more. Reena had been known to run away from home & rebel which only exacerbated the already tense relationship with her parents.
Reena was so convinced that life away from her parent’s strict home would be better that she went as far as to falsely accuse her father of sexual, mental & physical abuse in the fall of 1996 when she was 13. At the time of Reena’s murder, she was not fully living with her parents & instead, she was under the care of the Ministry of Children & Family Development. It was her belief that the foster system would offer her a better life.
She was removed from her family home & sent to live with her grandparents. Initially, Reena claimed that her father was only physically abusing her but when she later said he had also sexually abused her, Manjit was arrested in 1997. He was put in jail while awaiting arraignment, but Reena recanted her statement two months later. After the charges were dropped, Reena moved in with her grandparents, but she indicated that she wasn’t comfortable there & was ultimately sent to a foster home.
Reena’s parents were convinced that it was this new group of friends who encouraged their daughter to make such outlandish accusations. They were disgusted by the fact that the Canadian Ministry hadn’t conducted an investigation or even questioned them & simply took Reena’s words as fact. The Virks were horrified by the situation but hoped that Reena was just going through a phase & made sure she knew that their home was always open when she felt ready to return. They prayed that it was only a matter of time until Reena realized that no one would care for her as deeply as they did.
Once in foster care, Reena realized it wasn’t all that she thought it would be since she still had chores, rules & a curfew. After a few months in foster care, during a visit with her parents in mid-October, Reena admitted that she was tired of her foster home & she apologized to her parents & the charges against her father were dropped. However, this arrangement didn’t last very long & she was placed in a youth shelter before she was again placed in the government’s care.
Reena was shy, vulnerable, lacking confidence & desperately trying to fit in & find her place in the world. She was described as a typical teenager who loved rap music & wore blue nail polish. She had been frequently bullied throughout her childhood & was struggling to connect with her classmates. Kids had stuck gum in her hair & criticized her weight throughout her time in school.
Reena envied the kids who seemed to find their place in the world & became especially drawn to a pale, blond girl named Nicole Cook, who was also fourteen. Nicole lived in a group home & idolized gangsters & spoke about stealing cars & serial killers. She was in a close friendship with a girl named Kelly Ellard who was 15 & wore her brown hair in a short bob & a stud in her nose.
Of the two girls, Nicole was the more confident & charismatic & claimed that one day, she would move to New York & join the mob with the goal of becoming the first female hit man. Reena was immediately taken with Nicole’s outgoing, brazen personality & admired her undeniable confidence. She was basically everything that Reena envied; slim, pretty, popular & cocky. As time went on, Nicole began to distance herself from Reena because her insecurities were very apparent & Nicole got the feeling that Reena was very jealous of her.
One day Nicole left her phone book at Reena’s house & Reena decided to contact some of the boys listed inside & told them that Nicole wasn’t nearly as pretty as she thought she was. She told them that Nicole’s eyebrows were fake, her breasts were fake, she wore colored contact lenses & had AIDS. Reena also called one boy listed in the book & repeatedly tried to ask him out.
When Nicole discovered what Reena had done, she was exceptionally angry & couldn’t understand why she would have done such a thing. This was when she decided to form a plan of revenge with the help of her friends Kelly & Missy Pleich. She called the girls & told them to meet her at Shoreline School on Friday for a beatdown. Kelly had been Nicole’s best friend since elementary school & was protective over Nicole, so she quickly agreed to the plan.
The other girl involved, Missy, already had a vendetta against Reena since she believed that Reena had slept with her boyfriend. Missy had known Reena since sixth grade & was aware that Reena was often picked on about her weight & the fact that she was quiet & kept to herself unless she got to know you. Missy admitted that when she did see people pick on Reena, despite considering herself a friend, she never defended her. Reena never vocalized the hurt that she must have felt from the harassment.
Missy came from a very large family & she was the last of thirteen children. Because her mom was so distracted with raising twelve other kids, Missy was given free reign to live however she wanted. This included drinking, stealing & beating people up. When Reena was placed in foster care, she reconnected with Missy, who was also staying at a temporary youth home & this is where they also met Nicole & Kelly. All of the girls were in & out of the foster system. It was speculated that because Reena viewed these girls as mean & tough, she did what she did with Nicole’s phone book so that she herself could also come across as mean & tough, likely thinking this would ultimately impress them. Reena basically worshiped these girls & wanted nothing more than to be accepted.
Nicole’s mother later told police that she overheard her daughter discussing with a friend ways to kill Reena. They said they would invite her out, dig a hole & bury her alive.
On Friday, November 14, 1997, sixty teenagers came together on the field behind Shoreline School as they usually did on a Friday night. They would typically hang out, slip alcohol into their Slurpees & smoke marijuana.
Reena had never been invited to join the group before & when she was invited, she was initially hesitant since she knew that Nicole was aware of what she’d done. At the time, Missy & Nicole were staying at a group home called Seven Oaks & Reena was still in foster care but spending more time at home. Reena’s parents said that the initial plan that night was for Reena to spend the night at home; she was going to have dinner with her parents, relax & have a nice evening with her family. That all changed when the phone rang at about 6:30 or 7 pm when Missy called & asked Reena to come out. Reena told her parents about the invite & they begged her to just stay home. At one point, she was told that she couldn’t go since it was cold outside & already getting late. They asked her to just visit with her friends the next day & this was when Reena told them that she heard rumors that a girl was going to get beaten up that night. While she was on the phone with Missy, she even asked her if she was that girl. They assured her that she wasn’t & encouraged her to come out with them.
Reena’s parents said that when she hung up the phone, they could tell that she didn’t actually want to go, but felt forced to. She told them that she would be back in a couple of hours & left the house, headed for Shoreline School.
The majority of those that were there that night had no idea what Nicole or Kelly planned to do; many had never even met Reena. The police broke up the large crowd that had gathered at the field by the school after someone broke a window & the now smaller party moved under the Craigflower Bridge which crossed the Gorge Waterway.
At this point, Reena left the area to call home to let her parents know she would be home in about an hour. This was the last time they ever heard their daughter’s voice. Some of the girls prevented Reena from leaving, linking arms with her so she was unable to walk away. They ripped up her bus pass & told her to join them under the bridge. The area was not a desirable place; it was cold, dark, damp, cave-like & smelled of stagnant water & urine. More than a dozen teens were gathered, some on the bank, some standing on a nearby staircase. Reena sat on an old tree stump.
As Reena sat, Nicole, Missy, Kelly & five other teens stood around her. This was when Nicole, who was the ringleader of the group, confronted Reena & asked her why she was spreading rumors about her, screaming that Reena was trying to ruin her life. Nicole later alleged that Reena called her a b!tch which prompted her to put a cigarette out on Reena’s forehead. Reena was stunned by the pain & pushed Nicole in defense as Kelly punched her with a closed fist. Soon, six girls & one boy, 16-year-old Warren Glowatski, joined in on the brawl & swarmed Reena. Some later said that the attack lasted a minute or less & ended as quickly as it began after someone shouted, “Enough!” Reena lay on the ground, bleeding & crying, crumpled in the mud at the water’s edge.
At this point, most of the group dispersed & ran away & despite her distress, not one person stepped in to help Reena. Instead of checking to see if she was okay, girls rifled through her backpack, threw her perfume bottle & diary into the water.
The teens involved in this case were later dubbed the Shoreline Six & included Missy Pleich, Nicole Cook, Courtney Keith, Nicole Patterson & Gail Ooms & another unnamed minor. Warren, the only boy there, didn’t even know Reena before this night & would have had no reason to be upset with her.
Nicole & Missy left the area since they needed to catch a bus & make it back to their group home for curfew at 11 pm & were checked in the group home shortly after that time.
Reena managed to stand up & stagger away, onto the bridge to head home. Tragically, she would never make it home. Kelly & Warren followed Reena as she tried to get to the safety of her home; they continued to assault her until the point that she was unconscious. They each took hold of one of Reena’s feet & dragged her to the water’s edge & ultimately drowned her in the nearby Gorge Waterway. Warren later testified that he let go of Reena & Kelly took her into the gorge until the water was waist deep & Kelly held Reena underwater until she died. Warren stood by watching, doing nothing to stop Kelly. No one can truly say why Kelly did what she did, some say that she killed Reena out of fierce loyalty to Nicole.
An autopsy indicated that Reena sustained multiple blows throughout her body to such an extent that it’s consistent with a person who had been involved in a car crash.
Of the eight participants that night, not one person stepped in to help Reena who was a 14-year-old girl that was beaten & killed for utterly trivial reasons.
When Reena didn’t come home that night, her parents began to worry & believed that she may have gone to spend the night at her grandparent’s home. However, she wasn’t there, nor was she at the group home. By the next morning, Reena’s mom frantically called around, trying to find her daughter & ultimately spoke with Nicole & Missy at the group home who said they didn’t know where she was & hadn’t seen her. Reena’s parents contacted the Saanich police to report their daughter missing.
In the meantime, Missy said that on that Saturday morning, November 15, Kelly called her & Nicole at the group home & told them that she killed Reena while Warran stood by. The three of them met at the bridge, back at the little beach where Reena had been murdered. As they walked along, Kelly told them, “I finished her off, I dragged her into the water.” They proceeded to search the area for Reena’s belongings & came across her shoes which Nicole placed in her bag.
By Monday, rumors began spreading around school about a girl being killed & police began investigating the case more seriously. Oddly enough, none of the kids seemed disturbed by this & life just seemed to go on as normal. One week later, police went to the Shoreline School & arrested all eight teens. According to Nicole, she & Kelly had made a pact that when they were questioned by police, neither one would talk. Nicole refused to give a statement & only requested that she get John Gotti’s lawyer to defend her. Kelly, on the other hand, immediately started talking & the pact was forgotten. Reena was still missing at this point & there was no body, but police knew it was only a matter of time. They had been told that three people walked over the bridge & only two walked back.
After their interviews, police knew exactly where to look for Reena’s body & on Saturday, November 22, 1997, a team of divers inched their way along the gorge. It wasn’t until that afternoon that a helicopter was sent up that Reena’s body was found. It had washed ashore at the Gorge Inlet, a major waterway on Vancouver Island. Reena’s official cause of death was forcible drowning. Eighteen pebbles were found in Reena’s lungs which proved that she had been alive when she was placed in the water. However, the head injuries she sustained had been severe enough to be fatal had she not been drowned.
In the eight days that Reena was missing, rumors continued among the teenagers around town & within Shoreline Secondary School, but because it was 1997 & social media had yet to exist, the teens were able to keep what had happened relatively quiet. However, reports indicate that several uninvolved students & teachers overheard these rumblings & no one came forward to report it to police.
The community was stunned when they learned that eight teenagers had been arrested for the incredibly violent & vicious murder. Six girls, including Nicole, were charged with aggravated assault for the initial attack under the bridge. Because of the severity of what Kelly & Warren had done, they were arrested on November 21, 1997 & charged as adults despite being only fifteen & sixteen, respectively. Because they were being charged as adults, their names were able to be released, whereas the other six could not be identified as they were protected under Canada’s Young Offenders Act.
Missy Pleich indicated that she was haunted by what had happened to Reena & felt it was her fault since Reena had trusted her & she had been the one to invite her out that night.
Warren Glowatski had a slight, short stature, standing at 5’5” & 130# & was often the town teenage heartthrob. He had a troubled, unstable childhood; his mother was addicted to alcohol & hadn’t been around for years. He stayed with his father, who worked as a welder & they moved frequently. More recently, he & his father settled in a trailer home in View Royal, but in the months before the murder, his father married a woman he’d met in Vegas & Warren was living alone in the trailer supported by money that his father sent him. Warren often talked himself up to contend with his confidence issues regarding his short stature & claimed to be a Crip. He was exposed to drugs & violence at a young age which factored into his growing into an angry child who was willing to inflict pain on others.
Despite many people being involved in this case, the focus was placed on Kelly & Warren since they were the two accused of ultimately causing Reena’s death. Eleven witnesses ended up testifying about statements that Kelly made in regards to her involvement in the second attack that led to Reena’s drowning. Witnesses confirmed seeing both Kelly & Warren crossing the bridge in the direction that Reena staggered away. Two witnesses saw Kelly returning after the attack & indicated that her pants appeared to be wet & she made incriminating remarks at that time.
Warren had never met Reena before & had no knowledge of Nicole & Kelly’s plan that night, but had viciously joined in on the beatings. The next day, he showed up at his girlfriend Syreeta’s house & asked her if she could bleach the blood from the knees of his pants. She later told the police that he’d confessed to following Reena with Kelly. He said that “something happened.. Kelly did something to her.” Because of her statement, Warren was arrested & he was interrogated for hours without the presence of his parents or a lawyer. He told the police that Kelly dragged Reena to the water & drowned her while he stood by & watched. The police told him that because he was the male in this case, he would be “going down big time.”
In April 1999, during a trial without a jury, Judge Malcolm MacAulay sentenced him to life in Matsqui Institution which is a notoriously rough prison located in a remote area. The judge declared that Warren’s testimony was “incomplete & improbable.” Warren’s mom stood outside the courtroom, intoxicated & declared his innocence, “There’s just no way that he killed that girl.” Warren was convicted of second-degree murder & sentenced to life in prison with an opportunity for parole after seven years.
During her interviews as well as the trial, Kelly offered a very different version of events. She claimed that Nicole was likely Reena’s killer since she always spoke of hurting people. Police found a black nylon Calvin Klein jacket in Kelly’s closet & the arms were stained with saltwater that was consistent with samples taken from the Gorge, however, she claimed it was from another day that she went swimming in the cold water. She was confronted with the fact that multiple other teenagers recalled her bragging about the fact that she “finished her off” & “held a girl’s head under water.” Kelly claimed that because it was high school, these were only rumors. Many were surprised by Kelly’s involvement in the murder because she came from a supportive family & socioeconomic resources.
Nicole refused to testify against Kelly even after police let her hear the tapes of Kelly blaming her for the murder. Kelly ultimately had three trials; in her first, she portrayed herself as an innocent, demure schoolgirl as she spoke in a hushed voice with a trace of a British accent. Warren had been issued a public defender while Kelly’s family hired one of Canada’s most prominent lawyers, Adrian Brooks, to defend their daughter. As he stood before the jury, he pointed out that there was no DNA, no fingerprint evidence & no blood evidence that tied Kelly to the crime, “Rumor plus rumor still equals zero.”
A jury found Kelly guilty in 2000 & Judge Nancy Morrison praised Kelly’s “overwhelming love of animals” as she handed down the most lenient sentence possible. She described Kelly as “young, intelligent” from a “wonderful family.” In 2001, the Supreme Court of Canada overturned this conviction on the grounds that she had been improperly questioned.
Her second trial was held in 2004 & Kelly was relentlessly challenged as she showed a much more aggressive version of herself this time around. She rolled her eyes, screamed & spoke with sarcasm. A mistrial was declared when jurors were deadlocked 11-1. The third trial was in 2005, Kelly was found guilty & further appeals were denied. She was convicted of second-degree murder with an automatic life sentence & began serving her prison sentence in 2005, eight years after Reena’s murder.
In September 2008, the BC Court of Appeal overturned Kelly’s conviction & ordered a fourth trial on the grounds that the judge from the third trial gave the jury incorrect instructions over testimony. However, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the conviction & in June 2009, the lengthy legal case finally concluded.
While in prison, Warren kept to himself & avoided trouble as he volunteered to speak with at-risk youths. He became involved in restorative justice programs which seek to facilitate reconciliation between victims & offenders & met privately with Reena’s parents in June 2007, ten years after their daughter was murdered. In an extraordinary act of forgiveness, they accepted his apology & supported his request for full parole which was granted in 2010. Prior to that, he was granted day parole in 2007 & allowed to leave during the day. Suman Virk told reporters that Warren had been the only one to take responsibility for his actions.
On the other hand, Kelly, who had been dubbed “Killer Kelly” by the media, maintained her innocence & behaved in a combative & erratic manner. She was involved in numerous infractions; she hoarded toothbrushes, likely to serve as makeshift shivs & confessed to a yearlong binge on contraband crystal meth. Soon after she turned 30, she stopped taking drugs & became pen pals with a 41-year-old man named Darwin. At age 33 in 2016, it was revealed that Kelly was 8 months pregnant after she had been allowed conjugal visits with Darwin who was a former felon with gang ties who was out on parole. He has since been arrested & put back in prison after breaching parole.
For the first time during a parole hearing in May 2016, Kelly finally took responsibility for her role in the murder, however, downplayed how it happend & said that she had taken Reena to the water to “splash water on her face” to see if she would “wake up.” When her son was born, she was granted escorted prison releases to take her newborn to medical appointments. She told the parole board that the birth of her son was “very motivating.. The best therapy for me.”
In 2017 she was granted day parole which meant she could work & study in the public & return to the prison or halfway house at night. She was to maintain her parole’s conditional orders which included abstaining from drugs & alcohol & not contacting the Virk family.
In August 2019, she was granted overnight leave & was able to rent a home. Her day parole was extended with the condition that she undergoes psychiatric treatment for anxiety. She is not allowed to have contact with her ex-husband without supervision or written consent from her parole officer. In May 2022 Kelly rejected a chance at full parole & told the board that she was “situationally.. not ready” for freedom. She is now 41-years-old & has two children with Darwin. They got married but are no longer together & she has since changed her name to Kerry Marie Sim. According to parole documents, she is living in a community-based residential facility where she is struggling to cope with life on a limited budget & a lack of child-care options. Her parole was extended for another six months & she expressed that the Under the Bridge Hulu series is disrespectful to Reena & her family & will re-victimize the Virk family.
The other six who were arrested were prosecuted in youth court in February 1998. Three of the six pleaded guilty to assault causing bodily harm & the other three were found guilty of the same offense following their trial. They each received sentences ranging from 60-day conditional sentences up to one year in juvenile detention at the Victoria Youth Custody Center. Nicole Cook spoke to the media & complained that her sentencing of up to one year was too harsh, “I’m not responsible for her death in any way, shape or form. I wasn’t there with Kelly or Warren. I didn’t kill her.” She was asked that if she hadn’t started the fight that night, would Reena still be alive? She replied, “I don’t know. Maybe not. Maybe. She didn’t die as a result of that beating.”
Warren is now 43-years-old & is free after receiving full parole in June 2010 & has remained out of the public eye.
In 2019, the book, Under the Bridge was released about this case, written by author Rebecca Godfrey. On April 17, 2024, Hulu premiered an eight-episode drama mini-series, Under the Bridge based on the book, but sadly Godfrey wasn’t able to see the completion of her vision. The show was created by Quinn Shephard & Samir Mehta which Godfrey collaborated on for more than two years though sadly she died after battling lung cancer in October 2022.
Living through the grief of losing their daughter as well as a 12-year legal process, took its toll on the Virks who have since focused their energy on educating Canadian youths on bullying as they share Reena’s story. Suman spoke in one video, “Bullies thrive by you keeping quiet. That’s how they get their power, if you don’t talk about what’s going on. It’s too big for you guys to handle on your own.” They have the goal of bringing awareness to the very real problem of teen violence. They’ve spoken to thousands of children about healthy relationships & how to treat others from diverse backgrounds as well as where to go for help & how to forgive people.
When Reena was killed in 1997, social media & texting didn’t yet exist & since, cyberbullying has added a much deeper layer to bullying. In 2008, Manjit wrote a book titled, Reena: A Father’s Story & criticized the legal system for removing Reena from their family home amid the false sexual abuse allegations as well as the trials that followed her murder. The book tells the story of Reena’s life & death as well as the struggles she experienced during her youth & years of being bullied.
Suman, Reena’s mom, blames social services for mishandling the case that led her daughter to be moved to a foster home. “These people are trained professionals & they couldn’t clue in that this child was a total storyteller. They failed miserably. There’s no excuse for how they failed.” In 2018, Suman died at age 58 after she choked while dining at a cafe. Before her passing, she voiced that connecting with Warren helped her process her daughter’s murder.
Reena’s murder sparked conversation around racism & bullying, specifically bullying perpetrated by young girls. In Reena’s case, some of the girls were extremely violent before this & were caught up in the notion of violence as a powerful & romantic thing. Those that knew about this case couldn’t wrap their heads around how teens could act out like this. A woman who studies violence in youth, particularly in girls, Dr Cybil Arts, indicated that during a fight, adrenaline is high & things are in motion. People engage in tunnel vision & become focused & out of control. Some asked what made six of the eight involved in Reena’s case stop while two continued? She explained that people make internal decisions even when they’re in an extremely heightened state. In this case, six had the moral compass to stop & two did not. Without a moral compass, even something as viscous as the murder of a young, innocent girl can be seen as something to be proud of.
References:
- Vice: The unforgettable story of a BC teen murdered by her peers
- Wikipedia: Murder of Reena Virk
- Biography: The shocking murder of Reena Virk inspired Under the Bridge
- BBC: Obituary: Suman Virk, the mother who forgave her daughter’s killer
- People: The true story behind Under the Bridge: What happened to Reena Virk?
- Time: The chilling true story behind Hulu crime drama Under the Bridge
- CBC: Family of Reena Virk reacts to news of killer’s prison pregnancy
- Esquire: Under the Bridge: The true story of Reena Virk
- Supreme Court of Canada: R v. Ellard
- Screen Rant: Who killed Reena Virk in Under the Bridge: The true story & what happened in real life explained
- Medium: The tragic story of a teen murdered by her peers – Reena Virk
- Murderpedia: Kelly Marie Ellard
- Elle: Separating the fact from the fictionalized in Hulu’s Under the Bridge
- Internet Archive: MSNBC – Bloodlust Under the Bridge
- CBC: Reena Virk killer claims TV series based on crime ‘disrespectful’
