Popular Girl’s Secret Life Led to Her Death

Michael Ann “Miki” Koontz was the darling of this small Appalachian coal-field town--homecoming queen, cheerleader, an above-average student whose bags were packed for college.

But her many friends seemed unaware that she also was a drug user, caught up in a drug ring whose leader believed that she knew too much. He allegedly ordered her killed just as federal agents were preparing to haul him in.

A friend of Koontz’s--James C. “Chris” Pennington, 21, who said he carried out her execution to cancel a $2,000 drug debt--pleaded guilty to murder and kidnapping charges Tuesday, saying the drug dealer forced him to do it.

“He pulled out a gun and put it to the back of my head and told me if I didn’t shoot her, he would shoot me, and then he would go find and shoot my family, and I loaded the gun and turned my head and pulled the trigger,” Pennington testified.

He faces life in prison, but prosecutors agreed to recommend parole after 20 years if he keeps his promise to testify against Robert Jerry Warren Sr., the alleged leader of the drug ring. No sentencing date was set.

Warren, 44, has not been charged in Koontz’s death, but has pleaded guilty to federal drug charges. He is to be sentenced May 14; he faces life in prison for conspiracy to distribute.

Koontz, 17, had spent part of the summer of 1995 in a drug rehabilitation program. She had been home with her parents just three days when she was killed.

On the evening of Aug. 25, she and her mother had planned to attend a football game in nearby Matewan. But first, she told her mother, she had to run some errands.

It was the last time her mother saw her.

She met with Pennington that afternoon. “[Warren] told me that he had something I could do for him to avoid the [$2,000 drug] debt and he told me . . . it was to kill Miki Koontz,” Pennington testified.

Under the pretext of a drug deal, Pennington said he took Koontz to a remote area about five miles from Williamson, where Warren was waiting. The three walked into the woods, and Pennington shot Koontz in the head with a .22 rifle.

“She didn’t die on the first shot, and Jerry made me shoot her again,” Pennington testified. “And then after that, he gave me some rock [cocaine] to smoke and a pipe to smoke and we went our separate ways.”

The body of the petite brunet with hazel eyes was found three days later, on what was to have been her first day at Marshall University. She had talked about becoming a lawyer, like her older half-brother, Tim Koontz, or maybe a journalist, her teachers said.

The murder stunned the 4,100 people of Williamson. “We’re such a small community here that everybody’s family, and we just lost a member of our family,” said Rose McCoy, Koontz’s journalism teacher and yearbook advisor at 255-student Williamson High School.

Pennington was arrested two days after the body was found.

Warren’s distribution ring, which was reportedly clearing $35,000 a month in this county of only 33,000 residents, had ensnared Koontz and her 20-year-old sister, Kelli Koontz.

Tim Koontz said he had urged his sisters to talk with the FBI.

“They were emotionally fragile girls going through adolescence, and they were caught up in something,” he said.

“This crack industry is a disease that preys upon the young and emotionally fragile. They were both struggling to shake it.”

Tim Koontz said Kelli is now drug-free.

Miki Koontz, who was outgoing and liked everyone, was the last person her friends thought would get in harm’s way. “She never met a stranger,” McCoy said.