The Murder Book: A True Crime Podcast

The Von Stein Family Tragedy Part XIII: Drugs, Games and a Deadly Spiral

• BKC Productions

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Welcome to the murder book. I'm your host, Chiara, and this is another episode of the Von Stein family tragedy. Let's begin. Later when his friends try to describe Chris Pritchard, they call him off the wall, strange, weird, a character. He was smarter than the average. He was funny. Evolved in a loud and crude way. He was a show-off, frequently doing things to draw attention to himself. He was the kind who was always trying to prove something. He was a dreamer filled with big plans for the future that regularly bubble up out of him. But some friends wonder how he would ever accomplish such great schemes. For he was easily bored, impulsive, anxious. He was always in a rush, according to his mother, Bonnie Vanstein. Two passions occupied most of Chris's time outside of school: cars and role-playing fantasy games, especially Dungeons and Dragons. He first had become interested in DD while he was doing grammar school in Indiana. After his family moved to Washington, he began playing regularly with a small group of friends he met in school, a group that his other friends considered to be brainy but odd. Chris's passion for cars led him to a different group of friends, less brainy, more outgoing in. And among the teenage cruisers in Washington, Chris was well known both for his car and the way he drove it. His car was a classic 65 Mustang flashback. Or fastback, I should say. It was black with a ghost stripe down each side when he got it. A 16th birthday present from his mother and his stepfather, Leith Van Stein. Later he had it repainted in its original color. Whipped in white with black stripes. Steve Outlaw, one of his closest friends, also had a must then, and they spent many hours together working on their cars. Chris loved the sense of power that a car gave him, and behind the wheel he became a different person, forceful and reckless. A good student in high school, Chris maintained a B. Aberton to his senior year when personal problems got him off to a bad start. The summer before his senior year, he spent several weeks with his father Stephen Pritchard, his first long stay with him since his father had left when Chris was three, barely old enough to remember. Chris wrote with him on one of his long distance trucking runs to the West, and his mother worried about the emotional effects of the visit. Soon after his return, Chris started dating one girl regularly, his first real love affair. When she broke off the relationship after only three weeks, he nearly went to pieces. His concentration faltered, his grades plummeted, and some friends thought that he began to develop an uncaring attitude. His best scores in high school were in science and math, and at the end of October during his senior year, he applied to the engineering program at NC State University, the program Leith von Stein had flunked out of 20 years ago. Although his SAT or ACT scores were not exceptional, 1020, they were high enough to get Chris accepted as a nuclear engineering student at State only a month after he sent it in his application. A matter of great pride to his stepfather. And although Chris had a trouble senior year in high school, nearly flanking English and college preparatory math, he still was graduated 168th in his class of 266, with a 2.86 grade point average. But once Chris got to state in August 1987, his study habits grew far worse. At the end of the first semester, he had a grade point average of only 1.3, barely passing. And his grades became a matter of contention with his stepfather, who could see Chris going down the same path to failure that he had taken at state. Although Chris improved his grades slightly at the end of the second semester, he still was far from living up to his potential. Drinking was a part of Chris's failure to study. He had begun drinking in high school, but once in college and away from his the structures of home, he began drinking more and more. In the first semester, he drank mostly on weekends, usually Canadian mist or vodka, sometimes spending Sundays and some Mondays nearly too sick to get out of bed. He never had like beer, but by second semester he had acquired taste for it and began drinking it every day. Chris became worried that he was an alcoholic, so he quit drinking completely for a month, during which he brought up his grades to a low C, but at the end of the period he started drinking again, this n this time more than ever. Chris was enjoying his liberty too much to return home to Washington at the end of his freshman year. Although his mother's stepfather thought that he needed a break from classes, Chris decided to go to summer school, which allowed him to keep his room on the sixth floor of Lee Dorm. During the 10-day interim between spring semester and the beginning of the first session of summer school, Chris returned home and brought back to school his beloved Mostan, which had remained in Washington since the previous summer because freshmen and state were not allowed cars. Now he had mobility with his liberty, and to supplement the$50 allowance his parents put into his account each week. He got a$4.50 an hour parent job in the men's department at Miller and Rhodes, a clothing store in Crabtree Valley Mall, only a few miles from the campus. He had just gotten off work after one of his early days on the job when he saw misleading notice on the dorm lobby bulletin board that says free beer. When he saw that the notice actually was about Dungeons and Dragons, which appealed to him as strongly as beer, he went straight to the eighth floor and introduced himself to the dungeon master, James Barlett Upchurch III, who by the summer of 1988 wanted friends to call him Moog. Bard moved back onto campus that May with more money than he had ever had. An insurance company had just paid him nearly$5,500 to replace the Camaro he had demolished on the day after he bought it in February. The money should have gone to the credit union, which held the lien on the car, but through a fluke, Bart received the title to the car and the check came to him. Rather than pay off the loan on the car, Bart decided to keep the money and continue making payments on the car, which now, unbeknownst to the credit union, rested in a yankyard. When the check came, Bart paid a bank to cash it and took the money in$100 bills. He called Opie, who was about to leave for basic training, and arranged to meet him to pay off a debt he owed for back rent. Bart climbed into OP's Jeep, gleefully pulled out the big roll of bills and began counting them off. And OP even told him that if a cop would come by he was going to know we're doing a drug deal. You better watch yourself so somebody will kill you for that. And after flashing the money around to his friends, Bart put$2,000 in the bank, made several advanced payments on the car loan so he could ha wouldn't have to worry about that for a while, and went on a spending spree with the rest. Among other purchases, he bought tickets to a Pink Floyd concert for himself and all of his friends, and on the night before the concert, he threw a big party and provided all the alcohol and drugs with his windfall money. Bart wanted to use the$2,000 he put into the bank to buy a Jeep, but the one he and Opie wanna found that was to his liking cost considerably more than he had. With his usual audaciousness, Bart asked the bank to make a loan on it. When the bank said no, he began to look for a lesser priced vehicle. A one ad for a 67-4 Galaxy convertible with a new paint job, new chrome, and for a new top call his eye. So he went to look at the car. It was a big hokey machine, dramatic, a sure attention getter, and Bart could picture himself and his friends charging Wally in it, making all the girls take notice. Bart bought the car only to discover that it needed new brakes and other expensive repairs. He put it in into a shop to have the work done, but the bill came to more than$1,000, and Bart realized he wouldn't have the money to pay it and still get through summer school, even though his mother had given him money for the first session's tuition. The shop owner agreed to hold the car until Bart finished summer school and could pay the bill. Later, Chris would say that he met Neil Henderson on his first visit to Bart's dorm room, but Bart would say it actually was on his second visits when they got together to plan around their class and work schedules to play DD. Bart was taking two courses, the first summer session, prehistoric archaeology and anthropology. Chris was enrolled in a single course, Carculus. Neil was working third shift at a Safa Center, giving him time to play in the afternoon and early evening. They decided that they could play at least twice, possibly three times a week, and Bart began mapping a campaign. During the first week of classes, both Bart and Chris attended faithfully and did their classwork. But soon after the session began, Chris met another student in his calculus class, Tim Parker. Soon after their meeting, Parker asked Chris if he smoked pot. Sure, Chris told him. And later he would claim that he actually had smoked only a couple of joints during his entire freshman year. Parker was heavy, it was a he was a heavy marijuana user, so Chris later claimed that he had offered it to Chris without charge. Within a week after Parker first offered him pot, Chris said he was smoking it every day. During the second week of classes, Chris came to Bart's room to talk about D ⁇ D, but the conversation took another turn. And Chris asked him, Do you get high? And his answer was, yeah, sure. He said, Well, come on down later if you want to. We got plenty of dough. When Bart went downstairs to Chris's room, he heard loud rock music coming from within. He knocked and heard people shuffling around before the door cracked open and somebody peeked up. It's Mook. Bart heard Chris say, Hey man, he's cool. And the door swung open to a smiling group of students and a haze of marijuana smoke. Neil Henderson spent a little time on campus with Bart, Chris, and Quincy. He came over for the DD sessions, which, when not scheduled at his apartment, were played in Bart's room or the dorms downstairs. The downstairs study room. But he rarely stayed for the partying, usually walking back to the apartment he shared with Butch Michel on Ligen Street. Part of the reason was that he was back with Kenyatta, who had finished her first year at the School of Science and Math and did not want to return home for the summer. Neil invited her to move in with him. Kenyatta saw this as an opportunity to revise and rebuild their relationship and she resented the long hours that Neil spent playing DD. And soon she and Neil were bickering and yelling just as they had in their tumultuous past. And, you know, Neil later said of Kenyatta that she liked having her around, but when they stay around each other too long, she got on his nerves because she was a very hyper person. She grew upper extremely easily. She would go and play DD twice a week until she magnifies that into never spending any time with her. Because Neil worked late at night and Kenyatta has taken a daytime job at McDonald's, they had opposite schedules and little time to be together. Kenyatta wanted to have that time alone with Neil. She said, quote, I would want to cook him dinner to go out somewhere. He wanted to spend all of his time doing DD. End quote. A couple of times she went with him to his games on campus only to draw the eye the ire of her cousin, Bart, whom she still called James despite his preference for Moog. He treated her really bad. It was like, why are you here? And he picked on her. He knew her weaknesses, and he would use her weaknesses against her. And she would go over there and he would make her cry and she would start walking back to the apartment. So after James abused her, Neil would ask ask her, Why did you leave? And she would say, You saw how he treated me, but he wouldn't say anything about it. I hated James. In in according to uh to Kenyatta, she would say, I hated James. I hated him for letting my bike get stolen, but I really hate hated him for making me cry. End quote. He didn't care about himself, and he didn't care about anybody according to Kenyatta. Although Kenyatta's relationship with Neil's roommate Butch started off okay, it too began to deteriorate and soon led to yelling, and Neil also had begun to realize that moving in with Butch was a mistake. He hardly knew him, had only played DD with him, Butch had a powerful temper. Neil discovered that he and his he never knew when his roommate might explode in anger. So he was unaware that in the past Butch had been hospitalized for emotional problems and that Butch's mother worried that when he drank he might become violent and hurt somebody. Like Bart, Butch resented Neil's sloppiness and disorder. Another Butch was a regular member of DD groups with Neil, he also resented Neo's form of play. Neil was always trying to rule the world. The boy was hungry for power, but it but it put it that way, he hated playing with him. Neil's philosophy is if you got it, I want I want it and I will kill you for it. So what he wants, he's gonna get it. So he's a calm, he's calm, he's sneaky, he's not physical, but he's always thinking. By the third week out of the first summer school session, Chris had a smoking device called a bong in his room and was using marijuana daily, and he was paying Tim Parker for it. He also was drinking great amounts of beer each day. As Chris and Bart were smoking pot one day, Bart asked if he ever had used acid and Chris said no. So later Chris remembered Bart telling him, You ought to try it, it's cheap. Only three dollars a hit. It gives a great high and it lasts a long time. Soon after that, Chris, Bart, Neil, Butch, Quincy, and Brew were playing DD in the dorm near in the dorm study room. Chris was sure that Bart was on acid. He thought that he could tell because Bart was jumpy, as he described it, more hyperactive than usual, and his eyes rolled and darted. When the game ended, Bart told Chris and Neil that he had some acid and suggested that they try that they try it. And both were willing as well. So they went into Bart's room and Bart sold two hits to Chris and one to Neil, suggesting that they take only half a hit to begin. Chris took half, but Neil decided to take the whole thing. Bart took a whole hit too. Afterward, they went to Chris's room and smoked pot. When Chris reported feeling nothing from the acid, he took another hit this time. So Bart sold two hits to Chris and one to Neil, suggesting that they take only half a hit to begin. Sorry, I think I repeated myself out here a little bit. But afterward they went to Chris's room, they smoked pot, and when Chris reported feeling nothing from the acid, he took another hit, and this time it was a whole one. And within 30 minutes, he later reported that he began seeing bursting colors, hearing the music to which he was listening much, listening much differently than he ever had ever heard it before. He felt euphoric on top of the world, bolder than he ever had felt, and he could not contain his energy. He had to go outside. It was after midnight, and the three went out and walked four hours around the campus. It was nearly five when Neil went home and Bart returned to his room. Chris was still too energetic to sleep, and he went to his room and listened to music for another hour before dosing off. Hank had now returned from his travels, and Bart introduced him to Chris three days after Chris's first acid experience. Hank began coming frequently to Chris's room to join in the activities. By the fourth week of the first summer session, both Bart and Chris were attending class less frequently. Chris decided to change his calculus course from credit to audit, thinking that would release him from having to return in homework and take tests, but he was soon to learn different. At the end of that week, Chris got his paycheck from Miller and Rhodes. He bought half a gram of cocaine and half an arms of marijuana from Tim Parker and went up to Bart's room, where Bart, Hank, and two other of their friends had gathered. After high marihuana, Chris bought him eight hits of asset from the the cocaine, the acid, the marijuana. And he grandly announced, Fellows, now this is power. He offered up his marijuana and cocaine to the others, and before the night was out, the drugs all had been used, and the campus police had been summoned after the group began throwing firecrackers from the balcony. Later Chris reported that he was really messed up to. But once again, he was so energy-filled that he couldn't contain himself. Once more, he and Bart and the others walked off the length sorry of the of the high and this time off campus, covering like five or six miles. Chris later estimated that it was on this walk that Bart and Chris told Chris about the tunnels. And Bart had learned about the tunnels as a freshman, and he already had made several forays there exploring. The tunnels were concrete underground passages that crisscrossed the entire campus, carrying steam pipes and other utilities from buildings to buildings, and their entrances were barred and locked. But BART had other students had discovered that money. Manholes about the campus offered access. Chris was excited about the tunnels and wanted to go immediately. So nobody else was interested, but Bart agreed to take Chris to see them. It was around about like 4 a.m. when they lifted aside a heavy grate near the DH Hill Library and drop into the darkness and NC state's underworld. Bart knew the locations of switches to turn on the fluorescent lights and they wandered through which the intricate network of pipers or pipes I should say, pausing to smoke another joint and to read the graffiti that other student explorers had painted on the tunnel walls, giving them the look of a New York subway car. When they climbed back out of the manhall. They would be wealthy and popular. Chris mentioned that it was just a matter of time before he would be wealthy anyway. His family, he said, had millions, not to mention three houses and seven cars. This was the first time the others had heard anything about Chris's family being rich, although they knew him. They didn't he knew they were well to do. So he said, Bart said later, you know, I didn't know his parents had money. I knew he would call his mom and ask for 50 or 100 bucks that and he would get it. I wish I could call my parents and do that, but it didn't I didn't know they had that kind of money. How does this old man get that money? Somebody asked. And Chris said he had inherited it. And he says, you know, it says, hey man, you ought to just off your parents and go ahead and get that money. Somebody said that out loud, although later nobody would recall who said it. And Chris, when he heard this, he said, Yeah, I could buy a big house in the woods. And somebody said, up in North Raleigh. And somebody else put in, oh yeah, you got to have a swimming pool. And Chris added, Anna Ferrari, a satellite dish, a big screen TV, and a pool table. So they began fantasizing about the possibilities. They all could live together, buy plenty of drugs and booze, play DD whenever they wanted, attract fabulous babes. Chris said he would buy a killer stereo system, two serious computers for him, two and blue, and boo to write on. And he might not just make this Wenson's ice cream parlor near the campus, too, and turn it into a restaurant and club for Bart to run. Later, Chris called his session bullshitting and daydreaming. And Bart said, We were all joking, just being ridiculous. We were wish listing. We'll be right back. By the fifth and final week of the first session of summer school, Bart and Chris had stopped going to class. Chris had been upset to learn that even though he had changed to audit against Carculus class, he still was expected to do homework and take exams. He had no intention of doing either. He explained to his mother that there had been a misunderstanding and he was getting no credit for his class. That was fine with her, but she tried to talk him out of staying for the second summer session, telling him that he needed a break from classes and a chance to enjoy himself before starting his sophomore year. Chris was already enjoying himself almost more than he could stand, however, and he insisted on enrolling for the second session, this time taking the chemistry and a political science course in American government. Although Bart had paid little attention to his studies in the final weeks of his first summer session, he thought that he would slip by in cultural anthropology and get an incomplete in prehistoric archaeology, and that was how it turned out. For the second summer session, he signed up for math and English, and his grandmother, Carolyn, whom he rarely saw anymore, ended up paying his tuition. When the first summer session ended on June 28th, Chris's closest friend from his freshman year, Chuck Jackson, moved into the dorm room with Chris. Like Chris, he was a Dungeons and Dragon player, but unlike Chris, he was a serious student who refused to neglect his studies. Chuck brought an air conditioner with him, installed it in the dorm window, ensuring that the room would be the gathering place for all of Chris's friends. After Chuck moved in, he and his completed the sleeping loft that Chris had been intending to erect, but never have gotten around to, making even more room for friends to gather to party and play DD. On Thursday, June 30th, during the weeklong break between summer sessions, Bart and Chris were finishing off a picture of beer California pizza. Both had smoked pot and taken a hit of acid earlier and were waiting for the asset rush to hit. California had become the chief gathering spot away from campus for Bart, Chris, and other friends. It seemed an unlikely choice for it was Yuppie establishment in a suburban shopping center. Bart had worked there briefly soon after the place opened. California's chief appeal to Bart to Bart Chris and their friends was that they could buy beer there without question, although they were underage. Chris usually drank at least a pitcher of beer at California every day, sometimes two or three. When friends from home visited, he loved to take them there and show off by buying beer. He spent so much time at California and deepened or depended, I should say, so much upon it that he had begun to call it the center of the universe, and for him and his friends that summer it was. On this day, Chris and Bart were bored. Chris had gone to work at his clothing store job the day before and had not even bothered to go and explain why. He was tired of the job and ready to quit. It interfered with his drinking and pot smoking and kept him from playing Dungeons and Dragons. With July 4th, weekend looming, many of Chris's and Bart's friends have left town. Bart and Chris had made no plans. And Chris said, Hey, we can go to South Carolina. We can visit my aunt. She has a party waiting for us. And Bart was skeptical, parting with an aunt. And he said, Hey, she's cool. She parties heavy. First time I ever got drunk was at a party at her house. I always have a good time down there. So beyond that, Chris said that he knew a girl there, and his aunt, who was his mother's younger sister, had a daughter. And he said that, oh, my cousin's good looking, so I'll set you up with her. It was only a matter of a telephone call, Chris said. Boy was agreeable, and Chris collected from the restaurant. He re returned to the table to report that the party was on. They went back to the dorm to pick up a few things, landed a case of Michelop into Chris's Mustang and headed for I-45 in South California. And on the way they drank most of the case of beer. They were drunk, but still frenetic from the acid, when they stopped at a truck stop near the state line to call Chris's inman, and they arrived at her house to find numerous vehicles, including several pickup trucks with gun racks in the back window. A party was in full swing inside the small brick house, many of the participants members of a local volunteer fire department. Later, neither Chris nor Bart would remember many details of the party. Bart would recall somebody showing off 357 Magnum and being offered his fill two of moonshine. Liquor, and he would recall somebody offering him that what was called a blueberry dairy. Actually a mixture of moonshine and a percapped syrup, which he described by but Chris accepted to his dismay. And the great amusement of the party goers, as Bart later told it, Bart also would recall being called a city boy by the rural firefighters, a chart he found especially ironic when he thought of the wilds at Caswell County, where he and he had spent most of his life. Bart later remembered being distressingly hungover the following day, but by afternoon he and Chris had recovered sufficiently to accompany Chris's cousin on a visit to a nearby zoo. That's right. Chris wanted to go to another party with a zoo. Sorry. They were going to the party to a nearby zoo, and then Chris wanted to go to another party with a girl that he had gone out with previously, a friend of his cousin Bart, and and then Bart declined and stayed behind with Chris's aunt, who changed the dressings on wounds on his elbow and shoulder that he had occurred from an earlier skateboarding phone. So Chris returned bragging of taking the girl to a motel room and of partying with big-time drug dealers who show off UC's Bart set later. On Saturday, Bart was loading his stuff into Chris's car when he saw wires dangling from the dashboard and an empty space where he had the expensive stereo radio intake player that Chris's mom and stepfather had given him for Christmas had been. So Bart said, Hey man, somebody stole your stereo, and Chris didn't believe it. Say, go look. So of course Chris was angry and worried about what Bonnie and Leith would say. They didn't even know where he was. His mother had called, asking her sister if she had seen her, had not heard of it from him, and she had cover for himself. Now his aunt called the sheriff's department to report the theft. A deputy came and took a report, but Chris knew that he would have to tell his parents that the theft occurred as well elsewhere. On the trip back to Raleigh, Chris began to worry about what to tell his mother of his whereabouts for We'll be right back. So on the trip back to Raleigh, Chris began to worry about what to tell his mother of his whereabouts for the past three days. His mother called him several times each week, sometimes daily, and he knew by the call that she had made to his aunt's house on Friday that she was worried about him. He had no idea just how worried she was. Bunny and Leith had planned to spend that weekend in Wisdom Salem. Chris' sister Angela and her friend Donna Brady were going to leave on Thursday and spend the night with Chris in Raleigh, then drive on to Washington, Salem to join Bonnie and Leith on Friday. Angela had co-arranged it all with Chris, who had forgotten about it. Angela and Donna arrived in Raleigh Thursday night while Chris and Bart were just reaching South Carolina. Unable to find Chris, Angela and Donna later reported that they slept in Angela's car in a campus parking lot before driving onto St. Wisconsin Salem. When Angela told her mother about being unable to find Chris, Bunny began calling all of her friends and all of her relatives looking for him. And uh when she still had not located him. When she still had not located him by Saturday morning, she called the campus police. The police seemed less than concerned after Bonnie had told her story, but she insisted that Chris was very good at remembering appointments and wouldn't have forgotten that his sister was coming. He always called into work when he couldn't be there, she said. He always called her if he was going someplace. She was certain that something terrible had happened to her, to her son. So the campus police told Bonnie that she would have to send a letter stating that she felt that Chris was missing involuntarily. But they could begin an investigation immediately if she made a recorded statement to that effect. Bonnie recorded the statement by telephone at 4.06 p.m., five hours after making her first call to the campus police. By that time, Chris and Bart were on their way back to Raleigh. The campus police, meanwhile, were checking with the Raleigh police and with all area hospitals, including the nearby mental hospital, and a missing person's report went out to police agencies across the state. And Bart was telling Chris as they drove to a rally, you either have to tell the truth or just made up make up something totally unlandish. Laughing, they made up the story that Chris later told his parents about getting to see Bart's uncle, the car breaking down, and no lady feeling them feeding them goat's milk and the bologna sandwiches that make them deathly sick. And Bart assured Chris, don't worry about it, they'll believe it. When Chris said Bart arrived back at campus Saturday evening, friends said Chris, man, you better call your mama. She's got the cops and the National Guard out looking for you. At 1025 that night, a campus police sergeant knocked on Chris's dorm room door. Chris assured him that he was in good health. He had been in Roanoke Rapids, town near the Virginia border, visiting relatives, he said, and had forgotten to let his parents know that he was going. The officer told him to call his mother and Chris assured him that he would do it immediately. Chris was apologetic when he called his mother. He had forgotten all about Angela coming, he said. Then he told her the story that he and Bart had dreamed of, and Bonnie was so relieved that she was willing to accept any explanation. But when she told Leith what Chris had said, Leith said he didn't believe that story for a minute. A day after the return from South Carolina, Bart and Chris were ready for another party. This was Sunday, July 3rd, and the campus was almost dead because of the holiday weekend. Five few students were still in the dorm, and Bart set out through the building to see if he could round up some potential merrymakers. On the fifth floor, he encountered two young women and told them to come up to the sixth floor later for a party in Chris's room. The young women were Cyril Cook and Sandra Goodman. Cybil, who was from a nearby town, was a sophomore who wanted to work with children, and she just had transferred from another university and knew almost nobody at state. Sandra Goodman was the first person she had met. Sandra, day student who was commuting to summer classes, was visiting in Sibyl's room when Bart came by, introducing himself as Moog. Sibyl thought Bart was cute, and she and Sandra decided to go upstairs and see what was going on. Later, neither would recall anything special happening that night, but the party was significant because it allowed them to make the acquaintance of Bart and Chris and several others. They would remember it as the night that they were drawn into the circle of Bart and Chris's friends. In coming weeks, they will see Bart and Chris almost every day. Two days after meeting Bart and Chris, Sandra and Sybil joined them at California Pizza, along with Chris' roommate, Chuck Jackson, Drew Simpson, and another student who occasionally played DD with the group. Or were sitting at a big round table eating pizza and drinking beer when Sandra and Sibyl realized that the conversation had taken an unexpected turn. The others were talking about killing somebody. This person had too much power, they said, and they were plotting how they could slip up on him in his sleep and slay him with a sword. Sandra later remembered asking herself, what in the world are they talking about? It seemed like something that they were planning, that they were really planning on doing, she said. And Cyril recalled that she was getting real nervous because she didn't know these guys, and she was thinking this is this was awfully strange. She was looking at Sandra kind of funny. It took them a little while to realize that the guys were talking about a game. It was the first they knew that the circle they had fallen into was one betrothed to Dungeons and Dragons, a game that neither of them knew anything about. Two days later on Thursday, July 7th, Bart, Chris, and Hank were sitting again at California, downing more pitches of beer when they decided to take off on another trip, this time to the beach. They stopped to see friends of Chris's and Greenville, and Chris showed off the quarter gram of cocaine in the ounce of Hawaiian pot that he had bought. Later they drove through Washington with Bart and Hank, urging Chris to roar down his street so they could all take a piss on his parents farm long. And Bart said, We were in that Hunter S. Thompson drug induced spirit of adventure, and we figure we have already fucked up so much. Let's go and do some more. They got to the beach at three in the morning and headed back after a short frolic in the surf, and have have Have Lock Chris was stopped for speeding. The cops searched the car but didn't find the pot that Bart had hidden under the dashboard. Chris got away with nothing more than another speeding ticket. Although both Bart and Chris still made efforts to go to class sporadically, their outside activities left them little time to study. Chris, who had quit his job at Miller and Roads after the trip to South Carolina, was playing in in two DD groups and keeping track of his games and his character's powers on the computer in his room. After the long DD sessions, which sometimes stretched far into the night and usually were enhanced by marijuana, alcohol, and acid, Chris often wanted to go adventuring in the tunnels beneath the campus. Usually he and the others carry flashlights, but they sometimes made torches from sticks wrapped in toilet paper, and Chris usually carried a falcon, a bamboo martial arts sword. Chris was always saying, Let's go tunneling. He liked going down there, according to Bart, and he would always take some pot and he would walk around and smoke pot and read the graffiti. Once they took cans of spray paint and left behind their own graffiti. Chris spraying Underground Guild and CWP, July 1988 on the walls. They never attempted to play DD in the tunnels, and the most exciting thing that ever happened there was unexpectedly hearing another group of students and chasing them, making them think the cops were after them. After a while, it got boring, Bart said of their underground adventures. It was hot and uncomfortable down there, but Chris never got enough of it. Chris spent more time with Sandra and Cyril than Bart did, sometimes devoting evenings to playing. A card game called Spades with them in one dorm room or another. Sandra often spent nights in Sibyl's room rather than driving back home. Bart shied away from being alone with Sandra and Sibyl after he realized that Sibyl had a crush on him. He wanted nothing to do with her, and after she realized that he wasn't interested in her, she never pressed her attention. Sandra was engaged, but her fiance had transferred to an out-of-state college in May, and they had since agreed to begin seeing others. She was dating somebody off campus and had no romantic interest in Chris or any of his friends. Nonetheless, Chris tried hard to impress Sandra and Sybil. For one thing, he led them to believe that he kept important secrets in his computer. One was a cool plan that would bring him a lot of money, he boasted. Both Sandra and Cibyl had heard Chris bragging about knowing big-time drug dealers, and they assumed that the plan had something to do with drug deal. Drugs were becoming more and more part of Chris's life by then, and he was smoking pot at least three times a day. Often sleeping for a while afterward, he continued drinking at least a picture of beer a day at California, and he used acid two or three times a week, usually a head and a half and a half at a time. His$50 weekly allowance all went for drugs, and his credit card was at his limit. Sandra and Ciro later recalled that Chris was asking his mother for money to buy clothes and bragging when she sent it that it was all going for drugs. He stopped buying cocaine because it was too expensive and he didn't offer a long enough high. He continued to depend on Tim Parker and Parker's friends from marijuana. And he got his acid from Bart and Hank. He said, although Bart later denied that he and Hank were Chris's suppliers. Chris makes several more trips as the second summer school session wore on, twice going to Greenville to visit friends from high school. On one of those trips, he took a friend named David, who was called Wasted White Skin and a black friend of David's. On another trip, he and Brew went to the beach, stopping first at Chris's house in Washington and visiting briefly with his mother. The real purpose of that trip was to go to the courthouse at Newborn and pay off the speeding ticket that he had gotten on the early trip to the beach with Barton Hank, but Chris was careful not to let his mother know that. He would already had four previous traffic tickets and had lost his license once, and he knew what his parents' reaction would be if they found out about this one. He told his mother on the stopover that he and Bru might come back and spend the night, but they returned to Rally instead. Chris waited until he got back to the dorm to call his mother and tell her that he wouldn't be returning to spend the night, but he would come back for a longer visit, he promised. He kept that promise on Friday, July 22nd, calling his mother first to let her know that he was coming. Before leaving, he tried to make a memory wanna buy from a friend of Tim Parker, a high school student, who took his money and a check, left him waiting three hours in a shopping center parking lot, never returned. Angry and frustrated, Chris drove on to Washington and spent the night at home. His visit took an unexpected turn on Saturday when his mother, the mother of the high school student from whom Chris had tried to make the drug by, called his house, seeking an explanation for the check Chris had given to her son. Chris finally had to admit to his upset mother and stepfather that the check had been for marijuana and that he did smoke a little pot now and then. After that unpleasantness, Chris remained to grow hamburgers for his family, but despite his mother's plea that he stayed another night, he returned to campus after supper, saying that he had to get back to work on a report for his political science class that was due Monday morning. But when he got back to Raleigh that Saturday night, Chris did not work on the unwritten report that he had been nagging at him for days. Instead, he and Bart went to California pizza, drank beer. He didn't work on his report the next day either. Sunday night, july twenty fourth, he, Sandra, and Cybil rode to the Safer Center, and Sandra went in and bought a case of beer. They brought it back to the dorm, put put part of it in the refrigerator in Chris's room, and took the rest to Cyril's room, where they were joined by Chuck and Brew and began a game of spades. About 11, Brew got upset at Chuck for helping the girls win the with the game and they got they they had words. Chuck left and went back to his room, but Chris and Bru remained drinking and continuing his game. The summer was not turning out as Kenyatta of church hoped that it would, because instead of she and Neil rebuilding the relationship, they seemed to be growing further apart. Almost everything that he did irritated her and they argued constantly. She hated that he remained so devoted to Dungeons and Dragons and focused most of his energies on the game, ignoring her. She hated that he commit he continued stealing, slipping something into his clothing every night as he left his safe center. And later Neil would say that his this was mostly food and he didn't really consider that stealing. She hated the stupid things he was doing, like playing in the tunnels using drugs. She was particularly upset that Neil had started using acid. And she said later, I hate drunk people. I'm scared of drugs. And I asked Neil, why do you have to do this? And he said, Oh, I just want to try it. Neil is big on this experimental stuff and thinks should should try. Thinks you should try everything, he said. But Kenyatta said, Well, you're going to get addicted to it. And he would say to her, No, no, it's just experimental, it's not really addictive. And she didn't believe him. She would say, Oh yeah, sure. More than anything, Kenyatta hated the people Neil was associating with that summer. His roommate Butch, her cousin Bard, whom she still called James and despised. She described him as scum. And Chris Pritchard. Every time she saw Chris, he was either coming off or going on a hike. Drugs or alcohol every time he did it, he did it to excess. He was very skinny, very sick looking. Black things around black rings around his eyes, totally nasty looking, like he was right on the edge. He just looked real weird to her. Looked like he didn't care about anything. James and Chris both had that look. We don't care about what happens. So Kenyatta worked a later shift than usual at McDonald's on Sunday night, July 24th. She got off from the shift early and came back to the apartment thinking that she and Neil might do something together. As usual, she found Neil playing Dungeons and Dragons with Butch and another friend in the clutter of the living room. And she it would is it would just make her mad. She went into the bedroom, she shared with Neil, slammed the door, changed clothes, went about furiously cleaning the room. Several times she went out to the kitchen or the bathroom each time giving cold scales to Neil and his friends, who play right on. Each time she returned to the bedroom, slamming the door. After a while the game broke up, Neil came in looking sheepish. And he said, Kenyatta, I just did acid. It's going to take effect in about 20 minutes. And she told him, Well, thank you very much for telling me. You can leave now. I don't want you in this apartment. And she recalled later he stood in that he stood in the doorway a long time. And he said to her, I can't believe you're throwing me out. And she said, Well, just go and don't take your key. I'm not going to let you back in here. I don't want to see you on a trip. So he got his stuff and left. Butch asked her later, Where did Neil go? And Kenyatta said with disgust, Well, he's doing acid. I guess he's going to wander off somewhere in the tunnels. When Sandra and Sibyl tire of space sometime after midnight, Chris suggested another game, Truth or Dare. They played for an hour or so and then went back to space. Sandra and Sibyl were tired and sleepy from the effects of the beer, and they began yawning and giving other signs that they were ready to for bed. But Chris was drunk and wanted to play more. And Sibyl said at one point, can you please quit playing this game? But Chris and Brew showed no signs of stopping. Several more times Sibyl and Sandra mentioned how tired and sleepy they were. Still Chris and Brew didn't leave. Finally, Sibyl insisted that they quit the game. So Chris asked, What time is it? And somebody said it's near it's nearly 3 30. And much to the relief of Sandra and Sybil, Chris and Bruce finally left. Brew hid for home, Chris went up and one flight of stairs into his room, where Chuck had been long asleep, and climbed into his sleeping loft. In little more than an hour, the phone by Chuck's bed would ring and he would awaken long enough to jog Chris's from his brief sleep and hand him the receiver. Chris would later hear his sister's his sister's voice telling him that his mother and stepmother had been stabbed and that he had better get his butt home. Thank you for listening to the murder book. Have a great week.

Contributor

Kiara Coyle

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