| Sources |
- [S23] Atchley Funeral Home, (http://www.atchleyfuneralhome.com/), 26 Sep 2006.
Jenilyn Addis Franklin
June 06, 1988 - September 26, 2006
Birthplace: Point Pleasant, New Jersey
Resided In: Kodak, Tennessee
Visitation: September 29, 2006
Service: September 29, 2006
Jenilyn Addis Franklin, age 18 of Kodak, passed away Tuesday, September 26, 2006, along with her husband, Brandon D. Franklin. Jenilyn was a graduate of Covenant Christian Academy and attended Walters State College in Sevierville. Jenilyn was a member of the Power Dance Factory dance team in Sevierville.
Survivors:
Parents: Wayne and Darlene Addis
Brother: Joshua Addis, all of Kodak
Extended family members in Texas, Colorado, and New Jersey
In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to M.A.D.D. (Mothers Against Drunk Driving), 511 E. John Carpenter Frwy., Suite 700, Irving, TX 75062.
Funeral service 7 PM Friday in the East Chapel of Atchley Funeral Home with Rev. George McLaughlin officiating. The family will receive friends 5-7 PM Friday at Atchley Funeral Home, Sevierville. (www.atchleyfuneralhome.com)
- [S4] Knoxville News-Sentinel (Tennessee), 15 Oct 2006.
All that remains
Families of young couple killed in senseless tragedy left with grief and questions
By MATT LAKIN, lakinm@knews.com
October 15, 2006
KODAK - Sometimes Darleen Addis still listens for her daughter's laugh.
She heard it for the last time on Sept. 26, when 18-year-old Jenilyn and her husband, 21-year-old Brandon Franklin, left home on their motorcycle.
They died a few hours later after a crash on U.S. Highway 411 outside Sevierville. Police said a pickup crossed into their lane and hit them head-on at about 55 mph.
They'd been married a little less than two months.
The driver, 43-year-old Larry Bruce Williamson, of Seymour, had no license, a history of drug use, and three convictions for driving under the influence in the past year, court records show. He'd been declared a habitual traffic offender almost three months earlier and was still on probation for his first DUI conviction.
Police, prosecutors, judges and probation officers couldn't keep him sober. They couldn't keep him off the road.
They couldn't keep two newlyweds from dying.
"He should have been in jail," said Williamson's son Chris. "This wouldn't have happened if the law had done what they're supposed to do."
Now Williamson is in jail on two counts of vehicular homicide and one count of driving as a habitual offender.
Meanwhile, the couple's families struggle with their grief.
"It's devastating," Addis said. "I wake up crying every morning. I go to bed crying. It's just something I will never get over.
"Everything they did, they did together. They were always together. They're together now."
Vows for the future Brandon and Jenilyn Franklin married July 30 at Mountain Valley Chapel in Pigeon Forge. They exchanged rings, kissed and promised to spend their lives together as their favorite song, "Everything" by the band Lifehouse, played.
The same song played about later at their funerals.
The couple met last fall when Jenilyn was a high school senior at Covenant Christian Academy in Sevierville. Brandon worked with her mother at the Bass Pro Shop in Kodak, and she introduced them.
"He had a lot of talents," Darleen Addis recalled. "And his interests were a lot like hers. So, one day, I said to him, 'I've got this daughter.' That was all it took."
Soon the couple began seeing each other nearly every day. Jenilyn, a dancer and sketch artist, invited him to her dance recitals at school. Brandon, a former Boy Scout, played the guitar and would sing for her, sometimes making up his own songs.
"He sang, and she couldn't," Addis said. "She danced, and he couldn't. What one was thinking, the other knew the answer to."
Just before Jenilyn's graduation, the couple visited Cape May, N.J., on a family vacation. Brandon proposed to her there on the beach.
His mother, Sharon Franklin, remembers him nervously rehearsing before he left.
"He really loved her, and she really loved him," the mother said. "I wish everybody could have a love like they had."
The couple spent their honeymoon in Bermuda, then moved in with Jenilyn's parents in Kodak. She enrolled at Walters State Community College in Sevierville, studying criminal justice. He kept working and considered going back to college.
The couple had already started thinking of names for their children.
"They wanted two kids - a boy and a girl," Addis said. "They had so much to do and so much life ahead of them. I was looking forward to them having babies and to me being a grandmother. Now they're not here."
'It happened so fast' The couple left home the afternoon of Sept. 26 to visit friends in Sevierville. They climbed onto Jenilyn's new motorcycle, a red 2006 Kawasaki Vulcan, waved goodbye to her mother and headed into town.
Jenilyn had practiced all week for a dance recital that Saturday. Brandon planned to sing with her in a duet of "Everything."
She had to be home by late afternoon to get her books for a night class at Walters State. They headed back along U.S. 411 just after 4:30 p.m.
They were 17 miles from home when police say a Ford F-150 pickup veered across the centerline.
James Morgan watched as he pumped gas at a convenience store a few yards away.
"The truck came out like it was going to pass the car in front of it," he said. "It happened so fast, they didn't have a chance. From what I could tell, the man in the truck never even hit the brakes."
The impact sent husband and wife flying, authorities said.
Two drivers had already called 911 from cell phones to complain about Williamson's driving. The first came from a driver on East Main Street in Sevierville about seven miles up the road.
"The guy's swerving all over the highway," the caller said on the 911 tape. "He's nearly hit two cars already."
The second came about 15 minutes later from a woman on U.S. 411 as the wreck happened.
"He's running everybody off the road," the woman said. "He just had an accident. His truck's on fire."
Officers arrived a few minutes later and found Brandon lying on the pavement and Jenilyn in the nearby grass.
"It's always bad, but it's worse when there's kids involved," said Trooper Phil Little of the Tennessee Highway Patrol. "And these two were practically kids."
An ambulance carried Brandon to Fort Sanders Sevier Medical Center, where doctors pronounced him dead on arrival. Jenilyn lived long enough to be airlifted to the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville, where she died in surgery.
Williamson, the pickup's driver, stepped out of the cab unhurt. Police said he swayed on his feet and looked drugged.
He told officers he was on his way home from a court-ordered visit with a psychiatrist.
"He had slurred speech and a glazed look in his eyes," Little wrote in a series of arrest warrants. "He could barely walk. He told me he had taken his medicine earlier that day."
A long history Williamson had been arrested nearly a dozen times in the past year on charges ranging from driving under the influence to aggravated domestic assault, court records show.
Before then, he'd owned and managed various restaurants around the area. Chris Williamson describes his father as a man broken down by stress and an addiction to painkillers after an ankle injury.
"When he's not on that medicine, he's a good guy," the son said. "He'd do anything for anybody."
His lawyer, Joe Baker, said he's not ready to discuss the case. He didn't make Larry Williamson available for an interview.
"It's certainly a tragic event, and our prayers go out to everyone involved," Baker said. "But it wouldn't be appropriate at this time."
The first arrest came on June 13, 2005, when Williamson, driving a Jeep Cherokee, hit a dump truck parked in a yard on Shiloh Church Road. He told a Sevier County sheriff's deputy that he'd been taking oxycodone, a prescription painkiller, for arthritis and a broken ankle.
His next arrest came a day later on the steps of the county jail. Williamson began hitting his wife as he left on bond, according to court records. He entered a deferred guilty plea to domestic assault a few weeks later, and a judge placed him on probation and ordered him treated for drug and alcohol abuse.
A second DUI arrest followed on July 20, 2005, when a Sevierville police officer spotted him speeding and weaving along Middle Creek Road. He'd been taking painkillers and tranquilizers.
Police also charged him with two counts of drug possession but dropped those charges after he showed prescriptions from his doctor.
About 11 weeks later, an Alcoa police officer charged him with DUI after he ran a car off the road and hit a guardrail on Alcoa Highway.
"Williamson was very slow in his movements and did not seem at all concerned about having been involved in an accident," Sgt. Keith Fletcher wrote in a warrant on that crash.
Williamson pleaded guilty in Sevier County General Sessions Court in November 2005 to two DUI charges and to violating his probation. Those pleas earned him 20 days in jail, 40 hours of community service, 11 months and 10 days on probation, an order to attend DUI school, and a revoked driver's license for one year.
A Blount County judge sentenced him to two more days in jail and another year's probation in February.
The arrests continued - aggravated domestic assault in March, a public intoxication charge in May.
Authorities revoked his probation in June for the arrests and for failing to show that he'd begun DUI school. It was reinstated after 10 days of community service.
"They should have kept him in jail," his son said. "That would have stopped a lot of this."
A Sevier County judge declared Williamson a habitual traffic offender in July and barred him from driving for three years.
Family members said he appeared to take his probation more seriously after that.
"He knew he'd got in a lot of trouble, and he said he was trying to turn things around," his son said.
That didn't keep him from getting behind the wheel. Two months later, Williamson climbed into his son's pickup and headed into town to see the psychiatrist, a condition of his probation.
"I'd just got it fixed, so I left it at the house," the son said. "I guess he took that while I was at work. We'd told him he didn't need to be driving, but I couldn't drive him everywhere. My mom couldn't drive him everywhere."
Leaving town, he met Brandon and Jenilyn Franklin on U.S. 411.
Laws, jails and loaded weapons Prosecutors said the case shows that nothing short of handcuffs and steel bars can keep some drivers off the roads.
"We can pass all the laws we want to, but if a person wants to get behind the wheel and drive, they're going to drive," said 4th Judicial District Attorney General Jimmy Dunn. "We just don't have enough jails to put all these people who drink and drive in."
He blames the state's DUI laws, which allow probation and community service to take the place of jail time, and overcrowded, underfunded rural jails that barely have enough room for thieves and killers.
Sevier County's jail has a maximum capacity of 214 inmates as set by federal standards. It routinely houses up to 300.
"It's just growing by leaps and bounds," Sevier County Sheriff Bruce Montgomery said. "We're so much over (capacity) we don't have room to lay any more mattresses down."
The crowding led to the filing of two federal lawsuits last year, which were ultimately dismissed. The county plans to build a new jail for nonviolent inmates, but construction hasn't begun.
Even when it's built, a new jail won't make the laws any tougher.
"Our laws reflect what our values are as a community," Dunn said. "Until we as a society determine that something has to be done, it won't be done.
"If you're driving intoxicated, that vehicle is just like a loaded weapon. And these two kids out there are just as dead as if someone held a gun to their heads and executed them," he said.
State law treats DUI as a misdemeanor until the fourth offense. On paper, that means the first three convictions carry a maximum sentence of a year in jail each.
In practice, most first-time offenders spend just 48 hours in a jail cell - sometimes less - with the rest of the sentence rolled over to probation. Even three-time offenders typically spend only six months in jail, the legal minimum.
"The DUI laws seem cut and dried, but they're not," said Laura Dial, executive director of Mothers Against Drunk Driving Tennessee. "We don't necessarily want people to be locked up for life, but the laws still need a few extra teeth."
Paper and practice For all three of his DUI convictions, Williamson spent a total of 22 days behind bars - each time as a first offender.
Williamson worked out his first and second guilty pleas at the same time, so Sevier County authorities merged them for a sentence of 20 days.
"You have to be convicted before you can have a second offense," said Steve Hawkins, chief assistant district attorney general. "He actually got 10 times more than he would have gotten on a normal first offense."
Blount County authorities apparently didn't know about Williamson's record in the neighboring county and treated his third conviction as a first-time offense. Instead of six months in jail, he served two days.
The three convictions allowed prosecutors to have him declared a habitual traffic offender, but that didn't stop him from driving.
State law allows local authorities to seize intoxicated drivers' vehicles and sell them at auction. Police say that's fine if the offender drives a Ferrari, but it can be a losing proposition otherwise.
"Most of the time, it ends up costing you money," said Montgomery, the sheriff. "You have towing and storage fees. If there's a lien, then you're responsible for what they owe on it."
Micela Burnham, a Sevier County assistant public defender who has represented Williamson in the past, deals with clients like him regularly. She said the state's DUI laws don't account for the realities of life in rural areas with no public transportation.
"We live in a society here in America where you have to drive to get from point A to point B," she said. "You have to drive to work. You have to drive to the store. It really complicates life for people who can't drive. And it's scary how many people out there have lost their licenses and are still driving around. I'm not sure this is a population of people who are deterred by the laws."
She favors making drug and alcohol treatment more accessible.
"It's cheaper to treat these people than to put them in jail," Burnham said. "But many of these people have no insurance. If they have any insurance at all, it's maybe going to pay for a 14-day detox program. That's not enough."
Williamson could appear in court Dec. 1 for a preliminary hearing. A trial could be more than a year away.
Prosecutors say he could face a sentence of up to 30 years in prison if convicted.
'The hurt's always there' Darleen Addis and Sharon Franklin haven't thought about a trial. They haven't thought about the law.
They can't stand to think about the crash yet.
"I can't even fathom it," Addis said. "You're not supposed to outlive your child. I know she doesn't want me to sit around and cry over her, but I just can't help it."
Addis keeps her daughter's room just the way she left it the day of the crash. She hasn't moved a thing, from the dance trophies on the dresser to the "I Love Lucy" posters on the walls.
The wedding dress still hangs in the closet, the wedding bouquet above the dresser mirror. The couple's car still sits in the driveway, the "Just Married" sign in the rear window.
Addis wears their wedding rings on a chain around her neck.
"It's never going to be the same," she said. "But this way, I still have a piece of my baby here with me."
She and Franklin talk sometimes about their children and the life they had. They look through photos, read letters and watch videos from their children's wedding day.
Sometimes they laugh. Sometimes they cry. Sometimes they sit in silence.
"It gets easier, but the hurt's always there," Franklin said.
Tire marks still scar the pavement at the scene of the crash, ending at two white crosses decorated with flowers and bearing the couple's names. Passing drivers can barely see them from the road.
The mothers worry most that their children will be forgotten, just two more entries in the state's annual list of highway deaths.
"Eventually, I know I have to move on, but it's so hard," Addis said. "I want my baby to be remembered for who she was. I don't want her to become a faceless statistic."
Matt Lakin may be reached at 865-342-6306.
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