Blood Games (48 page)

When his candidate failed, Sermons returned to the university, this time with more resolve. He won a degree in business administration, married soon afterward, and enrolled in the prestigious law school at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem. His marriage ended in the second year of law school, but he got his degree and passed the bar exam. He had several job offers, including one with the civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington. He chose instead to return home, working briefly for an older lawyer, another family friend, before opening his own practice in a storefront at the corner of Market and Main streets, just a block from the courthouse.

Now remarried and the father of two children, Sermons was getting ready to go off to Myrtle Beach for a weekend of fun with two old law school chums on Friday, June 15, 1989, when he got a call asking him to come immediately to the district courtroom. He arrived to discover that he had just been appointed the attorney for an indigent client charged with one of the biggest murders in Washington’s history.

Like almost everybody else in Washington, Sermons had heard all the rumors about the Von Stein case: that it was an inside job, a family matter. He had heard courthouse scuttlebutt that an arrest might be imminent, and he had assumed that if that were true, the defendant likely would be Von Stein’s stepson. He was not expecting the glum young man who turned out to be his client. Clearly, this was not the type of person he usually represented in court, indigent murder defendants rarely had names like James Bartlett Upchurch III.

Bart had arrived in Washington in the predawn hours. He was taken first to the police department, where he was photographed and fingerprinted, then whisked over to the jail in the basement of the courthouse, where he was told to shower and issued a set of orange coveralls. Both the police and the district attorney wanted to keep his arrest a secret, so as not to tip off Chris, and without any sleep, Bart was hurried into a district courtroom, where he could be quickly arraigned and have a lawyer appointed without reporters learning about it. He was charged not only with first-degree murder, but with conspiracy to murder, with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, with first-degree burglary and felonious larceny. He was immediately taken back to the jail, where Wayland Sermons first talked with him in a small interview cell.

Sermons could tell that Bart was scared and obviously depressed, but he was immediately talkative. He knew nothing about any murder, he said, and he certainly hadn’t committed one. He felt sure that Chris was involved—the police had said as much—and a guy he had lived with before his arrest, Neal Henderson, might be as well.

Bart told how he had gotten to know Chris and said he’d only been to Washington once, when he and Hank and Chris had passed through on their way to the beach.

On the night of the murder, he said, he was in his dorm room alone, studying. Chris was downstairs playing cards with his roommate, Chuck, and two girls, Sandra and Sybil. Chris had called about 12:30 A.M. and asked him to come and play spades, but he said he had to study. A little later, about one, Neal came by his room, high on acid, but he only stayed for a while and left alone. The next morning, Chuck called and told him that Chris’s parents had been attacked.

He told about Chris’s extensive drug use and how he had acted crazy after the murder. He said that the police and the SBI had talked to him on several occasions and gave a rundown of what he had told them. He went through all the events of his arrest the night before. Sermons warned him not to talk to anybody, not to jailers, not to other inmates, and certainly not to any police officers about any aspect of the case.

Bart was especially concerned about one thing. Would this be on TV? Would it be in the newspapers? He didn’t want his family to know that he had been arrested.

Sermons was certain that the news soon would be carried by local newspapers and TV stations, but he didn’t know how widespread it might be. Although the murder had been big news in Washington, it hadn’t been reported in most of the state’s major cities. Unless Bart’s arrest made the wire services, his family likely wouldn’t hear about it in the news. But they would have to know about it eventually, Sermons reminded him. There was no way to avoid it.

After sleeping late Friday morning, John Taylor and SBI agents Lewis Young and Terry Newell drove to Winston-Salem. They arrived about 1:00 P.M. and met Agent Tom Sturgill at the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Department. Before Melvin Hope and David Sparrow had driven to Raleigh to pick up Bart the night before, they had met with District Attorney Mitchell Norton, who drew a warrant for Chris’s arrest. Young now had that warrant, and at midaftemoon the four officers drove to the modest Von Stein house on Konnoak Drive.

Bonnie answered the door. She was expecting them. Despite all the efforts of the district attorney and the police to keep Bart’s arrest a secret, a friend from Washington had called that morning to tell her that a friend of Chris’s had been arrested for murdering Lieth (a young woman who had dated Chris was a receptionist in the town hall, her mother was secretary to a local attorney). Chris had spent the previous night at a friend’s house and Bonnie had called him there.

“Chris, you need to come home and sit with me, because things are happening,” she later recalled telling him. Chris was on the phone to his attorney, Bill Osteen in Greensboro, when Bonnie invited the officers in. Bonnie was polite and businesslike as usual, unemotional, but she did not hesitate to let the officers know of her irritation. She simply couldn’t understand why they were doing this, she said. They were making a big mistake, and they would have to answer for this injustice that they were inflicting upon her son and her family.

Chris was wearing Bermuda shorts and an N.C. State Wolfpack T-shirt. He seemed nervous but compliant when Young served the warrant and placed him in handcuffs. The officers told Bonnie that they would take Chris to a magistrate’s office at the courthouse, where they would remain for about thirty minutes, before going on to Washington. She told Chris that she would follow and see him there. No tears came from either. Chris asked to get some cigarettes from his car before leaving, and the officers got them for him.

At the sheriff’s department, Chris was allowed to use the telephone in a detective’s office to make several private calls to friends, before the magistrate found probable cause for his arrest and left him in the custody of Young. Bonnie and the officers missed one another at the magistrate’s office, and Chris was put into an SBI car without seeing his mother again. Young and Newell drove him back to Raleigh, where Newell was to pick up his own car. Taylor followed.

Chris was talkative along the way, although he didn’t bring up the charges against him. He chatted about the tornadoes that recently had wreaked havoc in Winston-Salem. He said that he’d quit his job at the tire company about a month earlier and had enrolled in summer school at Wake Forest University in anticipation of attending either Appalachian State University, where his girlfriend was a student, or Guilford College, where his stepfather had gotten his degree, in the fall semester. He seemed to have no doubt that he would be free to return to school. He was taking chemistry, he said, but that was a mistake. What he really needed was some easy credit hours, and chemistry was far from that.

Despite the attempt to keep Bart’s arrest a temporary secret, word of a break in the case had swirled swiftly through Washington. City Manager Bruce Radford got a call from a TV reporter saying he had heard that an arrest was about to be made. Could Radford help him? Radford suggested that he talk with Chief Crone.

“I’ve already talked to Crone,” the reporter said. “He won’t tell me anything.”

At 5 P.M., Radford went to the police department to find out if Chris actually had been arrested. Crone wasn’t there. Instead, Radford found a note that Crone had left for John Taylor, saying that he would be at the district attorney’s office. Radford went there. As he was approaching the office’s open door, he heard Norton saying, “Radford is our leak. He called the TV station and told them.”

Radford knocked at the door, and stepped into the office. A hush fell over the room.

“Mitchell, I heard you say I was your leak,” Radford said. “Let me tell you, I’m not. If you’ve got a leak it’s somewhere else.”

Radford was aware that his involvement in the case had been resented by many, but he was not about to step aside now that the case was coming to flower. He joined the planning for Chris’s arrival. It was decided that Chris would be taken directly to the jail to try to avoid reporters and photographers. Chief Crone would call a press conference at the police station to divert their attention.

Nevertheless, TV camera crews and newspaper photographers were waiting at the back of the courthouse when Young pulled up to the jail entrance and hurried Chris inside.

At the police department, Crone announced the two arrests and said that a third suspect was yet to be picked up. The police knew where he was, Crone said, and bringing him in would be no problem. He could not go into the details of the case, but a witness, he said, had “told us exactly what happened.” After offering details of the arrests, he was careful to point out that neither Bonnie nor Angela was implicated in the murder.

Bruce Radford stepped forward to commend Melvin Hope, John Taylor and especially Chief Crone, who, he said, brought “new angles of approach” to the investigation.

“This should allow the citizens of Washington to rest easier knowing arrests have been made in the case and that police department efforts led to the arrests,” Radford said.

Wayland Sermons had tried only one murder case before. His client had pleaded self-defense and been convicted of second-degree murder. Bart’s case would be much different. Sermons had no doubt that Norton would seek the death penalty.

Before he left for Myrtle Beach on Friday evening, Sermons learned that Norton would be going to the grand jury on Monday, seeking indictments against Bart and Chris and one other person, presumably Neal Henderson. When he got to the beach, he discussed what he knew about the case with his friends, Davis North and Wayland Cooke, both experienced trial attorneys in Greensboro, who were well acquainted with Chris’s lawyer, Bill Osteen. Then Sermons realized that the reason Norton was seeking grand jury indictments was to avoid a probable cause hearing during which the state would have to make known the basis of its case. “It was deliberate,” he said later. “It was to avoid having to reveal anything, to keep me from finding out what was going on.”

Bart slept for a long time Friday. On Saturday, he had little appetite. He thought idly of suicide, although he knew that would be difficult and would require more thought and energy than he felt capable of mustering at the moment. Other thoughts preoccupied him, thoughts about his family. Yet when he was allowed access to a phone on Saturday, the first call he made was to Hank at the restaurant where he worked in Raleigh.

“Hey, man, where you at?” Bart recalled Hank saying after accepting the collect call.

“I’m in Little Washington.”

“Man, what you doing there?”

“I got arrested for murder.”

“No way, no way.”

“Yeah, it’s true.”

“Look, Neal came by here, said he wanted to give you some money to get out of town, said he was going to come by here and bring it tonight.”

“I think Neal may be working for the police. If he does come by there, he might be wearing a wire.”

A little later in the conversation, talking about the seriousness of his situation, Bart’s voice broke. “They’re going for the death penalty,” he said.

“Can’t be good, man.”

“They’re going to kill me for this.”

Now Bart couldn’t control himself any longer. He started to cry. “Throw me a good wake,” he said. “Make sure there’s a lot of beer and a lot of pizza there. Make it a good party.”

Afterward, Bart steeled himself to make the call he had been dreading, the call he had been putting off for more than a day. He dialed his mother’s number in Virginia.

Joanne had remarried and had a fifth child, another son, but things had not been going so well for her in recent months. In December, her husband, Alan Ferguson, had undergone surgery for a knee injury and almost died from a pulmonary embolism that developed from the operation. Joanne herself had been hospitalized numerous times since April for tachycardia, a rapid and uncontrollable heartbeat. Several medications had been tried without success, including one potent drug that produced toxic side effects. She was scheduled to check into the University of Virginia Hospital in Charlottesville on Sunday, June 18, for a series of tests. She was packed and ready to leave when her telephone rang shortly before dinner Saturday evening.

A collect call from Bart. Yes, she would accept. Was he calling to wish her well at the hospital?

“Hi, honey, how are you doing?” she said brightly.

“Hi, Mom.”

She thought she detected a quiver in his voice, something unusual for Bart. “Are you all right?”

“No,” he said in a sudden gush of tears. “I’ve been arrested.”

“Arrested? For what?”

She had been through this before. What had he gotten himself into now?

“For murder,” he said, crying as she had never heard him before. “Mom, they want the death penalty.”

Joanne could not believe her ears. Murder? The death penalty? This couldn’t be happening. She wasn’t even aware that she had begun to scream. “No, Bart, no.”