It was like old times once again. Jeannie called Denise at the photo lab promptly at noon every day, making plans for the weekend. Maybe she would buy something expensive this week, she said, perhaps a $10 scarf, maybe even a new pair of shoes.
Denise thought this weekend would be special, and she really looked forward to it.
“You look great!” Denise said when Jeannie answered her knock Friday night.
“Guess who came in from Richmond,” Jeannie said, opening the door wider so that Denise could see Pernell sitting in the living room, settled in for the evening.
“Are we still going out?” Denise asked uncertainly.
“Oh, yes,” Jeannie said. Turning, she called out to Pernell, “See you in a few hours.” She got her purse and they left in Jeannie’s car.
Jeannie wasn’t the old Jeannie that Denise was hoping she would be that night, not nearly as lively and cheerful. Still she had gone out despite Pernell’s sudden reappearance, a good sign, Denise thought.
When they returned near midnight, Denise declined Jeannie’s invitation to come in. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” she promised. She had climbed inside her Jeep and put the key into the ignition before she noticed a pattern of bullet holes in her windshield.
Trembling with fright, she was uncertain what to do. Finally, she hurried to Jeannie’s apartment and got her to the door.
“Somebody shot out my windshield,” Denise said, loudly enough for Pernell to hear.
Pernell came to the door. “Did you hear any shooting while we were gone?” Jeannie asked him.
“I thought I heard something,” he said. “Must have been the kids across the street.” Denise took the inappropriate grin on Pernell’s face as a smirk. She knew that the kids across the street were all under ten years old, and it wasn’t likely that they’d been shooting. She was sure that Pernell had shot her windshield to get back at her for taking Jeannie out, and as she drove home in a dark mood, she was frightened more than ever for Jeannie.
Pernell’s move to Richmond turned out not to be the blessing for Jeannie that Denise had hoped it would be. It soon became clear that even from two hours away he was still controlling Jeannie’s life.
“He called constantly,” Denise remembered. “All hours of the day and night. Even when Jeannie wasn’t home, there would be four and five telephone messages from Pernell waiting for her return.
“They’d all be the same. You know, ‘It’s me. I know you’re there. Pick up the phone.’ Or, ‘Me again.’ Or he’d say something like, ‘Just calling to let you know I have ways of keeping up with you.’ By their very nature, the messages he left were themselves intimidating.”
Almost every weekend, Pernell showed up without invitation, stifling any plans that Jeannie had made. After a while, she just quit making any and began to withdraw from her family and friends.
“Jeannie was worried,” Denise recalled. “Actually, from the time she first met Pernell, there wasn’t a day she wasn’t worried. In the beginning, she was worried because she didn’t know how her parents were going to react to the fact that he was black. But now she had a different reason to worry. Now she was worried about how she was ever going to get away from him.”
A telephone call changed everything. It came a few days after Thanksgiving, 1988. Tony, her former husband, called just to say hello.
“She lit up,” Denise remembered. “If there had been a way to harness that glow, Jeannie would have lit up Norfolk.”
Tony’s work in Pennsylvania was going well, he said, but his third marriage had broken up. The news had not surprised Jeannie. For as long as Jeannie had known Tony, he had little tolerance for people who were overweight. When Tony had married his third wife, a woman Jeannie and Denise had known from a distance, she had been slim and trim, but Jeannie and Carrie had spotted her at a Virginia Beach shopping center a few months after the marriage and both noticed that she’d had gained weight.
“She’s getting a little fat,” Jeannie said, sounding pleased. “Tony’s not going to like that.”
“That sticks in my mind,” Carrie said in 1995, “because that’s the only catty thing I ever heard Jeannie say about anyone.”
Now Tony was telling Jeannie that his divorce soon would be final.
“I guess it’s my fault, in a way,” he said. “I should have known more about her before we got married.”
Tony went on to say that he would be coming home at Christmas to visit his family and would call when he got to town.
“I’ll be here,” Jeannie said.
Jeannie called Denise to tell her about Tony’s call and impending visit.
“And how do you feel about that?” Denise asked.
“Great,” Jeannie responded. “He’s going to call me when he gets here.”
Denise now felt like a wet blanket.
“Jeannie, be careful,” she said. “You know Tony wasn’t the best thing in the world for you when you were married to him. You just can’t go back. You can forgive, but you can’t forget. Just be careful.”
But Denise knew it didn’t matter what she said. It was clear that now, more than ever, Jeannie was looking forward to Christmas, always her favorite time of the year.
Tony’s reappearance made Pernell’s presence in Jeannie’s life an even more pressing problem. He still called at all hours and continued to show up when Jeannie least expected him. But come the holidays, he told her, he would be in North Carolina with his son.
More than a week before Christmas, Pernell showed up without notice at Jeannie’s apartment. Jeannie had decided that she wanted Pernell out of her life, she had told Denise, but she didn’t know how to accomplish it. Pernell’s mood was mellow when he arrived, making Jeannie think that this was the time to try to break away from him. She opted for an easier, partial solution.
“She told him that they could be friends, even best friends if he liked,” Denise recalled, “maybe talk on the phone once in a while, but not every night and not every week, maybe a letter occasionally, but that their relationship had come to an end. She told Pernell that he was a nice guy and that he ought to find him the kind of girl in Richmond that he deserved and marry her. That’s the way Jeannie was. She never wanted to hurt anybody’s feelings. Other people will give almost as much as they take, but Jeannie would just give. And Pernell was a taker. There was nothing mean about Jeannie.
“Pernell was real nice about it. He told her that was fine, that he had made a few new friends in Richmond and maybe something would work out.”
Before leaving, Pernell gave Jeannie a Christmas gift, a bracelet with a strange gold bear charm attached to it. The charm was encrusted with three tiny white gemstones, one for each eye and another where a belly button should be. Jeannie loved teddy bears. She’d collected them for years.
When Pernell left a short time later, Jeannie thought it was for good, and she was happy that she had chosen the gentle approach in breaking off with him. Pernell had taken it so well, she later told Denise.
Joy returned to Jeannie’s life as Christmas approached. She had always embodied the spirit of Christmas to her family and she spent most of the days leading up to the holiday with her parents, as usual taking charge of decorating the tree and the house. She also bought another Christmas teddy bear, this one dressed in a sweater with “1988” woven into the fabric. It joined the rest of her collection beneath the tree.
A few days before Christmas, Jeannie taped a cluster of small golden bells to the top of the decorative mirror in the foyer of her parents’ home, and on Christmas Eve, when her sister Carrie and her brother Sam came home, the whole family posed for a snapshot beneath the bells. Sam’s arm was on Jeannie’s shoulder. Ben was hugging his older daughter to him. In the middle was Carrie, the mother, with a happy expression on her face. Jeannie was smiling and from her wrist dangled her new teddy bear charm bracelet.
Tony had arrived from Pennsylvania a day earlier, and having him home for Christmas, her family knew, was the best gift she could have
hoped for. They spent hours together talking, remembering their high school days, recalling the best days of their marriage. Within days, they already were talking of remarrying.
“They had even decided that they would go to Mexico for their honeymoon,” Denise said. “They were making plans.”
Jeannie and Tony were in bed at her apartment a few days after Christmas when they heard a sharp rapping that seemed to be coming from the back of the apartment in the area of the living room. Tony started to get up to investigate, but Jeannie realized that Pernell surely had returned, and panic struck her. She couldn’t afford for Tony to find out about Pernell, and she told Tony to stay put and she would see what was going on.
Jeannie pulled on a robe and went outside. She found Pernell on her balcony. He had climbed there on a trellis. He knew Tony was inside, he said, and he threatened to break into the apartment and confront him.
Unbeknownst to Jeannie, Tony had called the police, and as she begged Pernell to leave after talking him down from the balcony, a police car turned into the parking lot. Pernell saw it and ran off into the night.
Two officers came to the apartment, and Jeannie told them that she had heard a noise at the back of her building but had found nothing. After searching the area, the officers left. Jeannie returned to Tony with relief, but she knew now that Pernell did not intend to make an easy exit from her life.
Through January, Jeannie’s telephone stayed busy. Tony called frequently from Pennsylvania, and Pernell called just as often from Richmond, now leaving messages even more chilling than before.
“Pernell was telling Jeannie that he would never hurt her,” Denise remembered, “but that he had friends who might. He bragged that he had had a girl down in North Carolina put in the hospital one time.”
She begged Pernell to leave her alone, but he began showing up unexpectedly at her apartment and in the courthouse parking garage even more frequently. She was terrified of him now, but she didn’t know what to do about it.
Tony was her counterbalance. When he called, it was always about pleasant, hopeful things—their remarriage, their honeymoon, finding a house in Pennsylvania.
“If things don’t work out with Tony, what will I do?” she asked Denise during a long, emotional conversation one night.
Denise tried to be positive. “You’ll do just fine,” she said. “You’ve always been able to bounce back and there’s no reason you wouldn’t do it again. You’ve got a lot to offer somebody, and if it’s not Tony, then it will be somebody else, some wonderful man.”
But Denise kept her true feelings to herself. She wasn’t at all certain that Jeannie would be all right. When she called Jeannie’s apartment now, she discovered that on most days Jeannie was in bed by six in the evening. Clearly, Jeannie was deeply depressed. She ate very little.
In late January, Tony asked Jeannie to come to Pennsylvania for a week, and she eagerly accepted. Despite her depression, she tried to put herself in an optimistic mood before the trip. And she was filled with anticipation and excitement when she left in the third week of February, 1989.
But only a few days after Jeannie had left, Denise’s phone rang.
“You heard from Jeannie?” Pernell asked without preliminaries.
“No, Pernell, I haven’t,” Denise said flatly.
“Listen, do you know where she’s staying in Pennsylvania?” he went on pleasantly.
“I sure don’t. I didn’t ask her and she hasn’t called.”
“C’mon, Denise,” he said teasingly. “You and Jeannie are like sisters. She wouldn’t leave town without telling you where she’s going to be.”
“We may be like sisters,” Denise answered, “but she sure didn’t tell me where she’s going and I didn’t ask.”
“Why don’t you give me the number? I won’t tell her how I got it.”
“Maybe you don’t understand, Pernell,” said Denise with growing anger. “I don’t have Jeannie’s number.”
“She’s with Tony, isn’t she?” he said, surprising her.
“Like I said, she didn’t tell me what her plans were.”
“I really need to talk to her,” Pernell said. “I can’t just let her go. I just don’t know what I’ll do without her.”
Denise didn’t respond.
“She means a lot to me, you know.”
Denise’s silence continued.
“Denise, you there?” he asked.
“Yes, Pernell, I’m here.”
“I know you have her number, Denise. So, why don’t you go ahead and give it to me? I only need to talk to her for a minute.”
“Pernell, I don’t have her number. I don’t know where she is. I don’t know where she’s staying, and even if I did I wouldn’t give that information to you.”
Without another word, Pernell hung up. The call, Denise knew, did not bode well for Jeannie’s future.
Jeannie Butkowski refused to press charges when her former boyfriend abducted, raped and beat her. When she turned up missing again two months later, her front door kicked off its hinges, her family thought that the police in Chesapeake, Va., were not interested in looking for her.
Jeannie’s last Christmas with her family. Left to right are her sister, Carrie; her father, Ben; her mother, Carrie; her brother Sam and Jeannie.
Jeannie’s roommate and closest friend, Denise Edwards, knew that Jeannie was dead as soon as she discovered her missing, and she knew who had killed her: Pernell Jefferson. Denise’s daughter Dawn now has faint memories of her “Aunt Jeannie,” recalling only that her mother once spent a lot of time searching for her.
Jeannie’s grave in Rosewood Memorial Park in Virginia Beach. Her mother goes there every Tuesday to polish the bronze marker, clip the grass and replace the flowers.
The church in Benson, North Carolina, where Pernell Jefferson sang in the choir with his family.
Pernell’s mother, Joann Richardson, knew that athletics could take Pernell out of the poverty of his childhood, and she was right. He became an All-American football hero and was recruited by the Cleveland Browns.
Willie Jefferson was a football star at South Johnston High School, but he was far outshone by his older brother Pernell, who starred in three sports and once participated in two simultaneous events, running in a track meet between innings in a baseball game.
Guilford College’s 1984 football team was not expected to win a single game, but under Pernell’s leadership, it rose to be Number 3 in the nation. Pernell (22) poses with other backfield defenders: his close friend Lamar Boykin (37); Tim Everhart (10) and Kieran Byrne (13).
As a sophomore in 1982, Pernell opened Guilford’s homecoming game with a dazzling 80-yard kickoff return for a touchdown. Cheering him in the stands was a girlfriend he was abusing just as he later would abuse Jeannie.
Diagram of the house on Hibben Rd. in Chesapeake, Va., from which Jeannie was twice abducted by Pernell, the second time with deadly result.
Jimmy Weaver, the sheriff of Amelia County, Va., resented that his county had become a dumping ground for murderers from nearby cities. He became determined to put Pernell into prison.
Wes Terry, chief deputy of the Amelia County Sheriff’s Department, was the lead officer in the investigation of Jeannie’s murder. He had come to Amelia at the request of his old friend Jimmy Weaver.
Pernell later said that he was in shock after his conviction for Jeannie’s murder. Soon after he was taken from a back door of the Amelia County courthouse, his brother Willie stood on the front steps, Bible in hand, shouting that Pernell had not received a fair trial.
18.
The Miracle Tape
JEANNIE RETURNED FROM HER VISIT with Tony brimming with happiness and plans for the future. Although they hadn’t set their wedding date, they had planned their honeymoon to Mexico and looked at houses. Jeannie even had talked with the clerk of court in the town where Tony lived about a job. Things could not have gone better. But as she was struggling to get her suitcase out of the car
on her return to her apartment, a neighbor came over.
“I’m not being nosy,” he said, “but I was just wondering if you gave anyone permission to stay in your apartment while you were gone.”
“Well, no,” Jeannie said, suddenly wary. “Did you see someone in my apartment?”
“A black man,” her neighbor said. “He seemed to have a key. Stayed several days.”
“Is he still there?” she asked.
“Haven’t seen him today,” he said.
Jeannie’s glanced around the parking lot for Pernell’s gold Fiero but didn’t see it, and declining the neighbor’s offer of help, she climbed the stairs to her apartment.
She opened the door only a crack at first, then cautiously wider. She was shocked by the sight before her. Her neat, tidy apartment had been ransacked. Clothing was scattered, furniture overturned, food scraps and dishes spread about. She stepped inside in disbelief, and when she did Pernell was instantly upon her, pushing her against the wall and pinning her there.
“Miss Butkowski,” he said, his angry face pressed close to hers, “don’t you know that if I can’t have you, nobody’s going to?”
“Pernell, you’re hurting me,” she cried out. His grip on her wrists was like vises. Suddenly, he released her arms and grabbed her by the neck with both hands. He was choking her, and she fought vainly to break his grip. Just as she thought she was going to lose consciousness, he hurled her to the floor, pounced on her and began hitting her as she struggled for breath. Later she would withhold many of the gruesome details about what followed, telling Denise only that Pernell had alternately beaten and raped her throughout the night. He had left at dawn, she said, with a warning that he could have her killed with a single phone call.
Jeannie had thought about going to her parents’ house after Pernell left but decided against it because she feared that her father would try to kill Pernell and get himself in trouble. Instead she had gone to Denise’s house. Denise had come to the door sleepy-eyed and was shocked at Jeannie’s appearance. Her mouth was cut, her eyes and temples were beginning to blacken, and hand marks could be clearly seen on Jeannie’s throat.
Deadly Goals Page 14
