Deadly Goals

by Wilt Browning

  “But Mama…” Sam protested.

  Carrie had not been able to bring herself to visit the spot before, although she had thought about it when she and Ben were in Amelia for the trial. She just hadn’t been able to do it then.

  “It’ll be all right,” she now assured her son.

  Sam led the way in his car. Ben, Carrie and Denise followed. Ben could not bring himself to go to the site and remained alone in the car. Sam and Denise helped Carrie through the undergrowth until she stood on the bank of the dry creek bed where her daughter’s body had lain.

  “What an ugly place,” Carrie said after a few minutes. “What a forsaken looking place. This place needs some flowers or something.”

  On the day after Christmas, 1991, Carrie returned to the lonely place where Jeannie had been found and there she spread 20 pounds of wildflower seeds, scattering them across the barren ground of the creek bed and into the nearby tree line.

  She would return every Christmas thereafter to do the same thing.

  “The place is something to see in the spring when everything comes alive again,” Sheriff Weaver says. “There are flowers everywhere.”

  29.

  The Eyewitness Account

  CRAIGSVILLE IS A DOT on the map along Virginia Highway 42 halfway between Goshen and Buffalo Gap. It is two hours of hard driving northeast of Roanoke. The nearest metropolitan areas of any significant size are Lexington to the south and Staunton to the northeast, both nearly an hour away.

  “When I first moved here over thirty years ago, we had five banks, five or six grocery stores, a dozen filling stations and a beer joint on every corner,” says the woman who runs the town’s only restaurant, which specializes in country cooking.

  Craigsville survived then on the timber industry, which has since moved on. It also was the home of one of the region’s most productive concrete plants, which now lies in ruin, its steel skeleton rusting away.

  Now Craigsville is a quiet town with limited commerce of any kind. The homes, most of which predate World War II, are built of wood. Freight trains rumble through town three and four times a day, seldom slowing, never stopping. Had the Commonwealth of Virginia not chosen Craigsville as the site for a new prison more than a decade ago, Craigsville might have become a ghost town.

  Augusta Correctional Center now provides sustenance for the town, as well as for much of the surrounding region. It is a dependable industry. There are no layoffs and it operates three shifts a day and never closes for weekends and holidays. Most of the working residents of Craigsville are employed in various capacities at the prison.

  Flanked on the east by mountains where the Blue Ridge Parkway makes its way out of sight along the distant ridges, bounded on the west by rocky cliffs that once provided some of the best industrial limestone in the country, the prison with its high fences stacked with row upon row of razor wire seems incongruous to its beautiful setting. Here, a thousand of Virginia’s toughest prisoners are locked away.

  It was to Augusta that Pernell Jefferson was brought on May 8, 1992, after being held at Powhatan Receiving Center for several months. Although sentenced to a life term, he calculates that with good time, he will become eligible for parole after only 20 years, in the year 2011. For every 30 days that he stays out of trouble, 10 days are deducted from his sentence.

  By 1995, his case has been appealed two times and twice denied. Both appeals claimed the tape recording of Jeannie’s earlier abduction should not have been permitted into evidence. Nevertheless, Pernell had not given up hope that his sentence yet would be overturned or reduced.

  After arriving at Augusta, Pernell became a model prisoner, spending time in the library studying law, using computers to write dozens of letters to friends, attorneys and national experts on steroid abuse, which, he claims, lies at the root of his problem. He also created a large computer file on steroid abuse including extensive case studies involving athletes, particularly weightlifters. He volunteered to run the prison’s athletic programs, became the commissioner of the flag football league and a referee at basketball games.

  “They won’t let me play football,” he said during an interview, “and I’m glad. It’s too rough for me. It’s supposed to be flag football, but they take it to extremes sometimes.”

  He maintains his athletic build by spending hours each week in the prison weight room, and proudly claims to be the fifth strongest of all the inmates in any weight classification, a feat accomplished, he noted, without anabolic steroids which, he insists, transformed him from a “lovable, unselfish, well-mannered” person to a “monster with an aggressive nature.”

  “I’m not looking for excuses,” he said. “I’m just trying to figure out what happened and do something positive. You know, you try to have a little pride. You try to say, ‘Hey, this is me. This isn’t TV stuff. This is real.’”

  Yet, he adamantly denied killing Jeannie, pounding the table before him with his fist as he distinctly pronounced each word. “I was not the person to pull the trigger that killed Miss Butkowski. Let’s talk logic. If you think I’m going to kill you and I give you the gun, no way are you going to give it back to me. In my mind, I never thought about killing or shooting her.”

  Until this interview, he said no one had ever asked him what had happened that night in May, 1989, including his defense attorney.

  “This is the first time I’ve told this story to anyone,” he said going on to give his version of what happened that night after Jeannie was taken from her home. He was driving Jeannie’s car, he said. She was in the passenger seat. They were on I-64 headed for Richmond, where he had been sharing an apartment with his older sister, Blondie, for several months.

  “Let’s put it this way,” he said. “I’m driving a five-speed car. I’ve already given the gun to her so she won’t be afraid of me. I’m driving. She has the gun like this…” He held an imaginary revolver with his left hand beside his thigh.

  “Next thing I know, I’m aware that she’s brought the gun up…” He raised an imaginary weapon beside his head, the barrel pointing straight up. “I don’t know if I reached out and grabbed the gun or what. But the next thing I know, there’s a light of fire—a kind of flash—in the sun roof.

  “When I saw that, I just stopped, almost in the middle of the road. I didn’t see no blood, but it was night. I didn’t see no blood. I shook her. Then I saw blood on her cheek. Just a little bit of blood.

  “I was in shock. I just drove around for two or three hours. I kept thinking about what I should do. After I rode around, I knew I was in trouble.”

  As he drove, he said, Jeannie sat slumped beside him in the passenger seat.

  Later, in a letter, Pernell offered a different version of events that night.

  I told her I had to go home because I had to work the next morning at 7:00 a.m. So she agreed to let me drive myself to Richmond. We stopped off at Williamsburg to get a bite to eat. Then we continued to Richmond. On the way we talked about different things (concerning our relationships and their ups and downs). I talked about Susan and she talked about Tony. Her words were, and I quote—

  My life is ruined because Tony found out you are black and I had been sleeping with you. He is never going to take me back…

  At that point she started crying. I was two blocks away from where I was staying in Belle Meade Apts on Jefferson Davis Highway.

  Jeannie asked was the gun real and I said, “I think so” because I was not familiar with guns. I gave her the gun and she opened the chamber and took out one bullet then put it back in. At that point I pulled up in the drive way in front of my sister’s apt. Regina did not want me to leave her at that point. So we drove up and down Jefferson Davis Highway. We passed a police cruiser and he flashed his headlights because the headlights of Regina’s car were not on. We were on the outskirts of the city limits and I pulled over on the side of the road to use the bathroom. I left the ignition on. She sat in the passenger seat with the gun in her hand. After I got bac
k into the car to take off, Regina had the gun in the area of her head.

  Simultaneously or a split second before, I grabbed the gun and it went off. At this point I’m in another world. I rode around for about 3 or 4 hours and went back past the same police cruiser. I did not know what to do.

  During the interview, Pernell confirmed that he placed a call to Joe St. Augustine early on Saturday morning after the shooting.

  “I said to him, ‘Joe, something’s happened.’

  “He said. ‘What?’

  “I said, ‘My ex-girlfriend is dead.’ I never said I killed her. He came to get me and I told him that I’ve got to park her car and we went to an apartment complex he suggested. The situation about burying the victim came from that man. He lied to save his own hide. He carried me to a place they were building an apartment complex to get some concrete mix. He told me to throw that on her and put a tarp on her. He even showed me where the tarp was.

  “Why wouldn’t he say, ‘I don’t want anything to do with this’?

  “The same guy told me to move the body. He suggested moving the body so he wouldn’t get caught because he knew where the body was.

  “And Pernell didn’t buy no gas. Wayne Scott is the man who burned the victim’s body and he got a plea out of all this and he’s already out of the system.

  “Later Joe came to me. He said, ‘Pernell, they keep questioning me about this. They keep questioning me about that.’

  “I said, ‘Joe, I’m going to take my chances and go tell what happened.’

  “He said, ‘No, man, you’ve got to leave. They’re not going to believe you. You broke up and that breaking and entering happened.’ At that point, fear set in. He gave me his whole paycheck—$180—and said, ‘Take this and go and I’ll tell them you didn’t do it.’”

  Pernell said that on his birthday, June 4, almost a month after the shooting, he called from Florida to St. Augustine at 12:15 a.m. at a computer center where St. Augustine worked nights.

  “I asked him, ‘Did you tell the truth?’ He told me to hold on while he went to another phone. Then he said, ‘Naw, man. I told them you did the killing.’

  “‘Why?’ I asked him.

  “‘To get them off my back,’ he said. ‘Now when they catch up with you, tell them I lied on you.’

  “‘Why don’t you go to Spain?’ he asked me. ‘They’d never find you there.’

  “‘Right,’ I said, and hung up the phone.

  “I want people to see what I’ve been through. I’m not blaming nobody. There are some people out there who believe in me. They know something had to happen. And I hate every day that I let people down that stood by me.

  “I think about her,” he said of Jeannie. “But it’s done. I know and she knows I didn’t pull that trigger.”

  Epilogue

  IN THE SPRING OF 1994, Pernell taught a course for other inmates on how to control anger and aggression, and in June a Department of Corrections counselor placed a memo in Pernell’s file in which he called Pernell “a role model for others.”

  He had indeed become a model prisoner, just as Susan predicted. He keeps out of trouble and remains an avid weightlifter. He religiously watches ESPN’s “Sports-Center” on his personal, five-inch, black-and-white TV and has become captivated by the soap opera, “All My Children.”

  He corresponds regularly not only with national experts on the uses and abuses of anabolic steroids, but with several female pen pals whose pictures he keeps in a frame on the top of a small desk in the tiny cell he shares with another inmate. He still keeps in touch with his old college roommate Lamar, talking with him regularly by phone. They still talk a lot about football, especially Guilford College’s 1984 victory over Elon. Lamar says they never speak of Jeannie’s death.

  Pernell’s former coach, Tommy Saunders, still gets calls from Pernell as well and is impressed with how cheerful he usually sounds. “He still thinks that somehow and someway somebody’s going to come down the pike and say this was all a mistake, and Pernell’s going to be out,” Saunders says.

  After losing two appeals, Pernell is ready to make another based on his abuse of steroids, but Steven Benjamin is no longer his lawyer and no other attorney has yet agreed to take his case.

  After his murder trial, Pernell still faced charges in Chesapeake of abducting Jeannie and breaking into Denise’s house. He had been scheduled to go to trial on the abduction charges in July 1992, but his court-appointed lawyer in that case, Randolph D. Stowe, claimed the trial subjected Pernell to double jeopardy and the trial was postponed.

  In June 1995, the Court of Appeals agreed with Stowe.

  “The court ruled, interestingly, that the abduction began here,” Chesapeake Commonwealth’s Attorney Ann E. Poindexter said, “and continued up to the point of murder and therefore dismissed the abduction charges against him.”

  Left standing, however, were the burglary charges. Poindexter promised they would be pursued. “The problem we face in getting him to trial on burglary,” she said, “is that the only people who can testify are those who were involved.” Those involved were Scott, Zimmer and Savin, who have served their sentences. “And we had a hard enough time getting them to court the first time,” she said. “The bottom line is that if we can’t find the people involved, there’s not much we can do.” The problem solved itself early in December, 1995, when Pernell agreed to plead guilty to single charge of breaking and entering to abduct. He received a second life sentence to run concurrently with the first. A week later, he appealed the sentence.

  For members of Pernell’s family, the events of the last decade have taken their toll. His mother, now in failing health, keeps mostly to her small home in Benson where she raised her children. Willie says that Pernell’s conviction “destroyed her.”

  “Mother has come to the conclusion he’s done, it,” Willie said. “If he didn’t do it, why’s he locked up? That’s the way she sees it.”

  Willie keeps busy working two jobs in Benson, including his own business as a carpet cleaner. But only once has he returned to South Johnston High School where both he and Pernell once were athletes of note.

  “Lots of people around here know what happened to Pernell, but a few haven’t heard,” he said. “I’m afraid if I go over to the school somebody’ll say, ‘Aren’t: you Pernell’s brother? Whatever happened to Pernell?’ I’ve had people ask me that on the street. I just say he’s working up north, and let it go at that.”

  No family members other than Willie have visited Pernell in prison. Willie went only once. He took Pernell’s son, P.J., with him. Now a teenager, P.J. does well in school and is showing promise as an aspiring athlete. “But he still cries a lot,” Willie reports.

  In a letter dated March 31, 1995, addressed “to family, friends and my victims,” Pernell offered apologies.

  “I really think these are in order and certainly overdue,” he wrote. “I do understand that any apology cannot and will not suffice for some individuals. But I do need to express my remorse and sorrow for my acts. Making it public will no doubt be a step in my continuous rehabilitation.

  “I have asked forgiveness from God and once I have made my sincere apologies known to the people I have hurt then that part of my life can start to heal.”

  He then listed individual apologies:

  Mama Jo: Thank you for rearing me with discipline, care and love. Please do not ever feel my problems stemmed from something you shorted me on because you gave me the best happiness and affection growing up. Love you!

  Little P.J.: Champ, dad is very sorry not to be there in the most important years of your life. I need you to understand I love you more than any single thing in my life.

  Prickett Family: Saying I am sorry does not amount to the pain and suffering you all have endured. I do have remorse for being a part of the total tragedy in which you lost a family member.

  Susan: For the past eight years I have expressed my apologies to you through third parties. Maybe one day yo
u will understand the whole scenario.

  Family (Especially Linda H., Brick, Shirley, Linda Faye and Willie Jr.): I am sorry for my problems because they have taken away from our family unity. Thank you for still being supportive, both financially and spiritually.

  Friends (Especially the Saunders, Herb Appenzeller, Lucylle and Nikki Nichols, Lamar and Glen): Through all this you have stood supportive in my corner. You have shown the true value of genuine friendship.

  Sarah Wheeler: Please forgive me for leaving all the responsibilities of rearing our son on you. Thank you and your husband for allowing me to call little P.J. as often as I do.

  Others: I am sorry to have caused you pain and heartbreak.

  Susan Demos, who still works in professional soccer, remains haunted by her years with Pernell.

  “There are still days I’d just love to kill Pernell Jefferson,” she says. She remains bitter that law enforcement authorities in Miami didn’t arrest him. “If someone had stopped him then,” she says, “Jeannie wouldn’t be dead.”

  Susan is still startled awake occasionally by a feeling that Pernell is somewhere in her apartment.

  “When that happens,” she says, “I have to get up, turn on every light in the apartment, look behind the drapes and in every closet before I can go back to sleep.”

  And in recent years, she has been troubled by a recurring dream.

  “I see Pernell in the distance and I start running from him,” she says, “and I’m running down this street lined with light poles. And I think I’m getting away from him, but every time I look up, he’s sitting on the top of a light pole ahead of me.

  “And finally I’m running into the dining hall at Quaker Lakes, a camp I used to attend as a little girl, and Pernell’s behind me. There’s nobody in the dining room, but there’s this huge pot of stew simmering on the big camp stove. I look around and Pernell has turned into this huge lizard, like an iguana, and he’s leaping at me and I’m trying to get away. Finally, he jumps onto this butcher block table and I get a big meat knife and—chop, chop, chop like Julia Child—I chop him up into little pieces. I look around and there’s still nobody there. I put the little pieces of Pernell into the stew. ‘No more Pernell,’ I say to myself. It feels good.”