The Von Stein Family Tragedy Part XIX: The Von Stein Arrests

The case changes the moment the handcuffs go on, and it never stops changing after that. We pick up with Bart’s arrest and a quiet, rushed arraignment designed to keep the public from noticing, then watch that secrecy unravel as Chris is arrested at home and the town starts buzzing with leaks, reporters, and fear. With first-degree murder charges on the table and the death penalty looming, the early hours feel less like a clean search for truth and more like a race to control the story. 

From there, we track the legal machinery that decides what the public learns and when: grand jury indictments that help prosecutors avoid early hearings, discovery motions that reveal how little the defense can actually see, and bond hearings that separate who gets to go home from who stays behind bars. We also dig into the human side of the Von Stein family tragedy in Beaufort County, including the phone calls, breakdowns, and family fractures that erupt when someone is accused of murder and insists they were framed. 

Then the motive conversation lands like a thunderclap: news reports of a multimillion-dollar estate bring inheritance into the spotlight, while investigators and attorneys maneuver around witness statements, private detectives, and mounting media coverage. The pressure peaks with a plea bargain that turns Neil Henderson into the state’s key witness, complete with a rehearsal-style “trial before the trial,” and we end on a final development that reshapes everything heading into court. 

If you’re following the Von Stein murder case, true crime legal strategy, or how plea deals and public narratives collide, you’ll want every detail here. Subscribe, share this with a friend who loves court-room true crime, and leave a review with the question you can’t stop thinking about.

Transcript

Welcome To The Murder Book

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the murder book. I'm your host, Ciara, and this is another episode of the Von Stein Family Tragedy. Let's begin. Bart had arrived in Washington in the early hours, and 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 issue a set of orange cover rolls. 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, but was hurried into a district courtroom where he could be quickly arraigned and had 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 fillonious larceny. He was immediately taken back to the jail where Weyland 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 had not committed

Bart Is Booked And Questioned

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one. He felt sure that Chris was involved, the police had said as much, and a guy he had lived with before his arrest, Neil Henderson, might be as well. Bart told how he had gotten to know Chris and said that he had 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, Neil 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. But 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 had not been reported in most of the state's major cities. Alis 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 Louis Young and Terry Newell drove to Wisdom Salem and they arrived about 1 p.m. and made agent Ton Sturgil at the Forsythe County Sheriff's Department. Before Melvin Hope and David Spiro 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 the warrant, and at mid-afternoon the four officers drove to the mother's Funstein House on Cornwall 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 Leith. A young woman who had been dating Chris was a receptionist in the town hall. Her mother was secretary to the local, to one of the local attorneys. Chris had spent the previous night at a friend's house and Bonnie had called him there. And she told him, Chris, you need to come home and sit with me because things were happening. And Chris was on the phone to his attorney, Bill

Chris Is Arrested At Home

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Austin, 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. They were making a big mistake, she said, and they would have to answer for this injustice that they were inflicting upon her son and her family. Chris was wearing a Bermuda shorts and an NC State Wolfpack t-shirt. He seemed nervous but compliant when Young served the warrant and placed him in the handcuffs. The officers told Bonnie that they would take Chris to a magistrate's office at the courthouse, where they would remain for about 30 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 Chevious 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 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 back to Raleigh, where Newell was to pick up his own car, and 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 recaven in Western Salem. He said that he would quit his job at the tire company about a month earlier, having volunteered a summer school at Wake Forest University in anticipation of attending either Appalachian State University with his girlfriend or go for college, where his stepfather had gotten his degree in the fourth semester. He seemed to have no doubt that he would be free to return to school. He was taking chemistry, she 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 Rafford help him? Radford suggested that he talk with Chief Crone. And the reporter said, Well, I already talked to Crohn and he would not tell me anything. At 5 p.m., Radford went to the police department to find out if Chris actually had been arrested. Cron wasn't there. Instead, Radford found a note that Crohn had left for John Taylor, saying that he would be at the district attorney's office. So Radford went there. As he was approaching the office's open door, he heard Norton saying, Radford is our leak. He called a TV station and told them. At that moment, Radford knocked at the door and stepped into the office, and there was a hush that fell over the room. And Radford said, Mitchell, I heard you say I was your leak. Let me tell you, I'm not. If you got a leak, it's somewhere else. Sir 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, and it

Press Pressure And A Suspect Leak

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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 the 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 wouldn't 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 arrest had been made in the case and the police department efforts led to the arrests. Whelan 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 Murdo 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 Neil Henderson. When he got to the beach, he discussed what he knew about the case with his friends. Davis, North, and Wayland Cook, both experienced trial attorneys in Greensboro, who were well acquainted with Chris's lawyer, Bill Austin. 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. And he said later that it was deliberate. It was to avoid having to reveal anything to keep him from hiding out what was going on. Bart slept for a long time on Friday, and on Saturday he knew little he had little appetite and he thought of suicide, although he knew that would be difficult and would require much thought and energy that he felt capable of mustering at the

Death Penalty Fears And Strategy

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moment. Other thoughts preoccupy 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. And Bard recalled Hank saying after accepting the collect call, where are you? And he said, I'm in Little Washington. And so he asked him, What are you doing there? And he said, I got arrested for murder. And Hank reacted, No way, no, no, no way. And he said, Yeah, it's true. And he said, Look, Neil came by here and said he wanted to give you some money to get out of town. He said that he was going to come by here and bring it tonight. And Bart said, Well, I think Neil 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 the situation, Bart's voice broke when he said they're going for the death penalty. And he said, they're going to kill me for this. Now Bart couldn't control himself any longer and he started to cry. And he then said to him, throw me a good wake. Make sure there's a lot of beer and a lot of pizza there. Make it a good party. Afterward, Bart Bart stilled himself to make the coal he had been dreading. The coal 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 been not going so well for her recent for her in recent months. In December, her husband, Alan Ferguson, had undergone surgery for a new injury and almost died from a pulmonary embolism that developed from the operation. Joanne herself had been hospitalized numerous times since April for tachycardia, which is 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 18th 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? And he, you know, she thought she detected a quiver in his voice, something unusual for Bart. And so she asked, Are you alright? He said, No, I have been arrested. Arrested for what? She had been through this before. What had he gotten himself into now? And he said, For murder. And he started crying. And he said, Mom, they wanted 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. And she started screaming, No, Bart, no. And Bart kept saying, I didn't do it, Mom. I didn't do it. Please don't cry. Please don't cry. Later, Bart would recall his mother being hysterical. She said and quote, How many times have I told you you got to watch the type of people you're hanging out with? You can't hang out with white trash. And Bart told her mom I wasn't hanging out with the white trash. The people who got me into this trouble were rich white kids. A year after their separation, Jim and Joanne had agreed that their children really should be with their mother, and they had gone to live with her in Virginia. A week before Bart's call, Joanne had sent her two daughters, Carrie and Alex, to North Carolina to spend several weeks with their father and grandmother. Their father had taken them camping along the Blue Ridge Parkway, and they had returned on Saturday. Jim had dropped his daughters off at his mother's house in Milton, then gone on home to the farm. Carolyn was happy to have her granddaughters with her, and when the phone rang Saturday evening and she heard Joanne's voice on the line, she assumed that she was calling to check on the girls. But instead, Joanne said, You better sit down. I got something terrible to tell you. Bart has been arrested for murder. Carolyn immediately called Jim and she talked to Jim. She said, Jim, I got something to tell you. Bart is in jail in Beaufort County. And he said, What for this time? And he was not even surprised that he was in jail. She said, For murder. And there was a long silence from the other end of the line. And Jin recalled later, and he said, Quote, I was numb, disappointed, let down, defeated, and helpless. Here was the culmination of all my worries. You have talked and talked and begged and tried to get him to do what he needed to do, and here he goes again. Back into another mess, but this time far worse than anything before. End quote. Wayland Sermons returned home from Beach Sunday night and had a conference with the district attorney on Monday morning. And Sermons wrote in a memo to himself the following Mitchell Norton says no way to bond hearing in district court. Cases going to grand jury today. Lewis Young spent more than an hour outlining the case against Chris, Bart and Neil for the grand juries that morning before they returned all of the indictments requested by the district attorney. Bonnie and Angela had driven to Washington after Chris's arrest, and on Saturday, Bonnie had met with James Vosberg, the Washington lawyer who had represented Chris when he got into trouble in high school and had handled other legal problems for the Von Steins. Vossberg, whose own son had graduated from high school with Chris, met with Chris for more than an hour in the jail Friday night. He accompanied Bonnie on to for a visit to visit Chris on Saturday. On Monday, Vosberg told a reporter for the Washington Daily News, Mike Voss, that Chris was frightened by the murder charge. Bart's cousin Kenyatta went to Raleigh on Monday to comfort Neil on the night before he was arrested. He called and asked her to be there

Grand Jury Indicts Three Defendants

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with him. He was scared, she said. He cried that night. I hemmed his pants, we washed his clothes. He didn't have any good shoes except for the ones that went with his Wendy's outfit. So he polished those. John Taylor and Louis Young left Washington for Raleigh before 7 Tuesday morning. Neil was ready when they got there, and they were back in Washington before noon. Reporters and photographers were waiting to get a look at this third suspect. At a little before five that afternoon, Neil was brought into Superior Court wearing shackles in the standard orange jumpsuit. Judge Herbert Herbert Small questioned him about his ability to hire an attorney. Speaking in a voice so soft that it was barely audible a few benches back, Neil said he couldn't afford a lawyer. He had only $10 in the bank and $40 in his pocket when he was arrested, he said. His job paid him $4.15 per hour. He was to have received a raise the following Monday, he noted, when he was he was to have been promoted to shift manager. Although he didn't mention it to the judge, that was the promotion that would have given him the courage, as he had promised Kenyatta, to go and face his former teacher Weldon Slayton again. While Neil was in the courtroom, Jim Upchurch was talking for the first time with Bart's lawyer. Jim had been so dispirited after receiving the call from about Bart's arrest, so resentful about being sucked into another morass of misery into which his son had wandered, that he had put off calling. Now Sermons told him that Bart appeared to be in shock over his arrest, and that he kept adamantly insisting that he had no part in any murder. Until talking with Sermons, Jim had thought that Bart must be involved in some peripheral way. He would not have been surprised, he told Sermons, if he had learned that Bart had been arrested for any number of other things. But to be accused of actually killing somebody, sneaking up on a sleeping innocent and beating and hacking him to death was beyond his comprehension. He said, quote, I just couldn't believe that Bart could do anything like that. He's not an aggressive or violent person. I have never even seen him get into a fight or hit or shoved anybody. End quote. Attorney Sarmons was reluctant to talk about details over the phone. The case was a big one, he said, with local political implications, and he was worried that his phone might be tapped. Jim told him that he could drive to Washington on Saturday. Bart looked completely different when he was brought into the tiny cell where Jim was allowed to meet with him in the Beaufort County Jail that Saturday, nearly nine days after his arrest. His long bleached hair had been just been shorn, the locks still lying in a jail corridor where they had been swept. He looked pale and thinner than when Jim had last uh seen him a few months earlier. The atmosphere was less tense and than Jim anticipated, almost casual. And Jim asked him, How are you doing? And he said, Okay, I guess. And so he Jim asked him, What's going on? And the story came from Bart in a gush. It was all about Neil. Neil had framed him, Neil was lying, Neil must have been the one who did it. Neil was going to the guest. Chamber for short. And Jim even recalled later that he was a little cocky. And he said, Bart can get cocky when he feels like he's in trouble. So Jim asked him, Where were you when the murder the murder happened? And Bart said, I was at the dorm. And he said, Did anybody see you? And he said it was hard to remember, but he thought that a couple of people did. Handgun at the girl, maybe. And he asked him, Would they be willing to testify? And Bart was sure they would. Jim felt better after talking with Bart. If he had an alibi and witnesses, he at least had hope. But mainly Jim felt better just because he had come. And later, Jim says, quote, I think he was glad to see me. I was glad I was there. I felt guilty about waiting that long. End quote. We'll be right back. By the first of July, the Buford County Courthouse was swamped with lawyers filing motions on behalf of the three defendants in the Von Stein murder case. Two Washington lawyers, Michael Poe and Chris McLendon, who could be running for a judge soon, had been appointed to represent Neil. He had done fine, they told him, but now it was time for him to quit talking and let them take care of them of matters. The first priority being to get him out of jail on reasonable bail. Frank Johnston, a Washington native and Wake Forest University law graduate, who had been practicing in the town for more than 17 years, had been appointed to work with Wayland's servants on Bart's behalf. The major problem was finding out just what evidence the state had against a client, who proclaimed complete innocence and said the police had come after him only because he was the only one of Chris's friends who had been in trouble before. Chris's attorneys, Bill Austin, his son Bill Jr., and James Vosberg, who was assisting the Austins in Washington, were having similar problems. During the last week in June,

Discovery Fights And Witness Canvass

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all of the lawyers filed detailed discovery motions seeking to know all of the evidence that the state had accumulated about their clients. The state had by no means finished gathering evidence. For John Taylor and Lewis Young, the case was ongoing. Two days after arresting Neil, Taylor and Young were back in Raleigh, calling once again upon the friends of Bart, Chris and Neil, telling about the arrests, warning that lawyers and private investigators might be calling, trying to decide who would make good witnesses and who would not, attempting to tie up loose ends. Quincy Blackwell looked at photos of the bad John Cron had found and said that it looked like one Mook had in his drawing room the previous summer. The markings on it were familiar, he said. Mook liked to diagram stuff like that. Sandra Goodman told them that she had recently had a long talk with Bru and he was frightened that the police might be trying to implicate him and Chuck in the murder. He assured her that he knew nothing about the attack on Chris's parents either before or after it happened, and he was positive that Chuck didn't know anything either. A week after Neo's arrest, Taylor dropped by the jail to visit with him. Neil, Chris, and Bard were kept in separate cell blocks and couldn't communicate with one another. Taylor wasn't on business. He had come to like Neo and he had gone to a used bookstore and bought a stack of science fiction for him. He just wanted to drop off the books and reassure Neil that things would work out for the best. A week later, Taylor and Young returned to Winston Salem to interview Chuck Jackson at his summer job. As before, the officers got the impression that Chuck wanted them to leave him alone, that he had answered all the questions he wanted to answer about Chris and Moog. They showed him the bat, the next up, the knife. He claimed he had never seen any of them. They asked him, did he remember seeing Neil on the day before the murder? A private detective had asked him the same thing a few days earlier, said Chuck. Taylor and Young were surprised that a private eye was already making rounds. He had to be representing Chris. Obviously, Bill Austin didn't intend to waste any time in preparing Chris's defense. Chuck said he told the detective that he thought Neil had come by his and Chris's room that night, but he really didn't remember whether Neil had come by or not. The private eye had asked him repeatedly about whether or not he had found Chris's car keys after Chris left on the morning of the murder. He said and he had told him that he did. Actually he said, he couldn't remember whether he did or not, which was what he had told Taylor earlier. Chuck did remember one thing. Shortly after noon on this on the day of the murder, he had looked out and seen Chris's car parked where he usually lived it, between Sullivan and Burger Domes. He was certain about that. Both Sandra Goodman and Civil Cook had told the detectives the same thing. Yet Neil maintained that he had left the car in the fringe parking lot that morning when he and James returned. And Neil claimed that he had hidden the keys in a bathroom closet in Chris's suite. Had somebody driven the car later in the morning. Nearly a month after the arrests, the Von Stein murder was still big news in Washington. On Wednesday, July 12th, the residents of Beauford County got the first indication of motive when a story appeared on the front page of the Washington Daily News under a bad big headline that said, Murdered Von Stein left $2 million. Until then, Von Stein's newly acquired wealth had not been made public. Quoting probate documents, the newspaper said the value of his estate of $1,940,206.92, including life insurance of $770,000, all of which was left to his widow. The report went on to note that if Bonnie had died in the attack, her children would have inherited the entire amount. In Washington that day, many people were commenting that now they could understand why Chris had been charged. Many also were noting that Bonnie would be coming out of this ordeal well fixed. That night, Bonnie called John Taylor at home and asked if he would mind having lunch with her the following day. She wanted to talk

Inheritance Motive Hits The News

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about the case, but she didn't want it to be an official meeting. They agree in advance. Taylor later said that it would be personal and private. Neither would take notes. Taylor accepted because he wanted one more chance to try to persuade Bonnie that they were only prosecuting, not persecuting her son. Bonnie suggested the King and Queen restaurant in Greenville, and Taylor agreed to meet her there at noon. He called the district attorney after talking with Bonnie to make certain that he wasn't doing something wrong. Norton didn't object, nor did he instruct him as to what he could say. Taylor was nervous about the meeting. He wanted to do everything right, but and he especially didn't want to make any faux pas. The king and queen was not the type of place where he normally dined. He knew that it was very expensive and he was uncertain whether he should try to pick up the check, since Bonnie had invited him. He called his close friend and confidant, Lila Howard, the city personnel director, to ask for tips on etiquette. She told him to let Bonnie pay if she attempted to do so, and assured him that he would do fine. Taylor arrived at the King and Queen to find Bonnie waiting in the restaurant closed for lunch. She was wearing Bermuda shorts and a blouse. He had forsaken his blue jeans and cowboy boots for dress legs, a tie and short sleeve shirt. Bonnie suggested sweet Caroline's the restaurant where she and Leith had their last meal together, and Taylor followed her there. Taylor felt awkward and he sensed that Bonnie did too. After all, it was his efforts that had put her son in jail awaiting trial for his life. In the next hour, Taylor revealed all the basic facts he and the other officers had uncovered about the case, answered all of Bonnie's questions, but even as he did it, he knew that Bonnie was not accepting his vision of the truth. When he told her that the FBI had verified Chris's handwriting on the map, Bonnie maintained that it wasn't concrete evidence. Somebody could have tricked him into drawing it, she said. He might have drawn it for some other purpose at some point in the past, and somebody had come upon it and taken it. The waiter brought the check while they talked and left it by Taylor's plate. As the conversation was drawing to a close, Bunny discreetly reached over and retrieved the check. The meeting ended amicably with Taylor assuring her that he would continue looking into the case. Bunny thanking him for telling her much that she had not known before. Taylor's only disappointment was that once more he had failed to sway Bonnie to the States View. Bonnie just couldn't accept it, he said later. Her boy could have done that, and that's all there was to it. She was a very stubborn woman when it came to that. Later, Taylor was surprised and disappointed to learn that despite their agreement that the lunch was to be personal and private without note-taking, as soon as they parted, Bonnie wrote down everything she could remember that he had told her and took it straight to her lawyer in Washington, James Fosberg. On Friday, July 21st, Neil was taken from the Beaufort County jail and whisked 25 miles north to Williamson in Martin County, where Superior Court Judge Thomas Watts was holding court. With no reporters present, Judge Watts set a bond for $200,000, $50,000 of it to be secured by money or property owned by an assortment of relatives and family friends of Neil's mother. The arrangements had been worked out previously. Neil was released on condition that he had not associated with Chris Obart, that he reside with his mother, who had moved into a small house in Danville, Virginia, and that he reported weekly to the court or to his lawyer in Washington, Michael Poe. Neil's former employers already had arranged for him to have another job at Wendy's in Danville. On the day of Neil's release, James Valsberg filed a motion at the Buford County Courthouse to have Chris released on a bond of $100,000 so that he could assist his lawyers in preparing his case and continue the psychiatric care that he had been receiving before his arrest. The motion noted that Chris has suffered severe depression over the loss of his stepfather

Bonnie’s Private Lunch With Taylor

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and that near fatal injuries inflicted to his mother. Not until the next week did the people of Beaufort County learn of Neil's release. Even then, the district attorney declined to comment about it. That week brought another flurry of motions from lawyers on all sides. William Sermons was furious when he learned that James Vosberg had received crime scene photos and FBI evidence reports from John Taylor the week before, but he had yet to receive anything from the state. Although he was certain that Neil was to be the state's chief witness, he still had no idea what Neil had told the police about Bart's involvement. He prepared a volley of motions asking that Bart be released under a $150,000 bond, that money be provided to hire private investigators to help him prepare his case, and that the state be compelled to turn over evidence against Bart so that his lawyers could fight the charges. Chris's lawyers also filed several motions asking that police officers be required to preserve all the rough notes from the investigation, that all court proceedings be fully recorded, and that his eventual trial be removed from Buford County because of adverse news coverage. The state, meanwhile, filed a motion asking that Chris's attorneys be required to turn over the evidence they intended to use at his trial. New York's attorneys also requested evidence from the state and filed preliminary indication that they too would seek money for private investigators. Lawyers anticipated that many of these motions would be heard when the regular session of Superior Court opened in Washington on Monday, July 31st. New was required to be in court that morning to hear motions in his case and answer when the calendar was called. He left and returned a couple of times that morning, at one point sitting in the same road as Bonnie and Angela, who had come to court hoping that Chris's bon motion would be heard. When the normally Bonnie caught her first sight of Neil, she became so upset that she fled the courtroom and had to be taken to her lawyer's office nearby to be calmed. Later, she told John Taylor that Neil gave her an eerie feeling and she thought that he was the person who had been in her bedroom the night of the murder. The shadowy figure that attacked her and her husband, she said, resemble Neil's thick and blocky body more than Bart's long and lanky frame. Chris's motion for Bond was heard the following morning. He was brought into the courtroom where he hugged his mother and sister and sat attentively through the proceedings. Judge Watts set his bond at $300,000, half of which had to be secured. When Watts learned that Bond intended to use two certificates of deposit to meet the secured bond, he noted that he had problems with property that belonged to the victim being used to secure a bond for the accused. But he allowed the certificates to be used anyway. Chris was relieved at 2 30, dressed in dark gray slacks, an expensive sport jacket, purple print tie, his mother on his arm, she wearing sunglasses, her long hair tied into a ponytail. Chris hurried from the courthouse behind his lawyer, all three ignoring questions from a reporter who trailed along. Bart was the only defendant in the case now left in jail. And his chance at freedom came two days later, when he was ushered into court for his bond hearing. Judge Watts set the total bond at half a million dollars, all of it to be secured. Not even Bart's grandmother, who always had come to her family's financial rescue in the past, could afford such risk. And Bart was returned to jail to await his trial, the date of which remained unknown. Bart actually had believed that he might be able to get out on bond, a pipe dream. His father had called it, and the judges' ruling sent him back into depression. His father came again to see Jim. Carolyn came with his uncle John, who just had become an assistant prosecutor in Alamance County. His mother was not able to visit. After undergoing an elaborate series of medical tests during the week following Bart's arrest, doctors determined that she needed a pacemaker implanted in her heart. Complications followed the surgery, and she had to be rehospitalized several times. It would be September before she was finally recovered enough to visit Bart. The person Bart was most frequently in contact with was Hank. Bart regularly called him collect at his mother's restaurant. Sometimes Hank would even hold the receiver up to a speaker so Bart could hear a favorite song on the jukebox. But if it was Bart's inability to find out what was happening to himself that was more responsible than anything else for pulling him out of his depression. And he said, quote, I didn't know what was going on, who was saying what. It was really strange, a strange position to be in. I had a

Bond Hearings Free Chris Not Bart

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hard time understanding it and coping with it. Wayn would come by. He didn't know what was going on. He told me, You got to help me if we're going to fight this. You got to work with me. What happened was I started getting mad. The SBI and the Washington Police Department were sc you know screwing me over, setting me up, doing stuff to my family. I just got more and more mad, starting started getting involved, starting working. Eventually, I started using a line on myself. Might not be as bad as it seems, might be able to get out on bail. I said, Hell, I ain't going to give up the ghost yet.

unknown 40:56

End quote.

SPEAKER_00 40:59

The Bon hearing burst the bubble of hope temporarily, but it didn't squelch the Bart's will to fight. And he said later, quote. I started looking at the situation. As far as I could tell, there was no evidence that I did anything. I had been arrested on Neo's word. I figured. I just started gathering all the information I could get about what Neil had been saying to people. End quote. Others were trying to find out what Neil had said too, including Bart's father. Attorney Sermons had urged him to find out anything he could about Neon from his niece Kenyatta, who was living that summer at her grandmother's house in Milton. That proved to be more difficult than Jim expected. Although Kenyatta liked Jim, her loyalty clearly was to Neon, not to Bart, her own blood, whom she openly detested. That made the summer particularly difficult for her grandmother, with whom she was living. Her own grandson, Bart, her first grandchild, whom she deeply loved despite his problems, was in jail facing the possibility of the death penalty, and her granddaughter was lawyer to her grandson's accuser. Caroline said later, quote, it was the most difficult situation you have ever seen in your life. She was living here, hating her cousin. Everybody was just handling her with care. It was like walking on eggs all day long. Every day. Talk in long periods with Kenyatta. Before his arrest, Neil made one request of Kenyatta. He wanted her to make peace with his mother, so that they could support one another during this difficult period. Kenyatta had made an effort. She called Anne Henderson at Penny's, where she worked, arranged to meet her for dinner. Neil's mother was not able to go out when Kenyatta arrived because she had to be home with her daughter. Instead, she ordered a pizza and sat in the living room at Anne Henderson's house chatting. Kenyatta said later, quote, she was being really nice to me. But Kenyatta could tell that it was a strain for her. Kenyatta was wary and soon became skeptical about Henderson's motivation. She said the only reason she wanted to talk with me was to get information to get her son out of jail. I really tried with Ann Henderson for Neil's sake. I spent the whole summer trying to be friends, but that wasn't possible. She hated me. Oh God, she hated me. As the summer progressed, I got angrier and angrier at Neil. I got so fed up with this whole thing that I said I don't care what happens. I was so mad I didn't care what happened to Neil or to James or to anybody. End quote. Despite her anger at her grandmother's request, Kenyatta agreed to talk with Bart's attorneys, Will and Sermons and Frank Johnston, who drove to Milton on August 16 and met her at Caroline's Big Gray Ghost of a House. She told them about the night Neil claimed to have taken LSD when he stayed out all night, returned agitated the next morning, and gave her $50. She told them how he had been preoccupied in the press after that. She said af that after the police began questioning Neil, he told her that he had been involved in in the murder of Chris's stepfather and that he and Bart had done it. Neil wouldn't give her any details. She told the lawyers, although in fact he had. She said Neil told her that he had talked with the police because he thought it would help him. She had not been approached by anybody else about the case, she said, but Neil had warned her about Chris's investigator, who was a bad FBI type. End quote. Kenata had not wanted to tell the lawyers anything, especially if it might help Bart, who deserved whatever was coming to him, in her opinion. She had taken an immediate dislike to attorney's sermons. He was just covered in syrup, she said. Biggest politician I ever saw in my life. I couldn't stand him. Caroline was relieved at the end of August when Kenyatta left to begin her freshman year at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. No longer did she have to worry about saying something about Bard O'Neill, whom she had always liked. That might provoke Kenyatta's volatile nature. Lawyers on all sides of the Von Stein case scrimmage throughout September and into October, filing dozens of motions, arguing in court over technicalities and procedures, the defense lawyers seeking separate trials for each defendant, trying to get those trials moved from Beauford County, asking for rulings that would relieve the clients of the possibility of the death penalty. In October, Judge Watts authorized the hiring of private detectives on Bart's behalf and sermons called on Bill Sigurdson of Greenville, who had provided bodyguards for Bonnie immediately after the murder. Early in October, Bart was taken from the Buford County Jail without notice and driven to Raleigh, where he was placed into the Wake County jail more than a two-hour drive away from his lawyers. The ostensible reason was to have Bart tried for probation violations. Bill Sigrinson and another detective who worked with him, Paul Davis, went to Raleigh to talk with Bart about the case. He asked if Bart recalled anything unusual happening about the time of the murder. And Bart said, unusual? Well, the night of the murder, I guess, Henderson came by and he said that he had an outfit that he wanted to go rob.

Family Tensions And Kenyatta’s Role

SPEAKER_00 47:27

He told me he had an outfit he wanted to hit. That there was a house that he wanted to rob. Who was that? They asked, he said, Henderson. So they asked, what was the night of the murder? Was that the night of the murder? And he said, yeah, that was the night of the murder. I told him that I was through doing that. He said, what time at night? He said around 12 or 12 30, 1 o'clock, somewhere along in there. The next day, of course, Chris Pritchard's roommate called and told me about the murder happening. Later in the interview, Sergenson quizzed Bart about the investigation, why the police had begun looking at him, why they have talked to Neil. Bart said that he figured they came after him because he had a prior record and was hiding out because of his probation problems. And he said, quote, not longer after I dropped out of sight, they talked to Henderson. I don't know if they had some evidence on Henderson or whether Henderson decided to come clean, but apparently Henderson told them that I was the actual hitman in his murder and that he was the getaway car driver. And Chris Pritchard was the mastermind behind it all. End quote. So then they said, well, that does not really follow. Because for one, Chris is not really that smart. Two, I don't see why they needed a getaway car driver in the first place. Why wouldn't he want to bring in a whole bunch of people on something like this? Now I can drive as well as anybody else. I guess the mainline reason we are going now is that Henderson is faced with the possibility of a lot of time and to do something to cover his ass, I guess he decided to implicate me, he said. So after a few minutes later, Sigison then said, Oh, let me ask you this. Did you, and I want you to answer truthfully, did you have anything to do with this murder? Either planning it, doing it, or knowing about it right after it happened or before it happened. And he said, Well, after it happened, like a couple of weeks after it happened, everybody sort of got the details, knew what was going on. Every once in a while, when we were sitting around drinking beer, we would sort of start discussing what went on, you know, and what did we think really happened. And all of this, like having a bowl session, it was then I reflected back to what Neil was talking about, that he had a house that he could hit and that he could make a lot of money on it. And you know, he said, it was going to be a big one. He was expecting to make several thousand dollars, he said. So Sigerson said, Well, I'm gonna ask you the question again. Did you have anything to do with it? And Bart said, No, no, no, no, sir, not at all, not at all. No hesitation about that, no, sir. Did you know about any of this beforehand? And Bart said, no, sir. He rambled about child calling to tell him about the murder afterward. And so Sigurdsen said, okay, all right, I want you to look at me in the eye. Did you have any knowledge beforehand? Was there any discussion of doing this around you before the murder? The murder. And Bart, who had a habit of holding his head down and glancing away from people while talking with them, looked him in the eye and he said, There was never any discussion of anything like this. There were people who would occasionally make jokes along the line of, you know, well, Chris, when are you going to offer your folks? And Chris knew about it. Everybody knew about it. It was like the common joke. End quote. Later, Sigerson said, I want to ask you another question before we leave. Who did the killing, do you think? And Bart said, Well, probably if Neil didn't actually do it himself, I would think maybe Butch or Quincy, one of his roommates, because Butch told the SBI that he would kill someone if he was paid enough. I know but uh Butch had a history of being violent when drunk or whatever. There was one time he and Neil almost got into a fight. Bart knew that when the police department, or I would say the police detectives, first came around, they asked many questions about uh Butch and Quincy, especially about Butch. He would have known that he had to be for some purpose. A few days after the private detectives interviewed Bard at a Lake County jail, Paul Davis questioned Butch Mitchell at his apartment on Lycan Street and came away with some startling information that Butch had not told the police. David asked Butch, were you involved in that murder in any way? He said, No, not deliberately, if that's what you're trying to say. He said, Well then, what way? He said, Well, they know that I'm hurting people. And like we usually play these DD games. They asked me, like returning to the game, what would I do? What would you do to kill somebody? Yes, and I and I told them, I didn't think nothing of it. I told them, and that was it. So they asked, What did you tell him? He said, I told them that, like in the game, when you go hill, of Tommy, when you go kill someone to make sure, kill them fast, don't make noise. What would you do is wait till they're asleep. The person he he be laying there, you get the easy ro the easy side. I don't know how many people you got. You got the the easy side and then you will attack at the same time. That way you could you get as much damage as can be done. There's no way for them to scream or yell out. And you do something else to make it look like it was a robbery. You just happen to go in there to rob them and surprise them and make sure you have somewhere to corroborate an alibi. Because the alibi is the main thing. Show up someplace so people can see you. At a party, you're gonna see somebody for a few minutes and then leave. You can leave and come back and nobody knows the difference. So they ask, well, okay, so how about this particular murder? Did you advise anybody on this particular murder how they could do it? Was this particular murder discussed? That's what I want to know. So the answer was no. So do you ever sit around and talk about how they could get rid of Chris's father? He said, not that I heard. So Davis asked, a couple minutes later, who do you think committed the murder? And he said, You mean the actually stabbing and stuff like that? I think that they all did it. What do you when you say that they all are you're referring to to Chris Pritchard? You say, Yes, Chris Pritchard. Neil Henderson? Neil, you know, may have done it. James Upchurch. Yes, Moog. Do you think James Upchurch was there the night that the murder was committed? He said he was with them. He said he was with them. Did you hear him say that he was with them that night? He said yes. You heard Mook say that he was with them when the murder was committed. He said yes. Because he said I asked him, if you all went and came to pick up Neil, why didn't you let me why didn't you let me go? And he said, You don't go there because there was like a lot of dope and stuff like that there. So they asked, what they were they doing acid at that time? He said, they say they had some drugs there. A little later, Davis asked, Do you think anybody else was involved in this bedside? Besides the the the three you told me? And he said, I understand that there was two more guys. So who do you understand they were? He said, I don't know. It have to be somebody that I don't know. You never heard names? He said, no, they're not. They didn't say if they were doing something, they never told me about it. But he said, but you think there were five five involved? And he said, yes. Do you think Chris actually went down there with them? I said yes. His car was there. He ain't gonna let nobody go with it. His car. So just as John Taylor had gone, the private detectives and what's attorney discussed Butch's version, but Weyland Servants knew one thing for certain. He wouldn't be putting Butch Mitchell on the stand. By the end of October, John Watts had sorted through the sea of motions and settled most of the mayor issues in the Valstein cases. There were two trials, one for Neil, a combined trial for Bart and Chris, who could be tried for their lives. Judge Watts also ordered that the trials be moved from Beauford County to Elizabeth City in Pasquaton County, 100 miles northeast of Washington, where there had been little news about the case. The first trial that of Bart and Chris was set to begin January 2nd, 1990. Bart's attorney were distressed that they did not win a separate trial that night, that might have allowed them to keep up some evidence such as the map, which had been tied only to Chris. And also Chris's trial undoubtedly would have been first, and they could have used it to learn the state's entire case. As it was, they knew very little about the state's evidence. Despite all the emotions for discovery, they still didn't even know exactly what New Half told the police. The only knowledge coming from the bits and pieces

Private Detectives Chase New Angles

SPEAKER_00 58:59

that I'm sorry, uh the the the bits of uh and pieces that had been uh disclosed so in the state's own motion. So by early November, sorry, after spending three weeks in in the Wade County jail, Bart was back at Beaufort County. His family friend George Daniel, who was now a state senator, having succeeded in getting any hearing of his probation violations postponed under after his murder trial. He was now taking an active role in his own defense, placing calls to feel out potential witnesses, keep notes for attorney Wayland's sermons. On Wednesday, November 7, he called Kenyatta at her dorm room at the university. He was pleased with the conversation and made these notes after they have talked. He wrote, She's dating Philip Thompson. No shoe ID from her. Said Neil expects to be free, said she knew Neil was stealing for sure, got along real good with her. She will be glad to testify at trial. She's talked to Neil about once a month until a couple of months ago when she pissed him off by telling him about other guys she's seen. His notes about his conversation with his cousin were indicative of Bart's ability to delude himself. Kenyatta's view of the conversation was decidedly different. She said, quote, he called me up from jail talking just as sweet and nice. How are you doing? How's Carolyn? And thinking, boo, boo, boo. Then he says, So what did Neil tell you? It really pissed me off. He thought he was going to use family influence to tell his lawyer stuff to get him off. I felt totally harassed. I told my grandmother, I have no loyalty to James at all. There's a lot you don't know and a lot you don't want to hear. I hated him. I thought he was a total pump scum. I thought he was the worst person in the world. I wouldn't do anything to help him. I got sick of my family protecting him. I just got sick of it. Further evidence of Bart's ability to delude himself lay in notes he made about a conversation with a fellow inmate, a former military policeman turned drug dealer, jailed on child molesting charges. And Bart noted, fairly smart. The inmate claimed that he had met Neil on a bus in Williamstone in 1987 and later had seen him several times in Washington down around the block, a drug dealing area in a black neighborhood near downtown. At one point, the inmate said that he had talked with Neil for 20 minutes, each remembering the other from the meeting on the bus. The inmate said that at least three people who work selling drugs for him had seen Neil and sold drugs to him at various times in the past year and a half. Bard noted that his inmate might be willing to testify. And Bart wrote, is he lying? He has nothing to gain. Five days after calling Kenyatta, Bart telephoned Weldon Slayton, the first time he had talked with him in more than two years. Slayton was surprised to hear from him and told him that a Castle County detective had checked with him the week before to find out if Bart ever had been on the baseball team. Bart was pleased with the call and was certain that Slayton would make a good witness in his behalf. What could he testify to at trial? Bart wrote for sermons. Number one, was I ever aggressive in high school during four years he knew me? No. Number two, was I greedy? No. Number three, was I ever ambitious? No. Number four, did Neo and I appear to be very close friends anywhere near close enough to conspire together for murder? No. But continue making notes about two about who could testify in his behalf. Hank and Opie can testify to Neo's criminal activities and his fascination with throwing stars, knives, book of poisons, etc. Who could testify towards my apathy towards assassin and DD? Chuck, Coy, Butch? All of the above can testify that me and Neil never did anything together. Brew, Chris, and Hank, etc., can all testify to do acid by oneself can lead to bad trips, poor association with reality, an ability to distinguish fact from fantasy, a feeling of being alone, and being in a group limbs coming effect because any action is talked out as to whether it would be safe, like climbing into trees, crossing streets, playing with guns, etc. Two letters that Bart wrote to Hank in November revealed how much he had become divorced from the reality of his own situation. In the first letter, he enclosed a collection of newspaper articles about the case that Hank had been asking to see. And after an introductory paragraph about the clippings, he got to a more important point, drugs and acid. He said, if you send any doses, put them under a stamp on a letter and mail them to Weyland Sermon's office. He's handling my mail to ensure I get it fairly untampered with. Don't send them on a package because sometimes they throw the wrapping away before I can't get it. I'm getting Weyland to send this out so I don't have to worry about it being screwed with. Sermon was unaware that Bart was attempted to use him as a courier for drug deliveries and wouldn't learn about it for several weeks. After giving the drug instructions, Bart revealed where some of his hope had been coming from. Jailhouse scuttlebutt. He said, Would you believe that we have fairly reliable reports from at least two and probably five different people placing neon Washington between 487 up to the murder? All from dealers on one side of the local drug streets. Drop me a note and tell me about your Halloween exploits and tell me how everyone is doing. He closed by telling Hank to tell his stepmother that if he won, he was going to buy her a restaurant and turn it into a shoe store for trans vestides. A couple of weeks later, Bart wrote again to Hank addressing the envelope to compadre the postas. Foster. And on the back of the envelope, he drew a Kilroy face looking out from between bars and added, Happy Thanksgiving. And he said this is what he wrote. Hey heck. What's up in the real world? How about that Berlin Wall coming down? Is that something or what? The single biggest problem is set for nuclear weapons weaponry erased overnight. Maybe there's some hope for the world after all. Nah, must be a com a commie trick. Got good news down here, the D8 gotten a court order to see my bank records between May 23rd, 88, July 25th, 88, because Neon said I bought a knife at Kmart or flea market by check. Not only have I never written a check at Kmart, but think I never I went there all summer. Flea markets don't take checks. And the last time I have been to a flea market since I owned my 240Z was when you, me, and Wolf and Dessie got one last phone. This may not sound like much, but it's damn important. It's the first time of Henderson's statements we have gotten and contains a probable lie. The the approvable lie, I should say. The more we can prove Henderson is full of it, the less our jury will believe anything he says. His statement also said that he never left the getaway car the night of the murder. On June 14th of this year, he took the police to the baseball bat, which was hidden in dense woods near the Vanstein house. How will a man be able to explain in court how he knew where a murder weapon was hidden near the house if he had never left the car? His statements contained a few other things that didn't make any sense at all. He said we we expect he will crack up understanding Jan and Marie. Don't let any of the specifics I mentioned about the knife or bat get out to the general public. We're trying to appear ignorant to the DA. Just don't tell anybody who will spread anything other than Henderson's full of it and we can prove it. You know, I have been thinking about all of this stuff the last week or so, and I have come to the conclusion that I'm actually sort of getting a kick out of it. I mean, it's like the ultimate game of me against them and the winner take on. Win millions of dollars or lose your life for a crime you didn't commit. I guess somebody would say it's perverse, but that's what it boils down to. To me, none of this is real. It's just a part of the game of life. And somebody upped it up the stakes. At least that's how I came to think of it. It looks like from the way things are going, I'm going to be a very rich guy a year from now. I don't think being a millionaire will suit me much. I decided I'll probably give a lot of it away to my close friends and family, but keep the lion's share for myself, of course. Peace. Job be of church the third. Later, Bart said that the millions he mentioned in his letter were the prostitutes he planned to win from the state when he sued for malicious prosecution after his innocence was confirmed in court. And by this time he had managed to convince himself beyond doubt that he was going to be exonerated. Bart had owned no way of knowing that neither of these letters ever reached Hank. He sent them to the wrong address. The recipient opened them and took them to the police. A few weeks later, they make their way into the hands of Mitchell Norton. On December 5th, Neil walked into the Superior Courtroom at the Beaufort County Courthouse shortly after 5 p.m. as Court was ending for the day. He was wearing a gray suit and was accompanied by his lawyers Michael Poe and Chris McLendon. Mitchell as Norton asked Judge Thomas Watts for permission to bring up a case that was not on the court calendar. Neil Henderson stood ready to plead guilty to the two felonies in the Von Stein case, aiding and abandoning second-degree murder and aiding and abating assault with a daily deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicted serious injury. So Norton agreed to drop all other charges against Neil. Judge Watts requestions to Neil from a standard form, including, do you understand that upon your plea you could be in prison for a possible maximum sentence of five plus 20 years? Neil said yes. A plea bargain had been worked out with the district attorney under its terms. Neil was to testify truthfully against Bart and Chris, and

Neil Pleads And Preps To Testify

SPEAKER_00 1:11:14

failure to do so would nullify their agreement. Sentencing would be left to the discretion of the judge. His lawyers had approved the agreement, and Neil said in response to questions from Judge Watts, and he had discussed it with his family, who also approved. Judge Watts accepted the plea, postponed sentencing until after the trials of Bart and Chris, and allowed Neil to continue to remain free under the bond that had been previously posted. Neil remained in Washington for two days after his guilty plea, talking for hours with John Taylor, Louis Young, and prosecutors, going over his story again in minute detail, checking for contradictions and other problems. Before he left, he agreed to return to Washington on December 19 so that he could be put to a trial before the trial. A session that would give him a taste of what was to come. Jim Taylor, who had been promoted to detective sergeant in August, still wasn't finished with his investigation. And in mid-December, he was back on the road once more, talking again to people in Raleigh, traveling to Caswell County to learn more about Bart. On December 14, he met Kenyatta at the public safety office at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She told him what had happened on the night of the murder, that at night Neil told her he had taken acid and she ordered him to leave. When Taylor asked if Neil had told her about the murder and his role in it, she said, Quote, I'm not going to lie to you about it because there's no love lost between me and Neil. And there's no love lost between me and my cousin. And I'm not going to lie to you to save either one of them. End quote. Taylor said, Well, all I want you to do is tell the truth. And she said, Yeah. The truth is that Neil did tell me about pretty much everything. Had she talked with her cousin? They asked. And she said, yes. He had called me twice in recent weeks. She said, asking questions about what? He said, picky stuff. Like he's trying to set up a case against Neil. He's trying to help out his lawyers. He wanted to know if Neil had a pair of black reebox and if she and Neil had gone shopping at Kmart and what they bought. Had they shopped at Kmart that summer, Taylor asked. And she said several times. But she had never seen Neil buy a hunting knife. But had been a totally changed person when he called. Kenyatta said previously he had abused her and totally ignore or totally ignore her, but now he was different. He was really interested in everything I was doing, like he was really trying to butter me up, like he really wanted to get something out of me. So Neil asked her to lie for him when he first told her about his involvement. And she said he wanted her to say that she couldn't recall things, particularly the night of the murder, but she had told him she wouldn't do it. So Taylor asked her, has Neil asked you to lie for him since his arrest? And Kenyatta said, No, I haven't been in his life to have to lie for him or do anything like that. I was, I just called him up and talked to him to make sure he's doing okay. So Taylor said he wanted to ask her opinion on some things. He said, Do you think Neil has the guts to kill anybody? And she said, Hell no. I have never seen him violent. He would even stick up for me. I almost gotten beaten up by his roommate. So Taylor sketched out the scenario of the murder as told to him by Neil. Does that sound like something he could be led into doing? And she said, Yeah. If it's his friends, he will do anything to get respect. Had she ever seen Neil hit anybody? And she said, he only hit me like maybe once. And that's because I was being spastic. Say, was he trying to calm you down? Say, like, would you shut up, please, trying to calm me down because I had a very bad temper. What was the madest she had ever seen him? And she said, well, the time she told him that she liked his best friend, he stormed out of the room and creamed his face through the wall. Taylor asked her opinion of Bart. She never known him to be violent either. And of course. And she said, well, he sat bug eye in the corner all the time. When Taylor asked what she meant, she perched on the edge of her chair, making a face at him, white-eyed. He said, Are you trying to portray the paranoid type person? She said, a very drug-out paranoid person. He just sort of looked very dangerous to me. He was like, I would not just not like to be left in the room with him by myself. He just looked like he was getting ready to blow up all the time. So Taylor asked her, You don't have a stake in this, do you? And he said, There's not some great upchurch fortune there in Castro County. And she started laughing. She said, I wish I knew about it. Kenyatta had a question for Taylor, though. She said, Are my grandmother and I going to be on the stand at the same time? Not the same time, but the same day. So Taylor had realized from his interview that Bart's lawyer certainly couldn't risk putting Kenyatta on the stand. If she testified, it would be as a prosecution witness. Her grandmother surely would be only a character witness for it, you know, grandson. They wouldn't likely be testified on the same day. Kenyatta seemed relieved. She didn't want to have to ride home with her grandmother after blowing away her cousin on the stand, she said. And Taylor couldn't resist a personal question before he left me. He said, Do you still love Neil? And Kenyatta said, nah. I mean, I love him in a kind of admiring way, you know. Like he was once a great guy. I'm past the, no, we'll never get back together or anything like that. The following day, Taylor was back in Castle County talking with Weldon Slayton and George Bush, teachers of Bart and Neil. Slayton said that Bart had called him recently from jail and told him that when he got out in February, there were going to be lawsuits. Taylor came away from these interviews with the impression that Bart had grown up without a moral structure, that he had been imbued with an attitude that told him, you are smarter than other people. Take advantage of it. Gain from it. Stuff there for the taking. People are stupid if you can concern them. You can calm them. On December 19, Neil rode from Washington to the courthouse in Williamson, 25 miles north, with John Taylor. There, they met Mr. Norton and assistant district attorney Rob Johnson. In an empty courtroom, the lawyers put Neil on the stand and led him through a scenario similar to the one he would be facing two weeks later. The lawyer thought that Neil was not taking this whole thing as seriously as he should, that he had no idea of the stress that he might come under in court. Norton assumed the role of DA Johnson played the bad guy defense lawyer. As they got into the proceedings, the lawyers grew more concerned about Neil. He wanted to jouse intellectually with his questioners. He seemed cold, inhuman, almost robot-like in some of his responses. Later, Neil admitted that he wasn't taking the mock court seriously. Several times he got the giggles when one side or the other would raise objections and the other would overrule Orso's thing. While trying to answer one question, Neil forgot Leith Von Stein's name and call him something Von Stein or Van Stein. And Rob Johnson suddenly threw down his pen and leaped from his chair, ripping off his glasses and said, At least you could address the man by his true name. And he said this angrily, launching into a torque that Neil never would forget. He said, he yelled at me for quite a while. And he said, You're going to have to get serious about this. You may think this seems funny now, but there's something fun there's nothing funny about it. You kill a man and you're going to have to accept responsibility for that. You are a murderer. You're just as guilty as James Upchurch, whether you did the actual killing or not. Neil sat silently, his face paling as if he had just been kicked in the gut, while Johnson went on and on. When he finally had finished, Johnson turned and stalked out of the courtroom in disgust. Saying nothing, Neil got up and walked quickly back to a jury room, closing the door behind him. Taylor and Norton sat looking at one another and said, You think you ought to go back there and check on him, John? You're a mask. And Taylor said, He'll be alright. Let him get it out of his system. Several minutes later, Neil returned to the courtroom. He was composed, but his eyes were red from crying. The prosecutors foke better knowing that Neil could break. Perhaps he could look human and sympathetic on the stand after all. Bart's mother Joanne always grew sentimental at Christmas. Each year she took a treasure collection of ornaments from storage when time came to decorate the tree. From the time Bart was a year old, she had made a special ornament each year for each of her children, matching ornaments to personality. For the first time, Bart would not be with her for Christmas. Indeed, he might never be able to spend Christmas with her again. She cried when she brought out the ornament collection this year and saw all of the ornaments she had made for Bart over the years. The clown, the teddy bear, the egg from first grade. The first one she ever made for him. The one celebrating Woostock. Just as she had in the past, she had hung all of them proudly on her tree. Two days after Christmas, six days before the turn of the bard and Christ was to begin, the phone rang in Gayland Sermons' house shortly after 10 30 p.m. Attorney Sermons was in bed and already had nodded off to sleep. So he entered the call groggily, but immediately recognized the district attorney's voice. And he said, Weyland Mitchell Norton, I

Mock Court Meltdown And Final Turn

SPEAKER_00 1:22:50

just wanted to let you know that Chris Pritchard has decided to plead guilty. Thank you too for listening to the murder book. Have a great week.