319: Charisse & Lacie Christopher

One afternoon in June 1987, Nancy Wilson was at her home in the Hiwassee Apartments in Millington, Tennessee. She heard a loud thump from the apartment above. Seconds later, she heard a woman scream “get out” followed by a bloodcurdling scream.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:35):
I tell Bubba, I said, Bubba, you were convicted as
soon as they saw you.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Millington and Tennessee is located just north of the bright
lights of Memphis. It was founded in the eighteen seventies
and named after George Millington, a generous landowner who donated
part of his property to help build the school. Because
of the fertile soil and location near Memphis, it slowly
grew as a farming community. Then in the eighteen eighties,
the railroad came. It was a ribbon of stale that

(01:15):
connected Millington to the outside world. It brought with it opportunity, growth,
and change. But the most transformative moment came in nineteen
forty one. World War two was swirling and the US
Navy established the Naval Air Station Memphis in Millington. It
quickly became the lifeblood of the town as its biggest
employer thousands of Navy personnel but we trained here. By

(01:38):
the nineteen eighties, Millington had grown into a small but
busing suburb. There were strip malls, schools, churches on every corner.
The streets were lined with pickup trucks and tidy lawns.
It was home to working class families, military transplants, and
longtime locals who remembered when the town had only one
stop light. And while Millington had its own share of problems,

(02:00):
just like any other town, violent crime wasn't really something
that people worried about. It was seen as a safe
and peaceful place to live. But that piece was shattered
on the afternoon of the twenty seventh of June nineteen
eighty seven. It was just after three p m. At
the Heiss Apartments, a rent subsidized complex on the southwest

(02:20):
side of town. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Nancy Wilson,
the resident manager of the complex, was inside her unit
on the first floor. Hers was a quiet job, mostly
maintenance calls and rent collection. That afternoon had been on
eventful until Nancy heard a loud thud coming from the
apartment above her. She froze for a moment, listening. Seconds later,

(02:45):
she heard a woman above screaming, get out. The woman's
owned A terrified Nancy stood there, listening intently. She then
heard a scream that tore through the entire apartment block.
Everything then fell silent. Nancy's heart raced as she strained
to listen above her footsteps moved quickly across the floor.

(03:08):
Moments later, she heard the sound of water running from
the tap. The apartment above belonged to twenty nine year

(03:28):
old Cherise Christopher, a young mother doing her best to
start over. Jerise had lived in the Hawissea apartments with
her two children, three year old Nicholas and two year
old Lacy. To most of her neighbors, she was quiet
and polite. She kept herself. One neighbor, Helen Truman, would
later recall, I only knew her by seeing her coming

(03:49):
in and out. But behind the quiet exterior was a
woman who had endured more than most people. Cherise had
come from a tight knit, loving family, the kind of
people who gathered for birthdays and holiday dinners, who sat
around the swimming pool and made each other laugh. But
Cheres's personal life had been marked by hardship. She had

(04:10):
been trapped in an abusive marriage. The father of her
children was controlling and violent. It took strength for Cherise
to finally leave, but she did. She was rebuilding her
life piece by peace. She had her own apartment and
a job. Most importantly, she had Nicholas and Lacy. They
were said to be her pride, and joy. Nancy Wilson

(04:33):
didn't waste a second after hearing the strange sounds coming
from Teresa's apartment, she grabbed the phone and called police.
The dispatcher's voice was calm, but Nancy's wasn't. Something terrible
had happened upstairs. She was sure of it. Minutes later,
the first squad car pulled into the Hwisi apartments. Officer C. E.

(04:54):
Owens stepped out and scanned the building. Everything seemed still,
but as he approach to the staircase leading to the
second floor, he caught a glimpse of movement In one
of the windows. There, in the upstairs unit, the same
one where the screams had come from, stood a man.
It was a black mail holding an overnight bag, a
pair of sneakers, and some clothing. He looked on at

(05:18):
the officer from behind the glass. His officer Owns climbed
the steps. The apartment door suddenly burst open. The man
came running out. He was drenched in blood. The officer
said it coated his arms and hands and stained his shirt.
It was dripping from him, literally dripping. Officer Owns would

(05:38):
later say it looked like he was sweating blood. He
had it on his shirt, his arms, his chest. The
man looked dazed, like he didn't quite understand what was happening.
He looked almost scared. Then he said something unexpected. He
told the officer that he had caught the police. Officer
Owns stopped him, trying to make sense of what he

(05:59):
was saying, but before he could ask a single question,
the man lunged. He swung the overnight bag and struck
Owen's hard His shoes hit the ground and he bolted.
The man ran down the stairs and vanished into the
neighboring apartment complex. Officer Owens gave chase and radioed for backup,
but within moments the man was gone. Shortly thereafter, officer

(06:23):
John Boyd arrived to assist. Together, the two men turned
their attention back to the apartment. The front door was locked.
The manager, Nancy, shakily stepped forward and opened up for them.
What they found inside would haunt them for the rest
of their lives. Just inside, the hallway was painted in red.

(06:44):
There was blood everywhere on the floor, splashed along the walls,
soaking into the carpet. It trailed into the kitchen like
a grim path. The officers followed it there in the kitchen,
they saw three bodies crumpled together on the floor. It
was twenty nine year old Jerise Christopher, her three year

(07:05):
old son Nicholas, and her two year old daughter Lacy.
All of them were covered in blood. The officers rushed forward,
desperately searching for signs of life. Cherise was gone. She
had been stabbed forty two times. There were stab wounds
to her chest, neck, abdomen, and even her head and thighs.

(07:26):
Her hands and arms were slashed with deep defensive wounds,
evidence of a brutal fight for her life. Two year
old Lacey had been stabbed nine times in the chest, back, abdomen,
in head. A large butcher knife lay on the ground
near her small, lifeless body. There was a baseball cap

(07:46):
looped around her arm. Besides cheries, there was a used tampon.
But amid all this horror, there was still a breath.
Three year old Nicholas was still alive, but just barely.
It had been stabbed in the stomach with such force
that the knife went clean through his back. His intestines
were protruding from the wound. Blood soaked through his clothing

(08:09):
and pulled beneath him. On the floor, but he was breathing.
Paramedics arrived in a rush. Gently and carefully, they lifted
Nicholas onto a stretcher. One of them held as exposed
intestines in place with gloved hands as they raised towards
the hospital in Memphis. The next few hours would be critical,
but as Nicholas thought to survive, detectives were laughed with

(08:32):
a horrific crime scene, a missing suspect, and a single
unanswered question, who could do something like this? The crime
scene at the apartments was unlike anything detectives and Millington

(08:53):
had ever seen. It wasn't just the brutality, it was
the chaos. Crime Scene technicians arrived shortly after Nicholas was
rushed to the hospital. As they stepped into the apartment,
the smell of blood and iron still hung thick in
the air. The linoleum floor on the kitchen was slick.
Crimson smeared across counters, splashed onto the walls, and soaked

(09:15):
deep into the fibers of the carpet. In the hallway,
a drawer was pulled wide open, likely by the killer
in the moments before the attack, when he'd reached in
and grabbed the weapon. A large butcher knife was recovered
from the scene, bagged carefully and logged as evidence. But
that wasn't the only thing left behind by the killer.
There was the baseball cap looped aroundly as his arm.

(09:38):
It didn't belong to Raiser the children. It was assumed
to have been dropped by the killer during the frenzied attack.
In the living room, three cans of cold forty five
liquor sat on the table untouched. A fourth empty cam
was discovered outside, just on the landing near the apartment door.
It suggested the killer might have been drinking before or
even during the attack. Jeris and Lacy's bodies were transported

(10:02):
to the Medical Examiner's office. Doctor Richard Harriff was the
forensic pathologist assigned to do their autopsies. He described Teresa's
injuries as devastating, but not instantly fatal. Despite forty two
stab wounds, none had punctured a major organ or artery.
He explained, in a stabbing of this type, the culminative

(10:25):
effect of the stabs or what kills Jerise had suffered,
and she had fought for her life in the lives
of her children, and ultimately her body had simply run
out of blood and strength. Licy's injuries were more targeted.
One of the nine stab wounds had severed her a
order to main artery that leads directly to the heart.

(10:46):
Her death, although still horrific, would have been more immediate.
There was no sperm detected on either Scharis or Lacy. However,
traces of acid, phosphate and enzyme found in high concentrations
in seamen were to say, discovered in varying amounts on
both victims. The test alone couldn't determine much. This was

(11:06):
nineteen eighty seven. DNA testing wasn't yet available to local departments.
The technology existed in theory, but it hadn't been applied
in field investigations for nowing. This clue, like many others,
was frustratingly inconclusive. And then there was the tampon. Therese
had been menstruating, yet she wasn't wearing any kind of

(11:27):
feminine hygiene product at the time of her death. A
used tampon was found discarded beside her body. It was
presumed the killer had removed it. The murder stunned Millington,
and it wasn't just the loss of life. It was
the randomness, the cruelty. People were shaken. Detectives were certain
of one thing early on in the investigation. This wasn't

(11:51):
a robbery gone wrong. Nothing appeared to have been stolen.
They began to piece together a timeline. Therese and her
children had returned her home sometime between one and two pm,
after an outing that left only a small window of
time for the murders to have occurred. Investigators considered a
chilling possibility that the killer had been waiting for them

(12:12):
inside the apartment. Whether he broke in or was let
in remained a mystery, but the randomness of it all
sent a ripple of fear through the community. Rebecca Wilson,
a local resident, told reporters things like that don't happen
in Millington. You read about it in Memphis or somewhere,
but not here. It doesn't make sense stabbing little children.

(12:34):
Another neighbor, Jane Anderson, described how her family was suddenly
rethinking everything. They installed the peep hole in their front door.
They locked their windows at night because now they weren't
so sure who they could trust. But as the town
held its breath waiting for answers, it wasn't long before
detectives made a breakthrough and arrest was on the horizon.

(13:04):
While crime scene investigators worked through the night cataloging the
carnage left behind in Teresa's apartment, the search for the
man covered in blood intensified. He had vanished after attacking
officer Owens, but he wouldn't stay hidden for long. That evening,
less than a mile from the scene, officers were dispatched
to four or five four to four Bill night Drive,

(13:25):
a modest brick house tucked into a quiet Millington neighborhood.
It was just three blocks north of Hewhissi Apartments. Inside,
police found their suspect hiding in the attic. He emerged
slowly when officers stormed the property, descending the steps with
his hands visible. He looked disoriented, and before he was
even asked a question, he muttered, man, I ain't killed

(13:49):
no woman. One of the officers later described his demeanor
as a erratic. He had a wild look about him.
He said his pupils were pinpoints. He was sweating and
foaming at the mouth. The man was twenty year old
Purvis Tyrone Pain, a part time pain during carpenter from
Drummonds and Tennessee. He didn't have a criminal record, but

(14:12):
in his pocket, officers found a small scrap of paper
with what appeared to be cocaine residue, along with the syringe.
Pain was placed under arrest and booked into jail while
he sat in a holding cell. Fingerprint technicians were working
quickly to analyze prints that were lifted from the crime scene.
When the results came in, they were damning. Pain's fingerprints

(14:34):
were discovered on the cold forty five beer cans inside
Cheres's kitchen. Its prints were also discovered on the countertop
and the telephone, both of which were spattered with blood.
Investigators believed that after the attack, he might have tried
to call someone, or maybe they thought he'd simply touched
the phone during the struggle. Whatever the case, the physical

(14:55):
evidence tied Pain to the crime scene. They also recovered
c lothing near the home where he was arrested, covered
with blood that blood match Cherie and her two year
old daughter, Lacy. The next day, Purvis Pain was officially
charged with two kinds of second degree murder and one
kind of assault with intent to commit murder. Prosecutors explained
that first degree murder charges hadn't been filed yet. Because

(15:18):
they were still determining whether the crimes were premeditated. To
many people who knew Purvis Pain, the charges were unfathomable.
He wasn't a man known for violence. He was the
son of a pastor, Carl Paine, who described him as
a quiet, church going young man. Pain worked construction jobs
five days a week and sometimes picked up extra shifts

(15:40):
on the weekends. He was known to MOA's neighbors lawn
without being asked. He gave ride to old their parishioners.
At home, he spent evenings dancing with his sister and
helping his mother with chores. He'd been born premature, and
as a child he'd struggled in school. Reading and riding
hadn't come easily, but violence was never part of his story.

(16:03):
His father, Karl, told the Commercial Appeal, I know my son.
I know him well. He's been brought up in the church.
He's a nice young man. But Carl admitted he hadn't
been allowed to speak to his son yet to ask
him what had happened. He stated, they won't let me
talk to him. I just want to hear his side.

(16:23):
Others rallied behind the pains. Doris Harris, a long time
family friend from the church, told reporters she'd known Pain
his entire life. She described him as a moral young
fellow instead of you spent five minutes with him, you
couldn't help but love him. Some of them believed that
Pain had simply stumbled into a nightmare, walking in on

(16:44):
the crime scene at the wrong moment, panicking when the
police arrived, and running in fear. But for those who
knew Sheerise Christopher, the theory didn't hold Her brother, Gregory,
believed without hesitation, that she had died trying to protect
her children. He said, said she loved those kids. She
loved them more than anything. Nicholas, who had survived against

(17:05):
all odds, had just come out of a complicated surgery
to repair damage to his spleen, liver, and intestines. His
tiny body had endured incredible trauma, but he was stable. Still.
The road ahead was long, Gregory said, my little nephew
is going to be in the hospital for quite a while.
In the aftermath of the attack, as the media spotlight

(17:27):
intensified and the legal machinery slowly turned, the community tried
to come together. Kay Mason, the children's babysitter, organized a
fundraiser to help cover Nicholas's medical expenses. She said, if
this happened to me, I'd like to know that somewhere
someone would help one of my children and help Kim.
Pouring in life blood, the regional Blood Center launched an

(17:51):
emergency blood drive. Nicholas had already used several units during surgery,
and the cost was mounting. Susan Soyle, a spokesperson for
Life Blood, commented, what we're trying to do is replace
the number of units the boy has used and also
stockpiled two. The community couldn't undo what had happened, but
they could try in some way to help the little

(18:11):
boys survive. The very next day, prosecutors made a decision.
The charges against Purvis Pain were upgraded. It was now
facing two counts of first degree murder, but the motive
still wasn't clear. Investigators were coming through his life, his records,
and his movements, and as the legal case began to build,

(18:32):
questions lingered in the air. Who was Purvis Pain really
and what happened inside that apartment. Though detectives were confident

(18:54):
they had their suspect and custody, there was one thing
they couldn't quite answer. Why what possible reason could someone
have to brutally attack a young mother and her children
in broad daylight. Detectives turned their attention to tracking Purvis
Pain's movements that day, hoping his timeline might offer some clarity.
According to his friend Sylvester Robinson, he had driven Pain

(19:16):
from Drummonds to Millington around nine a m. The route
included stops at a local bank and then the apartment
of Payne's girlfriend, Bobby Thomas. He lived in the same
apartment complex as Teres, just across the stairwell, but Bobby
wasn't home. Sylvester said. The two drove back to Drummonds,
then returned later in the day, making a few more

(19:37):
stops in Tipton County, North Shelby County, and Millington. At
some point between twelve thirty and one pm, he dropped
Paying off at Bobby's apartment again, this time with an
overnight back. Payne said he would wait there for her
to return. Not long after, Payne showed up at the
home of Sharon Nathaniel, a friend who lived just a

(19:57):
few blocks away. I Aren't told investigators that Paine looked
upset and there was a small patch of blood on
the front of his shirt. When she asked him what
had happened, he kept repeating the same thing. They're gonna
think I did it. The other week. I had a
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(20:18):
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(21:42):
From the moment of his arrest, Pervis Pain insisted that
he was innocent. He told detectives that he hadn't attacked anybody,
that he had simply walked in on a nightmare. That day.
He said he had gone to Bobby's apartment multiple times
waiting for her to return from visiting her mother in Arkansas.
On one of those visits, he said, he left his

(22:02):
overnight bag, including clothing and three cans of Colt forty
five beer outside in the hallway. But then he said
he heard something. It sounded like somebody faintly crying and
calling for help. He said he followed the sound to
the apartment across the landing Jerse's apartment, and found that
the front door was already partially open. He was just

(22:25):
about to knock when, he claimed a tall black man
wearing white shorts bolted through the door and ran right
past him. Startled, Pain said, he stepped inside. He recalled,
I eased the door on back, and I said, coming in,
coming in. When I pulled the door back, I saw
the worst thing I ever saw in my life. Inside,

(22:47):
he said, was pure horror. Jerise was still alive, just barely.
A butcher knife was lodged in her neck. Her hands
were on it as if she was trying to pull
it out. She couldn't Payin said. He reached for the phone,
but in his panic, he didn't know who to call.
He turned back to Cheries and then made a decision.

(23:08):
He would later regret. He pulled the knife from her neck.
He said that he cut his wrist while doing so.
She race clung to him briefly, he said, like she
wanted help. He looked on and saw Nicholas, just three
years old, lying beside her, crying softly. He bent down
and tried to soothe him. He said to him, don't cry,

(23:32):
it's going to be all right. I'm going to get help.
Then he looked out of the window and saw the
flashing lights of a police cruiser pulling up. He panicked.
He was a black man standing in the middle of
a blood soaked crime scene. The victims were white, and
he was covered in their blood. Payin said he changed
his shirt and shoes before running outside. He said he

(23:55):
approached Officer Owen to try and explain, but when the
white officer saw the blood and began asking questions, pain ran.
It was fair, he said, not guilt. The detective's pain
story seemed carefully constructed. He had admitted being there, He
had admitted to touching the knife. He even admitted to

(24:15):
changing his clothing. The forensic evidence had indeed placed him
at the crime scene, but still his claim wasn't entirely impossible.
But to the prosecution, it didn't look like panic. It
looked like rage, and as the case moved closer to trial,
they announced they were seeking the death penalty. The murder

(24:45):
trial of Purvis Pain began on the eleventh of February
nineteen eighty eight. It was a case that already had
stirred strong emotions. Two lives were lost in the most
brutal fashion, a third hanging on by a thread, and
a suspect who assisted He was simply in the wrong
place at the worst possible time. From the very first
moment of the trial, it became clear that this wasn't

(25:07):
just about what had happened inside that Millington apartment, It
was about why. During opening statements, the defense led out
their position. Pain, they said, hadn't killed anybody. He had
stumbled upon a horrifying scene and panicked in his sphere.
He had made the worst possible decisions, but he wasn't
a murderer. The prosecution painted a much darker portrait. They

(25:33):
said that Pain had been waiting outside the apartment for
his girlfriend Bobby, when he decided to knock on the
door across the way to Race's apartment. What happened next,
they argued, was in some tragic misunderstanding. It was intentional, violent,
and driven by lust and drugs. Prosecutor Tommy Henderson told

(25:53):
the court that Pain had made unwanted sexual advances to Cherise,
and when she resisted, he snapped. Just described the murders
as a drug induced frenzy, pointing to Pain's erratic behavior
and the cocaine residue found on a scrap of paper
in his pocket. Witness after witness was called to the stand.
First responders described the carnage inside the apartment, the blood

(26:16):
on the walls, the floor, the sheer scale of violence.
Officer owned, the first on the scene, testify that he
had seen Nicholas, just three years old, lying beside his
dang mother. He said there was blood everywhere. But under
cross examination, the defense highlighted discrepancies in the officer's testimony.
During a bond hearing, Owen had said Pain struck him

(26:37):
with bloody hands. No, he said he couldn't remember whether
Pain's hands had blood on them at all. It was
a small detail, but in a case like this, small
details mattered. The forensic evidence told the damning story. Pain's
fingerprints were found on a bear can, the telephone, and
the kitchen counter. He admitted to touching them, but insted

(27:00):
it was only because he had tried to help. Then
came a moment that would haunt the courtroom. A baseball
cap had been found looped around the tiny arm of Lacey.
The prosecution argued it was clear evidence of a struggle
that it came off during the attack. Pain insisted he
had no idea how it ended up there, and then

(27:20):
Purvis Pain took the stand. He testified that he had
seen the aftermath of the attack, that he had heard cries,
pushed open the door and found a scene from a nightmare.
He said he tried to help to Race, pulling the
knife from her neck, even cutting his own wrist in
the process. He had reached out to comfort Nicholas, who
was crying beside her, and when he saw the flashing

(27:43):
lights of the police car pulling up, he panicked. As
soon as I let out. As soon as I left
out the door, I saw a police car, and some
of their feeling just went all over me. I panicked,
I'm coming out of here with blood on me and everything.
It's going to look like I'd done this crime. I
saw a police getting out a white man at that,
and that scared me even more, you know, like I

(28:05):
didn't have a chance. He said he didn't lock the
apartment door behind him, but couldn't explain why it was
discovered locked. As for the scrap of paper with cocaine
residue in his pocket, he claimed the other man had
dropped it, that he had picked it up with the
intention of throwing it away, But to the jury the
story was just too thin. On the final day of

(28:26):
the trial, the courtroom fell into a hushed silence. The
jury deliberated for seven hours before sending word that they
had reached a verdict. Spectators filled slowly back into the courtroom.
Family sat in opposite corners of the gallery, one graving,
the other prank, and then the verdict was read. Guilty

(28:46):
for the murder of Cherise Christopher and her daughter Lacy.
In the eyes of the court, Pervis Pain was no
innocent bystander. He was a double murderer, one who had
left a child fighting for his life and a commun
unity searching for answers. But for others watching, especially those
who knew purpose Pain, the verdict didn't settle anything. It

(29:09):
raised new questions questions about justice, race, and fear, and
about what really happened that summer afternoon in Millington. Because
for Purvise Pain, this wasn't the end. This was just
the beginning of a decade's long fight to prove that
he was telling the truth. The sentencing phase followed him.

(29:40):
For purpose Pain, the stakes couldn't have been any higher.
It wasn't about guilt or innoiscence, but instead life or death.
The defense began by trying to show the man behind
the headlines, not the suspect, not the accused, but the son,
the boyfriend, and the churchgoer. His girlfriend, Bobby took the stand.
She spoke soffully, describing a man who had stepped in

(30:00):
when she needed somebody the most. She told the jury
that Pain had treated her three children just like a
father that loved his kids. She had met him at
church during a time when she was being abused by
her husband. In Pain, she said she had found kindness.
Then came Payne's parents. They described a devoted son, one

(30:21):
who attended church regularly, didn't abuse drugs or alcohol, and
worked hard. They pleaded for his life with quiet dignity.
But then the prosecution made their move. They rolled in
a television monitor and played a gruesome videotape. It showed
the bodies of Cherise, Christopher and Lacy Joe lying lifeless
in the blood spattered kitchen where they had died. Rigormortis

(30:45):
had already set in the village had been barred from
the trial. The judge ruled it to inflammatory for a
jury wang guilt, but now it was fair game and
it had the intended effect. Jurors looked away, some wiped
away tears, and then came Cherise's mother Mary. Her voice
shook as she spoke, not about vengeance, but about loss.

(31:09):
She told the jury about Nicholas, the little boy who
had somehow survived. He now lived with her and her husband,
and he didn't understand why his sister and mother never
came home. She told the jury. He comes to me
many times during my week and asks me, Grandma, do
you miss my Lacy? And I tell him yes. He says,

(31:29):
I'm worried about my Lacey. Then District Attorney Tommy Henderson
stood once more. He didn't speak about forensics or timelines
or fingerprints. He spoke about Nicholas, of the kind of
boy he had been before the murders and the kind
of boy he would grow into, carrying this trauma with
him forever. He told the jury, no one will ever

(31:51):
know about Lacy Joe because she never had the chance
to grow up. There won't be a high school principle
to talk about Lacy Joe Christopher. There won't be anybody
to take her to prom His mother will never kiss
him good night, or sing to him, or hold him.
The courtroom began to wait, but the prosecutor didn't stop.
He reminded the jury that pains Tim wanted them to

(32:13):
think about all the people who loved him. But what
about Charis? What about Lacey? What about Nicholas who no
longer had anybody to watch cartoons with? What about the
people left behind? The jury were then sent off to deliberate.
They were gone for just four and a half hours,
and when they returned, the room fell silent. Then they

(32:35):
announced their verdict. Purviose Tyrone Paine would be sentenced to death.
For some it was justice, For others, it was another tragedy.
But for Purviose pain it was now a race against
the clock, a fight not only for his life but
for his story to be believed. In April, of ninety

(33:01):
ninety pervise, Pain launched his first major appeal. He argued
that the case against him had been purely circumstantial, that
the evidence wasn't strong enough to warrant a conviction, let
alone a death sentence. But the Tennessee Supreme Court saw
things differently. They issued a firm response, we find the
evidence sufficient to convince any rational trier of fact that

(33:23):
the defendant was guilty of first degree murder beyond a
reasonable doubt. They also rejected Pain's claim that the cocaine
residue and drug paraphernalia found on him at the time
of his arrest should never have been shown to the jury.
For Pain, it was another door closed, But far beyond
his case, a larger legal debate was quietly brewing. At

(33:44):
the heart of it was one critical question, should juries
deciding on life or death be allowed to hear about
the victims, their lives, their families, and the whole left behind.
In nineteen eighty seven, the Supreme Court had said no.
They ruled that the aid Amendman, which protects against krill
and unusual punishment, prohibited victim impact statements in death penalty sentencing.

(34:07):
Their concern was fairness. Not every victim has a family
who can speak for them, not every loss is easily measured,
but that ruling was now under challenge, and Purvis Pain's
case would become the battleground. In nineteen ninety one, the
justices agreed to hear arguments on pain sentence, specifically whether

(34:27):
the video of the bloody crime scene in the statements
from Teresa's graving family had unfairly swayed the jury. His
attorneys filed a petition describing Pain as a borderline retarded
man who had stumbled upon a horrific scene. They argued
that the videotape shown during sentencing had an almost cinematic
disorienting power. They said a juror following the movement of

(34:51):
the camera could not have helped but get the eerie
feeling that he or she was standing in the room
with the victims. Shortly after the walk through the apartment.
The jury was called upon to decide whether Pain should
live or die. They warned that victim impact evidence created
a dangerous risk that a jury might choose death based
on passion, prejudice, or a tragic sense of guilt. But

(35:13):
Attorney General Dick thornbudd disagreed. He told the Supreme Court
that it wasn't fair for juries to see a killer
as human without seeing the humanity of those they'd taken.
He stated, if the jury must consider the defendant as
a uniquely individual human being, then there is no convincing reason,
especially none grounded in the Constitution, to prevent the jury

(35:35):
from also considering the unique characteristics or circumstances of the victim.
But not everybody agreed. Justice Sandrada O'Connor posed a difficult question,
should the defense be allowed to bring in evidence of
a victim's bad character to argue that not much harm
resulted from their murder. Thornburg replied that diminishing the value

(35:56):
of a victim's life shouldn't be allowed. Paul Stevens wasn't satisfied.
He warned that the system was becoming a one way
street stacked in favor of the prosecution. Then in June
of ninety ninety one, the ruling came down. The Supreme
Court reversed its earlier ban. Victim impact statements were not allowed.

(36:19):
The jury had a right, the court said, to understand
the full weight of the crime, not just in legal terms,
but in human ones. This ruling upheld Purvis Pain's death sentence.
Inside the courtroom, Cheres's mother, Mary, offered her thoughts as
she said, what people don't realize is that a victim
is gone. They cannot defend themselves if they don't let

(36:41):
the survivors talk about them when it goes to trial.
All they are is a name. There's nothing there for
the jury to even think about. It was a victory
for some, a devastating blow for others, and for Purvis
Pain it was another step closer to the execution chamber.

(37:10):
By October of two thousand and seven, Purvis Pain had
spent two decades on death row. His execution was now looming,
scheduled for the twelfth of December, but his attorneys weren't
done fighting. They filed the motion to delay the execution,
citing appending US Supreme Court case Base versus Reese, the
challenge the constitutionality of lethal injection as a form of punishment.

(37:35):
At the same time, a federal judge had ruled that
Tennessee's own lethal injection protocol was unconstitutional. Pain's lawyers argued
that his execution shouldn't move forward while the very method
by which he would be killed was still under scrutiny.
The Tennessee Supreme Court denied the motion, saying they didn't
have jurisdiction, but in the end, the execution was put

(37:57):
on hold, Caught in the middle of a national debate
for what constituted cruel and unusual punishment, and then silence.
For more than a decade, Purvis Pain's name disappeared from
the headlines. That was until September of two thy and nineteen.
That's when Tennessee Attorney General Herbert's Littery asked the state

(38:18):
Supreme Court to set execution dates for nine death row inmates,
purpose Pain included. But the case wasn't as buried as
it seemed. That same year, Pain's legal team filed new motions.
They claimed that he had been wrongfully convicted, and this
time they had something that hadn't existed back in nineteen
eighty seven, DNA testing. At the time of the original trial,

(38:41):
DNA technology was in its infancy, unavailable in the way
we understand it today. In fact, Pain had asked for
DNA testing back in two thousand and six, but was denied.
Not in twenty twenty, his attorneys argued that there was
untested evidence evidence that could finally tell the truth. They
filed the petition, painting a very different picture of Purvise Pain.

(39:06):
Mister Pain was close with his family and active in
his church. He was a respected young man in his neighborhood.
Though he struggled academically due to an intellectual disability, he
never had any disciplinary issues. The petition highlighted that the
police report never mentioned any suspected drug use, despite prosecutors
claiming a trial that Pain had been high on cocaine

(39:27):
when he attacked Cheries, and it pointed to a startling inconsistency.
If Pain had stabbed to raise more than forty times,
then blood should have been all over him, but the
clothes that Pain had been wearing, which were recovered from
a dumpster, contained only minimal blood. Officer Owens had described

(39:47):
him as being dripping in blood, but the evidence didn't
match that image. Even more unsettling, other possible suspects were
never truly investigated. The petition mentioned Cheres's abusive, excit husband,
who was in prison at the time of the murder. However,
he was at Fort Pillow, a minimum security facility where,

(40:07):
according to former employees, inmates often left during the day
without consequences. The petition also described another witness sighting of
a man fleeing the scene, a man who one neighbor
said had previously been seen arguing with Charise. A long
time resident of the building told attorneys he saw Pa
and entered the building, but this was just before another

(40:30):
man ran out. This man, he said, had been seen
with Charise before, but they weren't on good terms. Then
came another breakthrough, one that should have surfaced years earlier.
In twenty nineteen, federal public defenders coming through the evidence
storage facility discovered something they had never been turned over

(40:50):
during trial, a bag of blood soaked bed sheets. They
also found the murder weapon, blood stained items, and other
key forensic materials, all of which had never undergone DNA testing.
The Innocence Project joined the legal team. Vanessa Podkin, one
of Pain's attorneys, stated, mister Pain has consistently maintained for

(41:12):
three decades that he's innocent. If we do DNA testing today,
we can not only prove Previs is innocent, but identify
the person who did the crime. But not everybody welcomed
this new momentum. Shelby County District Attorney Amy Wyrich pushed back,
she claimed that the bloody bed sheets were from a
completely different case and had nothing to do with the

(41:35):
murder of Charis and Lacy, but the evidence room staff disagreed,
confirming that the sheets were in fact from the Christopher
crime scene. Kelly Henry, another of Peen's attorneys, responded sharply,
there is a long line of bungling in this case
leading to mister Paine's wrongful conviction. She emphasized that they

(41:56):
were also requesting testing of the murder weapon, fingernail scrapings,
the tampon, and other bloodstained the objects, and she made
one final biding observation. One of the things that is
really shocking to me is that in twenty twenty, an
elected district attorney general of a major metropolitan city would
say that DNA evidence is irrelevant in a murder case,

(42:18):
particularly one that they said was sexually motivated at the
time of trial. That boggles my mind. For the first
time in over three decades, there was a renewed glimmer
of hope if the DNA matched somebody else, it could
exonerate Purvis pain. If it matched him, the case would
be closed. For all the years that had passed one

(42:40):
thing had never wavered pervis. Pain's family had always believed
in him. His sister Rolanda brought her sons to visit
him each week. She said, Pain told her what an
officer had said during his arrest. You think you're black,
now wait until we fry you. That sentence lingered with her.
It wasn't just about a crime. It was about race,

(43:02):
about parr about a system that had failed her brother
before he ever stepped into a courtroom. Landa said that
her brother had always told the truth. She said, the
case against him was purely circumstantial.

Speaker 1 (43:16):
I call him Bubba. I tell Boba, I said, Bubba
you you were convicted as soon as they saw you
because of the color of your skin. I will continue
for the rest of my life as long as it
take to fight for my brother's friend. And it's not
too late to save his life.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
And now, with a new execution date looming December third,
twenty twenty, Pain's attorneys filed yet another appeal. This time,
they argued that executing Pain would violate the Aid Amendment
because he was intellectually disabled. They cited his low IQ
and backed it up with stories from people who had

(43:57):
known him since childhood. He'd struggled to read and write.
He couldn't follow instructions, couldn't use a ruler, count money,
or even iron clothing. Neighbors said that he was gullible,
easy to trick, and easy to use. He was gentle,
but he was never street smart.

Speaker 3 (44:16):
His father said, you know how it is when he
gets first chair first chat is very important. Very He
was born premature, and we had a great plan for
him because he was the oldest one, and we thought
for Wai going to be the onest chatty we had.

Speaker 2 (44:32):
By now, Pain had a growing circle of support beyond
his family and the Innocence Project. A coalition of faith leaders,
legal advocates, and civil rights groups led by the Ben F.
Jones Chapter of the National Bar Association rallied behind him.
They issued a public statement which read, mister pen is
a black man with intellectual disabilities who was convicted of

(44:54):
killing a white woman and her daughter after the prosecution
relied on racist stereotype types about black men as hyper sexual,
drug using super predators. He is scheduled for execution on
December third, twenty twenty, despite a constitutional ban on executing
people with intellectual disabilities and the existence of DNA evidence

(45:17):
that has never been tested, and finally there was a breakthrough.
Judge Paul A. Scan ruled in Pain's favor the DNA
testing would go forward. At the same time, Paine's attorneys
filed the clemency petition with Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, asking
for a sentence to be commuted to life in prison.

(45:38):
The petition made a bold, painful comparison. The stereotypes used
to convict mister Paine are from the same used repeatedly
throughout history, from Emmett Hill to the Central Park five.
Finally people listened. That weekend, dozens of supporters gathered at
the Iam Aman Plaza in Memphis, just to Stone Through

(46:00):
from where doctor Martin Luther King Junior had spent his
final days. They wore shirts with Pervis Payne's name or
his face and stood together calling for justice, or at
the very least, a second chance. Carl Payinne, Purvis's father,
was there as well. He remembered the first time he
saw his son after his arrest. He had said to him, Dad,

(46:23):
I didn't kill no woman, Carl said. He looked at
his son and replied, without hesitation, I know you didn't.
He thought it would be a day or two, maybe
a week. That was thirty three years ago. Carl had
already lost so much. His wife, Bernice, died in two
thousand and five, still clinging to hope. Every new year,

(46:44):
she would say the same thing, Pervis is coming home
this year. His daughter passed away in two thousand and sixteen,
after years of standing by her brother's side. Now Carl
stood alone, fighting for the only son he had left.
He said in an interview, they want to take his life,
the only son that I have. In November, just weeks

(47:08):
before the execution, Governor Bill Lee granted a temporary reprieve.
He said the decision was made due to disruptions caused
by the COVID nineteen pandemic, but for the family, it
was more than that. It was time. Time to finish
the DNA testing, time to hope. In January of twenty

(47:35):
twenty one, the long awaited DNA results came in. They
showed what Pain and his attorneys had expected. His DNA
was present on the murder weapon, but the details mattered.
His DNA wasn't found on the handle of the knife.
It was on the hilt, which matched his version of events.
Pain had said he'd touched the knife to try and

(47:56):
pull it from Teresa's neck and cut himself in the process.
But there was something else. There was DNA from an
unknown man, partial degraded but present, and it was on
the handle of the knife. Somebody else had touched it. Unfortunately,
there wasn't enough viable DNA to run it through the

(48:17):
FBI's national database. The identity of this person remained a mystery.
Prosecutor Steve Jones quickly responded. He said that the DNA
results didn't change anything, but the timeline was unclear and
the unknown DNA might have been left before or after
the murder. The judge overseeing the case agreed, ruling there's

(48:40):
nothing that exonerates Purvis Pain, but the Innocence Project didn't
say it that way. In a statement, they wrote, the
DNA testing results are consistent with Purvis Pain's long standing
claim of innocence. Mail DNA from an unknown third party
was found on key evidence, including the murder weapons, but

(49:00):
unfortunately is too degraded to identify an alternative suspect by
the FBI's database, And still more crucial evidence was missing.
The fingernail scrapings from Charies who had forty five defensive
wounds who had clearly fought hard for her life had

(49:21):
somehow been lost, so had the rape kit's vaginal swaps.
Pain supporters were growing louder, pointing out what had been overlooked.
Pain had no defensive wounds on him, no bruises, no scratches,
just the cut on his wrist, and even the photographic
evidence had raised questions the two bodies had been moved

(49:43):
before photographs were taken. Cherise was seen both face up
and faced on Lacy's body too had been repositioned. Furthermore,
fingerprinting hadn't been done on the kitchen drawer where the
knife had come from. They weren't lifted from the sea,
the door handles, the toilet, and those beer cans that
had Pain's fingerprints on them. Some suggested they had been

(50:07):
deliberately staged for the photos. Meanwhile, public support for Pain
was surging. A petition launched by the Innocence Project had
gathered over six hundred thousand signatures. His attorney, Kelly Henry said,
to have over half a million signatures on our petition
as just astounding, but it speaks to the injustice in

(50:27):
the case and how it's resonating with people. They can
understand the outrage that we could possibly execute someone who's
innocent and disabled when racism played a key role in
landing them on death row. As the new execution date
neared April ninth, twenty twenty one, his team made one
last play for clemency. Then there was a breakthrough, not

(50:51):
in corporate in legislation, Tennessee lawmakers passed a bill preventing
the execution of intellectually disabled inmates. Pain's atturn and He's
acted swiftly, filing a petition asking the court to officially
declare him ineligible for execution. The state appointed an independent
expert to conduct a psychological evaluation, and in November of

(51:13):
twenty twenty one, the verdict was in purvise. Pain was
officially intellectually disabled. The court then vacated his death sentence.
After thirty three years, Pain was no longer facing execution.
He wept in court. Attorney Kelly Henry recalled the moment steering.

(51:34):
He just hugged me and just said thank you over
and over and over again. I told him it was
all right, I got you. But this didn't mean freedom
for Pain. He was now facing two consecutive life sentences
He was still in prison, still locked away from the
life he'd known, but he was off death row, and

(51:54):
for the first time in thirty three years, he could
sleep without fear of a final date. In January of
twenty twenty two, Pervis Pain was back in court, not
for freedom, but for a hearing that would decide the
rest of his life. The question was concurrent or consecutive sentences.
If consecutive, Pain wouldn't be eligible for parole until he

(52:16):
was eighty five years old. If concurrent, he could be
eligible in just six years. It was a hearing filled
with emotion, with both families present, and both sides had
a story to tell. Jerise and Lacy's family spoke first.
Cathy Heights, Cherisa's sister in law, stood up and said,
there was so much love and it was taken away

(52:37):
from us. Cherise didn't have a choice. We didn't have
a choice. She's forever with the angels. Angela Johnson, Cherisa's sister,
shared how her world fell apart with the murders. She
was filled with grief and anger, but her words about Nicholas,
the toddler who had somehow survived that day were especially

(52:57):
hard to hear. She said, he'd never wort covered, he
lived alone, had never dated, and had very few friends.
She said, he completely shut down. You can still tell
there's a part of him that will never be happy ever,
not without them. Then it was Pain's turn to be heard,
not in his own words, but through those who knew

(53:18):
him best. His supporters described a gentle, helpful young man,
a boy who had struggled in school, excused from reading aloud,
often unable to understand written directions. His father, Karl, spoke
with pride and sorrow as he said he was a
person who had the gift of helps. He was always
helping somebody. Four prison officials also testified on Pain's behalf.

(53:44):
They described a man who had spent three decades on
death row without a single disciplinaryan fraction working as a
janitor in the prison, showing respect, consistency, and grace under pressure.
And then the judge made her willing life sentences to
be served. Concurrently, that meant that Pain would be eligible

(54:05):
for parole in two thousand and twenty seven. She acknowledged
the immense pain of the Christopher family, but also recognized
Pain's efforts. She stated, if released from custody, the defendant
would have an extensive support network to assist him in
his continued rehabilitation. For the first time, there was a

(54:26):
timeline or a finished line. In two thousand and seven,
Pain would have a shot at freedom, but that hope
was short lived. In June of twenty and twenty five,
the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled that the judge didn't have
the authority to alloy the life sentences to run concurrently.
They then ordered that the sentence be served consecutively, and

(54:50):
just like that, the finish line moved decades away. Purvise
Pain will not be eligible for parole until two thousand
and fifty six, he would be nearly ninety years old.
His attorney, Kelly Henry, released a statement which said, we're
incredibly disheartened that Purvis will remain incarcerated for a crime

(55:11):
he did not commit. But we will not give up.
We just won't until we're able to exonerate him and
get him out of prison and get him home to
his family. Well, Bessie's that is it for this episode

(55:45):
of Morbidology. As always, thank you so much for listening,
and I'd like to say a massive thank you to
my new supporters up on Patreon. Dukes and Rata. This
was quite a controversial case to cover, but it was
a request by one of my listeners. Curious to hear
what you think of this case. Is Purvis Pain innocent
or do they have the right guy? Feel free to

(56:08):
join Morbidology's Facebook group and share your thoughts there. Remember
to check as out at morbidology dot com for more
information about this episode and to read some true crime articles.
Until next time, take care of yourselves, Stacey Eve, and
have an amazing week.