A Family's Tragedy

By Jason Cato From staff reports

(Published October 26‚ 2003)

Editor's note: This is part of a two-day series in which The Herald will explore the events surrounding the deaths of a Chester County couple allegedly at the hands of their then-12-year-old grandson and issues involving juveniles in the adult criminal system.

By Jason Cato

The Herald

After driving more than an hour in the crisp darkness, the black Nissan Pathfinder pulled off on a gravel road parting a hunting club in rural CherokeeCounty.

A half-mile later, it veered to the right on an old logging road. For the first few hours of Nov. 29, 2001, the driver hid in a grove of pine saplings with Christy, his golden retriever mix, and a cache of weapons, including the shotgun police say he used to kill his grandparents.

Miles away, a neighbor reported a fire at 950 Slick Rock Road just before midnight Nov. 28. Within hours, the bodies of Joe Frank Pittman, 66, and Joy Roberts Pittman, 62, were discovered in the rubble of their ChesterCounty home. Onlookers noticed the Pathfinder was gone. They soon discovered the couple's 12-year-old grandson, Christopher Pittman, also was missing.

Police issued word to be on the lookout for both. It was the second time in five weeks such a search was needed for the boy.

When he was found this time, the stakes would turn out to be much higher. Police charged him with double murder.

Christopher's troubles existed for more than a matter of weeks, however. A state psychologist reported he was "a young man who'd had difficulty with the adults in his life." He felt alienated from others and reported a family history of emotional problems and mental illness, she said.

His family does not deny that. This was the culmination of painful experiences and a life quickly spun out of control, they say.

"This was a lifelong progression of sadness and depression, of being let down and a lot of loss from those he loved and trusted," said his maternal grandmother, Del Duprey of Wildwood, Fla.

Some say his personal problems don't justify killing his grandparents, an act portrayed by the prosecutor as cold-blooded.

Though they may describe the act, that characterization does not apply to her grandson, Duprey said.

"To me, in my world, there are no 12-year-old monsters," she said.

Troubles in his life began with his parents, Joe Dolphas Pittman and Hazel Jones Pittman. A family member called the relationship doomed from the beginning.

They met in 1986 at Wildwood High School in central Florida and quickly fell in love. Joe was a sophomore, Hazel a freshman.

Their daughter, Danielle, was born the next year. Hazel was 16.

Joe graduated the following year and joined the U.S. Army. He began boot camp at Alabama 's Fort McClellan on May 11, 1988. Eleven weeks later, he and Hazel were married.

It would be his first in a string of failed marriages.

On April 9, 1989, the young couple's second child, Christopher Frank Pittman, was born in Huntsville , Ala. Six weeks later, he'd experience the first of a half-dozen family splits, divorces and separations when Hazel left Joe and returned to Florida .

By October 1990, she'd given birth to another son by another man and Joe was deployed as part of Operation Desert Storm.

Hazel left the family while Joe was away, leaving the children with Duprey, her mother. It'd be a decade before the children would see their mother again.

"They had no relationship with their mother, and that was her choice," said Duprey, who adopted Hazel's third child, Christopher's half-brother, and raised him as her own son. "My daughter left them when they were born, basically."

Joe returned from the Middle East in March 1991 and moved with the children back to Alabama , where he was stationed. When he was discharged that December, they moved in with his parents in Oxford , Fla.

Joe remarried in 1992 but was separated again a year later. He and the children moved back in with "Nana" and "Pop-Pop," as his parents were called.

"My mom and dad were really like their parents," Joe said.

Joy cooked for the family and washed the children's clothes. She drove Danielle 40 miles round-trip to dance lessons in Ocala, Fla. Every morning, she took Christopher to North SumterPrimary School, where he went to class and she worked as a receptionist.

Around the house, the kids played on the 5-acre property, swimming in the pool or taking rides with their grandfather on his Allis Chalmers tractor.

Joe and the kids eventually got their own place a few miles away, but the children still saw their grandparents daily.

Christopher and his grandfather were especially close. They shared a middle name, Frank, and many of the same passions, including hunting, fishing and taking things apart.

"My dad was his hero," Joe said. "He (Christopher) was under his feet constantly, waiting to learn from him."

In 1997, the grandparents moved to South Carolina , building a house in rural Chester County.

Joe Frank Pittman was born in 1935 in a mill village in Lando. He and his wife often visited family there. In the 1980s, the couple bought 20 acres deep in the woods off Slick Rock Road , where they long planned to retire.

The move devastated the grandchildren they'd helped raise. Christopher, then 8, took their departure especially hard.

"I did, too, to be honest," his father said.

Life goes on

A maintenance worker with the Sumter County, Fla., school district, Joe, now 35, did all he could to give his children normal lives.

Christopher liked playing video games and played centerfield for his youth baseball team. He was nicknamed "Bug" because of his love of insects.

Described as quiet and reserved, Christopher was whippet-thin. Family photographs, some salvaged from his grandparents' burned house, depict his chestnut eyes and hair and a smile stretching to the edges of his narrow face.

Although Joe Frank and Joy had moved nearly 500 miles away, their grandchildren visited often. Christopher became friends with many of the boys in the area.

"He (Christopher) was well-rounded, well-liked," said the Rev. Chris Snelgrove of New Hope MethodistChurch. "He was as normal and carefree of a little boy as there was."

In Chester, Christopher enjoyed swimming in creeks, camping and playing in the woods, his father said. He loved riding his grandfather's four-wheeler. Neighbors said he also enjoyed driving the family car up and down the long, dirt driveway -- something they say his grandfather often allowed.

Life in Florida changed in 1996, when Joe remarried once again. This one brought more children, two daughters. Their arrival, however, had a negative effect on Christopher, a state psychologist reported.

The boy's father said those effects were no different than what many other children experience. "There are a lot of things that affected Christopher, just like they would any child," Joe said.

Christopher and his sister were held to high academic standards. In March 2001, Christopher was chosen to participate in a Florida program that would provide four years of college after graduation.

Like his own father, Joe was loving but strict; and Christopher got into trouble at times that brought spankings or being restricted from watching television, using the computer or playing video games.

He once wore his father's Army fatigues for Uniform Day at South Sumter Middle School. When a boy took his hat, Joe said Christopher "jumped on the kid" to get it back.

Another time, he and a friend shot up a mobile home with a pellet gun. And there was an instance when he chased after his sister with a baseball bat.

"Taken out of context, it sounds terrible," Duprey said. "It was just kids being kids, though."

Mother returns

Joe and his third wife split in 2001. Later that summer, Christopher and Danielle got something they'd always wanted: a chance to get to know their mother.

"They'd been through two stepmothers and naturally wanted their own mother," Duprey said.

The reunion proved bittersweet.

Hazel came to Florida for a two-week vacation a few months after giving birth to her seventh child. The stay ended up lasting months, Duprey said.

Hazel told her mother and Joe she'd changed and wanted to get to know her other children.

As the stay got longer, Hazel rented a mobile home near Oxford and brought her four children who were living with her down from Virginia. Her husband was to follow, Duprey said.

Hazel and Joe, however, began to rekindle their old relationship.

"She told Joe that she and her husband were separated," Duprey said.

As the romance grew, so did the relationship between Hazel and her first two children, Duprey said.

Hazel and Danielle shared clothes. She met her daughter's friends and even took her to register for high school, Duprey said.

Christopher and his mother also shared things, Duprey said. Both are shy by nature.

"He seemed very happy around her," Duprey said. "They both were. They thought it was wonderful. They finally had a mother -- their mother."

By October, though, Hazel's husband threatened to take custody of their children.

The next time Joe and the children came by her mobile home, Hazel told them to get their things, Duprey said. "She told them to leave and don't come back. She said she wasn't going to lose custody of her children over this. ... She hurt them all over again."

Within days, Christopher decided he'd had enough, Duprey said.