11x23 - Chief Suspect

[bunniefuu]

The wife of a
respected police officer

was m*rder*d in her home.

But the motive was unclear.

The crime went unsolved
for more than a decade,

until a cold case
unit took a fresh look

and found evidence
on the 911 call that

had previously been overlooked.

I've got to call, man.

Stay on the line with me.

Most everyone in
the small town of Springboro,

Ohio knew Jim and Vickie Barton.

Jim was a lieutenant in the
local police department,

a rising star who
many believed would

one day be chief of police.

- He's always been very thorough,
very professional, easy to work

with and easy to get a hold of.

His wife, Vickie, was a nurse

supervisor at the
local hospital.

- She loved her work.

She was a very
compassionate person.

So I knew she was very
good at what she did.

One night, after work, Jim

returned home and found
everything in disarray.

In the bedroom,
he found his wife.

She had been shot to death.



There's a mur...

My wife has just
been k*lled, I think.

Where...
Where's she at?

Are you at st...

This is Lieutenant...

This is Lieutenant Barton.

There was a pillow over her
head and she's not breathing.

And she's got her clothes off.

I don't know what's...
What's going on.

But get me some... get me
some help out here, quick.

A unit is
being dispatched, right now.

Just getting there

was the first thing
I wanted to do.

A lot of things were
going through my mind.

Knowing Jim was a policeman.

Did someone... did someone try
to hurt him, hurt his family?

When paramedics arrived,

they pronounced Vickie
Barton dead at the scene.

She had been shot three times
in the head execution style.

I found that
odd... two behind the ear?

That was different.

We never did really come
to a full understanding of,

was it overkill?

We just don't know in
what order they occurred.

The motive didn't
appear to be robbery.

Vickie's jewelry was
still in the bedroom.

And Jim's g*n collection
had been ransacked,

but nothing was missing.

Investigators found no foreign
fingerprints in the house.

They dusted four feet high

on those walls, all the
way back, and nothing.

They dusted the bedroom.
Nothing.

At the autopsy
the medical examiner

identified the m*rder
w*apon as a .22 caliber.

He also found evidence that
Vickie had been sexually

assaulted during the
attack, and bitten.

I had swabbed this area.

And we collected saliva and
that was... and in that slide,

they were able to recover DNA
of the person who had bit her.

This DNA did not match anyone

in the database of known
criminal offenders.

As a precaution,
investigators also

compared the DNA to
Vickie's husband, Jim.

And it also didn't match.

Who would do something to her?

She was the most likable person.

She could get along with anyone.

Earlier on
the day of the m*rder,

Vickie called her husband to
say that a young man had come

to the door needing help because
his car had run out of gas.

And Jim didn't like that.

And he said, what did you do?

And he said, I hope you
put a g*n in his head.

She goes, no, you know?
It was OK, Jim.

He just wanted gas.

He was a very polite young man.

And, you know, I got his
some gas, and he left.

Was it possible that
the man was actually casing

the Barton home and was the
one who committed the m*rder?

It could have been
planned, the whole thing.

I mean, they could've
targeted Jim and Vickie.

Or it could've been
totally random.

I don't like to arrive
at a decision too quick.

But I didn't like
what I was seeing.

And I'll leave it at that.

The execution-style
m*rder of Vickie Barton,

a police lieutenant's
wife, rocked

the small town of
Springboro, Ohio.

When we're talking
about a woman being m*rder*d

in her home in the middle
of the day in Warren County,

that was big news.

That was country.

That's where people went to
get away from bad things.

So it was big news.

Police had to consider
whether someone Jim Barton

once arrested had
sought revenge.

- There has never been a m*rder
of anyone connected to a law

enforcement officer, in this
county, that I can remember.

We've had officers k*lled.

But never a family member,
and never a homicide.

Investigators checked
ex-convicts from Jim's case

files, but didn't come
up with any leads.

Days passed, then weeks.

And no new information surfaced.

On the one year anniversary
of Vickie's m*rder,

the case remained unsolved.

The case was
worked very heavily, especially

because it was a
police officer's

wife that was m*rder*d.

And they went through
every lead that they had.

Jim Barton
went on with his life.

I offered to
just lend an ear if he needed

a friend to talk to
that had known her.

And asked me for
my phone number.

He wrote it down, said,
I will probably call you.

And he did, the very next night.



he married Maryann Lacy,
Vickie's childhood friend

and a bridesmaid
at their wedding.

But the marriage was in
trouble from the start.

Within months, Marianne started
noticing strange behavior.

She said, Jim spent hours
alone in the darkened basement.

- It was very quiet.

And I never knew
what he was doing.

And that just... that
really put me into a panic.

After 17 months,
the couple divorced.

Meanwhile, investigators
never gave up

the search for Vickie's k*ller.

This was something that

haunted that
community, out there.

It was haunting,
a scary mystery,

and people known
to the community

and loved and respected.

It needed to be resolved.

Then, four
years after the m*rder,

police got their
first real break.

Gary Henson, a
small-time criminal,

was arrested on a drug charge.

During police
questioning he said,

he knew something about
Vickie Barton's m*rder.

He kind of started crying

and broke down to the detective.

And said, I have something
I need to tell you.

And he told him that
his brother was involved

in the m*rder of the
police officer's wife.

Henson's half
brother, William Phelps,

told him about the crime.

Phelps said, it was
supposed to be a robbery.

But his accomplice...
Probably high on dr*gs...

Lost control, sexually assaulted
Vickie Barton, then k*lled her.

A background check revealed
William Phelps was not at work

on the day Vickie was m*rder*d.

Unfortunately, he was
unavailable for questioning.

Phelps k*lled himself
just three months

- after Vickie Barton's m*rder.
- He acted strange.

He actually went through
a paranoid stage,

sleeping with a g*n and
making sure the windows

were locked every night.

And he put traps
outside his window

to make alarm in case
somebody would come up.

He acted like a guy that was
very afraid after the homicide.

And Gary Henson
said that Phelps never

revealed the identity
of his accomplice.

- As a result of Gary
Henson told them,

they then exhumed the body
of his brother, Will Phelps,

to try to determine if the DNA
that was found on Vickie's body

was the same.

Forensic
pathologist Dr. Lee Lehman

relied on Will Phelps'
teeth for the DNA.

The reason we extract teeth

for DNA is because,
inside the teeth,

the cells are held
in calcium, very

firm, hard material
in the enamel.

And it is not contaminated by
bacteria and decomposition.

William Phelps' DNA did not

match the saliva on
Vickie Barton's body.

Gary Henson's DNA
didn't match either.

- We have evidence that he was in
jail at the time of her m*rder.

And there was no way he
could have been that person.

It was another dead end.

- I got up and took a long walk.

In fact, I left the office.

I drove around for a while,
thinking, where do we go next?

Another four years went by.

Then, a cold case unit
reopened the investigation

of Vickie Barton's m*rder.

They were particularly
interested in Jim Barton's

comment to his colleague
at the m*rder scene.

He told me, he said,

they k*lled her man,
those murdering bastards,

they k*lled her.

But how did Jim Barton know

there was more than
one perpetrator?

- You don't talk
about them and they

unless you know who
them and they are.

Eight years after
Vickie Barton's m*rder,

the Warren County
Sheriff's Office in Ohio

formed a Cold Case
unit specifically

to reopen the investigation.

They started at
the very beginning,

by listening to the


made after finding
his wife's body.

I'm
checking the rest of the house.

All my stuff's
laying out in here.

There's... oh man.

I got to call, man.

Stay on the line with me.

- We were beginning
some realization here,

that this, there's
something to this.

There's something more to this.

Did he say,
he had to call for help?

Or that he had to call Phelps?

I got to call, man.

An informant
identified William Phelps

as one of the men involved
in Vickie's m*rder.

And it sounded like
Vickie's husband, Jim,

mentioned Phelps'
name on the 911 call.

Oh, man, I got to call,

, man.

Jim Barton, still a
lieutenant with the Springboro

police, insisted he said,
he needed to call for help.

He said, he didn't know
anyone named Phelps.

- He was already
on 911 so there's

no reason or need
to call for help.

And again, the word
that I heard was Phelps.

To find out what Jim
Barton said on the 911 tape,

investigators turned to Dr.
Robert Fox, a faculty member

of Ohio State University,
a linguist and expert

on acoustic phonics.

- Speech recognition
is a science.

We put a lot of money into it.

But nothing is good
as the human ear

and the human perceptual
system in understanding speech.

In part, because human listeners
are also human speakers.

And there's a very close
connection between those two.

Dr. Fox was
asked if he could determine

if Jim Barton said,
Phelps or for help.

And to eliminate any potential
bias, that was all he was told.



There's a mur...

My wife has just
been k*lled, I think.

Where...
Where's she at?

Are you at...

This is Lieutenant...

This is Lieutenant Barton.

Dr. Fox
took the 911 call

and broke it down into wave
forms, visual pictures that

detail the energy of
voice and cadence.

He was particularly interested
in two groups of sounds.

Vowels, which are soft, and
fricatives, or hard sounds.

Fricatives include sounds

like F, as an fff... Frank.

And the reason
it's interesting is

that in this particular call,
one of the critical issues

with whether he said F as
in Phelp or fine or farm,

or whether there was an
H in there that might

have indicated
that he said help.

Get me some help.

Get me some help.

Dr. Fox used
a computer program

to perform a spectrum analysis
of the sounds associated

with individual letters
in the recording.

After I had isolated
a number of different F's,

for example, in
Mr. Barton's voice,

I then compared
these different F's

in a systematic
way, one to another.

I also excised several examples
of Mr. Barton saying H.

And I compared those
to the fricatives.

Get me some help.

Get me some help.

Call.

Call.

When the key part
of the tape, only 2 and 1/2

seconds was analyzed,
the result was clear.

- I
- got to call Phelps, man.

Barton was saying a
simple F sound, as in Phelps.

Call Phelps, man.

He was not saying something

more complex, such as for help.

Get me some help.

- I must admit, that this 911
tape was the clearest tape

I had ever heard
of that fashion.

Very easy to understand,
very easy to analyze.

And the audio analysis also

showed something unexpected.

Jim Barton was moving
things around the house

while he was talking
on the telephone.

Lieutenant Barton?

I hear him in the background.

You shouldn't be doing this.

He was an evidence technician.

He's a trained
evidence technician.

He knows he
shouldn't be touching

or moving anything
in that house.

Did you have anything to do

with your home being
burglarized that day?

- No, I did not.

Did you have
anything to do with your wife's

m*rder that day?

- Nothing.

Jim Barton still
maintained his innocence,

and volunteered to
take a polygraph test.

Jim Barton failed the test.

When news of Barton's possible
involvement became public,

a local waitress
came forward to say,

she saw Jim Barton
and William Phelps

sitting together
in her restaurant.

She saw Jim
Barton talking to Will Phelps.

She saw them together.

Jim Barton denied
knowing Will Phelps.

But she testified that she had
seen them together in the past.



Jim Barton was arrested
and charged with complicity

to commit involuntary
manslaughter.

The police informant,
Gary Henson,

now revealed one last
piece of information

he had previously withheld.

He told our
investigators that Jim Barton

had contacted his brother and
said, I need my wife scared.

Could you do a
burglary to scare her?

But why would Jim
Barton want to scare his wife?

When that question
was finally answered,

no one, not even Jim's best
friends, could believe it.

Investigators wondered why
Jim Barton, a 15-year veteran

of the Springboro
Police Department,

would hire others to intimidate
and frighten his wife, Vickie.

Then they remembered that
Jim Barton had actively

campaigned for the
job of police chief.

But to get that
position he had to live

within the city
limits of Springboro.

And apparently,
Vickie didn't want

to move from their 10-acre
farm located outside of town.

That's why we think he did this.

He wanted to scare his wife
off of the farm... they were

in a remote, desolate
area... into the city,

where he would then be
able to apply for chief.

- Jim wanted to scare Vickie.

He hired these people to
come in and scare her.

From some of the
testimony I heard,

or listening to the cold case,
he actually paid these people

an extra dollar amount to fire
one shot above Vickie's head.

Investigators believe
that it was William Phelps who

knocked on Vickie's door
telling her he ran out of gas.

And that he did so to
make sure she was alone.

Phelps later
returned to the house

with an accomplice
intending to rob her.

Instead, his accomplice,
possibly high on dr*gs,

lost control and sexually
assaulted Vickie.

Then he k*lled her, because
she could have identified them.

- Let's go!

Prosecutors believe
Jim Barton came home expecting

his wife to tell him
about the robbery.

Instead, he found she
had been m*rder*d.

He called 911 to
report the crime.

But according to audio
experts, mumbled something

incriminating, almost as if
he was talking to himself

Where...
Where's she at?

Are you at...

[PHONE]: I'm checking

the r... the rest of the house.

All my stuff's
laying out in here.

They're... oh man.

I got to call Phelps, man.

Stay on the line with me.

William Phelps
k*lled himself three months

after Vickie's
m*rder, most likely

because of his
involvement in this case.

HE did not leave a note.

And his wife wondered,
for years, what happened

and why he committed su1c1de.

Ironically, Jim
Barton moved into Springboro

shortly after Vickie's m*rder.

But he never achieved his
dream of becoming police chief.

He was passed over
for the promotion

three different times.

Before the trial, Jim Barton
was offered a plea bargain

in return for identifying
Phelps' accomplice.

But he refused.

He always insisted he knew
nothing about the crime.

It's hard to say what

Jim Barton knows
and doesn't know.

We plan, at some point, to go to
him... once this is all resolved

and the appeals are over... and
ask him if he could help us out

with who that other person is.

But it has not happened yet.

Jim Barton was convicted

of complicity to
commit manslaughter.

He was sentenced to a minimum
of 15 years in prison.

Had it not been for the forensic
analysis of Jim's 911 call,

the case might never
have been solved.

- Jim Barton's where
he needs to be.

It doesn't necessarily
settle well since he's a cop.

But again, it's the truth.

A crime was committed.

And justice has been served.

- These are pros.

And when you're a
pro, it's real simple.

No one gets away with m*rder.

I don't care what
uniform you're wearing.

No one gets away with m*rder.