Prisoner’s new confession ruled credible by courts

BILL GEROUX TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Published: December 3, 2008

SPECIAL SERIES: What Happened To Jennifer Evans?
Fifth of 5 parts

VIRGINIA BEACH — He looked thinner and prematurely aged after 12 years in Virginia's hardest prisons, but ex-Navy SEAL trainee Billy Joe Brown still mesmerized.

"Whether or not you believe me is really not my concern," he said this May from the witness box in Virginia Beach Circuit Court, where in 1996 he and his former best friend, Dustin A. Turner, were convicted of murdering Jennifer Evans.

In a new twist, Billy testified he had found Jesus in prison and had decided to confess that he alone choked Jennifer to death, as Dustin had claimed. Billy said he had no interest in helping Dustin -- "I'd let him rot" -- but he did not want to stand before God a liar.

"I'm here to glorify Jesus Christ by telling the truth," Billy told Circuit Judge Frederick Lowe at an unusual hearing to help decide whether Dustin should go free.

But was Billy telling the truth?

Billy seemed at ease May 28 in shackles and an orange jumpsuit, after being transported to Virginia Beach from his cell at Greensville Correctional Center to testify. He showed little interest in Dustin, sitting at the defendant's table, or in Jennifer's family and friends in the front row.

He told the judge that in 1995, he and Dustin belonged to a small sub-brotherhood of SEALs and trainees who enjoyed breaking all the rules. "We'd drink and smoke [marijuana] and have sex with girls," Billy said. "Extremes, always going to extremes."

He said he and others took illegal steroids that helped them recover quickly from injuries but also made them more aggressive.

Billy laughed as he recalled building up such a tolerance to alcohol that he could drink a case of beer and a fifth of rum in a day. "That was quite a goal," he said. "It took me a while to achieve that."

. . .

On the night he killed Jennifer, Billy said, he arrived at The Bayou drunk and proceeded to down about 30 drinks, including shots of bourbon, beers and mixed drinks.

He was not interested in women that night, he said, because he had gone home with one from the club the previous night. He had a steady girlfriend and didn't want her to catch on about his cheating.

Dustin approached him around closing time and told Billy he was "hooking up" with Jennifer and wanted Billy to get a ride back to the SEAL barracks at nearby Little Creek Amphibious Base with a mutual friend.

But Billy got impatient and walked into the parking lot, where he found Dustin and Jennifer sitting in the front seats of Dustin's silver Geo Storm hatchback. Billy said he climbed into the cramped rear seat, directly behind Jennifer, and began making crude remarks to her and touching her hair.

Then, Billy said in May, "I snapped and started choking her. . . . And I think Dusty -- I believe I recall him trying to pull my arm away. I believe he did."

Jennifer managed a breath of air, Billy said, but he quickly clamped his arm back around her throat and resumed choking her until blood came from her nose and he knew she was dead. He said he did not recall Dustin intervening again.

Billy said he did not know what made him kill.

"One minute I was normal, the next minute I was gone, and then I said, 'Whoa.' But then it was too late and I knew it was too late. . . . There was no reason, no rhyme, no thought, no nothing."

He immediately passed out and then awoke about 45 minutes later in the car in Newport News Park, where Dustin had driven the three of them. There, Billy said, he helped Dustin carry Jennifer's body into the trees. He began to take off his clothes and was planning to sexually assault Jennifer's body, but Dustin yelled, "Man, get in the car," and Billy did, he testified.

In the front row of the courtroom, Jennifer's mother lay her head on her husband's shoulder.

. . .

Under cross-examination by Virginia Deputy Attorney General Robert H. Anderson, Billy acknowledged having been so drunk that he remembered only parts of that night. Billy said he had not remembered Dustin trying to break his grip on Jennifer until he read an account of Dustin's trial in the newspaper.

Billy readily agreed he had told a series of lies about the killing. He explained how he had fashioned each lie to fit his goals at the moment.

His secret? "Lie without conscience."

At first, he was so angry at Dustin for betraying him that he decided to take Dustin down, too, he said. "I made up a story. I figured they'd rather have two than one, so I said we both did it. I figured they would believe that, given our history of group sex and things like that. So it was an easy story to sell."

When Billy first tried to confess from prison to Jennifer's murder, in 1999, his lawyer did not believe him. Billy insisted the lawyer contact authorities. Then Billy had second thoughts and quickly called the lawyer back and said -- falsely -- that the confession he just had finished making was a lie.

Considering Billy's record of lying, deputy attorney general Anderson asked, why should anyone believe him now?

Billy replied without heat that he did not care if anyone did. He had thrown away all his legal papers, he said. He did not expect to get out of prison; all that mattered was clearing his slate with God.

As for his future, "Whatever the good Lord wills. I am not worried about it."

. . .

Billy's performance left the crowded courtroom buzzing.

Jennifer's mother found Billy unconvincing. To other listeners, including a police officer who had worked on the case, Billy's story rang weirdly true.

Lowe ruled three weeks later that Billy's confession was credible. The judge did not elaborate.

He sent his findings back to the Virginia Court of Appeals, where a panel of three judges has to decide whether the confession was significant enough that "no rational trier of fact" would have convicted Dustin of murder after hearing it.

Dustin's lawyer, David Hargett of Richmond, argued Dustin was guilty of nothing more serious than being an accessory after the fact, a misdemeanor with a maximum penalty of one year in jail.

The Court of Appeals has asked both sides to file more legal briefs and prepare oral arguments in the case. A decision is unlikely before spring.

. . .

Dustin, 33, who goes by Dusty, is incarcerated at Powhatan Correctional Center, where he receives regular calls, letters and visits from family and friends, including a former girlfriend, Anitra Branyan, who testified for him at his trial.

His mother, Linda Summitt, drove 12 hours from Indiana to Powhatan to visit him during last week's Thanksgiving holiday.

"They know I'm not a bad guy, that I'm not a criminal," Dustin said in a telephone interview last week from Powhatan. Only the SEALs have cut all ties.

Dustin said he is guilty only of helping Billy hide Jennifer's murder instead of turning Billy over to police. At age 20, he said, "I was forced to make a decision when I was in complete shock. I obviously made the wrong decision. It was wrong legally and probably morally, too. I just took off and drove."

He said he thinks Billy quickly broke Jennifer's neck and that "nowhere at that point could I have done anything for Jennifer. She was still dead."

Dustin said the truth got lost in the emotion of the case. He doesn't expect Jennifer's family to forgive him, "but I think they should know the truth."

He said he believes Billy's confession will prompt the courts to free him from his 82-year sentence. "I never once accepted that sentence as my fate," he said.

He envisions going home to Bloomington and enrolling at Indiana University. But first, "I've got a lot of catching up to do," he said. He never has used a cell phone or been on the Internet.

"I've never forgiven Billy Brown for what he's done," Dustin said last week. Even now, Billy has come clean for the wrong reasons, trying to settle with God for his own sake, when he should apologize to those whose lives he has ruined, Dustin said.

"He's still a psychopath."

Contact Bill Geroux at (757) 498-2820 or .