Female Serial Killers

by Peter Vronsky

  This time she sounded more collected and sober. After some prodding she told him that Stuart Taylor had been murdered by his girlfriend, Velma Barfield. Not only that, but Velma had also murdered her own mother the same way. When Philips pressed the caller for evidence, she had nothing to offer. Exasperated, Philips then asked how she knew and was surprised to hear her tell him that she was Velma’s sister.

  There was not much that Philips could do other than call the hospital and ensure that indeed a Stuart Taylor had died there on Friday night and that an autopsy would be conducted. He was assured that there would be an autopsy as the family had asked for one. This was outside his jurisdiction, but Philips made a note to follow up on the information. It would be weeks before Philips made a connection between Velma Barfield and the strange break-in and assault he had investigated in a trailer park three months earlier.

  The results from the autopsy would take weeks. In the meantime, Velma and Stuart’s children drew together in their loss. They were touched by the care that Velma had shown their father and by her obvious grief. On the day of the funeral they took Velma to Stuart’s house to get her belongings and asked if Velma wanted anything of his. With tears in her eyes, Velma only asked for the wedding ring that Stuart had bought along with the engagement ring. The family embraced Velma and gave her four hundred dollars as a token of their affection and gratitude for the care she had shown for Stuart.

  The autopsy had initially only revealed a case of gastroenteritis—a severe inflammation of the stomach and intestines that would not be enough to kill a person as healthy as Stuart at his age. It was indeed puzzling and the doctor could not let the mystery rest. He cut away some of the internal organs and kept them while releasing the body for the funeral. The next day he began to examine them and discovered abnormalities in the liver tissue. He sent them to Page Hudson, the chief medical examiner in North Carolina, for further tests.

  Page Hudson immediately detected what appeared to be traces of arsenic poisoning in the liver samples. A few days of testing confirmed massive doses of arsenic in Stuart Taylor’s tissue samples. North Carolina should have been the worst place for Velma to use arsenic, because it had the highest rate of arsenic deaths by homicide and suicide in the U.S. Since 1971, when the state began keeping records, there had been sixteen arsenic deaths, mostly murders.166 In one year there was a total of six. Because of North Carolina’s extensive agricultural activity, arsenic was readily available in the form of pesticides, many of which were sold in retail stores over the counter.

  One in particular was problematic. Singletary’s Rat Poison came in the form of an odorless, tasteless, clear liquid. The North Carolina Pesticide Control Board attempted to ban it in 1976 but only succeeded in introducing a diluted version of Britain’s Sale of Arsenic Act which had been passed one hundred and thirty years before. Buyers in North Carolina were subsequently required to sign for their purchase of Singletary’s, but they did not have to show any identification when signing. Many of the proprietors of the country stores where Singletary’s was sold were not even aware of the new regulation when it took effect in 1977. Moreover, there were many arsenic products other than Singletary’s that were likewise odorless, tasteless, and clear in appearance, like, for example, Terro ant poison, which was sold in almost every drug and hardware store and was not covered by the regulation. This was the product Velma had plunked down sixty cents for in the drugstore while she waited for her prescription on January 31.

  By March the family had still not been informed of the autopsy results. Instead the information went to Robeson County District Attorney Joe Freeman Britt. Joe Britt got a crash course on arsenic poison, from Page Hudson, who reported that it was his experience that arsenic poisoners frequently had already committed the crime and had gone undetected.

  Joe Britt gathered together his homicide investigators from the Robeson County Sheriff ’s office. One of the investigators had already heard from Benson Philips, who had told him about his 5:30 a.m. phone call naming Velma Barfield as not only the murderer of Stuart Taylor but also of her own mother, Lillie Bullard. As it often is in rural counties, everybody knew each other.

  One of the investigators knew both Velma and her family, including her mother, and Velma’s first husband, Thomas. He knew Stuart Taylor as well, although he did not know that Velma had been having a relationship with Stuart. He recalled that Velma’s first husband had died in a fire and that she had then married somebody in Fayetteville, but he did not know what had happened to him.

  He had run across Velma in another case. An elderly man by the name of John Henry Lee, shortly before dying the summer before, had called to report that one of his blank checks had somehow been stolen and fraudulently cashed. The investigator visited his home and was surprised to find Velma there working as a caregiver. His inclination was to suspect Velma but both John and his wife, Record, insisted that Velma was a pious, churchgoing Christian and it was inconceivable that she would have stolen the check. There were no further leads.

  Another investigator knew the son of Montgomery and Dollie Edwards, the elderly couple who had died within a month of each other. Velma had been employed as a caregiver in their household he told them. Once they pulled on those threads, it all started to quickly unravel.

  Within days the investigators had assembled the death certificates of Stuart Taylor, Lillie Bullard, Dollie and Montgomery Edwards, and John Henry Lee. “We spread them out across the desk,” Britt later said, “and it was just like a damn suit of cards: gastroenteritis, gastroenteritis, gastroenteritis…”167 Later Velma’s second husband, Jennings Barfield, would be added to the suspected victim list.

  “Gentlemen, I think we have a serial killer on our hands,” Britt said.

  Velma’s Childhood

  Margie Velma Barfield was a local girl—born and bred in the counties between Fayetteville and Lumberton in North Carolina’s cotton and tobacco belt. She was a child of the Great Depression, born on October 29, 1932. Velma was the second child of 21-year-old cotton and tobacco farmer Murphy Bullard and his 22-year-old wife, Lillie. Her brother, Olive, was born two years earlier. They lived in a world without electricity and running water. Water was drawn from a well dug just behind the kitchen and butter and milk were kept in buckets suspended in the cool waters of the well in the hot summer months. There was no outhouse—they would go out into the woods to relieve themselves. Bathing and washing clothing was done in huge galvanized tubs that hung from the wall when not in use. It was the Beverly Hillbillies before Jed found the oil and without the laugh track. But it was not unusual. Power lines did not arrive in that part of Cumberland County until after World War Two.

  Murphy owned his own land and for a while he was able to support his children and aging parents despite the Depression, but eventually cotton prices crashed and Murphy, like so many rural men, had to find industrial work in the city. He got a job in the Fayetteville textile mills repairing looms. He would commute daily to the mill, come home and sleep a little, get up at dawn to farm, and then head back out to the mill. Over the decade Velma’s family grew. Lillie gave birth to seven more children over the next fifteen years: five sons and two daughters in addition to Velma and Olive.

  Murphy was known as a good neighbor, friendly and ready to give a helping hand whenever it was needed. If somebody was sick and could not get their crop in, Murphy was there to do it. If farm equipment was needed, Murphy would readily loan his.

  The family, however, saw a different version of the man. At home Murphy was tyrannical and full of violent, uncontrollable rage. If anything was out of place or not done the way he wanted it, he would unleash a violent beating, sometimes onto the nearest available target. He whipped his children, usually with a strap, but was known to use anything else that fell into his hand. Murphy did not drink often, but when he did his temper and violence would get only worse.

  As the oldest son, Olive often took the brunt of the beatings, and Lillie often did her best to p
rotect Olive, sometimes taking the blame for some error or infraction Olive might have committed. This was a cause of deep resentment in Velma, who felt that her mother favored Olive and sometimes protected him at Velma’s expense. Her resentment of her mother also deepened because of her meekness in not openly intervening in the beatings. Velma and Olive, despite the beatings, still talked back to their father. With every beating she received, Velma resented her mother more and more instead of her father.

  Velma shared her parents’ bedroom and sometimes would be awakened by the moans of pain from Lillie to see her father twisting her mother’s arm or bending her fingers. But Velma writes, “Daddy didn’t hit her.”

  “Mom never fought back,” Velma said. She summed up her childhood in four words, “I was always afraid.”168

  Yet there were many good times. On Sundays Murphy would organize baseball games in the field out back and the kids would play until dark. Sometimes he would take the family on picnics and outings to swim in a nearby pond. He taught them all how to swim.

  Velma said that her father was not always bad tempered and she craved his affection when she was 10 or 11 years old. He would call her “sugar” and “honey.” She recalled how sometimes he would sit her on his lap and hug her, and how much she loved that closeness and warmth. She said of her death row reminiscences of her father that this was the first time she was expressing how much that meant to her.

  The happiest memory of her life, Velma recalls, was when her father spontaneously bought her a pink dress she was admiring in a store window. She recalls how she looked forward to showing the dress to her mother when they got home, but Lillie spoiled the mood by complaining that it would be difficult to iron.

  Velma had started school when she was 7 and was taunted by other children who were better off than she. Other kids ate sandwiches on store-bought bread and store-bought cookies for dessert. Velma had chunky dark homemade bread or biscuits and a slice of meat or sausage. She began to eat her lunch alone. Her clothes were shabby. She only received a new pair of shoes at the beginning of the year, which were always practical and ugly. Velma began stealing coins from her father’s pants and buying candy and eating it in front of the kids to taunt them back. Then Velma stole eighty dollars from an old man’s cabin near where she was visiting some relatives: It was an enormous amount of money in those days. Velma was found with some of the money and insisted that the man had given it to her for safekeeping. Murphy whipped her with a belt and Velma either suspended her thieving or made sure she was never caught again.

  Teachers complained that Velma was boisterous and short-tempered. She was easily offended when things did not go her way. Velma had hoped that school would give her refuge from her problems at home, but instead it only created new problems. But home was worse. Every Wednesday, Murphy would fetch Velma from school at noon so that she could do the family laundry. She would have to do it by hand until evening.

  When Velma was in high school she showed a talent for basketball and was offered a place on the team, but that would have meant staying after school for practice. Her mother refused permission for Velma to join the team, insisting that she needed her at home to help with the kids. This deepened Velma’s resentment of her mother even more.

  When Velma turned 13 the family moved to a larger property in Robeson County, which would, some forty years later, put her to death. It was around that time that Velma says her father raped her. She was home from school in bed not feeling well and her mother was working outside in the yard. Her father walked into the room and raped her without saying a word. Velma says he also fondled her several times when the family went swimming.

  It took Velma a long time to reveal this episode. After her arrest, she told her psychiatric examiner that her father had once climbed naked into her bed but that somebody came into the house and he quickly left without completing the assault. She could not bring herself to talk about it until near the end of her life. She said that it made her resent her mother even more. Velma stated, “I did feel angry at her. I couldn’t understand why she could not protect us. As a child I could not understand that.”

  Velma wrote that when she came down for supper that evening she felt “dirty and awful” and that she then hated her father as much as she loved him. “My feelings were so mixed up, and I was ashamed of how I felt. I couldn’t tell my brothers and sisters—how could I admit that I deeply loved a father who did the kind of things he did to me?”169

  Almost every serial killer’s story begins with some awful, tragic childhood. Velma’s childhood is typical of serial killers—a history of rape and physical abuse. Her psyche’s defense system displaced her anger away from her father toward Lillie, who she felt was passive in the face of Murphy’s abuse. It also disconnected her emotional network, displacing the anger and hate she felt for her father with a false love and affection she felt she should have had for her father. For the rest of her life until her father died, she appeared to have a normal and loving relationship with him, visiting with him and taking her own children to their grandfather—the same man who had brutalized and raped her. She directed her own rage and anger elsewhere.

  Velma’s First Marriage

  Velma was seventeen and in grade eleven when she escaped her house by marrying her high school boyfriend and neighbor, Thomas Burke, in December 1949. They married in secret after driving to South Carolina, and revealed the marriage only later to Murphy and Lillie. There was some hell to pay at first, but they got used to the idea. Both Velma and Thomas dropped out of high school and eventually moved in with Olive, who had recently married. Thomas took a job driving a soft drink delivery truck.

  Two years later in 1951, Velma gave birth to her first child, a son she named Ronald Thomas, who would be called Ronnie. She was 19 years old. Two years after that she gave birth to a daughter, Kim. By all accounts Velma was a passionately loving mother who ensured that her children’s lives would be nothing like her own childhood. There would be no beatings or yelling. The children were smothered in love and affection. Velma read to them every night. She and Thomas joined the Baptist Church and Velma devoutly attended, never missing a service, ensuring that her children always attended with her.

  Some might say that Velma might have been too attached to her children. Once, when Thomas and Velma went away for a few days’ vacation leaving the children with Thomas’s parents, Velma practically hyperventilated with anxiety by the end of the second day. She forced Thomas to pack up and the next day drive back late into the night, waking up the parents and taking the children home in the middle of the night. Only once Velma was reunited with her children did she relax.

  When Ronnie was in third grade, Thomas was making sufficient money to move the family into a new large house with plenty of space for the kids to play, in the small town of Parkton. The house was just down the street from a Baptist church and the family’s religious activities escalated. Velma taught Sunday school and Bible classes while Thomas served as an usher.

  The family did everything together. Went to the movies, the beach, bowled, and played miniature golf. Velma played basketball with her kids and they would spend the summer weekends visiting country fairs or driving out to the beaches on the coast.

  Ronnie was deeply attached to his mother. On his first day of school Velma spent the entire day with him to get him used to being without her. She always volunteered to help with class trips and picnics. Ronnie would later say, “I wouldn’t say I was a mama’s boy, but I was close to it. I really loved my mamma to death, a real adoring-type love.”

  Kim was more attached to her father, following him around everywhere. Thomas gladly took her with him on errands. She sat on his lap as they watched her favorite TV shows and she adored her cheerful father who always had a joke to make her laugh.

  It was a perfect marriage and a perfect family with no hidden shadows or dark demons scratching at the back door. But for all four of them, those days would become nothing but a distant misty memory o
f better things past.

  In 1962 when Velma was thirty and Ronnie was twelve and Kim was ten, fibroid tumors were discovered on Velma’s uterus. Velma and Thomas had planned on only two children so they went ahead with what the doctors recommended—a hysterectomy, the most common nonpregnancy-related surgery performed among American women. A hysterectomy is instant menopause and nobody had accounted for how the hormonal changes would impact on Velma’s personality. Velma and Thomas were apparently unaware of the possible negative emotional toll that was more prevalent among women of Velma’s age having hysterectomies than in older women.

  Velma became irritable and nervous, snapping angrily at the kids and at Thomas. She was depressed and felt that she was becoming overweight. She began taking diet pills. She went on spending sprees, occasionally writing checks knowing there was not enough money in the account to cover them. When they bounced she somehow managed to cover the amounts with the stores before charges were accrued. She kept this secret from her family.

  In 1964 she developed back pains and was prescribed painkillers to which she quickly became addicted.

  Thomas, in the meantime, began to drink heavily. Velma writes that she thinks he began around 1965 and escalated the next year after his father died. He had also joined the Jaycees and often after meetings would drink and socialize with other members. Velma abhorred drinking. For her there was no such thing as a social drink. She saw the effects that alcohol had on her father and the one thing she had admired most about Thomas when she met him was that—unlike the other boys—he did not drink. But he was getting dead rolling drunk, coming home and passing out on the couch.