Larry’s parents had not spoken with Barbara since Buheller had told them that she was the target of his investigation. After that Sunday dinner, they had seen her only once. They had picked her up at Brenda’s and taken her and the boys to Hanes Mall in Winston-Salem for an afternoon. Barbara had not seemed to enjoy the outing, and afterward the Fords felt that she was avoiding them.
Now that Larry’s death had been publicly proclaimed murder and Barbara was the prime but unspoken suspect, they didn’t know what to do about their relationship with her. They knew that suspicion didn’t equal guilt, and they still didn’t want to think her capable of what they now were convinced she had done, but despite all of that, they didn’t want to appear to be accusing her or to be abandoning her and their grandchildren either. When they heard nothing from her following the news reports reclassifying Larry’s death, they put off trying to contact her. Finally, they decided to drive to Randolph County and drop in on her to try to get a feel for the situation.
Finding nobody at the house, they went on to the Monroes’ house and were amazed to learn that Barbara and the boys already had moved back to Durham. Not only had she not bothered to say goodbye, she hadn’t even told them that she was intending to leave.
After Barbara fled to Durham, the Fords expected to hear any day of her arrest. When days passed, then a week, then another, and they still had heard nothing, they drove to the sheriff’s department in Asheboro to find out what was going on. Buheller met with them and assured them that the investigation was proceeding. But there were many other crimes in the county, he pointed out, including other murders, and only himself and two other detectives to look into them. He had to fit in the investigation of Larry’s death as best he could. It might take a little time.
The Fords left dissatisfied but still hopeful that something would be done soon.
Years later, Buheller would acknowledge that his investigation had come to a halt soon after the autopsy had come back. “The only thing we really had to go on was the gunshot residue,” he said. “Other than that I couldn’t get anything.” Moreover, the assistant DA with whom he had conferred did not seem interested in pressing the matter. “I just didn’t get any cooperation from the DA and really didn’t have a case,” he recalled. “One piece of evidence is not enough to take somebody to death row on.”
The Fords were not the only ones concerned about the progress of the investigation. Insurance companies also were interested.
On April 20, Barbara had received her first insurance payment as a result of Larry’s death, a check for $26,326.17 from a group life policy that Larry had with his company. The policy, which had been issued by Equitable, had a double indemnity clause for accidental death and she had filed for that as well, sending newspaper clippings to verify that Larry had died accidentally.
Eighteen days after she had received the first insurance check, Barbara had received another, much bigger one, from Metropolitan Life for an individual policy Larry had taken out. The check for $44,902.55 included $10,000 for an accidental death clause. She also had filed to get $20,000 from an accidental death policy that Larry had with the Exxon Travel Club.
Equitable was hesitant to pay Barbara’s claim for accidental death, and on June 6, Ernest Atkinson, the company’s account benefits manager, interviewed Sheriff Carl Moore about Larry’s death. Moore told him that he had originally thought that Larry had committed suicide but had changed his mind after learning the results of the hand-wipe test.
“The sheriff does feel that someone did kill the insured,” Atkinson later wrote in a memo to his supervisor.
The following day, Atkinson interviewed Buheller.
“He said insured’s wife is under investigation in connection with the possible homicide,” Atkinson wrote in his report. “He feels that if the death was due to homicide she had something to do with it. He stated another insurance company whose name he would not release had a $100,000 policy on the deceased. Mr. Buheller said his investigation will determine if the death was due to homicide or accidental. He said the deceased definitely did not commit suicide.”
The $100,000 insurance policy did not exist, except in the rumors that were flying about Larry’s death. But Equitable had more than $26,000 at stake on the double indemnity clause of Larry’s policy, and it could attempt to reclaim the money it already had paid Barbara if she could be proved responsible for his death. The company not only put a hold on that payment but tried to stop payment on the check it had issued. Barbara already had cashed that check, however.
Like the Fords, the company kept waiting for word of Barbara’s arrest. June turned into July and still nothing was heard from the Randolph County Sheriff’s Department. At the end of July, Ernest Atkinson called Buheller again.
“Buheller said the case is still open,” he wrote to his supervisor. “They have several suspects. He would make no statement beyond this.”
Buheller had no new suspects at all. He hadn’t even conducted another interview. Years later, other investigators would speculate that he had become so wrapped up in the complexities that were presented when Kay Pugh’s death became entangled with Larry’s that he simply had thrown up his hands.
As fall approached, Atkinson was still trying to find out if Barbara was going to face charges. He called Buheller again on September 7.
“He said the case is still open,” he wrote in his report. “He still is unable to discuss the case. Call back in 30 days.”
Atkinson called back as directed, and again thirty days after that. Each time he dutifully noted the results in his file: “Same as above.”
The final blow to Larry Ford’s homicide investigation came that fall. In Randolph County, Sheriff Carl Moore was an aberration, a Democratic office holder in a county where Republicans far outnumbered Democrats. Four years earlier, Moore had beaten Robert Mason, a twenty-year veteran of the Asheboro Police Department, for the job. This time, Mason was running again, with stronger support from the Republican Party. And this time he prevailed. With the new sheriff would come new top officers in his department.
Doris and Henry Ford had not been able to get anything out of the sheriff’s department in months, and after the election they wanted to make sure that the investigation of Larry’s death continued. They drove to Asheboro one day and searched out John Buheller.
He had worked hard on the case, Buheller told them, but there was not yet enough evidence to make a case against anybody. The investigation would now be left up to the new sheriff.
“I’ve done all that I can do for you,” he said, throwing open his arms in a gesture of helplessness.
The Fords left realizing that they might have to start all over again if they were to have any hope of seeing justice in Larry’s death.
Ernest Atkinson also made one last try with Buheller to find out something about the Ford murder investigation early in December.
“Dec. 15 is Buheller’s last work day,” he noted in his report. “The case has been turned over to Charles Hatley, SBI. Buheller said call Hatley in 30 days.”
The case had not been turned over to the State Bureau of Investigation, however. It had been shunted to the sheriff’s department’s inactive file.
The insurance company did not stop trying to get a resolution about Larry’s death, and neither did the Fords. The company began pressing the new sheriff for action, and the Fords, who were unaware of the insurance company’s activities, took the same tack. Nearly a year after Larry’s death, they finally arranged a meeting with Sheriff Mason, but they left it disappointed and angry. “He practically told us to go home and forget it,” Doris recalled.
The Fords would not do that. They called the new district attorney. They tried to get the State Bureau of Investigation to look into it.
The pressure from the Fords and the insurance company prompted Sheriff Mason to make a determination about the case at the end of March, just over a year after Larry’s death.
His officers had interviewed witnesses and family members, the sheriff told reporter Bob Williams of the
Courier-Tribune
in Asheboro. “They are now more satisfied than they were, if not completely satisfied, that it was accidental,” he said.
The Fords were disgusted. They appealed to the state attorney general. They tried again to interest the SBI. Later, they would even try to get the FBI to intervene, but they were rebuffed at every turn.
Finally, for their own peace of mind, they would decide that they had to leave justice for their son’s death in the hands of God.
Barbara was free.
Part Three
New Beginning, Old Endings
10
As summer began, Barbara and her sons were living once again with her parents in Durham, where nobody but her family knew the circumstances of Larry’s shooting, but Barbara intended for the stay to be only temporary.
With more than $70,000 in insurance money, she planned to invest in a house. She wanted to be near her parents for the children’s sake, and she began looking in their neighborhood. The first house she went to see was a neat brick bungalow at the comer of Bramble and Genesee. She had noticed the “
FOR SALE
” sign in the front yard soon after she returned home. The house, only a couple of blocks from her parents’ home, belonged to Russ Stager and his estranged wife, Jo Lynn. Russ had been living there alone with his German shepherd, Sampson, for three months when Barbara first came to his door.
Although Russ didn’t mention it when she showed up, he was having doubts about whether he really wanted to sell the house. He was showing it mainly to satisfy his obligations to the real estate agent. Barbara liked the house, but she wanted to take her time about choosing, and before she could make a decision Russ made a settlement with his wife and took it off the market.
While Barbara was house shopping, she and the boys began going to services regularly with her parents at their church, Ebenezer Baptist. The church members were aware that Barbara had only recently become a widow—her husband, some had heard, had died in an accidental shooting—and they went out of their way to make her and the boys feel welcome.
As part of this effort, the young adults group at the church asked Barbara to join and invited her to attend a weekend retreat at Topsail Beach. The members thought it would be a good chance for her to get away, to make some new acquaintances and perhaps to get over some of the trauma of her husband’s death. The group stayed in a big rented house on the beach, the women upstairs, the men down. Barbara was a little standoffish and quiet, but the group had expected that, considering the ordeal she had been through. Everybody made a special effort to include her in conversations and activities.
Jim Browder* was one who went out of his way to talk with Barbara. Two years younger, he was a relatively new member of the group himself. A native of Greensboro, he had married and moved to Texas. When his marriage broke up, he returned home. He had moved in with his brother in Durham until he could recover emotionally and financially, and was starting a new business as a building contractor. He was lonely, and one of the reasons he had joined Ebenezer was his hope of meeting a decent young Christian woman with whom he might start a relationship.
Jim was introduced to Barbara by her brothers, with whom he had become acquainted at church. He knew that she had been in real estate. To make conversation, he had approached her at the beach and asked her advice about a building project he was working on in Durham.
Jim was tall and slim, like Larry, with the same understated, quiet personality. Barbara was friendly toward him, and they had no trouble talking to each other. Jim liked her immediately. She impressed him, he said later, as “just a good old country girl.” He invited her to go for a walk on the beach after supper. He sensed that she might need to talk to somebody about her husband’s death, and as they walked on the hard sand, keeping above the surf’s foaming edge, he said, “Look, I don’t mean to pry, but if you ever need to talk about what happened, I’d be glad to listen.”
She seemed touched by the offer, and they stopped and sat in the sand, watching the waves break, while she told him how she had gone to sleep on the couch on the night of Larry’s death and was awakened a short time later by a loud noise. It had sounded like a gunshot, she said, and she had rushed to the bedroom and found Larry shot while he was cleaning his pistol. She cried as she recalled the horror of the moment, and Jim reached to hug and console her. She clung to him crying, and before Jim realized what was happening, they were on their feet and moving toward the dunes. There Barbara kissed him deeply, and soon they had pulled aside their brief clothing and were in wild conjunction in the sand.
“It just came on, a natural thing,” Jim recalled later. “I didn’t intend to do that. I didn’t want to do that. That wasn’t my nature. One thing just led to another and there you are.”
Jim did have the presence of mind to ask one important question before things had gone too far. “Are you on the pill?”
“Don’t worry,” she told him. “I had my tubes tied after my last baby.”
Afterward, Jim was astonished at the level of Barbara’s passion. He never had known a woman so sexually aggressive. Her husband had been dead just two and a half months, he knew, and she had been through great strain. He thought she had just been letting go of all her pent-up emotions.