He was crying now, and finding it hard to go on. “They build up like pressure in a cook pot,” he said, “and they overflow, as right now.”
He turned away from Judge Watts to look back at the closely packed rows where his mother, his sister, his grandmother, his uncle, his aunts, and so many of the friends he’d had in high school—and even the parents of many of those friends—sat watching him. A number of them were crying, too.
“I just want you to know that I love all of you,” Chris said to them, crying so hard he had to pause. “And I thank you all for being here and supporting me. I honestly feel I do not deserve this support. But the Lord has given me strength to stand here today and do what I know is right. And I ask that he give you all the strength and support in the coming years, for I will not be here to do that myself.”
Then, trying to compose himself, he turned back to face the judge.
“I can’t hold anything against James Upchurch or Neal Henderson for what they did. The Lord asked me to forgive them, and I have. Just as He has asked me to forgive myself, which I have not quite been able to do just yet.
“That’s all that I have to say. Thank you.”
Judge Watts called for a ten-minute recess.
* * *
When court resumed, the judge spoke. As with everyone else involved, elements of this case had touched him in ways he’d not forget. Having spent more than twenty years in the criminal justice system, Thomas Watts was no stranger to horror, sadness, and waste. Yet, he, too, seemed shaken by exposure here to something more—to something mysterious and malignant.
He began, however, by talking about Bonnie. “It was indeed a difficult situation counsel found themselves in, in this case. But if there’s anybody in this courtroom that I personally have the deepest of sympathy for, it is Bonnie Von Stein, a lady who has lost her husband. It was just very obvious from her testimony, from all that she has ever said, that he was the light of her life. And she’s a lady who is now about to lose her son, at least in a physical sense of separation.”
Then he spoke directly to her. “I hope, Mrs. Von Stein, based upon what Dr. Royal has done, that you may in fact regain a son who had been lost previously. The difficulties and conflicts that Mr. Osteen and Mr. Vosburgh encountered pale in comparison with the things that you’ve been through. And my heart goes out to you, ma’am. I think this matter shouldn’t conclude without me saying that.”
Judge Watts turned his attention back to Chris. “Now, having dealt with some heinous crimes, some terribly, terribly tragic things, I honestly and sincerely would still have to say that this case is, as you put it, Mr. Osteen, bizarre and just atrocious in its consequences for all concerned.
“But particularly for Lieth Von Stein, who, without benefit of jury, without benefit of judge, without benefit of due process of law, had the ultimate punishment imposed upon him savagely and brutally, as the consummation of a plan that originated in the mind of his stepson, whom he loved and cared for.
“You gentlemen,” he said to Osteen and Vosburgh, “appeared before me with a motion in Greenville, back in December. And while you were getting organized and putting your things out on the table, there was a Bible lying open on that judge’s bench in Pitt County. I had not placed it there. I don’t know who did.
“But as you gentlemen were getting ready to speak, I glanced down and the book was open to Proverbs 28:24. I made a note of it at that time and I’ve carried it with me ever since.
“ ‘Who so robbeth his father or his mother and sayeth, it is not transgression, the same is the company of a destroyer.’ That’s old law, but that’s still good law.
“And when Upchurch was apprehended, he had a backpack that had many things in it that I did not admit into evidence. But among those books he was carrying with him was the collected works of William Shakespeare. King Lear, act one, scene four: ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.’ How sharper than a serpent’s tooth.”
Now he looked directly at Chris.
“I believe you are now remorseful, Mr. Pritchard. I don’t doubt your remorse in the slightest. I believe, if you had it to do over again, if you could go back and undo those whom you have wronged, you would do so. But you can’t. And you must pay the consequences of those events which you put into motion.
“And the genesis, the genesis was Christopher Pritchard. The midwife may have been Dungeons and Dragons and drugs—I would not argue with that—but the genesis was Christopher Pritchard.
“ ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth.’ ”
Then Thomas Watts imposed the maximum sentence: life plus twenty years. It would be, probably, more than twenty years before Chris even became eligible for parole.
* * *
Chris was permitted to walk to the front of the spectator area and give farewell hugs to family and friends. Then Osteen asked the judge if Chris could have just a moment alone with his mother and sister before being taken away.
Chris, Bonnie, and Bill Osteen were led to a small room adjacent to the judge’s chambers for a private farewell. Angela did not accompany them. “I don’t understand why,” Osteen said later, “because the purpose was to give them a chance to at least say good-bye.”
But even Bonnie stayed only briefly. She said she’d be in touch once she was told where he’d been sent. A time might come for a deeper and more personal exchange between mother and son, but in Bonnie’s mind, it was not now.
She knew that Neal Henderson was about to be sentenced, and after having attended every minute of the legal proceedings thus far, she did not want to risk missing that moment.
And so, as she put it some months later, “I exited the room,” leaving Chris in the company of only the lawyer who had so disliked him from the start.
As the door closed behind her, Bill Osteen found himself, for the first time, feeling something approaching sympathy and even affection for Chris.
“We knew this was coming,” he said. “We knew, essentially, what the judge was going to do. But the best thing that happened here today was that I perceived something genuine coming from you. You appeared to me to be saying, ‘I love my family and I know what I’ve done is wrong.’ I think that’s a big first step for you, Chris. And if you stay on that road, I think you’re going to make it.”
Chris looked Osteen straight in the eye. He said, “Yes, sir. It was too long in coming. I really have hurt them. But I’m going to try to make it up any way I can.”
* * *
Back in court, Judge Watts termed Henderson a “bright star,” praised his SAT scores, and complimented him for his honesty and cooperation, without which the crime might never have been solved. He then sentenced Henderson to a term that, with recommendation for “study release,” might mean he’d be out of prison in less than five years.
To Bonnie—who still firmly believed that Henderson was the man who’d tried to kill her—this sentence seemed unconscionably lenient. It so rattled her that the moment court recessed she headed straight for the prosecutors’ table and had sharp words with the first person she found, who happened to be the young assistant district attorney Keith Mason.
A tall, kind, thoughtful man, he came from a Beaufort County farm family of which it could be noted, and often was, that “there are no better people than the Masons.” He spoke with a country accent much thicker than Bonnie’s, despite his having graduated from both college and law school at Chapel Hill, and he shared the same small-town values that she had grown up with in Welcome.
“This means I’ll have to sleep with a gun in my hand for the rest of my life,” Bonnie said.
When Mason did not respond, she added, “I hope one day you’ll tell me what really happened.”
“Excuse me?”
“I hope one day you’ll tell me what really happened.”
Keith Mason was slow to
anger, especially toward a woman who’d been through as much as Bonnie, but it had been a long day, a long week, a long month, a long year.
“Bonnie,” he said, “why don’t you just say what’s on your mind.”
“Are you aware of Dr. Hudson’s opinion about two assailants? One person could not have used a bat and a knife at the same time.”
“Yes, I am aware of Dr. Hudson’s opinion.”
“Well, what do you think of it?”
“Opinions are funny things. Everybody’s got one, especially when it doesn’t have to be part of their testimony. I assure you, we are not covering up for Neal, or anybody else.”
Then, his temper rising, he added, “Bonnie, I don’t know who was in your bedroom other than Upchurch. I don’t know because I wasn’t there. But whether you know it or not, there are an awful lot of people who have the opinion that you were the one who killed your husband. I’m not one of them, because there’s no good, hard evidence. You may have killed him, but there’s not any evidence. And I can assure you that we have gone where the evidence has taken us, and not where we thought we ought to be.”
And so it ended for Bonnie as it had begun: with her as victim, as suspect, and as a mother whose trust in her son had been sadly misplaced.
She walked out of the courthouse and into a small park across the street where, seated on a bench, in bright sunlight, the air calm and surprisingly warm for January, she made her first and only public comment on the case.
Reading from a statement she and Wade Smith had prepared in advance, she said:
“The events of the past eighteen months have been tragic for me and my family. We have endured sorrows beyond any I have known before. I loved my husband, Lieth, and loved our quiet life together. On the night he died, I almost died from wounds I suffered during the assault. I do not understand why I survived.
“Now my son, Chris, and two of his companions have been sentenced for participating in this tragedy. I love Chris, as I am sure Neal’s and James’s parents love them. I hope and pray that these three young men can someday find peace within themselves.
“We now have the difficult task of picking up our lives and trying to move forward. With the continuing support of our family and friends, we will succeed.”
And then, after checking out of the Goodnite Inn, she drove home alone to the small, empty house in Winston-Salem.
When she got there, she walked straight through the house and out the back door to the shed where her cats were waiting. She opened the door and stepped inside and sat on the floor of the shed, leaning against a wall, her eyes closed.
“And I sat there for an hour petting them,” she said. “Just letting those poor, sweet, innocent, trusting creatures climb and purr and rub all over me.”
Part Five
Forever A Stranger
February 1990–July 1991
Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father’s heart? Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?
—Thomas Wolfe
Look Homeward, Angel!
41
It was only three weeks later that I met Bonnie, in the same small, windowless conference room at Tharrington, Smith and Hargrove where, in early January, Mitchell Norton had said he still could make a case against her for the murder of her husband.
The next day, she drove me to Little Washington and we walked together through the Lawson Road house.
She said there would be no secrets, no closed doors. She would ask everyone with whom she’d ever had contact in relation to this case to answer any questions I might have.
“Very firmly and very forcefully,” Jean Spaulding recalls, “she said, ‘This book is not for me. The truth is to be told in this book. I want you to tell him the truth, and however it turns out is how it turns out.’ ”
Through the late winter and into the spring and summer of 1990, I spent many hours in the dimly lit living room of Bonnie’s small house in Winston-Salem, talking to her about dark and cheerless things.
Staying at a nearby motel, I’d arrive, usually, at nine A.M., and we’d talk all day. She made me iced tea, fed me sandwiches for lunch, answered every question I asked, and volunteered information on subjects I would not have known to ask about if she had not introduced them.
Usually, after such sessions, we’d go out for dinner at one of the many nearby restaurants and make an effort to find other things to talk about. But there wasn’t much. Bonnie was trapped, alone, inside a very dark and private cave from which there was little hope for escape, and there was no use pretending she wasn’t.
We were in close physical proximity, but emotionally she was always distant. She talked about Chris and Angela and about the frightful things that had happened to her with a flatness and detachment that was bothersome at first, until I realized that in order for her to speak, or to function at all, she had to keep the part of herself that dealt with the outside world (including me) isolated from her deeper feelings.
On rare occasions, usually late into our long afternoons—and only when the subject would be her father or Lieth—there would be a sudden catch in her voice, a halting, what might have been a misting of her eyes, a quick breath, a look away.
She acknowledged that she might be, herself, “at the extreme other end of the spectrum, perhaps too much so,” but said, “I take a dim view of people who get overly emotional. I don’t ignore difficult situations, but they’re not what I dwell on. Why should I burden others with my feelings?”
Over the next year, I would learn that the refusal to display emotion was not merely a protective mechanism Bonnie had adopted to survive in the aftermath of her tragedies; it was, perhaps, the Bates family’s dominant trait. From childhood, it had been especially strong in Bonnie.
She had been born with her tear ducts sealed. “We might as well not even have bothered to get them opened,” her mother once told me, “because Bonnie was a child who just didn’t cry. And if she was sick, just leave her alone, don’t bother her. She didn’t want to be comforted.” Bonnie’s younger sister, Ramona, recalled, “Even when she was a little girl, you never knew what she was thinking.”
Bonnie feared only one thing: going upstairs by herself, to the bedroom she shared with her sisters. Not that she ever spoke of this—even as a child, Bonnie did not admit to weakness. However, when her mother would give her clean, folded clothes and tell her to take them to her room, they’d be found hidden in the kitchen or den instead. Only years later did Bonnie confess that she’d hidden them, changing into them when no one was watching, because of her fear.
It seemed a peculiar phobia. Forty years later, however, it was in her upstairs bedroom that Bonnie experienced the most terrible moment of her life.
Whatever emotional openness she had had vanished when Steve Pritchard abandoned her. “He shut down forever a part of Bonnie that I miss,” Ramona said.
“We didn’t want her to marry Steve,” her mother told me. “George and I talked to her until we were blue in the face. But the more we talked, the more determined she became.”
Even before he walked out on her, he caused her pain. While she was pregnant with Chris—just how pregnant no one seems sure—she had an epileptic seizure. Bonnie herself first told me this. She’d been rushed to a hospital. She’d had to undergo a spinal tap. She’d stayed in the hospital for a week, receiving then and for the rest of her pregnancy large doses of the antiseizure drug Dilantin. She wondered if this might have done some prenatal damage to Chris’s brain that could have made him less responsible for his actions twenty years later.
What she didn’t tell me was what seemed to have caused the seizure. “She had that seizure because of Steve,” her mother said. “She found out he was running around. I can even tell you who it was with. Right down there at the c
orner of Center Church Road and Route 150, there was a store, and the girl lived upstairs over the store. Steve was seeing her. One night, she even came down to the car to talk to him while she was wearing nothing more than her nightgown. Bonnie found out, and that’s when she had that seizure—right then. It was a terrible thing.
“Then, when Chris was born, Steve didn’t even have the money to get Bonnie out of the hospital. He had money for a motorcycle, but not to bring his wife and firstborn home. He had to come and ask me for the money.”
After the trauma of that first discovery of her young husband’s infidelity, Bonnie’s reaction to further evidence that her marriage was failing was total denial.
This continued even after Steve had left her, in summer of 1972, when Chris was just over three and a half years old and Angela was almost two. Her approach had been to seal the wound tight, so no one would see how much it hurt. At first, she told no one. Only weeks later did she confide to her father what had happened. And even then she would say only, “Steve is gone, and I don’t want anybody talking about him.”
By then, in Jean Spaulding’s view, Bonnie’s posture of denial when confronted by emotional upheaval had already had a profound effect on Chris, in whom the same reaction had already been cemented.
“Frequently,” Dr. Spaulding said, “with children who are about two years old, you will find them mirroring their parents’ behavior. That’s one of the ways they incorporate and learn new behaviors. It’s pretty age-specific. It’s usually gone by three.
“If a child is mirroring a parent’s denial, you wonder what happens to fantasy life. Here, in Chris’s case, we would assume—and we are speculating—that by the time he’s four or five, he’s got this thick layer of denial: ‘This is how you deal with the real world, or any trauma.’
“But underneath, he has to have some sort of fantasy life. And you wonder whether that has been stifled by the denial only to come out later in Dungeons and Dragons. And—this is also speculation—if a child’s fantasy life has been dampened by this layer, a brick wall, essentially, of denial, and this fantasy life is down there trying to have some expression, it would be like an abscess. It would just grow and grow and grow. And once it was allowed expression, there would probably be an absolute outpouring.”
Cruel Doubt Page 47