by Pat Brown
A person who wanted Doris dead, or didn’t care if she died, and didn’t care if the kids found her body, would not have made the call. The killer also knew the Hoovers ’ exact address, indicating he was familiar with the location-so familiar that he would have had to live nearby or be a regular visitor to the point of knowing the address. In theory, the killer could have walked outside to get the address or looked at mail lying about to get it, but again, it was unlikely he would do this for any reason except to attempt to save Doris ’s life.
THERE ARE A number of versions of the events of the evening at the Hoovers ’ home prior to the homicide.
The most interesting discrepancy, reported by the other sisters, involved an older sister, Debbie, who was married and did not live in the residence, and Debbie’s friend Carl Barlow, who sometimes visited Doris without Debbie, and the issue of Debbie bringing a dog over to show Doris.
Her sisters say that in the early days of the investigation Debbie said she had been at the house with Carl, showing off her new dog. But when I spoke to her she said that Carl had visited separately before she had arrived that night. Debbie’s sisters also say that Debbie told them that both she and Carl had witnessed Doris arguing with Mickey over the phone. Carl, likewise, seemed to not remember exactly who was where and when. Carl told me that he couldn’t remember if he and Debbie were there together or not that evening.
Also, there was the issue of the argument ensuing on the phone that evening between Mickey and Doris Hoover. Mickey did not remember such an argument that evening.
According to her sisters, Debbie was defensive at the time when questioned about Carl and seemed to be holding back.
Carl, on the other hand, was almost too helpful in his interviews and responses to my e-mails. Although he said he wasn’t extraordinarily close to Doris and the family, he then detailed very intimate moments with them. He seemed eager to help solve the crime and appeared to be fishing for information about the status and progress of the case.
Carl also made odd statements in his interview that led me to believe there was more that he was not telling me.
CARL HAD A thing for Doris and used to take walks with her. They discussed stuff that seemed a little odd for a mother to be discussing with a boy who was close with her daughter and in his early twenties. They were a little bit too intimate.
Doris had seven children, and she had been seriously overweight until shortly before her death, when she enrolled in Weight Watchers and was steadily, purposefully, losing weight.
I think Carl was looking for a mother figure and might have confused her with his sexual needs-he became attracted to her in a none too wholesome way.
Here is what Denise Hoover told me about Carl in an interview:
“Carl Barlow was weird,” she said. “Very quiet-he was my older sister’s age, in his twenties. He was at the house a lot. My mom walked every day and there were times he walked with her. After Mom died we never saw him again. He called her Mom, but all of our friends did.
“A friend thought he had feelings for Mom but it was one-sided,” she continued. “He was there that night. My sister Debbie was there with him, but she says he was already there when she got there. It was around eleven p.m. I don’t know where he lived relative to the house. I think he had a car.”
Laurie told me that when she described the person she saw wiping the girls’ bedroom doorknob that night, Debbie told her that she had first thought of Carl.
When I began my investigation in 2001, I received an e-mail from Carl Barlow that said that he was a good friend to Doris and all of the children. He told me in the e-mail that he had gone by the house the evening that Doris was killed, but had to leave. He found out the next morning about the murder. The police asked him to come down to the station, where he said he “spent about three hours being questioned, having finger prints, palm prints, and pubic samples taken.” But he said that he never heard anything else from the police about that night.
Carl went on to describe the setup of the family room in detail-he said that he understood the person came in through the window in the family room. He said, “There was a couch in front of the window and the window was about 5 to 6 feet up from ground level. The windows were wood frame and not easily opened, they also had storm windows; I don’t remember them ever being open.”
He ended the e-mail by offering to help my investigation in any way he could.
He gave up some interesting information without even being asked; in particular he commented that Mrs. Hoover was unable to have sex. That was kind of an odd thing for a young friend of the family to be discussing with his friend’s mother.
He’s one nobody suspected. He was so unlikely no one had thought of him. It just couldn’t be him. But my review of the evidence raised questions about his possible role.
Now if only I could provide enough evidence to support my hypothesis.
CARL’S INTERVIEWS WITH me sent up many red flags.
“I have my own theory,” Carl told me. “This is way out in left field. I really wondered about Mickey, her husband. Me and him… he was intimidating to me… I had peculiar feelings about him… She couldn’t have sex; maybe it hurt too much.
“It also could be something she just said to me. Like we were a lot like mother and son but a lot more than that. But there was never anything physical between us…
“I didn’t care a whole lot for Debbie’s husband at the time,” Carl added. “Something about him I didn’t care for. He was in the military…
“The windows were always closed and locked. Wood frame windows with a swing lock on the top. And no ladder…would be impossible without a ladder.
“[There was a] double window in the family room and the couch was against the wall under the window. No footprints that I know of. I think one of the younger girls said he left and came back. I don’t know if the girls know if it was the same person… Maybe someone else came to the house and left. That was always something Doris [did] that meant they were in bed. If she was in bed I don’t think the door was open and if someone knocked, she probably wouldn’t hear it. In my younger days, if I was driving by and the lights were off, I wouldn’t stop.
“I couldn’t tell you a whole lot about Mickey.
“At the time I didn’t have a gun, not even an air gun.
“I only know that Doris had a gun. I just took her word that she had one. I know she told me she had one under her pillow or mattress. She always had it there in case she needed it.
“I think back then there was a three-day wait to pick up a pistol.
“I don’t remember the police questioning anyone. I just think it was people there that evening.
“They didn’t ask me to voice the words on the tape.
“For an injury, you would call the firehouse, not the police. I don’t know which one they called. As a matter of fact I did hear that they called Mickey’s station.
“[There were] four different pay phones-one at the corner, one up the street at the shopping center, within a mile or mile and a half or two. Or maybe eight phones. At that time most of them were inside stores. 7-Eleven was probably open all night… No, it was [the] other store-open at least until eleven.
“They asked me where I was at and I said, ‘At Marilyn’s house.’ They just asked what time I got there and what time I left-I arrived at eight p.m. and I left at eight a.m. I don’t know if they checked with Marilyn-[or] even talked with Marilyn.
“I sure hope you get some answers.”
Carl was a friend of the family and spent time alone with Doris, talking about life and taking walks. Without a doubt, he had established a personal relationship with her.
He was extremely familiar with the layout of the house and the address, as he visited quite often. He also knew Doris ’s children and was friendly with some of them.
One of the daughters told me that Carl owned a gun similar to the one used in the crime; however, during my interview with him he said he didn’t own any
gun at the time of the murder. He even added, “I didn’t even own an air gun at the time.”
I learned that Carl was unhappy with his relationship with his own mother and commented that Doris filled in as a kinder, older woman who would listen to his problems. A number of Hoover family members believed he might have been infatuated with Doris.
Carl commented that Doris knew things about him that no one, including himself, had told her. This bizarre statement was made more than once.
“I told Doris I would be back later but I never made it back,” he told me.
I wondered why he would be returning at a later time that night and why, if he told her he would come back, he didn’t.
“To me he wasn’t odd,” Debbie told me. “Denise thought [he was]. He was a quiet person. He was very friendly. He would do anything for anybody. He liked me a lot. We dated a couple times in high school. He was good to my kids and husband.
“He was kind of my best friend,” Debbie continued. “I could talk to him about the problems with my dad. Maybe he had a crush on my mom. I know he didn’t think my dad treated her right… Monte, my husband, got a dog from the police department, and [my mother] at one time had raised shepherds. Mom wanted to see him [the night she was killed], so I went over, took the dog. Monte took care of the kids. I was there till midnight or later. I left because she got a phone call from my dad and argued.”
Debbie said she didn’t see Carl that night at the house. Carl couldn’t remember if she was there before or after him. Her sisters Laurie and Denise, however, said that they were there together, and that it was quite late. If they were there together, it would have had to be after eleven. Carl said he was there from seven to seven thirty p.m. and was going to come back later. Did he return after eleven p.m. with or after Debbie? He said he was there at around seven p.m. and told Doris that he would return later but didn’t. But what if he did return? Carl’s alibi was that he was a mile away at the home of his girlfriend, Marilyn, by eight p.m. This conflicted with others’ recollections of him being at the Hoover house late that night.
There seemed to have been a family confrontation that night. But who was involved is unclear. Some reported that Doris had fought with her husband over the phone. Others told of an argument between Doris and Debbie over Debbie leaving her husband (and possibly for Carl). Carl seemed to be involved in some way or another.
Carl brought up the issue of taking his watch over to Doris to have it fixed. This was a watch she gave him, supposedly for graduation. He said, “It never showed up again.” It was highly unlikely that a thief would have chosen to steal Carl’s broken watch. It was more likely he was concerned that the watch was in her purse, evidence perhaps that he had returned that night.
Finally, Carl’s parents lived nearby and this would be the direction the perpetrator would have been heading after leaving the Hoovers ’ house, shown by the crayon marks on the sidewalk the perpetrator left after he stepped on them at the crime scene. There was also a convenience store with a pay phone at the end of the Hoovers ’ street along that same route, the phone the killer used to call the fire station.
* * * *
LAURIE HOOVER SAID she never completely shook off the nagging fear that her father could have had something to do with her mother’s murder, that maybe he had hired a hit man. It was a feeling that stuck with her over the years.
The police investigation stalled and the survivors waited for years and years for some hope that the case would be reevaluated and a suspect would finally be identified and brought in. A recording of the emergency call disappeared shortly after the murder. And although they hypnotized and polygraphed Laurie, they never interviewed Doris’s eldest daughter, Cathy, who lived across the street, or Debbie, who had been at the house that evening, or Doris ’s two best friends. Nor did they talk to Mickey Hoover’s coworkers. They did question Carl.
“It was screwed up,” Mickey told me in an interview. “One detective had a daughter who was very ill. He didn’t have the time to put into it. Finally, they changed lead detectives. Naturally, I would like to know what happened.
“The police told one of my daughters it was a hit. I didn’t hear it from the police. They never questioned me on the hit theory. They questioned my buddies; they never asked me to take a polygraph.”
By the time of my investigation, the police no longer had any evidence from the case. They gave the Hoover children a number of reasons for this: it “got lost in the chain of command,” “became contaminated,” or was “lost in a warehouse fire.” It didn’t help me that the house where the murder occurred subsequently burned down.
But Debbie-and Carl-appeared to be holding back.
Debbie seemed defensive when we talked about Carl. And, according to Denise, Debbie had been against my being brought in to profile the crime. Was her grief too great and did she not want to dredge up the past, or was there another reason?
Debbie made statements that she and Carl were not romantically involved, yet others believe differently. Carl and Debbie also said that Carl was not romantically involved with Doris, but that also was questionable. What exactly the emotional involvement was among the three of them remains to be discovered.
Mickey, however, fully cooperated in my interview and I found nothing concerning in his answers. He did have questions about Carl, it’s worth noting.
“My wife had befriended Carl as a teenager,” he said. “Carl, it seemed, had a troubled relationship with his parents, and I don’t know whether he was living with them at the time. He never came to the funeral or the funeral home. He said he was at his girlfriend’s and the police never went further. My daughter asked me if [Doris] was having an affair. I hate to think that. She had never had any affairs that I had known of.”
(Incidentally, Carl told me he did attend the funeral and subsequently went with Debbie to put flowers at Doris ’s grave.)
Mickey was willing to be polygraphed, further decreasing any suspicion about his involvement. I still believed it advisable to request the polygraph anyway. This would serve two purposes. One, since he was willing, why not take the opportunity to leave no stone unturned and be sure nothing was overlooked? Should I be dead wrong in my profile, this was a reasonable way to be sure the killer of Doris Hoover didn’t escape attention. Should Mickey have difficulty with the polygraph, then a door of investigation opens. If he passed it without problem and a police interview with him aroused no new suspicions, then Mickey could be dropped low on the suspect list, further narrowing the focus of the investigation to other suspects.
Carl gave me mixed messages about his relationship with Doris and the family. On one hand, he tried to sound nonchalant, like he was just a casual family friend without strong connections to the victim.
Then, during his conversations with me, he made statements suggesting a strong intimacy with the family and Doris in particular. He was eager to be helpful. He didn’t even seem upset that he had been considered a suspect. He said he hoped the police solved this crime and that I should call him anytime, yet he purported to have little information to offer of other possible suspects.
It was my feeling that the crime may have been one of passion, at least what most people call a crime of passion. Crimes of passion are really actions that an individual would not object to carrying out should he be provoked. What causes some folks to feel guilty about these crimes is when the crime goes further than expected. If Carl did it, he might not have planned to kill her; he might only have wanted to scare her, maybe appear desperate to her.
He should have been asked if he ever actually engaged in any sexual conduct with Doris. I believed that they may have had a physical relationship and that Carl was uncomfortable with it. I didn’t buy his assertions that the relationship was just a friendship. He said that Doris couldn’t have sex-how would he know and why should he know? He was confused as to why the police got pubic hair from him when “she couldn’t have sex.” Perhaps he tried with her-consensually or not-and she
found it too painful (following a hysterectomy). Perhaps she told him that as a way to fend him off. Either way, it seemed to me he knew too much about this for a daughter’s male friend to know.
He also said Doris knew things about him he had never told anyone. Was he suggesting she was psychic? Regardless of the confused meaning of this, it infers yet more intimacy.
When I completed my profile, in addition to thinking that the police should reexamine Carl, I also concluded that the police should have talked with Debbie. According to her story about when she was at the house and who was there with her, her stories were inconsistent with those of her sisters.
After I handed in my profile to the police, I suggested that they use the Hoovers ’ appearance on the daytime TV show to see if Carl would talk more about the night of the murder. I suggested they give Carl a ring, tell him that tips had been coming in after the show aired (I had gotten some, but unfortunately they were all from psychics), and they now needed to talk with him.
The detective liked the idea.
The prosecutor didn’t.
And nothing was ever done.
CHAPTER 9.MISSY:A CHILD’S NIGHTMARE
The Crime: Sexual assault, homicide
The Victim: Missy Jones
Location: Southwestern United States
Original Theory: Her father did it
As you’re driving into this small town in the Southwest, there are signs on the side of the road that say warning: hitchhikers may be escaping prisoners.
The town has only two industries: a prison and a mental institution. You either work at one or the other. And then there was the sheriff’s department, which put you either in the prison or the mental institution. It’s a pretty scary place.
