Profiles in Fatherhood

From People Magazine

Published June 4, 2007:

Still, as Destin lay ailing with a life-threatening kidney condition last year, he assumed even his ne'er-do-well dad would come through. In January 2006, moved by Byron Perkins's plaintive appeal to help his son, a judge granted him a pass from jail to be tested to see if he was a match to donate a kidney.

Instead, Perkins, 38, who had recently been convicted on drug and weapons charges and was facing a minimum 25-year sentence, fled to Mexico with his girlfriend—leaving his son bitter and bewildered. "I don't know how he could lay his head down at night, knowing he ran away and left me up here to die," Destin told CNN.