ur congregation has someone to fight tand with us to restore our church to which it was intended by Scripture.
a small faction of church members who supported drumheller
” An appellate panel reduced Drumheller’s sentence, and
with Bumpass’s enthusiastic support, he was granted parole after 12 years. Drumheller joined Bumpass’s church, got a job through Bumpass running a medical supply business, met a woman in the congregation, married and had two sons. His life, which had been condemned to the miseries of prison, seemed to have blossomed anew. But by the late 1980s, this feel-good narrative collapsed.
He had an another adulterous affair — this time with a church friend’s wife — Bumpass and the woman’s husband recalled in recent interviews. Both marriages ended. The congregation, which had believed in Drumheller’s rebirth as evidence of the Christian power of forgiveness and redemp- tion, was mortified, Bumpass remembers. “We certainly felt betrayed,” he said. Drumheller left the church, divorced his wife, and mar-
ried the woman with whom he was having an affair. By 1989, he was running a Medicare scam, he acknowl-
edged in a guilty plea in federal court. The case was so blatant that it was held up by the federal government as one of the nation’s worst cases of Medicare fraud. “Drumheller obtained names and health insurance claim
numbers of nursing facility patients,” June Gibbs Brown, in- spector general of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, testified to a congressional subcommittee. “He then forged physicians’ signatures … and filed claims for equip- ment … which he never provided.” Her statement said that former employees of Drumheller gave statements about “epi- sodes of sexual misconduct and violence” by Drumheller. He got a five-month prison term and an order to pay
William M. Drumheller iii, who in January 2009 took the pulpit at the harrisonburg Church of Christ, was involved in court hearings in october over who should govern the church.
The psychiatrist’s diagnosis: “Inadequate personality with
strong anti-social features.” A jury convicted him of murder. It sentenced him to 70
to 125 years. But once incarcerated at the Stateville Correctional Cen-
ter, Drumheller began impressing nearly everyone he met as a sincere man who had made a horrific mistake, recalls Peter Bumpass, volunteer chaplain at the prison for nearly 30 years. “Everyone thought the world of Bill. … it just seemed like a one-time incident that got out of hand.”
$59,000 in restitution. Meanwhile, life at home was abusive, say Drumheller’s
son, Peter, his stepson, Brad Karas, and stepdaughter, Aman- da Jones. Peter Drumheller, 28, now works at a construction job in
Chicago. Reached by phone, he said his father beat him, his brother and his mother. “I was so near to death with him so many times,” he said, his voice shaking. “You’d just have to run and hope he didn’t find you.” He said he has been “on sui- cide watch” in hospitals because of childhood physical abuse by his father. He hasn’t seen or heard from his father in 17 years, Peter
said. Brad Karas said he did not live with his mother —
December 19, 2010 | The WashingTon PosT Magazine 13
PHOTOGRAPH BY MIKE OLLIVER
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