Scared To
Death
(Page 1 of 3)
Oct. 29, 2005
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Vickie and Jim Barton started dating in the mid
1970s and married in 1980. Years later, the
couple realized the dream of owning a horse
farm. (CBS) |
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(CBS) Police Lt. Jim Barton found his wife, Vickie,
murdered execution-style on their farm in Warren County,
Ohio, in 1995.
With limited physical evidence and no suspects, the
investigation lay dormant for nine years until a tip
opened up the case.
Jim Barton soon found himself under arrest with charges
related to the slaying. Prosecutors had a troubling
theory: did Jim Barton’s ambition to become police chief
lead to his wife’s murder?
Correspondent Peter Van Sant reports.
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Growing up in Middletown, Ohio, Vickie Siebert seemed to
have one passion in life: horses.
But Vickie’s mother, Mary Jane Siebert, soon discovered
her daughter had another interest at the stable. “She
would go out practically every day, out to the barn. … I
thought she was riding the horse. She wasn’t. She was
out there with Jim.”
Jim Barton says Vickie loved the outdoors and that their
love of riding horses brought them together. In 1980,
after a five-year courtship, Jim and Vickie married.
The newlyweds moved into the small town of Springboro,
where Jim became a police officer, rising to the rank of
lieutenant.
Darlene Bisgaard and Cathy Trame knew Vickie as both a
friend and a co-worker and they say she loved being a
cop’s wife. “I think she looked up to him as kind of her
protector,” said Trame.
Like Jim, Vickie chose a career helping people,
eventually becoming a head nurse at a local hospital.
But Jim and Vickie never let their careers stand in the
way of their goal of owning a farm. In 1988, they
purchased a horse farm just outside Springboro, which
they called "Locust Knoll."
“In my eyes, it was Ponderosa. Whether it was to anybody
else other than Vicky and I, I don’t know,” said Jim.
For the next seven years, Jim and Vickie spent every
spare moment rebuilding the home, putting up a network
of fencing, and adding a new barn.
But neither Jim nor Vickie could have planned for what
happened back on April 11, 1995.
Jim remembers the last time he saw his wife. “It was a
sunny spring day. I told her ‘I love you’ and kissed her
goodbye.”
Later that afternoon, Jim finished work, left the police
station, and headed for home.
As he drove up to the farm, he noticed that the garage
and interior doors were open, something he thought was
“a bit odd.”
Inside, his wife lay motionless with a blood-stained
pillow over her head. Jim says he touched her leg,
remembering that her skin felt ice cold.
Jim called 911 (audio). “I knew it was a lost cause but
yet, you know, I kept hoping,” he said.
Worrying that someone might still be in the home, Jim
says he searched the house, with his gun drawn. But the
killer or killers had left.
Detectives discovered a puzzling crime scene yielding
few clues. Vickie was murdered execution-style, with
three gun shot wounds to the head. But there were no
eyewitnesses, no murder weapon, and no strange
fingerprints.
“You hope to come away from a crime scene with crucial
evidence. We just didn’t have it,” said retired Det. J.R.
Abshear, who was assigned to the case. “I kind of got
the feeling there that something might be staged.”
The house appeared to have been burglarized but valuable
items like Jim’s guns and Vickie’s jewelry were left
behind.
The only physical evidence at the crime scene was found
on Vickie’s body. Her shirt, along with her bra, had
been pushed up and her breast had been bitten.
The saliva left from the bite provided valuable DNA but
Abshear says no match was made from a number of people,
including Jim Barton and his friends.
One of the few leads early on in the case came from
Vickie herself.
Several hours before she was murdered, Vickie told Jim
about a stranded motorist who had dropped by the farm
with a gasoline can looking for fuel. Det. Abshear spent
months trying to track down the man, but his identity
remained a mystery.
The investigation limped along, but Jim, still a cop,
tried to go on with his life. One year after the murder,
he remarried.
In a bizarre twist, his new bride was Mary Ann Lacy,
Vickie’s childhood friend and matron of honor. Mary Ann
says she fell in love with his charming side and
attentiveness but the marriage fell apart with a year.
Mary Ann says Vickie’s unsolved murder proved to be too
great a strain. “I said, ‘What happened?’ Because I
really wanted to know, I wanted to understand. And he
was quite reluctant to talk about it with me. And that
bothered me and I told him,” she said.
Jim says he may not have talked about Vickie, but she
was always on his mind and so was the investigation.
The 1995 murder of Vickie Barton remained unsolved for
three frustrating years.
Scared To Death
(Page 2 of 3)
Oct. 29, 2005
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Vickie and Jim Barton started dating in the mid 1970s
and married in 1980. Years later, the couple realized
the dream of owning a horse farm. (CBS)
(CBS)
Then, in 1998, investigators finally got a break in the
case, from a small-time career criminal named Gary
Henson.
Frank Hensley of the Middletown police department had
just arrested Henson for burglary and drug possession.
At the end of his interrogation, Henson dropped a
bombshell, saying he knew who shot Lt. Barton’s wife.
Henson told the detective the killer was his
half-brother William Phelps.
Phelps allegedly revealed his dark secret to Henson just
days after the murder. “Phelps finally confided in him.
He said, ‘I’ve done a horrible thing.’ And, finally,
Will says, ‘I’m the one who shot her,’ ” said Det.
Hensley.
Henson said Phelps, along with an unidentified
accomplice, had planned to burglarize the Barton home.
“Gary told me that Will said, ‘I panicked and I shot her
in the head,’” said Hensley.
Four months after the murder, Phelps committed suicide
by carbon monoxide poisoning. Henson said his brother
couldn’t cope with the guilt of killing Vickie.
Detectives Hensley and J.R. Abshear believed Henson. “He
knew that she had been bitten, which had not been
released to the media,” said Abshear.
But the only hard evidence Abshear had to link Phelps to
the crime was the DNA found on Vickie’s body. He
immediately ordered Phelps’ body exhumed, hoping for a
DNA match.
But Abshear says there was no DNA match to Will Phelps.
With no direct evidence linking Phelps to the crime —
and the identity of his accomplice still a mystery — the
question of who killed Vickie remained unanswered and so
the case remained open.
Moving on with his life, Jim had begun dating Elaine
Geswein, a human resources manager. One year later, they
were married.
And, Jim says, there was more good news. In 2003, a
countywide cold case team was formed to take a second
look at Vickie’s murder. “I was thinking, maybe they’ll
get some energy behind this crime, this investigation,
and solve it once and for all,” said Jim.
The cold case squad was led by seasoned homicide Capt.
John Newsom from the Warren County Sheriff’s Office. For
weeks, they combed through all the evidence.
Just six weeks into the probe, the squad discovered a
clue buried in the evidence. It’s on Jim Barton’s
frantic 911 call (audio). Two and a half seconds of
audiotape that broke this case wide open.
On the tape, Newsom says Jim can he heard saying “I
gotta call Phelp, man,” referring to William Phelps, the
man once suspected of shooting Vickie. Suddenly there
appeared to be a link between Jim Barton and Phelps.
But Jim says he never knew or met Phelps and says Newsom
is misinterpreting the call. He says he told the 911
operator “I gotta call fo-help. I’m slurring the words
“for help” together. I gotta call ‘fo-help.’”
Jim says he was not getting anywhere with the 911
operator and started thinking about calling someone
else.
But the cold case squad was convinced that Jim was
saying “Phelp.” To prove their theory, they turned back
to Phelps’ half-brother Gary Henson, who told stunned
investigators that Barton had hired Phelps.
This new detail that Jim was involved in his wife’s
death was never mentioned by Henson when he talked to
police five years earlier.
“He told us ‘Jim Barton met Will and came to him and
said stage a burglary at his house. And then scare
Vickie when she got home from work,’ ” said Newsom.
It seemed utterly fantastic. Why would a distinguished
police officer hire criminals to scare his wife?
John Newsom says it has to do with Jim’s ambition. “He
wanted to be police chief.”
According to Det. Newsom, there was an unwritten rule in
Springboro that the Chief of Police had to live within
city limits and that meant Jim would have had to move
off his farm and into town.
But Newsom believes Vickie would have never agreed to
sell her dream ranch. So, the theory goes, Jim hired
Will Phelps and an accomplice to scare her, hoping that
would get her to move into town where she would feel
safe.
Newsom doesn’t think Jim wanted Vickie dead but only
wanted her frightened and that something went “terribly
wrong” in the process.
Jim calls that theory “crazy,” saying he loved the ranch
and would not have left it to become police chief. He
also thinks Henson is a liar, stressing that he had no
involvement in this crime.
But investigators chose to believe the career criminal
and not the career cop. “Gary Henson told us things that
we were able to corroborate,” said Newsom.
Besides knowing about the bite mark on Vickie, Henson
said his brother was the mysterious motorist who asked
Vickie for gasoline the morning of the murder. According
to Henson, that’s how Phelps would “case” a house before
robbing it.
To prove his innocence, Barton agreed to take a
polygraph test. But in the end, Barton failed.
Newsom says the failed polygraph was the tipping point
in the case. In April 2004, nine years after Vickie’s
murder, Jim Barton was arrested for having caused his
wife’s death.
Scared To Death
(Page 3 of 3)
Oct. 29, 2005
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Vickie and Jim Barton started dating in the mid 1970s
and married in 1980. Years later, the couple realized
the dream of owning a horse farm. (CBS)
(CBS)
Jim Barton, the veteran cop, faced the ultimate
humiliation of being arrested by his fellow officers,
charged with causing his wife’s death.
“It’s like I was totally drained at that point. I knew I
had committed no crimes. But now I’ve got handcuffs.
It’s one of the lowest moments of my life,” said Jim.
In February of this year, Prosecutors Leslie Myer and
Josh Engel took the case to trial.
“Our theory was that he wanted to scare her so that she
would move with him into the city of Springboro so that
he can be chief,” said Engel.
“Everyone knew that. That’s undisputed," adds Myer. "He
applied multiple times. He wanted to be police chief."
Jim Barton calls that theory “absurd” and “crazy.”
Vickie’s friends Darlene Bisgaard and Cathy Trame also
say the theory doesn’t make sense to them. Bisgaard
doesn’t think a burglary would have frightened Vickie to
the point of selling the farm. “It would have challenged
her to be more aggressive in protecting their farm.”
At trial, the defense will argue that the prosecution’s
case is thin, their motive absurd, and their lead
witness, Gary Henson, unbelievable.
Prosecutors, however, will argue that Henson is telling
the truth and will use Jim’s own words on the 911 tape
to prove it.
Prosecutors begin trying to establish that Jim Barton
knew who killed Vickie and call Lt. George Hunter, the
first officer to arrive at the Barton farm.
Asked if Barton made any statements when he arrived, Lt.
Hunter says, “He did. He told me ‘They shot her, man.
They’ve killed her. Why did they have to kill her, those
murdering bastards.’ ”
Prosecutor Josh Engel says the testimony is very
significant. “He [Barton] knew there was more than one
person involved in this crime, right from the
beginning.”
But Jim says he was “just lashing out at criminals per
se.”
Next up for the prosecution is former waitress Barb
Palmer. On the stand, she claims she saw Jim Barton and
Phelps together at a local diner 20 years ago, a claim
Jim says is a lie.
Prosecutors admit there’s no evidence that Phelps was
ever in the Barton home. But, they say, that’s because
Jim Barton wiped down the crime scene before
investigators arrived.
Leslie Myer says investigators found fewer than 10
fingerprints in the entire home, including those of Jim
and Vickie Barton. And prosecutors claim you can hear
Jim Barton cleaning the crime scene on the 911 call.
Jim calls the claim “totally absurd,” adding, the sound
on the tape is his “searching the house, moving the
clothing back on the hangers that were in there. Going
room to room, going through closets.”
But for Jim, it’s what the jury hears at the end of the
911 tape that matters most: the controversial
two-and-a-half second clip, eight minutes into the call.
“What do you want people to know that you said on that
911 tape?” asked Van Sant.
“I gotta call ‘fo help,’” Barton replied.
Prosecutors are convinced he was saying “Phelp.”
But JR Abshear, the lead detective back in 1995, isn’t
so convinced. “To be very honest with you, I thought he
said 'help.' ”
Both sides introduced experts to tug and pull at every
modulating sound Jim uttered during the call. In the
end, it all boils down to how many syllables the jury
hears.
Forensic audio expert Tom Owen testified for the
defense. “The word is a two syllable word, ‘for help.’
It has two beats. And after you slow it down, you can
clearly hear that." Owen narrowed in on the critical
tenth of a second on the tape, playing the call slowly.
Prosecutors produce their own audio expert, Jim Fox, who
heard only one word and one syllable, “Phelp.”
After four experts and seven hours of testimony, the
jury, along with everyone else in the courtroom, had
heard enough.
But what the jury hasn’t heard yet is testimony from
Gary Henson, the state’s star witness, a career criminal
with a rap sheet spanning 20 years.
For Mary Jane Siebert, it had been nine desolate years,
and countless visits to her daughter Vickie’s grave
before there was any hint at justice. “It should never
have happened,” she said.
So when she got the chance, Mary Jane made sure she was
in the same courtroom as the veteran cop, who had
allegedly turned criminal.
But like so much in the case against Jim Barton nothing
was quite what it seemed. Mary Jane testified for the
defense, saying she remained close with Jim and that
“he’s like my son.”
Prosecutor Myer tried to imply that sadly, with her
daughter murdered, Mary Jane was holding on to the only
family she had left, her son-in-law Jim.
That notion upset Mary Jane. “I would like to tell you
what she is, but I don’t dare use the language.”
Three days after the trial began, the government brought
its star witness out of the shadows and into the
courtroom.
Henson said there were no discussions about a deal for
his testimony and then testified about some of his past
crimes.
Henson also testified that Jim enlisted his
half-brother, Will Phelps, to scare Vickie right off the
farm and that Phelps had asked him to join in on the
planned crime.
“When she pulled in the driveway, we was going to meet
her and then shoot over her head,” Henson testified,
saying that Jim Barton had provided two guns.
But that plan fell apart because Henson was locked up in
a county jail on the day of the murder. He says Phelps
found another man to take his place and testified that
he read about Vickie’s murder in the newspaper.
Henson said Phelps told him during a phone call that
Vickie had been shot by accident by the unidentified
accomplice.
But back in 1998, Henson told police that Phelps
confessed to being the killer.
“Isn’t it fair to say that in 1998 Gary Henson lied?”
Van Sant asked Leslie Myer. “Well, by saying that his
brother shot her. Yeah, I mean that’s a lie,” she
replied.
And in 1998, when he first talked to police about the
murder, Det. Frank Hensley says, Jim’s name never even
came up in connection with the plot.
Hensley did testify at trial but was never asked about
Henson changing stories. “Henson not only knows how to
manipulate investigators, but that’s his total way of
life. He’s a manipulator,” Hensley told Van Sant.
And J.R. Abshear, the original investigator into Vickie
Barton’s murder, had the exact same experience when he
questioned Gary Henson in 1998. During the questioning,
Abshear says Henson never mentioned Barton’s name in the
plot.
Jim Barton says Henson is a liar. “I never knew Will
Phelps. I have no idea who these people are.”
But, despite all the lies he had been caught telling, it
was Henson’s accuracy about the hideous and secret
forensic detail that ultimately convinced prosecutors
that he was telling the truth. He testified that the
mysterious accomplice bit and raped Vickie.
And the prosecution team had one more bit of evidence
they were banking on: testimony from Henson about a gas
can Phelps used to case the Barton home and allegedly
left behind after the murder.
In an exhibit photo, Henson pointed out a gas can,
saying it looked like his brother’s.
But Jim’s wife, Elaine, says that’s a lie. She says it’s
Jim’s gas can that he has owned for years, showing it to
Van Sant in the garage.
Still, Barton’s lawyers were banking on the jury never
believing a crook and a liar. And at the heart of their
closing argument was this: Jim Barton arrested
criminals, he didn’t conspire with them.
Ten years after Vickie Barton was murdered on her farm,
jurors were weighing the guilt or innocence of her
husband Jim.
Everything about that day seemed unexpected and
unpredictable, yet Jim says he felt confident that he
was going to be acquitted.
Then came the verdict: jurors convicted Jim Barton of
complicity to commit involuntary manslaughter.
He was immediately taken into custody and led away. To
hear Jim Barton tell it, just as Vickie was taken from
him, now two more lives were being stolen: his own, and
that of his new wife, Elaine.
“I think 'How in the world could this have happened?' I
have heard of innocent people going to jail, but I
certainly never thought I would experience it,” Elaine
said.
And Vickie’s mother, Mary Jane, was also shocked by the
verdict. “I could not believe that that jury came back
and said he’s guilty. Because he’s not.”
But the jury had spoken. Jim Barton, the veteran cop,
was now inside the same Warren County jail where he used
to send common criminals. All that was left was the
judge’s sentence.
The case was closed. Or was it?
“I was in my cell, and a note came under my door. And it
said, ‘You need to have your attorney contact me right
away.’ And the guy signed his name at the bottom,”
Barton said. The name was Danny Ray Clark, a successful
businessman.
At the time, Clark was in jail for violating a temporary
protection order involving his wife.
Van Sant met Clark just after he had been released from
jail, where Clark says Henson told him something
stunning. “Gary Henson wasn’t convinced of Mr. Barton’s
guilt. Didn’t know if Mr. Barton was guilty or not
guilty. And, really, it didn’t seem to matter,” Clark
said.
“I’m thinking this could be earth-shattering information
that we need,” Jim said.
Just days after dismissing the jury, Judge James
Flannery ushered Jim’s defense team back into his
courtroom to hear explosive new testimony.
“Gary actually said he didn’t know if Jim Barton was
involved or not and he didn’t care,” Clark testified.
And, amazingly, there was more to come.
Barton’s lawyers produced a second jail-house confidant
of Henson’s, Michael Moore, a former deputy sheriff, who
was doing 90 days time for taking marijuana from a
police evidence room.
Moore testified that Henson told him he only testified
because prosecutors forced him to. “He stated that if he
didn’t testify he could face obstruction charges,” Moore
testified.
Prosecutors emphatically deny that Henson was ever
threatened to testify.
And then a third witness testified; he was James Calvin
Hodge, who had also met Henson in prison.
“Gary told me that Mr. Barton was not in any way
involved in this case,” Hodge testified. “He said, ‘I
know he’s innocent.’ Then, later on, he just said, ‘I
know the cop didn’t have nothing to do with it, didn’t
hire nobody to do it, didn’t even have a clue about it,’
” he continued.
But Judge James Flannery decided the three men’s
testimony was not enough to order a new trial, so no
jury would hear it.
48 Hours showed video of the new testimony to Vikkie
Fletcher and Dave Rice, two jurors who voted to convict
Barton.
“I would still say guilty,” said Fletcher.
“If you believe one snitch, Gary Henson, why not believe
these three criminals,” asked Van Sant.
“Because Gary Henson didn’t want anything out of this,"
Fletcher said. "Again, I still go back to the fact that
Gary wanted to do something right by his brother.”
And David Rice says the testimony did not create any
reasonable doubt in his mind. “I feel there’s not a lot
of new evidence presented by these three fellas.”
Jim does not think he had a fair trial. “I had no
involvement in this crime. Absolutely, I had no
involvement in this crime. I’m innocent.”
Jim says he and Vickie dreamed about having their horses
and farm, and retiring on the property.
But what becomes of any dreams Jim might have left is
uncertain.
What is certain now are two things: Jim Barton will
serve at least 15 years in prison; and neither the
convicted cop, nor the convicted conman killed Vickie
Barton.
Whoever committed that crime remains a mystery.
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