.jpg)
The Murder Book: A True Crime Podcast
Each week, The Murder Book will present unsolved cases, missing persons, notorious crimes, controversial cases, and serial killers, exploring details of the crime scenes and the murderer's childhood. Some episodes are translated into Spanish as well. The podcast is produced and hosted by Kiara Coyle.
The Murder Book: A True Crime Podcast
The Von Stein Family Tragedy Part 2:The Strange Case of a Family Shattered
A predawn emergency call launches police into the heart of a wealthy Washington, North Carolina neighborhood where they discover an unimaginable scene. Leith Von Stein, a prominent local executive, lies murdered in his bed – his body bearing the marks of a savage attack with multiple head wounds and stab wounds to his chest and back. His wife Bonnie, critically injured but alive, whispers about a dark figure with a baseball bat and knife.
The crime scene immediately raises questions. Blood spatters the walls and ceiling of the master bedroom, yet the teenage daughter sleeping just down the hall claims to have heard nothing. A broken window suggests a break-in, but valuable items remain untouched throughout the house. The staged appearance of the scene and the peculiar calm of family members trigger the investigators' instincts that this is no ordinary home invasion.
When Detective Sergeant Melvin Hope interviews the Von Steins' daughter Angela, he's struck by her emotional detachment – a stark contrast to her brother Chris's seemingly performative grief when he arrives from college. "Chris was really trying to appear grief-stricken but he wasn't quite making it. It was almost like he was going for an Emmy," Hope later recalls. As medical teams work to save Bonnie's life, investigators begin piecing together the truth behind this brutal attack, suspecting that the most dangerous threats may have come from within the family's own walls.
Step into the shocking investigation of the Von Stein murder case, where appearances are deceiving and the peaceful facade of an affluent neighborhood masks a chilling reality. Follow detectives as they navigate bloody crime scenes, suspicious behavior, and family secrets to uncover who would want this prominent businessman dead – and why they would strike with such savage intensity.
Welcome to the Murder Book. I'm your host of the Von Stein Tragedy. Let's begin. While Bradford Hederton was calling frantically for the rescue squad, danny Edwards began trying the other upstairs doors, still uncertain whether an intruder was hiding behind one of them, he opened one door, shined his flashlight inside and saw a form lying in bed. He switched on the light to a scene of teenage disorder. Clothes were all over the place. The walls were covered with posters of rock stars, horses, a frosty mug of beer, a string of Budweiser, long necks, shoes, socks, a hair dryer lay on the floor by a rug that had horse country on it. A big square fan hummed, blowing directly on a young woman with short, light brown hair and freckles, sleeping soundly in a t-shirt. And Edwards start calling ma'am. Ma'am, the young woman steered and set up abruptly, frightening, and she asked what is it? Edwards recognized her, although he didn't remember her name before he had joined the police department. He had been security chief at the mall and he remembers seeing her many times with other teenagers who regularly gather there, and he said well, something has happened. You need to get up and get dressed. He stepped out of the room to leave her alone and began checking the other doors a closet, a bathroom, another bedroom, this one with posters of cars on the walls Ford, cobras, obviously a boy's room. Nobody in any of them. The young woman emerged from her room as Edward completed the quick search. She had pulled on shorts and sneakers and Edwards asked her is there any way to get into the attic up here? And she said well, there's an opening in my room in the closet. So Edwards went into her room, opened the closet, but it was so jammed with stuff that he knew nobody could have gone through it to hide in the attic.
Speaker 1:And Vonny Vonstein said over the phone to Michelle Sparrow in communication she says I think I heard my daughter talk. And Michelle said over the radio C-32, please advise if that subject's daughter is all right so I can calm her down. And Edward responded 10-4, she's okay. And so she went. You know Michelle went back to Bonnie and said okay, bonnie, your daughter is fine, okay?
Speaker 1:So Teleton had reentered the blood splatter bedroom where Bonnie Von Stein lay on the floor and was checking the body on the bed. And Bonnie said my husband must be bad, oh God. And Tetherton told her I think he's gone. And Bonnie said into the telephone, I see him. So Michelle said okay, don't look at him, bonnie Don't look at him. And Bonnie said he was trying to help me. And Michelle asked okay, do you remember seeing anybody? Because she was trying to divert her attention. She said it was dark, I don't know. She said okay and she said I know he had a big club or a baseball bat. And she said I know he had a big club or a baseball bat.
Speaker 1:Now the phone rang and Michelle, the 911 operator, answered it and it was Captain Lewis at the fire station. He was a meticulous record keeper and wanted additional information. Bonnie said he had also a knife. So for a few moments Michelle tried to talk to Bonnie and Louis at the same time and so she said Captain Louis, I have still got 1033 traffic. I'll call you as soon as I get some more buddy Bye-bye. So she went back to talk to Bonnie and she said Bonnie, you hang in there with me. And she said don't let my daughter in here.
Speaker 1:And Teleton called to Edwards and the whole. She said tell her not to come in here. To Michelle's radio. And she said she advised not to let her daughter in there. And Teleton responded 10-4. So Michelle said Bonnie and she said yes. She said the rescue's coming, okay, and she said yes. She said don't look at your husband. So she looked up instead to see Tetherton looming over her and she said Officer Sparrow, this is the policeman. Hey, and Tetherton, read for therow, this is the policeman. Hey, and Tetherton reached for the phone and said Tetherton, and that was Michelle. And to the phone, he said yo. He said God, I'm glad to hear you. He said yeah, we got to have a rescue right quick. They're on the way. She said okay, I'm going to hang up then.
Speaker 1:So David Sparrow had her titillating, frantic calls for rescue over his car radio. He had been an emergency medical technician before becoming a police officer, so still carrying his shotgun, he also got a portable oxygen tank and mask from his car and sprinted to the house. Eddards opened the front door for him and Sparrow hurried up the stairs into the bedroom to see Tilton taking the telephone receiver from a woman lying on the floor in a bloody nightgown. He quickly checked the man on the bed, searching for a pulse, but realized that he was dead. So he took the oxygen tank to the woman and saw that she had been stabbed in the chest and was having trouble breathing and he said OK, I'm going to take care of you. And he started preparing the mask and she repeated again please do not let my daughter in here. So Sparrow had seen the young woman in the hallway, outside the door, and he went out and asked her to go downstairs and wait. And he said to her don't touch or move anything.
Speaker 1:So the ambulance turned onto Lawson Road it's Sivan, further rending the shadow silence of the morning. And it came to a halt and there were two men inside, david Hall and Mike Harrell, both firefighters and emergency medical technicians. They jumped from the vehicle. Hall was carrying the trauma bag. Harrell, who had been driving, followed him to the front porch at a trot. Through the glass storm door they saw a young woman sitting on the step near the bottom of a staircase, chin in hand. She stood when she saw them and opened the door and she said upstairs, at the top of the stairs, they encountered Edward and Tertan. He said you got one on the bed, one on the floor. I think one of them is gone, the other one's fading fast.
Speaker 1:So Ho and Harold were expecting some blood. But they were startled when they entered the room and saw blood everywhere. Both men, put on rubber gloves, went first to the man on the bed. They rolled him over, saw a big stab wound in the center of his chest, right above his heart. Blood already had begun to gel on the man's chest and he had no pulse. Both men turned their attention to the woman on the floor and kneeled down beside her in a small pot of blood and asked her how are you doing? She said not too good. He began wrapping a blood pressure gauge around her arm and the woman asked is he dead? And he answered yes and she said well, at least he's not suffering. She had cuts on her head and a sucking chest wound that no longer was bleeding, but she had lost a lot of blood and her blood pressure was dangerously low.
Speaker 1:A call had to be made to the hospital emergency room to alert the staff to the situation and to get a physician's permission to start an IV and wrap the patient in military anti-shock trousers, an inflatable suit used to stabilize injured patients. Now, wanting to report the woman's condition and her presence, harrell went downstairs to find another telephone. The young woman directed him to one on a kitchen wall, but the receiver was disconnected and missing. He found it on the table but the receiver was disconnected and missing. He found it on the table. David Sparrow held his flashlight on the phone while Harold reconnected the receiver and made the call. He had two patients. He told Dr Elizabeth Cook, the young emergency room physician, one was DOA and a hospital vehicle would have to be sent for the body. The other was conscious but appeared to be gravely injured and declining rapidly. Dr Crook approved the IV and the application of MAST trousers and began to prepare for the patient's arrival. Upstairs Hall was ripping open a dressing to put on Bonnie's chest wound and he told her I'm going to have to cut your gown, is that all right? And she nodded her approval. Harold returned to help him get her into the stabilizing trousers and then he went to the ambulance and, with the help of Officer Ed Cherry, carried the stretcher into the house.
Speaker 1:At communications, michelle Sparrow was still busy. She called Captain Danny Boyd, chief investigator for the Washington police, and he told her to call Melvin Hope and John Taylor, two of the department's four detectives. She called Captain Zane Osno, second in command of the police department, and asked him if she should call the chief and he said no, he would call him. She returned Captain Lewis's call at the fire department and when she found a spare moment she stopped the device that recorded all calls, removed the big tape reel, marked it and put it in a special place. She knew that investigators would want it for evidence.
Speaker 1:While the technicians work on the injured woman, tarriton went downstairs and found her daughter sitting calmly in the den. He needed some basic information for his preliminary report and he wanted to get it before she found out just how bad things were upstairs and perhaps lost control. He told her that her mother had been stabbed but that she was conscious and talking, and he didn't know how seriously she was hurt. Her father, he said, also had been beaten and stabbed and was seriously injured. He was surprised that she showed no reaction to what he was telling her and calmly agreed to answer his questions. Her name, she told him, was Angela Pritchard. She was 17. Her mother was Vonnie Von Stein. She was 44. The man upstairs was her stepfather, leith Von Stein, two years younger than her mother. He worked at National Spinning Company, a yarn plant, the biggest employer in Beaufort County, and was an executive there. Only then did Tetherton realize that he had met the bloodied man upstairs before he had seen this young woman before too. More than a year earlier, while off duty, he had been witness to a minor car wreck in which Angela had been involved, near the high school. He had waited at the scene to tell the investigating officer what had happened.
Speaker 1:Liability for the accident later fell into dispute and Von Stein complained to Police Chief Harry Stokes about Teleton's version of events. Teleton had been summoned to accompany the chief to Von Stein's office at National Spinning to talk about the matter. Teleterton felt that Weinstein implied that he had lied and wanted him to change the truth to benefit his stepdaughter, and he had left the meeting in a huff. Now this young woman was telling him that she also had a brother, chris Pritchard, who was away at NC State University. Should she call and tell him what had happened? Tidderton told her to go ahead and call and if she wanted to call somebody to come and be with her, that would be all right. But she should stay at the house. Detectives will be wanting to talk with her later.
Speaker 1:The call came at 5.17 am from emergency call box E08, next to Burgard Dormitory on the campus of NC State University. Such call boxes were spread strategically around the campus, mounted on poles topped by blue lights so that they could be easily spotted. None was more than a minute or two away from a patrolling campus police officer, a male, apparently young, was on the line and dispatcher Barbara Dew had trouble understanding him. Standing him, he sounded hysterical and he kept saying something about losing his keys and his parents being stabbed and he needed to get to Washington, north Carolina, and do as his name. But all that she could understand was Christopher. She tried to calm him to learn more, but he grew even more hysterical. So she told him just hold on, I'm sending an officer out.
Speaker 1:When Cobach's ego aid came into sight, lieutenant Teresa Crocker saw a young man dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, his back rested against the pole on which the phone was mounted, his knees pulled up, his head on his knees. When she brought her red and gray campus security card to stop beside the box, the young man leaped up and came to her car yelling. He was thin and of medium height, with a shock of dark hair and a wild look in his eyes, so agitated that she couldn't make out what he was trying to tell her. And he said I couldn't find my car keys. He kept saying and he also kept repeating something about his parents being beaten and stabbed. As he was flinging his arms and stalking back and forth, ranting and raving, as Lieutenant Crocker later described it, a second campus security car arrived and it was Patrolman Michael Allen that got out and he asked what's the trouble? And Crocker said in exasperation I don't know, I can't make it up. See if you can talk to him. So Allen couldn't get much out of him and he suggested that they take the young man to the public safety office. Both officers were certain that the young man was either drunk or on drugs and thought that he might be hallucinating.
Speaker 1:Melvin Hope always claimed that he was a bear to wake up, but he had no trouble staring himself. When the phone rang shortly before five and Michelle Sparrow told him there had been a murder in Smallwood, he put on blue jeans and moccasins and hurried out. At 44, hope no longer got the same trim figure that he had when he first joined the Marines at 18. But he has served 15 officer in Jacksonville, a town 60 miles to the south on the edge of the sprawling Marine Base Camp Lejeune. Eventually he had grown wary of wrestling drunk Marines and followed a friend to the Washington Police Department at the end of 1981. He had been an investigator the following July and now he was the department's detective sergeant.
Speaker 1:A gruff man with a bushy mustache, seldom without a cigar between his teeth. Hope was filled with macho, bluster, war stories, and others in the police department sometimes referred to him as their John Wayne. There's John Wayne. Hope arrived at 110 Lawson Road to find his captain. Danny Boyd had arrived before him and had already been upstairs to see the body. So Hope asked what happened and Boyd said well, we got a mess. And he went on to explain the situation briefly. Hope went on to see how big a mess for himself.
Speaker 1:Whoever had set out to kill Leith von Stein had done a thorough and vicious job. Hope saw the sabrogy of the attack was impressive. Von Stein now lay on his back, his eyes swollen and closed, his neatly trimmed beard matted with blood. His pale legs, which looked almost too thin to support his thick, hairy body, were spread. His left hand was clenched and his entire body was bathed in his own blood. He had five gaping wounds on his head three across his balding forehead, one just above and slightly to the side of his left eyebrow and the biggest above and to the back of his left ear, hope County's six stab wounds from a large bladed knife in von Stein's upper back near his left shoulder. Another in the center of his chest had gone straight to his heart. The carpet was bloodied on both sides of the double bed for more than three feet out. Blood was splattered on the ceiling and on three walls of the 16 by 20 foot room.
Speaker 1:John Taylor's real first name was Haskell, but nobody ever called him by it. There was a song, big Bad John, who had been popular when he was a toddler and his daddy had started to call him that. The nickname soon got shortened to Plain John and nobody had called him anything else since. At 27, he was the youngest detective in the Washington Police Department and one of his most promising officers. One of his fields of training was photography and he took most crime scene photographs for his department. After Michel Sparrow called him, he drove his pickup truck to the police department, loaded his photo equipment in the police evidence van and went to 110 Lawson Road. He arrived as Melvin Hope was looking over Leith von Stein's body. David Sparrow and Ed Cherry were on the porch and Taylor told them to seal off the yard with the yellow crime scene tape he had brought in the van. Nobody was to pass beyond the tape without an official reason for being there. Taylor joined his sergeant and captain in the bloody bedroom and got a brief rundown on what had happened before. The three detectives took a quick walk through of the house to begin scouting for evidence.
Speaker 1:It was apparent that the intruder had entered and departed the house by the back porch door. But the broken window by the door was a mystery. It had been broken from the outside because the glass jars were scattered on the beige linoleum of the porch floor. But why had the window been broken when the wooden door itself had nine panes of glass? A person would need long arms and have to stand on tiptoes to reach through the broken window and unlock the door. Also, the cuts on the screen didn't seem to match the bricks in the glass. Could somebody had entered with a key and broken the window as an afterthought to try to make it seem like a break-in? Another odd thing on the back porch was a faded, torn military knapsack lying on the floor by a plastic garbage can. It was obviously out of place. Had it been abandoned by the intruder? That would be the question.
Speaker 1:Two cabinets in the kitchen stood open, along with two drawers. Two purses lay on the countertop and the contents of another purse this one white had been spilled across the range top in the kitchen island. A wallet, a fat folder of credit cards and a small aspirin bottle were spread over stove-eyed covers decorated with fun fox hunt scenes. The wallet and purses appeared to have been rifled, but the detectives were not convinced that robbery had been the motive for this crime. Too many things that a robber might take and had been left behind TV screens, stereos, tape players, pcrs, computers, a $20 bill, a handful of change lay in clear view on a dressing table in the Von Steen bedroom. Leith Von Steen's wallet and watch lay untouched in a letterbox. His wife's wedding rings were on a small bowl. Other valuable jewelry was in an unlocked box atop a chest. Could Leith have awakened and startled a burglar before the thief had a chance to find all those things? If so, why didn't the burglar just flee? Why would a burglar creep into an occupied bedroom in the middle of the night carrying a baseball bat or club with a large knife, unless he had come with an intention to murder?
Speaker 1:While the detectives were doing their walkthrough, others had been arriving at the house Chief Harry Stokes, captain Zane Osnow, two technicians dispatched from the hospital to remove Liebman Stein's body. A news crew from the local TV station and Derry Sparrow told the news crew take a number and get in line. They were not allowed inside the crime scene tape. No one would be talking to them for a while yet, not until things had been sorted out. One young man was allowed behind the tape, andrew Arnold once had dated Angela briefly and they had remained close friends, so she had called him. After telephoning her brother, he identified himself to Sergeant Tetherton and Tetherton told him that Angela was inside and it was okay to go on in. Bonnie, tetherton told him was still alive, but Leith was dead, although Angela didn't know it yet. Angela was sitting in the living room when he came in. She had little to say and Arnold didn't know what to say to her. The two sat quietly until Tiddleton came to tell Angela that her stepfather was dead. When he did, tiddleton said later that he saw what he thought was a tear beginning to well in the corner of one eye of one eye. Shortly afterward Sergeant Hope came to suggest that Angela ride downtown to the police department with him so that he could follow, so he could take a statement from her. Her friend Hope said that she could follow in his own car.
Speaker 1:In the emergency room at Beaufort County Hospital. In the emergency room at Beaufort County Hospital, only half mile from the swarming scene on Lawson Road, dr Elizabeth Cook was determining the extent of Bonnie Von Stein's injuries. Her patient was alert but acting bizarre, as Dr Cook later described it. She asked the doctor that was working over her is he dead? I'm glad he's dead, he's not suffering, he's out of his misery.
Speaker 1:Dr Cook had found that her patient had three ragged lacerations on her head, two near the hairline at the center of her forehead, each about an inch long, another over her right eyebrow, this one larger C-shaped. Bonnie's left thumb was swollen and bruised, perhaps broken, although she still could move it. Her most serious injury was to her chest. Above her right breast was a bruise the size of a grapefruit. Just to the right of her sternum was a two-inch stab wound, deeper on the right than on the left. The blade had apparently glanced off the bone and cut it to the chest wall. The lung had not been penetrated but it had partially collapsed. Dr Cook ordered a transfusion, started, an IV began inserting a catheter into the chest to allow the wound to drain and the lung to reinflate, and Bonnie asked as the doctor worked, can't you put me to sleep? And she said no, darling, I'm sorry, I can't. Bonnie's breathing improved almost immediately and Dr Cook went on to suture all her wounds and order a second unit of blood before admitting her to the hospital's intensive care facility.
Speaker 1:At the public safety building at Norvalina State University, patrolman Michael Allen and Lieutenant Teresa Crocker had managed to get the agitated young man they had picked up at emergency call box E08, calmed enough to learn that his name was Christopher Pritchard. His sister had called him in his dorm room a little before five to tell him that their parents had been beaten and stabbed and that he would better get his butt home. He couldn't find his car keys and he had been so upset that he had left his dorm not knowing what to do, until he saw the call box and asked for help. Allen and Crocker told him that they would try to find out for certain what had happened and ask if he would like something to eat or drink. While they did it, he declined and, perched in a chair hugging his knees, did it. He declined and perched in a chair hugging his knees. Melvin Hope had just radioed Michelle Sparrow that he was leaving 110 Lawson Road to bring Angela Pritchard to the police station. When Michelle got a call from Patrolman Allen and NC State, she gave him the number for the direct line to the Washington Police Department and told him to wait five minutes and call Sergeant Hope for details. Lieutenant Crocker notified her supervisor of the situation and after she called Hope and confirmed the young man's story, he authorized two officers to drive him to Washington in a public safety car.
Speaker 1:Crocker and Allen were about to go off duty but they volunteered to take him. How long does it take to get to Washington, asked Allen, and Chris said well, like an hour and a half. If I drive Traveling at the speed limit, the trip normally took about two and a quarter hours. The three left Raleigh about six. Alan was driving Chris protruding in the front seat with him. Chris said little as they began the trip and after 15 minutes Alan asked him if he would like to get into the back seat and try to sleep. Chris said yes and Alan pulled off the road so that Chris and Crocker could exchange places. Soon after Alan pulled back onto the highway, his backseat passenger was curled up fast asleep.
Speaker 1:Melvin Hogg did not understand how the young woman before him could be so unemotional. Angela Pritchard answered his questions as if she had been not at all distressed by the terrible events of the morning. She has just graduated from Washington High and will be going to Greensboro College, a prestigious private school in the fall, she said. She told Hope about going out riding with her friend Donna Brady the night before. Donna had let her out in front of the house a little before 11. Her stepfather had been in bed but her mother had been up watching TV. They talked briefly and she had gone on up to her room. She went to sleep about 1230 and the next thing she knew Danny Edwards was waking her. She had not seen or heard anything. Melvin was incredulous that she had heard nothing, but he tried not to show it when he pressed her on it. Well, she explained, she was a heavy sleeper and her door closed and her fan was blowing on her. She had slept with the fan blowing on her since she was a baby. The young woman seemed so detached that Melvin finally said look, did you realize what happened here? And she said yes, my mother and stepfather had been stabbed and my stepfather is dead. Only when she mentioned that her stepfather was dead did her voice crack and she displayed the first sign of distress to Hope.
Speaker 1:A little before 6, francis Brady, an executive with an area T-speed station, answered his doorbell in small word to find Angela Pritchard and Andrew Arnold at his door. And Angela asked is Donald up? And Brady asked should she be? And you know and the reason Brady asked he was thinking perhaps that his daughter had made plans that she had forgotten. And Angela told him my stepfather has been stabbed. And mother's in the hospital, shocked, brady invited the young parent to his den and when his wife Lillian came to see who was calling, brady told her what had happened and she went immediately to wake Donna. Donna came into the den shortly and went straight to hug Angela. Later she said that she thought Angela was almost about to cry.
Speaker 1:Melvin Hope returned to 110 Lawson Street and he and Captain Danny Boyd decided to go to the hospital to see if they might be able to talk to Bonnie Van Stein. The hospital to see if they might be able to talk to Bonnie Van Stein. The detectives hoped to get some description of the attacker so that they could put out an alert. Dr Coote gave permission for them to ask a few questions, but they found Bonnie befuddled and kind of whacked out and this is a quote from Hope. She was unable even to tell them whether the intruder was black or white and she kept saying it was dark. It was dark.
Speaker 1:Allen and Crocker had found their way to the Beaufort County Law Enforcement Center, only to discover that they have come to the wrong place. Chris directed them instead to the Washington Police Department a few blocks away. They arrived about 8.30 and Sergeant Hope was not there. He had gone home to shower and change clothes. While they awaited his return, chris nervously paced.
Speaker 1:Hope arrived shortly, shaved and wearing a suit. He told Chris that he had left the hospital only a short time earlier and his mother was going to be all right, but he was sorry to report that his stepfather was dead. All the while he watched Chris closely for a reaction and later he described it this way. He says, quote Chris was really trying to appear grief-stricken but he wasn't quite making it. It was almost like he was going for an Emmy end quote and Hope said look, I'm going to need to talk to you. Do you want to talk now or would you rather go to the hospital first and see your mother? And Chris said, with his voice cracking I want to go to the hospital. So Hope later recalls it was almost like he had one eye on the exit and the other on me. When he left At the hospital, chris was allowed into the intensive care section for a short visit. He stood holding his mother's hand and crying as she told him what had happened. Thank you for listening to the Murder Book. Have a great week.
