THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, March 15, 1995 TAG: 9503150447
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LAURA LAFAY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: Medium: 93 lines
Two days before Christmas, Janice Eastman went from one bedroom to the next in her Chesapeake ranch house, bludgeoning and stabbing to death her husband and two children as they lay in their beds. Afterward, according to testimony at Eastman's preliminary hearing Tuesday, she drew the covers up around the bodies of her children and tucked them in.
On Tuesday, Juvenile Court Judge James A. Leftwich found probable cause to send Eastman's case to a grand jury. Chesapeake Commonwealth's Attorney David Williams said he plans to ask the grand jurors to indict Eastman for capital murder. If found guilty, Eastman could receive the death penalty.
Eastman, 32, described by friends as an obsessively organized homemaker and a doting mother, sat quietly during her hearing, her long brown hair loose down the back of her jail-issued clothing. Her court-appointed attorney, Steven Shames, sat beside her.
Prosecutors believe Eastman killed her family some time between the departure of a group of neighbors on the night of Dec. 22 and and a phone call she made to her sister-in-law in North Carolina the next morning.
``She said, `They're all dead, Viv,' '' the sister-in-law, Vivienne Massey, recounted in court on Tuesday. ``I said, `What do you mean?' And she said, `I killed them all. I slaughtered them.' ''
Massey asked to speak to her brother. But Eastman told her he couldn't come to the phone because he was dead. Then Massey asked to speak to one of the children. ``She said, `They can't come to the phone, either,' '' Massey told the court. `` `They're in their beds.' ''
The conversation lasted four minutes. As soon as she hung up, Massey called police.
Detectives Diane Branch and John P. Crimmins, assigned to patrol the Deep Creek area that day, showed up at Eastman's Blanche Court house 15 minutes later. Eastman opened the door.
``She invited us in,'' Branch testified. ``I asked if anyone was hurt, and she said, `Yes. They're dead. I killed them.' ''
Branch stayed with Eastman while Crimmins went to check the bedrooms. As they waited, Branch testified, Eastman pulled her toward the kitchen garbage can and urged her to retrieve one of the knives she had used. There was another knife in the sink, she told the detective. And there was a hammer she had used to kill her husband after she stabbed him ``but he wouldn't die.''
``Don't you want to get the hammer?'' Branch said Eastman asked her repeatedly. ``Please don't forget the hammer. If you don't get it now, you'll forget it.''
It had been hardest to kill Kelly, her 9-year-old daughter, Eastman confided to Branch.
``She said . . . (Kelly) was very smart and she had a lot going for her and if anyone should have lived, it was Kelly,'' Branch told the court through tears. ``She said her son (Kenny, 11) had a learning disability.''
Janice Eastman also has a learning disability, according to a letter she left on the kitchen table and asked Branch to proofread in case of spelling mistakes.
In the letter, Branch testified, Eastman described her distress over money problems and her inability to cope. She wrote about her husband, Kenneth, and how he had lost his job. She talked about herself and how she had a ``hard time handling any jobs.'' She said she felt ``very dumb.''
``She was selfish. She was stupid and that she always wanted things done her way and she had recently found out she had a learning disability,'' Branch said of the letter's contents. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
Janice Eastman, 32, could face the death penalty if found guilty in
the December deaths of her husband and two children.
``I killed them all. I slaughtered them,'' Eastman reportedly told
her sister-in-law, Vivienne Massey, by phone. Massey called the
police.
Kelly, 9, and Kenny, 11, were found in their beds, with the covers
drawn up around them. Their mother reportedly said it had been
hardest to kill Kelly.
KEYWORDS: MURDER PRELIMINARY HEARING by CNB