Female Serial Killers

by Peter Vronsky

  Velma began to rage at Thomas, perhaps in the way she thought her mother should have with her father. Thomas was charged with drunken driving. He lost his job and had to take another. It got so bad that at one point Velma had Thomas committed to a mental hospital. Thomas signed himself out several days later but he would rarely show his face in town again: He was too ashamed. The marriage began to spin out of control into some dark and violent vortex. Velma and Thomas fought bitterly and violently.

  After inexplicably collapsing one day in 1968, Velma was prescribed the highly addictive tranquillizer Valium. She later said that whenever she would take the pills they would soften the anger and rage that was tearing her up. Eventually Velma would become addicted to a combination of painkillers and tranquillizers, which included Elavil, Sinequan, Tranxene, Tylenol III, and Valium. She juggled as many as five doctors simultaneously: all were writing the same prescriptions for her in ignorance of each other’s existence.

  Neither Ronnie nor Kim could understand what had happened, but the happy, sunny, carefree days they all used to pass together as a family were gone forever.

  The Death of Thomas

  On the morning of April 19, 1969, Thomas came home from the night shift at a textile mill where he had found work. According to Velma, Thomas nodded off while sitting in his chair smoking. The cigarette fell out of his mouth and rolled onto his shirt, and he would have caught fire, Velma said, if she had not snatched up the cigarette. She recalled, “As I picked up the burning cigarette and put it out, I screamed, ‘I don’t care! I don’t care anymore! Burn yourself up if you want to!’”170

  Velma claimed that Thomas then managed to make his way to the bed and collapsed into it still dressed. In the meantime, she drove off with the weekly wash to the Laundromat in town. When she returned she says she smelt smoke in the house. Entering the bedroom she found the smoke so thick she could not see anything. She called the fire department. It was too late. Thomas had died from smoke inhalation.

  Later that day when Ronnie came back from school he walked through the smoke-damaged house. What caught his attention was that the firemen had had to chop through the kitchen door with their axes. Strange, Ronnie thought. Had his mother locked the door when she left? If Velma had entered the house as far as the smoke-filled bedroom, why had the firemen needed to chop through the kitchen door?

  Velma denied almost to the end that she had murdered Thomas. Yet her account of removing a burning cigarette from his shirt as he slept on the very same morning that he would then light another and carelessly set the mattress on fire is a strange coincidence. In the last days before her execution, Ronnie asked Velma if she had killed his father. She replied that she “probably” had but could not remember the details other than leaving either a burning cigarette or a lit match on the mattress as he slept and then closing the door as she left the room.

  Velma Remarries

  The death of Thomas did not bring peace to the house. In the next two and a half years, Velma’s house would catch fire two more times and be burglarized once. Velma made insurance claims for losses in all the incidents. She had become heavily addicted to tranquillizers, going to different doctors to get multiple prescriptions. She also began to weigh heavily on Ronnie in his last year of high school, obsessing about him. When Ronnie graduated from high school it was tradition that graduates would go to Carolina Beach for a weekend of partying. But as his friends waited in the car outside, Velma wept that he had grown up and she was losing him. Consoling his mother, Ronnie told his friends to go without him: He was going to remain with his mother that weekend.

  Velma was working in a department store. In September 1969, about five months after the death of Thomas, one of Velma’s coworkers, Pauline Barfield, died. Velma knew Pauline’s husband, Jennings, quite well. He often dropped in to pick up Pauline and would chat with Velma while he waited. Jennings was 54, a retired civil service worker collecting a disability pension because of diabetes, emphysema, and heart troubles. He had six adult children and lived in a house in Fayetteville with his 16-year-old daughter. After Pauline’s death the lonely widow and widower began to date.

  In July 1970, a little over a year after Thomas’s death, Velma announced that she and Jennings were getting married, much to the surprise and concern of Ronnie and Kim. Jennings was not very healthy, they felt, and Velma had her own drug problems. Nevertheless, on August 23, 1970, the couple was married in the church wedding that Velma had never had when she eloped with Thomas. Velma wore a pink suit, pink pillbox hat, and pink shoes, reminiscent of the pink dress her father had bought her when she was a child. Even the flowers and the cake icing at the reception were pink. Ronnie’s mother was now Velma Barfield, the name she would take with her to death row.

  Velma moved into Jennings’s home. Her old house had been repaired with insurance money after the second fire and she rented it out. Kim still had another year of high school to complete and she moved in with her grandparents, Lillie and Murphy, so she could finish her final year in the same school. Ronnie stayed there, too. The drunken and violent Murphy had long ago changed his ways. After a horrendous car accident while he was drinking, he stopped. His temper mellowed and he and Lillie were stereotypical loving grandparents as their nine children married and had kids of their own.

  Ronnie, in the meantime, had a decision to make. He had good grades but could not afford to go to college. Scholarships were rare in those days in that part of North Carolina. Shortly before her wedding, Velma had urged Ronnie to apply to college, assuring him that Jennings would pay for at least one semester. Ronnie applied and was immediately accepted at the University of South Carolina. But when it came time to pay for tuition, Jennings did not come forth with any money. It was some kind of misunderstanding. Ronnie returned to Lillie and Murphy.

  The problem for Ronnie was that in 1970 the U.S. was at war in Vietnam and Ronnie was 19—exactly the preferred age for the draft. If he was in college, his draft would be deferred, but if not he was fair game to be drafted to fight in the jungle for a tour of twelve months. Lots of 19-year-olds were coming back from Vietnam in body bags. Poor white trash and black ghetto kids who could not afford to get into college or did not make the grade were the backbone of America’s fighting forces in a war that by 1970 everyone knew had gone badly wrong.

  There was an alternative to the draft—to voluntarily enlist. The downside was an enlistment lasted three years instead of the twelve-month combat tour of duty, but the upside was you chose which service, branch, and specialty to join. It did not guarantee that you did not end up in Vietnam, but it did guarantee that if you did, as an enlisted specialist you were not going to be stuck as an ordinary infantryman in some rotting jungle hole—a grunt in the mud on the front line of enemy fire. And so Ronnie enlisted in the army in December to be trained as a security specialist. His enlistment was scheduled to begin in spring of 1971.

  In this same period both Velma and Jennings were realizing the mistake they had made. About a month after their wedding, after Ronnie was turned away from college, Velma overdosed on painkillers for the first time. Jennings took her to the hospital, but when he learned she had overdosed he drove her to her parents’ house and dropped her off, telling Lillie he could not deal with Velma. He was too sick himself.

  Ronnie counseled his mother to get her addiction to pills under control if she wanted her new marriage to work. A few days later Jennings came by and took Velma home. But it was not long before Jennings’s doctor called to tell him that Velma was refilling his prescriptions and taking the pills herself.

  In November Velma was taken to the hospital after a second overdose. Jennings’s daughter Nancy told Ronnie that Velma appeared to be drugged-up all the time, staggering around the house, falling and sometimes unable to speak. They tried hiding pills from her, but she was stashing them everywhere. Nancy was worried for the health of her father. Jennings was the sick one and Velma should be looking after him instead of the other way around.
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br />   In February 1971 Velma was hospitalized after a third overdose. When Ronnie visited her in hospital, she told him that her marriage was a mistake. Jennings was not watching his diet despite his diabetes and taking care of an invalid husband was not something she had planned on.

  Jennings likewise felt that he could not continue. On Friday, March 19, he drove over to his son’s house and telephoned his lawyer to plan out divorce proceedings. They made an appointment to meet on Monday.

  The Murder of Jennings Barfield

  Velma would state that her life with Jennings was getting worse by the day. She claimed that she had to take care of him and that he stubbornly refused doctor’s instructions for his diet. The more obstinate he became, the more drugs Velma took, she claimed. She said she began to wonder why she had married him in the first place. She wrote:

  Each day got worse. I can’t bear up under all of this. I’ve got to get away from this pressure. I can’t stand it much longer. I bought a bottle of ant and roach poison.171

  Velma insisted that her intention was only to make him sick. “Then he’ll be sorry he’s caused me so much trouble, and he won’t do it again,” she claimed.

  Jennings did not make the Monday appointment with his lawyer. He died Sunday morning after Velma took him to the hospital with severe stomach pains and vomiting. In her book Velma reveals that she convinced herself that Jennings did not die of the poison she gave him but that his lungs gave out because he was already weak and ill. If Jennings is indeed the first victim she killed, there is nothing in her account that gives us any insight into what was going through her mind as she crossed the line to commit her first murder. It is as if her entire persona had been already programmed and set to kill. She went from “I can’t stand it much longer” to “I bought a bottle of ant and roach poison.” There is nothing in between, no contemplation of her act, no comment on the last seconds when she held in her hand the poisoned dish or drink she was about to serve him—when she still could have spilled it on the floor or even knocked it out of his hands as he brought it up to his mouth before it was too late

  Nothing.

  “I bought a bottle of ant and roach poison” is all she had inside of her to reveal to us. And that, of course, is what makes her a psychopath and the rest of us, hopefully, not.

  The Disintegration of Velma

  After the funeral, which Velma did not attend because she was too drugged out, she moved into her parents’ house where Ronnie and Kim were living. Ronnie was scheduled to leave for army basic training at Fort Jackson, near Columbia, South Carolina. Velma took to her bed and begged Ronnie not to go. He went, of course, and during basic training Velma would visit him every weekend—the only recruit in Ronnie’s unit to get such visits.

  In mid-June, Velma and Kim moved back into their twice burned-out home. Ronnie had completed basic training and was scheduled to begin training at the Army Security Agency School at Ford Devens, Massachusetts, in July. While home for a visit Velma seemed to have improved, but as soon as he left her condition immediately worsened.

  Velma wanted Ronnie to secure a hardship discharge. Her doctor wrote to the army describing Velma’s medical condition due to her husband’s death and the induction into the army of her son. He requested that the army discharge Ronnie so that he could return home to take care of his mother and sister. The army refused.

  Velma had returned to work in the department store she had worked in before her marriage to Jennings. She frequently would not go into work, however. Her medical and drug bills grew. She borrowed eight hundred dollars from a bank to pay for them and then the next month reported a burglary at her house. The thieves, she reported, had made off with the cash she had borrowed along with some of Ronnie’s shoes and clothes. Velma made an insurance claim for the loss. Her behavior at work became erratic. She frequently was so hostile to customers that she was removed from dealing with them and assigned to the stockroom, marking prices.

  On October 14, 1971, Velma asked Kim to take her into town so that she could apply for work at some other businesses. She seemed to linger longer than planned. When Kim and Velma returned home, their house was surrounded with fire trucks. A third fire had burned in their house. Ronnie got emergency leave from the army and rushed home to his mother.

  Velma and Kim moved back in with Lillie and Murphy. While home, Ronnie promised his mother he would press vigorously for a hardship discharge and began collecting the necessary medical certificates and other paperwork. Velma, in the meantime, was fired from work. She had become too unreliable, even in the stockroom. Ronnie was also concerned. Two fires and a break-in—was somebody perhaps targeting his mother?

  During his visit home, Ronnie met a girl—Kim, a cousin of one of his high school buddies. They began to date and things got serious very quickly. When he left to return to Fort Devens, Kim had promised to write. Ronnie’s sister, Kim, in the meantime, moved in with her uncle Jimmy, who offered her work tending a vending machine route. Both children would regularly send money back to support Velma.

  More bad news arrived that autumn. Ronnie was being assigned to Vietnam in January. Velma was now almost hysterical. While Ronnie’s commanding officer had approved Ronnie’s request for a hardship discharge, the army still needed to confirm it.

  When Ronnie visited home during Christmas, things were bleak, not only for Velma, but also for his grandfather. Murphy had been sick with some kind of respiratory illness that the doctors could not diagnose and he appeared to be wasting away. Lillie now had to care for an ailing husband and for Velma, who sometimes was so full of drugs that she could not get out of bed for days. The only ray of light for Ronnie during his visit home was seeing his girlfriend, Kim.

  After Ronnie returned to duty, Velma’s condition worsened. She overdosed on pills again and was taken to the emergency room. She told hospital psychiatrists that she wanted to commit suicide because she could not face seeing her son killed in Vietnam.

  Ronnie’s assignment to Vietnam was put on hold until the discharge application was reviewed. In March, Ronnie got his answer. His application was turned down, but he would not be sent to Vietnam. He was assigned to duty at the Army Security Agency at Fort Bragg, just outside of Fayetteville. He would be close to home.

  Other news was not good. Murphy was diagnosed with lung cancer, and his condition deteriorated so fast that on April 15, 1972, he died. Velma appeared to be deeply upset at her father’s death. She said years later, “I had learned to love him as much as I had hated him. He was good to my kids. I think he tried to do with my kids like he wished he had done to us.”

  That spring Velma also lost her house. She had not made the mortgage payments in months and the bank foreclosed on the house and auctioned it off. Velma took a job at a textile mill but soon lost it after she overdosed on pills again and was hospitalized for three weeks.

  Stationed at Fort Bragg, Ronnie was now seeing Kim regularly. In the summer of 1972, they decided to get married. They would not tell Velma of their plans until November, however. When she heard, Velma was devastated. This was a betrayal. Velma cried and told Ronnie, “I’ve always been the most important woman in your life.”

  Velma and Her Mother

  But unknown to Ronnie, Velma had been in a relationship with a 69-year-old man she had met in hospital during one of her overdoses. Al Smith was a former construction worker who was in for severe alcohol abuse. Velma and Al began to date and eventually moved in together. Just like Jennings, in the past, and Stuart, in the future, Velma had Al attending church services and gospel meetings in her attempt to wean him off his alcohol addiction. But the relationship was volatile. They argued and fought. When Ronnie finally found out about Al he was surprised by his mother’s choice of partner and did not approve. It seemed as self-destructive as her pill habit.

  In December 1972, Ronnie had bad news for Velma. He thought his assignment to Fort Bragg was permanent, but he learned he was going to be reassigned to Germany in March. He and Kim wo
uld be quickly married in February and Kim, who was studying at college to become an elementary school teacher, would join him in Germany in the spring, where she would continue her studies through an extension program with the University of Maryland.

  Velma’s reaction was predictable: She overdosed herself into a coma. When Ronnie arrived at her bedside, she was on a respirator, and there were doubts whether she would make it through the night. But she survived. When Ronnie married Kim in February 1973, Velma was at the wedding, clean and sober at least for that day. That same month, Velma moved home with her widowed mother.

  Ronnie appealed the army’s refusal for a hardship discharge and updated his request with more medical letters on Velma’s worsening condition. His move to Germany was postponed in March pending a decision.

  No sooner had Ronnie gotten that good news than more bad news arrived from Velma. She was in jail, arrested for attempting to pass a forged prescription. On April 3, Velma pled guilty and was sentenced to six months, suspended for three years if she did not get into further trouble.

  On April 6, Ronnie received the good news that his discharge was finally approved. He was free to come home from the army. If he thought his life had been hell since he was twelve, it is only because he had no idea what was still to come: Ronnie was going home to Mother.

  In the autumn of 1973, Ronnie and his wife were enrolled at Pembroke State University. His sister, Kim, met Dennis Norton and they were engaged to be married the next autumn. Velma was living with her mother and still seeing Al Smith on and off. Velma bounced between jobs at textile mills, none of which she could hold longer than three months. In November 1973, Velma was arrested again, this time for passing a bad check in the amount of $115. Luck was with her this time as the prosecutor failed to check her record and nobody found out she was under a suspended sentence. Otherwise she would have gone automatically into jail to serve the six months for her previous conviction.