Velma Barfield
(Cindy Burnham/Fayetteville
Observer-Times)

Big, hulking, Stuart Taylor was happy as he drove his girlfriend, plump and bosomy 46-year-old Velma Barfield, to a revival meeting of the famous preacher Rex Humbard. Although Stuart was not extremely religious, he knew that his girlfriend was a devoutly pious Christian and she would love hearing the respected evangelist in person. Stuart was aware that there were contradictory aspects of Velma’s personality. She was living out of wedlock with him, a move that had shocked her children. She also had a criminal record for forgery, a fact that Taylor had discovered by accident and led him to decide he did not want to legally marry her. However, as Christians say, it’s a Fallen World and many people do not live up to their own ideals.

Fayetteville on N.C. map

Both Stuart and Velma were crisply attired in their Sunday best as they settled into chairs at the Cumberland County Civic Center in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

The service had just begun when a wave of nausea rolled over Stuart. “I’m feeling sick,” he whispered to Velma. “Maybe it’s something I ate.”

As Humbard preached, Stuart began feeling worse. Fierce pains gripped his stomach. “I’ve got to go to the truck and lie down,” he told his sweetheart in a weak voice.

The 56-year-old farmer rushed out of the packed room and into the coolness of the evening air. He opened up his truck and lay down on a seat. The feelings inside him grew worse. He could hardly think as words were pushed out of his mind by sheer awful physical pain.

Still miserable with nausea when the meeting was finished and Velma got into the car with him, Stuart lay back and writhed in pain as she drove them home.

“Stop,” he said at one point, his skin clammy with sweat.

She pulled over to the side of the road. A pale and sweaty Stuart stumbled out of the vehicle and vomited on the dirt.

At home, he was in too much pain to sleep. In the wee hours of the morning, Velma phoned his pregnant daughter, Alice Storms, to tell her of her father’s disturbing condition. It was Alice’s husband, Bill, who answered the phone. Velma apologized for waking him up but said she thought it important that Stuart’s daughter know that he was frighteningly sick. Later, Alice phoned to ask Velma about Taylor’s illness. They both concurred that it was probably just the flu.

Still later, Velma visited one of her boyfriend’s best friends, a man named Sonny Johnson. “Stuart’s sick and he wants to see you,” an obviously distressed Velma told him.

Johnson rushed over to see his friends. He found an ashen-faced, weakened Stuart Taylor, lying in bed with a washbasin beside it to throw up in. “Could you take care of the pigs for me until I’m over the flu?” Stuart requested.

His friend assured him that he would.

Stuart’s condition got worse. His chest, stomach and arms were all racked by pain and he vomited incessantly. He felt like he was on fire from inside.

The next day, Velma drove her terribly sick lover to the hospital. While the doctors examined and tried to treat the man, she discussed what she knew of his medical history. She was not well-informed about it but she knew he was a heavy drinker.

After answering the physician’s questions, Velma called Alice. She in turn phoned her brother Billy who went to the hospital.

Together with Velma, he heard a doctor say his father’s dreadful condition was “gastritis.” The doctor prescribed medicine and told Velma she could take Stuart home that night, which she did.

Stuart Taylor’s residence

Sonny Johnson again visited his friend at the latter’s large, white, steeple-topped farmhouse that afternoon. Stuart had finally improved. He still looked wan but was sitting up in bed, chatting and smoking. He asked Johnson to talk to him from the doorway because he didn’t want to transmit his flu.

The next day was a Friday. At around 8 p.m., Stuart had taken a drastic turn for the worse. Velma phoned John McPherson, a neighbor and friend. “Stuart needs an ambulance!” she told him in a voice that sounded full of fear. McPherson called an ambulance, then drove to the house himself.

He found Stuart Taylor looking terrible. The room had a nauseating odor because the sick man had suffered an attack of diarrhea in his bed. The arms and legs of the sweaty and chalk-faced man thrashed around and he made incoherent moaning noises. From time to time, he screamed. Velma had surrounded the bed with chairs, their backs to the bed, to prevent him from falling out of it.

The rescue squad worked quickly and efficiently to bundle him into the ambulance. Its siren wailed as it raced to the hospital. His concerned lover followed in Stuart’s truck.

Doctors rushed to his side but Taylor died an hour after arriving at the hospital.

In the waiting room were Stuart’s children, Alice and Billy, and the girlfriend who had nursed him through the illness, Velma Barfield. The doctor said he was puzzled by the man’s sudden death and suggested an autopsy.

Stuart Taylor’s grave

Both Alice and Billy asked Velma what she thought. “If you don’t do it,” she said, “you’ll always wonder.”

Stuart Taylor’s adult kids told the physician to perform an autopsy.

Velma Barfield and her adult son Ronnie Burke sat with Stuart’s grieving family at his funeral. Velma placed a comforting arm around Alice and said the words so commonly repeated under such circumstances by believers in an afterlife: “He’s in a far better place.”

As Ronnie left the service, he looked at another person there and observed, “You know, it’s the saddest thing but it seems like everybody my mother ever gets close to dies.” How could the good Lord allow this to happen to a faithful Christian like Velma Barfield?

Earlier that same Sunday, a phone call had awakened Lumberton Police Detective Benson Phillips. The caller was weeping and babbling. The detective could not easily make out her slurred, shrill words. He was able to gather from some of the sounds: “Murder! . . . I know who did it! . . . You’ve got to stop her! You’ve got to stop her!”

The sleepy police officer sighed. A crank call, he thought. Just what he needed to start the day. He had heard of no murder in the small town of Lumberton and he would have if one had been committed since he investigated all homicides.

However, he suggested she call him at the station before he hung up the phone.

When he got there, he found, as he expected to, no homicide reports. The nutty morning caller faded from his thoughts as he got on with his day’s work.

Book cover for Jerry
Bledsoe’s Death
Sentence

Then she phoned. According to Jerry Bledsoe’s Death Sentence, “This time she was calmer, more coherent. She still didn’t want to give details, but Phillips gradually coaxed them from her. She revealed that she was calling from South Carolina, but she couldn’t give her name. She didn’t want anybody to know that she had called. The man who had been murdered, she said, was the boyfriend of Velma Barfield, who had killed him just as she had killed her own mother. The caller admitted that she could offer no proof, but she was sure, too, that Velma’s boyfriend and mother weren’t the only ones. Too many other people close to Velma had died, she said, including two elderly people Velma had worked for, but she didn’t know their names. When Phillips pressed for evidence, she could offer none.

How did she know about all of this? Phillips asked.

‘Because,’ she said, ‘Velma is my sister.'”

****

Phillips was utterly baffled by this strange caller. He did not trust her but then again, he could not quite dismiss her out of hand. He had to do some checking to make sure. He called the Lumberton hospital and inquired if anyone had died over the weekend.

Yes, he was told, Stuart Taylor. It seemed to be a death by natural causes. Was an autopsy being performed? Phillips asked. Regional medical examiner Dr. Bob Andrews had performed an autopsy but did not yet have all the results back.

Phillips was intrigued and disturbed but also in an awkward position. As Bledsoe, wrote, “He had discovered that Taylor had been brought to the hospital from the countryside near St. Paul’s. That would put any investigation under the jurisdiction of the sheriff. He had no responsibility. Still, he made a note to call his old friend Wilbur Lovett at the sheriff’s department on Monday to tell him about it.”

In the meantime, Dr. Andrews, who knew nothing of the detective’s suspicions or those nagging doubts that Phillips related to Sheriff Lovett, was puzzling over the results of his autopsy. Stuart Taylor had seemingly died of gastroenteritis. It was odd for a man as healthy as Taylor to be killed by that alone and Dr. Andrews determined to look further. Finding an inexplicable abnormality in some liver tissue, he put some of Taylor’s tissue samples into plastic bags. Then he mailed it to North Carolina’s chief medical examiner and asked for more tests.

Dr. Andrews was still waiting for the results of those tests when he spoke with a distraught Alice Storms. Her father had been so hale and hardy. What was it that had killed him? She had a right to know!

So Dr. Andrews phoned North Carolina’s chief medical examiner, Page Hudson. Hudson did not know about the tissues Andrews had sent for examination. However, he asked Andrews for details about the death. Andrews told him about the girlfriend, Velma Barfield, who had brought Stuart Taylor to the hospital and described Taylor’s symptoms.

Hudson instantly grasped the situation. “Where’d she get the arsenic, Bob?” he asked.

Soon authorities took a second look at the death certificates of the several people close to Velma Barfield who had died. Even when an autopsy had been performed, no special test had been done for poison. Rather, with stunning regularity, those she knew expired of “gastroenteritis.” The investigators were pretty certain they were dealing not only with a murderer but a serial murderer.

The police always do best if they can get a confession. What would be the best way to obtain one from Velma? They decided to surprise her. They would pick her up for questioning on one of the multitude of bad checks she had written, then confront her with Stuart Taylor’s death.

Since the checks had been written in Lumberton, Benson Phillips would question her. Sheriff Lovett and homicide investigator Al Parnell were present as well. They went over the checks. This was well-ploughed territory for Barfield and she appeared nonplussed.

Then Phillips began discussing her poor boyfriend, Stuart Taylor, who had so recently and tragically died. “Do you know he was killed by arsenic?” the detective asked.

The plump grandmother appeared stunned by this news.

Phillips pressed on, asking for details about their relationship. He was especially interested in knowing if Barfield had reason to be angry with Taylor.

“Y’all think I poisoned Stuart, don’t you?” she gasped in outrage. The two of them were in love, she maintained, and planning to wed. She had nothing to gain by killing him. It was dreadful for them to suggest such a thing. Why, she was the one who had nursed the poor man through his illness! She was the one who had rushed him to the hospital! Now they were trying to throw dirt on all her good work. They ought to be ashamed of themselves.

“Would you take a lie detector test?” Lovett asked.

Certainly. She had nothing at all to hide.

They told her a polygraph examination would be arranged and that she was free to go. Just as she got up to exit, Parnell sprung on her, “Velma, you know, this can go all the way back to your mother.”

She glared at the investigator, made no remark, and left in a huff.

That Saturday morning, Ronnie Burke was visiting his in-laws when his mother, Velma Barfield, phoned their house and asked to speak to her son.

Ronnie Burke was a 26-year-old man with multiple responsibilities. He had a wife and a 3-year-old son. He worked full-time and went to college full-time at Pembroke State University where he sought a business administration degree. He would receive it in just a couple of months. Burke was often pressed for time and sleep but he wanted to become the first member of his family to earn a four-year college degree, partly because he knew how much that would please his mother. For quite awhile, Burke had been concerned for his mother. She had suffered far more than her share of grief through the deaths of so many people she cared about. He also knew that she was taking more drugs than the doctors had prescribed for her.

His mother sounded overwrought. The police had taken her to the station, she told him.

Oh no, he thought. She was back to writing bad checks to cover drug bills.

Then a shock went through him.

“They wanted to talk about Stuart,” Mom informed him. “They said he was poisoned. They seem to think I had something to do with it.”

Some cop had really goofed this time, Burke thought. Burke knew that Taylor had died five weeks previously. His Mom had been devastated. He did not know who might have poisoned the man but he knew it could not possibly be his mother.

He told his Mom that he would be going home soon and she should meet him there. This was a frightful mistake but Burke was certain it could be straightened out. The cops would learn they were barking up the wrong tree. He was anxious to comfort his mother and let her know things would work out as they should in the end.

Burke, his wife, and toddler dwelled in a modest duplex on the outskirts of Lumberton, North Carolina. When Velma arrived there, he comforted her just like he had intended to. He did not believe she would need a lawyer. Attorneys are terribly expensive, after all, and he and his mother were people of very limited means. The police would realize soon that she could not have had anything to do with Stuart’s death and just drop it. There was no need to worry, he assured her.

That Monday, Burke was at work when a woman phoned. She would not say who she was but told him, “I’m a friend of your mother’s.”

What did she want to tell him?

“I’ve heard she’s going to be arrested today,” she said. “I thought you ought to know.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, they’re going to charge her with Stuart’s death. . . . I know someone who works in the sheriff’s department.”

It did not seem possible that the police could go so wrong, Burke thought. Yet, Mom had told him that they suspected her. Could the cops be about to arrest an innocent woman for murder? That sort of thing happens in the movies but not in real life.

Burke told his supervisor he had to leave to attend to a family emergency. He drove to the Lumberton Police Department and talked to Wilbur Lovett. They were not planning to arrest her that day, the sheriff told him, but they did consider her a suspect. He could not disclose why and Burke left Lovett’s office even more outraged and upset than he had been when he walked in.

From there he drove to the home in which his mother was living. Velma Barfield resided with Mamie Warwick, a senior citizen who allowed Velma to live rent-free in exchange for her doing some household chores. Burke found his Mom taking a nap. She was in bed as he spoke to her, telling her that the cops still suspected her in Stuart Taylor’s death. Velma said she could not possibly do anything like that. Then she started sobbing. Finally, she stopped crying and told her son something he had never expected to hear. Her words were soft, almost a whisper, yet unmistakably clear.

“I only meant to make him sick,” she said.

With that, Burke felt like the floor had been cut out from under him.

So it had been an accident. But his mother had caused it. She would have to go to the police and explain.

Velma wept quietly as she sat in the passenger seat of her son’s car, being driven to the sheriff’s department. Burke could not be present while she was questioned. She said she did not want a lawyer.

Dejected but certain he had done the right thing, Burke phoned his sister to break the sad news to her. They agreed to meet at her home. In times of crisis, families need to be together and Velma’s sisters, Arlene and Faye, would eventually drive in to join their niece and nephew.

The phone rang and Burke spoke to investigator Al Parnell.

“It’s worse than we thought,” Parnell said.

Burke was dumbstruck, wondering how could it possibly be any worse?

“There are other people. . . . Other people she’s killed,” Parnell told a stunned Ronnie Burke. Parnell went on to relate that Velma Barfield had confessed to killing two people to whom she had been a paid, live-in caregiver and her own mother, Burke’s grandmother, Lillie Bullard.

When Burke repeated what he had been told to his sister and aunts, a pandemonium of tears and screaming broke out in the little house.

Burke recalled the loving mother who had fed and clothed him, bandaged his cuts and wiped his runny nose, been a conscientious grade mother for him and his sister, taken him to church and taught him right from wrong, disciplined him and encouraged him always to do his very best. That image was impossible to reconcile with the poisoner of four people.

Just what kind of person was Velma Barfield?

On October 29, 1932, Margie Velma Bullard was born. Her parents, siblings, and friends would always call her Velma. She was the second child and first daughter of farmer Murphy Bullard and his homemaker wife, Lillie. They would have nine children all together.

When Velma was born, the Bullards lived in an unpainted wooden house in rural South Carolina. The home had neither electricity nor running water. Unlike many farm families, they did not even have an outhouse. Rather, “the necessary” was taken care of with chamber pots and trips to the woods. Murphy’s parents lived in the home and so did his sister, Susan Ella, who was disabled because an arm and leg had been shriveled by polio.

As the Great Depression worsened, Murphy Bullard found it impossible to eke out a living from the sale of the cotton and tobacco he grew. He sought and found work as a logger in a sawmill owned by Clarence Bunch. Through Bunch, Murphy was able to move his family into a tiny house closer to town. Here his third child would be born.

Then Murphy got a job in a Fayetteville textile mill and moved his family back into his parents’ home. His father died shortly thereafter and his mother followed her husband to the graveyard in less than a year’s time.

The Bullard family was organized along traditional, patriarchal lines. Murphy Bullard was the undisputed king of whatever shabby castle his family occupied and Lillie was the submissive wife. He was an easily angered and hard-drinking man when he did not get his way and a strict, unbending disciplinarian with his many children. He did not spare the rod or, in this case, the strap and the Bullard youngsters often had smarting backsides.

One thing that especially galled him was a kid with a “smart mouth” and both his oldest child, his son Olive, and the daughter who had been born next, Velma, were known in the family for their tendency to give Dad back-talk. However, Olive believed that Velma did not get punished nearly as often or as severely as he did which led to a lot of conflict between the two youngsters. He was convinced that their father favored Velma. She was just as convinced that their mother favored Olive.

Velma disliked her mother’s submissive attitude toward their father. Decades later, she wrote in her memoirs, Woman on Death Row, “I seemed to accept Daddy’s high-tempered ways because I thought that’s the way men are. Mamas should love their children and stand up for them, and Mama never stood up for me, or for any of us.” Every time Velma got a beating from her dad, she was at least as upset with the passive Mom who saw and did nothing as she was with the aggressive dad who actually inflicted it.

Lillie Bullard believed she had to step carefully in her own household to deal with her husband’s temper. She herself was frequently in danger of being on the receiving end of Murphy’s fists because he was a hysterically jealous man. He was also himself flagrantly unfaithful which inevitably added to family tensions.

A 7-year-old Velma started school in the fall of 1939. At first, she loved it. A smart girl, she got good grades and teachers’ compliments. School also offered a respite from her crowded home life, her father’s strap, and her often-ill mother’s gripes and demands.

However, the child soon began having difficulty with her schoolmates. Velma did not wear the new, store-bought, pretty dresses that so many other girls did. Her shoes were sturdy and worn. Other children sometimes made fun of her garments and of the plain lunches of cornbread with a side of meat that she brought. Velma began sneaking out of the sight of the other kids to eat. Then she began pilfering coins from her father’s pants pockets to buy candies from a little store that was across the street from the school.

The child stole $80 from an elderly neighbor. Murphy Bullard laid the strap on long and hard, apparently curing her of the desire to steal at least during her childhood since there are no other reports of such youthful indiscretions.

As Velma grew, she was assigned more and more chores. She had to help out on the farm and care for her younger brothers and sisters. She resented the amount of work she had to do but did not openly rebel for fear of angering her stern dad. “I really never felt like my Mama or Daddy ever wanted me except for the work I did,” she would say later . “I always felt that they just really wanted me to be a slave.”

Not everything was bad in the youngster’s life, however. Her father could be loving with his kids and lead them in ventures that were lots of fun. Murphy Bullard often organized baseball games with his children and others. Velma was often the only girl in the game and enjoyed playing shortstop. She also liked swimming when her dad led the kids on excursions to a local pond.

Despite his harsh discipline, Velma was often happy to be a daddy’s girl. A 10-year-old Velma was walking through the business district of Fayetteville with her father. She admired a dress in a department store window. It was covered with pink flowers and had a wide ruffle at the hem. She told her dad how much she loved that dress and, to her very pleasant surprise, he marched straight in and bought it for her!

Sadly, later in her life, Velma may have become a daddy’s girl in the most negative possible way. She told a reporter from The Village Voice that her father had entered her bedroom and raped her. Prior to that, there had been confusing episodes when he felt her up and she was not sure if it was sexual or not.

Several of Velma’s brothers and sisters furiously disputed her claim that she was an incest victim. While her family had many of the traits characteristic of incestuous families such as a severe power imbalance between husband and wife and a father who drank heavily, it is not possible to say with certainty if her accusation was true or false. Velma certainly could lie and was a champion manipulator throughout much of her life. A claim of sexual abuse can be an easy way to play upon people’s sympathies.

In 1945, Murphy Bullard decided he was tired of working in the mill and wanted to go back to full-time farming. He bought more acres and, with that purchase, a small but far more modern home for his family. After only a year, he realized he could not support his large brood on what he could make from his crops. He returned to supplementing farm income with work in a mill.

Later, he got a job at a textile plant in the town of Red Springs and moved his family there. The house they moved into lacked the modern conveniences of the one they had lived in for the last couple of years.

Velma was now in high school. She no longer got the good grades she had achieved in elementary school. However, she found one activity that she enjoyed at Parkton Public School and that, surprisingly, was basketball. Although it was not standard in that era, Parkton had a girls’ team and Velma found the fast-moving sport a good way to work off energy. Then her mother insisted that Velma quit the team. Lillie had recently given birth to twins and needed her eldest daughter’s help with housework more than she ever had. Velma was terribly disappointed and saddened by her Mom’s demand.

Thomas Burke with Velma

Meanwhile, Velma and a high school boy named Thomas Burke had developed a mutual crush. A year older than she, Thomas was a thin-faced, jug-eared, dark-haired and lanky youth with a tender streak and a good sense of humor. The two found each other regularly at school to make friends and flirt.

No dating would be allowed until Velma was 16, her father told her when she expressed a wish to begin seeing Thomas outside of school. Then her 16th birthday rolled around but her father seemed to have changed his mind. He still did not want his daughter going out. After much pleading, Velma got Murphy to agree to her dating. He placed firm restrictions on her, saying she usually had to double date and always had to be home by 10 p.m. on the dot. Although she chafed under these restrictions, Velma went along with them. She did not have much choice if she was to avoid her father’s wrath.

When she was 17, Thomas proposed marriage and Velma accepted. She had a tremendous row with her father, at the end of which Murphy Bullard broke down in tears. Velma had never seen her father, so steadfastly and traditionally masculine, cry before. But she still wanted to be with Thomas.

Both Thomas and Velma quit school shortly after marrying. Thomas Burke held different jobs, in a cotton mill, as a farm laborer, and then driving a delivery truck. Velma worked for a while in a drugstore but Thomas disliked having her work outside the home so she quit.

The newlywed Burkes were residing in a small Parkton home where Velma’s family had once lived when the young wife got pregnant in 1951. On December 15 of that year, she gave birth to Ronald Thomas. His sister, Kim, was born on September 3, 1953.

Velma Burke adored taking care of her babies. She was an indulgent and protective mother who frequently read to her youngsters and could not stand to be separated from them even for brief periods. She wanted both children to grow up to be ardent Christians and regularly took them to a Baptist church.

Velma’s children, Kim and
Ronnie

When her children started school, Velma Burke quickly became known as one of the most involved mothers. She was “grade mother” for the classes of both her youngsters and always available for class field trips and the like. She and her children joked that they had “automatic arms” because whenever a teacher asked the class if someone’s mother would be willing to assist with a project, their arms instantly shot into the air. Velma Burke could always be counted on. She often drove children in the classes her kids attended on field trips and the youngsters would fight to ride with her because she was so much fun.

Around this time, Velma got another paying job. Apparently Thomas did not object. The family needed some extra cash. She took the midnight to 8 a.m. shift at a textile plant. Thomas began a job as delivery driver for Pepsi-Cola. The family now had enough funds to move into a more comfortable house in Parkton. The Burkes enjoyed several good years.

In 1963, Velma began having medical problems and had to undergo a hysterectomy. They were not as distraught as some couples might have been because both Velma and Thomas agreed that the two children were all they wanted.

The surgery appeared to have a drastic, and negative, affect on Velma. She was alternately nervous or depressed and often snappish. She began worrying that the fact that she could no longer get pregnant made her seem less womanly and, therefore, less attractive to her husband. She started to have more physical problems and was especially troubled by lower back pain.

Thomas Burke decided to join the Jaycees. He went off to their weekly meetings while Velma sat at home with the kids. She began to resent his evening absences.

Even more, she resented his drinking. Velma was a firm teetotaler who agreed with her church that alcoholic beverages were the devil’s drinks. Thus, she was deeply upset when she found out that Thomas was regularly going out with his male friends for a few beers.

In 1965, Thomas had an accident as he was driving his three-year-old Ford Galaxy. As described in Death Sentence, “The car left the highway, hit a culvert, sailed into the air and landed on its wheels in the driveway of a house. Thomas’ head banged the steering wheel and he was knocked unconscious.”

He had a concussion and would ever after suffer severe headaches. He always maintained that he had not been drinking but had only been tired and had fallen asleep at the wheel. His wife would not buy it. She was certain he had been drunk and redoubled her nagging on the subject.

Thomas resented her noisy attempts to talk him into abstaining from booze. He drank no more than most of the guys he hung around with. Why was his wife trying to run his life?

Their battles over booze became an almost daily affair. Usually, Velma started them, upset because Thomas had liquor on his breath. A shouting, name-calling match would follow and the children were inevitably frightened and disturbed by their argumentative parents. Ronnie was especially concerned because he feared his dad would eventually settle the disputes the way so many other men did— with his fists.

To his credit, however, Thomas never employed brute strength in his many and furious arguments with his wife.

Thomas was arrested for drunken driving in 1967. As a result he lost his driver’s license and, with it, his job at Pepsi-Cola. He was devastated. The shame and despair plunged him into a depression and he drank more than ever to dull a pain that was caused by his drinking. The Burke kids no longer invited friends over to their home because they did not want the other kids to hear their parents fight or see their dad wiped out from booze.

A mill hired Thomas and he was able to ride to work in a carpool (even if the word was not in common use at the time).

The household tension was taking a great toll on Velma. She was ever more worried and frantic and had been drastically losing weight. One day, Ronnie came home to find his mother lying on the kitchen floor in a dead faint.

He was able to help her back to consciousness but insisted on a trip to the hospital. Doctors there recommended she remain hospitalized for a week. She was given vitamins and sedatives before being released with a prescription for a mild tranquilizer, Librium.

When she got home, she eventually began taking more Librium than was prescribed. She also went to another physician and got a prescription for Valium. Velma Barfield had begun the avocation of “doctor shopping” that she would pursue up until her arrest for murder. It was a pattern of going to doctors and getting prescriptions without telling one doctor that she was seeing another. Thus, she took medicines that were not supposed to be taken in conjunction with each other.

Even as she constantly and loudly fretted about her husband’s alcohol use, Thomas and her teenaged kids worried about her use of prescription medicines. She was taking too much, sometimes leaving her as groggy as a drunkard.

One day in April, the Burke house caught on fire. The only person home was Thomas Burke. Both youngsters were at school. Velma said she had been at the laundromat when she came home to see the house in flames.
Thomas Burke died of smoke inhalation.

At the hospital, Velma collapsed when she was told of her husband’s death. Ronnie and her sister caught her before she could fall to the floor.

A few months after this loss, Velma Burke experienced great joy and triumph through the achievement of her son. Ronnie was graduating from high school as salutatorian. His mother sat proudly among the spectators as he spoke at the commencement. He chose the subject nearest to his heart: his mother. In his speech, he paid tribute to her as the reason for all of the good qualities he possessed. Velma cried as she listened to his public praise. What a joy to be so appreciated by one’s grateful son and to have everyone know it.

However, the Burke family continued to have bad luck. There was another fire at their home. This time, no one was inside and no one was hurt. But the house was gutted. While they waited for the insurance to pay for the damage, the Burkes moved back in with Velma’s parents, Murphy and Lillie Bullard.

Soon after Thomas’ death, Velma began dating a widower named Jennings Barfield. Barfield was a man who had taken early retirement due to numerous health problems. He suffered from diabetes, emphysema, and heart disease. He had lost his wife close to the time Velma had lost her husband and the two were probably initially brought together by a mutual desire to comfort each other in grief. Then a romance grew and deepened and wedding bells were in the air.

They were married on August 23, 1970. It was a church wedding, something Velma felt she had missed out on in her youthful elopement to Thomas Burke. Velma moved into the small home in Fayetteville that her groom shared with his teenaged daughter, Nancy.

The newlyweds were soon having troubles, partly because of Velma’s penchant for overdoing it with prescription medications. Jennings found his wife in a semi-conscious state and took her to the hospital. The doctor on duty said she had overdosed. They separated, then reconciled when she promised to quit taking so many pills. She broke her word and went back to the emergency room with another overdose. Both Velma and Jennings confided to others that they believed the marriage had been a mistake. Divorce seemed in the offing with it just a question of who would leave first.

It never actually came to that, however.

Jennings Barfield died on March 21, 1971, apparently of the heart failure that had troubled him for years.

Widowed again, Velma did not appear to be coping well. She was despondent and listless, often medicating herself into oblivion and spending much of her time in bed. “After Jennings’s death,” she would recall, “I felt emptier and more depressed than ever. I kept going to my doctors. I had prescriptions from at least two, and usually three, doctors at a time. . . . No matter how many pills any one doctor prescribed, they never lasted until time for the next refill.”

She worked at Belk’s department store but her performance there was being badly affected by her mood swings and evident drug dependency. Her boss was a sympathetic man so, instead of firing her, he put her in the stockroom where she could not alienate customers with a snippy or brusque manner.

Adding to Velma’s despair was a separation from her son. The Vietnam War was raging and Ronnie felt it was only a matter of time before he was drafted so he decided to sign up. He had second thoughts after Jennings Barfield’s death and his mother begged him to attempt to persuade the military that he needed to be allowed to stay with his sick mom. He made a sincere effort in that direction. Doctors wrote to the Army telling of Velma Barfield’s precarious health and asking that Ronnie be permitted to honorably opt out of his contract. It did not work and he was ordered to report to Fort Jackson in South Carolina.

When it seemed like things could not get worse, they did. Velma’s house once again caught fire! Velma went into hysterics. She was simply inconsolable. Why did such things keep happening to her?

She and her daughter once again moved back in with Murphy and Lillie Bullard. It was just in time— for Velma was fired from Belk’s. She had been coming in late and unable to perform her duties when she was there. Unemployment led Velma’s chronic depression to deepen. It got even blacker when she learned that Murphy Bullard had lung cancer. His death at 61 plunged her into a horrible grief. Life hardly seemed worth living. Her father was dead and her son could be sent to Vietnam and be killed.

It seemed that she would lose Ronnie even if he did not die because he told her he was planning to marry. She did not give her son and his prospective bride her blessing. Instead, she was crushed. She told her son, “I’ve always been the most important woman in your life and now you’re going to have her and you won’t even want me to come around at all!”

Ronnie tried to reassure her that his love for his future wife did not take away from his love for his mother. His earnest reassurance did nothing to ease her jealousy of the young woman who was to share his life. But neither did mom’s jealousy dissuade Ronnie from going ahead with the plans for his wedding.

In March 1972, Velma Barfield was arrested for forging a prescription. She pleaded guilty in April and got off with a suspended sentence and a fine. Then, finally, she got some genuinely welcome news: Ronnie was discharged from the Army!

Despite the bright spot of Ronnie’s return, Velma was still having a great deal of trouble. After her father’s death, she and her mother fell into a pattern of frequent quarreling. Velma claimed that Lillie was constantly ordering her about. The older woman expected to be waited on hand and foot and the grown-up Velma was not going to be treated like a slave by anyone. Lillie, for her part, was dismayed by Velma’s frequent use of pills and her tendency to sometimes simply pass out from taking too many.

Lillie got dreadfully sick during the summer of 1974. Her stomach was racked by painful cramps. She began throwing up uncontrollably and suffering a violent diarrhea. It got so bad that Velma drove her mother to the hospital. The doctors could not determine the cause of the sudden illness. However, Lillie was better after a few days and went home.

On August 23, a man Velma had been dating was killed in a traffic accident. (Velma was not present so this death, at least, was probably just a melancholy coincidence.) He had made Velma Barfield the beneficiary of his life insurance policy and she received a check for $5,000.

That Christmas appeared, as that holiday so often does, to be a time of sharing, forgiveness and reconciliation. Both Lillie and Velma enjoyed bustling about in the kitchen, making a big turkey dinner along with a variety of rich desserts for their big extended family. Everybody at Grandma Bullard’s house kidded around and laughed, then opened presents.

However, Lillie pulled one of her sons aside to talk to him about something odd that troubled her. She had gotten a letter from a finance company telling her that a loan was overdue on her car and it would be repossessed if she failed to promptly pay it. Lillie had not taken out any loan on the car and she owned it free and clear! Her son saw no problem. It was probably just one of those paperwork snafus, nothing to fret about.

A couple of days later, Lillie got terribly sick. She was nauseous, then vomiting. That was followed by an awful attack of diarrhea. Her insides felt like they were burning up. She told Velma that she had hideous pains in her belly and upper back. Her arms and legs flailed about her. She threw up again and threw up blood.

Velma phoned her brother Olive who immediately drove over. He was appalled to see their mother so sick and called an ambulance. The rescue squad allowed Velma to ride in the ambulance with her mother.

Lillie Bullard died two hours after arriving at the hospital.

Early in 1975, Velma was once again in hot water with the law. She had written another string of bad checks. She was convicted on seven counts of writing bad checks. The judge sent her to prison for six months. She was released after serving three.

Awhile after obtaining her freedom, Velma started to look for jobs as a caregiver for elderly, sick people. In 1976, she was living with and working for Montgomery and Dollie Edwards. Montgomery was 94, bedridden and incontinent. He was a diabetic and had lost his vision to that disease as well as both legs that had been amputated. He could not feed himself. Eighty-four year-old Dollie was in somewhat better shape but she was a cancer survivor who had had a colostomy. At first, Velma seemed pleased to be able to move into their comfortable brick ranch house. She got along well with both Edwardses and found a church she liked attending, the First Pentecostal Church in Lumberton.

As time wore on, tensions surfaced between the caregiver and her employers. Dollie often thought Velma was falling down on the job and told her so in no uncertain terms. Velma complained that Dollie was a demanding nitpicker. Their quarrels got more frequent and more heated.

Montgomery died in January 1977. Velma stayed on to aid Dollie. The two continued to bicker.

It was February 26, a Saturday, when Dollie got sick. She told her visiting stepson, Preston Edwards, that she believed she must have the flu. Vomiting and diarrhea plagued her. He came to see her the next night and was horrified by how weak and pale she looked. She had to go to the hospital, he said. An obliging Velma Barfield called an ambulance. Dollie was treated by doctors in the emergency room and sent back home without having spent the night there. She took a turn for the worse the next day and was back in the hospital by Tuesday. She died that evening.

Now Velma had no livelihood. That did not last long. She was soon caring for another ailing and elderly couple, 80-year-old farmer John Henry Lee and his 76-year-old wife, Record. Record was the one needing special assistance for she had recently broken her leg and was hobbling around on crutches when she could manage to get around at all.

The position seemed quite suitable to Velma. The Lees lived in a brick house in a rural area on the outskirts of Lumberton. They were willing to let Velma have Sundays and Wednesdays evenings off so she could attend church services.

Problems started surfacing. Record Lee loved to gab and the incessant chitchat got on Velma’s nerves. She and her husband often argued and Velma disliked being present during their fights.

Then there was a check that puzzled Record. She knew she had not signed it. John Henry called the cops but the case stalled because no one could think of anyone who might have forged Record’s name.

On April 27, John Henry got sick. His stomach was upset and he developed diarrhea. His condition worsened and Velma called an ambulance. The medics rushed the sweaty, gray-faced man to the hospital. He gradually recovered and was released on May 2, after he had spent four days there. Doctors were mystified about the source of the sickness but thought it was probably a virus.

 “Throughout May, John Henry continued to be sick,” according to Death Sentence. “For a few days he would be perfectly okay, then the vomiting, the diarrhea, the cramps, the cold sweats, would start again. His weight continued to drop drastically. His daughters were very grateful for the attentiveness that Velma showed him. She was so sweet to him, so caring. They felt themselves lucky that she was there.”

He took a turn for the worse and Velma called another ambulance for him. There was little the hospital could do for the dehydrated, terribly sick man. He died on June 4.

Some time after the funeral of John Henry Lee Velma Barfield moved into the home of Stuart Taylor. Before Taylor became ill at the Rex Humbard revival meeting, Velma had visited his daughter, Alice, and asked to see a picture of her father that she had taken as a joke. It was his “dead” picture. Stuart Taylor had stretched out on a couch, closed his eyes and folded his hands across his chest to simulate the image of a man in a coffin. Velma laughed along with Alice and Stuart when Alice brought the photograph to her.

Later, the memory of that shared laughter would cause Alice to shudder.

The prosecutor in Velma Barfield’s case was a large, blustery man named Joe Freeman Britt. He was an ardent advocate of capital punishment who had been called “the world’s deadliest prosecutor.” During one period of seventeen months, Britt had prosecuted thirteen first-degree murder trials and won convictions in all of them. That was a record and got him a mention in a Newsweek article.

Defending the accused serial poisoner was Bob Jacobson. He was a short, freckled lawyer and one of the few in Lumberton who would accept court-appointed cases. He had never previously tried a death penalty case.

Velma was being tried for one count of first-degree murder, that of Stuart Taylor. Her defense was that she did not mean to kill, only to render her victim ill while she attempted to cover up thefts by returning money she had pilfered from him. If true, she was guilty only of second-degree murder and the death sentence would not even be at issue.

Because the question of intent was so crucial, Britt argued that the jury was entitled to hear of other poisonings she had committed and their results. Jacobson argued that that would be prejudicial since she was only being tried for the death of Taylor.

The judge in the case was Henry McKinnon. He ruled that the evidence linking Velma to the deaths of John Henry Lee, Dottie Edwards, and her own mother, Lillie Bullard, be admitted.

First, the prosecutor put on both medical personnel and family who testified to the horror of Stuart Taylor’s death. Britt also brought out the fact that his life could have been saved had the antidote for arsenic poisoning British antilewisite, or BAL, been administered. However, to do that, the doctors would have had to have been informed that Taylor had been poisoned with arsenic — and the one person who knew that, Velma Barfield, did not tell them.

Defense attorney Jacobson asked doctors about the effects of the various drugs Velma had been taking and their possible interactions with each other. Some of the physicians who testified about treating Stuart had also treated Velma and prescribed medications for her. Their testimony showed that she was on drugs that could have badly impaired her judgment and were addictive.

Jacobson put Velma on the stand in her own defense. He knew he was taking an enormous risk in doing so but felt he had to let her explain her own confused thinking to the jury. She did well on direct examination, saying that she had given her boyfriend poison to make him sick but not to kill him. She said she did not tell doctors what she had done because she feared being returned to prison. He also brought out her extensive use of various medications, her combining a wide variety of drugs, and her dependency on them. She admitted forging checks because she was addicted to drugs and could not pay for them out of her own limited resources.

In the opinion of Britt, Velma Barfield was a cold-blooded and cunning murderer who hid behind a sweet little old lady and pious Christian masks. He would tear those masks off and show the jury who she really was. When he cross-examined her, he began with no pretense of being amiable or friendly. In his stance, manner, and voice, he bristled with hostility.

She bristled right back and that was precisely what he wanted. At one point, she seemed to be trying to argue that she had not killed her victims. Rather, people coincidentally happened to die after she poisoned them! After all, the first autopsies all indicated natural deaths.

“What I would like, your Honor,” Velma began during this astonishing statement, “to say to the jury and all, these autopsies — let me say first of all, when a person dies . . . and they ask for an autopsy to be performed, is it not true that we have an autopsy performed to find out the reason of the death? . . . So I don’t believe it killed them really. That is exactly the way I feel about it.”

A stunned Britt asked, “Beg your pardon?”

“I don’t think it killed them.”

At another point, Velma seemed oddly arrogant and snippy.

“You made Mrs. Edwards sick with Singletary’s rat poison, did you not?”

“No, I thought it was roach and ant poison.”

“So you knew these compounds would certainly make people sick?”

“I knew it would make them sick,” the witness replied.

“You knew it would kill them, too, didn’t you?”

“No, I did not.”

The defense put on several medical witnesses to testify to Velma’s lengthy history of chronic and overlapping drug use. None of them could say that she had been rendered insane in the legal sense by drugs but they testified that her judgment could have been terribly clouded.

Right after the prosecutor gave his summation to the jury, Velma made a gesture of silent applause, repeatedly putting her hands together without actually clapping. Her attorney and family were crestfallen. Britt was elated. With that single, uncalled for sarcasm, he was certain that Velma Barfield had as good as signed her own death warrant.

The jury came back with a verdict of guilty of first-degree murder. Then it found the “aggravating circumstances” to recommend the death penalty. Judge McKinnon fixed her punishment at death.

Like most states, North Carolina had no “row” of women waiting to be executed. When she was sentenced, Velma Barfield was the only female in the state doomed by the law. She was housed in the Central Prison’s section for mental cases, especially assaultive inmates, and prisoners considered prone to escape.

Central Prison main gate

Early in her prison stay, Velma went through drug withdrawal. She had been supplied with many of her accustomed medications during her trial. Her first days as a condemned prisoner were spent without them and she showed the classic symptoms of cold turkey: lack of appetite, insomnia, nausea, cold sweats, and splitting headaches. The doctor who treated her gave her anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications. Then gradually, over a period of over a year, she was weaned off of them.

Velma Barfield in her cell

To the extent possible, Velma made her cell into a home. She put up photographs of her children and grandchildren along with knick-knacks she crocheted and inspirational religious slogans. Velma did not usually smoke but she usually had a pack of Salem’s so that she could light one up while having a bowel movement on her cell toilet. Velma, whose victims had usually suffered a horrendous diarrhea before death, did not want to offend her guards with the odor of her own excrement.

****

Velma’s radio was usually tuned into a Christian program. Velma claimed that she had become a born-again Christian while in jail.

Although she had been a churchgoer and professed to love Jesus all her life, Velma said that she recognized that she had never been a true Christian. Her Christianity had been a matter of form and gesture. Then, while at her lowest ebb and awaiting trial for her life, she had finally, genuinely, opened her heart to Jesus and received forgiveness and salvation. She was listening to a sermon by J. K. Kinkle when the message of God’s love hit home for the first time. “All my life I was weighted down by my sins because I couldn’t do better,” she wrote in her autobiography. “It never occurred to me that Jesus really did pay the price, that Jesus alone bore the extreme punishment — death — for my sins, not just for my “good” neighbors. And, even more glorious, Jesus is willing to be my friend even now. I can talk to Him, and He will listen.”

Her conversion was greeted with skepticism by many, including the families of her victims. After all, she had spoken of Jesus and salvation when they knew her and when she was poisoning their loved ones. Her Christian faith had always been a fraud, they believed, and it continued to be one. It was just a ploy to try to save her life.

However, many people were favorably impressed by Velma’s claim to be, for the first time in her life, filled with the Holy Spirit. Tommy Fuquay, a Pentecostal Holiness minister, believed that she was a true Christian. “I don’t think I had ever seen anybody who had the repentant spirit she had,” he commented. “I could see her growing and her attitude changing. The faith in her just grew and grew each time I would see her.”

Rev. Billy Graham & Ruth
Bell Graham (AP)

The famous evangelist Billy Graham and his wife Ruth would come to believe Velma Barfield was their sister in Christ. Ruth Graham kept in frequent touch with Velma by mail.

Velma found meaning in her limited life by helping other prisoners. She was dismayed to discover how many inmates were functionally illiterate. She often wrote letters for them.

Special rules applied to Velma because of the death sentence and included no contact with the other inmates. However, the prison authorities frequently broke this rule because they found that she could be a positive influence on other prisoners. Assistant superintendent for treatment and programs at the prison, Jennie Lancaster, put a 15-year-old named Beth into the cell next to Velma’s. Lancaster asked Velma to try to help the girl who had been convicted as an accessory to murder.

Velma put her hand through the bars of her own cell and toward the next one so that Beth could hold hands with her. Beth took Velma into her confidence, pouring out her fears, while Velma prayed aloud for her and tried to comfort. For the first time in her life, Velma was known by her first name and Beth was the first prisoner to call her Mama Margie. She would not be the last. Other inmates often came to Velma for advice and words of reassurance.

Letter writing for herself and others consumed much of Velma’s time. She wrote to her family and to supporters she had never met. She also kept up with her crocheting. Velma prayed and read the Bible on a daily basis. Her son and daughter visited and sometimes brought her grandchildren with them. Together with a pastor, she worked on her memoirs, Woman on Death Row.

Any death sentence is automatically appealed. In June 1990, the Supreme Court turned down her appeal because it found no unconstitutional element in the way North Carolina’s death penalty statutes read.

Attorney Richard Burr
(AP)

A new attorney was handling Velma’s case. He six foot tall, 200 pound, longhaired and thickly bearded 30-year-old Richard Burr. He was the lawyer for the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee and dedicated to aiding prisoners under a death sentence. Velma was the first doomed prisoner he would defend. Two hundred other condemned would follow.

On September 17, the Supreme Court turned down another appeal filed by Burr on Velma Barfield’s behalf. Her best shot would be in North Carolina’s state courts, Burr concluded, but he had no license to practice in North Carolina.

Velma with Attorney Jimmie Little
(Cindy Burnham/Fayetteville Observer-Times)

Thus, a short and slender 36-year-old named Jimmie Little became her lawyer of record with Burr assisting him. Little had once been a public defender. He also had a reputation for being willing to stick his neck out. He had fought for his interpretation of free speech when he was a student at the University of North Carolina by opposing the ban on communist speakers at state campuses. As an Army officer during the Vietnam War, he had vocally opposed America’s being in that conflict.

Little went to the Bladen County Superior Court. He filed a motion asking for a hearing to determine whether or not his client was entitled to a new trial. There were several complaints behind this motion but the chief one was “ineffective assistance of counsel.” Thus, Velma was pitted against Bob Jacobson, her previous attorney. Little argued that Jacobson had failed in his duty to make appropriate motions and to put on helpful psychiatric witnesses.

The judge ruled against Velma and set another execution date. Her lawyers soon got a stay and filed more appeals. Over the next six years, several appeals were filed and turned down, several execution dates were set and avoided.

Both Ronnie and Kim continued to visit. As mother and son realized time was running out, Ronnie Burke brought up the painful subject of his father’s death in one of their conversations. He was palpably terrified of the answer but had to ask the question.

“Did you kill him?” Ronnie asked.

“I’m sure I probably did,” she sadly replied. Slowly, the story spilled out. Her memory was fuzzy but she believed that he had been drunk and asleep and she lay either a cigarette or a match at the foot of the bed, then shut the door.

She also admitted to the minister who helped her write Woman on Death Row, that she had murdered Jennings Barfield.

James Hunt,
Governor of North
Carolina (AP)

Once the appeals had been exhausted, Velma and her supporters had a thin ray of hope in the form of clemency from North Carolina’s governor. That governor was James Hunt who was running against famous incumbent Jesse Helms for the U.S. Senate. The governor refused Velma’s request for clemency saying her victims had been “literally tortured to death.” Hunt tersely denied that the senate race had played any part in his decision.

As she prepared for death, Velma was able to speak over the phone with Billy Graham. “Velma, in a way I envy you,” the famous pastor told her, “because you’re going to get to heaven before I do.”

Later she spoke to the Graham’s daughter, Anne Graham Lotz, who comforted Velma by saying, “Don’t think of it as the execution chamber. Think of it as the gateway to heaven.”

As they do at all American executions, demonstrators both for and against capital punishment gathered outside the prison before Velma’s death. Opponents held lit candles and hummed Amazing Grace, Velma’s favorite hymn. A festive mood prevailed among the capital punishment supporters. They held signs saying, “Velma’s going to have a hell of a time” and “Bye-Bye Velma” and chanted “Die, bitch, die!”

In her cell, Velma took a final communion. They put on an adult diaper underneath the cotton pajamas in which she had chosen to die.

“Velma, it’s time,” she was told.

Velma requested and got permission to put a robe on. Then she checked her hair in the mirror and stepped into the hallway. She was taken to a “preparation room” and asked if she had any last words. She did. “I want to say that I am sorry for all the hurt that I have caused,” she began in a firm voice. “I know that everybody has gone through a lot of pain — all the families connected — and I am sorry, and I want to thank everybody who has been supporting me all these six years. I want to thank my family for standing with me through all this and my attorneys and all the support to me, everybody, the people with the prison department. I appreciate everything — their kindness and everything that they have shown me during these six years.”

Death chamber gurney at Central Prison

Then the condemned prisoner was escorted to her “gateway to heaven.” That gateway was a tiny, sterile room with a gurney in it. Velma got up on that gurney, then lay flat down on it. Needles connected to IV leads were inserted into her arms. She would receive something to make her sleep, then a poison to stop her heart.

There were two lines into Velma but three executioners. One of their thumbs would press upon a plunger that was connected to a dummy so no one would know for certain that he or she had taken a life.

“Velma,” she was told, “Please start counting backward from one hundred.”

Obediently, Velma began, “One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight . . . ” Her voice slurred into silence and she started to snore. Her breathing got lighter and lighter with each breath. Then her skin turned an ashen gray. The monitor connected to her heart showed a flat line. At 2:15 a.m., on November 2, 1984, Velma Barfield, serial murderer and born again Christian, loving mother and killer of her children’s father and grandmother, was dead.