Before He Wakes (29 page)

Buchanan was quick to note the inconsistency. Barbara had told the first emergency workers on the scene that she knew Russ had the gun under his pillow and she reached for it when she heard her son get up because she was afraid he might be awakened and think Jason a prowler and shoot him. If he was such a heavy sleeper, why would she be concerned about that?

That version also was inconsistent with the one she had told Buchanan later on the day of the shooting and again during the taped reenactment. On the later occasions she had said that she felt something under the pillow but didn’t realize at first that it was a gun.

“Have you ever bought a .25-caliber pistol before?” Buchanan asked.

“No,” Barbara said. But ten years earlier her first husband had wanted her to buy a gun for protection, and she had always done what he told her. A coworker had gone with her to buy one and show her how to use it. She had fired it three or four times. She thought it was a .22. Just a little gun, she added.

She went on to recount the same story of Larry’s death that she had told investigators in Randolph County at the time.

Buchanan asked about insurance and Barbara said that she thought she would be getting a little over $100,000, counting insurance they had on a truck loan, their Visa card and a charge account at a furniture store, plus about $14,000 from Russ’s retirement fund.

Some time the previous year, Barbara said, Russ had to go on a secret maneuver with the National Guard and he had become concerned about what would happen if he died. He called and wanted her to come to a meeting in Raleigh about wills and death preparations. Each had made up wills on their computer, using forms supplied at the meeting, she explained, each leaving everything to the other. But she and the boys had by no means been prepared for Russ’s death, she noted.

Had she and Russ had any problems?

“Only financial,” she said.

The interview lasted about forty-five minutes, and as Buchanan and Myers were leaving, they noticed two new red motor scooters parked in the garage, one Barbara had bought for Jason, the other for Steve. Obviously her spending had not abated.

Buchanan went to the office on Saturday to type up a five-page application for a search warrant. For cause, he cited the similarities of Russ’s and Larry’s deaths, the inconsistencies in the reenactment of Russ’s shooting, Barbara’s subterfuge about her novel, unnamed affairs and her financial problems.

At midafternoon on Sunday, he took the warrant by the house of Superior Court Judge Thomas H. Lee for his signature.

At 7:05
A.M
. on Monday, April 18, four cars pulled up to the house at 2833 Fox Drive. Buchanan, Myers, McCabe, McDougald and two uniformed deputies got out and walked briskly to the front door.

Barbara’s brother Steve answered. He was alone at the house. Barbara already had left for work, Jason for school. Steve wanted to call his sister and parents, but no calls were allowed.

As McCabe wandered through Barbara’s house, she was astonished by what she saw. It was as if she had walked into an article from one of those home magazines. McCabe was a mother, and when she rushed off to work in the morning, dirty dishes were sometimes left in the sink, soiled clothing often draped over chairs. Not at Barbara’s house. Everything was in perfect order. Even in the closets and kitchen cabinets, everything was neatly arranged. From the interviews she had conducted with Barbara’s acquaintances, McCabe had begun forming a picture of Barbara as a perfectionist and this confirmed it.

“She had to be perfect at everything she did,” McCabe later recalled. “She had to be the perfect mother, the perfect housekeeper, the perfect wife. I can’t imagine the kind of pressure she must have put upon herself to be that perfect.”

While other officers continued the search, McCabe and McDougald took Steve aside to interview him. As could be expected, he stood by his sister. He said that he had been staying with her since Russ had died to keep her company. He didn’t know whether Russ ever had taught Barbara to shoot, but he had never known her to have any association with guns. He had never seen the .25 with which Russ had been shot, but he knew that Russ had at least three other handguns and he usually kept them loaded. Barbara recently had sold the guns at a local gunshop, he said. He admitted that he had never known Russ to sleep with a gun under his pillow, but he had heard him talking about prowlers.

Steve acknowledged that Russ had died “in an odd way,” but he didn’t think his sister had killed him deliberately. She still cried about him, he pointed out. Russ and Barbara never argued or fought, he said, and Barbara hadn’t been seeing any other men since Russ had died.

The officers spent more than two hours going through the house and Russ’s Blazer. They took bank records, canceled checks, bills, insurance policies, letters, telephone bills, computer disks and personal items.

From beneath Barbara’s bed, McCabe retrieved a box containing all the letters and cards the Fords had sent to Barbara and the boys over the years. In a hallway closet, Buchanan found the uncompleted manuscript of
Untimely Death
along with other writings. With it was a Doubleday letterhead taped to the top of a sheet of typing paper.

Buchanan also took the big leatherbound family Bible that Russ and the boys had given Barbara two years earlier for Mother’s Day. The Bible had two brown silk markers. Buchanan noticed that one was marking a page in Deuteronomy, the other in Exodus. When he opened the Bible to those pages, he found a familiar admonition: “Thou shalt not kill.”

“I thought that was significant,” he said later.

Near the end of the search, McCabe and McDougald were dispatched to Jason’s school to question him. He was brought to the school office, and the assistant principal and school liaison officer sat in on the interview.

On the morning of the shooting, Jason said, his alarm had gone off at six. He got up immediately, got a towel from the linen closet and went to the bathroom that was off the hallway just down from his bedroom. He had just climbed into the shower when he heard a sharp sound. He thought it was the toilet lid falling in his parents’ adjoining bathroom. But his mother came running into the bathroom just as he was turning off the water to get out of the shower and told him that Russ had a gun under his pillow and it had gone off, call 911. He hadn’t seen or heard his mother before she came into the bathroom, and he assumed that she was in bed until then.

Russ had taught him how to shoot the .25, he said, and had warned him against leaving a round in the chamber when he took out the clip. Russ usually kept the pistol in the unlocked nightstand beside his bed with two other handguns. He had never heard his father talk about sleeping with a gun under his pillow and didn’t know whether he did or not. He had never known his mom to have anything to do with guns.

After talking with Jason, McDougald drove to Wilmington and questioned Bryan at his university dorm. His mother was afraid of guns, Bryan said, and he didn’t remember Russ ever taking her to shoot. On the morning Russ was shot, his Grandmother Terry had called and told him to come to the emergency room at Duke without telling him what had happened. Later, he said, his mother told him that she had awakened in the dark, reached out and felt something under Russ’s pillow and “it just went off.”

Did he remember his real father’s death?

He remembered being awakened and taken across the street, he said. Later, his mother had told him that his father had been cleaning a gun and it had gone off because he had forgotten to unload it.

Both of the deaths, Bryan insisted, were just “freak accidents” and his mother certainly was not guilty of anything in either of them. He made it clear that he resented the implications of the questions that were being asked.

At two o’clock, Buchanan walked into the grand jury room at the courthouse and spent the next thirty minutes telling the jurors what he knew about Russ’s death and Barbara’s life. Soon after he left, the jury granted the indictment Ron Stephens sought.

Buchanan knew that Barbara likely had known since mid-morning that she was about to be arrested. He’d had her under discreet surveillance by deputies since he and the other officers had arrived at her house just in case she decided to flee.

He had decided to wait until Barbara was at home to pick her up. Shortly after four, he, Myers and McCabe climbed into his unmarked Plymouth cruiser and drove to the house on Fox Drive for the second time that day.

Barbara answered the door wearing jeans, sneakers and a hooded gray sweatshirt with a blue sailboat design on the front.

“I have a warrant for your arrest on a grand jury indictment for murder,” Buchanan told her.

She burst into tears and cried out for Jason as Buchanan once again advised her of her rights and warned that it probably would be best if she didn’t make any statements.

Jason also burst into tears when he came into the room and realized what was happening. Barbara cried out to him to call her parents and tell them that she was being arrested. Instead, Jason became angry, screaming at Buchanan, “I guess you think you’re a big man putting handcuffs on my mama, don’t you!”

The three officers led Barbara to the car, leaving Jason crying behind them. McCabe got into the back seat with Barbara, who turned to her.

“I didn’t do it,” she said. “I didn’t kill him.”

She seemed to be seething with anger. And she had a look in her eye that McCabe never would forget. The detective didn’t know what to say.

“I didn’t do it,” Barbara kept repeating as they drove to the county jail in rush-hour traffic. It was almost as if she were trying to convince herself, McCabe thought. After all, how could a perfect wife coldly murder two husbands?

24

Barbara seemed such an unlikely murderer that when news of her arrest flashed on TV screens on Monday night, many people reacted with astonishment and disbelief, especially those who had seen her at church only a day earlier.

Neighbors, family members, fellow church members, friends and coworkers were shocked and angry that Barbara was in jail facing so grave a charge. How could this have happened? they asked one another as word spread. Barbara was such a good person, such a fine mother, such a strong Christian that this had to be some awful mistake. Surely a judge would realize that immediately and Barbara would be released and her name cleared.

But all of these people would only grow angrier and more disillusioned with the workings of the law as Barbara remained in jail and more and more dark revelations from her past began to work their way to the surface.

On the morning after her arrest, Barbara made her first court appearance before Judge Thomas C. Watts. At her side was John Wainio, the lawyer who had called Buchanan on Barbara’s behalf a few weeks earlier. He had been summoned by her parents, but he had agreed only to see Barbara through this first appearance. He was primarily a civil trial lawyer and did not feel comfortable representing a client against such a grave criminal charge.

Barbara looked frightened and defeated as the judge asked, “Are you Barbara Terry Stager?”

“Yes, sir,” she said in a small voice.

“Mrs. Stager, do you understand that you have been accused by an indictment returned by the Durham County Grand Jury as of yesterday, with the offense of murder in the first degree allegedly occurring on February first, 1988?”

“Yes, sir.”

“First-degree murder is a felony offense under the laws of the state of North Carolina, commonly referred to as a capital crime, that is, a crime for which the punishment upon conviction is death or life imprisonment.

“I tell you those things not to frighten you, ma’am, but because I have a duty to explain the charges against you, and it is my duty to tell you the maximum possible punishment which could be imposed for the crime which has been alleged.

“Have you been furnished, Mrs. Stager, a copy of the bill of indictment and the other paperwork in this case?”

“I think that’s what I have here.”

Asked if she had counsel, Barbara said that she had retained another local lawyer, David Rudolph, but Wainio interrupted to say that wasn’t so, that her parents were just talking with Rudolph.

“We ought to probably just leave it at this point where I’m representing her for the purpose of this, and we’ll certainly work that out as quickly as possible.”

Wainio, who had talked with Barbara only for a short time that morning before coming to court, brought up a matter of vital interest to Barbara.

“Your Honor, there is no bond set.”

Barbara was a surgical nurse at Duke, he mistakenly pointed out. She needed to continue with her work, to be with her young son.

“Her parents are here, ready, willing and able to, of course, assist her and to assure that she’s going to be back.”

Barbara had known about the investigation for two months, he said, and if she had intended to flee, she would have done so already.

“What’s the state’s position?” the judge asked.

Eric Evenson rose to say that no bond should be set, the charge was too serious.

“Mr. Evenson, do you have any information that she had been charged with any other criminal offenses?”

“Your Honor, I know there are some worthless check charges. But quite honestly, there’s more to this than just that. And we would like the opportunity to present some of that at a bond hearing. There’s some evidence that may tend to show that this is the second husband that’s been killed mysteriously while she was in the house. She’s been charged in this particular crime, but there have been no charges filed in the first matter.”