by Ray Black
Lizzie Borden died on June 1, 1927 after a long illness resulting from surgery to her gall bladder. Emma died nine days later from a fall down some stairs. They were both buried in the family plot next to their father, stepmother and a third sister who had died early in childhood.
The case remains unsolved to this day.
Velma Barfield
Velma Barfield made headline news when she became the first person to be executed in America since 1962 and the first since the reintroduction of the death penalty in 1976.
Born on October 23, 1932, in Carolina, Margie Velma Barfield was the oldest girl and second of a large family of nine children. Her father, Murphy Bullard was a farmer, while her mother Lillie stayed at home and looked after the children.
The family were extremely poor and lived in an unpainted wooden house which had no electricity or running water. The conditions were extremely cramped and when the Great Depression got worse, Murphy found that farming did not give him enough income to support his ever-growing family. He managed to find work in a sawmill as a logger which was owned by a man named Clarence Bunch, and it was through him that the family managed to move into a small house which was closer to town. It was here that the couple’s third child was born.
Murphy Bullard was a dominating man who liked to drink and was known for his temper. Lillie on the other hand was submissive and always felt as though she had to tread carefully in her own home to avoid the backlash of her husband’s anger. It was always Murphy who disciplined the children and he often handed out beatings as a punishment for insubordination.
When Velma was seven years old, in 1939, she started school, and at first she thoroughly enjoyed it. She was an intelligent child and managed to achieve good grades and received much praise from her teachers. School was also a blessed relief from the overcrowded home in which she lived and also the fear of her father’s strap against her backside.
However, it wasn’t long before Velma started to stand out from the rest of her schoolmates. She wasn’t able to wear the same pretty clothes that the other girls did, and she was often teased for her shabby appearance and her rather plain lunch boxes. Velma started to hide away from the other children, too embarrassed to eat her lunch in front of them. Next she took to stealing change out of her father’s pockets so that she could buy some sweets from a shop which was just across the road from her school. Her stealing became more serious when she was discovered to have stolen $80 from an elderly neighbour, for which she received a very severe beating. This appeared to have taught her a lesson as there is no record of any more stealing when she was a young child.
As she grew older, Velma was assigned more and more chores at home to assist her father with the farm and also her mother with her siblings. She resented the amount of work that her parents made her do, and in her heart she felt they didn’t really love her they just looked at her as their slave.
Velma’s life was not always bad though for their father could also be loving and organized many games for them to play. Sometimes he would arrange a baseball game, or perhaps take them swimming to the local pond. She got on really well with her father most of the time – and some might say perhaps too well. Sadly, as she started to develop into a young lady her father allegedly entered her bedroom and raped her.
When Velma started attending high school she no longer achieved the good grades she achieved in elementary school, but she did have one love, and that was basketball. She joined the school team and loved to play at every opportunity. Then her mother told her that she would have to give up playing because she needed her help at home. Lillie had recently given birth to twins and she was finding the housework too much to handle on her own. Once again Velma felt as though she were the underdog and just being used.
While Velma was at high school she met a boy named Thomas Burke and they developed a mutual crush on one another. She asked her father if she might be allowed to meet Thomas outside of school, but he was adamant that there would be no dating until she was sixteen. Her sixteenth birthday came and went and still her father would not allow his daughter to go out on a date. He placed restrictions on his daughter and told her that she had to be home by 10 p.m. and must always have someone with her, although she was angry with his rules she went along with it because she didn’t want to be on the receiving end of his temper.
Thomas proposed to Velma when she was seventeen which caused a dreadful argument with her father. Eventually Murphy Bullard broke down and cried, something which Velma had never experienced before as he was so traditionally masculine and not one to show his feelings.
Velma and Thomas left school shortly after they got married. Thomas took several jobs, in a cotton mill, as a farm labourer and then driving a delivery truck. Velma did work for a while in a drug store but Thomas didn’t like her working and so she left.
On December 15, 1951, Velma had her first child, Ronald Thomas. His sister, Kim, was born on September 3, 1953. Velma was a loving mother and became very involved in her children’s upbringing. When they started school she was always around prepared to take part in any activity, in fact she became known as the woman who could always be relied upon to give a helping hand. As the family were a little short of cash, Velma took another job, this time with the approval of her husband. She took a night-shift job at a textile factory. Thomas also became a delivery driver for Pepsi-Cola and eventually the couple had enough money to move a more comfortable house in Parkton.
For many years they were a happy and devoted family. In 1963, Velma had to undergo a hysterectomy due to medical complications. The couple were not distraught as they were happy with the family they already had, but for some reason the surgery had a drastic effect on Velma. She became exceptionally nervous, was often depressed and started to snap at the slightest thing. She felt cheated that she could no longer bear children, and that for some reason made her less of a woman. Apart from the mental problems she also suffered physical problems including very severe back pain.
Thomas Burke decided he wanted to join the Christian organization, the Jaycees, and went to their weekly meetings leaving his wife sitting at home minding the children. She hated the fact that he was away from home, and hated even more the fact that he had started drinking. Velma was a firm teetotaller and became very upset when she discovered that Thomas was meeting up with his male friends for a few beers.
In 1965, Thomas had a car accident which rendered him unconscious. He suffered from concussion which left him with with severe headaches. Velma was convinced that the accident has been caused because he had been drinking, and this became almost a daily issue. The children became disturbed by all the constant shouting and verbal abuse that they threw at each other, and became frightened that it would end in violence.
Thomas was not prepared to let his wife try and control his life and he continued to drink. In 1967, he was arrested for drunken driving and as a result lost his licence and his job with Pepsi-Cola. This brought an air of depression over the entire household, so much so that the children did not want to bring their friends back to the house for fear of them hearing their parents fighting. The constant tension at home was taking its toll on Velma and she began to drastically lose weight. One day Ronnie came home from school to find his mother lying unconscious on the kitchen floor. He was able to rouse her but insisted that she paid a visit to the hospital to have a check up. The doctors, on seeing the poor state of health that she was in, suggested that she remained in the hospital for a week. She was given vitamins and sedatives, and given a prescription before she left for a mild tranquillizer, librium.
Velma began to like the feeling she got when she took the tranquillizers and starting to take more than she had been prescribed. She also visited another doctor and got him to prescribe valium, and from then on she would accumulate a stockpile of tranquillizers from various different physicians. She still worried constantly about her husband’s constant drinking, while the children and Thomas fretted about her overuse of prescrib
ed medicines. She became drowsy and a little incoherent, almost as if she too was suffering from too much alcohol.
In the year 1969 their house caught fire and the only person at home at the time was Thomas. Both the children were at school and Velma said she was coming back from the laundromat when she found the house in flames. Thomas Burke was taken to hospital but later died of smoke inhalation. When Velma was told about her husband’s death at the hospital she was completely devastated to the point of collapse.
HUSBAND NUMBER TWO
Not long after Thomas’s death Velma started to date a man named Jennings Barfield. Barfield had taken early retirement due to ill health and he suffered from diabetes, emphysema and heart disease. He was a widow and lost his wife around the time Velma had lost her husband, so they were probably brought together through grief.
The romance developed and they were married on August 23, 1970 and after the wedding Velma moved into the small house in Fayetteville, that Barfield shared with his teenage daughter, nancy. It wasn’t long before the honeymoon period was over and the marriage was having problems. Jennings was very worried about his wife addiction to the prescription drugs, and on one occasion had to take her to hospital in a semi-conscious state. The doctor on duty said that she had overdosed on the drugs and the couple decided to separate for a trial period. For a while Velma seemed to be under control but then she slipped back to her old ways and had to be readmitted to hospital with another overdose. The couple decided at this point that the marriage was really over and thought that divorce would be the best thing for both of them.
However, it never actually got that far because Jennings died on March 21, 1971, with what they presumed was a heart attack. Once again Velma was on her own and she was not coping very well. She would spend much of her time in bed dosing herself up with more and more pills in the hope that they would alleviate her pain and loneliness. To add to her utter despair, Velma’s son, Ronnie, enlisted in the military. She hated being separated from her beloved son. Disaster struck again in the form of a fire, and again Velma’s house was destroyed. Velma was devastated and couldn’t understand why it kept happening to her, and again, along with her daughter, she moved back in with Murphy and Lillie Bullard.
Velma got more and more depressed and she was unable to hold down a job for any length of time due to her dependence on drugs. The final straw was when Murphy Bullard died of lung cancer at the age of sixty-one. This was when she reached rock bottom and decided that life was no longer worth living. As if losing her son to the army was not bad enough, Ronnie then broke the news to his mother that he planned to get married. Velma did not take the news well and it took Ronnie a lot of persuading that his love for a wife would not take away his love for his mother.
In March 1972 Velma was arrested for forging a prescription to which she pleaded guilty. She escaped with a suspended sentence and a fine. Then she got the news she had been waiting for for so long – her son was being discharged from the army. During his absence the relationship between Velma and her mother had deteriorated and they now had constant arguments. Lillie was disturbed about her daughter’s over-use of drugs and Velma was not prepared to take any orders from her mother, so when Ronnie returned the atmosphere was rather taut. In the summer of 1974 Lillie became ill with dreadful stomach cramps and vomiting. Her condition deteriorated so much that Velma had to drive her mother to the hospital, but the doctors were unable to diagnose the cause of the sudden sickness. After a few days she recovered and Velma brought her back home.
Things went well for a while and they enjoyed a nice family Christmas without any traumas. However, Lillie was troubled by a letter that she had received from a finance company telling her that the repayments were overdue on her car. She told her son that she owned the car outright and that she didn’t have any finance to pay on it. Her son said it was probably just someone that had got their paperwork in a mess and that she was not to worry about it.
A couple of days later Lillie became really sick again, the same symptoms as before but this time she was vomiting blood. Velma immediately phoned her brother who was appalled to see the condition his mother was in. Velma rode in the back of the ambulance with her mother, but sadly she died two hours after arriving at hospital.
In 1975 Velma had another brush with the law and this time she served three months of a six month prison sentence for forging cheques. When she was released from prison Velma decided to take work as a carer for sick, elderly people. In 1976 she went to live with Montgomery and Dollie Edwards. Montgomery was ninety-four years old and bedridden. He had lost both his legs and his eye sight to diabetes and he was unable to do anything for himself. His wife, eighty-four-year-old Dollie, was in better shape than her husband but was recovering from cancer and had had to have a colostomy. For a while all went well and Velma seemed to have settled into a nice routine. However, tensions soon started to surface and Dollie didn’t consider that Velma was pulling her weight. Velma accused her of being too fussy and their rows got more frequent and more heated as time went by.
Montgomery died in January 1977, but although the two ladies were still arguing, Velma stayed on and took care of Dollie. Saturday, February 26, and Dollie was not feeling at all well. She had violent stomach cramps, vomiting and diarrhoea and she told her stepson that she thought she might have flu. Preston, her stepson, came to visit her the next night and was horrified to find her so pale and weak and told Velma that he felt she should be in hospital. They called an ambulance and after receiving treatment in the outpatients department, she was sent back home. The next day she got even worse and had to return to hospital and by Tuesday evening she was dead.
Once more Velma was without a home and a livelihood and she took another job looking after a frail old couple, eighty-year-old farmer John Henry Lee and his seventy-six-year-old wife, Record. The position suited Velma as she had freedom to go to church services and once again she had a nice house to live in. Once more problems started to surface due to Record’s constant talking which got on Velma’s nerves. Also the elderly couple were prone to arguing and Velma did not like to be around when they had their fights. There was one incident when the police were called because Record had discovered a cheque that she knew she hadn’t endorsed. The case came to nothing and then on April 27, John Henry became sick. Once again he suffered from severe pain in his stomach, vomiting and diarrhoea. His condition became so serious that he had to be rushed to hospital, but the medics were mystified by his sudden illness. After four days he returned home but throughout the rest of the month he continued to be sick. The family felt they were very lucky to have Velma looking after their elderly parents and thought she was a sweet and caring lady.
John Henry took a turn for the worse and was taken back to hospital, a very sick and dehydrated man. He died on June 4.
By 1970 Velma was in another relationship with a widower by the name of Stuart Taylor. Stuart was a farmer and considered himself very lucky to have the now forty-six-year-old Velma as his girlfriend. Velma’s children were a little shocked that she had moved in with a man out of wedlock, but Stuart had discovered that she had a criminal record for forgery and that he did not want to take her for his legal wife. Stuart was not a very religious man but he was quite happy that Velma was a devoutly pious Christian and went along with her to some of her meetings. It was at one of these Christian meetings that Stuart started to feel unwell. He was wracked with pain and he was suffering from nausea and diarrhoea. Back at home his condition deteriorated and Velma phoned his daughter to tell her that he she was worried about him. Velma also went to see one of her boyfriend’s best friends, Sonny Johnson, and told him how worried she was, so much so that he came over and visited his friend. He found Stuart in a very weak state and was asked by his friend to look after his pigs until he had recovered from the flu. Stuart got worse and worse until eventually Velma drove him to the hospital. The physician at the hospital described the condition gastritis, gave him some medicine, and
then sent him home.
Stuart never recovered and was rushed back to the hospital, where he died about an hour later. In the waiting room were Stuart’s children along with Velma, his caring girlfriend who had nursed him through this dreadful illness. The doctor said he was puzzled by the man’s sudden illness and suggested they perform an autopsy. They turned to Velma to see what she thought and she replied, ‘If you don’t do it, you’ll always wonder’.
THE WARNING
Ronnie felt sad for his mother because he felt that anyone she got close to in her life seems to die. Meanwhile a detective from the Lumberton Police Station had received a strange telephone call. It was from a woman who was crying and difficult to understand, but what he could make out was that she was trying to warn them of something. The words he could decipher sounded like: ‘Murder! . . . I know who did it! You’ve got to stop her! You’ve got to stop her!’ The policeman just thought it was a crank but suggested that she call again when he was at the police station. As he suspected no-one called and he just got on with his daily duties. Then the phone rang, it was the same voice but this time she was a lot clearer and coherent. The caller admitted that she had no proof but that she knew two people had been murdered by Velma Barfield, one was her boyfriend Stuart Thomas and the other her very own mother. When the policeman asked her how she knew this, she replied: ‘Because, Velma is my sister.’
The policeman was totally baffled by the call but decided to phone the local hospital to see if anyone had died over the weekend. When the answer came back, yes a man named Stuart Taylor, he knew he had to take the matter further. He asked how the man had died, but the hospital said they had not had the results of the tests carried out at the autopsy back. When the results eventually came through it revealed that Stuart Taylor had died from arsenic poisoning. The authorities then decided to take a look at the death certificates of several other people who had been close to Velma who had subsequently died. They discovered with rather peculiar regularity that the cause of death was given as ‘gastroenteritis’. The police were now certain that they were not just dealing with a single murder, but a serial poisoner.
