Blood Games (67 page)

“I am the executrix on the estate,” she said.

“You have counsel who are assisting you with that?”

“Yes.”

Even if Chris could not receive the trust directly upon his mother’s death, she still could remove the money, however, and after that, nothing would prevent Chris from eventually inheriting from the estate of his mother, who was a millionaire as a result of her husband’s death. Eventually, Chris still could profit handsomely from his stepfather’s murder.

The lawyers now were left to argue about Chris’s sentence.

“It’s been stated in court that the considerations of taking the pleas on Mr. Pritchard and Mr. Henderson were done capriciously and arbitrarily,” Mitchell Norton noted in his argument. “It’s not so. If Your Honor please, there was a lot of deliberation and careful consultation with us, the members of the investigative team, members of my own staff. We felt that it was the right thing to do, but it does not diminish, I don’t think, from the brutality of the case.

“Chris Pritchard, I think, perhaps from a moral standpoint, is more guilty than any of the other two. I would ask the court to look at that maximum sentence.”

“The argument of one person being more guilty than another, I don’t think that’s proper,” Vosburgh told the judge during his turn. “And I don’t think it should be considered. These three are equally guilty.”

During his argument, Bill Osteen shed a little more light on the meeting in which Chris and his lawyers talked about his prospects with his mother present. As the state’s case stood at the time, with only Neal as a witness against Chris and Bart, Osteen said, the lawyers had told Chris that he and Bart had a good chance of being acquitted by a jury. They also told him, Osteen said, that if he chose to go to trial, they doubted that he “could walk out of our office that day, or after a trial in which he may be found not guilty, and ever feel good about himself again. And his lawyers would not have felt good about it. And Chris sat there and said to us, ‘I participated and I understand I am responsible for it, and I don’t want to walk out on that matter.’ And we attempted to work out something with the state.

“There are a few things that I want to call to your attention that I thought were bizarre in this case. Chris Pritchard had a record in his community of being an honorable person as he grew up. And it’s just almost inconceivable as to where things could have gone wrong as they did. But it’s not a unique situation, when coupled, as Dr. Royal indicated the other day, with his youth and the difficulties he encountered then.”

Osteen said that he recently had been reading about “New Age” thinking, “which has moved away from some of the things that many people were taught in their youth and clung to, still cling to, as being the thing that perhaps makes people act in a better manner.” He quoted from an article in the Los Angeles
Times
that called Dungeons and Dragons “a doorway to the occult.”

“And it goes on to discuss Dungeons and Dragons further, saying that it’s laced with references to magic, occult wisdom, violence, and power. What we are saying is that the hallucinogenic drugs, the Dungeons and Dragons game, the mind-altering games, is an attempt to harness a segment of society that’s never had much religion to create an alternate religious view. In my view … the more fascinated a person gets with it, the more likely it is that they can become mentally imbalanced by the process itself. I submit that what we see there is essentially what we see in Chris Pritchard’s case.

“I am also sure there are people who can play Dungeons and Dragons and never have any lasting results. There are people who unfortunately can use drugs and not have any lasting results. And there are people who can grow up in deprived homes and do wonderfully well. But once in a while those categories come together and create what has been created here.

“We don’t contend that this man is incapable mentally of a defense, or was incapable mentally at the time this dastardly act happened, but he was changed.

“And through it all,” Osteen said, gesturing toward Bonnie, “there is a mother who has gone through pure hell not knowing what was out there, but knowing something was, from the belief that my son was not involved to the understanding that something is not as I believe it is, to fully understanding. And a mother who sits and says I am going to help him. I am going to give him my love and I am going to work with him. And a sister who says, I will work with him and I love him and I will stay with him.

“And you know from this man’s standpoint to hear people say that after what he’s done has got to have a powerful effect. Dr. Royal says this man can come back sometime and serve, and probably Chris will be of benefit to society. I hope Your Honor will take those matters into consideration.”

Judge Watts asked Chris if he had anything to say.

“Yes, sir,” Chris said, standing. “I would like to speak. Thank you, Your Honor. I just want to say, first of all, that I believe Mr. Norton was extremely fair in allowing me to take this plea bargain agreement. I know that I am guilty and I do deserve to spend time in prison. And I think it was fair of him to allow me to have that opportunity.

“I want to speak with my family because I really haven’t had a chance. You don’t know the type of mental anguish that I have gone through,” he said, as tears flowed. “As Dr. Royal has said, and it’s generally true, I seem to deny my feelings. I don’t know why, but I do. And they build up like a pressure in a cookpot. And they overflow as right now.” His voice continued, choked. “I just want you to know that I love all of you. And I thank you all for being here and supporting me.

“I honestly feel that I do not deserve this. But the Lord has given me the strength to stand here today and do what I know is right. And I ask that he give you all the strength and support in the coming years, for I will not be here to do that myself.

“I can’t hold anything against James Upchurch or Neal Henderson for what they did. The Lord asked me to forgive them and I have. Just as he has asked me to forgive myself, which I have not quite been able to do just yet. That’s all that I have to say, thank you.”

After Chris’s emotional outpouring, the judge declared a ten-minute recess.

When court resumed, Judge Watts again noted the difficulty of the situation in which Chris’s lawyers found themselves. “But if there’s anybody in this courtroom that I personally have the deepest sympathy for, it is Bonnie Von Stein, a lady who lost her husband, the light of her life, a lady who is about to lose her son, at least in a physical sense of separation. I hope, Mrs. Von Stein, based upon what Dr. Royal has done, what you believe, that you may have in fact regained a son that had been lost previously. And my heart goes out to you, ma’am.”

The judge recalled a hearing attended by Chris’s lawyers in December, during which he had found a Bible lying open on the judge’s bench.

“I had not placed it there. I don’t know who did. But as you gentlemen were getting ready to speak, I glanced down and the book was open to Proverbs 28:24. I made a note of it at that time that I’ve carried with me since.

“‘Whoso robbeth his father or his mother and sayeth it is not transgression, the same is the company of the destroyer.’ That’s old law, but that’s still good law.”

Judge Watts also recalled that when Bart was arrested, he was carrying the collected works of Shakespeare in his backpack.

“King Lear,” he said. “Act I, Scene IV: ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.’

“I believe that you are now remorseful, Mr. Pritchard. I believe if you had it to do over again, if you could go back and undo that which you have wronged, you would do so, but you can’t. And you must pay the consequences of those events which you put into motion. The genesis was Christopher Pritchard. The midwife may have been Dungeons and Dragons and drugs, and I would not argue with that, but the genesis was Christopher Pritchard. How sharper than a serpent’s tooth.

“I don’t speak to the plea arrangement. That was made. I don’t criticize or condone that which has been done by either the defendant or by the state. I have to work with that which he gave me. That’s all I can do.”

That said, he sentenced Chris to twenty years for the assault on his mother, to life for the murder of his stepfather. With good behavior, Chris would be eligible for parole in nineteen years.

His family gathered around to give him hugs before sheriff’s deputies manacled him and led him to a car to be taken to the Polk Youth Center in Raleigh. Chris left carrying a small white Bible he had been given as a child.

After her son was taken away, Bonnie, who had declined to answer questions from the media throughout the trial, handed reporters a written statement. She agreed to read it on camera for a TV reporter, but only if her face were obscured.

“The events of the past eighteen months have been tragic for me and my family,” she read. “We have endured sorrows beyond any I have known before. I loved my husband Lieth and loved our quiet life together. On the night he died I almost died from wounds I suffered during the assault. I do not understand why I survived.

“Now my son Chris and two of his companions have been sentenced for participating in this tragedy. I love Chris as I am sure Neal’s and James’s parents love them. I hope and pray that these three young men can someday find peace within themselves.

“We now face the difficult task of picking up our lives and trying to move forward. With the continuing support of our family and friends we will succeed.”

53

Only one act remained in the drama that was the Von Stein murder case: the sentencing of Neal.

That hearing resumed twenty minutes after Chris had embraced his family and been taken away to be transported to a youth center in Raleigh for eventual assignment to a state prison.

Neal’s lawyers called two more witnesses. The first was Charles R. Sechrist, owner of three Wendy’s restaurants, including the one in Danville where Neal had worked after being released from jail. Neal had been promoted to assistant manager, he said, and was a good and trusted employee.

“He worked, strived real hard, real dedicated. He always would come in to work early, stayed late, whatever it took. He was always ambitious to learn more and be a better manager for us. He’s the type of person that I’ve always looked for in a good manager.”

He would not hesitate to hire Neal again, he said.

Ron Amos, another of Neal’s band teachers from high school, testified to his trustworthiness.

“I found him to be somebody I could place responsibility on and have it carried out. It didn’t matter what I needed done, I could call on Neal. Neal was probably one of only four students in all my tenure of teaching of fifteen years that I allowed to have a key to my personal office so that he could keep records and help me.”

Asked whether Neal was an active or passive person, Amos said, “Neal was active with things that he was motivated to do. He was active with the band. You couldn’t keep him out of the band room. He was always there. He was active with a few other things, maybe the chess club, some other clubs. But in terms of aggression, he was a passive-type person. If he saw trouble brewing, Neal would come to me and say, ‘I think you better check into this, Mr. Amos.’”

Asked if he wanted to be heard about the sentencing, Mitchell Norton sounded more like a defense attorney than a prosecutor, noting that if not for Neal, this case might still be open. “He’s done a terrible thing,” Norton said. “He’s going to have to be punished for that. But the court has seen his testimony in the trial. Frankly, I thought Neal made a good witness. And he was always ready at any time that we called or had some question.”

Neal’s attorneys, Michael Paul and Chris McLendon, made impassioned appeals for a short sentence and an alternative to prison. They pointed to Neal’s vulnerability, his remorse, his assistance to the state, his tremendous potential.

“He is a young man who has a conscience, who wanted to do the right thing,” said Paul. “This is a tragedy when you have a young man who has so much potential.”

If Neal hadn’t confessed, Chris McLendon said, nobody knows what might have happened later with Chris and Bart.

“But with the patterns, heavy LSD use, had they gotten away with a tragic murder like this, it can only set the scene for a real history of some potential violence. And with the brain power involved here, there may have been other crimes that may never have been solved. So, Judge, thank God for Neal Henderson’s conscience. Thank God for his morality.

“To be quite honest with you, Your Honor, I am not used to having a client who tells me that he’s fond of the district attorney. But in this case, I asked him one day what he thought of Mr. Norton. And his answer was that he thought he was a real good guy. And that, Your Honor, I think somewhat typifies this young man.

“He’s got a bright future. Obviously, he can’t do some things. He will never be a lawyer, probably never be a doctor. There’s a lot of things this plea will keep him from doing. But he’s going to be all right. He’s going to do fine in life. He’s going to finish school. He’s going to co-own a Wendy’s, or he’s going to be with NASA. He’s going to be in a role to help society. I know that. I feel that I think that the district attorneys and the law enforcement people do, too.”

“Do you have anything you want to say?” Judge Watts asked Neal when his attorney had finished.