Cruel Doubt (36 page)

“I heard a whoosh noise and I lost consciousness.”

“How many times did you hear the whoosh noise?”

“Directly preceding every time I remember someone being struck.”

“How many times do you remember either yourself or Lieth being struck?”

“Four or five times.”

“Do you know how long you were unconscious?”

“No.”

“What was the next thing you remember?”

“I remember hearing the bedroom door close very softly. And I heard the same type of whoosh sound and some thumps outside of the bedroom behind the closed door. And the thought that came to me was, ‘Angela is being attacked now.' ”

“What was Lieth doing? Were you aware of where Lieth was at the time?”

“No.”

“Do you recall hearing anything from him, any sounds at all coming from Lieth?”

“At that time, no.”

“At some time later did you?”

“Yes.”

“And when was that, please?”

“I lost consciousness after hearing the whoosh and the thumps outside the bedroom door, as best I recall. And the next thing I remember is becoming awake, being disoriented. I was lying on the floor. I didn't know why I was on the floor. I thought I had had a bad dream and fallen out of the bed. I reached up to get back up on the bed, and I felt Lieth's hand. It was very sticky. It was a very sticky feeling, and his fingers just hung down.”

“Could you hear any sound from Lieth at that time?”

“I believe I heard him breathing.”

“Were you conscious of the fact at that time that you yourself had been struck?”

“At that time, no.”

“What about the chest wound?”

“At the time when I moved my hand, when I reached to try to get up on the bed,” she said, “I couldn't move. And there was this gushy, yucky, warm feeling that came up on my neck. And I put my hand up on my head. And I felt, like, a big hole in my head. And I realized that something was—was terribly wrong, and I needed to get to the telephone. I remember trying to move towards the telephone, and I couldn't get up. The only thing I could do to make myself move was to push with my heels. So I got turned around in the direction where the telephone was. It was sitting on top of the metal filing cabinet next to the desk.”

Norton asked her how she managed to get to the phone.

“I don't know,” she said. “I remember moving and trying to reach the phone. And then I remember being right next to the filing cabinet. I couldn't reach the phone. I couldn't sit up far enough to get to the phone. And I reached between the desk and the filing cabinet and caught hold of the cord and pulled the phone, and it fell on top of me.

“I remember becoming conscious again. I had the telephone sitting on top of me. I tried to call, get the operator. I tried to call 911. I couldn't remember where any of the buttons on the telephone were. I kept getting a busy signal, and all kinds of weird noises.

“Finally, I just hung the phone up and thought, ‘I have to find the zero.' So I started pushing the buttons one at a time. I would push a button and then hang the phone up until I got to the zero and got the operator.

“Could you describe your emotional state at that time?”

“The only thing I had on my mind,” Bonnie said calmly, “was, ‘I have to get somebody. I have to get help.' I wasn't conscious of any other emotion at that time.”

“At any time during the attack,” Norton asked, “did you ever see more than one person?”

“No.” That didn't mean she thought there
wasn't
more than one, but the truthful answer to the question he had asked her was no.

“Are you able to identify that person, Ms. Von Stein?”

She paused. Then, very softly, she gave what she knew to be the only truthful answer to the question he had asked. “No.”

* * *

Norton figured he was through the bad patch now. The rest, from his point of view, was mere detail. But to Bonnie, it involved an anguishing first public description of some of the worst moments of her life.

“I remember somebody knocking on the door,” she said. “I assumed it was the police because the lady on the phone said the police were on their way. I remember saying, ‘Come in.' But they couldn't hear me. They kept knocking on the door. Finally, somebody opened the door and turned on the light.

“He turned on the light and said something that sounded to me like, ‘Oh, my God, I've never seen anything like this.' And kind of fell back out of the room. Everything—everything was red. The whole room looked red to me.

“I remember asking about Lieth. And someone told me that there was nothing they could do to help Lieth. At one point, I asked about Angela. Then I heard her voice. And that was a beautiful sound.”

Bonnie paused. She could not go on. There just was no more she could bring herself to say. The moment was, she said later, “unbearable.”

But then it got worse. For no apparent reason—Bonnie later surmised, “He was just going out of his way to make me as miserable as possible”—Mitchell Norton handed her one of the worst and goriest of the crime-scene photos John Taylor had taken: one that showed, in full color, Lieth's bloody, battered body on the bed.

“Who is that individual?” Norton asked.

At this point, Bonnie finally began to cry. “That
was
my husband, Lieth,” she said.

She held her hand to her eyes and wept softly. It was something she'd promised herself she would not do, but when a person makes as many promises to herself as Bonnie had, it sometimes is not possible to keep them all.

* * *

Even when Bonnie was able to continue, Norton didn't let up.

“Did you believe your son could have done such a thing?” he asked.

“No.”

“Did you believe your son was innocent?”

“Yes.”

“Had you talked with your son?”

“Yes.”

“Did he indicate to you initially that he had done nothing?”

“Yes.”

“Do you now believe that your son had nothing to do with it?”

“No.”

“Have you talked with your son about what happened that night?”

“Yes.”

“Has he admitted to you that he, in company with others, did in fact plot and carry out not only your death, but the death of Lieth Von Stein?”

“Yes.”

“Did he tell you who was involved in the planning of this conspiracy?”

“Yes.”

“What did he tell you?”

“James Upchurch and Neal Henderson and himself, Chris Pritchard.”

“Did he tell you what the plan was? What each individual was to do?”

“Yes.”

“What did he tell you?”

“The plan was for Mr. Henderson to drive Christopher's car to Washington, and Mr. Upchurch was to go in the house and kill us, and Chris was to stay at North Carolina State.”

“When did Chris finally admit to you the things that you've just told us about, Ms. Von Stein?”

“December twenty-seventh, 1989.” There was a pause as it sunk into the jury's collective mind that this had been less than two weeks ago.

“And from July of '88 up until December of 1989, had he ever indicated to you, ever admitted to you, that he was involved in this?”

“No.”

“And up until that time in December, did you believe or want to believe that your son could not and would not do such a thing?”

“Yes.”

Then, after having her testify that the total estate that Angela and Chris would have inherited was approximately $2 million, and that neither she nor Lieth had sat down and explained the trust arrangement to either of them in detail, Mitchell Norton was finished with her.

* * *

It was Wayland Sermons, the younger of Upchurch's defenders, who conducted the cross-examination. He began by asking about their family life.

Bonnie said the million dollars Lieth had inherited had caused no changes in their lifestyle.

“You mentioned a fight at the dinner table.”

“Yes.”

“And that was something prompted not by Chris, but by Lieth's anger, is that not correct?”

“Yes.”

“Did that cause any animosity or split feelings between you and Lieth?”

“No.”

“For any short period of time?”

“No.”

“But I believe you indicated Lieth would have you discipline the children because they were yours, is that correct?”

“Not because they are mine, but because I was more diplomatic at handling them than he was.”

“Okay. And so that prevented him from becoming involved one-on-one with the children, isn't that true?”

“Yes.”

She said “occasionally” both Chris and Angela would call Lieth “asshole” to his face.

In response to further questions she also said: Chris had lied to her in the past; she didn't know why the kitchen telephone cord had been disconnected on the night of the murder; and that Chris alone, with no help from Angela, had prepared the hamburgers the night before.

Returning to the night of the murder, Sermons said, “Now, you talked to Angela in her room and she had a fan on and a radio, and then you closed her door and went to your room. Left your door open, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“And when you began reading you could hear her radio, so you got up and closed your door?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know if the door is hollow or not?”

“It is a hollow door.”

“It is hollow?”

“Yes.”

“And the door to Angela's room would be the same, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

He established that she'd indeed had thirteen cats in the house, and then he asked her about the rooster.

“Was this your pet?”

“Yes. I brought him in occasionally. He sat for about an hour each evening and watched TV with me.”

Then he asked about keys. “Do you know whether Chris had a key to the back door?”

“To the back door on the porch? No.”

“He did not have a key?”

“He did not have a key.”

“Have you since heard him state that he did have a key?”

“Yes.”

This was news. Until this answer, lawyers on both sides had accepted Chris's story of stealing the key to the back door. Now Bonnie was stating he had
not
had a key to the new, outer door. From Sermons's point of view, however, there seemed nothing to gain from pressing the issue.

Instead he began to focus on the murder itself, establishing how much noise there had been, implying that Angela could not have slept through it. He reminded Bonnie that, when first interviewed in the hospital, she'd said Lieth had screamed “at least fifteen times at the top of his lungs.”

Then he introduced the subject of Henderson, reminding Bonnie that she had described the assailant as having “very broad shoulders and no neck.” He handed her a picture of Henderson. She said she recognized it as being him because she'd seen him in court during pretrial proceedings.

“Can you tell us,” Sermons asked, “when the very first time is you saw Mr. Henderson?”

“I saw him in the courtroom in Beaufort County when I was there for some motions to be heard.”

“And was that the very first time in broad daylight, in any kind of light, that you had ever seen Mr. Henderson that you know of?”

“Yes.”

“Ms. Von Stein, can you describe to us whether or not you had any feelings of recognition of Mr. Henderson at that time?”

Mitchell Norton was on his feet, objecting, but Judge Watts ruled that Bonnie could answer.

“I didn't recognize Mr. Henderson,” she said. “I recognized the fact that he had a shape that frightened me. I was upset to the point that when we broke, I left the courtroom and did not return until after the lunch break.” Then she described having had the same sensation a few weeks earlier, when she'd seen someone else with the same physique.

Sermons asked whether the sight of James Upchurch provoked an equivalent response.

“No.”

“You did not become frightened?”

“No.”

“You did not feel any scaredness, or any type of emotional uprising in your body?”

“Not with his appearance, no.”

“Ms. Von Stein, in your opinion then, do the defendant James Upchurch's physical features match the silhouette you saw in your bedroom?”

“In the conditions I've seen him in, no.”

Sermons then attacked Chris's veracity, establishing that during at least four interviews with investigators, he had lied. “It wasn't until December twenty-seventh that Chris began to tell a story different from the four prior times, is that correct?”

“That's correct.”

“Did you know then that on the four prior occasions Chris had not been telling the truth?”

“No.”

“And I believe you said you did not want to believe that he would have been capable of doing such a thing, is that correct?”

“That's correct.”

“And after he made the statement on December twenty-seventh?”

“After he told me, I had to believe him.”

* * *

On redirect examination, she said she believed him now because “I can't possibly imagine him telling me such a horrible story had he not done what he said he did.”

But Norton's main concern was Bonnie's statement that Upchurch's appearance did not frighten her, and that he did not seem to resemble the person she'd seen in her bedroom. All his earlier work was threatening to come undone.

“The conditions in which you have seen Mr. Upchurch,” he asked, “have they been in a courtroom atmosphere?”

“Yes.”

“In well-lighted areas, just like it is here?”

“Yes.”

“Have you had your glasses on?”

“Yes.”

“Has he been dressed in a suit, coat and tie?”