In May 1994, almost exactly five years after Jeannie died, Susan’s assistant at work took a message from someone calling for Susan. It read:
My name’s Leon. Tell her I’m Pernell’s cousin. Pernell will be at my house in 20 minutes and he wanted me to call Susan to tell her we’re coming down for a visit.
Shaken, Susan quickly reported the incident to authorities, who assured her that Pernell was still locked up at Craigsville.
“He’s still stalking me from prison,” she says.
Susan’s father has since died and her mother Irene regularly corresponds with the parole board in Virginia, hoping to ensure that Pernell remains in prison for as long as possible. She has become a close friend with Jeannie’s mother, and they talk on the phone and correspond frequently.
Irene once sought unsuccessfully to have Pernell’s name removed from the most prestigious athletic award presented to Guilford College athletes, the Nereus C. English Award. She did succeed, however, in persuading the English family to insist upon stricter guidelines in choosing annual winners.
Early in 1994, the Commonwealth of Virginia acquired a large parcel of land, including that where Jeannie’s remains were found, and plans to turn it into a state-operated military cemetery.
“I guess it was always supposed to be a graveyard,” Sheriff Jimmy Weaver said when he heard the news.
Mike Reardon, Jeannie’s policeman friend who once was a Guilford College football teammate of Pernell’s, has married. He has left the K-9 unit but remains an officer with the Norfolk Police Department, working the vice and narcotics beat. He still is bothered by Jeannie’s death.
“I am sorry to say I was the one who introduced Jeannie to Pernell,” he says, “and that’s been hard to live with. I had to try for a long time to get that out of my head.”
Tony Butkowski, Jeannie’s former husband, is now married again and lives in New Jersey.
Denise has remarried and long ago moved away from the house in Chesapeake she shared with Jeannie. She still lives in the Tidewater area, but seldom sees Carrie and Ben any more.
“I’m not sure how they feel about me,” she says, acknowledging that she still struggles with her own feelings of guilt about Jeannie’s death. “The thing is, if I hadn’t gone out that night, she might be alive today. The only way I can get by is by saying if Dawn and I had been there, maybe they would have gotten us too. Maybe we’d be dead.”
Dawn, who was three and a half years old when Jeannie was murdered, remembers nothing of Pernell although she recalls that she once had an “Aunt Jeannie” and that her mother once spent a lot of time trying to find her.
Still, Dawn is affected by Denise’s lingering fear. Her friends tease her because she is not permitted to go with them to a park two blocks from her home without her mother or adoptive father.
“She doesn’t understand,” Denise said. “I try to explain to Dawn that there is a very mean man who once did some very bad things that I will have to live with for the rest of my life. She doesn’t understand that I can’t bear to have her out of my sight. I hope some day she will understand.”
Thomas Stark III, who successfully prosecuted the murder case against Pernell, lost in his bid to be re-elected Commonwealth’s attorney for Amelia County. He now is in private practice in Amelia.
Sheriff Jimmy Weaver ran for another term and won by one of the largest popular vote margins in county history. Wes Terry remains his chief deputy. Weaver thinks that putting Pernell in prison will be one of the hallmarks of his career, and he isn’t interested in hearing any excuses from Pernell.
“I see him as a person who had it made,” he says. “He had God-given talent. He was more than just an athlete. He was handsome. He had a great personality. He was educated. He could have done wonders in corporate America. This guy was a very fortunate person, and he screwed it up.”
In the months following Pernell’s trial, Sam’s marriage began to fall apart. Carrie sent some of Jeannie’s jewelry to Sam and asked him to sell it. The proceeds were to go to a fund for victims of crimes in Virginia. Sam decided to keep one piece, however, the bear charm bracelet that had led to identifying Jeannie’s remains. Sam married again in 1995 and has since become the father of a baby daughter. Sam still mourns for his sister, but he mourns as much for his parents.
“Not only did I lose a sister whom I loved very much,” he said, “I also lost a mother and father. They will never again be the mother and father I used to know. That’s what Pernell Jefferson took from me.”
Carrie retired in 1991, Ben at the end of 1995. They never plan to leave Virginia Beach.
“This is where Jeannie is,” Carrie says. “I will never leave my Jeannie.”
She still drives to Rosewood Memorial Park every Tuesday to clip the grass and polish the bronze plaque that marks Jeannie’s grave.
Never very talkative even in good times, Ben has become even more quiet and withdrawn. But he makes no secret of his hatred for Pernell.
“For as long as I live, the only safe place for Pernell Jefferson is in prison,” he says. “If he ever gets out, I’ll be an old man. I won’t have a thing to lose. If I had my way, he’d already be dead.”
Just before Jeannie’s body was discovered, Carrie had become a member of a group called Families and Friends Against Crime Today, and after Pernell’s trial, she joined Justice for Victims of Crimes, a group pushing, among other things, for anti-stalking laws in Virginia. Although Carrie always had trouble speaking in public, she appeared before a legislative committee in Richmond and held the legislators spellbound while she spoke for ten minutes from her heart.
“You can’t do anything for me,” she told them. “There’s no way you can keep me from hurting. I have already lived your worst nightmare.”
In March of 1992, Governor Thornton Wilder signed into law Virginia’s first anti-stalking legislation.
Later, Carrie joined a third group, Virginians United Against Crime, and on June 15, 1994, she spoke at a town meeting called by Virginia’s new governor, George Allen, to consider new laws that would deny parole to violent criminals. The legislature later eliminated the possibility of parole for those convicted of capital murder, but the law does not apply to Pernell, who was convicted before its passage.
Carrie remains active in all three organizations, is an officer in two of them, and is now pushing for even stronger anti-stalking laws. Her car and Ben’s pickup truck both bear bumper stickers that read: Someone I Love Was Murdered.
“They say when you lose a loved one by natural causes, it takes about a year of mourning,” Carrie says. “When you lose a child, it takes longer. If you lose a child by violence, they say it takes about five years. But I’ll never get over this.
“Not long ago, someone asked me how I feel about Pernell’s mother. Pernell’s mother can go to a prison and she can reach through the bars and touch her son. I can put flowers on a grave.”
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