Deadly Goals

by Wilt Browning

  “Pernell Jefferson,” she said, glowering at Pernell.

  “To the best of your knowledge,” Stark continued, “had she received any recent threats of bodily harm from anyone?”

  “Well, she had received bodily harm from him.”

  Benjamin rose to object that this was hearsay, but won only a partial concession. The judge agreed to strike Denise’s last answer, but asked her a question himself. “You did see some evidence of physical abuse?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Was Pernell Jefferson a friend of Regina’s at one time?” Stark asked.

  “Yes, sir, at one time he was.”

  “Did they date?”

  “I don’t know what the interpretation of ‘dating’ would be,” she answered. “I would consider a date going out to dinner, to a movie, and I don’t ever remember her doing that, but they did—they were in each other’s company.”

  “Do you know how they happened to meet?”

  “Yes, sir. They met at a gym in Virginia Beach. He was recommended to train her. He was a bodybuilder and he had the body to back it up and he was training her.”

  “And commencing some time in the spring of 1988, they saw each other from time to time?”

  “They saw each other every day at the gym,” she said.

  “Did there come a time when Regina did not care to see Pernell any more?”

  “Yes, there was.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because, well, we talked about it.”

  Benjamin raised a hearsay objection and this time it was sustained. Stark continued.

  “Can you describe the relationship between Pernell and Regina insofar as being peaceful, serene, turbulent, or how you might describe it?”

  “Throughout the most part of the summer, she seemed like they were very peaceful…liked each other’s company. And then towards the fall it started getting rocky. She wanted to pretty much go her own way. She told him that she would remain friends with him, that they could talk on the phone, just that he needed to get on with his life and her the same.”

  “Were there any specific instances of violence between the two of them?”

  “Well, there was a time when he broke in my house in March…”

  Benjamin rose quickly to object, but Warren ruled in the prosecution’s favor.

  Stark then led Denise to Jeannie’s first abduction and her discovery of the tape recording of it on her answering machine. The moment Benjamin had hoped to avoid—the playing of the tape—had arrived. The tape had been enhanced for clarity by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the judge, jury, attorneys, Denise and Pernell were given earphones to listen to it. Before the tape began, Ben, Carrie and Sam rose and quietly left the courtroom.

  Denise forced herself to continue staring at Pernell as the tape went on for more than seven minutes. The tape could be heard throughout the courtroom, and Pernell sat stone-faced as his voice resonated through it.

  “You’re going with me! Get in the car! Let’s go. Let’s go!”

  “You’ve already ruined my life,” the voice of Jeannie pleaded. “What else do you want? Leave me alone, Pernell. I’m not talking to you any more.

  “Let go of me!” she screamed repeatedly on the tape.

  “Do you want to die right here?” the man’s voice asked.

  As she listened, Denise dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.

  After the earphones had been removed, Benjamin rose once again in objection. This time the ruling was deferred.

  Denise and Pernell still sat glaring at each other.

  “Do you recognize the voices on that tape?” Stark asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Denise answered.

  “And they are?”

  “Jeannie’s and Pernell’s.” She still held Pernell’s gaze.

  “Do you know whether or not Regina was afraid of Pernell Jefferson?”

  “Yes, she was.”

  Benjamin objected. “Judge, I mean, it’s obviously hearsay and it puts me at a disadvantage.”

  “Not necessarily,” Stark countered, then turned to Denise before the judge had a chance to rule and said, “How did she show it?”

  “She had someone walk her from work to her car. She parked in a parking garage. From there she would go to her mother’s or my mother’s until I got home, until I called one of them and told her I was home. I would wait on the porch with the porch light on until she got in the house.”

  Judge Warren ruled on Benjamin’s objection only with his silence.

  “Did you receive an anonymous phone call from anyone after her disappearance?”

  “Yes,” Denise said, and described the telephone call in which a stranger told her that Jeannie was dead. She went on to tell how she had arranged for a subsequent phone conversation between the anonymous caller and a Chesapeake police detective before her testimony came to an end.

  The prosecution now called Charles Zimmer. A tall young man who weighed more than 250 pounds, Zimmer had dark, curly hair and pale blue eyes.

  When Stark asked his address, he replied, “I’m in the Chesterfield jail right now.”

  “And why are you in Chesterfield jail?”

  “For grand larceny.”

  “Have you been convicted of more than one felony?”

  “No.”

  “And have you been convicted of any misdemeanors involving lying, cheating, or stealing?”

  “Yes. Stealing a can of tobacco one time.”

  “And how old were you then?”

  “Eighteen…nineteen…”

  Stark got him to admit that he had participated in a number of burglaries early in 1989 for which he had not been arrested, before questioning him about the burglarly that had led to his arrest: a break-in at a home in Chesterfield County in which cash, jewelry and guns, including four handguns, had been stolen.

  “Do you know what became of the handguns that were taken in the larceny?” Stark asked.

  Zimmer replied that he had been told that the guns were given to Pernell Jefferson.

  Stark now went to the heart of his reason for bringing this convicted felon to the stand.

  “On the fifth of May of 1989, did you go to Tidewater with Mike Savin and Wayne Scott and Pernell Jefferson?”

  “Yes.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “To make some money, break and enter.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “To break and enter a house and make some money,” Zimmer repeated.

  “Did you know whose house it was?”

  “No, not specifically.”

  “Did you know anything about the person or person’s home you were going to break into?”

  “Yeah,” Zimmer answered. “It was supposed to be a drug dealer that we were going to.”

  “Was this trip planned in advance?”

  “Yeah. I knew about it maybe a week, three days to a week before.”

  “And whose plan was it? Whose idea was it?”

  “Well, Pernell’s, I believe. He was the one who approached Mike Savin and myself about it.”

  “Before leaving Richmond, did you make any stops?” Stark asked.

  “Yeah, we stopped at Safeway on Jahnke Road…to pick up some gloves.” Zimmer described them as yellow rubber dishwashing gloves.

  “And who did that?”

  “Myself and Wayne went inside to buy them. We all stopped.”

  “And with your money or whose money?”

  “Pernell’s,” he said.

  Zimmer went on to describe the trip to Chesapeake. When they arrived, he said, Pernell pointed out the house they were to break into and they drove to a nearby shopping center to call the house to find out if anyone was home.

  “Who made the phone call?” Stark asked.

  “I did.”

  “And who gave you the number?”

  “Pernell.”

  “And did anyone answer the phone?”

  “No.”

  Zimmer said that the
four men then drove back to the neighborhood, this time parking about a block away, and made their way to the house on foot. As they drew near, he said, he, Pernell and Wayne Scott waited while Savin went on to the house to make a final check to determine if anyone was home.

  “And then what happened?”

  “Well, me and Mike went up to the door and Pernell and Wayne stayed on the side of the house looking around the corner, and we banged on the door and nobody answered, so Mike kicked the door in.”

  “And did that in effect splinter the door and knock it loose from its moorings?”

  “Yeah, knocked it in.”

  “And did you go inside?”

  Zimmer said that both he and Savin were about to enter the house, but Pernell and Scott burst past them and rushed inside.

  “At that point,” Stark asked, “did you see any guns?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who had guns?”

  “Pernell and Wayne.”

  The gun Pernell had looked like one of those he and Savin had stolen in the earlier burglary, he said, a .32 revolver.

  “Had you all ever had a thirty-eight caliber among your inventory?” Stark asked.

  “No.”

  “If I understand you correctly,” Stark said, “Scott and Jefferson with guns at the ready go in ahead of you and Mike Savin. Was anyone in the house?”

  “Yes.”

  “When did you discover that?”

  “As soon as the door was kicked out.”

  “And what happened?”

  “A girl walked around the corner and she yelled something.”

  “Do you recall what she said?”

  “Yeah,” Zimmer answered, “like, ‘Oh my God!’ Then, ‘What are you doing?’”

  “She was directing her remarks to you?”

  “Towards me.”

  “And to Savin?”

  “And Mike. Yeah.”

  “When Scott and Pernell came in, did she have anything else to say?”

  “Yeah, she looked at him…at Pernell and said, ‘What are you doing here?’ She yelled it out. She said, ‘Oh, my God, what are you doing here?’”

  “And did Pernell answer her?”

  “I believe he said, ‘Shut up.’ He said something gruff,” Zimmer continued, “I couldn’t make out what it was.”

  “What did Pernell do at that time?” Stark asked.

  “He grabbed her and threw her on the floor and put his knee on her.”

  “Threw her down on the floor?” Stark continued.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And did he have the pistol in his hand all this time?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “Wayne went in the back rooms and checked to see if anybody else was there. And then Pernell turned around and looked at me and Mike and said, ‘Y’all can go.’ And we took off.”

  The man whose home had been burglarized by Zimmer and Savin, James deKrafft, came to the stand next to describe the four handguns that had been stolen: a .22 Reuger, a .32 Smith & Wesson with a two-inch blue-steel barrel, and a .32 chrome-plated Smith & Wesson, all revolvers. As he had waited to be called, deKrafft had told Sheriff Weaver that the blue-steel .32, the gun believed to have been used to kill Jeannie, a gun authorities had never found, had been purchased at a hardware store in Amelia.

  “It was one of the unexpected ironies of the whole thing,” Weaver later recalled. “Jeannie wasn’t from here. Pernell wasn’t from here. But the gun was.”

  When his name was called at mid-afternoon, Wayne Scott entered the courtroom. He had huge, rounded shoulders, close-cropped hair, and he was dressed in prison clothes. He seemed nervous. Pernell kept a close eye on him, but Scott hardly glanced at him.

  “You are presently pulling time for what offense, Mr. Scott?” Stark asked.

  “For breaking and entering to abduct.”

  “And where did that offense occur?”

  “In Chesapeake, Virginia, sir.”

  “Is that the breaking and entering of Regina Butkowski’s home and her abduction?” Stark asked. “Is that the offense?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Let me direct your attention, please, to May fifth, 1989, the day on which you and Mister Jefferson and Mr. Savin and Mr. Zimmer took a trip to Tidewater. Are you with me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What was the purpose of going to Tidewater?”

  “The purpose of going to Tidewater was to get one Butkowski to leave Pernell alone,” Scott said. “He claims she was causing him financial problems and legal problems.”

  “And who decided that you needed more than just the two of you to go along?”

  “Pernell.”

  “All right. And were there any firearms involved in this trip, in this caper?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Who had what?”

  “Pernell had a thirty-two and I had a twenty-five.”

  “Where did you get the twenty-five from?”

  “I got the twenty-five from my brother, sir.”

  “Pernell, he had a what?”

  “A thirty-two, sir.”

  “Can you describe its appearance?”

  “Yes, sir. A six-inch barrel, tumbler, kind of darkish color.”

  “Darkish color?”

  “Yes, brownish.”

  “Brownish color. Not chrome?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Where did he get the gun from?”

  “He got the gun from Mike and Chuck,” he said, referring to Savin and Zimmer.

  “Okay. When did he get the gun? When did Pernell get the gun from Mike and Chuck?”

  “That night.”

  “The very night you left?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay. Who gave it to him?”

  “Mike.”

  “Have you testified concerning this matter before?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Preliminary hearing?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And on the preliminary hearing, what did you have to say about the gun?”

  “I said it was a thirty-eight. You corrected me at the end and said it was a thirty-two.”

  “Well, do you know which it was?”

  “I’m no expert, sir,” Scott responded. “I can answer that truthfully.”

  “You’ve got to be wrong, I would think, one time or the other.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Was it a thirty-two or was it a thirty-eight?”

  “Thirty-eight—two, sir,” Scott stammered.

  “A thirty-eight two?”

  Scott laughed uneasily. “No, a thirty-two, sir.”

  “All right,” Stark continued. “On preliminary hearing, you were asked about seeing some cartridges and being able to identify those cartridges…”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How did you identify them?”

  “I held them in my hand and looked at them. I did not read the back of them.”

  “You held them in your hand and you looked at them?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you gauged it by size and shape?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Not by writing?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Okay, I believe you told Mr. Benjamin in response to his question that you read the back of the shells. Am I correct or not?”

  “I looked at the back of the shells.”

  “But you didn’t read the number?”

  “No, sir.”

  Stark moved on to the trip to Chesapeake, and Scott testified that the four men stopped en route only for beer and gas.

  “Did you buy any gloves?”

  “No, sir. Gloves were already in the car. I had a pair and Pernell had his pair.”

  Once the four reached Chesapeake and found the house, he said, he saw a car parked in the driveway.

  “Saw what car?” Stark asked.

  “The Three-hundred ZX.”

  “Can you describe it for m
e generally?”

  “Sun roof, two-door sports car, kind of grayish. It looked like it was kind of grayish.”

  “Was it a dark color?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “OK. Do you remember anything about its license plate?”

  “TIGRE Z.”

  Under further questioning, Scott described the events leading up to Jeannie’s abduction.

  “Mike and Chuck went up to the house, kicked the door in,” he said. “Pernell told me to come along with him. I was behind Pernell. We entered the house. I went and checked the other rooms, came back, told him it was clear. At that time, Mike and Chuck left.”

  “Now, did you see anybody in the house?”

  “A young lady,” Scott said. “She would have been about five-six, about a hundred and thirty-five pounds, Caucasian, reddish hair.”

  “Reddish hair, all right. How was she taking all of this?”

  “She asked Pernell what he was doing here, what did he want.”

  “Did she seem very calm, cool and collected?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Was she excited and upset?”

  “Frightened is more the word,” Scott said.

  “All right. And do you recall anything that she had to say?”

  “Only, ‘What are you doing here?’ And ‘What do you want?’”

  “And she directed those remarks to who?”

  “Pernell.”

  “She appeared to know him?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did Pernell say anything to her?”

  “Get dressed.”

  “Pernell—did he have his pistol in his hand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You both came in with your pistols at the ready?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Scott testified that when Pernell told Zimmer and Savin they could leave, they quickly complied.

  “That just left the three of you there?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Then Pernell and the young lady left together. Got in the Three-hundred ZX.”

  “Did she go with him willingly and cheerfully?”

  “Pernell had her by the arm pulling her out the door.”

  “And how did they leave?”

  “In the Three-hundred ZX. Pernell was driving.”

  “And what did you do.”

  “I left behind him and went and stayed at some friends’ house that night.”

  Scott said that he next saw Pernell the following morning as he arrived for work at a business called Prime Time, next door to the rental store where Pernell worked.