The following appeared as Part III in a three-part series on the Dallas Carter High School 1988 football team in the Nov. 11, 2008 editions of The Dallas Morning News.
More from the series
Part I: Scandal taints legacy of 1988 Dallas Carter football team
Part II: Robbery spree involving 6 1988 Dallas Carter football players was ‘just for kicks’
Part III: Former players on 1988 Dallas Carter football team tried to move on
— Who was to blame for 1988 Dallas Carter football grade controversy
— The 1988 championship trophy went missing
(Original story): Jessie Armstead says the last time he talked to Derric Evans was the day he drove past Evans’ grandmother’s house and saw him outside, playing dominoes.
Armstead estimates that was four years ago.
Gary Edwards says he talks to Evans a couple of times a year. He knows Evans lives in Houston, but little else. "He works for an office supply company, I think."
Twenty years ago, they were Carter High’s Three Amigos. Today, two are close and the other is an enigma.
"To tell you the truth, I'm just like I was in 1989," says Evans, 37. "I really don't give a [expletive] what people say about me, whether it's true or false."
During a phone interview, Evans says there is a reason he has rebuffed reporters since giving prison interviews to The Dallas Morning News in 1989 and 1991 and to author H.G. Bissinger for the 1990 book Friday Night Lights.
"The story is so much that you can't print," he says. "The real story never comes out. You've got to sugarcoat it to get it in the paper. I don't want to tell my story that way. My story is unedited."
His story exemplifies the 1988 Carter Cowboys’ conflicting legacy.
A state championship convincingly earned on the field was lost 25 months later by unanimous vote in an Austin boardroom.
Sixty-two varsity players thrilled and galvanized and brought pride to their community, but six of them caused embarrassment and grief.
Today they are coaches, businessmen, NFL retirees, youth ministers, policemen and convicted felons.
"It was a talented team with very talented individuals, many of which went on without blemishes on their records and are productive citizens in our community," says Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, the attorney who represented Edwards during the grade controversy and criminal trial.
He says the robberies were "a black eye for the community," but adds, "I think those who were around and are still around feel they got a raw deal - that the justice system extracted more than a pound of flesh from them."
'Four years I wasted'
Unlike Evans, Edwards did get to play college football.
Released from prison on Aug. 13, 1993, he enrolled at Texas Southern. He played two seasons but left after a coaching change and didn't graduate.
"All my friends had already gone to college and were working," he says. "I said, 'I guess it's time for me to get a job and make my own money.' "
Sitting at the kitchen table of his DeSoto home, he patiently retraces the grade controversy, the robberies, prison.
For the last year, he has worked on a soon-to-be-released book, Carter Boyz. Interviewing teammates and researching old newspaper stories led him to reflect - which, naturally, he also did in prison.
"That was just four years I kind of wasted," he says. "I didn't need to be rehabilitated because I was aware of my mistakes and knew I would never do anything like that again.
"The embarrassment I caused to myself, my family, my church family, my coaches and the University of Houston, that was enough."
He worked for a chemical company in Garland for six years. Since 2004, he has worked for the city of Dallas as an environmental specialist, inspecting facilities to make sure they are in code compliance.
Single, he attends several Carter games a year and lives down the street from Cowboys teammate Clifton Abraham. He also coaches a youth league football team.
He was in prison when two years of legal wrangling over his algebra grade ended with the University Interscholastic League stripping Carter of the state title.
"A couple of guys I was locked up with, I guess they heard it on the news or the radio," he says. "I didn't see how they could do that. The game is over. It's on film. I guess it was just for paper."
Over the years, he has been asked whether the more headstrong Evans coaxed him into the 33-day spree in which they committed four robberies together.
"No, no, no, I was never bitter," he says. "We were young. I guess it was kind of mutual between Derric and I because we were so close. It was like, 'Hey, I'm down with you for whatever because I know you're down with me.' "
Edwards watches today's NFL cornerbacks and is convinced he had the tools to make it. He wonders what might have happened if Judge Joe Kendall had given him probation, or if he had gotten out of prison in two years.
West got early-release signatures from the district attorney, sheriff, board of pardons and paroles and Judge Kendall. Only Gov. Ann Richards declined to sign.
"When you look back over 20 years, there's a reason for everything," West says. "I'm proud of Gary. Even though he still has scars from it, he hasn't allowed those scars to dictate the rest of his life."
Prisoner to pastor
Patrick "P.K." Williams served three years in prison.
He has five children, the second-oldest having been born while he was incarcerated. Williams met and married his wife, Latrina, soon after his release - and his return to the church.
"I'm glad I did go to prison," he says. "I had to get away from the 'hood - I was wa-a-ay over there. I had to pull myself away because I know if I didn't, I would have wound up getting back to that mode."
He lives in Garland, but hasn't strayed far from his high school roots. He sells cars at a dealership off Interstate 20, within view of the Carter campus. A few months ago, former Carter coach Freddie James came in to car shop, not realizing Williams worked there.
"P.K., I'm so proud of you," the coach said.
Williams also is a youth pastor at Tabernacle of Deliverance, a Dallas Pentecostal church. Two months ago, he joined a mentorship program at Carter started by assistant principal Stonie Arbuckle, a classmate in 1988.
"I'm getting a chance to give back to the community that I brought shame to, once upon a time," he says. "That means a lot to me. God has a plan for my life, and this is it."
Harsh consequences
Keith Campbell received the harshest prison sentence, 25 years, and the sharpest rebuke from Judge Kendall.
"Quite frankly, you scare me," Kendall said, recalling a psychologist's testimony that Campbell had sociopathic tendencies.
Campbell served seven years, four days. All of the once-incarcerated Carter players interviewed say their criminal records have presented obstacles, but Campbell has been the most affected.
His last full-time employment was a year ago, although this summer he was camp director at Friendship West Baptist across the street from Carter.
Some who meet Campbell remark that he would have made a good attorney. His last job was with a firm that assists in litigation document preparation.
"My two main regrets, first is the people I let down," he says. "Some people probably were living their dreams through us. To know that I broke some hearts really has been a bother over time.
"The other thing is, for everything that I think I could have been excellent at doing, I can't be. I just have this ceiling. I know I have the ability to grow beyond it, but it remains there."
Divorced last year, Campbell brags about 10-year-old daughter Kourtney and 8-year-old Kyle, pulling out a scrapbook to show off Kourtney's academic certificates.
"Everywhere we go, somebody knows me," he says. "My kids are like, 'Dad, you know everybody.' I tell them, 'Nobody knows me for the reasons I would like them to know me.'
"I ask them, 'Do you want children once you get grown? If you even have any thought of having a family, you need to make sure you watch every decision that you make now - because your children will also pay the consequences for what you do.' "
Campbell and Evans were the last Carter players released from prison. At the end of his term, Campbell was sent to the Allred Unit near Wichita Falls, where he saw Evans for the first time in nearly seven years.
Initially, Evans seemed glad to see him. But as he did welding work for the next couple of weeks, Campbell recalls that "he and I had no conversation. But the last thing he told me was, 'Don't take it personally, man.' "
A fallen star
After several phone conversations, Evans agrees to a sit-down interview in Houston, then reschedules twice, then decides not to do it.
Much of his reluctance has to do with his job, which he will only say involves working in a warehouse, mostly night shifts.
"Somebody like Jessie, he doesn't worry because he's probably got enough money," Evans says of Armstead, who played 12 NFL seasons and is a New York Giants special assistant.
Evans, who was paroled Aug. 22, 1996, says his co-workers don't know about his football or prison past.
"They talk about that high school team that kicked everybody's ass," he says. "They remember that team, but they don't even know I was part of it."
Twenty years ago, he was 6-3, 190 pounds and had once run a 40-yard dash in 4.34 seconds. Before he signed with Tennessee while sitting in a Jacuzzi, he was pursued by the likes of USC, UCLA and Nebraska.
"I tell people all the time, I was like Michael Jordan and he was like Scottie Pippen," Armstead says. "Nothing wrong with that. We won a championship together and there wasn't a DB, I say, who would have been better than him in the pros."
No one would have fathomed that the state title victory on Dec. 17, 1988, would be Evans' last organized game.
When Derric Damon Evans entered prison on Sept. 22, 1989, he left behind more than a rescinded college scholarship. Rumors at the time were that he had fathered two children with different Carter cheerleaders.
According to the Texas Birth Index, Tanell Derica Evans was born Oct. 19, 1989.
Garrick Damon Evans-Williams was born 13 days later.
"It wasn't a rumor, so what?" Evans says. "It was true; what's the big deal?
"Was it difficult? Yeah, it was difficult. It would be difficult for anybody. But nobody has any ill effects about it."
Tanell Evans, a standout track performer for Lancaster, now competes for Sam Houston State. Her media guide bio lists Derric as her father.
Garrick Williams, who attended DeSoto, is a redshirt freshman linebacker at Texas A&M. His bio doesn't mention a father, but Evans says he has attended several A&M games this season.
"Am I proud?" he says of his kids. "Yeah. Who wouldn't be proud?"
Staff researcher Molly Motley Blythe contributed to this series.
More from the series
Part I: Scandal taints legacy of 1988 Dallas Carter football team
Part II: Robbery spree involving 6 1988 Dallas Carter football players was ‘just for kicks’
Part III: Former players on 1988 Dallas Carter football team tried to move on
— Who was to blame for 1988 Dallas Carter football grade controversy
— The 1988 championship trophy went missing
Find more high school sports coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.
