The ordeal

Local woman’s third time testifying in murder case closes chapter in her life

June 24, 2006

By By VIC MacDONALD
Index-Journal regional editor

Portions of this article (in italics) are from a statement that Joann Suber Wilson submitted to The Index-Journal. Wilson also was interviewed for her thoughts on the guilty verdicts for Charles Vandross rendered this week by a Greenwood Court jury.
Vandross was found guilty of murder in the November 2004 shooting death of Wilson’s friend, Sanford Best, and of holding Wilson captive for about six hours at a churchyard.
It was Vandross’ third trial, after two prior mistrials.

Joann Suber Wilson, in her own words: The way I refer to it is that there were three trials, one in January 2006, May 2006 and June 2006. One for the Father, one for the Son & one for the Holy Spirit.

All she could think of, after two previous trials resulted in hung juries, was this: Charles Vandross was going to get out of jail and kill her. And her four sons.
Joann Suber Wilson said the thought haunted her.
When Greenwood County juries in January and May failed to return verdicts on four charges against Vandross, Wilson said she feared he would get bond.
Or, worse yet, the third time the case went to a jury, he would be acquitted.
On Wednesday, a third jury allayed some of her fears. It found Vandross guilty of all four charges against him — murder, kidnapping, first-degree burglary and possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime — and a judge sentenced him to the maximum, life without parole.
“Charles is very smart. I can see him digging out of prison with a pencil,” a still-shaky Wilson said. “He will plot a way to get out. But that is not as much of a fear as bond (following his second mistrial). My kids say, ‘He will not hurt you.’ But the only time I was able to rest was after we moved.”
A year and a half after the incident, Wilson and her sons left the Promised Land home where Best was killed and Vandross was arrested. Now her home in Greenwood is guarded by an alarm system and a dog. And a Bible.
Inside the book is a laminated newspaper clipping, a memorial to Best’s 40th birthday signed “Joann, DJ, Raheim, Jeremy and John.”
“He was a good man,” Joann recalls of her friend. “He was friendly. He would always make you laugh. He taught my sons golf, football. He was the only father to my kids — he gave them the off-to-college speech.”

When I first found out that Court TV would be filming in the courtroom, I was very upset. But I always try to find a positive in a negative situation. I soon realized that it was just a way for God to get the glory on nationwide television.

Wilson and Vandross were engaged at one time. But she says now that one reason she refused to marry him was she did not know anything about him — other than he claimed he was the late singer Luther Vandross’ cousin.
She said she did not meet, during the 12 months she dated Vandross, his family, who came to the three trials. One of his sisters, after watching Wilson’s testimony, labeled her “a drama queen.” She remembers that in May, a local man who had gotten out of jail reportedly killed his wife after slamming his car into her apartment.
“I lived in fear that (Vandross) would get out of jail and come back and kill me and my four sons,” she said. “I thought, ‘If he gets out and he comes for me and my children, I hope it haunts those jurors.’”
People told her that if the state could not get a verdict in a third Vandross trial, he would have to be set free under a sort of “three strikes” rule. That was not true, but Wilson said she didn’t know that, not being a watcher of TV crime and courtroom dramas.
“I thought I was going to lose my mind,” she said.

I now believe that I have an idea as to how Jesus felt, because I’ve been lied on, humiliated & accused of things that I did not do by people I don’t even know. ... But thanks be to God that He has supplied me with enough strength & faith to endure to the end.

After each trial, Wilson said she had to endure people of all races staring at her in stores and whispering. Her children would tell her when it was happening, so she said she wasn’t imagining things. She said she had to complain about a teacher, because a child Wilson knows told her the teacher had talked about the case to her class.
“After each trial, everybody knows — or they think they know — what happened. I just had to think, ‘Hold your head up.’ I was more worried about the kids hearing it and getting into fights,” she said.
Wilson said she also had people support her. “There were five white ladies in a car, and I knew one of them. They told me, ‘Honey, we’re praying for you. It’s just awful. What’s wrong with those jurors?’”
Wilson expressed her appreciation to “all of the jurors from the three trials who voted guilty,” the state’s witnesses and victims advocates, Eighth Circuit Solicitor Jerry Peace and the office’s investigator, Dusty Strickland, Eighth Circuit Judge Wyatt Saunders, who presided over the trial this week, pastors Tony and Joan Foster and the Restoration Worship Center church family, her co-workers and family, and the Best family, and “to all who supported and prayed for us.”
The state accused Vandross of shooting Best to death while Best was in Wilson’s bed because prosecutors said Vandross was jealous of their relationship. Wilson had called on Best for company after she broke off her engagement to Vandross, who left a job in Greenville to live with her. Later, when they began having problems, he got an apartment in Greenwood, but court testimony indicated he worked at a McDonald’s near Wilson’s workplace as an apartment manager to keep an eye on her.
On the night of Nov. 3, 2004 and the early morning of Nov. 4, Vandross was alleged to have entered Wilson’s home, shot Best in the head and duct-taped Wilson’s mouth and hands before telling her to get dressed and drive the two of them to a deserted churchyard.
Wilson testified that she tried to write “Charles” in her blood from where he hit her in the face and, at one point during their drive, tried to ram her car into an approaching car to kill them both.
Vandross and Wilson stayed at the churchyard, first New Tranquil Church and later the Old Tranquil Church, during the early morning hours, and then Vandross abruptly decided to have her drive back home to get her sons ready for school.
Once back in her house, she called authorities on her cell phone, whisked her sons out the front door and waited for Vandross to be arrested. Greenwood County sheriff’s deputies took him into custody without incident in her back yard near her car. He had a pistol in his pocket.

To anyone out there going through trials, tribulations or problems, my advice to you would be to praise God through it. Even when you don’t feel like it, do it. Stand on God’s word & His promises and when people hurt you & turn their backs on you, just hold on to God. He won’t ever leave you or forsake you.

A jury in January deliberated the case for 7 1/2 hours over two days before At-large Circuit Judge James Barber declared a mistrial. Prosecutors said at the time that one juror caused the holdout.
In May another jury spent eight hours in deliberations over two days before telling Barber it was deadlocked. Wilson said in her view the third trial “closed all the loopholes” and moved much more rapidly than the first two, possibly contributing to the guilty verdicts.
“I had to learn to hold my head up and keep going,” Wilson said.
That included emotionally surviving the closing arguments of the third trial that, Wilson said, were extremely painful. She was accused by the defense of being Best’s killer.
“And you can’t say anything,” she said.
By the time of the third trial, Wilson said she was fed up with the fact that Vandross and his family were allowed to talk to each other in the courtroom and have backroom meetings. She asked Sheriff Dan Wideman about it, and she said he stopped it.
Wilson said Best’s brother became upset because the Vandross family was allowed to watch CourtTV footage of previous testimony during breaks in the court proceedings, and that too was stopped. When the third jury came back with its verdict, Wilson said her family and the Best family were holding hands, praying for justice.
She said that when Sanford Best’s mother addressed the court and Vandross directly, the defendant was polite. But he rolled his eyes at her, Wilson said, when it came her time to offer him forgiveness.
“That was about as much justice as he (Best) can get. Mrs. Vandross gets to see her son. Mrs. Best goes to the gravesite and no one can talk back to her,” Wilson said. “Sanford had a voice in this trial. The pictures they were showing of him were speaking.
“He was sleeping (after) reading his Bible. He and Charles had been at my home at the same time before. He (Vandross) could have confronted him man to man.”
Now that the third trial is over and Vandross is sentenced, Wilson said it’s like “a two-ton weight has been lifted off of me. My co-workers said I looked like I had a makeover. I was so weighed down. There’s not a day goes by I don’t think about Sanford.”
She and her sons have a relationship forged by what Wilson said she is convinced was a near-death experience, and not just for her. She said if her oldest son had been at home that night in November 2004 he would have been asleep on a couch near the back door — where Vandross was reported to have entered the house before killing Best.
They’ve seen her endure almost 2 1/2 years of dealing with police and lawyers and court, not to mention healing her physical scars and starting to get over emotional wounds. “My kids say, ‘Mom, you’re stronger than kryptonite.’”
Still, there’s a void.
Of Sanford Best, she says, “I really miss him. One day, we’ll see him again.”

Earl Bridges

NINETY SIX — Earl Dupre Bridges, 77, of 203 McKenzie Road, husband of Helen Burnett Bridges, died Thursday, June 22, 2006 at Hospice House.
Born in Spartanburg County, he was a son of the late Fred D. Bridges and Ruth Stanford Bridges Frazier. He retired from CPW’s Gas Department and was a former member of Star Fort National Country Club. A Navy veteran of the Korean conflict, he was a member of Emerald Baptist Church and the Preachers Sunday School Class.
Survivors include his wife of the home; two sons, Tony S. Bridges of Jasper, Ga., and Scott D. Bridges of Greenwood; two daughters, Linda B. Maxey of Ninety Six and Barbara B. Bennett of Greenwood; two granddaughters; three great-grandchildren.
Graveside services are 3 p.m. Sunday at Greenwood Memorial Gardens, officiated by the Rev. Curtis Eidson.
Pallbearers are Bill Hart, Roy Whitt, Sam Beauford, Maurice Pridmore, John Banks and Joe Stackhouse.
Visitation is 6-7:30 tonight at Harley Funeral Home.
The family is at the home.
Memorials may be made to Hospice Care of the Piedmont, c/o Hospice House, 408 W. Alexander Ave., Greenwood, SC 29646.
Harley Funeral Home & Crematory is in charge.
Online condolences may be sent to the family at www.harleyfuneralhome.com

Carroll Brown

EDGEFIELD — Services for Carroll Brown are 2 p.m. Sunday at G.L. Brightharp & Sons Mortuary, conducted by the Rev. J.R. Hooper. Burial is in Jeter Baptist Church Cemetery.
There will be no viewing.
Visitation is at the funeral home.
G.L. Brightharp & Sons Mortuary is in charge.

Richard Norwood Sr.

Richard Eston Norwood, 81, of Sterling House, widower of Edith Coleman Norwood, died Friday, June 23, 2006 at Self Regional Medical Center.
Services will be announced by Harley Funeral Home & Crematory.

Men’s tee times set for Festival tourney

June 24, 2006

By JIM JOYCE
Special projects editor

The Men’s Invitational Festival of Flowers Golf Tournament starts at 7:45 a.m. today, with 78 players vying for the 2006 crown.
Players go off No. 1 and 10 tees, with the last group leaving at 9:42 a.m., when last year’s winner Vince Hatfield goes off No. 1 with Chip Whitt and Steven Liebler.
“I’m looking forward to it,” GCC pro Ed Carlisle Jr. said. “We’ve got the best amateurs in the state playing int it and we should see some good scores.
“The course is playing hard and fast and the set up won’t be extremely difficult, so we should see some low numbers.”
Carlisle predicts a 10-under-par 134 will win, the record score shot in 2001 by Brent Delahoussaye, of Greer.
“There will no changes in pin placements, but the yardage will be about five yards shorter the second day,” he said. It measures 6,810 yards today and will be 6,805 on Sunday.
Carlisle said only one player has a handicap of five, with everybody else rating two or below.
Tee times follow:

NO. 1 TEE
7:45 — Mike Rogers, Jeffrey Moats, Butch Crawford.
7:54 — Charles Edwards, Terry Willis, Thomas Todd III.
8:03 — Bryan Newton, Jim McFerrin, Larry Poole.
8:12 — David Baston, Chris Piontek, Phil Milner.
8:21 — Duff wagner, Chad Meldrum, Marcus Grumbles.
8:30 — Nathan Irvin, Marcus Ling, Cooper Tinsley.
8:39 — James Park, Jay Self, Bker Elmore.
8:48 — Adam Hart, Mark Gaynor, Dustin Barr.
8:57 — Tim Tang, Brooks Sims, Peter Johnson.
9:06 — Frank Wrenn, Josh Janis, Jonathan Bowden.
9:15 — Michael Meredith, James Hockman, Luke Hart.
9:24 — Ben Martin, Jeff McCutcheon, Andrew Smith.
9:33 — Josh Campbell, Bill Duncan, Kellen Altman.
9:42 — Steven Liebler, Chip Whitt, Vince Hatfield.

NO. 10 TEE
7:45 — Don Anderson, Christopher Cooper, Jackson Mizzell.
7:54 — Marcus Howell, Josh Henderson, Timothy Pope.
8:03 — Trey Fowler, Stephen Boggs, Stephen Schwab.
8:12 — Michael Bellamy, Scott Friday, Ron Schroder.
8:21 — Dann Standard, Bill Hathaway, Jared Decamps.
8:30 — Michael Lawrence, Drew Davis, Neil Campbell.
8:39 — David Connor, Garland Ferrell, Patrick Wilson.
8:48 — Baxter Culler, Paul Woodbury, Tom Kennaday.
8:57 — Max Faini, Jeff Stephens, Billy Belair.
9:06 — Raymond Wooten, Jarrett Grimes, Dustin Adair.
9:15 — Phillip Mollica, Steven Lindsay, Mike Gravely.
9:24 — Walter Todd Sr., Herbie Sargent, Patrick Rada.

Liberal decisions could affect churches’ numbers

June 24, 2006

Some of the so-called mainline churches in this country have been losing members for years.
Liberal thinking and actions have generally been a point of concern, at least by many of those who have changed churches, formed new churches or simply dropped out.
After a few controversial theological decisions the other day by Episcopal and Presbyterian (USA) convention delegates, from the pulpits and pews, it will be surprising indeed if their membership losses don’t increase. In fact, there has been talk about splits in the churches, and the chorus is getting louder. It’s not only happening elsewhere, either. There is much concern and unrest in Greenwood about those decisions. News reports said:

EPISCOPAL DELEGATES TUESDAY snubbed a request by Anglican leaders to temporarily stop electing openly gay bishops, a vote that further frustrated conservatives in the American church. The Episcopal Church in America is part of the worldwide Anglican Communion.
Conservatives complained that the measure stopped short of a moratorium, but supporters argued it would have set a moral standard for the church. There are sure to be those who argue that moral standards is the whole idea and that the rejection prevented that. How can anyone argue otherwise?
A Presbyterian Church (USA) national assembly voted Tuesday to create some leeway for gay clergy and lay officers to serve local congregations, despite a denominational ban on partnered gay ministers.

A MEASURE APPROVED 298-221 keeps in place a PCUSA church law that says clergy and lay elders and deacons must limit sexual relations to man-woman marriages. But the new decision says local congregations and regional presbyteries can exercise some flexibility when choosing clergy and lay officers of local congregations. In short, they can elect practicing homosexuals.
Presbyterian delegates also accepted a policy paper that suggests using gender-inclusive wording for the Trinity -- words such as “Mother, Child, Womb,” instead of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Actions by both denominations are sure to add to the divisiveness. In the Presbyterian case, the new policy says that while the church has it laws, it’s OK for local congregations and presbyteries to break them without consequences.
Under those circumstances, can either church avoid splitting?