Murdered teen's parents struggle to cope

Steven Wood maneuvers his electric wheelchair in the tight kitchen and then pulls himself up to open a cupboard. He can walk, but not far, and his face is flushed and he's breathing heavy.

Steven was at the hospital, yet again, just the day before. "What do you need?" asks his wife, Susan, and she gets up to help him. Steven sits back down in the wheelchair. "I was looking for those cookies," he says. "You go and rest," says Susan, who also is in poor health and can't move well. Both are only in their 40s, but have been forced by disease to quit their jobs and scrape by on disability.

Her main illness is fibromyalgia. His are several — many stemming from a horrific car accident decades ago that severed internal organs and broke his spine. Susan had been a nurse for 16 years. Steven was in the Army for six years and then also a nurse.

"I'll get them," Susan says, and sets two boxes of store-bought cookies on the counter. The pain in their joints is too much for them to knead homemade dough anymore.

"They're good though," Steven says, getting out of his chair and settling back into his recliner in the living room with a relieved sigh. "Have one," he says.

'Not this time'

This is what they do for all visitors, especially Derek's friends. Steven and Susan are the eternal parents — feeding, supporting, listening; the kids welcome at any hour, sinking deep into the living room sofas and feeling safe. Derek was their youngest; 17, athletic, smart and gorgeous. His last name is Pieper, from Susan's first marriage. Derek was about 4 years old when Steven came into his life. He was his dad. "They say blood is thicker than water," Derek wrote on Steven's last Father's Day card, "but not this time. I love you, Daddy." Derek's car is in the garage and, down the hall, his bed is made but his sheets unwashed.

Steven and Susan know so much about their son. They can recite lines from his school papers and the notes he wrote them; they know what is posted on his MySpace page and his friend's pages. They know his favorite cologne, the awards he won and when he won them.

At the mention of his name one of their dogs — a 3-year-old hound and Great Dane mix named Buddy — lifts his large, chiseled head and perks his ears, looking for him, then lets out a soft, mournful cry and puts his head back down on a sofa by the window and curls against his blankie, a shredded and worn rug he's carried around with him since he was a puppy.

"He's still waiting for him to come home," says Steven, who, along with his wife, is more involved with Derek's life than most parents. Except Derek is dead and has been for two years.

'He was no thug'

The moon was a sliver in the early hours of July 28, 2006, and it must have been dark in those last moments. Derek and another Wesley Chapel teenager, Raymond Veluz, 18, had left a party. According to Det. Lisa Schoneman of the Pasco County Sheriff's Office, Raymond asked Derek if he could help him buy some marijuana and Derek agreed.

In the weeks leading up to that night, Derek had been scared by some of the young men he knew from Wesley Chapel High School. They paid Derek money to drive them around. He was alarmed that they carried guns.

"Derek made mistakes," Steven said, "But he was no thug."

Schoneman said she believes both Derek and Raymond were good kids who made some bad decisions — and who, in the end, were at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Steven and Susan knew something was not right with Derek — he wasn't sleeping and he seemed frightened, but he wouldn't tell them what was wrong. They worried. That night before he died, Derek called after he got off work at Bosco's, a pizza place. He told his mom that he loved her and that he would be home soon. Then he went to that party and left in Raymond's car.

Their bodies were found at dawn the next day on a dirt road in Trilby, some 25 miles from Wesley Chapel. During the day, that area is gorgeous country, all sloping green pastures dotted with bales of hay and sewn together with old, weathered wood fences. The roads are so narrow that branches from the dense forest on each side touch overhead. There are no street lights.

Derek and Raymond had been shot multiple times from behind, their bodies found facedown.

Because of a well-founded fear of reprisal, witnesses refused to come forward. One who did, a young man named Jeremy Henry who began his criminal record at age 11, talked with detectives days after the murders and told them who he believed committed them. Three days later, he was found executed.

So for nearly two years, no arrests were made in the case. Then on July 24, witnesses decided to speak and Schoneman had enough information to get first-degree murder warrants for Tyree Jenkins, 22, and Luc Pierre-Charles, 20.

In what has been described as a miracle, Jenkins was picked up on a traffic violation in Hillsborough County less than an hour after the warrant was filed into the system. Pierre-Charles — whose yearbook photo was next to Derek's — is still at large and described as armed and dangerous. Detectives told Steven and Susan that the parents of Pierre-Charles are both Baptist ministers. A search on him shows that he was student of the month and a member of the junior honor society when he was younger.

Steven and Susan, who are both religious and say their faith is what allows them to survive, believe those who murdered their son are demon-possessed.

"When you look into their eyes, you see nothing," Susan said. They both pray for those men and their families, who, surely, are hurting