Before He Wakes (46 page)

“Members of the jury, in the case of the State of North Carolina versus Barbara Stager, you have returned as your unanimous verdict guilty of first-degree murder.”

Barbara gasped deeply and burst into sobs. Her lawyers reached to comfort her.

“Is this your verdict?” Myers continued. “So say all of you by raising your hand.”

All twelve jurors raised their hands.

Barbara raised her own hand to her heart and turned to face her family, her face stunned with grief and disbelief.

“Barbara, we love you,” her friend Sherry Sims called.

“Thank you,” the judge told the jurors. “You may sit. Let the record show that the jury has advised the clerk that the jury has found the defendant guilty of first-degree murder, and that all of them have raised their hands indicating that is their verdict. Would you like to have them polled?” he asked Cotter.

“Yes, sir,” Cotter said somberly.

One by one the jurors stood and said that, yes, this was their verdict.

The trial now would go into its second phase, the judge told the jurors, but that would not begin until the next day. They still were not to talk to anybody about any aspect of the case, he reminded them before dismissing them for the day.

Judge Allen then revoked Barbara’s $250,000 bond. She would not be going to lunch with her family today, would not be returning to their home in Durham this night.

“Do you want to be heard?” the judge asked Cotter.

“No, sir.”

“All right, Mr. Sheriff, she’s in your custody. Everybody else remain seated at this time.”

Two deputies moved to Barbara’s side to escort her to the Lee County jail. She seemed heavy on her feet, almost unable to walk. Behind her, friends and family sat as if in shock, some suppressing sobs.

As Barbara neared the door that would take her from the courtroom, she suddenly turned. “Bryan, Jay!” she cried. “I love you!”

“All right,” said the judge as she disappeared through the door. “We will be at ease.”

The tension in the room broke, and for a long moment an eerie stillness set in. People seemed reluctant to move.

Doris and Henry Ford and Doris and Al Stager remained seated, side by side, on their front-row bench, across the aisle from Barbara’s family. Now Bryan stood and faced the four people he had known as his grandparents.

“I hope y’all over there are happy now,” he cried angrily.

Cotter remained at the defense table, his shoulders sagging as if all spirit had drained from him. He stood as Barbara’s father approached, offering his hand.

“You did the best you could,” James Terry said.

Outside the swinging doors of the courtroom, a crowd of reporters and photographers lined the steps leading downstairs, waiting for the two families to emerge. Bright TV lights flicked on as Barbara’s family and friends came out.

“Get the hell out of the way!” Jason yelled at a cameraman.

As Malbert Smith and his wife, Virginia, drove Doris and Al home that evening, a van pulled alongside their car containing members of the Terry family. Angry shouts came from the van. At one point the van swerved toward Smith’s car before speeding away.

When the Stagers finally arrived home, they found a message on their answering machine:

“Kill! Kill! Kill!”

They recognized the voice, and it broke their hearts.

36

On the morning after the jurors had found her guilty, Barbara returned to face them looking beaten and listless in the same blue turtleneck blouse and print skirt that she had worn the day before.

Judge Allen began court by sending out the jury. SBI agent Steve Myers had come to his chambers earlier that morning to tell him about the threatening actions toward the Stagers the day before, and he wanted to make it known that any more such actions would result in harsh measures.

“I want to make an announcement right now,” he said sternly. “It has come to my attention that yesterday some harsh words and some actions were exhibited by some folks. I do not know who did it. I don’t care to know who did it at this point.

“Again, I realize and can appreciate deep emotions and strong feelings from relatives and friends of both the defendant and the deceased. I am not personally accusing anyone of any wrongful conduct. However, I want to warn everyone that I will not tolerate any outbursts whatsoever, any disruptions whatsoever, nor will I tolerate any threatening or harassing actions by anyone toward other people in this courtroom or around this courtroom.”

After the judge had spoken his piece, Cotter asked again that the case be dismissed. His request was quickly denied.

For the sentencing hearing, Evenson said, the state would rest on the evidence already presented. Cotter, however, had many witnesses eager to speak on Barbara’s goodness.

To send a person to death for murder in North Carolina, the state must prove one or more of eleven aggravating circumstances—that the crime was committed for money, that it was done in the commission of another felony, that it was particularly heinous and so on. Stephens and Evenson felt certain that they had shown without doubt the single aggravating circumstance that applied in Barbara’s case: She had killed Russ for money.

Any number of mitigating circumstances might save her, however, and Cotter and his partner, Edward Falcone, knew that their only chance was to show that Barbara was indeed the warm and loving person that many of her friends and family thought her to be, that she still might be of service to others. Falcone was in charge of the sentencing phase of Barbara’s defense, and he conducted the questioning of Barbara’s witnesses.

Worth Colvard, an accountant who had known Russ and Barbara for eight years, was first on the stand. He told of visiting often with Russ and Barbara, of going on trips with them, lifting weights with Russ, working with both in his church’s youth program—and Russ and Barbara didn’t even go to their church, he noted.

“She would do most anything she could for you,” he said of Barbara.

Colvard’s wife, Phyllis, spoke of Jason and Bryan. “There are no better children.”

Ann Hilliard, who often sat with Barbara in church, said that Barbara was there every Sunday and was active in all areas of Homestead Heights Baptist Church. “She is a very loving, warm, friendly person. There’s no greater friend. She would do anything in the world for you. If you have a problem, she will run right over and help you.”

“Did Russ love those kids?” Evenson asked Hilliard, who also had spoken highly of Bryan and Jason.

“Yes, he did.”

“And they loved him?”

“Yes, they did.”

Charles Root, who had been pastor of Rose of Sharon Baptist Church during the years that Russ and Barbara had been members there, told how they had taught Sunday school classes and had led the church’s youth program. They had taken a special interest in his own son, Les, he said, giving him a lot of encouragement at a time when he needed it.

“I think he became a more confident person, more confident in his Christian endeavors through his association with them,” he said of his son.

Root’s wife, Linda, not only had known Barbara at church, but had worked with her at Duke. “Barbara is a good listener,” she said. “Barbara is a supportive friend. There were times I needed to confide in Barbara and she was there for me.”

“Russ was a strong church member?” Evenson asked her.

“Yes, he was.”

“And he was just a good guy, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, I thought an awful lot of Barbara and Russ.”

Barbara’s cousin, Carol Belcher, called Bryan and Jason two “fine young Christian men.”

“They respect people and I would be very proud if they were my sons.”

Barbara always made certain that they were at church, she said. “She took them to church and she just raised them in a fine Christian home.”

“Did you know their natural father?” Evenson asked.

“Yes, I did.”

“He was a nice guy, wasn’t he?”

“I did not know Larry that well.”

“Would it be fair to say Russ spent probably as much time with those two boys as she did?”

“I would think so.”

Ginger Payne said she had become very close to Barbara when Barbara taught her Sunday school class during her final year in high school. “She would take special time out for me,” she said. “I was going through a hard time during my senior year in school, and she was always there. She would take me places just to talk, very loving friend, caring.”

Had Barbara remained her friend? Cotter asked.

“Yes.”

“Still?”

“Most definitely.”

Vivian Burch spoke of Bryan and Jason. “Her children and my children have been in and out of each other’s homes for the past three years.” Jason and her son Joshua were best friends, she said, and her daughter Greta was close to Bryan.

“I know Jason and Bryan very well,” she said, “as well as I do my own almost. Aside from being normally rascally boys, they’re the kind of children that you would be very proud of, well behaved, sensitive. You couldn’t ask for better.”

Asked if Barbara were her friend, she said, “Yes, she is a very good friend. Barbara is my prayer partner. My husband and I were privileged to put our house up as part of her bonding to help get her out of jail.”

Greta Burch, now a student at Wake Forest University, called Barbara “the best friend you could have…. She has been like my second mom. She was there for me when I needed her. She always writes me and I can always get advice from her, stuff I’m scared to ask my mom. She’s just wonderful.”

With those words, Falcone brought his string of praise-filled witnesses to an end. Cotter offered a computer printout showing that Barbara had no criminal record, not even traffic violations.

“That’s our evidence,” he said.

“Defense rests?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Evidence for the state?”

“None, Your Honor,” said Evenson.

Judge Allen sent the jurors out while he and the lawyers agreed on the wording he would use to instruct the jury. When the jurors were brought back, Allen told them that he would dismiss them for lunch. After lunch, he said, the lawyers would offer their final arguments.

Ron Stephens led off the prosecution. “I’m not going to preach to you,” he said, but he went on to do just that, quoting from the Bible, “ ‘I know not, Lord, am I my brother’s keeper?’ ”

“We are all our brother’s keeper,” he said. “That’s what gives us security in this life. That’s what makes us the nation we are, responsible for each other, a common bond. If she is not the keeper of Russ Stager, then we all rise up and we are all his keepers.”

Stephens stressed that Barbara had killed Russ for money.

“Money was something that totally controlled her, completely engulfed her, was one of the most important things in her life, the motivating factor in the death of her husband, a killing obsession, this greed for money.”

Most family murders, Stephens noted, are the result of passion, an explosive moment. “That’s not what happened here,” he said. Barbara had represented her marriage as happy, not volatile. “Therein lies the deceit, the treachery with this killing. That sets this killing apart, treachery, betrayal.”

Stephens brought up his days as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam and recalled two Vietnamese pilots he had known who had been assassinated. “Maybe ‘assassin’ is not a proper term for Barbara Stager,” he said, “but she flat-out eliminated Russ Stager. And this was not a Saturday-night domestic situation.

“Don’t forget the manner of the killing,” he told the jurors, calling it “a cold, methodical elimination as he lay sleeping.

“And for what? For what? For money … the most important thing in her life.

“And she knew the ropes about this,” he said, bringing up Larry Ford’s death. “This greed was nothing new for Barbara Stager.”

There were two sides to Barbara, Stephens said, a public and a private side. And while he was certain that all of the morning’s witnesses were sincere, he said, they had seen only one of Barbara’s faces, and it was a convincing face indeed. But the other face had been shown during the trial, he said.

“We have seen that Barbara Stager is a liar, that she is a person who schemes, that she is deceitful, that she is treacherous.

“Barbara Stager doesn’t have to answer to me. She doesn’t have to answer to the family of Russ Stager. She doesn’t even have to answer to the court for the crime she committed, but she has to answer to each one of you for that crime. I trust and know that you will do what is appropriate. We ask that you do justice in this case.”

Evenson began his last appearance before the jury in a slow ramble, talking about how the trial had unfolded almost as if it had been a melodrama on TV, something apart from normal life, an abstract thing, and how the most important fact was pushed to the background.

“You know what I’m talking about,” he said. “I’m talking about the fact that a living, breathing, walking, talking human being named Russ Stager is gone forever.

“It’s almost like it really didn’t happen, that he’s just a photograph. You see, this could be an intellectual exercise, but for God’s sake, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, fire building in his voice, “don’t forget that on the first day of February, 1988, that Russ Stager wanted to live just as bad as any of the rest of us. On that morning, he was in his own bed asleep. He was totally defenseless and he was at her mercy and she showed none. Now when they get up here in just a moment and they dance on the head of a pin and talk about mercy …”