Man to die for inmate's murderBy MICHAEL L. OWENS, The News Virginian
(Editor's note: This story contains graphic violence.)
Until a few days ago, all Bonnie Parker knew about her son's murder is that two men stabbed him 68 times in the Augusta Correctional Center six years ago.
She knew the name of her son's murderer, Michael Lenz, who is scheduled to die by lethal injection Thursday.
Months ago she turned down a chance to watch him die - "It would be just like reliving everything again," said the 71-year-old resident of Paw Paw, W.Va.
Bonnie Parker also had heard of Jeffery Remington, the accomplice who hanged himself on death row two years ago.
But word that her son - Brent Henry Parker, 41 - died at the foot of a pagan altar during a Viking cult ceremony, or as part of a possible power play for leadership of the group, was news to her.
No one ever told her that her last surviving son bled to death while an unarmed guard stood outside the cell screaming for backup. Her son died without a fight, probably because a stroke the previous year rendered one arm all but useless. She never knew the prison nurse bandaged her son's wounds until she ran out of gauze. The nurse testified that the blood "just poured like water; like somebody had turned a faucet on."
In fact, other than an obituary, there are few media accounts floating around about Brent Parker, who died serving a 50-year sentence for stomping a man to death during a 1985 drinking binge.
News articles give Brent Parker only brief mention as the 41-year-old victim of a brutal murder himself on Jan. 16, 2000. Primary focus goes to Lenz, who at the time of the murder was serving 29 years and 90 days for a string of 1993 burglaries in Prince William County.
He now awaits word from death row on his clemency petition to Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine as well as his request for a stay of execution from the U.S. Supreme Court. He has turned down multiple interview requests sent by The News Virginian through his lawyers and prison officials.
A call to Bonnie Parker's home in Paw Paw, W.Va., on Thursday marked the first time a reporter attempted to contact her. It also marked one of the few times the severe diabetic had been telephoned - by anyone - about her son's death.
Said her at-home nurse, Sharon Prifogle: "It was like she didn't exist, like he didn't exist."
A telephone call from the Virginia Department of Corrections on Jan. 16, 2000, alerted her of his death. At the time, she was in a nearby town for a friend's funeral.
"All she got was bits and pieces that her son was deceased," Prifogle said.
For nine years, she has helped Bonnie Parker deal with her diabetic tremors and refers to Parker's murder as "the accident." It helps ease the mother's pain, the nurse said.
Accepting his death was just the beginning of the mother's nightmare. She had to bring his body home to Paw Paw, too.
"They [Department of Corrections] didn't do nothing for this woman," said Prifogle, her voice rising in anger.
Without a car and just a few dollars to her name, Bonnie Parker turned to local churches to help bring home her son's body.
Paw Paw is a small, one-gas-station town of less than 600 souls. It's the stereotypical small town were residents know every face as well as they know their neighbors' personal business. It's also the type of town where most residents travel beyond the border for employment and excitement.
Brent Parker was the longest living of seven children born to Bonnie Parker. Five children died of natural causes while infants.
Another child, Shawn Parker, died at the age of 25 in a 1993 car wreck. Authorities cited his drunken driving for flipping his car over an embankment. But Bonnie Parker believes the person listed as the passenger actually drove the car and pinned the responsibility on her son to escape prosecution.
"He [the passenger] came the next day and said he was sorry, and I said that did no good," Bonnie Parker recalled.
Brent Parker grew up a carpenter working alongside his father, William Foster Parker, who died several years before his son's fatal stabbing.
His mother described a young Brent Parker as a bookworm who enjoyed loud music in his teens and was "liked" by everybody.
"His first year in school, he read a hundred [children's] books," she boasted.
His 23-year-old daughter, Heather Brown, could not be located for an interview. Bonnie Parker last saw her granddaughter eight months ago, as the girl prepared to enter an alcohol-treatment program.
Grandmother and granddaughter last saw Brent Parker while together on a Christmas jail visit in December 1999.
As the two strolled from the visiting room, he cracked a dry, overused joke: "I'll see you next year."
Those were the last words Bonnie Parker ever heard him say. Some of his words live on in prison letters, though the last batch is almost illegible because the stroke forced the lefthander to write with his right hand.
She sees him every day, though, in photographs of a young boy in knee-high motorcycle boots, or of an adult standing by her side in the prison visiting room.
Not everyone has good things to say about him, though.
Frederick County prosecutor Lawrence Ambrogi needed little prompting for Parker's crime to flood back into memory. In fact, all the prosecutor required were names - that of Parker and his victim, Ralph Wayne "Jimmy" Jenkins.
Few reasons are provided for the blitz attack.
In Lenz's clemency petition, defense attorney Jennifer L. Givens of the Virginia Capital Representation Resource Center in Charlottesville, argues the murder committed by Parker happened "for seemingly no reason."
Ambrogi, when pressed for an answer as he read from 21-year-old witness notes, failed to come up with a better explanation.
Brent Parker and Jenkins stopped in a mobile-home park on the outskirts of Winchester in a desperate search to find somewhere to drink.
For some inexplicable reason, a drunken Parker jumped on, kicked and stomped his acquaintance.
"Witnesses said he jumped up and down until someone said he squished it [Jenkins' head] open," Ambrogi read. "His bones were sticking out of his arms and legs."
He kicked so hard that Jenkins' pants and one boot came off the body. Parker held the pants aloft and bragged to witnesses, "I kicked his ass until I kicked him out of his pants."
Wrote Givens: "An eyewitness to the crime testified that . Parker was laughing and taking smoke and drink breaks during the hour-long beating."
After the beating ended, Parker jumped in the car and backed over Jenkins. He then stopped at a nearby 7-Eleven where, for two hours, he sexually harassed the woman clerk and bragged about the murder before stealing cigarettes and beer.
"The clerk stated that Parker was covered in blood from his knees down and that his car also had blood on it," Givens wrote.
The store clerk said of the theft: "I wasn't going to try and stop him after what he just told me."
Said Frederick County Commonwealth's Attorney Lawrence Ambrogi, who prosecuted Parker: "It was just a senseless, sadistic killing."
Parker died in pretty much the same manner as his victim - as the focus of a blitz attack and without putting up much of a defense.
Lenz, 42, has refused to pick between the electric chair and lethal
injection. The default method of execution goes to the needle.
Either way, he would be the first Virginia inmate executed for killing another prisoner since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976.
He might have killed Brent Parker in a preemptive strike to save his own life. Or, the attack came as a power play so Lenz could take a leadership role in the Asatru cult at the prison.
Information about Lenz is difficult to come by. According to his clemency petition, Lenz was a homeless man living in the woods of Prince William County who broke into homes and restaurants for food. The petition fails to state how he garnered nearly 30 years in prison for mere break-ins, however.
Prince William County Police records revealed little more information than the number of breaking-and-entering charges filed against him, Officer John Bogert said Friday. And the detectives who arrested Lenz retired years ago and could not be reached for comment.
The Viking cult prison group, called the Ironwood Kindred, was based on the pre-Judeo-Christian beliefs of the Norse religious practices. In other words, they worshipped Viking gods.
Deciphering the reason for the attack depends on which appeals petition, court record or newspaper interview is believed, however.
Years ago, Lenz told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that Parker "disrespected" the gods. Remington, convicted as an accomplice, voiced similar sentiments before taking his own life slightly more than two years ago.
Lenz also claims that Parker threatened his life.
"Parker twice told Lenz that he would 'sharpen the point of his cane and stab [Lenz] through [his] heart with it,' " defense attorney Givens wrote in her clemency petition.
"Lenz had good reason to take these threats seriously; Parker boasted about the fact that he was a convicted murderer, reminding Lenz 'I am a killer.' According to another inmate, Parker also made a point of 'telling people that he was considering hurting Michael [Lenz].' "
Givens argued in her petition that a jury might have spared Lenz's life had they heard this evidence.
Brent Parker died at the foot of an altar, seconds after one of his
attackers recited poetry as part of a pagan ceremony.
His mother, Bonnie Parker, had never heard of Asatru before last week. Her nurse, Prifogle, also was clueless about the cult's existence.
"Is that satanic?" Prifogle, attempting to keep it a secret from Bonnie Parker, whispered over the phone.
Neither woman was aware of the circumstances leading to the attack.
Lenz once testified: "I called [Parker] up to the altar and I asked - and I said to him, 'It's been a long, hard path between us.' And [Parker] said, 'Yes, it is.' And I pulled the blade out of my pocket, and I said, 'Are you trying to take it to the next step?' And he said, 'Yes I am." And so I stabbed him."
Remington then jumped in. Their frenzied attack stopped briefly,
Correctional Officer Earl Jones testified, as he ordered them to stop.
"[T]hey simply looked at me and went back to stabbing him," Jones said.
Now, defense attorneys are petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay of execution on the basis that some jurors "consulted" a Bible when deciding whether to sentence Lenz to death.
Bonnie Parker has never followed the newspaper reports about Lenz's fight for a reprieve. The fight for life by her son's killer does not interest her.
Months ago, she received an invitation from the Virginia Department of Corrections to watch Lenz die. It was the first time she'd heard from the department "in ages."
She never returned the letter. Instead, she prefers to content herself with school pictures and memories of her son.
Source : News Virginian
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