From Patriarch to the Small Screen: The North Carolina Murder of Leith Von Stein

The 1988 murder of Leith Von Stein that was perpetrated by a young man named Chris Pritchard, who was then a student at North Carolina State University. I found the following background information on the family in an article that ran in the Winston-Salem Journal on January 29, 1990. Chris Pritchard grew up in North Carolina, the son of a woman named Bonnie Bates and Steve Pritchard. His father left the family not long after Chris’s younger sister Angela was born. He and his mother and sister then moved in with his maternal grandparents on their farm in Lexington, North Carolina. Bonnie went back to school to study computers, eventually taking a job in the data-processing division of Integon Corp. in Winston-Salem in 1974.

While working there, she met a man named Leith Peter Von Stein. Leith ran the data-processing department. His parents had started up a successful dry cleaning business called Camel City Cleaners. Bonnie’s parents quickly took to Leith and felt he was a good match for their daughter. Bonnie and Leith were married in 1978. The family moved to South Bend, Indiana when he took a job there. In 1981, they made the move back to North Carolina when Leith took a job as the director of internal audits for the National Spinning Co. in Washington. Chris and Angela attended school at Washington High School. When he was a senior in high school, Leith’s parents passed away, leaving him over a million dollar inheritance. It doubled his net worth at the time. Leith adjusted his will to make sure Chris and Angela would be provided for in the future.

A Murderous Plot

After graduation, Chris headed off to North Carolina State University in Raleigh in a classic 1965 Ford Mustang his step-father Leith had gifted him. Once there, he joined a group of students who preferred taking LSD and playing Dungeons & Dragons. His failing grades that first year caused conflict at home. At the end of the year, Leith confronted him and expressed his disappointment at Chris’s academic performance. The fight stopped short of anyone throwing blows. Around that time, Chris began talking to a few of his friends at N.C. State, Neal Henderson and James “Bart” Upchurch about a plot to murder his parents.

Chris and Bart had grown up together in Caswell County, been in Boy Scouts together, and attended the same high school. Neal Henderson was an academically-gifted student from the North Carolina School of Science and Math who had trouble finding a social circle he fit into. The role-playing game gave him a sense of belonging. I’m assuming his sister Angela was also intended to be a victim in the plot because otherwise, Chris would have had to split his inheritance with her. He wanted to leave school, not have to worry about working, and buy a fancy house for himself and friends in Raleigh. He told the two classmates he would give them each $50,000 and a Porsche for Neal and a Ferrari for Henderson.

On July 24, 1988, the young men devised their first plan to stage accidental deaths for Chris’s family by planting a broken fuse in the electrical box, dousing the wall with gasoline, and setting a fire. Chris even went so far as to lace a meal of grilled burgers with a sleeping aid while he was home visiting. However, Neal and Bart lost the fuse as they were trying to crack it in the door of Chris’s car trunk. Their next idea was to send one of the men into the home with a machete. That scheme was aborted when the nearby Army-Navy Surplus Store was closed. But Chris Pritchard would not be deterred. He purchased a hunting knife from a K-Mart department store in Raleigh, planning to have Bart enter the house with Chris’s key, stage a break-in, and attack Chris’s parents while they slept with the weapon and a baseball bat. He drew them a map of the house, so they knew the layout. Bart stayed behind in Raleigh at the dorms to establish an alibi. Neal drove Bart the 100 plus miles to Washington, where he dropped his friend off near the house. When Bart returned, he was covered in blood, confessing he had gone through with the plan. They then attempted to destroy the evidence, get rid of Bart’s clothing, and wash the car.

A Family Destroyed

Bonnie Von Stein, age 44, survived the attack and was able to call 911. Her husband Leith, age 42, was pronounced dead at the scene. Angela was asleep in her bedroom and was not harmed. With Chris’s mother and sister still alive, his plan did not go the way he intended. But investigators had a hard time figuring out who the perpetrators were. When they found a part of the burned map Chris had drawn for his friends, they recognized Chris’s handwriting. They had no other evidence linking him to the crime, though. By then, Chris and his mother Bonnie, who had debilitating injuries from the stabbing, had moved back to Winston-Salem to be closer to family. It was Neal Henderson who helped move the needle for justice. After the murders, he left N.C. State and was working as an assistant manager at a Wendy’s restaurant in Virginia. Unable to hold the secret any longer, he went to authorities and confessed his role in the murder.

When Chris Pritchard, Neal Henderson, and James Bart Upchurch were arrested in June of 1989, Bonnie Von Stein could not believe her son was involved in the murderous plot that resulted in the death of her husband. But once Chris admitted his role to her, she had no choice but to believe it, stating publicly that the drugs he had become addicted to must have influenced him.

The Killers Speak

Chris and Neal reached a plea agreement with the prosecutors. They pled guilty to conspiracy to commit murder so they wouldn’t have to face first-degree murder charges. They both testified in Bart Upchurch’s trial, which was moved from Washington to Elizabeth City due to pretrial publicity. His attorneys claimed he was framed for the murder by his two friends. But prosecutors said a green backpack found at the Von Stein’s home was identified as belonging to Bart. The baseball bat he took to the crime scene was found at his home and identified by Neal Henderson. In court, Neal Henderson said, “What they proposed to me, it seemed like an adventure, just go off in the middle of the night and come back . . . But up until (Upchurch) got out of the car with the weapons, I didn’t fully believe he would do it.”

Can a Convicted Murderer Find Redemption?

A jury found Bart Upchurch guilty and he was sentenced to death, but that was later commuted to life in prison, where he remains today. His most recent parole hearing was in 2022. Gerald Henderson was sentenced to 40 years in prison for aiding and abetting a first-degree murder, plus a six-year-sentence for aiding and abetting assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill and inflicting serious injury. He was paroled in December of 2000. Chris Pritchard received a life sentence for second-degree murder and an additional 20-year-sentence for the attack on his mother. He was paroled in June of 2007 and, according to his LinkedIn profile, assists formerly incarcerated people to overcome the challenges of re-entry into society.

He told Fox 8 WGHP-TV “I knew what evil I had done. The only thing I had to cling to was the lie I had told to begin with,” Chris said. “I’m the biggest number one sinner that there is. But God’s grace is enough even for that.”

In 1991, North Carolina author Jerry Bledsoe wrote a book about the case titled “Blood Games: A True Account of Family Murder.” The following year, CBS adapted the book into a TV movie titled “Honor Thy Mother.” Actress Sharon Gless played Bonnie Von Stein and William McNamara was Christopher Pritchard. In 1992, true crime author Joe McGinnis wrote his own book about the case titled “Cruel Doubt.” This was turned into a TV miniseries that ran on the NBC network, and it starred Blythe Danner as Bonnie Von Stein and Gwyneth Paltrow as her daughter Angela.

This story was featured as part of the Missing in the Carolinas podcast episode, Made-for-TV Movies Based on N.C. Crimes.

Sources:

Winston-Salem Journal, July 27, 1988

“Former City Resident is Stabbed to Death in Washington, N.C.”

https://www.newspapers.com/image/940006941

Winston Salem Journal, Jan. 29, 1990

https://www.newspapers.com/image/940735532

Pact

News and Record, Jan. 28, 1990

https://www.newspapers.com/image/943703455

Defendant Was Framed, Attorneys Say

The Charlotte Observer, January 23, 1990