Cruel Doubt (33 page)

 

30

Bonnie's recollection of what happened during the rest of that day and night would prove very different from notes she took at the time, almost as if, for twelve hours, she'd been plunged into a state of near-amnesia.

She said the meeting in Vosburgh's office hadn't lasted more than thirty or forty-five minutes, that it had to be brief because the prosecutors were waiting for Chris. She recalled leaving the office accompanied only by Angela and returning, dazed and numb, to the Holiday Inn. Angela had asked no questions, but said, “Chris is my brother and I love him, and I know if he hadn't been doing drugs, he never could have done any of this.”

Bonnie remembered no other conversation with Angela about what the two of them had just heard. Angela had not stayed long at the motel. Probably, she'd spent the day with friends. Bonnie recalled spending the afternoon alone in the motel room, wondering how she'd ever be able to break this news to her mother, and to the other members of her family.

“I don't remember if Angela and I ate dinner together, or if she ate with some friends,” Bonnie said later. She did recall sitting in the motel room with Angela later that night, watching television. If, in all the hours since Chris had made his confession in Vosburgh's office, either Bonnie or Angela had said a single word in reference to it, neither was able to recall it.

Some things, Bonnie said later, were just too painful to talk about. Besides, what good would talking do? It wouldn't change anything. It would not bring back Lieth. To share their pain, even with each other, would have been a sign of weakness. And now, more than ever, Bonnie was determined to be strong.

She did remember Chris arriving at the motel room at ten-thirty
P
.
M
., accompanied by Bill Osteen, who said only that it had been a long, grueling day and that he, at least, was ready for bed.

Chris took one step inside and with tears in his eyes said, “I don't see how the two of you can stand to be in the same room with me.”

Bonnie's recollection was that she and Angela both told him they realized he was not capable of harming anyone, and that they knew what he'd done must have been caused by drug and mental problems. He cried and said he did not understand how he could have done it, no matter what the circumstances. Then he said to Bonnie, “I love you and Angela and I loved Lieth.”

Then he said he was hungry. “He went out to eat,” Bonnie said later. “I don't think Angela went with him. When he got back, there was very little talk. We were all so drained, we were beyond talk.” They just turned off the lights and went to sleep.

“A sleep,” Bonnie said later, “not only of total emotional exhaustion, but of the worst sort of depression I'd ever known.”

* * *

Bonnie's notes, however, told quite a different story. She and Chris and Angela had actually left Vosburgh's office together and had eaten lunch at the Little Washington outlet of the Golden Corral restaurant chain: an odd choice, since it was in a Raleigh Golden Corral that Chris had first broached the idea of the murder.

Even when her notes were read back to her, Bonnie had no recollection of such a lunch, or even of being in Chris's presence. Nor was Angela able to recall anything she said or did for the rest of the day. Chris had only a vague memory of possibly eating lunch somewhere, but did not remember where or with whom or anything that might have been said.

Bonnie's notes indicated that she returned Chris to Jim Vosburgh's office at one-fifteen
P
.
M
., so he could be at the county sheriff's office by one-thirty in order to make his formal statement.

After that, Bonnie did go back to the motel, apparently alone. There, she tried to write about what Chris had just confessed to. “It is so much worse than I had ever feared,” she began. But then she stopped.

She called Wade Smith in early afternoon, but was unable to reach him. He returned her call at four
P
.
M
., according to her notes, but she felt unable to speak freely to him then because Linda Sloane, her friend from the Humane Society, had arrived in the room.

Bonnie could not remember any of this, but Linda recalled the afternoon and evening clearly. A few days earlier, she and Bonnie had made plans to exchange Christmas gifts in the Holiday Inn, then to have dinner together in the Holiday Inn dining room.

And that's what they did. When Linda arrived at the motel in late afternoon, neither Bonnie nor Angela, who also was there, gave any sign that they'd had an unusually stressful day.

Everything seemed perfectly normal. Indeed, when Linda asked Bonnie how she felt, Bonnie said, “I feel good. I feel positive. Things are going to work out.”

They sat in the room and exchanged gifts. Then the three of them went to the dining room and ate. All Bonnie said was that Chris was answering some questions for the police, and she was concerned that if they kept him too long, he might not get a good dinner.

Days later Linda Sloane read in the newspaper that Chris had confessed and was going to plead guilty, and she then realized that Bonnie had known the truth throughout the afternoon and evening they'd spent together.

Even after the story had been printed in the paper, Bonnie never said a word about it. Just as Bonnie never told Linda—perhaps her best friend in Little Washington—that Chris had been hospitalized back in August.

Some things were just not meant to be discussed. Some things were private. Some burdens were not meant to be shared. And maybe, as Linda Sloane suggested later, “to not talk about it can help it to not be real.”

* * *

The other discrepancy between Bonnie's memory and her notes involved what happened after Chris had come back to the room. All the restaurants in Little Washington were already closed, and so, according to the notes, she gave Chris and Angela her car keys so the two of them could drive to The Waffle House in Greenville: the place where Bonnie had eaten her last breakfast with Lieth.

Chris and Angela did not return until after midnight. Later, neither could recall anything they had talked about to one another.

The formal interview with Chris had lasted from 1:25 to 10:10
P
.
M
. Present were Lewis Young, John Taylor, Mitchell Norton, Keith Mason, and Bill Osteen. Young later typed a thirty-four-page report of what was said, based on notes he took as Chris spoke. Osteen also took handwritten notes.

Several things Chris said would later give rise to troubling questions. Among them:

—He met Moog for the first time during summer session.

—He did not know whether Moog had ever met Angela.

—When he'd come to Washington on the Friday night before the murder, he'd gone out with his friends Jonathan Wagoner, Steven Outlaw, and Tiffany Heady.

—While home, he'd stolen a key. Young's notes said the key was for “the new back door . . . the outer back door.” Osteen's notes confirm this, quoting Chris as saying, “I had gotten a key for the new back door.” In the spring, Bonnie and Lieth had enclosed what had been a screen porch behind the kitchen. A new door, with a new lock, had been installed. The original back door, which led from the porch to the kitchen, had become an interior doorway, no longer directly accessible from outside the house.

—Moog was to leave Chris's car keys on a chair in his room upon returning to campus. If they weren't there whenever Chris was first informed of the murder, he would know his car had not yet been returned to the parking lot and he would make up his story about not being able to find his keys.

—Angela was to be a victim. He had no idea why she was not harmed.

—He had never read, or even heard of, the book
A Rose in Winter
.

—Except for the one occasion in August, he'd seen Moog only to say hi to after the murder, had never discussed it with him, and had never again played Dungeons & Dragons with either Moog or Neal Henderson.

At the time, none of these statements provoked much response. In retrospect, however, they could be seen as having disturbing implications.

* * *

Bonnie, Chris, and Angela drove back to Winston-Salem the next day. They still did not discuss what Chris had done.

“I'm just not the kind of person who's going to get into a long discussion about an unpleasant subject knowing that we've got a four-hour drive to Winston-Salem ahead of us,” Bonnie said later.

Angela said, “I never asked any questions because I didn't want to upset him. That's just the way I was brought up.”

And as soon as they reached Winston-Salem, the three of them went their separate ways.

* * *

That evening, Eric Caldwell came by the house. He'd already seen Chris, already knew Chris had confessed to Bonnie. Now he wanted to see how she was coping. For months he'd known the moment would someday come when Bonnie would have to learn the truth. Now he wanted to tell her he was sorry for having participated in what everyone had felt was a necessary deception.

“How're you doing?” he asked.

“Very surprised,” Bonnie said.

“You had no idea? You really never had any idea?”

“No,” she said, “it never once occurred to me that this would be the course events would follow.”

Eric told her how hard it had been for him to keep silent. She told him he had done the right thing. He had been loyal to Chris, and she admired him for that. There was nothing for which he should feel sorry; nothing for which she needed to forgive him. Chris was fortunate to have had him for a friend.

Her biggest worry at the moment, she told Eric, was how she would tell her family what had happened.

“They told me about my daddy,” she said. “Now I get to tell them about the next death in the family. Because that's what this is. Another death in the family.”

Her only consolation, she told Eric, was that, even though it had taken him a long time to work up the courage, to face up to what was right, to what must be done, Chris had, in the end, acted honorably.

“Chris pleaded guilty,” Bonnie said, “because he could no longer live with his remorse.

“He didn't plead guilty just to avoid the death penalty. He needed to do it because he couldn't live with it any other way. He wanted us to know. To go through a trial and be acquitted, and then never be able to tell us, that was not something he felt like he could live with. So, at least he acted with honor at the end.”

Such were the scraps and tatters to which she clung.

But Eric would say later that he'd reluctantly formed a different opinion of Chris's motive for pleading guilty. “He told me Osteen had said he only had a thirty percent chance of getting off. He said, ‘If they told me forty or fifty percent, I would have gone for it.' He said he looked at it like in Dungeons and Dragons, where you roll two ten-sided dice. Bonnie kept insisting that he'd pleaded guilty because of sorrow and remorse, but Chris said it was simply a matter of percentages.

“My biggest fear,” Eric said, “was that Chris wasn't really sorry for what he'd done.”

Bonnie did tell her mother and her brother and her sisters. Later, she would say, “They were all as shocked as I was.”

Then, alone, on New Year's Day, she made the six-hour drive to Elizabeth City, despite the fact that Chris would not be standing trial.

 

Part Four

“The Three Ds”

January 1990

31

For so long, January 2 had been imprinted on Bonnie's mind as the date when the long-obstructed march toward justice would begin. No more of the storm-trooper tactics of the SBI and Washington police. No more intimidation, no more lies, no more being treated like a criminal instead of a victim.

In the courtroom, in Elizabeth City, in front of the stem but fair-minded Judge Thomas Watts, with Bill Osteen and Jim Vosburgh defending him, Chris would finally be given a chance to demonstrate his innocence. And Bonnie would learn for the first time, from hearing
all
the evidence, what had really happened to her and to Lieth.

Now it was not to be. Now, Chris would not be on trial. Now, he would be making only the briefest of appearances to testify against James Upchurch on behalf of the prosecution.

And the prosecution—against which Bonnie had fought for so long and so hard and with such futility—was now
representing
her interests. After so many months of contempt for their tactics and their incompetence, and their stubborn and willful insistence on believing what she knew could not be true, Bonnie was suddenly
on their team
. This was not at all what she had been expecting. But not for a moment did it occur to her to alter her plan to attend every session of the trial. Even if Chris's fate was no longer hanging in the balance, this remained the trial of the man accused of murdering her husband, and of having tried to murder her.

And even though Bonnie was as convinced as ever that it had been Henderson, not Upchurch, whom she'd seen in her bedroom that night, she was now faced with Chris's admission that he had plotted with Upchurch, not Henderson, what he'd hoped would be her death.

Some were surprised that Bonnie was still so committed to attending the whole trial. Yes, of course, she would have to testify; yes, she would want to be there when Chris testified; but why put herself through the agony of being present every day? Why not just wait for a phone call in late January or early February, informing her of the jury's verdict?

Since she now knew for certain that her son would be going to prison for many years, why not take advantage of this last opportunity to spend time with him?

One answer was, she did not want to. And the trial provided the perfect escape. Now that she finally knew the truth, now that her denial mechanism—at least in regard to fact, if not emotion—was inoperable, the only way she could avoid confronting the reality of what he'd done was to avoid Chris himself. Only by spending alt week, every week, in Elizabeth City, until the very day Chris was sentenced, could Bonnie spare herself the trauma of such an encounter.

Consciously, of course, she saw her choice not as avoidance but as a last chance to bear witness to the love she'd had for her husband. “There would be other opportunities to be with Angela and Chris,” she said. “But this was the, last thing I could ever do for Lieth. Elizabeth City was where I felt I needed to be. I had accepted long ago that he was dead and that there was nothing I could do to change that, but I could be there and assist in any way I could to be sure the people who were responsible for his death were punished.

“And whatever the outcome, I needed to feel that when it was over, I would know as much as possible about what had happened on that weekend.”

Regarding Chris, she said that during those few hectic and traumatic days between his confession and the start of the trial, “I never had a major talk with him.” She seemed surprised, in fact, that anyone might think she'd find it necessary to have a frank discussion—possibly even an
emotional
discussion—about the fact that he had tried to have her murdered.

“The most significant talk we had was me asking him if he wanted me to sell his car. I did ask him once what his concerns were about being in prison, and he said he was worried about sex abuse, but I made a conscious effort not to rehash any of what he'd already told me about the crime because he was facing having to testify, and that would be hard enough for him, without me giving him some sort of grilling in advance. Besides, he'd already told me the basics in Mr. Vosburgh's office.”

* * *

Judge Thomas Watts was only fifty, but looked at least ten years older. He was balding, bespectacled, and since birth, had suffered from hemophilia. He walked with a cane and wore a hearing aid. His grandfather had been a Baptist minister (a distinction shared, it sometimes seemed, by approximately half the population of the state), and he had grown up in western North Carolina, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains.

“I'm a bleeder,” he once said. “One of the few that makes it to this age. When I was born, my parents were told I had a life expectancy of well under a year. So I sort of operate under the philosophy that every time the sun comes up, that's another one on the plus side of the ledger. I had bad knees, I had joint injuries, and there were no treatments in those days except to immobilize the area that was bleeding and put ice on it. I spent probably forty percent of my first ten years in the hospital.”

His physical infirmities caused Thomas Watts to become a voracious reader at an early age, and the habit had stayed with him. He grew up a Democrat and still claimed Franklin D. Roosevelt as one of his greatest heroes. He graduated from Davidson College, then Wake Forest Law School, and worked as a district attorney before being appointed to the bench in 1982.

He had Scottish blood in him, even owned a kilt, which he wore to folk festivals in the mountains. He'd been married to the same woman for twenty-seven years and had a twenty-five-year-old daughter who worked in public relations. But the law was perhaps his greatest passion. He read about it, he thought deeply about it, he approached it with a respect bordering on reverence.

His favorite necktie was imprinted with images of the statue of justice from the Old Bailey courthouse in London. “That statue,” he once explained when asked, “has three unique things about it. She obviously has the scales, and it's appropriate that justice should have the scales to finely weigh and balance the equities of a case. But she also carries in her right hand an upright sword, because justice should have the power to impose punishment if necessary. That is her strength; the majesty and force to impose the rule of an orderly and civilized society upon the public.

“But the most unique thing about the British figure of justice—which is absolutely different from the statues of justice you see in the United States—is that she is not blindfolded. Her eyes are open, so she can see the truth. And that summarizes my philosophy: justice should have her eyes open and should always be looking for the truth.”

* * *

It was before Judge Watts that Jim Vosburgh stood at ten
A
.
M
. on January 2 and said, “Your Honor, we have entered into a plea agreement with the district attorney. We would like to withdraw our pleas of not guilty and enter pleas in accordance with the plea arrangement and transcript, which will be taken by the court.”

Judge Watts, speaking in a deep, scratchy voice heavy with the accent of western North Carolina—more of a flat, slow drawl than the thicker, more purely Southern accent common to the eastern part of the state—told Chris Pritchard to step forward and to place his hand on a Bible that was passed to him, and to swear to tell the truth.

Chris, looking pale and nervous, ill at ease in suit and tie, stood and did so. Then Judge Watts looked down at him with an expression in which no glimmer of sympathy was apparent.

“Just remain standing, if you will, Mr. Pritchard,” the judge said, “and answer my questions in a good, loud voice so that the court reporter and all of us can hear what you have to say. First of all, are you able to hear and understand me?

“Yes, sir,” Chris said, his voice not loud at all.

“Do you understand that you have the right to remain silent and that any statement you make may be used against you?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“Are you now under the influence of alcohol, narcotics, medicines, pills, or any other form of intoxicants?”

“No, sir.”

“How long has it been since you used or consumed any intoxicating substance of any type?”

“I had a beer last night, sir.”

“Is that still in your system?”

“No, sir.”

“Do you feel any effects of that?”

“No. I had it with my food.”

Judge Watts asked Chris if he'd discussed his case fully with his attorneys (yes), and if he was satisfied with their legal services (yes), and if he understood that he was pleading guilty to two felony charges—aiding and abetting murder in the second degree, and aiding and abetting an assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill and inflicting serious injury (yes), and if he understood also that on the second-degree murder charge he could be imprisoned for a possible maximum sentence of either life or fifty years (he did), and that the presumed fair sentence for murder in the second degree as set by the state's General Assembly was fifteen years (he did), and that the second charge carried a maximum punishment of twenty years, and that the presumed fair sentence for that one was six years (he did), and if he understood that he had the right to plead not guilty and to have each of those charges decided by a jury, and at such a trial he would have the right to confront and cross-examine any witness who would testify against him (he did), and that by pleading guilty he was giving up those rights and all other important constitutional rights relating to trial by jury (he did).

“Do you now personally plead guilty to the charge of aiding and abetting in the second-degree murder of Lieth Von Stein?” Judge Watts asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you in fact guilty of that charge?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you now personally plead guilty to aiding and abetting an assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill and inflicting serious bodily injury upon Bonnie Von Stein?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And are you in fact guilty of that charge?”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

The judge then accepted the change of plea and permitted Chris to remain free under the conditions of his original bond until he was sentenced.

And so Bonnie's new life began. Even as Chris and Angela and Jim Vosburgh left the courthouse and Elizabeth City, Bonnie remained.

Alone in the courtroom, she was approached by John Taylor. He said that now that Chris had pleaded guilty, Mitchell Norton was wondering if perhaps, despite their past differences, Bonnie would sit on the prosecution side of the aisle. It was, after all, Lieth and Bonnie whom the State was representing, and the jury might find it peculiar to have her sitting on the “wrong” side of the courtroom, with the defense.

It was still so hard for her to recognize that the “defense” no longer included her. That these people, whom for so many months she had considered the enemy, were now her friends. Or even if she could never come to consider them friends, that at least they were no longer seeking to do her harm.

She gathered her notepaper and pocketbook and coat and moved in front of the railing that separated the trial's principals from courtroom spectators. There, on the left side, she took a seat alongside Taylor and Lewis Young, directly behind the table at which Mitchell Norton and Keith Mason sat.

The realignment, however, would not prove simple for either side. Grudges long nursed are not easily dissipated, especially when the aggrieved party must, at least implicitly, admit to having been wrong.

The problem worsens when the aggrieved party is a mother whose son has just told her he really did try to have her murdered, and when the district attorney still harbors a faint suspicion that this apparently pitiful victim might be something other than what she seems.

* * *

Late in the week, after the jury had been selected and with the trial in recess until the following Monday, Wade asked Bonnie to come to his office. Like Lewis Young before him Norton had turned to Wade for help in solving what he feared could be a serious problem.

Wade explained to Bonnie that Norton would be calling her as one of his first witnesses, but that the district attorney was extremely concerned about what she would say about the shape of the shadowy figure in her bedroom. Her insistence that it could not have been Upchurch would undermine the prosecution from the start.

She arrived at Wade's office, as requested, at nine
A
.
M
. Friday, January 5. To her surprise, Mitchell Norton, Lewis Young, and John Taylor were already there. Wade told her he'd been meeting with the three of them since eight-thirty.

Wade said he was almost finished talking with the three members of the prosecution team, and that as soon as he was, they could all talk together. Bonnie sat in the waiting room outside his office and began to make notes. She didn't like this. Even if she was now, in theory, a member—or at least a supporter—of their “team,” she didn't like them talking to her lawyer behind her back when she couldn't hear what they were saying.

“9:10
A
.
M
.,” she wrote. “He asked for about ten minutes with others.

“9:37—Conference without me still in progress.

“9:50—Same situation. I am still sitting in lobby, waiting. This is no surprise as far as prosecution group. It
is a surprise
from Mr. Smith.

“9:55—As the minutes pass by, I become increasingly dismayed.

“10:00—All four pass by and enter elevator. Mr. Smith says, ‘Bonnie, we'll be ready for you in just a little while. Don't go to sleep!' I made no response other than to nod my head in acquiescence. Actually, I don't quite trust my voice at this point. I really do not want to reveal my total dismay.

“10:05—It's time to release the building tension. I ask Mr. Smith's secretary for a cup of hot tea to help pass the time and calm the rising frustration.