Deadly Goals

by Wilt Browning

  “You don’t know where Wayne Scott is, do you?” Weaver asked.

  “Used to live with his grandmother. I guess he’s still there.”

  “You know where that is?”

  “No, sir,” Brown answered.

  Weaver had one more stop to make, at the Remco store in Southside Plaza where Pernell had worked. Eight months after Pernell had left town, a police officer was making a visit to Pernell’s former employer for the first time. Weaver talked with Mike Thomas, the store manager, who told him how Pernell had gone to lunch on a Friday in May and never returned.

  Sometime during his last days as an employee, Thomas said, Pernell had told him that his girlfriend was missing from her Virginia Beach home along with her car and that the front door of the house in which she lived had been kicked in.

  Weaver asked about the people who had worked with Pernell. Thomas said that Joey St. Augustine had been a co-worker and a friend and that Sean Brooks,* who had become a Remco store manager in Macon, Georgia, also worked at the store at the time.

  Late on January 18, Weaver called the Remco store in Macon and Sean Brooks answered.

  “What do you remember about Pernell Jefferson and his last week at the store in Richmond?” Weaver asked after identifying himself.

  At some point during that week, Brooks said, Pernell had asked if he would trade cars with him for the evening. “He said he had to move something and he didn’t have much of a trunk in his Fiero,” Brooks remembered. “I had a 1985 Mercury Topaz with a big trunk and I told him he could use that and I would drive his Fiero home from work that night.”

  Brooks said his Topaz was a two-door model with a light blue exterior and a royal blue interior. Brooks said that Pernell returned the Mercury near midnight of the day he borrowed it.

  “Did you see Pernell after that?”

  “Just Friday morning, the day he left. But I got a call from Pernell sometime in September.”

  “What’d he have to say?” Weaver asked.

  “It was a strange phone call,” Brooks remembered. “He wanted to know if I knew what Joey St. Augustine had told the police about his girlfriend.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him I had no idea.”

  Early on January 19, Weaver returned once again to Richmond to the office of Detective Ray Williams who already had briefed Weaver on his interview months earlier with St. Augustine and the failed attempt to bug St. Augustine’s apartment.

  This time, Weaver told Williams he needed to find Wayne Scott, who apparently lived with his grandmother. Williams made two calls to informants and found out where Scott lived. “Let’s go,” he said.

  Ten minutes later, the two officers knocked at the door of a house in an aging south Richmond neighborhood. An elderly woman answered.

  “We’re here to talk to Wayne Scott,” Williams told her.

  “Wayne,” she called out.

  Soon, a short, stocky black man with a thin mustache stood before them. At first glance, Weaver figured that Scott knew a lot about the streets of Richmond and how to survive there.

  “If it’s not too much trouble,” Weaver said, “we’d like for you to come down to the police station to talk to us a little bit.”

  “Got nothing to say,” Scott said.

  “We think you do,” Weaver said sternly, “and we think the best place to say it is down at the station. We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

  “Be back later,” Scott called to his grandmother. But on the ride downtown, he refused to respond as Weaver probed gently, hoping to learn what he was up against.

  “This guy’s not going to talk to both of us,” Weaver told Williams when they arrived at police headquarters. “Why don’t you just give me a shot at him first?”

  Williams agreed and showed Weaver and Scott to an interview room. Weaver put a tape recorder on the table in front of Scott, turned it on, and began asking about Pernell Jefferson and the car the two had sold to Alphonso Brown.

  But Scott only glowered, saying nothing.

  Weaver got up and paced, searching his mind for more questions.

  “I knew there would be a key to this interview and I knew I was going to have to find it somehow and turn it,” he later recalled.

  Warning Scott that this was a murder case wasn’t it, however. Scott didn’t scare easily.

  Then Weaver remembered Brown telling him about Scott’s GT, and he realized that at that very moment it no doubt was parked in some upscale, white neighborhood waiting for the cover of darkness when Scott could again go about his nefarious business.

  “I know about the red GT,” he said.

  Years later, Weaver would still distinctly remember Scott’s reaction. “It was like you had this flower and you poured boiling hot water on it. Scott just wilted.”

  Weaver realized that his key was within his grasp if only he looked in the right direction. “I knew the next question I asked would be the most important question in this interview, and maybe the most important question in the whole investigation, because it would let this guy know whether I was just fishing with the comment about the red GT, or whether I was really popping him with some stuff.”

  Weaver pretended to watch Scott squirm, saying nothing, allowing him time to respond. Meanwhile, he was frantically trying to frame his next question. Suddenly, his course presented itself.

  “Let me ask you something, Wayne,” he said. “How many people know about the red GT?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Scott answered quickly.

  “But I know,” Weaver said, pressing his index finger to his own chest. “What does that tell you?”

  “Somebody told on me,” he said.

  “There you go,” Weaver said with a smile, sitting back down in front of Scott.

  “I know about it and I know where it is, but those people out there don’t know a thing about it,” he said, pointing to the wall behind which were the offices of the Richmond Police Department detectives. Weaver stared into Scott’s eyes.

  “Wanna talk about Pernell?”

  “I know him,” Scott said.

  The key had just turned, and now the door began to open. Over the next two hours, Scott talked his way through one tape and part of another. And when he had finished, Weaver knew that he had enough to charge Pernell Jefferson with murder. Now he had to find him.

  24.

  A Visit From the Pope

  AT 2:30 on the afternoon of January 23, 1990, Jimmy Weaver swore out a warrant charging Pernell Jefferson with capital murder. When he called the Pricketts to tell them about it, Ben told him that the private investigator he’d hired had tracked Pernell to two places in Florida, Stuart and West Palm Beach, and that Pernell likely was still in one of those areas.

  Weaver called the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and asked for help in finding Pernell. Special Agent Steve Emerson in the Miami office was assigned to the case. He made a records check and discovered that charges were pending in Palm Beach County against Pernell. He soon had traced Pernell to a cousin’s house in Stuart.

  On Saturday, February 3, 1990, while officers from the Stuart Police Department surrounded the house, Emerson climbed the short flight of stairs to the front porch and knocked at the door.

  “I’m Special Agent Steve Emerson of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement,” he told the man who answered. “I have a warrant here for the arrest of Pernell Jefferson. May I come in?”

  “No, sir,” the man responded. “This is a house of worship and I am a minister and you may not come in.”

  “And I’m the Pope and I’ve come to get Pernell Jefferson,” Emerson said pushing past him with Stuart officers following. He found Pernell cowering in a closet.

  Later, Pernell would say that he had known that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement was looking for him, because a cousin who worked for the Miami Police and a friend who worked for the Riviera Beach Police had told him. But he had not been on the run or hiding ou
t, he said, and was not even aware of the extent of the charges against him.

  “We’ve got your man,” Emerson told Weaver by phone less than an hour later. “He’s right here in the Martin County Jail.”

  “Fast work,” a pleased Weaver said.

  It was with even greater pleasure that Weaver dialed the Pricketts’ number in Virginia Beach this time.

  “We’ve got him,” he told Carrie. “Pernell was just arrested in Florida. Your private investigator knew something.”

  “When will he be brought back?” she asked.

  “We’re not sure. We have to go through the extradition proceedings first, and he’s got some charges pending against him down there. All that has to be worked out.”

  He and Terry would be going down to talk with him the next day, he said, and Carrie told him that they had friends who ran a motel in the Orlando area who would welcome them and offer a place to stay.

  On Sunday, Weaver and Terry headed for Florida, planning to stop first in Benson to talk with Pernell’s brother, Willie. That stop proved short, however. Willie declined to talk. After spending the night with the Pricketts’ friends near Orlando, the officers drove on to Stuart, where they got their first look at Pernell when he seated himself across a table from them in an interview room at the jail on Monday afternoon.

  “Do you know where Jeannie Butkowski’s missing diamond ring is?” Terry asked him.

  “I don’t have it,” Pernell answered.

  “Has it been pawned?”

  “I didn’t do it,” he said.

  “Did you and Regina Butkowski care for each other?”

  “We knew each other,” Pernell said, adding, “I don’t think I want to talk to you gentlemen without an attorney.”

  “Well, you certainly don’t have to talk to us,” Weaver said, “but if this was a lovers’ quarrel that just went bad, you ought to let me know.”

  “I told you, I’m not saying anything to you,” Pernell said with a bite in his voice.

  “I’m going to say just one thing to you, Mr. Jefferson,” Weaver responded. “I won’t be back and some day you’ll wish you had talked to me. Let’s get out of here, Wes.”

  The two men walked out, leaving Pernell with the guard who had brought him from his holding cell.

  Years later, as Weaver looked back on his brief exchange with Pernell, he observed, “I probably wasn’t disappointed he took the attitude he did. You know, To hell with you, cop. Go ahead and prove it if you can. When I left that room, I felt like I had a direct challenge. It made me want to work just that much harder.”

  Weaver knew that Pernell had repeatedly abused women and he was sure that he would keep doing it, no doubt killing again, unless somebody did something to stop him, and he was determined to be that somebody.

  After leaving the jail, Weaver and Terry began trying to put together Pernell’s life since he had left Richmond more than eight months earlier. They started by going with Agent Emerson and Stuart Detective James Egbers to talk with a beautiful young woman of Italian lineage who had dated Pernell after he arrived in Florida in June. Pernell had been introduced to Roseanne Lentini* by one of his cousins. Her father once had known his father, Pernell said later. Lentini, who was 24, told the detectives that when they met Pernell told her he was a private investigator who had been hired by the family of a former girlfriend to hunt down her murderer. Lentini had dated Pernell for only a couple of months before he had moved in with another woman in West Palm Beach. Pernell later claimed that although he had passionate feelings for Lentini, she was addicted to crack cocaine and he could not handle the stress of dealing with her addiction.

  Terry showed Lentini a picture of the three-diamond engagement ring Jeannie and Tony had designed years before, one of the rings Jeannie had been wearing the night she was taken from her house in Chesapeake, and the young woman said she had seen the ring in photos Pernell had, but hadn’t seen the ring itself.

  “Ma’am, in the time you dated Pernell, did you ever notice anything suspicious about him?” Terry asked.

  “Just one thing,” she answered.

  “And what was that?”

  “I used to drive his little car, that gold Fiero, a lot. And I was driving it sometime last June or July and when I put on the brakes, this gun slid out from under the seat.”

  “What did the gun look like?”

  “It was, like, a pistol, and it had sort of a dark color, like it was old or something.”

  “Do you know where it is now?” Terry asked.

  “That’s the only time I ever saw it.”

  The gun would never be found, but Weaver and Terry were convinced that was the gun that had been used to kill Jeannie.

  To their surprise, Weaver and Terry also discovered that Pernell now was married. Soon after his arrival in Florida, Pernell had moved in with relatives in Stuart and landed a job tracking down delinquent accounts for a jewelry store in West Palm Beach, 40 miles away. Late in the summer, Pernell had stopped at an apartment in Riviera Beach to ask directions. The woman who answered the door, Cynthia Overman,* was older than he, in her mid-thirties, the daughter of Eastern European immigrants in Michigan, and a divorcee with a teenaged daughter. Pernell struck up a conversation with her and she was very friendly. He began stopping to see her every time he was in her neighborhood, pouring on his relentless charm. Within a month, she had invited him to move in with her, and Pernell, who had been driving an hour and a half back and forth to work from Stuart each day, accepted because it would put him much closer to his job. Within two months, they had married. Later, Pernell would not talk about the marriage, saying that he had promised to protect Cynthia’s privacy. Cynthia, who divorced Pernell after his incarceration and later remarried and moved back to Michigan, could not be located to be questioned about her relationship with Pernell. Pernell claimed that he cared for her and never abused her, but at the time Weaver and Terry suspected otherwise. The charges against him that had led to his capture were the result of a blow-up with Cynthia but had not been lodged by her and indicated no abuse of her. Pernell would not discuss the incident that provoked the charges, except to call it minor.

  On December 12, 1989, Pernell had been arrested by West Palm Beach police and charged with three counts: aggravated assault with a handgun, false imprisonment and grand theft of a firearm.

  According to the police report, Pernell had learned that his new wife had moved out and was staying at the nearby apartment of a male acquaintance. Pernell had lured his wife’s friend from his apartment by saying something was wrong with his car. Pernell and two accomplices then jumped the man, began beating him and took from him a revolver in a case, which the man had a permit to carry.

  “Jefferson held the gun and told (the victim) to go back into the apt.,” the police report stated. “While in the apt. Jefferson kept the gun and refused anyone permission to leave…while he tried to convince his wife to come home with him.”

  When police, summoned by security guards, arrived, Pernell dropped the gun into a garbage can, according to the report.

  Later, Pernell claimed that the officer who arrested him asked, “Do I know you?” as he was taking him to the station.

  “I said, ‘I don’t think so,’” Pernell recalled. “He wanted to know if I was an athlete, and I told him I’d played a little football. He asked me who I had played for. I told him the Browns. He said, ‘Really? I’m from Cleveland and I think I remember you being with the Browns.’

  “On the way, he called ahead and asked what my bond was going to be. They said $10,000. When we got there, he just said, ‘Take care of Pernell.’ They set my bond at $1,000 and I gave them the $100 cash and left.”

  Pernell reconciled with Cynthia, but it was his wife’s daughter who gave police the information that led to his arrest.

  After returning from Florida, Jimmy Weaver had extradition papers drawn but it would be months before Pernell was returned to Virginia because of the charges pending against him
in Palm Beach County. His trial there had been scheduled for March 9, but it was twice postponed. After summer arrived and Pernell still hadn’t been tried, a Florida judge, pressured by Virginia authorities, finally ordered that Pernell be extradited.

  On July 10, two Amelia County deputies, Leonard Wiggins and Kenneth Lloyd flew to Florida to get him. Later, both would recall how personable Pernell had been.

  “Under other circumstances,” said Wiggins, “I would have been more than glad to invite him to my house for dinner or go to a movie with him.

  “It was hard to remember that he was being charged with murder. But Lloyd and I both knew that we had to remember that he was a potentially dangerous man while we were having easy conversations with him.”

  Pernell was placed in the Piedmont Correctional Center, a regional jail shared by five Virginia counties, at Farmville, 20 miles from Amelia, to await his trial, but that would be a long time coming.

  Within days of Pernell’s arrival at Farmville, Pernell’s younger brother, Willie, called a friend in Richmond and asked for the names of the three best trial lawyers in the city. His friend called back with three names. The first was Steven D. Benjamin.

  Willie called and got an appointment. He was as impressed with Benjamin’s office in the gothic Old City Hall building near the capitol as he was with Benjamin himself. Benjamin, whose office once had been a judge’s chamber and had 20-foot ceilings, was a young man, trim and athletic, with short-cropped, thinning brown hair, wire-rimmed glasses and a no-nonsense style. He wore suspenders with his fashionable suits and spoke softly, seldom smiling, occasionally looking over the top of his glasses.

  Willie hired him, paid a $1,200 retainer and went home to borrow more money to pay for his brother’s defense.

  The key witness against Pernell, Wayne Scott, had agreed to plead guilty to charges of breaking and entering with intention to abduct Jeannie, and in August he appeared in court in Chesapeake where for the first time he made known publicly the events leading up to Jeannie’s death. He was sentenced to 15 years, of which 10 years would be suspended if he testified against Pernell. He was sent to a prison in Roanoke to serve his sentence.