Before He Wakes (28 page)

All of Russ’s National Guard associates and officers were questioned, and all agreed that Russ knew too much about weapons and was too cautious with them ever to sleep with a loaded gun under his pillow.

A Pen register, an electronic device that records the numbers called and received on a telephone line, had been connected to Barbara’s line, and although it had not functioned at first, by late February it was providing the officers with the numbers of many people who would have to be called and questioned.

On February 24, Buchanan and Evenson began moving the focus of the investigation to Randolph County. They went first to Greensboro to discuss the case with the district supervisor of the SBI, picked up the reports on Kay Pugh’s murder in High Point, then drove to Asheboro to tell Sheriff Robert Mason of their plans.

Russ’s first wife, Jo Lynn, also had been collecting information for the case at Evenson’s request.

“After I spoke with you, I called Russ’s mom,” she wrote to him in a long letter on February 28. “I had not spoken with her in over a week, and I wanted to clarify some things she had told me. She was very distraught having just read in the Durham paper that Sergeant Buchanan had been working on another case. I had not planned on telling her anyone had called me, but after learning how upset she was, I felt she needed the reassurance your telephone call had given me. I didn’t tell her who had called me, but that someone investigating the case had called. She was very relieved.

“To clarify my memory, I did ask Mrs. Stager to tell me again why it was that the children did not see their paternal grandparents, the Fords. She said that Barbara said that even Larry couldn’t get along with his parents. After Larry died, the grandparents would call to see the children and then wouldn’t show up. She said once they were going to take the boys camping overnight and never showed up. She said they were not dependable, that they were ‘oddballs,’ and that the Fords didn’t care anything about the children.”

Jo Lynn went over a lot of matters that she had talked about with Doris, including what Barbara’s sons thought of Russ’s death and whether Barbara told anyone that she actually had murdered Russ:

“Regarding his sons, Mrs. Stager feels the older one has to be suspicious. She said she was hoping Bryan would call her but that he had not. At the same time, she felt Bryan would protect his mother. Russ was extremely close to both sons.

“Mrs. Stager feels strongly that Barbara would not have told anyone. She did not have any close friends that she is aware of and agreed with me that to tell a boyfriend would only scare him off. I suspect that Barbara does have ‘someone else,’ but it is my opinion she has convinced that person it was an accident just as she convinced Russ [at first] that her first husband’s death was an accident.”

If Barbara did have someone else, the detectives so far had not found him.

The three SBI agents working on the case spent most of March delving into Larry’s death. Much of that time was devoted to trying to track down the truth about Kay Pugh’s murder and the rumors of Barbara’s lesbian relationship with her. In the end the investigators and prosecutors would determine that their time had been wasted. The rumors were false. No connection existed between the deaths of Kay Pugh and Larry. But they did learn many other things that led them to believe that Barbara had murdered Larry.

On March 2, Myers and McDougald interviewed Carlton Stanford, who had gone with Barbara to buy the gun with which Larry was killed. Stanford told them about buying the gun and his earlier afternoon with Barbara in a Charlotte motel. Barbara had told him that she and Larry did not have a good relationship and that Larry had hit her, he said, although he’d never seen any signs of her being hit. Stanford had heard the gossip of Barbara’s supposed involvement in a lesbian ring, but he couldn’t believe it. Barbara had mentioned relationships with other men, he said, but she had never given any indication of sexual interest in women.

“Tell me something,” Stanford said as the agents were nearing the end of their interview, “why didn’t anybody come and talk to me about all of this ten years ago?”

By mid-March, the investigators knew about most of Barbara’s affairs while she was married to Larry. Myers and McDougald had learned of her affair with Butch Hazelwood from Barbara’s former boss, Bob Gray. Hazelwood himself had been murdered ten years after his affair with Barbara, shot in the head with a .22 pistol in his office, and the case never had been solved. Randolph County authorities suspected that his death was related to drug dealing or heavy debts.

One person the agents wanted to talk with was John Buheller, the detective who had investigated Larry’s death. Buheller had left law enforcement seven years earlier, they learned, and had moved to Alamance County, where he became a truck driver. When they went to his last known address on March 24, they discovered that they had missed him by six months. The woman living at the address had lived with Buheller for several years and had a four-year-old child by him. Buheller had bought a restaurant that went under, the woman said, and had left town owing a lot of people money. She had no idea where he was. His first wife had taken out child-support warrants for him, and so had she.

Buheller had left a lot of stuff behind from his days in law enforcement, she told the officers. It was stashed in the attic. When Myers asked if they could look through it, she consented, and there they found Buheller’s notes and some of the records from his investigation of the Ford case.

The day after the agents found the records, Larry Allen, the Archdale police chief, called to say that the gun with which Larry had been shot had been found in a drawer at the sheriff’s department.

Back in Durham, Buchanan continued to pursue leads. He interviewed several of Russ’s friends and kept track of the telephone numbers of the calls Barbara was making and receiving. He got court orders and began compiling bank records for both Russ and Barbara. He spent hours poring through them. Russ’s checking account showed that he had been making regular payments to Veteran’s Life Insurance Company, and Buchanan discovered that Russ had taken out a $50,000 policy with the company just a year before his death, increasing the ante on the likelihood that he had been shot for insurance money.

On March 29, five days before Easter, Buchanan got a call from a Durham lawyer, John Wainio, who said that he was calling on Barbara’s behalf to find out the status of the case.

It was just a matter of getting the paperwork done, Buchanan told him.

Wainio said that Barbara had heard that the SBI had been asking questions about her in Randolph County. Did Buchanan know anything about that?

Not a thing, Buchanan said.

Barbara’s former friend Carol Gordon knew that Barbara was being investigated, but as weeks passed and nothing happened, she and her husband, Bill, and their friends Harry and Terri Welch began to wonder if Barbara ever would be brought to justice.

As Easter neared and warm weather arrived, Carol was driving to her home at Croasdaile Country Club when she saw Barbara driving past the golf course toward her. Barbara was in her Mustang convertible, the top down, her hair blowing—and she was smiling broadly. Russ was dead and buried, and Barbara was tooling around in the spring sunshine, having a good time. It was more than Carol could stand, and she had to pull to the roadside and sit for a few minutes to overcome her anger and grief.

Barbara was house hunting again, and at the beginning of April she found another house that she liked only a short distance from her own, close enough so that Jason would continue to be near his friends and attend the same school. She had taken Jason to look at the house and he liked it. She told the homeowners that she was interested, but she would have to sell her own house first. Her husband had died recently, she said, without mentioning how, and she wanted to get out of the house they had shared.

She also had gotten out of the bed they had shared. In mid-March, she had spent $827 for a new king-size bed to replace the one in which Russ had been shot.

Only a few days before Easter, Barbara’s friend Brenda Monroe drove to Durham for a visit. They went to the mall to do some Easter shopping, Barbara talking about her life on the way. As they were pulling into the parking lot, Barbara remarked, “I’m never getting married again, I’m a jinx.”

But before Brenda could respond, Barbara said that she really didn’t want to spend the rest of her life alone.

“I want somebody,” she said, “somebody like Russ. No, what I want
is
Russ.”

Buchanan had spent a lot of time in March trying to find out where the pistol that had killed Russ had come from. He had asked the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to trace the gun, but the trail of paperwork had ended at a Florida gun shop. He had called many area gun dealers, but none had any recollection of Russ and Barbara.

Finally, Buchanan decided to ask Barbara about it. He called her at work on April 5, two days after Easter. She and Russ had bought the gun from a friend of Russ’s, Garland Wolfe, two years earlier, she said.

While she had him on the phone, Barbara said, was there anything he could do to help hurry along the paperwork that was holding up the death certificate? She was in desperate financial straits because of her huge mortgage payments, she said, and she really needed a supplemental death certificate so that she could file for insurance.

Buchanan apologized. There still were a few loose ends to tie up, he said, but he was certain that the change on the death certificate would be made soon. He did not bother to mention that the cause of death on the certificate would be changed from “pending” to “homicide.”

The following week, Buchanan and Myers went to Randolph County to pick up the pistol that had killed Larry. Three days later, they interviewed Russ’s friend Garland Wolfe. Russ had told him a couple of years earlier that he wanted a small handgun so that he could teach Barbara to shoot, Wolfe said. Barbara was attending night classes and she needed it for protection. Wolfe told him about a .25-caliber semiautomatic that he had, and Russ had brought Barbara to look at it. Russ had paid him for it in cash.

Wolfe acknowledged that the gun had been unregistered.

Where did he get it? Buchanan wanted to know.

He had bought it three or four years earlier for his own protection, Wolfe said. A Durham County sheriff’s deputy had sold it to him.

23

Ron Stephens and Eric Evenson met with the officers involved in the Stager case on Friday morning, April 15, and took a careful accounting of all the evidence that had been gathered. All agreed that it was enough to ask a grand jury to indict Barbara for first-degree murder in Russ’s death.

First, though, the group decided, one final attempt should be made to question Barbara and stake out her positions. After she was arrested, they would not have another chance. Before the case was taken to the grand jury, Barbara’s sons also should be interviewed, and search warrants should be sought for her house and cars.

Buchanan and Myers drove to Barbara’s house at five-thirty that afternoon and presented themselves unannounced. She didn’t seem surprised to see them.

They just wanted to discuss a few more things about the case, Buchanan told her. “But before we do,” he warned, “I’d like to advise you of your rights.”

“Do I need an attorney?” she asked.

“That’s entirely up to you,” he said, as he recalled the conversation more than a year later. “I can’t advise you one way or another.”

She would go ahead with the interview without an attorney, she said, with no sign of nervousness. After all, she said, she only could tell him what she knew to be the truth.

Buchanan read Barbara’s rights from a card he carried in his wallet. After that formality he asked her about the gun.

Russ had bought it for her, she said, because he was concerned about her safety when she was attending night classes. She had gone with him to buy it, and Garland Wolfe had briefly told them how the pistol worked. She knew nothing about guns, she said, and had paid little attention. Russ never showed her how to use it.

There was no routine place for keeping the gun, she said. It had remained in the console between her car seats for a long time, but it was doing her no good because she had no idea how to use it. At the end of the fall semester in 1986, Russ brought the gun into the house and stashed it in a nightstand beside their bed, she said.

Late in March 1987, some jewelry turned up missing at the house and Russ moved the gun again, but she didn’t know where he kept it afterward. She did know that he had been sleeping with it under his pillow occasionally after becoming concerned about prowlers.

When Buchanan asked whether she’d ever gone to the National Guard pistol range with Russ, she acknowledged that she had. It had been a few years ago. She had fired two clips from another pistol, but she had never fired the .25 and didn’t think that Russ had either. She had a tremendous fear of guns, she pointed out.

She didn’t know whether Russ was careless with guns or not, she said, because she simply didn’t know enough about guns to have an opinion. Russ also had told her never to point a gun at anyone unless she intended to use it, she said, and she had found that amusing, because she really didn’t know how to use a gun and had no intention of pointing one at anything.

Then the first flaw in her story. Russ, she said, had talked about how he would shoot anyone who ever broke into his house, but she had found that ironic because he was such a heavy sleeper that he probably wouldn’t wake up if somebody beat down the door and carted out the bed with him in it.