The Von Stein Family Tragedy: Part IX: Probation, Parties, and the Road to N.C. State

A ringing phone, a flushed face, and a choice to confess—what starts as a “lark” shatters the quiet of a tight-knit county and exposes deeper cracks inside the Upchurch home. We follow Bart from a school break-in and a lake house burglary to a courtroom bargain that trades prison time for probation, restitution, and a promise to change. But promises are easy. What follows is harder: a mother who walks away to breathe, a father shouldering the day-to-day, and a son playing chicken with consequences.

As Bart heads to NC State, the clean slate muddies fast. Rooming with Neil sparks a cold war of personalities—neat versus chaos, parties versus role-playing games, impulse versus obligation. A pizza job funds late nights, probation hours go unfinished, and a week in jail becomes a story instead of a lesson. Mono knocks him flat; a missed form seals an academic collapse. Meanwhile, a cheap sports car, a stereo spat, and bitter roommate politics widen the gulf. Summer ramps the stakes: Opie’s stepbrother Hank breezes in with drugs and charisma; small-time shoplifting morphs into car stereo rip-outs and whispered break-ins. Stories clash—who stole more, who bragged more—but the pattern is clear: boredom plus bravado equals trouble.

All of it unfolds against the hum of Caswell County, where news travels faster than apologies and family reputations feel like public property. Joanne’s exit, Jim’s fury and fatigue, and the kids’ quiet coping form the emotional spine of this chapter. We trace how talent without direction curdles into defiance, how attention can feel like currency, and how a community’s gaze can both shame and harden. If you’ve ever wondered how a smart kid drifts from potential to probation, or how a family can fracture without a single slammed door, this story sits uncomfortably close.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Arrests And Confession
• 7:22 Court, Probation, And Family Strain
• 12:52 Joanne Walks Out
• 19:52 Graduation Fallout And College Plans
• 25:22 NC State: Roommates And Rivalries
• 32:22 Probation Trouble And A Week In Jail
• 37:52 Grades Collapse, Illness, And Drift
• 43:52 Summer Apartment And Hank’s Influence
• 50:22 Theft, Shoplifting, And County Rumors
• 57:22 Bikes, Betrayals, And A Family Ride

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:23

Welcome to the murder book. I'm your host, Ciara, and this is part eleven of the Von Stein family tragedy. Let's begin. Joanne knew that something was bothering Bart. For several days he had seemed nervous or distracted. She asked Emery if he knew what the problem was, but he didn't. Something was eating at Bart. And that's what she told Jim one afternoon in late February 1986, Bart's senior year in high school. But both knew that it would be that actually would do no good to quiz him about it because he simply would deny any problems and retreat into himself as usual. The answer to what was troubling Bart came with the ringing of the telephone after school on Thursday, February 26th. It was for Bart. As her son talked quietly on the phone, Joan knew that something bad had happened. His neck flushed and he looked frightened. And he said, after he hung up, Mom, I got to go to the sheriff's department. A friend has been arrested for something he didn't do, and I can testify to where he was. Joanne was not about to let him leave the house. And she said, You're not taking the car and going up there by yourself. You sit down here and tell me what's going on. Something's wrong, Bart, and something has been wrong for a while, so what is it? So he told her that his friend had been charged with breaking into the high school 11 days earlier and stealing a computer. Bart told her that it had happened the night Bart and three other boys had gone camping at the lake. The boy who had been arrested was one of the camping group along with his brother, so Bart knew he couldn't have done it. The fourth member of the camping group, Joanne discovered, was Gary Hampton. She should have known, because Gary was the one friend of Bart whom Joanne distrusted and disliked. She really didn't want Bart to associate with him, but she had been reluctant to forbid it. She had sensed that Hampton was trouble from the first time she saw him. He was older than Bart. He had dropped out of high school, joined the Navy, been kicked out after only a few months. He lived in a trailer beside another trailer in which his grandfather lived. Joanne had driven Bart there to play Dungeons and Dragons. Later, she had heard that other high school boys went to Gary's trailer to drink beer. Joanne had expressed her feelings about Gary to Jim and suggested that he needed to talk to Bart about it. And she remembered later that he said to leave him alone, to let him make up his own mind, because they can't choose your children's friends. Now, as Bart told her about his friend's arrest, Joanne realized that Bart knew more about what had happened than he was telling. When she pressed him, he finally admitted that he had taken part in the break-in too. Joanne broke into tears. Distress and anger burst from her, and she was angry not only because Bart had participated in a burglary, but also because he had been ready to lie to cover it up. Jim came home from work to find Bart quiet and sheepish, and Joanne almost hysterical, ranting and raving and crying. And Bart later said that it was the magnitude of the screw-up that astounded her. She was hoping that it was not going to be something major, but she told him that that was what he got for hanging around, you know, with people like Gary. And she was very upset. She knew with the company he kept he keep he was keeping that something could happen. And it had, and she felt responsible. So Jim told Joanne when he managed to get out of her what had happened. He said, Well, let me handle it. So he asked Bart, Did you do it? And Bart looked away from him and nodded. He clearly didn't intend to talk more about it. And Jim said later that Bart can turn you off like a light and that the madder you get, the more he closes you out. So Jim called a friend, Aspen Smith, a lawyer, who lived nearby and told him what had happened, and Smith advised Jim to take Bart to the sheriff's department, let him admit his part in the break-in and tell what he knew about it. This was a serious matter because it's a felony, Smith pointed out. And although it was unlikely that a first offender would be sent to jail, it was possible. Before Jim had a chance to take Bart to Jansenville, the telephone rang again. A sheriff's department detective asked to speak to Jim. Jim knew the man. He knew everybody in the county government. In an apologetic tone, the detective told Jim that he had a warrant for Bart's arrest. He wanted to extend the courtesy of allowing Jim to bring in his son. They would be right there. And of course, Jim was angry too, although he tried not to show it. And he told Bart, you know, the best thing to do when you have made a mistake is face up and pay the price. Your mother and I will support you, we'll get you a lawyer. Everybody at the service department was obviously embarrassed for Jim as the warrant was served and his son was taken away to be fingerprinted. Afterward, Bart was taken before a magistrate, another acquaintance of Jim, who released Bart to the custody of his father without bond. Nobody had any doubt that an upchurch would appear for trial. Bart was quieter than usual after his arrest. He went to school the next day, seemingly untroubled about the prospect of facing his teachers and fellow students, who surely would know about the charges against him. Word spread quickly in Caswell County. Later, Bart would admit to feeling embarrassed at the way teachers looked at him that day, although none said anything to him about it. From friends and classmates, he took a lot of kidding. Like, for example, they would say, Hey man, no, anybody who's got a computer they want to sell because you really did it this time. But the kidding was good nature, and beneath its surface was a certain odd at Bart's nerf and daring. That night, Jim Upchurch got another call from the Sheriff's Department, another warrant for Bart. This one for burglarizing a lake house on the same night of the school breaking and stealing five cases of beer, four bottles of wine, a TV, a set of binoculars, and two clocks. And Jim said later that he thought, well, what in the world is going on here? And now he was getting real mad. Bart admitted this one too. The reason he had not mentioned it the day before was simple. He wasn't sure the authorities had connected the two crimes. No sense in asking for more trouble. So for the second night in a row, Jim had to take his son to Jansenville for another hearing before the magistrate. And this time Bart assured his seating father that there would be no more surprises. Although Bart remained quiet about the details of the breaking at the time, he later claimed that they were unplanned, merely a lark. The camping trip was supposed to be an adventure, a test of endurance, sleeping out in the bitter coat in the middle of winter, cooking over an open fire. It was planned spur of the moment, something to do on Sunday night of President's Day weekend with no school on Monday. Bart had picked up the other boys in his mother's Beige Ford Escort station wagon. They burdened the small car with tents and sleeping bags and headed for a cove on Hycovese Road, not far from Bart's house, where his uncle John Thomas, Jim's half brother, had a lot and kept two canoes. At the lake, the boys loaded the gear into the canoes, set out across the muddy red water in search of a campsite. Darkness was nearing, the wind was bracing, and the water was so cold that it had begun to form a skim of ice and spots sheltered from the wind. Although all the boys were bundled in heavy jackets, they began to shiver at the thought of spending the night on the cold ground in sleeping bags. Why should they do that? Somebody asked. What right when right by the lake, on use, were so many there were so many cottages where they could build a fire and sleep in comfort. They picked a likely house, sat back at the in the trees, landed their canoes, scouted out the place as darkness was setting, nobody was anywhere around. They knocked out a downstairs window. One of the boys went inside and opened the door for the others. They found the power box, turn on the electricity, brought in wood, build a fire, turn on a small black and white TV. Meanwhile, a treasure trove had been discovered in the house. Cases of beer, several bottles of wine and champagne. They started drinking beers, scavenged the cabinets for food, popped the cork on a bottle of champagne. At first everybody was saying, oh hell, we're going to get in trouble for this. And after everybody had a few beers, it was, hey, this is fun. And out in the middle of Castle County wasn't anything else to do. It was something that they did. So it was just a little adrenaline rush out of the whole deal. But the rush soon died, however, and somebody suggested they go for a ride. Bart and Gary hiked back around the lake and got his mother's car. Then they ferried his uncle's canoes back one at a time, sticking out of the back of the station wagon. And finally they loaded up the remaining cases of beer, the wine, the easy-to-carry items that they found in the house, and set out whooping and hollering. They were talking about video games as they rode into Jansyville. Somebody said, well, hell, let's go get a computer while we're at it. And Bart says that he doesn't remember who the idea it was. Bart knew that a physics teacher at the high school always left a classroom window slightly open. They went through that window and snatched an Apple computer complete with color monitor and keyboard from a classroom. Bart dropped the keyboard and broke two keys on it as he was running back to the car. The four boys then went to Gary's trailer where they hook up the computer, play what with it while they polish off more of the beer, lure up by alcohol. They finally slept for a few hours, and after they awoke, Bart drove his two friends home, then went home himself to proclaim his camping trip a code but satisfying success. Bart was keenly aware of his parents' anger about his arrest. They were mad for a good long while. And according to Bart at the time, he said that he couldn't say very much to them. He couldn't do anything but hang his head and be real meek and humble. His father would say that he didn't show a lot of guilt, that he was mainly concerned about the outcome. A month after his arrest, Bart appeared before recorder's court judge Peter Mahew in the old White Courthouse in Yansaville, where his great-grandfather once had been so prominent. Jim had again hired George Daniel, who had helped Joan out of the wool business mess, and Daniel had worked out a plea bargain with the district attorney. The charges would be consolidated and reduced to misdemeanors in exchange for Bart's plea of guilty. Judge McHugh sentenced Bart to a year in prison, suspended on the following conditions that he be on supervised probation for three years, that he remain in school in good standing or be employed full-time, that he not associated with Gary Hampton and the other two boys with whom he committed the break-ins, that he perform 150 hours of community service in the next six months, and that he paid court costs and restitution. That was a considerably lighter sentence than the maximum 20 years in prison. And his father said later that he didn't think that anybody wanted to prosecute Bart to the fullest extent of the law. At the same time, he was concerned that he had been lax in disciplining Bart. He had left it to Joan to be the disciplinarian in the family, and she often had been frustrated and reprimanding Bart. And Jim said later that Bart was her match. He was always a discipline problem from the time he was real small. Tell him something, he wouldn't do it, he just didn't mind very well. He knew how to push you, he knew how to get your temper up, and he used to make John terribly mad. And she would say that he that she would be glad when he turns 18 and leaves home that it would just drive her bananas. But sometimes she she thinks that he just wanted to see how mad he could make you because he gave in. And it was almost a game sometimes. By the time he got to high school, it was more like an attitude problem, like he just resisted anything that you wanted him to do. Walter Slayton thought that Bart had an attitude problem, and that he was afraid that Bart had moved beyond the point where his behavior could be greatly influenced by parents or teachers. He just had no moral compass to go by. Slayton had regrets about Bart. Bart was so smart, so capable, yet he had no direction, no goals. His grades were barely above average. He rarely exerted himself to accomplish anything. Slayton could recall only one time that Bart had really thrown himself into a project. In our presentation on Mark Twain in the first semester of Bart's junior year, he talked about his life so convincingly as if he actually were living it. And that's the type of thing that he really wished that they would have, you know, the kids would have done, like Bart, you know, had finished. So he gave Bart an A on this assignment and a 99 for the semester, the highest grade Bart ever got. And it helped. Bart to get appointed to the Governor School for Special Students the next summer after he was named a National Merit semifinalist. If Bart had applied himself more to his studies and less to Dungeons and Dragons, Slayton knew he probably would have been chosen to attend the School of Science and Math. Science was his own genuine interest. He was always he always watched the National Geographic Special, science-related shows on TV. He read a lot about astronomy. His mother knew that he really wanted to go to the School of Science and Math, and that he was hurt when his friend and dungeon member James Long was chosen and he was not. Nobody other than his mother would know that he cared at all about whether he was chosen, though he because he never showed his disappointment. Slayton couldn't help but wonder if Bart had applied himself and received more of the recognition he was so capable of achieving. If he still would have taken such great pleasure and thwarting the system to show he didn't care. He was always doing outlandish things to draw attention to himself, such as listing in the school yearbook, all kinds of clubs to which he never belonged, and activities in which he had never participated. And he, you know, Slayton recalled later that he would have asked him, why, James, did you do such a thing? And he would just shrug his shoulders. He did things just to see if he could get away with it. Slayton saw Bart's troubles with the law as a logical outgrowth of his earlier defiant behavior. But he did not ask Bart about his arrest and conviction. When students had problems, he left it to them to come to him if they wanted to talk about them. But Bart didn't come. And he says, quote, James thought it was stupid to believe what I did. He had developed the attitude that life is out there for you to get out of it what you want, the easiest way you can get to you can get it, and that it's it's just all game. We'll be right back. Ward's problems with the law only added to the mix of emotions that had been simmering in his family, and soon after his sentencing, those feelings boiled to the surface. Joanne's job at Memorial Hospital in Danville regularly took out took her out of Castro County and make her realize how much she resented its isolation and attitudes. She said later, quote, Castro County is not the real world. You are never accepted as an outsider. Unless you're going to talk about tobacco or the weather or the latest car wreck on the front page of the Castware Messenger, there's nothing to talk about. I would walk into a country store and there would be dead silence. End quote. Her resentment of Caswell County was nothing compared to her resentment of Jim's infidelity. The unforgiving nature that had caused her to shun her father's funeral and sever all ties with her mother would not allow her to forget. She said that she couldn't get over Judy Gold. It wasn't the same after that. She couldn't make it the same. Although she loved Jim, she had concluded that they were too much on alike. She said, quote, we were two people just existing in the same household. We didn't communicate, didn't even really know each other. There was no common ground except for the children. Jim had such a passion and love for the farm. I wanted more than I had there. I knew there was more out there. We couldn't make it together. Jim knew that Joanne was unhappy, but he wasn't expecting what happened on Saturday, May 3rd, only five weeks after the trauma of Bart's court appearance. Joanne called him into their upstairs bedroom and told him that she was leaving. She had rented an apartment in Danville. She wanted to get away from everything and think. Jim said later that he tried to get her to stay, but she walked out. She just left. And left all four children with him. Bart was 17, Emery 15, Carrie 7, Alex 5. Duran had taken them all upstairs to talk with them before she left. Bard and Emery had little to say afterward. Bard, as usual, showed no reaction. Emery was at first distressed. Distraught, later grieved. The girls, especially Alex, was conf were confused and worried. Alex kept asking when her mother was coming back. Jim's mother, Carolyn, would never forget that day. After Duran left, Jim came to her house with the children. Once again, she had been left largely in the dark about what was going on in her son's family. She hadn't even known that Bart had been arrested until she read it in the newspaper. She had been shocked by that. And when she saw Jim this day, she knew she was in for another shock. He looked perfectly awful, just ghastly. And when she asked him what is it, he said, John's gone. And Carolyn couldn't believe that Joanne had left her children. She says that she didn't think anybody can understand why she did it. But the only way it was going to work was for her to leave. And she says, quote, I have no attachment to the farm and Jim did. I couldn't afford to take the children, and Jim needed to know his children. He never packed their lunches, he never tucked them in, never disciplined them. He didn't know who liked what under plates. He called me one time when Carrie was in the hospital and asked me how to wash Alex's hair. I had to leave. That was the only way it was going to work. The only way he was going to get to know his children. A week after she left, Joanne returned to pick up the children for Mother's Day. They talked about almost everything about her leaving. Nobody but Alex wanted to bring that up. And she asked, When are you coming home? But Joanne had no answer. Jim knew the answer already. He returned home that night to discover that she had taken all her clothes, the silver and china from their wedding. He knew that she would never come back. Not long afterward, Jim discovered that if Joanne had left to think, it had not taken her long to decide what she wanted. He learned that a co-worker, Alan Ferguson, was living in the apartment with her. Ferguson had just married for the second time a year earlier to a woman who had two children from a previous marriage. Jim and Joanne had gone to the house for a Super Bowl party in January. Jim knew that Alan and Joanne were good friends. He just had not realized that they were that close. Alan was the coach of the hospital's women's softball team. Joanne was on the team. They'd play on Thursday nights and afterward the team members would go drink beer and eat pizza. Jim had seen it as a night out with the girls for Joanne. Now he realized it might have been something else. He called Alan's wife, who had become suspicious of Alan and Joanne long before Jim. She had hired a private detective who had come up with evidence of a trist between Joanne and Alan. Left their spouses. She was going to use the evidence to obtain a divorce, she said, and Jim was welcome to use it too. Aleph Fegerson, meanwhile, had begun looking for jobs outside of Danville. He landed one in another Virginia town and Joanne followed him there. Back at the farm, Jim was coping with taking care of his children. Amory took most of the responsibility for the girls. Carolyn came to get the girls each morning and took them back to Milton so they could catch the school bus at her house. Then she waited for them in the afternoon and took care of them until Jim got home from work. Alex continued to say that she wanted her mother and daddy together again and Jin tried to make her understand that it probably would not happen. And he told her, it may be the best thing. Your mother's happy, we'll be happy too. And he said later that he was trying to be a lot more optimistic that he was feeling. Joan leaving was like knocking a crutch out. He was so dependent on her, and he really wanted her to come back. Jim worried that Bart might think his troubles played a part in the breakup and blame himself for it. And he asked his son one day, you know, well, how are you taking it? And just Bart said with a shrug, okay. But actually Bart was the least affected by the situation of anybody in the family. And he would say that later. He said, quote, when it finally did happen, I knew it was for good. At some point, I think there was always some kind of tension that I never consciously recognized. Mom had sort of started complaining when I was in about the 10th or 11th grade, but that was as far as it got. There was never a lot of arguing, never any violence or anything like that. When it happened, I said, damn, this has been going on and I never noticed it. End quote. When they finally did separate for good, it wasn't anything that was like some violent, emotionally wrenching thing for for Bart. As far as these things go, it was as painless as something like that can get, according to him. Duan returned in June for Bart's graduation. The family gathered at the farm afterward. The happiness of the situation was underlaid by unspoken anger, resentment, and pain. The tension grew worse when Jim opened up Bart's report card, which had been enclosed for his diploma. Although Bart had been graduated 64th in his class of 228 with a B average, he clearly had done almost nothing in his last semester. He had flunked two subjects, he slipped by and three other subjects with only one point or two to spare. A C was his highest grade, and he had only one of those in Walton Slayton's English class. Jim's anger uncharacteristically exploded. And he said, if you're not going to get serious about life and about going to school, there's no sense in you even going to college. You're not heading in any direction that's positive. You got to get control of your life. You got to take on some responsibilities. If you want to go to college, you're going to have to work for it. And Joanne was surprised. He was getting over Bart about it, really shilling him out. She figured Jim's outburst was prompted more by Jim's distress over the breakup than by Bart's attitude towards school. And Jim said later that he preached for 30 minutes. He was really mad. Bart just couldn't care less about grades of school or anything else. He just felt like he was heading down the drain. And Joanne finally told him, I think you have said enough. And that brought the sermon to a halt. Bart's future was still in doubt. He had no idea of what he wanted to do with his life. His strong interest in the military had led him to at one point to consider applying to the U.S. Naval Academy, and he actually had begun the process before discovering that his chances were too slim to be realistic. Instead, he had sent out applications to three or four colleges. One of those was MC State University and Raleigh. In the space allocated for an essay, describing why he wanted to attend state, Bart had been succinct. He wrote, North Carolina State University has one of the better schools of engineering in the Southeast. My family can afford the tuition. It offers Army RTC. It is close to home. Bart wasn't even interested in engineering. He was applying to the School of Humanities and Social Sciences to study sociology and anthropology courses that piqued his interest when he read the catalog descriptions. And in February, he had received notice that he had been accepted. But another possibility still appealed to him. His longstanding interest in the military led him to think about joining the Army. The year before, when his family had been at the state fair, Bart had stopped by the Army recruiting exhibit and talked with the recruiters. They had given him a test and told him he scored highest of anybody who had taken it that day. He had talked with the local recruiters since. Bart had decided to enlist for three years, save his money, earn enough in credits from the Army to pay for his college later, but a hitch turnup. Because of his conviction, he would have to get permission from his probation officer to join Jim. To join, and Jim went to talk to the probation officer about it. And he said, Nope, Barr needs to go to college. He has to have half a term before he we can get him off probation. I don't think he's emotionally mature enough to do it. And the parole officer wouldn't budge. Let's just say the probation officer and Jim disagreed. Bart was upset about the decision, but with the army out of the question, he saw no choice but to attend NC State. He certainly didn't want to stay in Caswell County. So Jim talked to his mother about it, and Carolyn said, well, if he wants to go to state, let's let's let him go. And Jim said later that he seemed to be positive about it. So Carolyn sent off the check for tuition and took Bart to buy new clothes for campus. In July, Jim and Bart went to NC State for freshman orientation. Bart was a little awe by the campus. It was just full of pavement and and and bricks. He woke up on campus, look at Lee Dorn, and he got lost. On campus that day, Jim and Bart ran into Neil Henderson and his mother and stopped to chat. Although they played Dungeons and Dragons together, Bart and Neil never had been close, perhaps because he felt a little competitive with the other. Neil was very close, however, with Emery. Yet here were Bart and Neil, friends, both from Castle County, both coming to state. One thing had seemed logical months earlier when both had learned of their acceptance of state. And Neil asked in class one day, you want to roam together? And Bart said sure, why not? Now they began making plans about what they would bring to the dorm, they would be sharing. We'll be right back. In August of 1986, when Bart and Neil moved into room 405B of a four-room suite on the fourth floor of Lee Residence Hall, a high-rise red brick dorm on the West Campus, NC State University, was only six months away from celebrating its centennial. In its 100 years, it had become the largest university in the state, with some 24,000 students on a campus of 623 acres on the edge of Downtown Raleigh. The university had strong programs in engineering, math, textiles, agriculture, forestry, veterinary medicine, design. It was a national center for research in science and technology. It also had a seething rivalry, especially in the basketball court with the University of North Carolina, the nation's first state university, 30 miles away in Chapel Hill. Carolina students consider themselves far more erudite and sophisticated than state students. Cars of Carolina supporters sometimes bore bumper stickers that read hunk if you love Carolina Moo if you from state. The NC State campus was split down the middle by a mainline railroad track and border on two sides by major thoughtfulness. Sorry, major thoroughfares. Hughesboro Streets and Western Boulevard. Hillsborough Street was lined with diversions. It had restaurants, bars, ice cream parlors, record shops, used bookstores, and other business catering to students. Western Boulevard offered a shopping center with movie theaters, a motel, fast food restaurants, pool and park, central prison, the TV station where Jesse Helms gained fame as a commentator before his election to the U.S. Senate, and Dorothea Dix Hospital, the state's primary mental institution. Boyd was immediately drawn to the diversions, both on and on off campus. It was real easy to get distracted. So many people your age doing parties, raising hell in such a concentrated area. And at one period soon after his arrival at State, Boyd was attending parties almost every night, often staggering back to his room in a stupor. Neil, on the other hand, detested parties and sneered at Bart and his activities, much as he had done in high school. Neil felt uncomfortable in groups of more than three and thought of parties as noisy and senseless wastes of energy. This difference in attitude was only one of many things that separated Bart and Neil. Soon after moving in together, both realized that they probably should have chosen other roommates. Bart, for one thing, was neat. Neo was incredibly sloppy. A demarcation line was soon drawn down the middle of the room. Cleanliness and order on one side, clutter and filth on the other. Beyond that, neither really liked the other, nor did they like one other another's friends. And Bart says, quote, a lot of people didn't like Neil, maybe because he was a real disgusting person. Anytime he got drunk, he got sick. He would go throw up in anybody's room he happened to be in. If you had a girlfriend coming, you didn't want him to be in. If you had and didn't want him around, because he would hit on her. Absolutely no shame. He just got on a lot of people's nerves, and everybody more or less avoided him. End quote. Neil's friends were mainly his acquaintances from his year in NC School of Science and Math. Bart's friends all were new acquaintances, people he had met during orientation and after moving into the dorm. And Bart said that some of Neil's friends were real genius types, really bright but extremely eccentric. While Bart went out partying, Neil preferred staying in his room playing Dungeons and Dragons, champions, and other role-playing games with his friends. Bart never played with them, although he did play occasionally with others. Most of his time, however, was spent hitting bars and clubs where he could pass himself off as 21, listening to rock and roll and prowling the nearby campuses of Meredith and St. Mary's colleges, attempting without much success to pick up the well-to-do young women who attended those private schools. Neil would buck everybody, drive everybody crazy, chase all the women away. Another thing separating Neil and Bart was study. Neil later would claim that he never saw Bart pick up a book during their year of rooming together. Only a few weeks into the semester, Bart quit going to his math and English classes for the simple reason that they were scheduled so too so early in the morning. Neil, on the other hand, felt obligated to study, at least preferily. In his final year at Bartley Jansey High, he not only won top honors in English and mathematics, he was captain of the CRISPO team and president of the Junior Engineering and Technical Society. He scored 1,500 on his ACTs, only 100 points short of perfect, prompting his admitting officer at NC State to note that it was the highest score he had ever seen. More than that, Neil had won a full scholarship to NC State, the Aubrey Lee Brooke Scholarship, granted each year to the top student in each county of an 11 county area. It was renewable for four years on the condition that he maintained acceptable grades. Neil did not have much spending money, however, and several weeks after classes began, he took a job at a Pizza Hut near campus, first working behind the counter, later delivering pizzas. When he told Bart about openings for delivery drivers, Bart applied was accepted. Soon Bart was working long hours on weeknights to support his weekend partying, and his grades suffered even more. On October 17, another warrant was issued for Bart's arrest. This one for probation violation, charging that he had failed to complete the 150 hours of community service he was ordered to render within six months of his sentencing for breaking into the lakehouse and his high school. His probation officer reported that he had completed only 49 hours and seemed indifferent about the rest. Bart was angry. He said, quote, it was mostly the fault of the guy assigning the community service. He didn't assign me enough work to do. I did everything I was told, but he didn't tell me to do enough stuff. End quote. On October 29th, Judge Peter McHugh gave Bart a choice he could complete his remaining community service or spend a week in the Caswell County jail. Bart chose jail. And the judge allowed him to serve the week during the fall break in c um in classes. And he said later that it wasn't a scary experience. It was a real pain in the butt because it was boring. Nothing to do except sleep and read. He felt embarrassed. Neil went around and told everybody about it. He was just glad to get it over with and be done with it. Soon after his week in jail, Bart had another brush with the law. He drove his pizza delivery truck in the wrong direction down a one-way street on campus to take a shortcut between dorms. A campus public safety officer stopped him and wrote a ticket, and that was not his first. Near the end of his junior year in high school, Bart got a warning ticket when he only slowed at a stop sign at a rural intersection in Caswell County. One week later, at the same spot, the same highway patrolman stopped him for the same violation and wrote him another ticket. This one, no warning. Bart didn't tell his parents about it. He and Amory and his friend Coy Odom scratched together enough money to pay off the ticket. When he got the ticket on campus, Bart intended to go to court and argue that it was unjustified, but the court appearance came just two days before Christmas, while he was home between semesters and he didn't bother to return to Raleigh for it. When he came back to campus, In early January, he received notice that his driver's license had been revoked. It was of little concern to him. He had given up his job at Pizza Out because it was taking too much of his time. Sometimes he didn't get back to his dorm until 3 a.m. He had no car, little opportunity to drive. Once again, he didn't tell his parents about his difficulties. Throughout his first semester, Bart had told his father that he was doing okay in class, making B's and C's. Jim was understandably perturbed when a transcript of Bart's grades arrived, showing mostly failures and incompletes. Bart blamed the bad grades on working too much and vowed to do better during his second semester. For a few weeks he did. He kept up his grades, didn't party as much on class nights. A friend in RTC helped him get a part-time job that didn't interfere with his class schedule, writing parking tickets for the campus police. Soon after the second semester began, Bart and Neo had a falling out. Bart told Neil one day that they needed to get a stereo for the room. Neil went along with the suggestion, so Bart Co rent to own place and found that he could get a top grade stereo for$100 a month. He had money that he had gotten as a gift at Christmas. Neil was awaiting the spending money that came with his scholarship. Bart said he would pay the first month's rent, Neil could pay the second. After the third week, Neil's money came in and he told him, and he said, now don't forget, you got to pay the stereo bill this month. And Neo said, No problem. Then came time the bill was due and he said, Have you paid it yet? And he said, I have spent all my money. And he said, What did you do with it? He said, I spent it. And that made Bart mad. And he said, Well, Neo, we agreed we were going to split the cost. And he said, Well, my name's not on the lease. So it was just tough luck. That's the kind of guy he is. So he didn't want to do anything, according to Bart that he had to do if he could figure out a way to get around it. And so he said, Well, the heck with you, I'll return the stereo. Bart and Neil hardly spoke for several weeks after the stereo incident, and during that time, Bart found himself uncomfortably confined to the room they shared. He started feeling sick and thought he was taking the flu. But after a trip to the campus dispensary, he was told that he had mononucleosis. He spent two weeks in bed and fell so far behind in his classes that he knew he never could catch up. He had a legitimate medical excuse for dropping out of his classes and maintaining his status as a student. And he received permission to do so, but he failed to return in the forms in time. And he said, quote, the real reason was that I was lazy and didn't feel like walking all the way across campus and seeing three or four people. He's end quote. By the time he got around to turning in the paperwork, it was too late. Flunked every single class second semester. And he was mad. And he said, Well, I screw up first semester, now second semester's gone too. And with no hope of passing any course, there was no need to continue going to class, but he had paid for room and board. And even though he had to live with Neil, he remained in the dorm. Late in April, he was sitting around with a suite mate, Fred Benson, who was called Opie because of a character he resembled in his favorite TV program, The Andy Griffith Show. Bart and OP had little in common other than a strong interest in the military. Bart was Army RTC. OP was Air Force. Their politics, however, were widely divergent. Bart considered himself liberal. OP was so strongly right wing that some of his fellow students call him the Nazi. OP was wanting to buy himself a Jeep, and he and Bart were looking through the one ad for likely prospects. Bart saw an ad for Adatsum 240Z, which is it was a nasty sports car for only$1,700. Intrigued, he and Opie went to look at it. Bart liked it so much that he called his father and asked about the possibility of borrowing money to buy a car. He soon would be going to work for the summer, he said, and would have no trouble paying it back. Opie liked the car too and he had enough money to buy it. He made Bart a temporary loan to get the car and told him if his father wouldn't let him have the money, he would keep the car himself. Bart proudly drove the Burgundian Gold sports car to his father's farm in Casper County. And he pulled out and the first thing Dad did was to look to see if it was stolen. So Jim negotiated a loan so his son could have his first car. He was unaware that Bart's driver's license had been revoked and that Bart had twice ignored summonses to come to court to face the charge of driving the wrong direction on a one-way street. Bart was unconcerned about the lack of a license and had no intention of staying off the road. And he said later that he was a good driver, never got stopped. He didn't see any reason for a license. Soon after he got the car, Bart took another job delivering pizzas, this time using his own car. When he wasn't delivering pizzas, Bart and Opie would load a case of beer into the car from the restaurant. Opie's mother operated next to campus and cruised around looking for girls to talk to. When the semester ended in May, Bart and Opie had to move out of the dorm. They already had rented a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment near the campus that they planned to share with another friend, Chris Williams. Neil frequently accompanied Bart and Opie on their apartment hunting for a race, unaware that they had no intention of letting him move in with them. And Bart said later that Neil was j, you know, just tag along. He that they would try to sneak out without him, but he just grew himself to the group. Once they found an apartment that they liked, Bart and Opie signed the lease. Although Neil had thought all along that he would be moving into the apartment with them, Bart informed him before the semester ended that they didn't want him living with them. Neil's objection offered Bart a chance to deliver the retort he had been waiting months to get off his chest. He said, quote, hey, your name's not on the lease, remember? You left me hanging on the stereo. End quote. Before Bart and OP decided Well, before Bart and Opie could move into the apartment, however, Chris Williams decided to take summer classes at the University of North Carolina at Wimmington and wouldn't be staying in Raleigh for the summer. So they needed a third roommate to help pay the rent. So Bart and Opie had to seek out Neil, and he later would proclaim it a mistake from day one. The three sweet mates moved in early in May. Bart received official notice that because of his grades, he no longer was welcome as a regular student and NC state. He could have his student status reinstated, however, by enrolling in summer courses and making acceptable grades. His father's fears had come true, and Bart still seemed to be without a course in life and little interested in finding one. Bart said that he wanted to take a year off from college to work and save money so that he could pay for his education himself when he reinrolled. Perhaps that would be best, Jim thought, and maybe he would mature a little and become more responsible, having to make his own way. Joanne's main concern was that he not dropped out of school permanently. She too went along with this plan but reluctantly. After a poor shoveling in his first semester, Neil's grades had declined even more in the second. Well then Slayton, who held such great hope for Neil, had become concerned. Neil still called his former teacher occasionally, but the calls came in less frequently because Slayton always brought up the subject of study and grades and never failed to let his feelings be known. And he would later recall that he would get angry and he would tell him, I ought to come down there and kick your butt over that campus. You got to do the work, Neil. They don't care what you made on your SATs anymore. You got to perform. At the end of the second semester, Neil found himself on academic probation. His scholarship threatened. And he said, Quote, I was still okay. They just told me to get my act together. I didn't really worry about it because I knew I could pull out of it if I wanted to. End quote. He made a show of good faith by enrolling in summer classes, taking math and German. He rarely went to class, however, and soon dropped math. After a few more weeks, he dropped his German class as well. He played DD with some of his friends who had remained on campus for the summer, but he spent much of his time sitting around the apartment with Bart and OP, watching MTV and drinking wine coolers. In June, Opie announced that his stepbrother Hank Foster was coming to visit and needed a place to stay. Bart and Neo agreed to let him stay in the apartment. Opie and Bart were sharing the large bedroom. Neo had the small bedroom. A huge closet storage room would be fixed up for Hank. Hank and his stepbrother were almost as much unalike as two people can be. Hank's father had divorced Hank's mother and later married Opie's mother, the owner of a popular off-campus gathering spot for students. Hank wore long lank hair, considered himself extremely liberal, collected creepy magazines, prided himself not only on his dexterity with the skateboard, but also on his remarkable ability to consume vast amounts of alcohol and drugs without apparent serious repercussions. Hank had attended college but dropped out to live, and he had arranged about the country living a counterculture existence on the edges of campuses in several cities. He had been living with his mother in Wisconsin until they had a falling out and he headed to Raleigh, where his father's stepmother and stepbrother lived. His stepmother had promised him a job in the restaurant. Bart liked Hank much more than he liked Opie, who often argued with him about politics and accused him of being just a retnik from the country. In Hank, he found a figure to admire and emulate. And he said later, quote, Hank is very intelligent. He's probably one of the most talented people I ever met. He could do anything, but he wasn't sure what he wanted to do. I guess that's what that's the way I am. He had this whole wellspring of ability, but it was just kind of going nowhere. You know, you sit at a crossroads and you try to make up your mind, you end up just sitting there. Just sitting around saying, well what are we going to do? End quote. When Hank moved into the apartment with Bart, Opie and Neil sold the drugs, primarily marijuana. Neil later would say that he didn't use marijuana that summer, but Bart began using it regularly. Bart had first tried marijuana only a year earlier on a traditional postgraduation trip to Myrtle Beach with many of his classmates at Barley Dancy High. And Bart recalled that a bunch of people partying, somebody said, Here, you want to try this. So he tried it. He figured if if he was going to college, he ought to at least try marijuana before he goes. Somebody put the Star Wars soundtrack on the stereo, Bart had carted to the beach, and the whole group sat back in a small pot and grew on the music. It really wasn't that big a thing, Bart would say later. He said, I didn't enjoy enough that I would want to go buy any. But marijuana's very illicitness appealed to the anti-establishment sensibilities that had been developing in Bart. And then too, Bart knew that his uncle Bill had used marijuana regularly, and he suspected that his father had used it too. By the time Bart had begun using marijuana regularly in the summer of 1987, all of Caswell County was about to learn of his uncle's use. On Monday, June 29th, a team of heavily armed sheriffs' deputies and SBI agents, accompanied by a helicopter with a TV news crew, had converged on Hickory Hill farm and swept through the old house where Bill and Lydia Upchurch lived. The officers had found 29 marijuana plants growing near the edge of the woods, 26 plants cut and drying, and 8 pounds of back marijuana in the house. The officers estimated its worth at more than$100,000. Bill maintained that the marijuana was for his own use. But he and Lydia were handcuffed and taken to the Castro County Jail, charged with manufacturing marijuana and maintaining a dwelling for control substances, both felonies. Bill's half-brother, John, who had just completed law school, bailed them out later that day. Carolyn did not learn about it until she read it in the newspaper the following day. She was horrified and embarrassed to show her face in the county where her own family and the upchurches always have been so prominent and law-abiding. She would have been even more horrified had she known that her eldest grandchild, Bart, not only was to see marijuana regularly, but also had not learned much, if anything, from his previous encounter with the law for theft. Unbeknownst to her, word already had filtered back to Casper County that both Bart and Neil were stealing their way through college. Weldon Slayton had heard as much from several students. Two Barley Yancy students who had gone to visit Neo at state had returned with a tale of Neil taking them on a shoplifting mission to a bookstore. Slayton couldn't resist bringing it up when Neil came home on a visit. And he said sarcastically, picked up any book any good books lately, Neil? So Neil had acknowledged his guild and sat meekly through Slayton's outrage lecture. He said, Don't you realize how stupid and shoutish this kind of thing is? There's no sense to it. And Neil would say, I know, I know, I was just trying to show off. But later Neil and Bart would disagree over who was the greater thief, each time playing his own theory and enhancing the others. Bart stated that Neil regularly broke into apartments and that she shoplifted on assignment. Somebody would say, Look, Neil, I need some CDs, and he would say, Give me 15 bucks and tell me what you want. And he would go out and come back with it. Neil was getting by on stealing and shoplifting and he was doing a pretty good business. Later, Neil denied that he regularly broke into apartments. The only time he ever did was during the summer of 1987, he said, and that was at Bart's suggestion. He and a couple of friends were sitting around drinking one night, and he said that there were that Bart came in and said, Hey, there's a place over here with an open sliding door and nobody at home. So all four of them slipped into the apartment, stole tapes and stereo equipment. And he said that it was an exaggerated drunken cartoon, everybody joking around. Imagine the Keystone cops going in somebody somewhere because it was silly. So shelf lifting was another matter. So Neil acknowledged something that always gave him an adrenaline rush, and he did it several times with Bart, he said, once with Opie and another time to impress some friends from Castro County, the ones who later told Walton Slayton about it. So he said that once he did it, he would let people think that he did it a whole lot more than he did to build up an image. And he said, quote, sometimes I will buy something and throw away the bag the bag and claim I stole it so they would think I was cool. It was just a little bit of stuff, really, but we talk about it a whole lot. Boy, we talk about it like we were hot stuff. The way I got more respect from them than I ever got any other way. End quote. Bart stole more than anybody in the group, according to Neo. He said he would come and tell me a lot of stories about what he was doing, breaking into cars and things like that. I had seen him steal CDs and tapes to sell to the record exchange. I saw him come home two or three times with car stereos. He would sell to friends on campus. One time he stole some speakers and was carrying them down Mission Valley Road and the police stopped him, but he took his weight out of it. Bart later acknowledged stealing car stereos and he said it was only a couple of times. Neil kept telling him how easy it was. He said, quote, I will be coming back drunk from some party, go buy a car that was unlocked, pull the thing out. Usually I had to be really drunk because I couldn't get up the courage otherwise. I did it just because it was so easy and I was so drunk. I'd probably sold them to somebody on campus to get some gas, but I didn't steal for money. I did it because I was bored and it was something exciting to do for the time being. No greater or lesser reason than that. End quote. Kenyatta, Bart's cousin and Neil's off and on girlfriend, knew that Neil and Bart both were thieves. She had seen both of them steal, and it made her furious. She and Neil revived the relationship late that spring, and that summer she came to spend several weekends in the apartment that Neil shared with Bart, Opie, and Hank. Neil showed her a telephone that he had stolen from an apartment, and she said that she saw him shoplift on several occasions. She said, quote, I was always mad at him stealing. He just didn't think anything about it. He said, a lot of people steal. What's the big deal? End quote. She was soon to have firsthand experience of being ripped off. Kenyatta had been a bicycle rider most of her life and she had two bikes. She noticed that Bart was collecting bicycles as well. Bikes, she was convinced, that he was stealing. He kept them chained on the patio of the apartment to prevent other thieves from making off with them before he could sell them, she said. That summer Kenyatta let Neo borrow one of her bikes while she was gone on a long planned bicycling tour. Trip to the West. She made the trip with her uncle Jim, cousin Emery, and a group of other riders from Cassero County and Danville in mid-August. Emery had developed an interest in bicycle racing, and Jim had taken up bike riding so that he and his younger son would have the activ and activity to share. In the spring, both had written in the Assault on Mount Metro, the highest mountain in the east, 6,600 foot peak in western North Carolina. That was considered to be the toughest bicycle race in the east, and both had been proud of finishing. Emory well ahead of his father. Now they were ready for higher mountains. For eight days in August, they undertook a 600-mile run from Abuqueque, New Mexico to southern Colorado, staying in the mountains all the way. They even made a run up Mount Evans, which is a 14,260-foot peak. Kenyatta went with them and had a wonderful time. She returned to find that the bike she had belonged to Neil was missing. He said it had been stolen. She was sure it had that it had been. She also was sure that she knew who had stolen it, but she was convinced that he had sold her bike with the other bikes he had stolen to help pay his share of the apartment rent. He denied, but she didn't believe him. She hardly believed anything he said anymore. And the theft of her bicycle was an offense she never would forgive. Thank you for listening to the murder book. Have a great week.