58
Among the items listed as exhibits were the incident/offense report of the crime and the arrest reports for Robert John Schiess III and Barbara Ann Roberts. The initial statement by Barbara following her arrest, along with her second and third interviews, were probably among the most crucial evidence that would be presented at the trial. The jury would have the opportunity to watch and listen to the videotaped interview with Barbara, when she had described the sexual activity during her affair with Vernon Roberts in a particularly graphic manner. That same videotaped interview included Barbara’s moment of inappropriate laughter, which was described in court as a “maniacal outburst.”
Two notes were entered as evidence at the trial as proof of the harassment that Vernon Roberts claimed that his ex-wife Barbara had heaped on him and Darlene, prior to Darlene’s death. The harassment, he contended, had ranged from the notes to attempted arson to several forms of stalking and trespassing, and several friends and relatives stated that Darlene had lived in constant fear because of it. She had even gone so far as to say that if anything ever happened to her, it would be Barbara who would be responsible.
The notes had been written on lined notebook paper and appeared to have been prepared by using a plastic school ruler with stencils cut into it so that the letters of the alphabet could be traced. Many words had been misspelled, which could have been intentional.
One note read as follows:
DARLENE
(drawing of a heart)
VERNON
YOU
THOUGHT
ENOUGH TIME
HAD
PASTED
NEVER
IF YOU
WANT
IT TO BE
FOREVER
I
CAN
SEE TO THAT
EASY
BE TOGETHER
FOREVER,
ETURNITY
(drawing of a tombstone with RIP)
ALL EYES ARE ON YOUR
EVER MOVE
The second note was more ominous, since it made reference to several other family members. It was addressed to Darlene, also contained some misspelled words, and ended with a line that looked like an attempt to make the note appear to have been sent by someone from Darlene’s past:
DARLENE
NO JOKE
KNOW WHERE
YOU VERNON
YOUR DARTHER
AND NOW WHERE
YOUR SISTER, SON
LIVE HAVE SOME WATCHING
ALL YOU CHOSE
ONE OR ALL
YOU ARE MINE OR
NO ONES
These two notes were included in the discovery files and presented as evidence, but there was no apparent positive proof that Barbara herself had prepared or sent either note; nothing on the notes themselves indicated the identity of the sender.
The interview and statement of James Anthony Captain concerning conversations he’d had with both Barbara and Schiess were brought in as exhibits, as were the first and second interviews of Vernon Roberts following his wife’s murder. The farmworker Jose Luis Richiez, who had observed Schiess and Barbara in the black pickup on the day of the murder, had been interviewed twice, and both those interviews were presented. Also on hand were the first and second interviews of Jason Alan Sammons and the interview of his friend Ellis McNeill Williams, who discovered the body of Darlene Roberts, and Todd Waits, who stopped to help Williams and Sammons.
The interviews of Charles Edward Young Sr., Ryan Kyle Tippens, Charles Edward Young Jr., and Leah Marie Stoker had all helped to place Barbara and Schiess near the scene of the murder; these were all included as exhibits.
Andrea Knight and Danielle Lyn Anderson, employees of Pearle Vision in Conyers, Georgia, had been interviewed regarding Barbara’s broken eyeglasses, and their interviews were among the exhibits.
Heidi and Benji Langford, the daughter and son of Darlene Roberts, had given very lengthy interviews following their mother’s death, and those interviews had provided some key information in the investigation and were included as exhibits.
The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation had talked to the father of Robert John Schiess III, and that interview was also presented.
Quite a few other items were included on the exhibits list: a diagram of the murder scene on Cherokee County Road 941, which had been made by law enforcement, the photo lineup shown to witnesses, who identified Schiess and Barbara, as well as the photo of Barbara’s bruised face and a receipt for in-line skates. The subpoena of Barbara’s records from Pearle Vision, the membership information from Schiess’s application to the South River Gun Club, and Schiess’s rental agreement for the storage building, where the black Dodge Dakota pickup was hidden, were all listed as exhibits.
Schiess had downloaded a long list of “Frequently Asked Questions About Fingerprints” from the Internet, and that list was found in his possession at the time of his arrest. It was included, along with the Wal-Mart receipt from Darlene Roberts’s final shopping trip, which was recovered from Darlene Roberts’s vehicle. Photos were shown of prior vandalism to another of Darlene’s vehicles, and the two harassment letters purportedly from Barbara to Darlene and Vernon were presented as exhibits.
Barbara’s Cingular Wireless cell phone records had been subpoenaed as proof of her calls to Vernon and to others, both on the day of the murder and in the preceding months. Those records were included on the exhibits list. Also on the list was an assistance rendered report from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, whose personnel had played a key role in the investigation and subsequent arrests, and a report from the Lee’s Summit, Missouri, Police Department involving the shotgun located there, but it had proved not to have been the one used in the crime. That shotgun—the murder weapon—had never been located.
The last items on the exhibits list were forensic in nature and were reports on the evidence submitted to the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences, the Lee’s Summit Police Department ballistic test results, and the preliminary autopsy report on Darlene Roberts.
59
When testimony began in the trial, the witnesses all testified as expected, repeating the facts that they had previously given in their statements to the investigators. There were no surprises until prison inmate Tonya Regalado took the stand. She had been brought from Julia Tutwiler Prison For Women to testify against the woman she clearly disliked, judging by the statement from the other inmate who said Regalado taunted and annoyed Barbara during their time together in the Cherokee County Jail.
Regalado was serving prison time for forgery and drug possession, and she had an extensive rap sheet for numerous other offenses, according to the authorities.
Regalado claimed that she shared a cell with Barbara for around seven months in 2007, although Barbara later said that they had not been cellmates and had only spent time in the dayroom together. Regalado said she had no knowledge of the case other than what Barbara had told her.
According to Regalado, Barbara had told her that it was the kick from the final blast of the shotgun that had broken her glasses and bruised her face, not a blow from Schiess to stop her from “freaking out” at the crime scene. She and Barbara had talked about the murder several times, Regalado said, claiming that Barbara told her she did not realize the glasses had been knocked off her face and lost until she and Schiess fled the scene.
“She talked to everybody about it,” Regalado claimed, but no other inmates had come forward to testify against Barbara.
According to Regalado, Barbara told her that Schiess had been furious when he found out that she’d had an affair with Vernon Roberts, saying that he “went ballistic.”
When Regalado was asked if she had been offered any deals for a reduction in her sentence in exchange for her testimony, she told the court, “I had already been sentenced.”
When Investigator Mark Hicks took the stand for questioning, he testified about the several versions of the crime that Barbara had told during her interviews. During the initial questioning session, Hicks said, Barbara had at first claimed she was not near the area on the evening of the shooting. Later, after being confronted with the broken eyeglasses traced to her, Barbara admitted that she was present at the shooting and had been a participant in what happened, but she did not say that she had fired the shotgun.
When the jury was shown Barbara’s videotaped interview with Hicks, they heard her describe what she claimed had happened on the day of the murder, when she and Schiess stopped Darlene on the road under the pretense of having trouble with the truck. They also heard Barbara relating the graphic details of her affair with Vernon, and heard for themselves the episode of Barbara’s burst of nervous, inappropriate laughter, which the prosecution termed “maniacal.”
Barbara had claimed in her statements that Schiess had become enraged when he learned of the affair with Vernon, and had planned to get revenge on Vernon by confronting Darlene. Instead, she said, the plan had gone awry when Darlene escaped from Schiess’s attempts to bind and gag her, and Barbara had claimed that Schiess had then gotten into Darlene’s Nissan Murano, followed her to the pond, where she had attempted to hide, and had shot her. Then, Barbara said, Schiess had hit her in the face with the shotgun butt, breaking her glasses. The two then left the Murano and returned to their truck, and headed back to Georgia. Along the way, they discarded the unrecovered murder weapon; they threw the shotgun into the Etowah River as they crossed the bridge over it, Barbara claimed.
In opening statements to the jury, District Attorney Mike O’Dell and Assistant District Attorney Bob Johnston had described Barbara Roberts as being obsessed with her former husband, Vernon Roberts, to the point of planning to get rid of Darlene, whom she saw as an obstacle to reuniting with Vernon. O’Dell described Barbara’s “obsessive rage,” and said that “there was premeditation.”
O’Dell told the jury that Barbara was a “master manipulator,” describing Schiess as an “alcoholic, former neurosurgeon,” who, he said, was “hopped-up on drugs.” He claimed that Barbara had convinced her lover to help her in her plot to kill Darlene. The plan, O’Dell said, was to remove Darlene from the picture so that Barbara could once again be with Vernon, who was the actual object of her affection.
The two prosecutors outlined what they believed was Barbara’s plan to kill Darlene. They said the plan involved the purchase of the Mossberg 500 shotgun and the membership in the South River Gun Club, where they “spent months” practicing target shooting. Then, because they knew Darlene’s daily routine, they came at around 5:50
P.M.
, on April 6, 2006, to the dirt road near her home to lie in wait for her and stop her as she came home from work.
“They practiced, they planned, and then like a spider setting her web,” O’Dell said, “she set the trap.”
The prosecutors outlined the events leading up to Darlene’s murder, saying that Darlene had been forced from her car as Barbara hid in the truck to keep from being recognized. But when Schiess began attempting to bind and gag Darlene, Barbara got out of the truck and held the shotgun. O’Dell said that it must have been at that moment that Darlene recognized Barbara, that she realized her life was in danger.
“Somehow she broke free from her restraints and ran,” he said. “For a few brief moments, Darlene Roberts felt some freedom. But it didn’t last long.”
According to O’Dell, Barbara then chased after Darlene on foot, firing the shotgun. Expended shells were found between the roadside and the pond, confirming the sequence of events, he said.
“The first five shots all missed as she chased after her,” he said.
Schiess then jumped into the Murano and followed the two women through the pasture to the pond, O’Dell said, damaging the undercarriage after driving through a field between the road and the small fishing pond, where Darlene had hidden in the weeds to seek shelter.
O’Dell then referred to Tonya Regalado’s testimony about Barbara’s alleged jailhouse confession. As Darlene lay partially hidden in the weeds along the edge of the pond, he said, Barbara “calmly and coolly pumped the shotgun,” and fired the last three remaining shotgun shells into Darlene Roberts, hitting her twice in the back and once in the head, point-blank, “from a distance of five to seven feet,” killing her instantly.
Darlene’s autopsy report indicated that she had died from three shotgun wounds—one to the head, one to the upper back, and one to the middle back. In addition, X-ray examination revealed multiple “snowstorm” images of shotgun pellets covering the whole right side of the chest and scattered over the upper arms. Photos of Darlene’s horribly mutilated body were shown to the jury, with Darlene’s family fleeing the courtroom to keep from having to see them.
The jury had already been presented with the evidence of the broken piece of the shotgun butt that was recovered from Darlene’s vehicle, and the broken glasses found at the crime scene, which had been proven to belong to Barbara. Those, plus the testimony of Tonya Regalado and Barbara’s own statements during interviews, were proving to be an almost insurmountable amount of evidence that Rodney Stallings would have to try his best to refute.