No Choirboy: Murder, Violence, and Teenagers on Death Row

On August 12, 1997, in Richmond, Virginia, 16-year-old William Jenkins was finishing his second day of work at Bullets, a fast-food restaurant. Suddenly, an armed robber entered the back door and placed the muzzle of his pistol to William’s neck, demanding money from the safe. Though William began to cooperate, the robber, 23-year-old Charles Bass, fired. William died instantly. Outside, another Bullets employee heard the shots and called 911, leading to the swift apprehension of the assailant and his two teenaged female accomplices.

William had two siblings: Paul, who was 13 at the time of the murder, and Mary, who was 10. Approximately nine years passed before Kuklin interviewed them: Paul was by then a junior at Virginia Commonwealth University, and Mary was a sophomore at Marymount University, also in Virginia. Both of them sat down together with Kuklin in Mary’s dorm room. William’s parents—Licia Hedian, a midwife, and Bill Jenkins, a drama instructor at Dominican University—also contributed to the dialogue via email. At the time of William’s death, they had been divorced for several years, but Bill was still closely involved with the family.

Mary prefaces the conversation with an admission that she and Paul have never discussed William’s death with one another, though both have occasionally talked about him to their mother. Mary recalls the horror and unreality of first learning about William’s death the morning after it occurred; she believed at first that it was a “dream” that she would soon wake up from. She was deeply depressed throughout middle school, failing at “everything.” Both siblings admit that they did not get along during those years.

Paul, who shared a bedroom with William, learned of his death the night it happened when his father came into the room to tell him. That night was one of the only times he had seen his father cry. His father told him that he wanted to keep William’s clothes because they still smelled like him. (Later, both siblings say that they kept his clothes and occasionally wore them.) Paul adds that he only cried for his brother about four times. This was because he “instinctively” began to shut down all emotion to numb his pain; Mary confirms that she noticed this.

What made William’s death particularly painful to Paul was that the two of them had not been close until the last two years of his life. William, he says, was very “advanced” and moved in a “cool” circle that Paul very much wanted to join. He feels that, as a 12- or 13-year-old, he never had the chance to win his brother’s respect and truly befriend him; most of his memories of William are of their “constant” fights. Mary too feels she has been cheated out of a special bond since she regards William as a kindred spirit with whom she shares many interests, such as guitar.

An email from Licia notes that her late son was acquainted with a “rough” crowd far removed from his own middle-class background; his best friend was a boy from the projects in Richmond. His siblings hasten to add that these friends were “nice” people, though occasionally “misguided.” They suggest that William was drawn to people and beliefs somewhat outside the mainstream, such as his interest in Wicca. Licia, a devout Christian, was troubled by this preoccupation. Regarding her own religious faith, she says that William’s death weakened her relationship with God, which took her much time and effort to repair. Ironically, the siblings note that Licia’s relationship with Bill, her ex-husband and their father, improved; they began to pray together and became friends again.

The siblings’ discussion moves to the death penalty, which every member of the family opposes. Bill explains in an email that he personally pleaded with the prosecutor not to seek the death penalty for his son’s killer, a situation that felt “surreal” but was essential given his longtime philosophical and religious convictions. If not for his urging, he believes the defendant would likely have been executed since he was poor and Black, while his victim was a white, middle-class teenager. The siblings opine that their father, who is now heavily involved in victims’ rights advocacy, opposed the death penalty for William’s killer in part to spare the young man’s family the excruciating grief he himself was experiencing. Also, due to their spiritual beliefs, the family has never believed in revenge as an acceptable motive. Moreover, Mary believes that the murderer’s impulsive act will likely torment him with guilt for the rest of his life.

Licia confides that the killer’s accomplices, the two teenaged girls, reminded her of William’s friends and that she felt pity for them. Though a Republican and far (she says) from a “bleeding-heart” liberal, she feels distinctly that the “community” failed these girls and others like them. Paul opines that the girls received much harsher sentences than they deserved.

The siblings reflect on their father’s attempts to cope with William’s death. Bill wrote a book, What to Do When the Police Leave, about losing his son. He tried to get his surviving children to read it in the hopes that it would help them process their trauma. Mary found this too painful, whereas Paul eventually got through it after losing a friend to violence—an event that revived much of his buried grief for William. Mary’s initial reaction to the book was one of anger: She saw it as a product of her father’s guilt over not spending much time with his family after the divorce, and later over devoting so much of his time and energy to William’s memory at the expense of his surviving children and his second wife. (She has since changed her mind about her father’s motives.)

Paul notes that his father volunteers at the Victim Impact Panel for the Cook County Juvenile Prevention Program, where he seeks to prevent tragedies like William’s by sharing the grief of his loss with at-risk teenagers. Paul once accompanied his father to one of these meetings. Mary finds it difficult to relate to her father’s ability, and willingness, to talk so frequently about his personal loss. She and her brother feel it just as strongly but tend to keep it beneath the surface. As Paul says, “We’re not private with our feelings, but we’re private with our grief” (174).