Deadly Goals Read online

  Deadly Goals

  Wilt Browning

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 1996 by Wilt Browning

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  For more information, email [email protected]

  First Diversion Books edition July 2017

  ISBN: 978-1-63576-227-3

  Dedicated to all those who loved Jeannie Butkowski, none more than Carrie and Ben Prickett, her mother and father.

  Acknowledgments

  “This is going to be difficult,” Carrie Prickett had said that day three weeks before Christmas, 1993, the fifth Christmas since Jeannie Butkowski, her daughter, had died. “It’s going to be difficult because Jeannie was Christmas. But I’ll try.”

  And for two days, Carrie and Ben Prickett opened their home and their hearts and their emotions to me, a stranger. Without their memories and their pain, this book would have been incomplete because it was essential that we understand that Jeannie Butkowski lived and loved and laughed.

  And died.

  With the certainty that I could not have been as gracious as they, I thank the Pricketts most of all.

  Amelia County Sheriff Jimmy Weaver, a big man with a big smile, a firm handshake and a coffee pot always kept hot on the burner, knew before I did that the story of the death of Jeannie Butkowski would become a book. And I thank him for his encouragement and for his help in gathering essential information. And I thank, too, Chief Deputy Sheriff Wes Terry, the lead investigative officer on the case, for his assistance and for suggesting to me late in my own research into this project that there were other stones to be turned, other sources to be mined. This story is more complete because of him.

  For encouraging me to take a close look at the Pernell Jefferson story when to discourage me would have been personally less painful, Dr. Herb Appenzeller, retired athletic director at Guilford College, will always have my deepest appreciation. But my debts of gratitude to this dear friend were adding up long before I began this project. For almost as long as I have known this special Quaker, he has encouraged me in my daily writings for the News & Record of Greensboro and has urged me on in my avocation as an author.

  Like the Pricketts, Susan Demos* knew virtually nothing of me when her mother called to tell her I was nosing around in a past that still is a painful memory for Susan. Yet her candor was astonishing and her contributions to my understanding of what transpired in her life and that of Pernell Jefferson, once someone she loved, were crucial to this effort. I wish her happiness as she continues her career in sports administration.

  The insights and memories of so many others were essential, not the least of which were Sam Prickett, Jeannie’s brother, and the former Denise Bratten, who had shared a Chesapeake, Virginia, address with Jeannie through those final, terrifying months of Jeannie’s life. I wish them peace.

  Pernell Jefferson. He was one of the most talented small college football players I ever saw, a man who once so impressed me that I called a friend with the Cleveland Browns to report upon his ability to return punts and kick-offs. And when I visited Pernell at the Augusta Correctional Center at Craigsville, Virginia, he did as he said in a letter that he would do—he greeted me as an old friend. We talked candidly and for long hours about good times and bad. From the beginning, he made it clear that this is a story he wanted to share, and in that way this is his story.

  I appreciate his trusting it to me.

  His former coach, Tommy Saunders, the first person to warn me that Pernell’s was a complicated story in which the truth can seem to wear many shades of gray, was immeasurably important to the gathering of much of the information contained in this book. It was, I am sure, an unhappy experience for Tommy and his family, because Pernell was and still is like a son, still is loved in the Saunders home. I pray that their children, Tommy Jr. and Bikki, will someday understand.

  Pernell’s brother, Willie Jefferson, helped me understand that the older brother he idolized was little different from young people we all have known. Except as an athlete. Willie remains deeply loyal to his sibling, and I appreciate that.

  Much of what appears in these pages will perhaps always be a riddle. Buddy Collins, a lawyer, neighbor and friend, helped keep me focused upon the elusive line between truth and fiction, and helped me in my effort to understand the legal aspects of this story. “The best lie,” he told me more than once, “is the one closest to the truth.” And in truth, I still seek the best lie.

  My visits to the prison where Pernell is an inmate were made easy by the facility’s assistant warden, Stewart Taylor, and his associate, Carolyn Byram, who coordinated those hours of interviews. They have my regards.

  My good friend, Gary McCann, served as my sounding board throughout this project, patiently listening as I talked about various twists and turns to this story as I was researching and writing the major project about Pernell that was carried in the News & Record on Sunday, March 20, 1994, and later as I launched the more detailed version that this book represents.

  And just when I thought I would never write another book, Jerry Bledsoe was there once again to encourage and coach me in this effort as he had done on other occasions for other books. Because stories such as this are his forte as one of America’s most successful true crime authors, his recommendations were invaluable.

  Finally, I owe my continuing love and appreciation to my wife, Joyce, who lost her nightiy Yahtzee partner during the months of this work in progress.

  To the Reader:

  All of the people who have a part in this story are real. These things happened and these are their memories and their recollections. This is not fiction. However, some of the names have been changed in the interest of privacy. They are marked with an asterisk upon first use.

  Introduction

  My name is Pernell Jefferson, Virginia State Prisoner No. 188173. On Aug. 6, 1991, I was sentenced to life in prison in the death of Jeannie Butkowski. By law, I must serve at least 25 years. With good time, that could be reduced by as much as five years. I will not be eligible for parole until sometime during the year 2011 at the earliest. In 2011, my son will be 29 years old. I will be 48. I will probably be a grandfather. I will have nephews, nieces and cousins I have never seen.

  By the time I win my freedom, I no longer will know how to cope with the future space-age technology as far as the personal skills I developed in the 20th century. Twenty-five years is so long that, logically speaking, some of the people hurt most by my imprisonment probably won’t still be alive to help me celebrate my freedom.

  I once had another, shorter number—22. I was a football player. A very good football player. No more. Still in the early years of my imprisonment, I am beyond those seasons even if freedom came tomorrow. But that no longer is important.

  I am a college graduate. None of the people with whom I now share my confinement is impressed. Degrees mean little here.

  What you are about to read is an account of how I came to be in this place, looking down the years at some distant, uncertain first moment of freedom that may not come until I am a very old man, or that may come only with death itself.

  The book you are about to read will no doubt show you two different characters of myself. A bright and a dark side. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I am not proud of that. I have been advised by other inmates of the Virginia prison system to keep all this to myself. And maybe that would be the wise route. But the truth as I see it is that I once was a decent person, and hope to be again. What the last
ten years—my dark decade—have taught me is that bad things can happen to decent people and that, and only that, is the reason I have cooperated and participated in the development of Deadly Goals.

  Some things you will read will be disturbing and horrifying. My role in the research for this book has not been to glorify or make excuses for my attitude but to offer an understanding of what I was going through. Violence, sleepless nights, obsessiveness, paranoia, euphoria, power struggles, circulation problems, and tragically hasty personal decisions.

  For eight years, a time in which even the medical profession did not fully understand the monster, I was a victim of the mental conditions and serious physical problems caused by steroid use. Sometimes called “steroid rage,” this condition, which physicians first began to understand as a result of studies begun during the ’80’s, is now known as “steroid psychosis,” a mental disorder.

  This disorder led me to many criminal acts which were never a part of my adolescent and teenage years. Many of the acts were perpetrated upon people who cared for me and loved me. And through the pain and hurt I caused them, they still wanted to protect me because they had seen the good—the warmth and the caring—in me.

  The hurt and pain that I caused, I now understand, was horrendous and became the driving force, I am told, in the victim’s mother’s successful lobbying effort with the Virginia General Assembly to pass anti-stalking laws. I must tell you that only recently have I understood that stalking was seen as part of the terror people knew at my hands, and if these new laws can prevent even one tragedy, an important move toward more sanity will have been taken.

  I now am convinced that had I not been using steroids, my personality would not have been that of obsessiveness and paranoia in my relationships with former girlfriends. My problems did not only start with my female friends but with guys in bars and night clubs. But the great tragedies were, in most cases, to the women who cared about me.

  I have opened up my personal life to show my problems associated with anabolic steroids. A friend once told me, “one man with courage makes a majority.” And it is in that spirit that I have found the strength to speak from my world behind bars and beyond the fences stacked with razor-sharp barriers. My hope is that this book will serve as a warning.

  No matter what anyone says, there is no such thing as a “good” drug other than those used with care by licensed physicians. Please understand what I’m saying, because I’m living proof of how drugs can destroy you and those you love. Only after four years of studying and associating myself with experts from Harvard University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Penn State University have I come to understand what was going on in my mind and body. Until recently, I never knew the extent of the pain I caused. I couldn’t appreciate or understand what I was doing and therefore had no way of comprehending the damage I was causing. As I write to you today, I’m aware—and I am eager—for young people to understand the nature of the monster anabolic steroids became in my life.

  If after you read this you still are contemplating using the “roid” then please contact me personally: Pernell Jefferson, P.O. Box 1000, Craigsville, Va., 24430-1000. We need to talk.

  Pernell Jefferson

  Inmate No. 188173

  Department of Corrections

  Commonwealth of Virginia

  1.

  The Homecoming

  THE WINTER DAY HAD TURNED DARK and Carrie Prickett waited for the telephone to ring, wondering what she would say, how she would feel.

  Neither Carrie nor Ben, her husband of 36 years, spoke. So much already had been said that no words came now. Only the steady ticking of an antique mantle clock, Ben’s prized possession, intruded upon the silence.

  They waited.

  Then the phone was ringing. Though the call had been expected, the ragged ringing jarred the Pricketts from their thoughts the way an alarm clock does when morning comes too soon.

  “Hello,” Carrie said softly.

  She listened to the voice on the other end of the line, then said only “Okay. Thank you,” before gently placing the phone back into its cradle.

  “They’re on their way,” she said.

  Ben, a retired Navy man, only nodded. And he and his wife were silent again, each lost once more in thought. This, they knew, would be one of the most bittersweet moments of their lives.

  Three miles away, two men dressed in the conservative dark suits of their profession began the short trip to the Pricketts’ neat, middle-class home in Virginia Beach. Quickly, they became part of the last of the Wednesday afternoon rush-hour traffic speeding along Providence Road. The traffic had lightened by the time they turned left onto Timberlake Road and into a neighborhood of unpretentious homes set among tall hardwoods and pines. Both men searched for the sign marking Steeplechase Drive.

  “There it is,” one said.

  Carrie and Ben had turned on the front porch light just as they had done hundreds of times when any of their three children, Carrie, Sam and Jeannie, was going to be late. They stood alone at the window of their living room watching, waiting for the headlights.

  “The house on the corner of Dunhill, where the porch lights are on,” the man in the passenger seat said.

  “Right,” the driver acknowledged.

  He slowed and turned off his headlights, coming to a stop just beyond the Pricketts’ mailbox. Still, with nothing more than the lights of the neighborhood to push back the night, the Pricketts could see the coffin, polished and gleaming, in the back of the hearse.

  Carrie opened the front door and stepped onto the small front porch, followed by her husband. Neither spoke. Together they held open the screen door in a gesture important only to them. “Welcome home, Jeannie,” Carrie wanted to say, but her voice was stilled by her sobbing. A tear tumbled down Ben’s strong face and he drew his wife to him in a firm hug.

  For five minutes, which later seemed both an eternity and an instant, the couple stood together, never leaving the small porch, never walking across the 25 feet of dormant winter lawn that separated them from the funeral car and the coffin that contained the tiny, delicate bones of their beloved Jeannie.

  Jeannie, their baby, had been murdered. Murdered, soaked in gasoline, burned and left for months in a dry creek bed a long way from home. Now, the only thing the Pricketts had to take to the cemetery were those fragile bones that, scattered by the elements and by forest creatures, had been harvested from the dark Virginia soil.

  But at least they had the bones.

  For more than eight months they had searched for her, driving across lonely rural roads they had never seen before, sending out flyers bearing Jeannie’s picture, sleeping little, enduring much, all that time waiting for the knock on the door or the telephone call that would bring her back to them. The call finally had come with the new year.

  And now Jeannie was home one last time.

  The two funeral home employees sat motionless, staring straight ahead, saying not a word.

  A neighbor drew back a corner of the drapes a sliver and peeked out upon the scene, quickly letting the drapes fall back into place so as not to intrude.

  Even on the porch, Ben could hear the forlorn ticking of the old mantle clock in the distant den as he held his wife, unable to still her shaking.

  Out on the street, the driver reached for the ignition, and the engine of the big Cadillac stirred again. The headlights flashed on and the hearse drew slowly away from the curb. It turned right onto Dunhill as the Pricketts watched it go, holding each other, consumed by their grief.

  “I wanted her to come home, Ben,” Carrie said, looking into her husband’s face after the hearse had disappeared from sight. “I wanted to open the door to Jeannie just one more time.”

  “I know,” he said. “I know.”

  Carrie Prickett could remember little about the summer of 1989 that had come and gone since Jeannie had disappeared. Neither could she recall much of the autumn that had followed, nor of the Thanksgiving th
at had offered so little for which to be grateful. Gifts had been opened at Christmas, but this time there had been none of the joy of other holiday seasons when Jeannie had taped tiny golden bells to the top of the mirror in the foyer and had decorated the tree, pretending to be annoyed, as usual, at her mother’s procrastinations.

  Four times, Carrie and Jeannie had spoken on the phone, arranging their Saturday ritual that Friday all those months ago when May flowers had begun to bloom. They had planned to meet at noon at the hairdresser’s before going to lunch and beginning an afternoon shopping spree.

  That Friday had been payday, and most of Jeannie’s wages as a secretary in the office of the clerk of court in Norfolk would have to go to pay first-of-the-month bills, she told her mother. But she’d keep $30 in cash, she added with a laugh, just in case she needed it during their visit to the mall.

  “I said ‘Good-bye, Jeannie,’ and hung up the phone the fourth time we talked that day,” Carrie recalled years later. “I didn’t know I was saying good-bye forever.”

  But now relatives from Georgia began gathering at the L-shaped ranch home on Steeplechase Drive to console Jeannie’s parents, her sister Carrie, and Sam, her brother. Neighbors brought food. And on February 24, 1990, friends and family as well as the curious filled the Holloman-Brown Funeral Home chapel. Tony Butkowski, who once had been married to Jeannie and whose name she had kept, sat in silence with his mother and brothers and sisters. “Precious Memories” played softly on the organ as they gathered.

  For more than eight months, Carrie, Jeannie’s sister, had been the strong one. If she had wept for her sister, she had done so in privacy. Like her father, she had held out hope that Jeannie would be found alive. Now Carrie approached the coffin in the pretty little chapel. She stopped as though she did not want to draw near, then she moved close, running her fingers along the edge of the smooth closed lid. Finally, Carrie looked at the picture of her sister that had been placed among the flowers that formed the coffin’s funeral blanket. She began to sob, deep painful sobs, and she suddenly felt dizzy. Then she collapsed under the weight of the emotion she had repressed since Jeannie had disappeared nearly a year earlier. Relatives moved close, Sam and Ben and uncles from Georgia, seeking to bolster Jeannie’s sister against her grief.