Cruel Doubt (40 page)

They'd stopped for gas—
and to wash the car
—in Greenville? Chris had said earlier that he'd not only filled the tank on Sunday night, just before giving Upchurch his keys, but had told Moog that although the gas gauge was broken, it was possible to make it down and back without having to refuel. Just in case, however, he'd given Moog twenty dollars for gas. Presumably a driver with Henderson's IQ and gaming ability would have thought to stop for gasoline, if he thought any might be needed,
before
a crime was committed, not after.

Beyond these details, there was the extraordinary discrepancy regarding the duration of Henderson's involvement. Had it spanned weeks, or only the final twenty-four hours?

Given this embarrassment of riches from which to choose on cross-examination, Frank Johnston, in a manner that Bonnie described in her notes as “offensive and harsh,” probed hardest at Henderson's story about moving the car.

“You say you drove down that road a couple of hundred yards?”

“No more than that.”

“And you parked there?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you have your lights on or off?”

“They were off, sir.”

“Isn't it true that there is a cornfield located immediately to the south of where you were parked, between Airport Road and the Smallwood subdivision?”

“I think so, yes.”

“And isn't it true that corn was growing there at the time?”

“I think so.”

“And you say you pulled down this road hoping to
see
James, or that
he
would see
you
?”

“I pulled down the road hoping to see James. I was hoping James would see me when I drove back and forth.”

“Well, you only drove back and forth once.”

“If he was on the road, that would have been enough.” Henderson seemed a little less forlorn and pathetic now; a little more surly.

“And you are telling us that you expected him to walk down this highway, with all his goodies, about a quarter of a mile back to the Airport Road, rather than walking through a field that would provide camouflage for him?”

“I expected to park the car where I was told to park the car and wait where I was told.”

“But you didn't do that?”

“No. I got scared and I left.”

In Bonnie's mind, that still did not answer the question of how Upchurch, fleeing her house after a murder—and by a longer and more exposed route than he needed to take—had managed to see a car parked in an unexpected location, maybe two hundred yards down a road that was little more than a driveway through a field of corn that in North Carolina, in late July, was already almost six feet high. And even if he had seen it, why would he have assumed it was Chris Pritchard's car, with Neal Henderson behind the wheel, instead of, for example, the police?

She was also bothered by two of his other answers. Henderson admitted that when he'd first spoken to Lewis Young, he'd described Chris's car as black. Not only was it white, but he'd even paused on his way home to get it washed. So how could he have thought it was black?

And in his original statement to John Taylor and John Crone, as he described the trip back to Raleigh, he'd said he and Upchurch had not talked much—instead, they had listened to the radio. But weeks earlier, the radio had been stolen from Chris's car.

As he neared the end of his cross-examination, Frank Johnston seemed to become more openly sarcastic with each question.

“Isn't it true, Mr. Henderson, that you were termed by many as a ‘genius'?”

“Some might say that,” Henderson answered. “Some might not. It depends who you ask.”

“And isn't it true that you had, from the time this incident occurred, eleven months before you ever came forward and made any statement to any officers?”

“Eleven months sounds about right.”

“And isn't it true that there have been an additional six or seven months since you first came forward?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And during all this period, you have certainly had ample opportunity to think about your situation and what would be in your best interest, have you not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“In recognition of your plea, is it not true that the State reduced charges against you and has agreed not to prosecute other charges?”

“That was the plea bargain, yes, sir.”

“And isn't it true that by your plea, you are not facing the death penalty?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And isn't it true that it was explained to you that the sentence you would receive would be based upon His Honor's discretion?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And depending on how you did in court and what you said, that might have a significant impact on what type of sentence you might receive, isn't that true?”

“I was told it would be entirely up to Judge Watts.”

“Weren't you told, Mr. Henderson, that if you got on that stand and verified the facts that the State wanted you to verify, that it may help you in your sentencing?”

“No, sir. I was told to give truthful testimony. And that's all I am doing.”

Now it was Johnston's turn to carry forward the appalling crime-scene photograph of Lieth Von Stein.

“I ask you to look at this again. Isn't it true that the last time you saw Mr. Von Stein you saw him in that condition, or
put
him in that condition on July twenty-fifth, 1988?”

“No, sir. That is not true. I did not do that and I could not do that.”

“And isn't it true that on none of these occasions you've testified to, James Upchurch was even with you?”

“No, sir. That is not true. He was with me and he did do what I said he did.”

 

36

Bonnie went home for the weekend. She met with Billy Royal on Saturday. “This time,” she said, “
he
talked to
me
.”

Now that he was free to speak openly to her, Dr. Royal wanted to try to explain how her son had turned out the way he did, and what might have driven him to the desperate point he'd reached by July 1988.

Bonnie wanted to know, yet she didn't. She needed to know, but not too much. The defenses that had enabled her to survive not only the previous eighteen months, but the grim years that had followed Steve Pritchard's departure, were not about to crumble all at once.

Besides, she still did not have the rapport with Dr. Royal that she enjoyed with Jean Spaulding. Indeed, Bonnie's notes of the meeting suggest a certain defensiveness. “Once, during our conversation,” she wrote, “I called Chris ‘Christopher.' Dr. Royal seemed to want to make a big deal out of that. There is no hidden reason for this. Usually, when saying the possessive form, it is easier to say ‘Christopher's' than ‘Chris's.' ”

She also wrote, “I asked Dr. Royal what his assessment of Chris is. He beat around the bush with a lot of ‘ahems' and double-talk. I asked him to tell me what he would say if asked a direct question about the reasons for Christopher's involvement & his seeming detachment. He went through another long, meaningless dialogue about how each of us possesses the ability to do most anything under given circumstances.

“Finally, he reached the core of the question. He feels Chris was deeply affected by his abandonment by his father at a very young and impressionable age. Since that time, he has had a fear of losing me. He has constantly sought assurance from me and has always feared rejection.

“Lieth came into his life and filled the father-figure void. He and Lieth did have a few problems, but certainly not more & maybe less than most fathers & sons. Chris has always felt like he needed a lot of friends.

“Dr. Royal also said Chris has had several fantasies concerning becoming a great writer, providing a home for me & Angela (having us dependent on him). Another fantasy is that he is married and we all live together in a giant home. Me, Lieth, Chris, his wife, Angela. His need for family seems to be overpowering at times. Almost to the point of desperation.

“In 1987, when Lieth's father died and we began spending so much time in W-S on the weekends, Chris felt a loss. The loss of Lieth's mother only made Chris feel more insecure. He saw Lieth's parents leave him. He also knew there was what seemed to be a large amount of money involved. His move to NC State was a further separation from the family. Being removed from the close relationship & dependence on me, he began to feel not so good about himself. His grades were slipping.

“Chris became more involved in the game D&D. This allowed him to remove himself from his real feelings and situations. He could set himself aside and become the character he was playing. Then came the increased use of alcohol, then the drugs. This combination became a deadly force: Chris's loss of confidence & self-esteem, D&D, alcohol & drugs.

“Chris also idolized ‘Moog' to a degree. He often talked about how smart he was & how he could keep all the characters in his head. ‘Moog' was the Dungeon Master. Dr. Royal feels when Chris mentioned patricide to ‘Moog' that ‘Moog' jumped on the idea & didn't lose sight of it. Although there were several occasions when the plans were talked about, they were never in a ‘real life' aspect or setting. Chris was detached, like it was ‘all a big game.'

“Another observation Dr. Royal had was that he felt Chris was trying to prove by killing his entire family that he could show he was not dependent on anyone. He could survive without any of us.”

Absent from the notes was any expression of feeling about what Chris had done. This was her son. He'd tried to have her murdered and had taken from her forever the man she'd loved. Yet she herself could survive only by reducing Dr. Royal's insights to a form of data she could process.

* * *

Billy Royal later made several other observations. Among these were that Bonnie's anger at Steve Pritchard for leaving her had communicated itself to both Chris and Angela; that the need for Bonnie to work such long hours, and sometimes to be gone for as much as a week at a time for training programs, made Chris extraordinarily insecure. Night after night, he and Angela would be the last two children to be picked up at the Salem Baptist day-care center. Chris, in particular, developed a chronic fear that his mother was never coming back.

Billy Royal also said, regarding Dungeons & Dragons, that the game put Chris in a place where he was in control, instead of dependent, and in a universe where he could “do” things that deviated dramatically from the value system he'd been brought up to believe in.

“He decided to take his fate into his own hands,” Dr. Royal said, “and just get rid of everybody he was close to before they had a chance to abandon him.”

But on that Saturday in January, as Bonnie's meeting was drawing to a close, Chris arrived for his regular appointment. This would be one of his final sessions with Billy Royal. In little more than a week, he would be sentenced and locked up for many years in a place where neither Billy Royal nor anyone like him would be able to help Chris get better.

Chris walked in, Bonnie looked at him, then suddenly started to cry. Almost immediately, so did Chris.

It was as if she could now see him, maybe for the first time, as the hurt, frightened, and angry little boy he'd always been.

 

37

James Upchurch's lawyers chose not to have him testify in his defense.

This may have been simply because they feared the jury would neither like him nor believe him. Though he'd gotten his hair cut and wore neat and subdued clothing each day, Moog, even on trial for his life, could not rid himself of the smirk that had attracted the attention of every investigator who'd ever spoken to him.

Lewis Young called it “a weird smile” and saw it accompanied by “that crazy stare.” Frank Johnston termed it more euphemistically “a facial mannerism that was not positive for his position.” In either case, a silently smirking murder defendant was bad enough. One who seemed to be grinning at the jury while denying his guilt from the stand would be worse.

Wayland Sermons later said there was another reason for the decision not to have Moog testify. “We felt that even though he would have had some good points, they would have been overshadowed by the open-door rule on cross-examination in North Carolina. That rule says that if a defendant, or any witness, takes the stand and swears to tell the truth, the prosecutor can ask
any
question—it doesn't have to have been raised on direct examination—relevant to either the facts of the case or the credibility of the witness.

“The State took three weeks to put on its case. Three weeks' worth of information that the DA laboriously put in front of the jury. And we felt he would laboriously spend three more weeks asking the defendant, ‘Isn't it true that this happened?' And we felt the damage from that—from hearing that again, with the defendant sitting up there saying, ‘No, that is not true, I did not do this'—we felt like there wasn't any advantage to that.

“In the eyes of the jury, whether he says yes, no, or ‘I was in Hawaii,' it just reiterates those points.”

The risk, of course—as would have been the case with Chris—was that no matter how often a jury was instructed that a defendant's decision not to testify should not count against him, it almost always did. Presumption of innocence was a splendid concept in the abstract, but what was found far more frequently in the real world of the courtroom was a presumption of guilt. After hearing two former friends spend days describing how he had plotted and carried out a murder, why wouldn't James Upchurch—or any innocent defendant—have
demanded
the right to personally tell the jurors it was not true?

In any event, with Upchurch having chosen to stay silent, closing arguments were made on Monday, January 22. In the absence of any direct denial of guilt from the defendant, it was up to his two public defenders to argue that the case against him had not been proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

Frank Johnston spoke first. He had not written out his presentation in advance, nor even outlined it. He never did. His approach was to “think through” the weak areas in the State's case and focus on them. Here, he felt, he had an abundance from which to choose.

“I don't think this case falls into the realm of good, old, everyday common sense,” he said. “I think it's in the realm of the supernatural. I think it's in the realm of imagination, science fiction, the movies. This is not a case where you simply go out and say, well, it must have happened because Neal Henderson and Chris Pritchard said it did.”

Then he began to chip away, piece by piece, at the evidence the State had presented. The inconsistencies, the unanswered questions, the elements that defied rational explanation.

He began with Angela, suggesting, without saying so outright, that perhaps she should have been a defendant, too. “Angela's bedroom,” he said, “was ten to twelve feet from Mr. and Mrs. Von Stein's bedroom.”

He reminded the jury that the doors of both Angela's bedroom and the master bedroom were “hollow-core doors—not as good a sound protector as a solid door would be.” And that Bonnie had awakened to screams. Yet somehow Angela had managed not to hear the screams. Somehow, she'd managed to sleep through it all.

“And what did the officer say who spoke to her?” he asked. “ ‘Angela showed no emotion, nor any interest in the situation.' ”

Bonnie, when awakened by the screams, saw someone standing above her. “And how did she identify this person? Very broad-shouldered; no neck. Very broad-shouldered; no neck. Now, this is interesting. Remember how she describes this. She says there was light filtering through the door. She had testified there were no lights on in the bedroom. It was completely dark. So this intruder had evidently turned a light on somewhere. She is telling us now that there is a light on somewhere in the hall—or is it coming from Angela's bedroom?”

Whatever its source, Johnston emphasized, “even though she may not be able to see his face, that light would silhouette his form. And it did. And that is why she is able to give that kind of description. Broad-shouldered, and no neck. But not just broad-shouldered.
Very
broad-shouldered. It made a distinct impression on her. And the specific question was asked of her, ‘Mrs. Von Stein, does the defendant look like, or does his size appear to you to be the same as, the person you saw in the room on that morning?' ‘No, it does not.'

“The State tries to say, oh, well, now, if you were in a completely dark room with the lights out, with somebody standing up holding a bat, could you tell who that person was? Well, no. But if that's the case, why does she see Neal Henderson and James Upchurch in the courtroom in Washington, North Carolina, under the same circumstances, at approximately the same time, and it's the figure, the physical appearance of
Neal Henderson
, that bothers her so badly that she gets scared and has to leave the courtroom and go to an attorney's office across the street.

“The State would contend to you that doesn't make any difference. But Neal Henderson fits the picture. You've seen a picture of Neal Henderson. You've recognized and identified him. Seen him on the stand. You can see that there's a marked difference in his physical stature and that of James Upchurch. But the State would contend to you that, well, you ought not to pay any attention to that. That's not important.

“Well, you are trying this man for some awfully serious crimes. And it is important. And it needs to be considered, seriously considered, by each one of you when you get in that jury room.”

Next, he spoke about the bat. “Who is the only person,” he asked, “who has indicated that this bat was in the Von Stein residence? Neal Henderson. What does Bonnie Von Stein say? She said she heard a whooshing sound, even after someone left the room and shut the door. Now, you swing that bat as hard as you want to, you are not going to hear a whooshing sound. ‘Oh, but we found a bat in the woods eleven months later.' The scientists, the SBI, the FBI, nobody can say anything about that bat except it's a bat and it was found in the woods—except Neal Henderson.

“Who knows what his thought processes were, his defense tactics? There's no way to tell that. But I think it's awfully strange that a bat was found in the woods near Smallwood that can only be identified by Neal Henderson. A bat that was not identified by Bonnie Von Stein. A bat that could have been put there anytime after July twenty-fifth. No blood on it, no fibers, nothing to connect it with this case except for old Neal saying, ‘Yes, I saw James take it out of his closet two or three days before this happened. I saw him draw something on it.'

“But isn't it conceivable, doesn't it make sense, that that bat could have been planted there, or could just have been there, period?”

Then he voiced doubt about Bonnie. “You've got to weigh Bonnie Von Stein's testimony in the totality of this situation. What's happening here? What's going on? Have you seen any good Alfred Hitchcock programs lately? Her husband goes to bed. She watches TV. Ted Bundy story. Any of you familiar with that? Remember what it was like? Took her rooster in to watch it with her. Daughter came home. Went upstairs to get ready for bed.”

But what happened next? Johnston asked. “She says, well, I was unconscious for part of the time. When did it happen? Did Lieth get assaulted and killed sometime earlier in the evening, and then Bonnie get assaulted three, four, five hours later?

“What do we know? We know she called the police at four twenty-seven
A
.
M
. We know that the gentleman saw the fire about ten miles away in Pitt County at about quarter to five. Those times certainly check out. But what do we know about old Lieth?

“The blood had jelled. Blood had jelled. He's lying across the bed. Are we going to believe that she was passed out for hours and that the attacker waited around for her to regain consciousness before he attacked her again? Is that what the State wants us to believe?

“It's like a game of Clue is what the State wants you to believe. Have you ever played Clue? You draw little cards. It says the knife is in the kitchen, so you move your man over to the kitchen. Try to figure out who did something. The State wants you to draw all these cards, and the ones you can't fit in the puzzle, just throw them away and don't worry about it.

“And where is Angela all this time? Safely tucked away in her bed, sleeping through all the screams, through all the noise, through all the batterings. What did Bonnie say she told Detective Taylor? ‘Yes, I could have told him that Lieth screamed as many as fifteen times. I heard piercing screams, and I screamed.' The insulation was so poor that she had to keep her door shut to keep from hearing her daughter's radio.

“They rush her off to the hospital. And obviously, she is injured. Got some cuts and bruises on her forehead where she says she was struck. Had a collapsed lung from a knife wound.” He paused there, apparently hoping that the jury would, on its own, contrast the relative insignificance of these injuries to the massive and murderous wounds inflicted on Lieth.

“Then Detective Taylor and the rest of Washington's finest come in and do the crime scene,” he said. “And what do they find? Nothing. Nothing. And what does the SBI find? Nothing. What does the FBI find? Nothing. There is not one thread of physical evidence that ties anything that happened in this case to the defendant, James Upchurch. Not one.

“The State has introduced approximately one hundred and seventeen exhibits, and there is nothing in any of them that ties the defendant to being in that house, or to being with Neal Henderson on that evening, or to having anything to do with this. There's only the statements of Neal Henderson and Chris Pritchard.”

Neither of those two, he argued, was worthy of belief. “Why aren't they telling you the truth?” he asked. “Who are they protecting?” It was not a question he attempted to answer directly, hoping instead that the jurors might come up with a few tentative answers of their own—enough, at least, to have reasonable doubt about the guilt of James Upchurch.

Johnston said it was awfully important to keep in mind that Neal Henderson was a genius. “I don't know about y'all, but most of us don't run into contact with geniuses every day. And I don't know how to weigh and to approach a genius mind. I fall much inferior to that. We've got a person here who has immense capabilities, not only of developing and focusing and directing and imagining, but we don't even know what we are dealing with. We do not know the ramifications. Perhaps some of you are geniuses and you understand, but I don't think good common sense can even help us to understand the magnitude and thought processes that geniuses have.”

But he wasn't just a genius, he was an unfeeling, mechanical man. “Look at Neal Henderson's demeanor on the stand,” Johnston said. “Have you ever seen anybody testify that looked more like a robot? . . . ‘James told me to do it. James told me to stick my hand in the fire, so I did it. I do everything James tells me to do. I don't make any independent decisions of my own. Look, I wouldn't even have got involved in this if I didn't need some friends.'

“He played Dungeons and Dragons with two groups of people, lived with his girlfriend, but he needed friends? Does that sound to you like somebody that's a recluse, that doesn't have friends?”

And he wasn't just a genius and a robot, he was a liar. Take, for instance, his mention of the radio. They hadn't talked on the way back to Raleigh, they'd just listened to the radio.
Except there hadn't been a radio in the car
.

“If you're going to tell the truth,” Johnston said, “you tell the truth fifteen times, you tell it the same way. But if you're going to tell a lie, you get mixed up. You get confused. You tell it different ways. ‘Well, I think the car was black.' If he can remember every road he came out of Raleigh on, if he can remember every little detail on that map, you mean to tell me he can't even remember what color the car is?”

Of all Henderson's lies, he said, the most preposterous was the account of moving the car from the American Legion Road to the Airport Road while Upchurch was presumably inside the Von Stein house, committing murder.

“He wants you to believe that after this defendant killed Mr. Von Stein, he strolls on out to Market Street with the big streetlights out there, with blood all over him, and goes on down the road.

“Now, is somebody going to go on a straight line back through some woods where they are going to be protected, where they won't be seen—go in a straight line back to the car—or come out on the highway, walk down the road that's well lit, one of the major roads in Washington? And from what Neal tells you, this defendant didn't even know the car was there! He didn't know Neal had moved his location. Does that make sense to you?”

Then Johnston closed with a summary of what he considered to be the most glaring inconsistency.

“Dr. Page Hudson,” he said. “As good an expert, as informed, educated, experienced, an expert as you could have in any case. Highly renowned, tremendous background and experience, dedicated, responsible.